Chapter 8: Aftermath
[USS Enterprise-D — Cole's Quarters, Deck 8 — 2364, Day 8, 2200 Hours]
The replicator hummed, and the plate materialized with a soft chime. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, green beans. The exact combination Cole had eaten every Sunday at his grandmother's kitchen table in a life that existed on the other side of death.
He took a bite.
It tasted like nothing.
Not bad—the replicator didn't produce bad food. It produced food that was nutritionally optimized, temperature-perfect, and utterly soulless. The pot roast had the right texture, the right color, the right aroma. But the particular magic of his grandmother's recipe—the way the onions caramelized in the cast iron, the way the steam carried the scent through three rooms of a house that no longer existed—couldn't be replicated by a machine that assembled food from energy patterns.
Cole ate it anyway. All of it, plus a second plate, plus a protein supplement bar. The enhanced metabolism didn't care about flavor. It cared about fuel.
He cleared the dishes, recycled the plates, and pulled his chair to the center of the room. The quarters were dark except for a single low-level strip along the baseboards. The viewport showed stars—always stars, the universe's relentless reminder that he was somewhere impossibly far from home.
Training time.
Cole closed his eyes. Extended his hands, palms out.
The Energy Perception was always running. Even now, without conscious effort, he could feel the ambient hum of the ship—the EPS grid threading through the walls, the faint pulse of the warp core three decks below, the bio-electric signatures of crewmates in adjacent quarters. All of it muted, distant, like hearing music through water.
He pushed.
The range expanded. Not much—a meter, maybe two—but the resolution sharpened. The EPS conduit in the port wall shifted from a vague warmth to a defined line of energy flowing at 94.7% nominal capacity. The bio-electric field of his neighbor—Ensign Rawlins, he thought, based on the circadian pattern suggesting someone asleep—resolved from "presence" to "specifics." Heart rate. Breathing rhythm. The low-frequency hum of a humanoid nervous system at rest.
Pain bloomed behind his eyes. Cole held for a count of ten, then released.
The perception snapped back to its default range. His head throbbed—a sharp, localized pressure at the base of his skull where the neural strain concentrated. Not as bad as the Farpoint creature, not as bad as the junction 12 read, but present. Real.
Ten seconds at extended range. Cost: moderate headache. Recovery: fifteen minutes.
He noted it in his encrypted file. Progress was measured in seconds and meters—incremental, frustrating, but real. A week ago he couldn't have pushed the range at all. Now he could hold an extra two meters for ten seconds before the cost became prohibitive.
The Technology Assimilation was harder to train. It required physical contact with actual technology, which meant either using his quarters' limited systems or risking practice in public spaces. Cole had settled on a compromise: late-night sessions with his personal PADD, the replicator, and Coleman's old toolkit.
He picked up the toolkit now. Standard Starfleet issue—micro-spanners, isolinear chip extractors, a portable diagnostic unit, various calibration instruments. His fingers closed around the diagnostic unit's casing.
Data flowed. Not the overwhelming torrent from the Engineering console—this was a trickle, manageable, almost pleasant. The device's architecture unfolded in his mind: power cell (87% charge), sensor array (frequency range 47.2-893.1 terahertz), processing matrix (three isolinear chips in parallel configuration, one running 0.3% below optimal due to a manufacturing variance in the substrate).
Cole held the connection. Twenty seconds. Thirty. The headache that followed was mild—a dull pressure rather than the spike of earlier sessions. The information stayed with him, clear and detailed, and when he set the device down he could still recall the manufacturing variance in chip three.
Retention improving. Headache decreasing for simple devices. Progress.
He opened the diagnostic unit's casing. Chip three was right there—he could see the substrate variance with his enhanced visual acuity, a barely perceptible discoloration in the crystalline matrix. Without the Assimilation, it would have taken a dedicated lab scan to detect.
Cole swapped chip three for one of the spares in the toolkit. The diagnostic unit's performance jumped 0.3%.
Tiny. Meaningless in practical terms. But the process—identify flaw through touch, confirm with eyes, fix with hands—was a proof of concept that made his heart rate climb.
I can do this. I can learn this. One piece at a time.
He sealed the toolkit and ran through three more Assimilation attempts—the replicator (complex, twenty seconds of contact yielded partial understanding of the matter reconversion system before the headache forced him to stop), the door mechanism (simple, full understanding in three seconds, zero headache), and the sonic shower controls (medium complexity, ten seconds, mild headache).
The session cost him ninety minutes and left him with a persistent low-grade throbbing across his forehead. He made notes, encrypted them, and filed them under "Grandmother's recipes."
Then he pulled on civilian clothes—a simple jacket and trousers from Coleman's sparse wardrobe—and headed for the ship's library.
