The Six Million Latinum Woman

It was getting late in the evening – just after 2100 by the ship's chronometer – before Joey Day Sisko finally arrived back in Engineering. The hours-long briefing by Chief Science Officer Snowfire was informative, but also very detailed and he needed to shake out the information that was threatening to burst from his brain and get back to something he was familiar with.

He approached his Beta shift Assistant Chief Engineer, Alyson Townsend. “How's the transwarp drive running, Lieutenant?”

She turned, startled, not realizing he had returned, and said, “Hey... I mean, good, Commander... Sir. No abnormalities detected and Ensign Celes reports hull shearing within acceptable parameters.”

Ensign Celes Arlana was the Structural and Environmental Specialist, who, along with Townsend had served on the Spectre with Sisko and he had requested their transfer to the Horizon when he had learned of his posting. In fact, he had taken a good portion of the Engineering team, 19 good officers and crewmen in all, leaving poor Captain Summers and his new Chief Engineer to recruit more before heading off again to their next mission.

“How was your class?” she asked him, jokingly.

“Makes the Academy look like child's play,” he returned, in jest. “I'll be in the lab if you need me.”

“Aye aye,” she replied, and headed back to the Chief Engineer's office to file a report on the state of the transwarp drive. By “lab” she already knew Sisko was referring to the Cybernetics Lab, where he had been spending a lot of his free time since they had launched. She wasn't sure what he was up to in there, but it must've been interesting enough to keep an Engineer's attention away from Main Engineering.

She wasn't aware that he was actually a scientist at heart. His specialty in the Academy was Science and Cybernetics, and Engineering was something he mainly just picked up as a junior officer on the Defiant, later refining his skills on Lotus Starbase and then on the Spectre. His mathematical aptitude scores were off the charts and he could pick up anything and become an expert, as long as it had to do with numbers.

He arrived at the lab where there was first a general area with a table for assembly and instruction, as well as several replicators and an area for testing of one's robotic creations. Beyond this were a series of private laboratories that officers could reserve for specialized projects. All but two were open. He approached one of the two closed doors and used his personal security code to enter the room. Inside the room was quite similar to the general area, but smaller. In addition to the table, testing area, and access to the ship's main computer, it contained one replicator, which would provide small amounts of requested material or parts, but was rationed to make sure that resources were first available for the proper maintenance and running of the ship. It also was locked down and would not provide the user with banned or dangerous substances. Of course, Sisko had senior security codes that could override all of those restrictions, if necessary.

At the moment, however, he was content with what it provided. So far he had only used it to build the thing that was sitting in the middle of the lab table: a positronic hand that looked, felt, moved, and functioned like a real human hand. Again, as he had done the last couple days, he picked up a small electronic probe and poked each finger, watching it react and recoil just like a human finger would upon receiving a small shock. He grinned as the thousands of microscopic nerves behind the polymer skin sent a signal to a wireless receiver/transmitter connected to the wrist, which then relayed it to the computer, where was stored a simple AI program, which then calculated the given response to the pain stimuli and sent a signal back down to the wireless receiver to tell it to move the finger away from the source of the pain. The transmissions all happened in mere nanoseconds, which was about a million times faster than it would in any human nervous system.

Sisko then caressed the hand and felt beneath his fingers, the polymer skin that felt so lifelike and soft like a real woman's hand. The sensation was odd, because it was just an object, but if he closed his eyes, he would never know the difference. Sisko developed the polymer to duplicate human skin at the molecular level, but as a synthetic, it would not degrade or need to be regenerated as it does on humans. With that level of detail, the android would hopefully be able to feel and experience sensations as deep and meaningful as humanoids do. He hoped that things like pain and pleasure would be a normal part of the android's life; something that Data was always striving for in his journey through life. He also hoped to integrate the emotion chip developed and recorded by Noonian Soong into the skin and nerves that he developed to create an all-encompassing sensational experience. Realistic visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustation senses would be included as well to add to the experience.

The hand responded to his touch by attempting to return the gesture and readings on the computer indicated a successful recognition of an intimate response in the AI's programming. He then spoke directly to the AI in order to ask it to perform some simple commands.

“Lal, please raise your index finger.” The hand of “Lal” complied, creating a fist first and then raising the first finger. He called his creation “Lal” in homage of the female android created by Data and lost mere days later. I won't let that happen this time, he vowed. No matter what I have to do...

“Lal, please raise your ring finger,” he then said, and the hand tried to lift the third finger as requested, but failed to raise it more than a couple centimeters. After failing a few times, it finally learned to hold its thumb over the middle finger and pinky, thus allowing it to pull the ring finger into a somewhat raised position.

“That is fantastic Lal!” he exclaimed. The learning process already occurring in the simple AI was remarkable.

Sisko turned off the AI so that Lal could “rest” and then turned to the computer to continue his work toward perfecting what Dr. Soong had started over eighty years prior.