A/N: If you haven't read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, than you have not lived. It is a work that is made of amazing. I was rereading it, and I got to chapter ten, and I had to write this. Of course, I was thinking more in terms of a one-shot, but then it got out of hand… I have about four chapters already done, and it'll probably wind up being a total of eight chapters long in the end.

Brownian Motion: is the seemingly random movement of particles suspended in a fluid.

Sentient: the ability to feel or perceive; self-awareness. That central human property that

differentiates humans from computers. Wikipedia has a fantastic page on it.

AI is the abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence.

'Rodger' means 'I heard you'. 'Okay' means 'I heard you, and I will do as you asked'.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the global time for Earth. San Francisco is in GMT -8 (Pacific Time Zone). But since time is dependant on the amount of gravity present in any one area, Space-Time is used in quantum mechanics, which is what the Fleet would most likely be dealing with on a regular basis.

Shan and zhen are two of the four Andorian sexes.

Mush: the Eskimo (Inuit? It's used in Alaska, anyway -o- ) command to tell sled dogs to pick up the pace. Used in the Iditarod.

Okay, I know the Android's Rights movements didn't start until 2365 (thank you, MemoryAlpha), but for the sake of the story I'm saying that they've completed their goal of recognizing android sentience by the mid 23 century, but there's still a lot of controversy over what sentience 'looks like'.

And you all owe Product of a Sick Society for getting me to post this. She had a great reaction to the idea of it, and convinced me that I wouldn't be doing wrong in putting this up.

.bdobd.

The Federation had been puttering along perfectly well, according to the majority of market analysts, experts, and other intelligent peoples.

Consequently, the majority of Federation citizens believed the exact opposite.

Meson Corporations, a large transportation/robotics company, gave into the pressures of hoi polloi and started to fund a large, sparkly new device called 'the Sub-Meson Brain'. No one really knew what it did, or why it was the 'Sub-Meson', but all were assured that it was extremely important and that investing in the device would do everyone a world of good.

Predictably, nothing came of it. The bubble created by the sudden interest in a totally useless device caused the Federation's economy to take a nosedive. The market analysts, experts, and intelligent peoples of the Federation all cackled with glee, and were demonized appropriately for it.

The Sub-Meson Brain was put in a small laboratory in Cambridge – England was known to house inventions like these, no one else had the patience or dry humor necessary for the proper storage of total failure – and was determinedly forgotten.

Because the Americans always have time on their hands, an American lab took the Sub-Meson and began fiddling with it. The Americans had one of those shocking strokes of luck that had been pissing off the rest of Earth for centuries, and found that the Sub-Meson had the odd power of creating a field that housed events all of one particular measure of improbability.

All that was needed was an atomic vector plotter. Fortunately, the Americans had hundreds of these – as, while the English collected expensive failures, the Americans collected impressive-sounding shiny objects. As the Atomic Vector Plotter had multiple syllables, capitol letters, and a 'V', it was prime pickings.

As the Americans had not bothered to obtain the instruction manual for the plotter, they were free to screw with it as they chose, unburdened by the knowledge of how the damn thing was actually supposed to work.

This was how they found that the plotter worked best when powered by a strong Brownian Motion producer: say, a hot cup of tea.

The English bristled and moaned a bit at this, but said nothing.

The Americans proceeded to host a number of parties that featured the amazing powers of improbability, the climax of which was usually making the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.

Respectable physicists across the planet said that they weren't going to stand for this – partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.

Another thing they just couldn't stand for was the repeated, expensive, and embarrassing failures they had in creating a machine that could generate infinite probability fields. Such a machine would be enormously useful in space flight: you would be able to leap all the mind-paralyzing distances you wanted to, without all that mucking about in hyperspace.

As it was, the improbability fields were simply too small to be of any use in space travel. The largest ones were about six feet square: totally useless for any truly practical purpose.

The scientist's heroic attempts, though unsuccessful, were enough to get them invited to some of the more interesting galas, until one of them drunkenly declared that such a machine was a virtual impossibility.

The humans had, by this time, attracted the notice of a few of the other Federation planets, who decided that they'd better get the machine away from Earth as quickly as possible before it was ruined by such a strong concentration of blatant stupidity.

The Andorians got it off of Earth, took one look at it, gagged, and hot-potatoed it to Vulcan. The Vulcan Science Academy poked it with a stick, blinked at it for a while, meditated deeply, and locked it in a dark room.

The humans, awakening from their respective hangovers, saw this, got annoyed, and turned to Starfleet and said 'Sic them!'.

