Stardate: 70114:1800
Title: The Sins of the Son, Part One
Author: Commander Winters and Lt. Vilmer
Time: After "Deja Vu"
Scene: USS Relentless


At some point or other in everyone's life there are some things that you have to deal with which you would rather not. Relly had just experienced violence in a very intimate and innocence-shattering way.

As the child image of Relly lay shivering and crying she kept her eyes firmly shut. That way she could not see the betrayal of the man who had appeared to be nice but had just harmed her. Also she tried not to think as when she did she just felt her disappointment at the crew as they had not come to help her or save her.

She felt more keenly than ever the pressure she was under to constantly perform tasks. From far off she heard people calling her. But she could not go. It wasn't a physical pain that stopped her, although the man named John had sufficiently damaged her to take control of her systems for a brief while; what stopped her now from leaving this safe dark world she inhabited was fear.

Relly ignored the calls and her subroutines continued to perform all the duties required of her.

~

The sentient Relly had read that 'time is a great healer' and though she was not fully aware of what it actually meant or that that was why she was slowly stirring from her frightened position, it was in fact the lapse of time that had given her some perspective.

Since her distress calls people had been calling to her non-stop. Kal had run every diagnostic he could and fixed every blown circuit on the ship, a lot of them he had attended to personally.

Kal returned the spanner he was using to his toolbelt, sighed heavily and slid his way back out of the Jeffries tube. He'd done test after test and worked both engineering and science to the bone trying to find out just what had happened to Relly. The truth was there was nothing physically wrong with her. Whatever the problem was it was software related, somewhere deep in the code as well. 

All of the Relentless' subroutines were functioning normally much like a Human or El-Aurian's autonomic nervous system. But the essential part of the new sentience was hidden somewhere. Kal was different in one key respect from other El-Aurians in the fact that his natural empathic abilities worked better on machines than they did on sentient beings.

Kal sighed again. There was no way he'd be able to find the root of the problem from outside the network - he needed to go back in. The blonde had a sneaking suspicion that whatever happened to her happened from inside as well. That was a chilling thought in itself. The CEO had been working on a prototype device that would allow a person to project consciousness into a neural net but had not actually tested it yet.

Knowing that the Captain would likely have his head if he tried it without permission, Kal sent a call shipwide asking the senior staff to join him in engineering. It wasn't long before the officers assembled and were watching the blonde with expectant faces.

"I've done everything I can from the outside," Vilmer said without preamble. "Physically there is nothing wrong with the ship."

"So it's a software or programming thing?" Maxine asked.

"Yes, and we don't have time for me, or you for that matter, to try and isolate it from outside the network."

Time was the one thing they were rapidly running out of as hails from Starbase 9 grew more insistent.

"I've given a lot of thought, and I believe she was attacked from within her own neural network, and by somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. The only way to find out is to go back in."

"Wait a minute, you want to use an untested device to try out a theory..." the Captain interjected.

Commander Winters did not look like she necessarily agreed with the Captain but she held her own counsel.

Undaunted Kal continued. "I know what you're thinking, Sir, and logically you're right of course. I think I can pull this off. There is another angle to the problem we need to consider as well. If the Relentless was just an artificial intelligence the outcome of the "theoretical battle" would have come out differently. As it is Relly has to learn just like the rest of us. She has access to a mind-boggling array of information, and can catalogue and access it, but she lacks experience to make useable sense of it."

The assembled officers digested the engineer's theory. Finally the Captain broke the silence.

"So, you think you can get in and get back out, with your sanity and personality intact?"

"I have certain skills and talents that I believe will help me in that area sir."

The Captain thought for a moment.

"Very well, someone stay with him and try to keep him in one piece. I'll be on the bridge stalling for time."


====================
Commander Abigail Winters
Executive Officer
USS Relentless
NCC-11966
====================

&

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Lieutenant Kal Vilmer
CEO
USS Relentless
NCC-11966
====================