From: LLDL81B@prodigy.com (Lori Grenci) Newsgroups: alt.tv.quantum-leap.creative Subject: LEAP NCC-1701D (1/4) QL/ST **ADULT** Date: 22 Jul 1995 06:08:16 GMT Message-Id: <3uq4kg$20b6@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com> LEAP NCC-1701D PART 1 "When dealing with quanta, nothing's impossible" -Thames- REVENGE OF THE EVIL LEAPER *************** Data looked around the Waiting Room. It was plain, with unadorned walls that offered no obvious clues as to its location. Standing across from him was a human male wearing a rather unconventional (by Data's standards) outfit - red pants, red sequined vest over an equally wild shirt, fedora hat, and a cigar perched in his mouth. "I assume that you are responsible for my capture." Data said, addressing this unidentified individual. "I would like to know where I am and for what purpose I have been brought here." The prime directive prevented Data from saying much more. He would wait patiently for the explanation. Al didn't answer immediately. Instead he walked closer to this person whom Sam had replaced. Here was, without a doubt, a most peculiar leapee, and Al was quickly developing a bad feeling about this leap. Al and Data continued to silently examine each other until Gooshie burst into the room and interrupted them. "Admiral, I have news from Ziggy, and I'm not sure you're going to like it." He whispered into Al's ear as the two men stared at Data. After hearing Gooshie's incredible news, Al pulled the cigar out of his mouth and muttered the only words that came to mind, "OH BOY." *************** "Mr. Data, at our current speed, what is our estimated arrival time at the Bibendi system?" Captain Picard waited a few seconds and tried again. "Mr. Data, OUR ESTIMATED ARRIVAL TIME at the Bibendi system, PLEASE!" No response. Picard walked over and stood next to the android's station. "Data, are you all right?" Sam Beckett wasn't paying attention. He put his hand on his chest and felt nothing. As he turned his head and saw the bald man in the funny uniform, he was instantly gripped by a kind of panic he had never known. A panic with no heartbeats, no sweat, no shaking muscles. He screamed. "AAAAHHHHHHHGGGGGG! SOMEBODY HELP ME!" By the time Doctor Crusher arrived on the Bridge, the crew was huddled around Data, who was frozen in his seat unable to move or speak. It would never have occurred to any of them that Data was in a catatonic state of terror. Only Sam knew that. The people around him thought he was suffering from a severe malfunction of his positronic brain. Even after dozens of leaps, Sam was still not comfortable with the experience of suddenly becoming a different person. Each time was unique but this was the most unique of all. He didn't feel human. He didn't feel animal. He didn't feel ANYTHING. He was numb. "Al," he thought to himself as the pretty lady doctor waved obscure instruments around his immobile form. "Al, where are you. I've become a zombie. I'm one of the living dead." Counselor Troi pushed her way through the crowd and stood by Data, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Data, Data, it's Deanna. Speak to me." She was getting unusual emotional vibrations from Data that she had never sensed before. Opening her mind to him, she reached out for any response that he might attempt. Troi's communication woke Sam out of his paralysis. He slowly moved some parts of his body to test his neuromuscular control and was relieved that it appeared normal. His sensation of movement, however, remained oddly disconnected. At that moment the only things he knew for sure was that his name was Data and he had lots of friends. "Thank you." he said feebly, "I'm not feeling too well right now. Can I go lie down somewhere?" Doctor Crusher and Captain Picard exchanged puzzled looks. No one had ever heard Data say he was not "feeling" well. The Doctor had another reason to be concerned; some of her medical tricorder readings had been distinctly humanoid. She felt it would be best to keep Data under observation in sickbay until she and Geordi could ascertain what was wrong. As Worf escorted Data off the Bridge, it was obvious to everyone that something was seriously amiss. *************** Al found Sam lying in sickbay, looking miserable and confused. There were several people in the room so he had to keep Sam quiet. He leaned over and spoke softly. "Sam, don't talk, don't react, just listen and, please, STAY CALM. You've leaped into the 24th century. You're an android named Data and you're an officer on a spaceship called, can you believe this, The USS Enterprise. The reason you feel so bizarre is because you periodically cross brainwaves with Data's computer brain." Sam's eyes were shut tight as he tried to avoid another panic attack. Without thinking, he unexpectedly yelled back at Al as if in a daze. "NO! This can't be!" he shouted. "How the hell did I get in the 24th century? And you're telling me I'm supposed to be some kind of...MACHINE!" Snapping back to reality, he realized that his outburst had probably drawn the attention of the other people in sickbay. He opened his eyes fully and stared apologetically at Al, whose iridescent, glittered, blue shirt and tie brought a reluctant smile to Sam's face. Doctor Crusher and Geordi both responded quickly to the android's nonsensical outburst and unusual grin. Running over to the foot of the bed, they spoke in whispers to each other, hoping Data wouldn't overhear. "Geordi, is it possible for Data's brain to have hallucinations?" "I'm not sure," Geordi responded while taking tricorder readings, "but there's an unidentified energy source in the area to the left of his bed. It resembles holographic emissions. That might be causing some kind of positronic misfire. I just don't know yet." "Ahhhhhh" Sam moaned as the imaging chamber door slammed shut and Al disappeared. A minute later, Geordi leaned over Sam. "How ya doin', Data? We're really worried about you." Geordi grinned at him, "You haven't self-installed any weird emotion chips lately, have you?' Sam smiled back dopily, "No...no weird chips." The smile only made things worse. "Geordi," Doctor Crusher shouted from across the room, "here's the positronic parallel interface connector." "Thanks, Doctor Crusher." Sam registered the names; Geordi, Doctor Crusher. Geordi came back and leaned over Sam again, this time holding a thin wire in his hand. If Sam had been able to sweat, he