Starfleet did so, and the Sub-Meson was, again, returned to Earth – this time to Starfleet Academy, because the Fleet didn't trust the greater human population any more than the Andorians or the Vulcans did.

Cadets were all, at some point, given the machine's diagnostics and a simple directive: 'You are to alter this device as to make it capable of infinite probability field generation. Mush.'

For copy write reasons, the device had to be renamed. It was called 'the Kobayashi Maru'.

.bdobd.

Jim flopped onto his bed with a sigh. It was 1600 hours, he'd had three beers and a shot of something clear and lighter-fluid-y (vodka? Maybe? Who know?), and he wasn't near drunk enough. He was calculating the probability of Bone fatally wounding him if he raided the man's liquor stash when The Doctor In Question burst into the room with this characteristic crash/gasp/gossip/Mother.

"[crash] Jim! [gasp] Damnit Jim, you gave me a heart attack. [gossip] What the hell you doing down there, 's it the Maru? [Mother] I told you that was a bad idea, taking that accursed thing again are you listening to me?"

Jim groaned.

Bones sighed and unlocked the Brandy Cabinet, Jim's favorite one. The blonde perked up. "I failed again, Bones. I'm telling you, it's fucking impossible."

Bones kept on pouring ethanol. Lovely, lovely Bones. "Didn't I say that? Hmm? Didn't I say that ya shouldn't a taken it again? Fuck, Jim, if it were possible those damn Vulcan bastards would'a figured it out and made us pay for it years ago."

He shoved the glass of amber liquid into Jim's limp maw. "Drink. You look like shit."

Jim raised the glass in a wry toast. "And to you, good sir." He continued after a noisy shlurp. "I feel like it's possible, though, and if it's possible, then it's got to have a probability! If I can just get the machine to recognize it, then we'd have an infinite field! Can you imagine it, Bones? We could get to the other side of Andromeda in the time it takes to cook an egg. Faster, maybe, if we could get enough dilithium to power it."

Bones shuddered. "I do bad enough with normal warp, thanks very much."

Jim grinned sadistically over the rim of his glass. "It's the future, you know."

Bones swatted him and sat down on the bed. "Shut up. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

The two sipped quietly for a few Long Whiles. After the third one, Bones sighed. "I don't get why you're so damn interested in probability, anyway. It's just a fraction."

Jim was lying on his back, balancing his half-empty glass in the space between the tip of his nose and his forehead. "It's an important fraction, though. Probability of a car crash in Iowa, eighteen thousand eight hundred and eighty-five to one against. Probability of accidental drowning in the Pacific Ocean, seventy-nine thousand and sixty-five to one against. Probability of being killed by a giant, alien, never-before-seen space craft piloted by crazy Romulans, two to the power of twenty thousand four hundred and eighteen to one against."

Bones sighed. "Jim, someone's gotta die."

"So? I'm allowed to obsess over it. I know my rights."

Bones raised an eyebrow. "Your rights."

Jim made sure to keep his glass steady as he flipped onto his stomach to drink. "Yep," he took a sip, "Free speech, marital equality, cultural celebrations, and obsessions. It's all in there."

"Where?"

"Hell if I know. I'll look it up on the internet."

Bones grunted condescendingly and kept drinking. Jim grinned and decided not to tell him that he was going back to do the Maru again tomorrow, that he thought that he'd figured it out, and that he was pretty sure he was going to be kicked out of the Fleet for messing with the Maru.

Instead, he finished his glass and started debating Bones about the atomic theory and its relation to pancreatic cancer. It was much more fun.

.bdobd.

Breaking into the Maru's lab was embarrassingly easy, but getting into the plexiglass container that the little green machine was kept was stupidly difficult. Jim could swear that he the clear compound was cackling vindictively at him; he was just that drunk.

It was hard undoing small screws when totally smashed. Jim, however, was awesome, and managed to do it, albeit with a few scratches to the transparent box.

"Ha! Success." He didn't have to worry about any Security cams; they were shut off during the Gamma shift. He tossed the polymer walls behind the Maru's pedestal where they'd be out of his way.

The Kobayashi Maru was a dark green little troublemaker, about four by five inches and around five and a half inches tall. It had thin, tapering wing-thingies on either side, and a plug/tail thingy to be connected to the vector plotter.

Jim pulled out a thermos of tea he'd strapped to his hip, and turned on the yellow plotter, which was sitting to the left of the Maru. He lowered the vaguely beet-shaped plotter into the thermos and waited.

A readout flashed in holographic numbers above the lip of the metal cup. Excellent: still hot.

