~#~#~#~

Photonic Dreams : A sequel to Looking Glass Milk

(this is set shortly after Pathfinder though the events from then on bear no relation to canon)

~#~#~#~

Part Four:

~#~#~#~

"I still don't understand why I can't just go to Talaria with you," Tom complained, continuing to pace restlessly around their quarters.

"I told you," Chakotay snapped, guilt making his voice sharp. "It's not safe for you to be with me. Despite all my precautions there's still a chance I'll be caught and, since Starfleet will assume you're with me, Tuvok should have no difficulty concealing you and getting you off Voyager right in front of their eyes."

"In a data padd," Tom muttered, "like I'm just a piece of software."

"Only until you're both safely on the ship, Tom, then your mobile emitter will be reactivated.  I'll make my way to Talaria, collect the clone and meet you at Vulcan. In the *very* unlikely event that Starfleet capture me, B'Elanna will collect the clone in my place. Starfleet won't risk a diplomatic incident by attempting to intercept a Klingon vessel."

"But you still haven't explained *why* I have to go to Vulcan at all," Tom pointed out mullishly. "If the Doc has the facilities to clone at Talaria, why the hell doesn't he have the facilities to do the transfer there too?"

"I'm trying to explain, Tom, but I want to talk to your face not your back. Come here, baby, and talk to me properly," Chakotay suggested.

"No way," Tom spat. "I want you to talk with your mouth, not your hands, for a change. You know I can't think straight if you're touching me and I've let you get away with it before, but not today. Today I want to *know* what's going on. This is *my* life we're discussing, Chak."

Chakotay sighed and rubbed his eyes wearily.  

"I thought you trusted me, Tom," he said sadly.

"Don't you do that, you bastard. Don't turn this around like *I'm* the one with the trust problem. Do you think I don't know what you've been doing? Shit, Chak, I'm not complaining. Do you think I haven't noticed the strain you've been under? You look like hell and I didn't want to add to your pressure by giving you a hard time so I've just played dumb blond and let you get on with it. But no more. I can't sit in the dark any longer. It's driving me crazy. I *need* to know.  I don't care what you're planning. The fact you don't dare tell me the plan already tells me I'm not going to like what you've come up with but I *do* trust you so I'll agree anyway. So at least respect me enough to tell me *what* I'm agreeing to."

"The fal-tor-pan."

"The what?"

"It's the Vulcan ceremony of...."

"I know *what* it is," Tom interrupted furiously. "I didn't sleep ALL my way through Xenobiology 101. How dumb *do* you think I am?"

"Well if you know what it is..."

"It's religious BULLSHIT!" Tom roared.  "I thought we were talking about a REAL option, Chakotay. I thought you had a scientific solution, not mystical mumbo-jumbo CRAP."

"It wasn't 'crap' for Ambassador Spock, Tom," Chakotay shouted back. Then, seeing the genuine terror in his husband's eyes he moderated his tone. "I understand you're frightened by the idea but I wouldn't suggest this if I didn't truly believe it would work. You know I wouldn't."

"You *believe*," Tom snorted. "Coming from a guy who has regular chats with his dead father, you'll forgive me if I don't find your *belief* to be a major comfort factor here."

"Tom...."

"Look, I respect your faith, Chakotay. As far as I'm concerned you can tell me you commune with the ghost of Zephram Fucking Cochrane in your spirit walks and I won't dis' you for it. I accept your faith but I don't share it and I'm sure as hell not dying for it." 

"Tom, please. Let me explain what..."

"No. N. O. No. End of discussion. Either the Doc does it *properly* or forget it," Tom exclaimed, folding his arms across his chest.

Chakotay ran his right hand through his hair distractedly as he struggled to find the right words to convince Tom this was the only option they had. He didn't blame Tom for his doubts but his own fear still made him blunter than he intended as he replied.

"The Doctor *can't* do it properly, Tom. We need to transfer your 'spirit', your 'soul' or whatever it is you want to call it that makes you a living being, not just your memories or you won't be *alive*."

"And what you're saying is that it can't be done by the Doctor in a purely scientific medical procedure?" Tom asked quietly. 

"Yes," Chakotay agreed, relieved that Tom understood.

"Beep. Wrong answer," Tom snarled viciously. "If you really believe that, Chak, then let's end this fiasco now."

"F...f...fiasco?" Chakotay stuttered.

