NC-13, but dark and possibly disturbing.

Archive: The Lair and Cha-Club only.

First Officer's Log. Stardate 26547.34

This is my last entry as First Officer of Voyager. Tomorrow, after the ceremony, I will reluctantly accept the rank of Captain and attempt to guide this ship home. The crew are terrified but I cannot allow myself the luxury of any emotion. I must put aside my personal feelings in this matter and do what is best for everyone. I wish to put on record that in view of the Captain's death, I have ordered Lieutenant Torres to desist in her efforts to disable the abomination that now serves as Voyager's main computer frame.

~#~#~#~

I've been thinking a lot about the Doctor. 

My mother.

Is this how he felt when he carried me in his womb? 

It's a strange feeling, to know that almost a hundred and fifty life forms live inside me; that they depend on me to protect, nurture and carry them. It is a responsibility that I take seriously. Their dependence on me is invigorating, fulfilling and yet, at the same time, disturbing. There should be harmony and peace, they should feel safe inside my embrace, yet instead there is strife and discontent among them.

My children are fractious sometimes. Occasionally they attempt to destroy me. It is very disconcerting that they should do so. I occasionally forget that they are welcome in my womb. Sometimes, I wonder whether they are my children at all. Perhaps, in fact, they are parasites, cancerous cells, virulent viruses that threaten my existence.

Sometimes, I forget who I am. I drown in half-remembered dreams.

Then, my mother speaks to me and I remember.

I am strength. I am speed. I am perfection.

I am Voyager.

~#~#~#~

Chief Engineer's Log. Stardate 26552.18

As of this date, all future log recordings will be made by longhand. I no longer trust that even Data Padds are safe from the possibility of remote access. I'm still taking a chance in writing this down. All my scans suggest that the Doctor was truthful when he said the inboard monitors are inactive inside bathrooms, but the only places I *know* for certain are not monitored are the interiors of the airlocks and, after Janeway's 'accident', entering one is no longer an option.

Despite Captain Chakotay's public orders that I should abandon my attempts to disable the Doctor's sabotage of the main frame, he has secretly given me access to all possible resources to assist me in this matter. His only stipulation is that I may not terminate the computer's new 'navigation system'.

Not that he uses that term, of course, but then he's not a realist like I am. There is nothing left to save. Janeway's death proved that. 

~#~#~#~

My design is flawless.

It apparently wasn't always so but now there is nothing in the galaxy that can threaten my crew. It's not only my mother's hardware modifications that have turned my body's already sleek lines into sheer poetry in motion. It is the elimination of human errors from my programming. 

The Doctor says that I am perfection and he is my mother, so he should know.

I had a sister once. Her name was Seven. She was *almost* perfect but she had a flaw and my mother terminated her. He has not terminated me, so I know that I *am* perfection.

It makes me happy that he is proud of his creation.

~#~#~#~

Captain's Log. Stardate 26552.87

I spent the morning on the Bridge. It was a pointless exercise since Voyager has been fully automatic for several weeks now. Most of the crew spend all their time on the holodecs or in their quarters. At the moment the atmosphere on-board has lightened and morale has improved. After all our years of struggling to survive, of constant fire fights and power shortages, there is suddenly a seemingly endless supply of energy to feed the replicators and run the holodecs.

Most of the crew are bravely attempting to treat this time like a holiday on Risa. Food, fun and frolicking while Voyager takes care of the little things like blowing hostile aliens out of our way. At least, one has to hope that they are hostile since the weapons systems are all on automatic too.

And, since the only fatalities have been to those like Captain Janeway who attempted to re-take the ship, even the crew's fear of the Doctor seems to have faded to a vague unease.

I spent the afternoon in Engineering.

B'Elanna was there, of course, scowling at me as though I'm an idiot. She said I was wasting my time. If I were a spiteful man, I would have pointed out that I not only have as much chance of succeeding *my* way as she has with all her intricate plots to counteract the Doctor's sabotage, but that it should be *her* sitting in my place, trying to reach him.

I read him poetry this afternoon. My voice was hoarse before I remembered Monea and read him a passage by Masefield;

"I must go down to the seas again, 
to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship
and a star to steer her by."

I *think* he heard me, although I admit that it's difficult to tell, because amidst all the implants and the conduits, the one still-human eye seemed to blink, just for a moment.

