Daddy's Little Hologram

By Laura Schiller

Based on Star Trek: Voyager

Copyright: Paramount

"She leaves and steps into her tiny car,
types in a destination and a name.
Now she's driving off to someone I don't know
and I advise that fellow to be good to her.
Because men are pigs, everyone knows this by now,
and whoever hurts her, I'll cook him all through.
I'll skin him, I'll pull his hide over his ears …
She waves, drives away:
hairclips and ribbons and bows in her hair."

- Reinhard Mey, "Spangen und Schleifen und Bänder" ("Hairclips and Ribbons and Bows"), translation by me

Dr. Lewis Zimmerman paced back and forth across the steel floor of the inactive holodeck, hands locked behind his back, head thrust forward like a shark's. His wrinkled lab coat billowed around him as he turned on his heel. Haley recognized all the danger signs. She had known he would not take this well, but she hadn't expected this.

Then again, she thought, glancing ruefully up at Lieutenant Barclay beside her, We didn't exactly plan to be caught before we could tell him..

"Congratulations, Reginald," snapped Lewis. "Just when I thought your storied career couldn't get any more colorful! What posessed Starfleet to send me a sexually frustrated holoaddict to work with, I'll never know, but this - " He swept his hand up and down in their direction, pinched the bridge of his nose, and turned away.

Reg turned crimson. Haley, holding his arm, felt his body tense like an overloading plasma coil.

"I don't blame you, Haley," Lewis continued, his hazel eyes softening. "You've led such a sheltered existence here, you couldn't have known any better. But you!" He shouted that last word directly into Reg's face, making him flinch. "Preying on my assistant is a line you shouldn't have crossed, Lieutenant!"

"S-s-sir, I – I – " Reg opened his mouth and closed it again, visibly wrestling with the stammer that did not allow him to speak in his own defense. Haley squeezed his arm, furious on his behalf. She would have interrupted Lewis herself if, true to form, he wasn't making it nearly impossible to get a word in.

"I'll inform Commander Harkins about this," Lewis seethed. "I'll tell Starfleet Headquarters! By the time I'm done with you, you'll be lucky to find work on a Ferengi garbage scow!"

"I – I didn't - "

"Come here, my girl." Lewis gestured imperiously with one hand, already beginning to type on the holodeck's computer with the other. "I'll have you fixed in no time. I'll wipe this whole mess from your memory buffer, all right? He'll never trouble you again."

That, to Haley, was the proverbial last straw. She let go of Reg's arm and threw herself between Lewis and the computer, fists clenched, ready to make him go through her if she had to.

"Don't - you - dare," she said to her creator.

Lewis' eyes went wide, and with good reason. In all of her nine years' existence, her vocal processor had never produced a tone like this.

"He's done nothing wrong," she continued. "We talked, we danced, and we kissed once at the end of the evening! What's wrong with that?"

"Th-that's right," Reg chimed in, drawing himself up to his full height. "I p-promise you I would n-never do anything to hurt Haley, or – or make her uncomfortable. We w-worked together for years, Doctor. You should know me b-b-better by now!"

"You really should," Haley added. "This is your only friend you're accusing, Lewis. The most honest man we know, or have you forgotten?"

She glanced back at Reg. Standing with his hands clasped in front of him, rocking on his heels, brown eyes blazing like a warp core with earnest indignation, the Lieutenant looked exactly what he was: a man who could not be deceptive if he tried.

Lewis followed the direction of Haley's eyes with a sardonic half-smile.

"Very clever, Mr. Barclay," he said, in a low, controlled voice more powerful than shouting. "You reprogrammed her to fall for you, didn't you."

"No," snapped Reg. He made an abrupt move towards Lewis, holding out his arms as if to grab the older man's coat collar, but it was his turn to be blocked by Haley. She placed a gentle hand on his uniformed chest, then turned back to Lewis, her slim photonic body between them like a forcefield.

"Haley's a s-sentient being to me, Doctor," Reg continued, covering her small hand with his larger one and intertwining her fingers with his. "She's evolved beyond her original p-programming, just like V-Voyager's EMH. I'd never … overstep her boundaries that way."

"If you won't believe us, Lewis, at least believe yourself," Haley said firmly. "Run a diagnostic. Scan my program in every way you can think of. The only evidence of reprogramming you'll find is your own."

"Hmph." Lewis eyed them both narrowly, as if he suspected Reg of using some ingenious method of covering his tracks.

"Y-you're still the better engineer," Reg told him wryly, finding some humor in this situation for the first time. "You know, this is the f-first time you haven't underestimated me."