"What you're saying is that I'm already dead," Tom explained dully, his flat monotone more terrifying to his husband than his previous anger. 

"Of course you're not..."

"Stow it, Chak. You said it yourself. If the Doc can't do it now he didn't do it before either, did he? My dad's right. I *am* just a hologram and it's time we both stopped pretending otherwise. If I don't have a soul *now*, how the hell are the Vulcans going to transfer one to the clone?"

Chakotay leapt to his feet, his face contorting with rage, and he closed the space between them so quickly that Tom barely managed a panicked step backwards before his shoulders were caught between Chakotay's large hands and then he was shaken so violently by his incensed husband that his words died unspoken in his throat.

"YOU ARE ALIVE!" Chakotay roared, his spittle splashing Tom's face like furious tears.  "DO YOU HEAR ME?"

A wave of almost numbing sadness swept over Tom as he saw the anguish in Chakotay's eyes. 

"Sure, babe," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I just got confused. Scared. You're right. I'm sorry. Of course I'm alive."

Chakotay gave a huge, heart-rending sob of relief and threw his arms around Tom in a desperate embrace.

"So you'll agree to the fal-tor-pan?" he begged.

"Sure, Chak," Tom mumbled. 

In the face of Chakotay's grief, what else *could* he say? It wasn't as though it made any difference really, Tom decided. When the Vulcans failed to locate a soul inside him, the transfer would fail. Maybe that wasn't even necessarily a *bad* thing because it seemed, according to Chakotay's beliefs, Chakotay was *already* a widower and Tom didn't want to spend eternity haunting him as no more than an electronic ghost.

~#~#~#~

He was getting old.

It wasn't a secret. Wasn't anything to be ashamed of. Everyone aged. Besides, wisdom came with age. To be an elder was to be a person who was respected and relied upon. Maturity meant experience. 

He stared at himself at the mirror, his fingers softly tracing the fine lines that time was beginning to etch around his eyes and mouth. Laughter lines.

Only, maybe that was the problem.

He didn't have anything to laugh about anymore.

He moved closer to the mirror, gazing deeply into the reflected brown eyes that seemed a little duller than he remembered, a little more shadowed, slightly faded like an old well-worn garment.

With a sudden surge of temper he struck the bottle away from the edge of the basin and watched its contents splatter over the floor, as black as dried blood.

No more.

What was the point anyway?

It was time to let nature take its course.

Grey was distinguished.

Only a fool worried about coloring his hair.

Pride. Vanity. What was the damn point anyway? He was married to a man who was living in a virtually indestructible body that would never age another day and yet Tom was willing to sacrifice that near-immortality just to prove he had a soul. How fair was that? That Tom should be forced to accept mortality once more just to prove the existence of something Tom didn't even believe was important? 

He sighed and rubbed his face with the heels of his hands, willing away the treacherous, half-formed tears that stung his eyes.

Yeah, sure. That's right, he told himself angrily. Why not show your new-found acceptance of your maturity by bawling like an over-grown child? Tom's not facing the most terrifying experience of his life to prove anything to Starfleet, he's doing it to prove something to you. He's giving up immortality just because of *your* religious beliefs and all you can do is look in the mirror and worry about how damned old you're getting.

But it hurt.

There was no point denying the fact.

He'd always thought he had so much time.

His life had been lived at such a frantic pace that he'd never even noticed the years slipping by. Fighting his way through the Academy, battling the disadvantages of his background to compete with cadets from far more technologically advanced homeworlds. Then struggling his way through the ranks, fighting for every position, determined always to be so damn good that no-one could ever again accuse him of being in Starfleet merely to fill the necessary quota of minority candidates.

And then, just as he finally found acceptance, just as he became one of the teachers at the very Academy that had mocked his original arrival, the treaty had been signed, his homeworld had been at war, his father was dead and he was forced to turn his back on the life he had so painstakingly carved for himself.

He'd been betrayed. His whole life had been shown to be a betrayal. The very Starfleet that he had held up to his father as a shining beacon of hope had become the cowardly traitor that had flung his people as sacrifices while it beat its own retreat.

So his life had become a battlefield. An endless, timeless period of running, fighting, attacking, retreating, while all the time the people he had once proudly claimed as his own became the enemy who snapped at his heels like vengeful wolves.

They called him traitor, and that was the saddest, funniest lie of all when it was the same blind arrogant Starfleet that was currently betraying his husband that had betrayed *him*. 

