Artificial Intelligence and Other Wishful Thoughts, Part 1

Posted on Tue 21st Aug, 2018 @ 12:10am by Elizabeth Anderson M.D. & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

1,711 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Oblivion
Location: Dr. Anderson's Office, Riverside Village, Deck 1553
Timeline: MD2, 1800 hours

It felt good to be back in uniform again, Damion thought as he stepped into the lobby of Elizabeth's office. He'd never seen it before except from the outside, and he liked the restful blues and greens of the room. Even the potted plants were artfully placed. He walked to the receptionist's window and peeked through the sliding glass. "Must be gone for the day," he muttered upon seeing the blurry outline of a pristine desk through the pebbled glass. He rang the chime by the window, where a small card on the counter told visitors to do so and to sign in.

"Hang on a second," Elizabeth called from her precarious perch on top of a small ladder. "Be right with you." She finished dusting the last half dozen books and placed them on the shelf, pushing together the bookends she'd found in a Bajoran flea market on Deck 685 when she'd been exploring Little Bajor, as the locals called it.

Damion smiled briefly at the sound of Elizabeth's voice. Then he took a seat, pulled out his mini-PADD, and began reading some of the departmental emails he'd received while on field assignment. He'd confined himself to reading only what required an immediate response while living as Corin Durant. That had still left a small mountain of emails announcing new and departing staff, the minutes of staff meetings--which, as evidenced by the length of the minutes, Jacen kept extremely short--manual updates, and policy changes.

Stepping down, the counselor folded the ladder and put it in the closet, along with the duster. Then she walked down the hall and into the waiting room. "Sorry to keep you - Damion!" she exclaimed with obvious pleasure. "What are you doing here?"

She was happy to see the man who had filled quite a number of her thoughts, as she'd worked to build a clientele, which was still progressing slowly. She felt as if she'd told him a thousand things, but her databank kept track of the fact that those conversations had mostly been with herself and not with him. It made her double-check, at lightning speed of course, each thing she wanted to say.

She laughed when her memory played back what she'd just said, "That was some welcome, wasn't it? Let me try that again. Hello, it's wonderful to see you. Welcome to my office, but let me lock up and let's go upstairs."

Damion laughed, too, because it felt so good to see her laugh. "Truly, I prefer the first greeting; it sounds more like you. And what I'm doing here is seeing if we might--I don't know--take a walk? Eat dinner somewhere? Unless you have plans?" He paused and then chuckled. "I guess now it's my turn to back-track. We caught the person we were looking for, so I don't have to be Corin Durant 24/7."

"That was my next question. You're learning my ways," Elizabeth smiled, simply happy to be in the same room with Damion again. "I have no plans. I was dusting, doing housekeeping. Can you believe it? I'd love to take a walk. Maybe we can get a picnic from ... well, not from the Slug and Grub Diner, but somewhere, and find an out-of-the-way spot to sit and enjoy ... something. Whatever we come across. No need to plan it to death, right? It's just so good to see you, and I want to hear everything you can tell me."

She imagined throwing her arms around him in a quick, big hug and then quickly backing off again, but the moment passed, so she smiled and simply said, "Come on upstairs while I put on walking shoes."

Damion clasped her hand for a moment and then nodded. "Yes, please do show me around. I've been wondering what sort of place you'd found to live in. And Slug and Grub is not so bad, but eh, I've no real appetite for flaked blood flea or whatever. Though Morva does try to tempt me. Every once in a while, I give in, to be polite. Sometimes, I'm pleasantly surprised. Her algae puffs and her green rice porridge with yamok sauce aren't too bad. The rest of it..." He made a face. "It's much better than what I ate on the Prosperous, but not enough better."

"If anything that comes out of her kitchen is better than what you were eating, then I really feel sorry for you," Anderson smiled, locking the office door with her thumb. "Come on upstairs. Sorry, no elevator, but it's a short flight anyway."

Damion burst out laughing. "To me, the replicated Ferengi food was so bad on the Prosperous that I passionately missed my mother's cooking--and she wasn't all that great of a cook. The rest of the crew, being Ferengi, thought it was fine." Damion followed Elizabeth upstairs. "And the day I'm too lazy to climb a flight of stairs is the day you might as well shoot me."