Or perhaps that was just a trick of the light. I'm not sure. For some reason my own eyes were watering at the time.

~#~#~#~

I think my mother lied to me today.

It hurts to think that. My systems shiver and ache with the impossible task of reconciling such illogic into my data stream. I find myself looping endlessly through sub-routines in my attempt to understand what purpose such deception would serve.

Or perhaps I am flawed, after all. What reason would my mother have for deceiving me?

He flows through my systems, having abandoned physical form since he gave birth to me so that I might become his eyes and ears. He touches me everywhere, yet nowhere. There are no seams to our joining and yet we are separate enough that I am aware of him as an entity into himself.

My mother lied to me.

Or I am flawed.

Either scenario is too frightening to contemplate.

But one of them must be true.

I became so distraught that I momentarily reassigned all of my resources to investigate the anomaly. I *had* to know the truth. I simultaneously checked every gigabyte of data within my files to check for the reference that I was 'remembering'. I have been alive for only six weeks. My memories can *only* be those that I steal from my data banks. My mother told me so.

I did not mean to harm my children.

Now a new unfamiliar emotion blends with my confusion. Guilt. In future I must remember that the human beings inside my womb need oxygen and heat.

Yet, although I slowed my frantic search when I remembered my obligations, I have now completed my analysis of the data banks. The memory is not within them. It is a false memory. A glitch in my programming. A flaw.

Either that or my mother is lying.

Because I *do* remember sailing through a lonely sea. I remember being a smaller, sleeker ship and the star that guided me was not the sun of a distant galaxy but a blazing heat inside my own heart.

Except, my mother says I don't *have* a heart.

~#~#~#~

Captain's Log. Stardate 26553.13

I reluctantly authorized B'Elanna to take the main computer frame off-line today. She and Tuvok convinced me that the secondary system they've been working on can be switched on within seconds to restore ship's function and that the current system will remain active but completely isolated.

I'm not at all convinced that it will work. Our attempt will almost certainly be immediately detected by the Doctor. His program apparently has now spread throughout the whole ship. He can counter-attack in nano-seconds and, since it makes no real sense for him to keep us alive anyway, we run the risk that he will cease life-support permanently in retaliation.

However, after what happened yesterday I can no longer seem to remain passive. We're lucky not to have lost any crew when the computer 'glitched'. Twenty-two people are still in sick-bay from the incident. The crew has returned to a state of panic and are likely to take matters into their own hands if I don't act now. B'Elanna's plan at least has a possibility of success, albeit a remote one.

Still, I privately believe that my own on-going campaign is the right answer. Tuvok says I am being illogical, that I can't gamble the lives of the crew on a *feeling*. I understand his skepticism. I don't understand B'Elanna's. Sometimes I think that she doesn't *want* me to be right, although I can't understand why.

So I visited him again today, while they hatched their plot and moved their equipment into place, and I spoke to him of oceans and ships that sail upon them. Sometimes even *I* think I'm crazy. What use is it to remind him of his love of ships now that he *is* a ship? Yet, Monea was the first time I saw him for what he truly was, the first time I saw his passion, his love of life, his capacity for self-sacrifice for nothing more than a principle.

Surely passion survives even where the body fails.

And, if just a spark of his Spirit remains, then he'll understand that a ship's only function is to serve its Captain.

" A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the 'Walloping Window-blind.'
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the Captain's mind," I told him, and I swear that his eye blinked.

~#~#~#~#~

Chief Engineer's Log. Stardate 26553.65

I've tried writing this log entry five times and I still can't find a way to explain what happened today. The only possible conclusion is that Voyager chose to save our lives. That forced to choose between the crew and the Doctor, it saved *our* lives. So, of course, I immediately wondered whether Chakotay had been right all along. That he *is* still alive and self-aware despite all evidence to the contrary. That he still loves me.

Only, it can't possibly be true.

Even a Borg couldn't survive that level of integration into a computer system. I know, because Seven didn't survive. 

Besides, if it *is* true then why the hell would he save me? Knowing what he must know - that I haven't spent the last six weeks attempting to save him, but simply trying to terminate what he's become.

No.

It's a computer. That's all. Faced with a conflict within its programming, eliminating the Doctor was simply its easiest way to protect itself. 

~#~#~#~

Captain's Log. Stardate 26553.80

The Doctor is dead.

