Day Is Done, Part 2

Posted on Tue 11th Jun, 2019 @ 7:27pm by Elizabeth Anderson M.D. & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

1,175 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Elizabeth Anderson's Apartment, Riverwalk Village
Timeline: MD-2, 1900 hours

Damion removed the bowl of hulled and sliced strawberries from Elizabeth's refrigerator and placed it on the kitchen table. "Who needs popcorn, when you can have this?" he wondered aloud and sat down. "That was a delicious dinner, Elizabeth. Where did you find the enchilada pie recipe?"

Anderson tapped her head, "Up here, down some ancient byway of the databases available." She never worried about making Damion uncomfortable by referring to her original nature and purpose, or the skills she had as a hologram. He had accepted that in her from the beginning. Anyone who became close to her would have to. "I'm glad you liked it, because I do, and I expect to make it again."

Taking a spoonful of sliced strawberries into her mouth, Elizabeth made a sound of pleasure. "You know, I can remember not eating, and not really seeing the point of eating, for years, but I much prefer to taste things. My favorite engineer did a wonderful job developing that ability for my matrix. These are ... is the term 'sinfully delicious'?"

"That's the term," Damion agreed, "even for those who don't believe in sin." He too ate a spoonful of strawberries and sighed happily. "I'm glad you don't pile a lot of sugar and nonsense on top of these. They taste so much better, plain." He chewed, lost in thought for a moment. "I remember it did surprise me that you ate food, the first time we met. Lemon pie, wasn't it? I wondered why, at first, but I supposed you ate because I was eating."

"Um-hum," she murmured, then swallowed. "That was exactly why. But somewhere along the way, it's become so pleasurable. One of the many developments I've dealt with. I can't say life is ever boring, since things keep changing all the time." For a moment, she reflected on some of the more uncomfortable changes she had to accustom herself to dealing with. Then she added, "It's a good thing a sense of humor is one of the things that came along early."

"Without that, much of the rest might never have developed," Damion agreed. He ate another spoonful of strawberries and leaned back in his chair. "And speaking of things developing and not developing--Would you like to hear about my lunch companion today?"

"Of course not," Elizabeth answered primly, eating more strawberries. "That's your work, and you know I have absolutely no interest in how you spend your days." Her eyes twinkled at him. "But if you really must unburden yourself, I suppose I'll have to listen."

It was uncanny how her sense of humor had formed, Damion thought. When they'd first met, she'd had something of a 'canned,' programmed laugh. That was gone, had vanished sometime before their arrival on 109. Now her laughter sounded perfectly natural, as did her accompanying behavior and facial expressions. How did she do it? It never ceased to amaze him.

"Ah, well, if you're not interested--I wouldn't want to bore the woman who cooked such a delicious dinner..." Damion shot her a mischievous look and grinned. "Though I think you'll find our subject professionally interesting."

"Oh, well, then, if it's professional interest, that's another ... kettle of fish? What's a kettle anyway?" Anderson asked, temporarily side-tracked. "I think it would make more sense to say a pot of fish or maybe a grill full of fish, don't you. Yes, I'm officially changing it." She waved her spoon in the air like a baton. "I am professionally interested, as that's another grill full of fish."

"A kettle is something you boil water in for tea," Damion said. "When the water boils, steam causes the release valve to open, and the steam makes an ear-splittlng whistle noise. I don't know how fish got involved with the kettle. Can you imagine fish tea?" Damion made a face. "Gods, that would taste disgusting. I'll have to have some more strawberries to banish the mental flavor." He promptly ate another spoonful of fruit and then gave Elizabeth a serious look.

"I'll call her Shara. We apprehended her in the act of transmitting signals from this starbase to an unknown recipient. When we apprehended her, we discovered that she wore something bizarre--a poison ring that had been affixed into her finger. The doctors in Sickbay had to beam it out of her finger and then do reconstructive surgery on her. They also beamed the poison out.

"The ring is ... of unusual construction," Damion said. "I can't go into that; it's classified. Drs. Addams and Dhuro wrote quite the report on it. Whoever made the thing scares the hell out of me. I would not want to be in that person's power because of the way the ring was made and how Shara was made to wear it."

Damion let out a breath and went on. "Today, after a lot of prep work leading to dead ends and enigmas, we finally began interviewing Shara. It didn't take long for us to realize that she has multiple personalities. I met at least three today. The Chief Counselor confirmed it. Interviewing her has thus become a delicate process, like walking through a minefield, because we don't know when a question will make her switch to being someone else. Because of how she's had to survive, she's become cunning. She'll use her sexuality to get what she wants, or she'll use dominance when she can. When she wants to hide her nature, we get what Dr. Graves calls her waking personality, who remembers the least of what has happened to her."

"Multiple personalities," Elizabeth mused. "As a study, it's interesting, but it sounds like a nightmare for an investigation. The little bit you can say about the ring sounds like it was created by a very sick mind. What could she tell you about him, or the purpose of the thing?" She began to leaf back through the database for case histories of multiple personality disorder. "Does Paul have much experience dealing with that sort of thing? Not that there is a lot of it, fortunately."

"Paul, eh?" Damion commented with an amused grin. "Been having a lunch or two with him?"

Elizabeth shrugged, "That's what he told me to call him at the party when he bought his house last year."

Damion gave Elizabeth a teasing look, as if to say, 'A likely story!' and went on. "I'm in complete agreement with you about the ring's maker. We're trying to figure out if the ring's maker is the person who caused Shara's personality to splinter, or if that happened earlier. If it happened earlier, then the ringmaker would be just one more in a line of traumas. If he or she caused the inciting trauma..." Damion shook his head. "I can't imagine that Shara would want to remember that person at all--save that one of her personalities is a very take-charge sort of woman. She wants to know what happened to her, to ease the fear and disquiet of not knowing."

To be continued ....

 

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