Scene 14

            “Doctor Crusher, I have a question for you.”

            Beverly smiled. “Well, I’m not busy right now, Jarod. Come in and have a seat.”

            Jarod sat across her desk from her, smiling back. Beverly Crusher had a gentle air that made you like her and an ability to command that made you respect her. It was not often those qualities were combined so well.

            “I have a friend who has not had access to the kind of medical facilities the Federation offers. His world is fairly primitive, compared to Federation worlds, and his condition is not such that he can travel easily to get what he needs. I’m looking into research that will let me help him.”

            “Well, Jarod, it would be best if you could get him to one of our facilities. Not just anyone can administer medical assistance.”

            “I know, and I’m working on that. But I do have medical experience.”

            “Jarod, is there anything you don’t do?”

            Jarod grinned. “I’m trying to work my way through all the professions. But I’d like to know if you could help me get started in the right direction for my research.”

            “I would have to see records of his condition before I can tell you that.”

            With something like a smirk, he handed her the scans he had taken of Angelo’s brain the night before with a medical tricorder lifted from—and returned to—her own Sickbay.

            “Oh,” she gasped, looking through them. “Dear merciful stars. How long has he been like this?”

            “Since he was a small child, perhaps seven, perhaps younger.”

            “He’s Human, Jarod. You didn’t tell me that.”

            “Is he? He used to be. Can you change the very structure of the brain without changing the essence of what being Human means?”

            “His DNA is the same. Jarod, this isn’t a natural degeneration, is it? This was done to him.”

            Jarod’s eyes glittered darkly between narrowed eyelids. “Yes, it was done to him.”

            “By whom? Why? Where is he from?”

            “A small planet very far from here. I can’t tell you where, Beverly. It is classified. He exists under a regime that views other people as objects to be exploited. Child or adult, it doesn’t matter. They are the physical and intellectual property of the regime.” He said it with so much bitterness that Beverly leaned forward and watched him intently. “In his case, they wanted to expand his intellectual capabilities. Just as an experiment. He was a very intelligent little boy. And so scared.” He saw Timmy again in his mind, scolded by Mr. Raines, terrified of going back wherever Mr. Raines would take him. He had been Timmy then, right up until— He jerked his head to dispel the images. Sometimes he couldn’t remember if they were memories or images from the Digital Simulation Archive discs he had stolen from the Centre. “It was some kind of botched neurological experiment. It went horribly wrong, changed him. They hadn’t expected it, but it proved useful to them. They erased who he was and made him an empath.”

            “An empath?”

            “Not like Deanna Troi. He absorbs the personalities of others and brings out information about them. He has very little of his own—he is quite empty inside—and what he does have he hides from most people. For fear they will take that as well.”

            Beverly muttered something under her breath. “I can’t believe this happens. But not within—”

            “The Federation? No, my friend does not live on a Federation world. I believe the Federation’s mission and goals have prevented such a thing from happening…until now.”

            “Until now,” she said with a sigh and a frown. “And it’s really happening here. Jarod, is this friend of yours the reason you’re doing all this?”

            “Partly.” He couldn’t keep his jaw from clenching as too many memories flooded him. “I can’t let what happened to—to him happen to others, Beverly! I care about the innocent lives that no one else seems to care for. They need justice, and I have seen too many instances where power is used to deprive them of justice. The powerful rule, and the innocent suffer for it. I can’t let it happen here! I can’t!”

            “Jarod—” Beverly said gently.

            Jarod got a strong grip on himself. “I’m sorry, Beverly. I didn’t mean to shout at you. But I love this Federation and this Enterprise. They are founded on everything that drives me. Discovery, learning, mercy, justice. To allow that to be perverted from the inside—it makes me sick.”

            Beverly picked up the brain scans. “I’ll start looking into these. I’ll do whatever I can. It makes me sick, too.”

            He slid into her place in his mind. “Having a child of your own must drastically change the way you see the circumstances around you.”

            “It does, Jarod, and as you have noticed, I keep seeing him as one of these children, or as your friend. He is one of the gifted ones. He grew up on these ships; he could have been one of the ones under secret surveillance.”

            Jarod leaned forward with a reassuring smile. “I understand Wesley is doing very well at the Academy.”

            She smiled back at him. “Yes, he is.”

            He was glad she wasn’t Deanna, able to feel his slight dismay at what was coming for Wesley at Starfleet Academy. He had seen the episode… “He will always do his best to make you proud. I know it.”

            “How do you know?”

            “I have put myself in his place. I know him, though I have never met him. He may do foolish things, like any young man, but he wants to make you proud of him. He knows you love him.”

            “I do.” A puzzled look came over Beverly’s face, and Jarod knew his own face was betraying his longing. He deflected it.

            “Thank you for helping me.”

            “Jarod—” She broke off whatever she was going to say. “Jarod, I will try my hardest. But I can’t promise anything yet. Primitive experiments can still ruin a brain past the ability of advanced technology to heal. To begin with, I need more specialized scans of your friend’s brain. Once I look these over thoroughly, I’ll be able to tell you precisely what kind. Can you get them?”

            “I don’t know, but I will try.”

            “And Jarod, please remember I’m not a neurologist.”

            A smile crossed his face. “No. You’re the chief medical officer aboard a Federation starship. That means you have experience with solving the most complex and obscure problems that this strange, wonderful world throws at you. I believe in you, Beverly, and so would my friend, if he could.”