"Are you finished then? Caught the bad guys and ready to move on?" she asked, going ahead of him up the blue carpeted steps.

"Caught the bad guy--a woman, actually--and preparing to move on. Lt. Miller will be questioning her. At this point I don't know if she'll be a hard case or if we can get her to talk. She knows how to project confidence, but she has the potential to be deadly. I'm inclined to suspect 'hard case,' but I'll wait and see."

As she opened her door, Elizabeth thought about offering her help. On the other hand, if they wanted it, they wouldn't be shy about asking, so she said nothing. "Come on in, make yourself comfortable while I change shoes. Feel free to look around." Her professional clothing, pale green slacks and a green and white striped over-tunic, was, in this case, perfect for walking anywhere Damion decided to go. She went down the short hall to the room she called a bedroom and was soon digging around in the bottom of the reproduction antique armoire for her Reeboks.

Damion glanced around Elizabeth's living area, cataloging the locations of windows and exits for an instant before the bareness of the place hit him. The only piece of furniture was a love seat with the blue afghan he'd knitted for Elizabeth lying rumpled on the cushions. She uses it! he thought in awe--and elation. Honestly, lad, you're making too much of it, he told himself. But he was still glad. Damion remembered the conversation he'd had with Elizabeth a few days before, when he'd said he would sit on the floor if she didn't want furniture. He smiled as he sat down on half of the love seat.

Coming back into the living room with her shoes in hand, she sat down to put them on, and asked, "What's a Reebok, anyway? The database says only that the original company was founded over 400 years ago. Apparently, details further than that are not deemed worth the space in the base memory."

"I've no idea; I thought they were just a brand of shoe," Damion said. "Who knows why people pick the brand names they do?" He stretched his legs out in front of him while Elizabeth put on her shoes. "You know, if you want a minimalist lifestyle, you could go for Japanese or Vulcan decor."

Finishing the tying of the second shoe, Elizabeth leaned back and looked around her living room, doing a quick database search for the two cultures he mentioned. She discarded mentions of functional decorative styles from the 21st century, sure that wasn't what Damion meant.

"It is a little under-furnished, I suppose," she agreed. "It wasn't at the top of my priorities, once there was a place to sit. I often eat out, so I haven't even bought more basic things. I can see in the database why you'd suggest those two, but is that what you would have in your home, given the choice?"

Anderson realized the question was prompted by curiosity to know more about Damion, rather than furnish her own place. They'd talked of many things in his past, when she'd first made his acquaintance as a client ... though not really ever a client, and certainly not for long, as their friendship developed along interesting vectors. She knew a fair amount about how he thought, but not much about how he would live, given a choice.

"Hm." Damion thought a moment. "I think, if I were living somewhere that wasn't officer's quarters... A table with chairs that match. And silverware that matches. And plates that match, that aren't chipped and haven't been mended. I would love to be able to give my mother those things. Real ceramic plates, not plastic ones like I usually use and dispose of in my quarters." He shrugged. "But I don't know, for certain. I might feel uncomfortable if everything matched, like I didn't belong there because I'm not used to it."

"Oh ... things that match?" Elizabeth said thoughtfully, filing that away to examine later and run a search or two for meaning. "Is that important, then? I hadn't considered it, but then, I haven't bought enough to have to think about it. Ceramic plates sound more permanent, or ... she ran a quick search, "... porcelain? The database lists what they call 'fine china'. Is that what you mean?" She'd never given such things much thought. The word domesticity floated out of the crowd of references, and she examined it. Would Damion appreciate domesticity from her? She had a sense of 'making a home' but she wasn't exactly sure what that meant.

"Matching dishes--if you have any--are what you save and protect and bring out when important guests come to dinner. Everyday plates--you almost never have two of the same kind, and you usually wind up with a collection of all different sorts. That's how it is at home, anyway. In the Federation, on Earth, plates just match. They think it's normal, and it is, for them; their people haven't been at war with each other for decades."

"Damion, you make credits from Starfleet, don't you. Why can't you give your mother those things?" she asked.

To be continued ....

 

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