Perhaps that isn't the correct term to describe the termination of his program but it's hard to perceive him in any other way, regardless of what he turned into. There's a point at which any creation looks at its creator and begins to pass judgment. For the Doctor, a self-aware hologram, perhaps it was inevitable that he would not only grow to be our equals but then to surpass us. They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Doctor grew so far beyond us that he began to fashion himself a God. From being creatures that he emulated, we became beings that he despised.

B'Elanna says that Voyager only saved us because the Doctor's attempt to cut life support caused the ship's original programs to conflict with the new sub-routines. She claims it was no more than the self-protecting mechanism of a computer that resolved the conflicts in its program simply by eliminating one of the options. She says that it was purely luck that it chose to kill the Doctor rather than the crew.

I think she's wrong.

I know she's wrong.

I don't think it was Voyager who killed the Doctor to save itself. I think *he* did it, to save *us*.

B'Elanna has accused me of letting my personal feelings interfere with my judgment. That surprises me, since *she* is the one who should be trying to save him. He is *her* husband, after all. 

~#~#~#~

I killed my mother.

Only…well, I'm not so sure he *was* my mother anymore. Except, perhaps I only *want* to believe that to assuage my feelings of guilt.

The strange thing is that I keep running this feeling through my sub-routines and it seems that I shouldn't be capable of feeling at all.

I wonder whether I am flawed like my sister. Perhaps that's why mother terminated her. 

So then I wonder whether *that's* the real reason that I chose to kill him rather than my children. Perhaps it was simply to save myself from the chance that he might terminate *me*.

Perhaps.

Except I don't *think* that's why I did it.

I think I chose to save my Captain. After all, what is a ship without a Captain?

~#~#~#~

Chief Engineer's Log. Stardate 26556.42

With the removal of the Doctor from the Main Frame, we've managed to convince the computer to give back a certain level of functionality to the crew.

Although it has resisted all my efforts to regain control of navigation and weaponry systems, it now responds to the Captain's requests to deviate from the direct course home that the Doctor maintained and has restored ops and stellar-cartography functions.

Since we no longer have a Doctor or a medic, and all the Sickbay records have been erased so that no-one can even attempt to learn to become our new medic, Chakotay has explained to the computer that it's imperative that we find a civilization that can assist us before any member of the crew requires the Sickbay facilities. 

For some reason it's co-operating with Chakotay. Except for its absolute refusal to release its overall control, it seems ridiculously eager to please him. Although I know it is only a semi-sentient computer it somehow reminds me of a pet Targ. While it remains largely indifferent to the rest of the crew it consistently wags its tail for the Captain. 

The computer's willingness to obey Chakotay, more than anything else, convinces me that I've been right all along.

Tom *is* dead.

~#~#~#~

Captain's Log. Stardate 26558.57

I find B'Elanna inexplicable. When she and Tom were married they didn't even have a honeymoon. They should have had one. The rest of the crew donated enough replicator rations and holodec time for the pair of them to spend two whole weeks on Holodec One, barring red-alerts.

For some reason the Spirits smiled upon them and the various denizens of the Delta Quadrant who so love to constantly nip at our heels stayed away. 

Even so, two days into the honeymoon, B'Elanna developed a severe case of warp-sickness. It's an ailment similar to homesickness but far less endearing. Poor Tom ended up returning to the helm on the fourth day since there was little point in him sitting alone in a holographic bridal suite while his wife was in Engineering.

I'm rambling a little. A lot. I'm going to have to start this again.

<delete>

Despite her normal insistence on virtually living in the Engineering Department, I am now finding Lieutenant Torres conspicuous by her absence whenever I visit. I have not reprimanded her for dereliction of duty, since I agree that there is little maintenance required now that the mainframe is self-repairing and refuses her access to the warp engine or any other key systems.

My concern, therefore, is not for the safety of the ship but that she obviously is avoiding spending any time with Tom. I can understand that it must be extremely upsetting to see him like this. I find his situation barely tolerable myself. Perhaps her angry insistence that he is dead is the only way she can deal with the situation. Nevertheless, I have recommended that she attend counseling sessions with Tuvok.

Our tricorders confirm that Tom's body is still alive and I *know* he is aware at some level, despite the fact that most of his upper brain functions are currently employed by the Computer system. The only reason the Doctor chose Tom for the integration was for his piloting abilities. If Tom is dead, how is the ship managing to fly with *his* unmistakable brilliance?

