Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative Path: tivoli.tivoli.com!geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!aleph From: aleph@netcom.com (Aleph Press) Subject: DRABBLES: TNG: The Data Drabbles Message-ID: Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 15:24:57 GMT Lines: 116 Xref: tivoli.tivoli.com alt.startrek.creative:4192 I'm posting this for Kate Orman at korman@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au, who for some reason can't get her posts to show up on alt.startrek.creative. Everything below this line was sent to me by Kate; please e-mail her with any comments you may have. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DRABBLES By Kate Orman In July 1993, I had a bit of a binge of writing drabbles - short stories of exactly one hundred words. These four were published in Mary Urban's superb zine "Data Base". If you'd like to use these in your fanzine, you *must* ask my permission first. email me at korman@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au. Go on. I'll say yes. *** OFF-LINE DREAMING "Just dream, Data." It starts with an inner hull breach: hurricane exhalation into the void. Silence swells inside the ship. In Engineering, bright blood explodes from Geordi's mouth. On the bridge, the Captain crumples like tissue paper as life support fails in a lethal cascade. Doctor Crusher is a pale mannequin across a sickbay bench, Counsellor Troi a twisted figure against a wall. He steps over and past the corpses, each name unreeling from his catalogue, and only the man who doesn't have to breathe is still alive... ... with the jolt of awakening he realises: every gift has a price. *** GOING-AWAY PRESENT (She had shrieked with laughter. "Stop it! Your tongue's electric - it tingles! It tickles!") The touch on his shoulder was hot as plasma - or was it as cold as space? It was natural to associate confusion with Q. A vast electric tingle exploded inside his circuitry, and he had to let it out. ("I'd love to hear you laugh," she had said, in those warm minutes before sleep overtook her. "Certainly, Lieutenant. Ha ha ha ha." She slapped his chest, drowsily. "Stop that. Not that. I mean your real laugh.") "Data? Why are you laughing?" Tasha! This is for you! *** CONTAGION A moment's disorientation as Worf hefted him in a fireman's lift. Then even his hearing went, every bit of feeling crashing into electric oblivion. Trapped in that blackness, he heard the rodent voice of the virus, dancing a manic rewrite through scripts and subroutines, chittering at the boundaries of protected memory. Was this death? This spiral from signal to noise? How very human to catch a virus. How very human to die. He remembered his response to Armus' challenge: "Curiosity." And in that last instant - How very human to be afraid. Afterwards, of course, he didn't remember any of it. *** YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE, YOU KNOW After every crisis, a denouement. In Ten-Forward, Geordi flips through dog-eared journals. Data's watching face is underlit by the table. "So near and yet so far," he comments. "I just don't see any way of reproducing the chip from these notes. Your father had a unique way of working." Data nods; he already knows. "I'm really sorry," says Geordi. "It's like having the holy grail snatched out of your hands." "Paradoxically, I could only feel the loss of the chip if I had it." Data's words are firm. "Lore cannot hurt me." Geordi opens his mouth and closes it again. Kate Orman "You are endlessly agitating, unceasingly mischievous. Will you never stop?" - Light, in Marc Platt's "Ghost Light", 1989