STF

Holodeck 1- Reconciliation

Posted Oct. 12, 2020, 1:34 p.m. by Lieutenant Commander Dr. Royal Sinclair (Chief of Security) (James Sinclair)

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Holodeck 1- Reconciliation

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Holodeck 1- Reconciliation

Posted by Captain Dante Knight (Commanding Officer) in Holodeck 1- Reconciliation
Posted by… suppressed (10) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

An expanse of silence sat between them. That was a very good question. Was she all right? “No, Royal, I’m very much not all right. Maybe I haven’t ever been. Which is a very strange thought…” If she hadn’t been dressed as she was and speaking on a personal level, she could have been mistaken for her alter ego at the moment given that her voice was much closer to that distant tone of SARAH.

~Corinne Dalton

“Then you might want to tell us what this is about?” Dante said from behind them as he approached, his eyes already having taken in the surroundings and now resting on the form on the ground. He had read the reports, there were always reports, but they were vastly different and impersonal to what had transpired in the past.

Captain Knight, CO

Sinclair looked at the Captain and simply nodded once. This was Cori’s show, so he’d let her direct the flow.

Sinclair, CoS

Cori took in Dante for a moment before she focused on Royal. “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes dropping for a moment as she frowned. “You were trying to help and I… was too terrified to see anything at that moment. I took it out on you and I’m truly sorry.”

She pushed herself to her feet in a single fluid motion borne of years of practice as a dancer. Taking a step to stand between the captain and Sinclair, she faced Knight. “I lost my ballet pointe shoes. And long story short we found some of my personal effects have been marked as evidence in an investigation into my death. The second one actually. The one where the Douwd trapped me in a tiny space in the Saracen’s computer for over three years, giving me a fear of small spaces and darkness. And after I… returned, after I freed myself finally, I learned that I had been declared lost. Missing in Action and presumed dead. But that of course became complicated when Royal did my psyc eval and filed it. And now Federation Security is investigating. And if they start digging, they will get to this,” she said gesturing to the dead body before them.

“Captain, I told Royal the story, in all its terrible reality, in confidence. Which he’s bound to whether he’s currently a practicing therapist or not. But this isn’t just about me. It’s about all the others that were a part of it. Of people who are innocent and don’t deserve to have the past ripped wide open and made public. It’s not fair to them. But I might not get a say in any of it. I certainly didn’t back then. But it’s your ship. Your crew. And I think you deserve to know the truth so that we can figure out how to handle this. But…”

She moved away, her gauzy dress shifting as a light breeze cast a moment of respite from the desert heat. Dalton peered down at the dead body. “But if I tell you the story, names excluded where necessary, I need you and Royal to understand that this was not some abstract event. I had a bullet rip through my back and I bled out on this very holodeck floor. I don’t say that to be gruesome, but so you understand that when people question my existence, doubt my sentience, I think back to this day and desperately wish that I had just actually died here. Because I’m tired and I’m tired of feeling like I’m one step away from being declared a liability. Or, on the flip side, that one day the ship will begin to get old and breakdown and it’ll be retired. What happens to the woman in the machine? Does she simply become a museum piece along with the ship? An oddity people can visit on a rare whim? Because it’s not just the pain of the past I’m fighting here. I’m fighting for my future. And right now my immediate future is looking dicey. I’ve made some real progress, I think, trying to claim back my life, but it feels like I’m going to lose everything just. like. that.” She snapped her fingers and the bloodied form disappeared from sight.

~Corinne Dalton

“No. You won’t.” Royal said flatly, as if he was commenting on the color of the sky. “You are a living consciousness, a sentient being. The law is very clear on this, isn’t it Captain?” he asked, turning from where the body disappeared to look at Knight.

Sinclair, CoS

Dalton looked at Sinclair sideways “That’ what your report says, but I’ve yet to see evidence that everyone else accepts that Royal. Otherwise why would I have to prove my sentience every time we get a new captain, or counsellor or someone else who has a direct impact on what happens to me. I know why. It’s because Command doesn’t believe it. A that’s what I’m afraid of,” Cori said softly.

~Corinne Dalton

Royal sighed and shook his head. He knew it wasn’t that simple, but bit his tongue. Now wasn’t the time to belabor the point.

Sinclair, CoS

“Defining a sentient being from an advanced piece of programming is still a tricky point to get to, but once defined as not only Sentient, but Sapient, the law becomes very much the law. It’s getting to that point that is where the trouble lies.” Dante replied, looking between the two. “Now if Federation Security is investigating, they have more in mind than just solving a missing person case and protecting the other people involved might not be the best course of action for thmem. That’s where the concern should be so, Cori, what is going on?”

Captain Knight, CO

OOC: Shamelessly copying and pasting portions of a previous convo with Royal. lol
IC:
Steadying herself, she looked back at the ground where her body had been a few moments go, before gazing at Royal and Dante. “Alright, here goes. Don’t say I didn’t warn you though,” she said with a rueful smile.

“I fell in love with someone, a member of this crew of a middle rank. That’s all I’ll say unless you insist on names. But, he was charming, flirtatious, exactly the kind of person I’d have a fling with. But that’s not what he wanted and he practically courted me, as strange as that sounds. And the more time we spent together, the more I fell in love with him. He returned those feelings.”

“Then one night, he left a message for me to meet him on the holodeck at a certain time. I figured it was another one of his lovely surprises. But when I arrived at the holodeck he told me, it was this weird desert program that whisked me in and before I knew it was some sort of war insurgency program. I was so confused but kept thinking that he would show up and explain or join in or something. Things escalated and then I found myself running for my life from these people with weapons. I turned a corner and found myself in an alley and the next thing I know I hear a gun shot followed by this intense pain in my back on the holodeck. The next thing I knew I was lying in the dirt in a pool of my own blood and I realized that there were no holodeck safeties and that I had just been shot in the back and was actually dying.”

“Then he showed up and he was panicking. I remember him holding me, and saying he was sorry, that he never meant this to happen to me. He said that he told me the wrong holodeck and that he was on the other holodeck waiting for me to show up so he could propose.” Her voice had gone rather quiet by this point.

“Long story short, at the moment I died, a special program kicked in and preserved my consciousness, scattering me wherever it could amongst the computer network. Later on I found out that the holodeck program had been another crew member’s, who was engaged to another member of the crew. She left and then disappeared after their wedding, and by that point, the man I had been involved with was gone as well. And I guess in a state of solidarity, her former partner and I got to know each other better. We were both devastated by these people, for different reasons of course. But he then told me the truth, the big thing that reframed everything about my relationship with my partner.” Without using names, Cori knew she risked confusion, but she hoped Knight was still following the story.

“He told me that his wife and my partner had some sort of antagonistic relationship going on and they had a bet. That they were each trying to kill the other or something like that, and she also had an adrenaline addiction. She often used the holodeck without the safeties, and the program was hers. It was an honest mistake that my partner told me the wrong holodeck, but the holodeck was set up to kill her.” Cori exhaled. “So she lived and I got caught in the cross-fire, and some weird program I still don’t understand was added by her high ranking father to keep her from dying entirely. And I also learned that my partner was only in a relationship with me and only proposing to have plausible deniability. He wanted me to fall in love with him so I would defend him.”

Cori sighed. “And now you know what only Royal knows, and because these people are long gone, there’s no point in trying to do anything about their role in it. And that’s not what I want. I also have no intention of hurting the man she was married to because he is also innocent in all of this and doesn’t deserve to have Federation Security dragging us all through the mess that his former wife helped to create.” It was a lot to process, but Cori knew there was little she could do to make it easier.

~Corinne Dalton

Bump

Bump for Skipper.


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