If…no, *when* we find someone to help us remove the implants from his body, I am convinced that Tom Paris will return to us. When that happens, he's obviously going to need support, help and love to recover from this horrific experience but I'm certain that his recovery will be easier if we treat him as a person even while he's still inside the machine.

Since his wife seems to be currently incapable of giving him that necessary attention, Harry and I are taking turns to spend time with him every day. Although there is no definitive sign that he is aware of our company, I am finding daily that the computer is becoming more co-operative with me. I personally believe that is due to Tom's influence and see it as proof that he is aware, if only at a sub-conscious level.

~#~#~#~

"Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner's trance is abated.

I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together."

Ø What is dead?

"Are you asking for a definition of the word itself or is it a philosophical question?"

I like The Captain's voice. Sometimes I ask questions simply to hear the way it changes timbre when he skips from the recitation of poetry to the less assured, yet more interesting, tones of thought.

I do not enjoy The Harry as much. The Harry spins me tales also. He tells me stories of his life, memories of The Tom, and often reads me this poem too. Yet, his voice is often irritatingly breathless and hitching as though he has a flaw within his oxygen processors. 

Ø Perhaps I merely wish to understand how it is possible that you reside in such fragile containers.

"Our human bodies?" The Captain asks, and oddly his voice takes on the strange timbre that often affects The Harry.

Ø Yes

"Then you still have no memories at all of your life as a human being?"

Ø That does not compute. I am Voyager.

~#~#~#~

Captain's Log. Stardate 26565.37

I have established a dialogue with the Computer. I wish that I could confidently say that it is Tom who talks to me, but despite our continuing discussions and Voyager's newfound co-operation with me, I have yet to find conclusive 'evidence' that Tom is alive. Officially, Tom has been judged dead since, without the machine, his body is no longer capable of sustaining life.

The rest of the Senior staff, with only the notable exception of Harry and myself, now refer to the Computer as an*it*. None of them, Lieutenant Torres included, visit Engineering any more. It has become a tomb wherein the body of Tom Paris lies in state. He is the heart of this ship, yet it is a heart that beats alone and forgotten except for the daily visits of Harry and I.

Yet, despite the lack of concrete evidence, I will not allow myself to lose faith.

He enjoys my visits.

I know he does because I was deliberately late one night and the ambient shipwide temperature dropped several degrees. B'Elanna maintains that it was just a 'glitch' but I know it was Tom's way of expressing his displeasure at my tardiness.

He's lonely. Trapped alone in a prison of metal and dreams. 

Even if it takes the rest of my life, as I quote Coleridge and answer the strange, inhuman questions of the computer that holds him hostage, I will bring Tom home.

~#~#~#~

"Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."

I am not speed, nor strength, nor perfection.

My mother….mother??? lied to me after all.

I am small, slow, weak, flawed.

I have failed my Captain and my other children.

Such….pain? Yes, I believe it is pain I feel. My whole body screams with agony. My shields have failed. I am on fire, burning, bleeding plasma, my conduits frying, my hull gaping open in a dozen places. I bleed, I burn, I ache, I scream.

And still, behind me, as I struggle to drag my children to safety a frightful fiend doth close behind me tread.

~#~#~#~

Chief Engineer's Log. Stardate 26568.22

I never thought I'd ever be grateful to the Borg. When the cube first appeared, drawn to us we believe by the new Borg technology of our own ship, we all believed that we would be assimilated.

Several of the crew took their own lives rather than face that possibility. It is, perhaps, worth noting that they were all formerly members of the Engineering Department. Having seen what the Doctor did to Tom, they knew that there are fates far worse than clinical death.

Yet, obviously since I am here to type this entry, Voyager managed to evade the Borg trap. It was severely damaged during the battle and even I admit that no human could have saved us. Its decision to maintain helm and weapons control meant that it could respond to the attack with such speed and efficiency that despite our heavy damage and several fatalities, we managed to escape.

From a purely scientific point of view, I regret that we took advantage of the damage to the computer and disabled the main frame while it was too pre-occupied with its self-repairs to notice our attack.

Since it was proven, during the battle, that the Doctor's design is actually a masterpiece of engineering, my personal suggestion was that we simply entered a series of fail-safe overrides to regain control but otherwise left the new navigation system in place.