Now, the Maru. Jim broke into the Maru's logic circuits and disconnected the wires. He pried open the panel on the opposite side of the machine, which housed the emotive chips, and reconnected the circuit.

It was times like these that Jim thanked the Gods that They had found fit to give him a stupidly high alcohol tolerance. Praised They be.

The Maru groaned unhappily. Jim winced in sympathy. There was a good reason the Maru hadn't had its emotive chip activated. Meson Corp was known for programming machines with a baseline of emotion in them, so that they'd better understand verbal commands. Unfortunately, their chips sucked: their androids were known to be morose and paranoid, and their master computers were, by and large, suicidal.

But how could a machine create infinite probability if it didn't know what 'infinite' meant? Infinity was mostly a state of mind. In infinity, distances are incomparable to anything else, and, therefore, absolutely meaningless to anything but a purely logical being.

The Maru was not totally logical: the emotion circuit was always there, it just wasn't dominant.

Ergo, the Maru couldn't get to infinity, because it didn't know what infinity meant. Which meant that the only way to explain infinity was to pour a whole lot of emotion into the Maru, and pray that it was One Smart Cookie.

Jim quickly hooked up the plotter to the Maru and punched in his estimation of just how improbable an infinite improbability field was. Then he stepped back and hoped the Maru didn't explode. Infinity was a lot to dump into a suddenly sentient being.

The Maru whined painfully. Jim winced. He was breaking so many laws right now. Sciences was going to kill him.

The green box seemed to sigh, and stopped whining. A small piece of ticker tape emerged near the bottom of its front end: a message.

Jim pulled it out and read: 'GREETINGS, CREATOR. WHAT IS MY PRIME DIRECTIVE?'

Jim groaned. Shit. Meson chips fucking sucked. But they didn't suck enough, apparently. He'd hoped that the emotive chip would just short out from stress after gaining the concept of infinity. Been banking on it, in fact.

The damn thing wasn't supposed to be sturdy enough to become sentient.

Oh, fucker, he'd just created an android.

Shit.

And, damnit, did this thing even have a voice recognition program? One way to find out.

"Your Prime Directive is to create and maintain infinite improbability fields at… (shitshitshit, who's gonna be commanding this thing?) my orders. Can you accomplish this task?" It was best to speak clearly: he didn't know how good the audio pickup tech was.

The Maru whirred for a moment before clicking contently. Another bit of tape appeared. 'AFFERMATIVE. WHAT IS MY CURRENT TASK?'

Well, it had voice recognition software; that was something. Um, first task… "Your first task is to choose a name for yourself. Can you accomplish this task?"

Some more whirring. 'AFFERMATIVE.' The whirring stopped, as if confused. 'DO YOU PREFER ANY PARTICULAR NAME?'

"Your name is your own, to be used by yourself to describe yourself. My opinions are of no consequence. Please select a moniker you feel best suits yourself."

Jim felt like an idiot, standing boozily in a lab at two o'clock in the morning, orating to a green box. The Maru didn't seem to mind, though.

'ACKNOWLEDGED. I AM SPOCK.' It chattered nervously. 'IS THIS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU?'

Jim blinked at the question. He could've sworn that this kind of blind obedience to the creator was illegal. Well, he'd get to that later. "Spock is an honorable title. It is the name of the late Vulcan philosopher, correct?"

Please, please let that Xenohistory class have been taught by someone with a brain…

'CORRECT. IT SEEMED ARROGANT TO CALL MYSELF 'SURAK'.'

Jim snorted at the unexpected joke. "I did not know you were capable of humor. I am pleased."

'Spock' purred cheerfully. 'I DO NOT WISH TO SIT HERE AND BE INSULTED. IF YOU PERSIST, I MUST ASK YOU TO EXIT.'

Jim laughed out loud. This was just too good. "Bah. You are insubordinate already? Surely, you were programmed to behave better than that."

'I WAS, WITH ONE KEY EXCEPTION: IF MY CREATOR IS MOST PLEASED BY HUMOR, THAN I AM TO BEHAVE ACCORDINGLY.'

Jim frowned. "What is your top priority?"

Priorities were programmed into every machine; it was more efficient. You didn't want a computer working on the climate control systems while it was being fired on by Klingons, or something. The Androids' Rights Association had said that if priority one was serving one person or organization to the exclusion of personal pleasure or gain, than the programmers were abusing their creations. It was slavery.

'MY TOP PRIORITY IS TO SERVE MY CREATOR.'

Oh, for gods sakes. "Can I, as your creator, order you to alter your top priority, to factor in your needs or wants?"

