Do Photonics Dream of Holographic Sheep?

Posted on May 26, 2014 @ 8:33pm by Commander Gene McInnis
Edited on on Oct 26, 2015 @ 2:27pm

Mission: The Tangled Webs We Weave
Location: USS PANDORA

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Do Photonics Dream of Holographic Sheep?
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Location: USS PANDORA
Scene: Bridge
Stardate: 21.30509.1548

This is how it began.

Mac stood in front of the big chair on the bridge of the USS PANDORA, his arms folded across his chest. He focused all his attention on the view screen, but he knew everything that was going on around him. He didn't have to look at the Helm to know their heading; he felt it in his bones. He didn't have to ask the Science station what the sensors were picking up; he could "see" everything they saw. He was software, a program in the shape of a man that had once walked the decks of several different star ships before dying in his own quarters. Mac was not even remotely Bajoran, but he wore the earring anyway, and his nose was crinkled, though he could change that if he wanted. He was a dance of light particles and tractor beams, and though he walked the corridors of the PANDORA, he did not have to. He could step from the bridge to anywhere else on this ship in the blink of an eye.

But he didn't.

It startled the crew, and he didn't want that. From time to time he asked for various stations to report, and they did, not because he didn't already know this information, but because it made things easier for the people around him to forget what he was. They couldn't forget who he was. Or who he had been.

Once upon a time, he had been Commander Gene McInnis, a son of BAJOR, with a human grandfather. McInnis had come up through the ranks like everyone else, a graduate of the ACADEMY, his first posting had been to the USS SUTTNER. It had been a good way to start. He had gone on to Captain the USS EIDOLON until its destruction fighting pirates in Hell's Throat and the Dominion War. But that man had died fighting a Founder on GATEWAY Station. There were stories told about the man, songs sung in some bars, by some folk, around campfires by others. Mac couldn't speak to that. He wasn't that man.

He was something completely different: a photonic template based on this officer, an engineering masterwork by the PANDORA's Captain Timothy Layne, a collection of algorithms, a vast data load of visual and information files and Layne's own imagination. Officially, he was the Emergency Counseling Hologram, but he had a higher setting if it was ever needed. He could be more; it was in his programming. Layne had seen to it after Mac had qualified to sit a watch on the Bridge. His captain had made sure he did everything anyone else might have to do to earn that right, to sit in the big chair.

Mac almost never sat. He did not tire. And he didn't need to access the ship's various systems that way. He felt the ship all around him. If he desired, he could become the ship, but he didn't do that much either. Again, it spooked the crew. Some of them were already spooked, of course. They knew the stories of the ghost ship EIDOLON and its spectral Captain, how it haunted the shipping lanes looking for trouble. Pirates they captured had told them over the years ... stories nobody believed ... though some wondered. Mac was not a ghost. He was a photonic life form, a program left running intentionally, a system that had gained its own awareness and become what he was ... Mac.

Behind him the turbolift came to a halt. He knew without looking who was in it.

He smiled.

=/\=

Iconic, Tim Layne thought as he stepped out onto the bridge of the PANDORA.

The man was an icon, born to stand the bridge of a star ship, to sweep the shipping lanes clear of pirates. He stood in front of the big chair, his arms folded as he gazed out the view screen intent on whatever was out there. Once upon a time, he'd been Layne's friend, his captain. But not any more. Layne's friend was dead, buried on BAJOR years ago. This ... this was an homage.

"What have we got, Mac?" Layne drawled, the turbolift door closing behind him.

Cmdr Gene McInnis, ship's ECnsH (Emergency Counseling Hologram), glanced over his shoulder, a grin coming naturally to his open, wrinkle-nosed face. Tim Layne was often surprised by the authenticity of the holographic programming. He'd downloaded every visual file of the man he'd been able to locate, so the appearance was genuine and a tad eerie, since he looked exactly as he had back on the GATE. But Xana, Gene's widow, had provided him with her husband's logs ... and stories that never got as far as recording. The earliest iteration of the man had been a bit stilted and shakey, but gradually -- Tim had left the program running constantly -- it had become its own person.

And that's what sometimes freaked him out.

Even though 98% of what Gene was came completely proscribed by his programming ... that last two percent was more than a little spooky. He was a photonic life form now; he was what Gene might have been if he'd lived long enough to evolve in that direction. But sometimes he did things Gene would never have done in a million years, like pray to the Wormhole aliens, who, to Layne's knowledge, had never responded. He had begun as Cmdr Gene McInnis, once Captain of the EIDOLON, and was now something more ... and less. In the beginning, he'd been confined to the holodeck, then gradually adapted into the ship's neural net so that he could walk freely among fellow crew. Now upgraded with the latest in mobile holographic integrity hardware, he could even leave the ship.

But he was still only photonic. Light had its limitations.

The bridge of the PANDORA wasn't one of them.

"What have we got, Mac?"

"We have a sneaky little bastard hiding out in the magnetic field projected around that asteroid two points of the starboard bow. I thought we'd sweep past, let him think he slipped us ... and watch where he runs."

"Make it so." Layne said as he took the big chair and scanned the log.

This was how it began.

If it could have stayed that way, Mac would have been happy, or as close to it as photonics could reasonably get. But that is not how things work in the real world.

That is not how it would end.

=/\=

NRPG: Hope this works for you, Tim. It was like opening a vein.

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