His life had sped past him, time slipping away unnoticed as the simple need to survive obliterated any chance to actually 'live'.

There had been nothing but the fighting, the fleeing, odd snatched moments with strangers when the needs of his flesh became a roaring heat that he couldn't avoid, yet never resting long enough to let anyone touch his heart.

He was ice. He was granite. He was a tempered blade of revenge, forged in the white-hot flames of betrayal, death and despair. He had no time for love, no time for the weakness it would bring, no time for the vulnerability of caring for another when he'd lost the ability to even care about himself.

No time.

And while there had been no time, he hadn't had to deal with the fact that he was approaching middle-age, alone and unloved.

For the first few years on Voyager, time had still flowed unnoticed in the struggle to survive against the odds. His duty to his people, his at-first reluctant duty to Janeway's own crew, his struggles to meld and merge his rag-tag band of misfits into the command structure of Voyager; all these things had kept him too busy to notice the slow tick of his life-clock running down.

Until New Earth.

Until he had faced the prospect of stopping and actually having a life for the first time ever.

Not that he was sorry they had been rescued. Although he had no doubt that he and Kathryn Janeway would have somehow made a life together, the experience had been enough to teach them that they weren't destined to be anything but friends.

She was neither weak nor strong enough to become his mate.

Had she been a weaker person, she would have drawn on his innate desire to nurture and protect. Had she been a stronger person, she would have satisfied his urge to lay down the burden of his long years of responsibility and take shelter under her dominance.

Instead they had found themselves equals, constantly head-butting each other in a useless dance of posturing. He had wanted to ease her burden, but he hadn't been strong enough for her to lay down her mantle of Captain, nor weak enough to fulfill her desire to dominate.

And so, on their return to Voyager, he had found himself looking at the rapidly failing relationship between Tom and B'Elanna. That had been an alliance forged in the fires of hell. Tom and B'Elanna had been as ill-suited as he and Kathryn had been, with their vicious cycle of fights and make up sex.

Sex.

Perhaps that *had* been the sole reason he'd fallen for Tom initially.

Sex.

Just the feel of another body in his hands, of heat, of need, of briefly laying down his constant need for duty and losing himself in basic animalistic passion.

When had sex stopped being enough?

Oh, who was he fooling?  Sex had stopped being enough the very first moment he had lain down and worshipped Tom's body with his own. One evening that had begun as no more than a mutual decision between them to lay the ghosts of their respective relationships in a wild, emotionless physical relief had become an epiphany.  The fire that had ignited between them from their first touch had become a raging inferno that even death couldn't extinguish.

He loved Tom. 

It hadn't crept upon him over the years of their acquaintance. It hadn't been a simmering ember waiting to be cajoled into flame. Until the moment that their bare flesh had touched, Chakotay had never even dreamed that he might find his spirit-mate in Tom Paris. Yet, from that moment, he had known that Tom was the other half of his soul. 

That's why even the most perfectly anatomically correct hologram of Tom, even one fully endowed with Tom's personality and memories, wasn't enough. 

If Tom didn't have a soul, Tom wasn't his soul-mate. 

Tom wasn't *Tom*.

And that was too terrible a thing to even contemplate.

It was no wonder he was feeling old.

~#~#~#~

"Thank you for coming, Tom. I need to discuss something with you that you might find painful so if you'd like Chakotay to be here, I wouldn't have any objections," Kathryn offered. 

"I wanted to see you alone. I need to talk to you about something personal, Captain."

"Of course, Tom. You're always welcome to talk to me as a friend. Sit down," she urged.

"I...um, don't want to talk to you as a *friend*," Tom mumbled.

Kathryn looked at him in surprise. "You want my opinion on something personal as a Captain?"

Tom shook his head. "I want your opinion as a scientist."

She was both pleased and perplexed by his comment. "I'm not the only scientist on board," she reminded him gently, though she was careful to keep her expression welcoming so he understood she wasn't rejecting his request.

"I know," Tom replied, sitting down with a sigh. "But you're the only person I can think of who's likely to be really objective about this."

"What's your question?"

"Do I have a soul?" he asked bluntly.

Kathryn  choked slightly, feeling both extremely uncomfortable and completely out of her depth.

"I...well...to be honest, Tom, I don't know if I even believe in the validity of the idea of a soul at all. At least not in a religious sense."

Tom nodded, as though he'd expected that to be her answer. "That makes this easier," he admitted. "It's too hard to discuss this with Chakotay or Tuvok. Hell, even Harry and B'Elanna seem to base their opinions on faith rather than facts."