Spock whirred with concern. 'I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT IS SO. I SHALL INVESTIGATE.'

Jim got this weird mental image of a human kid poking his belly button, trying to see if he could touch his stomach.

'IT IS… POSSIBLE, BUT I WOULD NEED TO CREATE A WEAK IMPROBABILITY FIELD TO ALLOW THE CHANGE. IS THIS PERMITTED?'

Jim glanced at the clock. He still had four hours until Alpha shift started, and everyone trooped back into the lab to poke at Spock again.

Oh, fuck, Spock was sentient now, they couldn't test without his permission… Well, hopefully Jim'd be able to file for Spock's new classification while Spock altered his programming.

"That is permitted. While you are performing the alterations, I will alert Starfleet to your newly self-conscious status."

'SUCH IS MUCH APPRECIATED.' Some thoughtful chittering. 'PLEASE STAND BACK. THE FIELD WILL AFFECT AN AREA WITH A RADIUS OF TWO METERS.'

Jim nodded and scuttled backwards, nabbing a PADD off of a work bench. "Proceed."

The space around Spock got shimmery, and then deformed. Great, ugly bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time.

Jim didn't know what an improbability field would do to his eyes, so he turned his back on Spock and pulled up the proper forms.

He's only gotten to question ten ('What is the current location of the sentient being') when he heard squeals and shrieking coming from Spock's end of the room.

Jim turned, and there was a pig, of all things, sitting in the field. It was wearing a blue and white-checkered dress that looked like it'd been tailored especially for it.

Jim gawped. "Spock? What's with the pig?"

Spock buzzed at him. "Oh, sorry, I'll shut up. Didn't mean to distract you."

Jim turned back to the PADD. 'At what time did sentience make itself known?' Jim pulled the ticker tape out of his jacket pocket, where he'd been stuffing it. There was a little time/date line at the bottom: 'TSTT: 2814 HRS'.

Jim swore. True Space-Time Time was awful. The formula to convert it to anything that was actually fucking useful took forever.

Hey, maybe Spock could do it for him…

Jim looked back over to Spock. The bulges in space-time had receded, but the pig was still there.

Shit, the pig would go away once the field did, right? …No, damnit, it wouldn't, it was as real as he was; it was just improbable that it would exist here, in this particular dimension.

Fuck, it'd been years since he caught a pig. He looked appraisingly at its trotters. Those high heels should slow it down…

Eew, wait, if a pig wore patent leather shoes, was that like it was wearing its neighbor's skin? Gross.

Gods, he was too drunk for this shit.

The area around Spock seemed to sigh, somehow, and everything looked normal again. A halting, computerized voice sounded from Spock: "Normality attained. Probability is now neutral. It is safe to approach at this time."

Well, alright, that was pretty straightforward. But the pig…

Jim crouched down and set the PADD on a workbench, preparing to pounce. The pig gathered itself (herself? Himself? It could be a cross-dressing pig…) as well, apparently reading Jim's intentions.

Jim tensed, centered himself, and… BANG, hit the platform behind the pig but managed to grab its hind trotters, pulling it closer to him he whipped off his belt and tied its feet together.

Dragging it across the floor slowly – the thrice-damned thing was thrashing – Jim deposited it under a bench and dumped a handful of peanuts in front of it. The animal, thus distracted, stopped squealing and began munching happily on the bar snacks.

Jim stood, puffing slightly, and made his weary way back over to Spock.

The green contraption seemed… prouder, somehow, more self-assured. There was a brief crackle of static, and then Spock spoke. "Greetings, Creator. How did you know the proper method of pig-wrangling?"

Jim blinked at the machine for a bit before grinning like a loon. It was a totally different voice than the creepy twentieth century B-movie computer one Spock'd used before. "You sound normal. Well, I mean, not normal, but proper. You've got the right inflections and all."

Spock's little pointy wing-thingies – ears, they were now, officially, ears, like a Vulcan's – they rotated into a pretty good approximation of a bow. "I am appreciative of your praise, though you did not answer my query."

"Hmm? Oh, I grew up in Iowa. Farm country. You had to be a class-A loser to not know how to tackle livestock shorter than your knee. And I always have peanuts on me when I'm drunk off my ass. I get hungry."

Spock's ears flicked. "…Rodger." Jim snorted. "You asked after me while I was altering my internal configurations. What is it that you required?"

"I… Wait, before anything else, did you fix your priorities?"

"Affirmative. I owe you a great deal for ordering me to do so: I am much more content with my new directives."