Haley felt her creator's own half-smile tugging at the left corner of her mouth. She knew better than to underestimate Reg.

Lewis frowned and turned back to the computer, muttering under his breath as he typed. Haley exchanged an anxious glance with Reg and squeezed his hand. Even knowing that her program contained no evidence against him, it was still unnerving to stand there and watch someone rifle through it as if it were a cargo container. Who knew what would turn up?

"Stardate 44387.9." Haley's recorded voice issuing from the sound system made all three of them jump. "Lewis' new assistant arrived today, a Lieutenant Reginald Endicott Barclay. He seems competent, but terribly shy, and he has a speech impediment that really doesn't help."

"My personal log!" exclaimed Haley. "Lewis - "

Her creator held up his hand, palm-out. She subsided. If she were human, she would have blushed to the roots of her hair – but she knew what the old man was doing. He was looking for some drastic change in her personality, some sudden infatuation, to prove his point and bring Reg's plot to light. He'd always had a flair for the dramatic, after all. Well, he'd just have to be disappointed.

"I tried to ask him about his previous posting on the Enterprise-D before it was destroyed – I mean, the Enterprise, can you imagine? But I could barely get a full sentence out of him. I'm afraid he won't last long, which is a pity, because at the rate Lewis goes through engineers, soon there won't be anyone left for Starfleet to send."

"Ha!" Lewis let out a short bark of what might have been amusement. Reg looked down at Haley's hand still woven into his and let it go, sharply, as if it had burned him.

"Keep listening," she implored him. "Please."

"Stardate 44452.3. Lieutenant Barclay is getting on Lewis' nerves. It's not just the stammer, it's the fact that they are so much alike." The two men proved her point by both shooting her indignant glares; she ducked her head. "They argued about holomatrix configurations all through dinner and didn't say a word about my perfect medium-rare steak. They're both convinced they're right, and neither of them will compromise. If I had nerves, they'd be worn to threads between these two … but I have to admit, it's brave of Mr. Barclay to stand up to his supervisor like this."

The humiliation slowly drained out of Reg's face. He lifted his chin, standing straighter, looking moved by the revelation that Haley had admired him as early as this.

Lewis gave another order to the computer, advancing the time index, too impatient to listen to all of nine years' worth of logs.

"Stardate 51836.6. Mr. Barclay left to join the Pathfinder Project. Lewis feels insulted, but I understand. His heart goes out to these people, stranded fifty thousand lightyears away from their friends and families. He knows how it feels to be lonely. So do I.

"He thanked me before he left. For … everything, he said. No one's ever spoken to me like that before."

A peculiar look crossed Lewis' plain, worn-out features before he turned his head. Could it be remorse – for dismissing Reg's dream of getting Voyager home, or leaving Haley so unused to being thanked?

"Stardate 53884.3. Lewis is dying. I feel so helpless. He won't stop working nights, refuses to take any exercise, and won't even let me cook healthy meals for him. He programmed me to be a caregiver. Why doesn't he trust me to - "

"Hey!" Lewis protested. "I came around to your rabbit food eventually, didn't I? If I'd known you thought about it that way – "

"I thank whatever gods there are for Mr. Barclay. He's been our rock. He accompanies Lewis to as many horrid Starfleet Medical appointments as he can, and even takes turns staying with him so that I can have the evening to myself. I don't know how I would cope without him.

"I just … I wish I knew why he looks at me like that."

"Like what?" Reg whispered, too quietly for Lewis to hear.

"Like now."

For once, Haley wished that she could blush, as he was doing. Even the tips of his ears were pink. His wide dark eyes seemed to look directly into her, reading every piece of code that went into her creation.

"Stardate 53885.8. Lewis will live! He's going to make a full recovery!"

The catch in her voice, the closest she could get to tears of joy, went to the hearts of both men.. Reg smiled softly at Haley, remembering the joy of that moment as well as she did.Lewis, somewhat to Haley's surprise, swiped fiercely at his own eyes with the back of his hand

"It's a complicated story, but needless to say, Mr. Barclay helped to save him. He's the one who brought Voyager's EMH all the way from the Delta Quadrant to administer a cure. I couldn't be prouder of that brilliant, stubborn hologram if he were my own flesh-and-blood brother. I suppose I also should be grateful to Counsellor Troi. She's very … polite. And very beautiful. Mr. Barclay seems to admire her."

Her recorded voice became rather terse. Reg let out a small, incredulous laugh, which she couldn't help but find reassuring.