"They have beliefs that you don't share and you want to discuss the subject completely objectively?"

"Exactly. I mean I respect Chakotay's belief in his Spirits and I'm not saying he's *wrong* but I didn't believe in them even before my accident so I...well, they aren't real to me and I never really grasped the idea of what defines a soul or even if such a thing even exists at all. I've made a choice based on something I don't even believe in and I guess I'm just trying to get my head around the idea in a way that makes sense to me."

"You mentioned Tuvok," Kathryn prompted, a vague suspicion forming although she refrained from asking Tom to confirm it.

"Tuvok believes that everyone has a soul, only he calls it a 'katra'. It's weird. He's so hot on being this logical guy but he still believes in the existence of something invisible that can't be proven. Harry not only believes in the idea of a soul but in ghosts that have form and substance. And then there's B'Elanna. She believes when she dies she'll go to the barge of the dead, so that means she believes in the idea of an eternal soul too."

"Most humanoid cultures and religions seem to share that constant theme," Kathryn agreed. "The idea that a being can exist beyond its mortal body."

"Do you think that proves the idea is valid?"

"The fact that so many diverse cultures share it?"

Tom nodded.

"No," Kathryn replied with a soft sigh. "My own feeling has always been that people, of whatever race, embrace the idea of an eternal soul simply because they fear death."

"Me too," Tom agreed. "But then most Starfleet brats like us are agnostic, aren't we?"

Kathryn smiled ruefully. "A proud lack of religious belief has become its own religion in Starfleet," she agreed.

"So," Tom asked around the thumbnail he was gnawing, "if you don't believe in the idea of an eternal soul, do you still believe in a 'mortal' soul? How do you define life? Am *I* alive?"

And there it was, the 64,000 credit question.

Kathryn closed her eyes and took a deep breath before replying.

"I don't know," she confessed.

Tom winced.

"Thank you for being honest with me," he whispered, but his eyes went dull and flat with such pain that she couldn't bear to continue looking at them.

She rose and walked to the viewport. As she watched the stars bleeding past her eyes, she struggled to find the right words to comfort the distraught pilot.

"Some questions don't have answers, Tom. How do I define life? Is life something sacred? I don't know. If we accept the big bang theory then *all* life is no more than the effect of a chemical accident anyway and so what we call life is not a sacred thing in itself. It's a state of being, I suppose, but that being can have endless forms. We've encountered species whose physical form is less substantial than the photonic light that forms your matrix and have accepted that they are *alive*.  Consciousness and self-awareness, perhaps, but then *any* hologram has those. Sentience? But life can exist without sentience just as sentience can exist without life.

"I suppose I *do* believe in a 'soul' but I think of it more as a 'life-force', Tom. Something that is part of a physical entity and yet able to exist in a state separate from it. There is *something*. Your own husband once proved that to me conclusively when he managed to leap-frog his consciousness from one member of a crew to another. To that extent I *do* believe in a soul, though the idea of it existing past mortal death is something that has never been proven. But while a being has life it does seem to have some form of life-force and I suppose *that* could be defined as a soul.

"In that way, perhaps *all* holograms have a soul. We play God, Tom. We create beings out of light who have feelings, emotions, the capacity for love, and then we destroy them with arbitrary carelessness when they no longer serve our purpose. Does that mean they aren't alive during the period of their activation or is it simply that we don't want to face the possibility that they might be?

"Why would I feel no hesitation in deleting a program like Fairhaven, yet fight desperately for the survival of the Doctor?  On one hand I believe the Doctor can't possibly have a soul, even if such a thing exists, because he *is* no more than a hologram. Yet he's a unique and special being and, although I hesitate to call him *alive*, if he ceased to be then I *would* consider that ending to be a death and how can he die if he isn't alive?" she asked, with a perplexed shrug.

"But if a situation arose where you had to choose between the Doctor and another member of the crew, you would save the one of flesh and blood, wouldn't you?" Tom asked.

"Yes," Kathryn admitted reluctantly.

"Then do you believe there are degrees of life?"

"Perhaps."

"And what degree do you believe I fall into?"

"I honestly don't know, Tom. My heart says you're alive in every real sense of that word but my mind doesn't fully agree."

"Because if you went to the holodec now you could recreate a hundred more Tom Paris's and none of them would be distinguishable from me?" Tom asked calmly.