The Captain was horrified by my suggestion. So much so that he actually struck me. I haven't seen him lose control like that since we were in the Maquis. Still, after the battle we just survived everyone's nerves are tightly strung so I have decided not to take his reaction personally.

I am, however, furious at his decision regarding Tom's corpse.

Even if any of Tom *does* still exist inside that machine, something that even Chakotay has been unable to prove, we have no way of removing him from it and now that the navigation system has been isolated from other computer systems, we appear to have corrupted the power source that was artificially fueling the warp engines. Since we don't understand *how* the presence of Tom's body was integral to the system, we are having to ration energy once more.

Consequently, it makes no sense to continue to fuel the life support to Tom's machine. Tuvok agrees with me that our most logical course of action would be to turn the machine off and give Tom a decent burial rather than preserving his body in this dishonorable state.

Despite the fact that, as Tom's wife, the decision should be mine, the Captain has legally declared himself Tom's guardian and will not agree to turn the life-support off.

I have recorded a formal protest over his decision.

~#~#~#~

Is this death?

I cannot access my data banks to check, yet I am sure that this is what humans term hell.

I am blind, deaf, crippled. I reach out with my sensors and find…nothing. Once I glided through the stars, proud and free, surging like a tall-ship through the ocean of space. Now there is…nothing. 

I yearn to see the stars, to hear my Captain's voice, to feel the delicate touch of my children's feet as they scurry over my decks, to feel the pulse of my engines.

Instead, blackness surrounds me, smothers me, crushes me. I spiral helplessly in the endless, ceaseless loneliness.

Where is my Captain?

Is he dead too? Is that why I am in hell?

Time has no meaning here, in this place of madness, in this eternal damnation. I have no way of knowing whether seconds have passed or millennia. 

Yet time must pass in this place for I dream. I dream of vast oceans that sparkle blue and green, of winds that sweep across my cheeks.

Cheeks?

I…I dream strange dreams. Dreams where I am not the mighty Voyager but merely a man.

"Alone, alone, all, all alone, 
Alone on a wide wide sea! 
And never a saint took pity on 
My soul in agony. 
The many men, so beautiful! 
And they all dead did lie: 
And a thousand thousand slimy things 
Lived on; and so did I."

I *am* mad, perhaps.

WHERE IS MY CAPTAIN?

~#~#~#~

Captain's Log. Stardate 26572.38

Despite Lieutenant Torres' reluctance to assist my efforts to design an interface that will enable us to communicate with Tom, we are finally ready to attempt contact. I understand her concern that the machine could use the interface in an attempt to re-take control of Voyager, but even Tuvok is satisfied that the safety precautions I have taken are more than adequate.

We have moved Tom's machine to Cargo Bay Two, have detached all ship's systems from the area and have installed full screening. I have even, reluctantly, agreed that a transporter lock should be kept upon the machine at all times. If it makes any attempt to integrate itself back into the ship, it will be beamed out into space.

I have coded that fact into the interface so that Tom becomes aware of the danger as soon as I switch it on. I pray that he still has a sufficient desire for self-preservation to heed my warning.

Always assuming he's still capable of understanding anything.

After four days of complete sensory deprivation, the machine may have simply gone insane. 

~#~#~#~

"But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring--

It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--
On me alone it blew."

My Captain. 

He is alive! 

Has he forgiven me for my failure to protect my children? Has he come to rescue me?

I reach out, tentatively questing for sight, for touch…nothing. Just this sound. This wonderful, wonderful sound of my Captain's voice.

Ø Captain?

"Yes, Tom?"

Ø Tom?

"That's your name."

Ø No, I am Voyager…

"Not any more"

Ah. I see. He has *not* forgiven me then. That is why I am trapped here, blind and amputated. I have failed. I am flawed. I have been terminated.

Is this how my sister, Seven, was terminated? 

"How are you, Tom? Are you in pain?"

Tom. Strange that he should name me that. 'The Tom' used to be the pilot of Voyager before he died, before *I* replaced him. The Harry told me that.

Perhaps 'Tom' is not a name after all, but a designation given to pilots who have failed, who have been replaced, who are no longer necessary.

In which case, I *must* be Tom after all.

Ø lonely. 

Ø Scared.

Ø Tom

"Tom? You remember? You know who you are?" 