would have been drenched by now, but he was still in that same disembodied state he had felt on the Bridge. "Data, we're going to take your non-critical channel paths offline and hook your positronic test matrix to the system control console. You'll have to turn over so I can attach this interface." Geordi showed Sam the wire. Sam wasn't entirely sure what Geordi was talking about, but he was smart enough to know it wasn't something you wanted to do to a human brain. "You know, I'd rather not be offline right now. I have a splitting headache. Maybe we can do this some other time?" "Some other time?" Geordi was totally puzzled. "Data..." but he was interrupted by the Doctor, who suggested that they just leave Data alone for a while and let him rest. *************** Returning to sickbay a short time later, Al found Sam still in bed and still wearing that same depressed and detached expression, eerily very much like Data's normal face. He signaled to Sam to get rid of everyone so they could talk. After sending the medics off on some inane errand the two men were finally alone. "Sam, I've been trying to get some info out of the real Data. He's a nice guy, for an android, and he wants to be helpful, but he's got some kind of special order, a prime directive, whatever you wanna call it, that prevents him from telling too much. Anyway, he suggests that you offer to run diagnostics on yourself using the equipment in his quarters. That's what he does when his computer brain goes cafluey. If you let that engineer with the designer sunglasses run tests on you, he's gonna figure out PDQ that something's not kosher." Sam sat up from the bed, suddenly interested in Al's babbling. "That man's name is Geordi and he's been very nice to me, so I don't want to hear any nasty cracks about him. Fortunately, he hasn't done any extensive testing yet. Doctor Crusher is letting me rest first." "Doctor Crusher...that's the pretty blond in the blue lab coat, right? She's a real looker. But Sam, have you seen the brunette in the tight jumpsuit with the big bazooms? MAMMA MIA, I almost had heart failure!" Sam rolled his eyes to the ceiling and lay back down on the bed. "Al, PLEASE, just find out from Ziggy what I'm supposed to do so I can get the hell out of here. And is anyone investigating the string enigma that caused this time displacement?" "Well, figuring out what you're supposed to do is a little iffy, since this is the future and Ziggy has no information to process. We have to rely on what Data's willing to tell us. And he's also been helping with the string problem. Even though he had to disobey orders to do it, he linked himself up to Ziggy and gave her a few calculations to chew on that almost fried her chips." Al cocked his head and gave Sam a big cheer-up grin, "You know, I think Ziggy's in love." "That's just great, Al." Sam said, half smiling and half grimacing. "Anything else?" Al began gesticulating wildly, waving his cigar around in big circles, and banging the handlink every now and then for no apparent reason. "This Data guy's IQ must be a gazillion. He's got some theories about strings connecting across spacetime, and gravity bending the universe, and some other mumbo-jumbo that I don't understand. And you should have heard Ziggy and Data discussing quantum physics. It was AMAZING. Like being in the presence of a couple of Einsteins...or a couple of Becketts." He winked at Sam. "But, the REALLY incredible thing about this Data, is that, even though he's a robot, he's fully functional, if you catch my drift. I mean, he told me he's done it a few times." Al leaned in close to Sam, took a puff, and grinned. "Thought you should know that, just in case you get any interesting offers from one of these 24th century babes." Sam closed his eyes and shook his head. "OH GOD, Al! You were talking to an android about SEX? Don't you ever think about anything else? "Sure I do...sometimes." *************** Sam did as Al had suggested; he convinced Doctor Crusher to release him to Data's quarters under the pretext of running diagnostics. Captain Picard placed him on temporary inactive duty, so mercifully, he didn't have to actually DO anything. As Sam tried to settle into his quarters, he discovered that sometimes even an IQ of 267 is not enough when dealing with new appliances. He blew up the replicator trying to get breakfast and spent two hungry hours wondering if androids ever ate real food. Not being certain, he used the cat he found wandering around as an excuse to request repairs. "Gotta make the kitty chow," he said to a mechanic who was thinking that Data had really lost it. Successful at last in creating a roll and a cup of soup, he was relishing the meager meal when a wandering memory caught hold of him. Didn't he once see a movie where someone asked someone else, "Do you...eat?" That silly quote found its way through one of the swiss-cheese holes to torment him. Who were those characters? Laughing sarcastically, he asked himself, "Do I...eat?" After ten minutes of feasting, he sat down in front of Data's imposing console, toying with the idea of trying out some 24th century technology. Logic told him to just sit tight and wait for news from Ziggy, but his curiosity and boredom got the better of him. He knew from watching others that this ship's computer was voice activated and responded with vocal answers. In fact, the ship's computer sounded a little like Ziggy. Sam hoped the voice security system would recognize him as Data. "Computer, please identify me." "You are Commander Data of Starfleet, current assignment USS Enterprise." Sam breathed a sigh of relief; he had fooled the computer, even if he hadn't fooled Spot. The cat was standing on the workstation, haunches up, hissing at him. "You're right. I was being very rude." He took a short break to feed Spot something from the food replicator and then got back to business. "Computer, please list all officers of the Enterprise and show me their identity photos." His photographic memory easily absorbed all the information as the computer flashed it on the screen. Even though he had already learned a few things about the crew, he now knew more, and that would help him function. "Computer, compute spacetime curvature along an axis intersecting..." Before he could finish someone was at his door. "Come in," he said, expecting to see Geordi or Doctor Crusher. It was Deanna Troi. ******************* - End Part 1 -