Chapter Text
The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures
And instructions for dancing
– The Magnetic Fields
Geordi stood at the kitchen window on the morning of their 15th wedding anniversary, sipping his coffee and feeling largely at peace.
As he put away his empty mug, he heard Data’s footsteps come down the stairs.
“Good morning, Geordi.” Data wore a robe, his hair a little out of place. He had done his research and practiced this act to perfection, the “attractively disheveled morning after” look.
“Morning. There’s coffee.”
“Thank you.” Data made pointed eye contact. “I have overslept.”
Geordi smiled. Data did not oversleep, if he slept at all, but he did know how to play house.
It was a white cottage with black trim situated in a lushly terraformed stretch of the Red Planet. On the sunny side of the cottage there was a garden festooned with swathes of netting to keep out curious wildlife, beyond the garden a tall gray barn. In its shade a bicycle leaned against a parked shuttle craft, and across the dirt road from the house, a large pond was surrounded by willow trees. The interior of the cottage was all very Baker Street, if instead of a detective and a doctor, Holmes and Watson had been a pair of space-faring mechanical engineers. The heart of the house was a grand fireplace, the mantle of which displayed a jumble of holocam images of friends and family, and in pride of place at the center, a hologram of Tasha Yar next to a little wooden box marked ‘Spot.’
The house finally felt like home. They’d moved there after Geordi’s retirement a couple of years prior— he’d been surprised how ready he was to leave Starfleet. Maybe the all the wild years on the Enterprise were to blame. They’d settled into a pleasant academic life, both teaching at the nearby university, Data churning out a steady stream of scientific papers and poetry alike.
“Geordi, it is our anniversary.”
“Really? I didn’t realize.” Geordi tipped his partner’s face down into a kiss.
Data pulled away much too quickly. “Have you given the cats their breakfast?”
For his part, Data looked exactly as he had 25 years ago when they first met. Geordi did not. He was a little grayer, not quite as slim, though his sister assured him he looked pretty good for a senior citizen (he was only 54, thanks a lot, Ariana). Data had added a rather stylish hint of white at his temples, but when he and Geordi went together to the university or out on a date, they nonetheless looked like a middle-aged man going out with a partner at least a decade and a half his junior. Geordi... sort of hated it. But there was nothing to be done.
Geordi gripped Data’s waist, finding it difficult to let go. “And they say romance is dead. No, I haven’t, I’ll feed them now.” He crossed the kitchen to replicate the appropriate food, and when the dishes clinked against the kitchen tiles, a pair of black and white cats bounded into the room.
“You have once again confused their nutritional preferences. Deut prefers supplement number thirty-three; Anti will eat only number sixty-eight.”
“I guess they’ll just have to swap bowls today.”
“What is the purpose of marking the bowls with their names if they do not eat out of the correct one?”
Data had retrieved a cup of coffee and a small glass of biofluid chaser. Sitting at the kitchen table, he had already begun poring over the PADDs left there the previous night. Geordi studied his partner’s face. It was impossible to tell whether Data was messing with him, or was truly invested in this cat bowl conversation. Geordi decided it wasn’t worth finding out. He joined Data at the table as Deuterium and Antideuterium lapped up their breakfast.
“Hey, Data.”
Data hummed brightly in recognition, but did not look up from his reading.
“Are you going to wish me a happy anniversary?”
Data’s yellow eyes met Geordi’s ocular implants in a flash. “I acknowledged the singularity of the date when I greeted you a moment ago.”
Geordi fiddled with a salt shaker. “You acknowledged it, but you weren’t very... celebratory about it.”
“In the past you have stated: ‘We don’t have to make a big deal out of every anniversary; they all bleed together anyway.’” It was strange to hear Data use a contraction, even in the context of quotation.
“Okay, true, but... this is a pretty big one. Fifteen years married, twenty together— I think that’s worthy of a little bit of celebration.”
Data tilted his head, still gazing at his partner. “I see. Of course, Geordi. Please, allow me to make amends.”
He pushed his chair away from the table and reached out a hand. Geordi took it, and Data pulled him down to his lap. He placed a soft, deliberate kiss on Geordi’s lips. Geordi pressed his mouth deeply against the android’s, fumblingly untied his robe and snaked his arms around the smooth synthetic torso within. Data broke away from the kiss once more, but this time, pressed Geordi’s cheek to his own and spoke softly in the engineer’s ear:
“Happy anniversary.”
Geordi was flooded with warmth, pressed their bodies closer. “Happy anniversary.”
After a leisurely breakfast, Data announced he had something to show Geordi, and led him to his office. Well, “office” wasn’t quite right. While the old barn had been easy to convert into a workshop for Geordi’s mechanical pursuits, Data’s research required a temperature-controlled laboratory environment. They had been obliged to add on to the back of the cottage; from the outside, the lab looked like a slick modern afterthought on the old building’s side. Not that the lab was inhospitably clinical— Data had hung a few paintings, and it had been the backdrop for a number of romantic encounters as routine maintenance sessions devolved into sexual exploits. Geordi wondered if this was one of those times.