"Speaking of Mr. Barclay … he taught me how to waltz."A breathless giggle interrupted the log, the unmistakable sound made by millenia of young women after their first brush with romance. "And he asked me to call him Reg. I'm still not used to it! Oh, but it was such a lovely evening. If a summer night on the real Earth is as beautiful as his holodeck program, I wish I could travel there."

"Computer," Lewis ordered, "End playback."

There was no sound except for the monotone buzzing of Roy, the holographic housefly, which had flown into the roomwhile no one was paying attention and was now hovering above Lewis' head. Absently, he waved it away.

"You see," Haley said. "I may not be natural, but my feelings are. Why can't you understand that? If I were real, if I were organic, would you still be acting this way?"

"Damn right, I would," Lewis retorted, his thick gray eyebrows bristling like caterpillars. "If you were organic, you'd still be a child!"

"I've been active nine years. Voyager's EMH had his first relationship at one and a half!"

"That's different."

"Why – because he's male?"

"Because he's in the Delta Quadrant!" Lewis rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. "He's out there living life, having adventures, while you – you could count on one hand the times you've left this lab!"

"And who's responsible for that?" Haley threw up her own hands, a matching gesture which had never come so naturally to her.

Reg glanced between them like a spectator at a tennis match, looking bewildered and amused in equal measure. Like Lewis, he had never seen Haley so assertive before. Unlike Lewis, he admired her for it. Seeing that spark in his eyes gave her a rush of confidence and courage she had never felt before.

"You think I'm naïve, inexperienced," she continued. "Well, maybe I am. But how am I supposed to gain life experience if not by living?"

"Life experience – ha!" Lewis tossed his head derisively. "Is that what the young folks are calling it these days? Next thing we know, your new boyfriend will take you joyriding around the galaxy just like Voyager's EMH, interfacing with alien technology, tacking random subroutines onto your program, picking up malfunctions and – and – what in Cochrane's name do you think you're doing?" he exclaimed, just as her dark-blond hair brushed his left cheek.

Something about his litany of the dangers that could befall her, his mention of Voyager's EMH (whose departure had left Lewis brooding in his laboratory for days, poring over old design specs as if they were baby pictures) and even his rising levels of vitriol (a classic Zimmerman defensive tactic if she ever saw one) had shown her what all of this was really about. She interrupted his tirade in the best way she knew: by pulling his skinny frame into a hug.

"I'm not leaving you, Lewis," she murmured into the threadbare collar of his coat. "You don't have to be afraid."

"Who … who says I'm afraid?" he tried to bluster. Between his tear-choked voice and the way his arms closed tightly around her shoulders, however, the pretense fooled nobody.

"Even if I leave this station someday, I'll never leave you," she assured him, trying to convey all the love she felt for this brilliant, lonely, exasperating man who had given her life. "Why would you even think that, after all these years?"

A shy clearing of the throat made them both turn around. There stood Reg, hovering, uncertain about whether he was welcome during such an intensely private moment. Something about Haley's face must have encouraged him, however. He stepped forward.

"Dr. Z," he said kindly, using the closest thing to a friendly nickname Lewis would allow his subordinates to call him. "I know you and I haven't always … g-gotten along, but … I l-learned more from you in my first week here than from a-any other engineer in a year. B-between Haley and me, I don't even know whether it will work out … "

He cast her an apologetic glance; she replied with a shrug, appreciating his honesty. After all, she had run enough soap opera programs to realize how unpredictable relationships could be. That, in her opinion, was what made the idea so interesting.

"But whether it does or not," he continued, "I – I'll keep coming back here. Like a b-bad penny, as the old saying goes," with his sweet, self-deprecating smile. "You see, Doctor … I don't have so many friends that I can … afford to lose them."

He held out both hands, one to his mentor, one to Haley. She ran to tuck herself under his arm, leaning her head on his chest, just below his commbadge. Lewis made a show of eyeing the outstretched hand, wrapping himself tightly in his coat, trying futilely to contain the joy leaking out of his expressive eyes.

"'Doctor'? It's been eight years, you pedantic beanpole," he said gruffly. "Isn't it about time you called me Lewis?"

And with those warm words of welcome, he let go of his coat and squeezed Reg's hand.

"About time," a sepulchral voice repeated from somewhere above their heads. It was Leonard the iguana, perched on the top row of a shelf full of outdated equipment, blinking down at them with reptilian unconcern.

At the sight of him, all three of them burst into hearty, ringing laughter.