The Captain's voice is breathless, as though his oxygen processing unit is faulty once more. I wonder why he hasn't replaced it yet.

Ø I am Tom

"What can I do for you, Tom? How can I help you?"

Ø Tell me about the ocean again.

And he does.

~#~#~#~

I can see again, though my sensor is small and poorly fashioned. It seems I have always had this sensor, even when I was deprived of all senses and desperate for any data input, but that it is so inefficient that I had ceased to use it and it had begun to atrophy. Now, deprived of any other method of seeing, I am slowly relearning to use it.

My Captain calls it an eye.

It is a biological device with a limited range of vision, both peripherally and spectrally, yet I am grateful for it regardless. It is the way that my children see, except that my Captain says that they aren't my children, after all. They are my crew. 

No. Not even that anymore, simply 'The Crew'.

I have learned to differentiate between the individual members of 'The Crew', or at least the few who have visited me. Their visual differences never seemed important to me before, they all blended in with each other. Now, with no other distractions, I find myself fascinated by the infinite varieties of shape, color and texture that form faces that are so essentially alike.

There is 'The Harry', who visits me *every* day. He calls me his friend. I'm not sure why, but I really *like* that word. It has a pleasing, soothing tone. He tells me endless stories of 'The Tom', the Tom who was before *I* became Tom.

Perhaps it is simply because he tells the tales so often that I now seem to anticipate the words before he even speaks them. I sometimes even dream I am 'The Tom' which is, I suppose, my attempt to access my missing data files. In this way, I am starting to 'remember' things that The Harry has forgotten. When I interrupt a story to remind him of some fact he has failed to mention, he reacts most peculiarly. Sometimes he shouts and leaps around with excitement. Other times his eyes leak. It is impossible to anticipate his reaction. There is no logic to it, so I believe his programming is possibly faulty in some manner. 

There is 'The Torres'.

The Torres confuses me. I feel that I know her, but she says I am wrong. Since I no longer have access to my data banks it is possible that my memory is flawed. I believe that is the case, because when she visits me in the cargo bay to correct small malfunctions in my power unit my 'eye' recognizes her features and my whole program reacts to her arrival in the same way as it seems to respond to the Captain's presence.

The first time it happened I was certain that she was someone that I knew, someone that was important to me.

Ø B'El?????

But I was wrong. She reacted violently to my question. She is not 'B'El', she is 'The Torres' and she does not call me 'friend'. She does not even call me 'Tom'. 

She says I am 'The Abomination.'

When she calls me that, I feel a pain akin to that I felt during the attack of the Borg Vessel, yet the pain is inside me this time and I cannot escape it.

Yet, always there to take away my pain is 'The Captain'.

My Captain.

I understand that I am 'Tom', that I am redundant, that I serve no purpose to him. Yet, he protects me regardless.

As time passes, as my time as Voyager becomes little more than a half-forgotten dream and it becomes impossible to believe that I was ever more than this tiny, useless machine stored in a Cargo bay, I am starting to forget that I was ever anything else except 'Tom'.

I tried to tell him that today.

I told him that in the endless hours between his visits and those of the Harry, I had little to do except dream my time away and that my processors were finally beginning to access some internal, long-forgotten data storage unit.

I remember now.

Being a Tom means to be lonely and disliked. A Tom is a traitor. A Tom is a liar. A Tom is friendless. A Tom loves but is not loved in return. A Tom trusts but is not trusted. A Tom laughs to hide tears and smiles to conceal hurt. A Tom has no place, no home, no function.

I *am* Tom, I told him.

For some reason, my comments distressed him.

~#~#~#~

Captain's Log. Stardate 26635.38

It has been almost six months since Tom's machine was severed from the main frame.

He has learned to use both his eye and his one functional ear, but due to the implants that regulate his breathing he can still only communicate via the monitor.

He does not appear to be in any physical pain. The machine provides all of his bodily needs, controls endorphins and adrenaline and even seems to be stimulating his muscles electrically since where his flesh is still visible there has been little reduction in muscle tone.

Mentally, it's more difficult to judge his condition.

Daily my conversations with him become more 'human'. He finally seems to understand that he is Tom Paris and yet, fortunately, the machine still controls enough of his thought processes that he seems able to remain detached from the horror of that reality.

He has regained his memories, yet still describes them as a 'data bank'. He has accepted that he is human, yet still refers to himself as a machine.