            As he was going out of the door, she said, “Jarod, what is his name?”

            He paused. “Timmy. His name is Timmy.”

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Scene 15

            “Miss Parker! Miss Parker!”

            Miss Parker looked up with a glare from her conversation with Sydney as Broots screeched to a stop in her office. “What, Broots?”

            “I’ve got it! The machine!”

            “You know what it’s for?”

            “No. But I know how to turn it on.”

            She put her forehead down in her hands with a groan. “Oh, good. At this rate we’ll catch up with Jarod when your daughter is ninety.” Nonetheless she and Sydney both went to join him.

            The little man looked proud of himself. Maybe it was something to be proud of, if your ego was the size of a pea. The machine looked…alien. Like most things Miss Parker did not want to believe, she shrugged that thought off. Too much time at that stupid science fiction convention. “Well?”

            “Well, see, there are no switches or buttons—”

            “I don’t want the whole blueprints! Just turn it on and see what it is.”

            With a gulp, Broots picked up one of the other things Jarod had left with the machine. “It’s a remote,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “So easy.”

            “That does not look like a remote.”

            “No. But watch.”

            He brushed his fingers down the square thing in his hand. Something glowed.

            The world disappeared.

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Scene 16

            “Where are we?” Miss Parker spat.

            They were in a very cramped, very dark space. Either Broots was sitting on her lap, or she was sitting on Sydney’s lap, neither of which was cause for any great joy.

            “Just stay calm,” Sydney said. “Everybody try to get up, slowly.”

            “I don’t need survival tips from you, Sydney. Broots, get off of me!”

            “I’m trying.”

            “Well, try harder!”

            Presently they were disentangled. Miss Parker ran her hands over the walls. They were in a mostly square room, barely large enough for the three of them to stand far closer together than Miss Parker ever wanted to be to either of them, unless she was intimidating them.

            “Is this a door? It feels like a door.” She pushed and pulled, but it didn’t open. She found something that felt like a flat-panel keypad and pushed things. It made a melodious beep but did not open.

            “Wait, Miss Parker,” Sydney said. “Before we get out we should find out where we are.”

            “Thank you, Zen master.”

            “Hey, look what I found!” Broots said brightly. A sharp blue light shone in her eyes.

            “Get that out of my eyes! Give me that! Where did you get it?”

            “It’s a little flashlight I keep on my keychain.”

            “Why? So you don’t fall over things in the dark when you get up to have some milk?”

            “No, it’s in case I find myself locked in a closet with Miss Parker and Sydney.” He flinched back as she loomed down on him, strangely lit in the blue light, no less beautiful and no less intimidating than usual.

            “Well, do you have anything else in those pocket protectors of yours that will get us out of here?”

            “No. What wouldn’t I give for a sonic screwdriver right now, eh?” He grinned feebly.

            “A what? No—I don’t want to know.”

            “Well, whenever the Doctor’s locked up somewhere—and I don’t mean the EMH, I mean The Doctor—different franchise, you know—British—”

            “I said I don’t want to know!”

            “Miss Parker.” Sydney was inhumanly calm, as always, and sounded amused as well.

            “What?”

            “Look up.”

            She directed the flashlight upward. Their little room extended far above their heads, and metal rungs were set in the walls.

            “Shafted,” Broots murmured.

            “Shut up, Broots. It’s an access shaft. Can anyone explain how we got in an access shaft? Broots?”

            “Don’t look at me.”

            She shone the light in his eyes. “Whatever it was, you did it. Now climb.”

            “You know what?” Broots panted as he climbed. “This place seems familiar.”

            “Familiar how? You spend much time in access shafts, Bat-Boy?”

            “Other than in the Centre, no. It’s not the Centre. We’re definitely not there. It feels different.”

            “Feels different?”

            “Yeah. A gut feeling, I guess you’d call it.”

            “Broots, I would not willingly give a human title to any feeling you might have.”

            Broots was quiet. She wondered if she’d hurt his feelings. She told herself she didn’t care.

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Scene 17

            “Captain, another ghost intruder alert! This time in Jeffries tube 47. Just like the other: it came and went, more like a circuit overload than anything.”

            Picard sighed. The stars had been playing merry havoc with their instruments. Data and Geordi had been able to cross-circuit things to compensate, but the captain still didn’t like it. It was like being colorblind. Meanwhile, the data collection Starfleet wanted was going forward, and Commander Westmore had laid out his suspicions about certain crewmembers and was working with Worf on a very creative trap for them and other members of their organization. Riker didn’t like it, but then, he didn’t seem to like Westmore very well. Something about the man, he said, rubbed him the wrong way. Something faintly wrong. And yet Deanna had detected nothing to alter her belief that he was trustworthy.

            Deanna had been jumpy for days. She said she felt as though the crew’s emotions had been amplified somehow, as if she were sensing an echo bouncing back onto them. She and Dr. Crusher had been trying to figure out if the new star system might have anything to do with it.

            Picard sighed again. He would be glad when this was all over, when Starfleet Intelligence operatives were no longer running all over his ship and performing secret experiments, when ghost echoes were no longer making his security officers run all over the ship…

            “Send a security team, Mr. Worf,” he ordered.

            “Yes, sir.” Worf didn’t roll his eyes, but he felt like it.