“Do not mistake this for an anniversary gift. The timing is incidental.”
“Can you tell me if this has to do with that big project you wouldn’t tell me about?”
“Indeed, this is ‘that big project.’”
The right side of the lab housed a bay of holoscreens, a wide computer terminal, and rather incongruously, a plain wooden desk and office chair piled high with tidy stacks of PADDs and books. On the wall hung a framed print of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes. When Geordi had questioned the somewhat shocking decorative decision, Data explained he admired how Gentileschi had captured the look of confident resolution in Judith’s face. Fair enough. On the left side of the lab was a reclining exam table, a wall of counter space and equipment storage, and one of Data’s own paintings: a maritime-era ship bursting through clouds. Technically impressive as always, but a little derivative as far as subject matter, Geordi thought privately. The center of the lab was dominated by a cybernetic diagnostic chamber, its clouded crystal polystyrene doors closed.
Geordi dropped into Data’s office chair, right underneath Judith. “This had better be pretty mind-blowing, buddy, for it to be worth all the secrecy.”
Data paused, considering. “I am not sure ‘mind-blowing’ is the best descriptor. However I am confident you will not be disappointed.” Data moved to the center of the room and tapped at the diagnostic chamber’s control pad. He peered at Geordi down the length of his prominent nose and asked with some gravitas, “Are you ready?”
Geordi hugged a knee to his chest. “Lay it on me.”
The doors of the diagnostic chamber telescoped open. Inside, there was an android. It had no skin. All the muscles of its arms and legs were present, but its open rib cage housed only a rudimentary biofluid circulation pump, and a cluster of wires which trailed out of its thorax and terminated in a pair of subprocessor units resting in the android’s pelvis, clearly a temporary arrangement. Its face, like the rest of its body, had no skin, just a set of perfect white teeth and a pair of empty eye sockets. The verterium cortenide skull shone in the light.
For a long, long moment, Geordi just stared. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured. “What am I… what am I supposed to take from this, Data?”
Data cocked his head. “Is it not evident? Though further experimentation is required, I believe I have successfully constructed a stable positronic brain.”
Geordi stared another moment. Something about the structure of the android’s skull looked familiar. “What do you…” He shook his head. “You made a stable brain?”
“Yes, that is what I said.”
“So… you made another child? Without asking me about it?”
Data looked perplexed. “No, Geordi, this is for you.”
Geordi’s face went ashen. He appraised the incomplete android with new eyes. It was the right height. The right build. And even without any skin, it was unmistakably his own face.
He stood, crossed the room. Then, realizing he had nowhere to go, walked back to the bay of holoscreens. Data watched him with yellow eyes wide. Geordi leaned on the terminal and, catching a glimpse of his own haggard reflection, looked to his feet.
It took Data a painfully long moment to realize his big reveal had not gone to plan. “You are... upset.”
Geordi barked out a laugh. “Data, I’d say I’m a little more than upset! I hate this! I hate that you did this without talking to me.”
Data looked very exposed; as if to match his expression his robe threatened to slip off one shoulder. “We have on many occasions discussed the possibility of creating an android body for you.”
“That was hypothetical, Data! A couple of hypothetical conversations doesn’t give you blanket permission to— to do something like this!
“I apologize. It was not my intent—” Data cut himself short, and for once he didn’t continue. Geordi wouldn’t meet his eyes, so he stared at Holofernes. Arterial spray splattered Judith’s pale arms as she sawed off his head. His blood seeped in quiet rivulets onto the bed sheets below.
Geordi shook his head, still leaning. “This is so out of line, Data. I can’t believe you’d think this was a fine thing to do.”
“It— it is not clear to me what I have done wrong. Perhaps I should have consulted—”
“Yes! Yes, you should have. If you had said to me, ‘Hey, I made a stable brain, things are getting really real! Do you want me to make an android replica of you to plug your consciousness into after you die?’ Then I would have had a chance to say, ‘Wow, that’s kind of a lot, I really need to think about that.’ But you didn’t. You just went ahead and did it, because you can’t conceptualize how screwed up it would be to have a stripped-down metal version of yourself staring you in the face.”
Data paused. “Geordi, I have had numerous experiences similar to what you have described.”
“That’s different.” Geordi pushed away from the terminal. “That’s different. You and I are different.”
Data had seen Geordi angry before. He had never seen him this kind of angry.
“I— I do not know what to say.”
Finally, Geordi looked Data in the eyes. “I think that’s probably for the best.”
Data’s faintly perplexed expression did nothing to convey how hard his positronic brain was working to wrap itself around what just happened.
Geordi couldn’t look at him any longer. He stormed out of the lab, leaving Data standing there next to the half-assembled effigy, staring into Judith’s grim face.