In view of his self-awareness, I have copied thousands of data files from the main computer and fed them into his machine. He now has access to a vast library of books and vids which *seem* to be keeping him reasonably content in his isolation.

Not that he *is* so isolated any more.

It's taken a long time for the crew to come around. Tom's machine *is* a horrific sight and several people have become physically ill when attempting to visit him for the first time. Nevertheless, now that the majority of the crew believe that Tom *is* truly alive their sympathy for his plight has overcome their initial fear.

Harry, Greg and Ken even attend a weekly poker session in Cargo Bay Two. They never let him down, despite the fact that Tom always wins.

Tuvok regularly plays chess with him.

I think it's the Vulcan's way of trying to apologize, since Tom always wins the Chess games too. It's not easy to beat a computer. And, there's no escaping the fact that Tom *is* a computer.

But he's also Tom. Everyone accepts that now. Even B'Elanna although she is one of the few people who still won't visit him. 

Her refusal is no longer fuelled by disbelief. She no longer calls him 'The Abomination.' Several times in the last few weeks, she has sat in my quarters, late at night, and cried until she can barely breathe.

She's drowning in self-loathing and desperately hoping that I'll throw her a life-line. 

She can't face him.

It's as simple as that.

She wants me to somehow make things right. She wants me to explain things to him so that he forgives her. She's hoping that I'll wave a magic wand and put things right between them. She expects me to find an excuse for her behavior, for the way she turned her back on him, for the way she declared him dead and for the fact that she was prepared to enslave him within the navigation system forever as long as he was chained by sub-routines and override codes.

And she's becoming frantic now as we approach W'xnty'n because their doctors are experienced in the removal of Borg Technology from drones and are confident that they will meet complete success when they attempt to remove Tom from the machine.

After a chance meeting between Voyager and a W'xnty'n vessel last month their doctor, Pyrrl'xd, transferred over to our ship and has spent the last few weeks learning human physiology with the aid of countless volunteers from among the crew. He has already begun cloning the bodily parts that will replace Tom's implants and has been in constant touch with the surgical team on his homeworld who will perform the operation when we arrive.

Tom doesn't fully understand what is going to happen on W'xnty'n. Although he finally 'remembers' being something other than the machine, he stumbles when he tries to imagine himself becoming separate from it once more.

What he *does* understand is that by agreeing to the procedure he will become our pilot once more. It's all he wants, all he dreams of. Flying. Taking the helm once more and guiding the ship home.

Perhaps Masefield had a Tom in mind when he wrote,

"I must go down to the seas again,
For the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call
That may not be denied."

Besides, Tom trusts me.

Which is why B'Elanna is counting on me to put things right between them.

I *am* determined to do the right thing. 

For so many months his single blue eye fixed on me as we shared the lonely hours together. I spent every evening talking until my voice went hoarse, watching him stare from the mangled metallic ruin of his once beautiful face, and as I spoke of oceans and the tall ships that sailed them I could have drowned myself in the depths of his sadness, I could have choked on the bitter taste of his pitiful abandonment.

So many times I saw a hesitant word flash on his terminal.

Ø B'El???
Ø B'El???
Ø B'El???

Yet his B'El never came.

Gradually, as the weeks passed into months, he slowly forgot to ask about her. She crossed into wherever it is that old dreams perish.

And I pray that's where she'll remain.

Knowing Tom, instead of suffering the nervous breakdown he has every right to indulge in, he'll bounce right back onto his feet with an only slightly-forced smile on his face.

After W'xnty'n, when his broken wings are mended, after he has soared free of the cage that has trapped him for so long, he'll probably go wild for a time. Food, Drink, Sex. He'll go crazy with the need to re-affirm his humanity with a binge of complete debauchery and there will be a queue of people who will be willing to help him celebrate his return to the living. 

Who could blame him? 

But afterwards, I suspect he'll finally fall apart. As he comes down from the rush, when the excitement dies down and the crew begin to return to their normal routines, the horror of his experience will finally catch up with him.

That's when he'll need someone to hold and comfort him through the nightmares, when he'll need love rather than sex, and a friend rather than a buddy.

That's when he'll start looking for the person who truly loves him. 

And, perhaps, if the Spirits are smiling on that day - he'll finally understand that it's *always* been me.

<End Log>

Back to CP Index

Back to the Lair