This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #30Double Double (5) by: Seuzz   Chapter 5
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, MISTER SPOCK! I am sick of your half-breed interference, do you hear?
Kirk pounded the palm of his left hand with the clenched fist of his right. That was it!
It had taken him hours to find it—hours spent scrupulously scrubbing through the memories he had been programmed with, and patiently introspecting the human Kirk's automatic responses to various possible stimuli. But he had found it!
The conditioned response to any encounter initiated by the ship's Vulcan first officer. Mind your own business, Mister Spock!
He had to congratulate the human Kirk on his cleverness, and once he found the stimulus-response pair, he was able to quickly find the moment his original had drilled it into himself: while lying on the platform after physical replication but prior to the mental patterns being read.
He continued to muse: It must be that the first Kirk-android (suspecting nothing) spoke those words when he visited the Enterprise. That would have aroused suspicion in the highly perceptive Vulcan, which led the landing party to appear.
Kirk smiled grimly to himself. He would have to be careful to make no such mistake when he took the human's place on the Enterprise.
Oh yes. That was part of the plan. It had been part of Doctor Korby's plan, and it still made eminent sense. From its command chair he'd have at his disposal everything he needed. Quick, wide-ranging transportation. A starship captain's prestige, implicitly backed by the authority of Starfleet. Access to the Federation's communications and data nets.
But that would come later. First, he needed a way off Exo III. Not only for himself, but for the replication machinery as well. That was the key element.
For this planet, in its degraded state, simply lacked the material and energy resources to manufacture androids on the galactic scale called for by the plan. There weren't even the resources to make androids to replace the complement of a single starship—which is why it had not been the immediate plan of the first Kirk-android to begin beaming down its ship's crew for duplication and replacement.
No, what was needed was a planet with the raw materials sufficient to fuel large-scale android manufacture—and a population both small enough that it could be completely replaced, and large enough to serve as a workforce.
And getting to such a planet required transportation.
Briefly, Kirk's mind went to the Enterprise, but he firmly thrust aside the temptation to try capturing it. Aside from its being unlikely to be in the stellar neighborhood, it was obvious that its captain would regard a renewed call from Exo III with wariness, and would approach it with an extreme caution.
Indeed, it seemed likely that any ship would approach with something like paranoia, if the Enterprise had made a report on what had been found there—and what had nearly transpired.
Kirk snorted to himself. "If"? Of course a report had been made! But it didn't do to dwell upon worst-case scenarios. And besides, the human Kirk had overcome worse challenges.
Indeed, so what (he reflected) if the Enterprise had reported on the plans and the fate of the mad Korby. That alert would only have gone to Starfleet, and there were plenty of unwary commercial vessels that might still be caught with a distress message. There were worlds that weren't even part of the Federation—though they orbited within Federation space—whose ships, whether military or commercial, would not be privy to Starfleet's warnings, or wouldn't care.
As Kirk reflected on the challenge, he now discerned that he only had to be careful not to catch the attention of a Starfleet vessel.
He smiled again. Now he saw exactly what kind of vessel to catch—and how to catch it!
Kirk pressed the intercom button, and Brown appeared in the doorway. "What are you doing?" Kirk asked him.
"Maintenance tasks," Brown said. "I am currently cleaning the receptor rods."
"Show me how."
"Why?"
"So that I may familiarize myself with the machines."
"I am perfectly able to operate them," Brown said, "at least so far as to make new copies of ourselves."
"We need more than that. We need to move the operation to another planet. And to do that," he added as the other android looked startled, "we have to know how the machines work so we can take them apart and put them back together again."
"I am not equipped for that. Ruk—"
"Then we'll learn together. Surely Doctor Korby composed notes?"
Brown scanned his memory banks, then went over to rummage through some of the desk drawers. He drew out several data disks and laid them on the surface. "Perhaps these will help."
"Thank you, Brown," Kirk said. But he didn't look up as he sorted through the disks, inserting one into a reader. "When you are finished with the receptors, bring me the devices that Doctor Korby used to communicate with the Enterprise. We will have to amplify them if we are going to get transport off Exo III."
"Are you going to be able to understand the machines well enough by the time transportation arrives?" Brown asked. His tone, Kirk noted, was growing bewildered.
"I only want to look at what we have to work with," Kirk said as he turned his concentration onto the design documents displayed by the reader. "We are going to be here for some time yet, probably." He remained concentrated on the reader so that he felt, rather than saw, when Brown left.
The other returned to the main chamber and to his work. It came automatically to him—it was a task he had performed at Doctor Korby's orders dozens if not hundreds of times—and that was fortunate, for his circuits heaved with an experience he had no word for.
Doubt.
It was a disorienting feeling, like that he felt on returning home to find everyone gone or destroyed. He could not place himself or his thoughts comfortably in what was a new and unanticipated circumstance. The logic of it, if there was logic, escaped him.
On the one hand were the very clear and cogent actions and orders of the new Kirk unit. As Kirk had explained, he was programmed not only with knowledge of the Creator's intentions and the plans he had formulated for carrying them out, but with the strategic and tactical training of the Enterprise's commander. And so it was only logical that the Kirk unit should be the one to formulate and give orders, and for he, Brown, to carry them out.
But Brown could not help anticipating probable conflicts arising between them. He too was programmed to follow the Creator's orders—it was the core principle out of which every one of his functions arose—but he was not so much zealous to follow those orders as he was simply obdurate. He knew this about himself, and so he knew that he could and would be obdurate if a divergence opened between Kirk's interpretation of the Creator's orders, and his own.
And such divergences seemed possible, even likely. Yes, Kirk was programmed with the Creator's plans and intentions. But as he had argued, he was also programmed with the knowledge of a trained tactician and strategist. It therefore seemed plausible—likely even—that under the pressure of events ... as circumstances arose that were unanticipated by Doctor Korby ... that the Kirk unit would use its programming to improvise plans and methods that diverged from Doctor Korby's. Brown could easily anticipate Kirk's arguments should that happen: This is what the Creator would have done if he were here, this change in his plan will take use closer to his final intent. But there would still be a conflict between Brown's knowledge and understanding of the Creator's intentions, and Kirk's.
What would happen then? Would he resist Kirk? Could he resist? And what would it mean for the Creator's plan and intentions if he did defy Kirk? What would it mean if he didn't defy them, when he should?
So occupied with these concerns Brown worked, not only cleaning the receptor rods but doing complete maintenance on the machines, and on other equipment in the base. The passage of time meant little on Exo III, particularly to an android like Brown. And so it made no difference to him if it were six hours or six days later when Kirk summoned him by intercom to the main chamber. There he found his companion in the act of laying a carbon-silicon husk onto the duplication table.
"Disrobe," Kirk ordered his companion. "I am making a new Brown."
Brown complied, even as he asked, "Is this necessary?"
"It is. There is a great deal of work to be done. When you produced me," he added in a tone that was perhaps just a little dry, "weren't you planning to make more than one?"
Brown didn't answer, but merely clambered onto the rotating table and docilely let Kirk lock him in. Not until then did he look Kirk in the eye, and see a veiled expression there that stimulated another one of those bothersome itches: doubt.
But it came too late to save him.
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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