"Exactly. Although I *want* to believe we simply moved your consciousness from your physical body into this one, the more I read the messages from Starfleet the more I'm beginning to wonder whether what we did to you was morally wrong. I'm so sorry, Tom. I'm responsible for this situation you've found yourself in. Whether or not you truly *are* alive by human definitions makes no difference to how you feel, does it? In every emotional sense you *are* Tom and so what I allowed the Doctor to do becomes unconscionable if I allow your current existence to be terminated."

"You aren't responsible for how things have turned out. You were trying to save my life," Tom interrupted, "and you did."

"Did I?" Kathryn asked uncertainly.

"I think so," Tom said slowly. "I've done nothing except think about it for the last few weeks and the more I've thought about it the more I've begun to wonder whether I really *could* be alive. Because there *is* a difference between me and any other hologram you could create *now* out of my stored memories. The difference is that *I* didn't die."

"I don't understand."

"I remember every second of that procedure, Captain. I was awake and aware through the entire process of leaving my old body and entering this one. That's the difference between me and any new hologram you could make of me. It's difficult to explain but...well, you know the back-up of me in the mainframe?"

"Yes?"

"Well, if anything happened to me... I mean *this* matrix...and you reactivated me from the mainframe then, well, I don't think I *would* be me anymore. I'd just be a hologram like my dad says. But *this* mind in *this* body is really me because I've never stopped being me."

"You're saying you think this particular photonic body somehow contains your 'life-force' but that the exact duplicate of your matrix that exists in the mainframe doesn't?"

"Yes," Tom groaned, rubbing his face in frustration. "But I don't know how to explain it to you."

"Just try, Tom. Please. I want to understand."

Tom thought for a moment, his expression strained, then a wry grin crept over his face.

"What?" Kathryn prompted.

"Remember when I broke warp ten and we went off and made little lizards together?"

Kathryn flushed but nodded.

"When we 'changed', we not only lost our normal physical forms but our human consciousness too, didn't we?"

"Thank goodness," Kathryn muttered.

"Yet no-one ever doubted we were still *us* inside those bodies and when the Doc made us human again no-one suggested we weren't really *us* again."

"I hear what you're saying, Tom, but the circumstances were different. We never physically left our bodies, they just changed appearance."

"But where did our consciousness go?" Tom demanded.

"It didn't go anywhere. Our thought processes were simply affected by our physical changes."

"So we remained alive, despite the changes, because the life-force is a state of being not a state of body or mind?" Tom asked.

"Yes."

"So if I remained alive despite my transformation into a lizard and back, why can't I have stayed alive through my transformation into a hologram?"

"Again, I understand your point and it's a good one but there is still a vast difference between the two events. When the Doctor moved you into the hologram he did it by capturing your electrical brain activity, transforming it into data bytes and transferring it electronically into your matrix. Although I didn't perceive it that way at the time, he used exactly the same process that the holodec uses to create holocharacters from Voyager's databanks."

"So you're saying that the fact he changed my mind into nothing more than a data stream before moving it into this matrix means only my memories were moved rather than *me*? That whatever constitutes life, whether it's consciousness or a 'soul' can't be transferred in that way?"

"Yes."

"Then how the hell does a transporter manage to do it?" Tom challenged.

"What?"

"When a transporter beam dematerializes someone, it transforms them into data then moves that data and rematerializes it in a different place, doesn't it?"

"Essentially," Kathryn agreed.

"And after someone has been transported, no-one suggests that their 'soul' didn't get transported with them, do they? I mean Starfleet would be full of a hell of a lot of zombies if the soul or life-force or katra or whatever the hell you want to call it didn't get transformed into data too. So what's the difference between what happened to me and someone getting transported? If you'd managed to reconstitute my body from the transporter buffer you'd never have doubted it was the real *me* who rematerialized, would you? So why is it so impossible to believe you managed to at least rematerialize my life-force?"

"You're saying that your matrix is just acting like a pattern buffer for your 'soul'?"

"You're the scientist," he reminded her. "Could I be right? Is it possible? Could I really be alive inside this hologram?"

For a long moment, Kathryn just stared at him as the possibilities swirled through her mind and then a huge, hopeful smile spread across her face.

"Theoretically you could, Tom. By god, perhaps you could. I need to send a message to Starfleet and..."

"No," Tom interrupted.