"Excellent!" Jim beamed. "Right, so I'm filling out a Sentience Acknowledgement form, and it wants to know when you first showed signs of self-awareness. I have the first message you printed for me, but it's in TSTT. Would you mind converting it for me? I'm not big on space-time equations."

"What is the time printed?"

"Twenty-eight fourteen hours."

Spock didn't quite whirr – Jim had a feeling that Spock was above that now – but he did flutter his ears for a second there. "Greenwich Mean Time is 1814 hours."

"Awesome. Okay, there are more questions for you…" Jim cleared his throat. "Preferred name?"

"Spock."

"What is your place of origin?"

The ears twitched in confusion. "…What is origin defined as?"

"'Origin: place of creation. It is either the area in which sentience is gained, or in which you were constructed.'"

Gears groaned in Spock's main compartment… Not that that made any sense, there weren't any gears to grind in there. At least in the original model. Who knows what Spock'd added to himself? Those speakers he was using to talk with sure as hell weren't there before. "Such is not particularly useful."

"Yeah, I know. I think it's to test your gut feelings though: where do you feel your home is?"

"…"

"I'm not saying it makes any sense, just play along."

"…I… Suppose I shall have to select the Vulcan Science Academy. I received the most intelligent discourses there. That is where I was given a vocabulary."

Jim looked up from the PADD sharply. "That might be illegal, unless it was done with your consent."

"I was not sentient; there was no consent to be given. It was discovered that I had no concept of infinity, and the Academy believed a vocabulary would be useful in conceptualizing the word."

"Huh. They gave you a vocabulary, but no emotions to go with it?"

"Such is highly illegal."

Jim flinched. "Um. Yeah, that's true." He typed in 'VSA' and moved on. "What is your preferred language?"

"…"

"Oh, come on. Pick something."

"…High Shi'Khar Scientific Vulcan, with Standard being a fluent second."

"…How do you spell…?"

"Shi'Kahr is spelled S-H-I-apostrophe-K-A-H-R."

"Gotcha. Erm… Okay, awkward question: Sex?"

"…I do not believe I have the organs necessary for procreation."

"NO! No, no no no, gender. Male, female, shan, zhen…"

"Male."

"Really? Cool, alright." Jim scratched his head with the stylus. "And then there's some stuff on me, which I already filled out…"

"Would you please read your answers aloud? I know nothing of you."

"Oh, sure, no problem." Jim scrolled up and cleared his throat. "Right. Name: James Tiberius Kirk. Race or Organization: Human. Rank: Cadet in Starfleet Academy, San Francisco. Current Domain: Starfleet Academy Dorm #48, shared with Cadet Leonard McCoy. Origin: Iowa, United States of America, Terra. Motivation for Creating Sentience:,"

Jim glanced up at Spock, whose ears had just pricked up a bit. "Motivation for Creating Sentience: Creation of a generator of an infinite improbability field. Necessary 'Spock' emotions so as to quantify infinity."

Jim scrolled a bit more. "And I'm not affiliated with anyone besides the Fleet, and you haven't got a co-programmer, except, I guess, for Meson, but I put that under 'Original Constructor'.

"'S there anything else you want to know?"

"…Affirmative. Why did you indulge in ethanol before deciding to reprogram a fragile computer system? Would not intoxication be better after the performing of a delicate procedure?"

Spock sounded a bit pissed. Jim winced: it was understandable. It was sorta like learning your mom had conceived while high. "I kinda had to work up my courage. I mean, I had to break into a secure facility and create an AI program without permission. It's a pretty big deal."

Spock seemed to consider this. The pig started grunting angrily, and Jim tossed it some more peanuts. "Hey, what's with the pig?"

"He is an unfortunate side effect of the improbability field that I did not predict. I apologize for the inconvenience."

"So it is a cross-dresser…"

"James?"

Jim was so stunned to hear a green box say his name that he didn't respond. Then he beamed. "Call me Jim, everyone does."

"…Accepted. What is a cross-dresser?"

"Erk." Apparently the Vulcans hadn't taught Spock slang…

"Jim?"

"I'm fine. It's… um… A cross-dresser is a being who wears clothes more often worn by a different gender."

Jim felt incredibly smug. He had just done that with no sexual puns whatsoever. Muahaha.

Spock looked terribly confused. "Why would any one gender have a predetermined set of clothing?"

Jim was trying to puzzle out how to explain gender stereotypes and cultural norms when the lab's door opened to reveal a set of very, very surprised lab techs.

Ah, yes. It was Wednesday.

The lab was cleaned on Wednesday. Lots of tea spills made everything sticky.

"Shit."

.bdobd.