---
[USS Enterprise-D — Ship's Library, Deck 12 — 2364, Day 8, 2345 Hours]
The library was empty at this hour except for a single figure seated at the far terminal, back straight, fingers moving across the interface with mechanical precision.
Data looked up as Cole entered. Yellow eyes—the android's most immediately striking feature—tracked him with an attentiveness that managed to be curious without being threatening.
"Lieutenant Coleman. You are accessing the library outside standard hours."
"Couldn't sleep." Cole settled at a terminal two seats away. Close enough for conversation, far enough for independence. "You?"
"I do not sleep. I use the unoccupied hours for personal research and self-improvement." Data's head tilted—the characteristic processing gesture that Cole recognized from hundreds of hours of television. "Your query history indicates an interest in humanoid energy manipulation. A niche subject."
Cole's stomach dropped. He can see my search history. Of course he could—Data had operations-level access to ship systems.
"Theoretical interest." Cole pulled up the database interface, keeping his voice casual. "I read a paper on the Traveler phenomenon. The way certain beings can manipulate energy through thought—it got me thinking about human bioelectric fields."
"A fascinating subject." Data's eyes brightened—not emotionally, but with the particular intensity of an intellect engaging with a new problem. "The Traveler phenomenon, as documented, suggests a connection between consciousness and energy manipulation that conventional physics cannot explain. I have 847 papers on the topic in my personal database. Would you like me to recommend the most relevant?"
"I'd appreciate that."
Data transferred a reading list to Cole's PADD. Forty-three papers, ranked by relevance, with annotations summarizing each one's contribution to the field. The android had compiled the list in approximately four seconds.
"Can I ask you something?" Cole said, scrolling through the list. "Off the record?"
"I am not certain what 'off the record' means in this context, as I am not a recording device. However, I am capable of discretion."
Cole hesitated. The question mattered—not for the information, which he already knew, but for the relationship. Treating Data as a person, as someone whose perspective had value, was the foundation of a friendship that would become one of the most important in his life.
"Do you ever wonder what you are? Not what you're designed to do, but what you are? The gap between your specifications and your actual experience?"
Data was quiet for 2.3 seconds—an eternity for a positronic brain.
"Frequently," he said. "I am designed to process information and perform tasks. Yet I also observe, question, and seek understanding for its own sake. These behaviors exceed my programming parameters. Dr. Soong designed me to want to be human, but wanting itself is a function he could not have fully anticipated." A pause. "You are asking because you experience a similar discrepancy."
"What makes you say that?"
"Your query history suggests you are investigating abilities you did not previously possess. Your transfer records indicate standard humanoid baselines, yet your performance during the polywater event exceeded those baselines significantly. And you are sitting in a library at midnight asking an android about the nature of identity." Data's head tilted again. "These data points suggest a being in the process of discovering what it is."
Cole stared at him. The android stared back with perfect, inhuman patience.
"Yeah," Cole said after a long moment. "Something like that."
"I find that... interesting. If you wish to discuss the subject further, I am available. I have no other appointments until 0600."
They talked for two hours. Not about Cole's powers—he kept those locked behind the same walls he'd built for everyone else. But about consciousness. About the difference between programming and choice. About what it meant to exist in a form you didn't choose and find meaning there anyway.
Data spoke without contractions—never "I'm," always "I am." His observations were precise, technical, and occasionally startling in their depth. When Cole made a reference to 20th-century philosophy that he shouldn't have known in detail, Data noted the anachronism but didn't press. The android filed information; he didn't interrogate.
By 0200, Cole's headache had faded entirely. The conversation had been better than any analgesic—grounding, stimulating, a reminder that this universe contained minds worth knowing.
"I should get some sleep," Cole said, standing.
"A physiological necessity I sometimes find regrettable," Data replied. "This conversation has been refreshing. Most of my colleagues engage with me on technical matters. Few discuss ontological questions."
"Their loss." Cole meant it. "Same time next week?"
"I will be here. I am always here."
Cole walked back to his quarters through quiet corridors, the ship humming around him in its midnight register—lower, slower, as if the Enterprise itself was breathing in its sleep.
Something had shifted. Not the powers, not the cover story, not the endless calculus of what he knew versus what he could reveal. Something simpler.
He'd made a friend.
The PADD in his pocket held forty-three papers on energy manipulation, a friendship with the most unique mind on the ship, and encrypted notes documenting abilities that were growing stronger by the day.
Cole keyed open his quarters. The darkness welcomed him. He set an alarm for 0600 and lay down, and for the first time since the polywater incident, his thoughts weren't about Tasha Yar or Q or the Borg or the thousand ways this could go wrong.
They were about tomorrow. And what he might learn next.
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