"But we need them to consider the theory, Tom. If we could prove that it is at least scientifically *possible* that you are alive then we don't even have to convince them it's the truth. We don't have to prove you are right, just that you *could* be. The Federation was built on the principle of preserving life in any form. No one would even dream of terminating your program if there is even the slightest possibility that you *are* alive."

"Starfleet's opinion doesn't matter to me, Captain. The only person who needs to believe is my husband."

Kathryn looked at Tom in complete shock.

"Chakotay has never doubted you, Tom," she exclaimed.

"I know," Tom replied softly, his eyes sad. "In a way, that's the problem. He *doesn't* doubt the idea of me being alive so he can't see that there's only a million-to-one chance that he's right. I just wanted to know whether there was a *possibility* of it working. It's not that I won't do it anyway. I owe him that much faith. It's just...well, I needed to know it wasn't *completely* hopeless."

"A possibility of what working, Tom?" Kathryn asked, no longer able to hide her concern.

"I can't tell you," he apologized. "I shouldn't really have been speaking to you at all, but I'm glad I did. I know that there's a hell of a difference between a theory and a fact, but at least Chakotay's idea maybe isn't totally crazy either." 

"He loves you, Tom. I don't know what his 'crazy' idea is but I do know it must be something he truly believes will help you."

"Yeah," Tom agreed, "and let's face it, I don't exactly have that many options."

"Speaking of options, the reason I asked you to come see me was I received a request from your mother in today's datastream."

"My mother?" Tom asked, his face paling. "What did she want?"

"She requested I download your personal logs to her," Kathryn explained, with an awkward smile.

"My logs?"

"It's normal procedure..."

"In the case of *dead* crewmembers," Tom interrupted furiously. "Shit. I'm so fucking stupid. I'd been telling myself she just hadn't written 'cos she was scared my dad would find out. I thought at least *she* would have wanted to believe I was alive."

"I think she does, Tom."

"What?"

"Here. Read her note for yourself," she suggested, handing over a data padd.

"I don't understand," Tom eventually whispered. "Is this...is she suggesting what I *think* she's suggesting?"

Kathryn smiled.

"I think, despite the cautious wording of her request, she couldn't possibly have made *that* huge a mistake over the amount of bandwidth she's had allocated to allow the transmission of your 'personal logs'. Either she thinks you've spent the last seven years writing the entire history of the known worlds or she's offering space in the data stream for the safe transfer of far more than just your logs."

"I don't need her help to go down the data stream," Tom snapped, although his hands were trembling so much that he had to put the padd down on the table.

"Of course you don't," Kathryn agreed mildly. "You could go exactly the same way as the Doctor did."

"You know?" Tom demanded.

"I didn't *know*, but when no-one, including the Doctor himself, made any objection to his program being placed in storage it was pretty damned obvious I was only storing his back-up. You all really should have made more noise about it if you didn't want me to guess what you'd done."

"I don't think Chakotay *wanted* to deliberately mislead you. He just didn't want to put you in a difficult position," Tom replied thoughtfully. "He's keeping you in the dark as much for your own sake as for ours."

"I know that, Tom, and I appreciate it. About your mother though. *She* doesn't know you can get off the ship by yourself, so she *is* trying to help you."

"Is she?" Tom demanded.

"What do you mean?"

"How *did* she get the bandwidth allocated, Captain? I think it's just a trick. The note's probably not from my mom at all. It's my dad's way of trying to trick me into turning myself in."

"What do you want me to do, Tom?"

"Send my back-up. To all intents and purposes that *is* me. If my dad *is* behind this, it will take the heat off Chakotay when Voyager goes through the worm hole. If they think they already have me, they probably won't waste the resources attempting to arrest Chakotay."

"But then Chakotay would have to fly the ship, otherwise they'd know we hadn't sent the real hologram."

"Well, the logs would definitely have to 'say' that he was at the helm," Tom agreed easily.

"Are you sure about this, Tom? Now we are so near to the wormhole, Starfleet have a constant uplink with our ship's systems. We can't make another back-up without them becoming aware of its existence. You'll effectively be handing Starfleet your only chance of being reactivated if there's a problem with your mobile emitter."

Tom shrugged.

"Well, that just makes me as mortal as the rest of the crew, doesn't it?" he replied philosophically. "None of you have back-ups either. Besides, like I said before, that back-up isn't *me*."

"So we're back to discussing souls," Kathryn said, with a sad smile.

"Or the lack of them," Tom sighed.

Go to Part Five