Finding Missing Pieces

Posted on 30 Sep 2017 @ 10:04am by Lieutenant JG Edward Butler & Lieutenant Tuula Voutilainen M.D. & EBH Mark I "Raven"

2,757 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Starfleet Academy, San Fransisco, Earth - OCS Quarters, 12A
Timeline: MD35; 1345 hours

[ON]

Edward's head slipped off of his hand and jerked toward the desktop. He breathed in sharply, jerking fully awake. Despite being a leader in his field, and despite having worked with some of the most complicated code ever written, he found his scientific rotation completely dull. This was the fifth time he'd dozed off when scanning through sensor logs for the single anomaly that was somehow important.

He pushed his chair back and scratched at his thin beard along the jaw line. He moved to the replicator. "Fried potato crisps, salted." Edward's metabolism hadn't slowed and he could eat just about anything he wanted. He crunched down on the salty snack and leaned back onto the sofa.

It was at that moment that he was interrupted by the door chime.

Edward set the glass bowl on the small side table and moved to the door. He opened it. "Hello, can I help you?" he looked down on the much shorter woman.

"I heard you're the best," replied the mysterious woman at the door, presumptuously pushing herself in her wheelchair into Edward's quarters. With her pale skin, dark hair, and black eyeshadow, the woman had an ominous and mysterious presence about her. A fresh tattoo was visible on her neck of some sort of runic script, while some older ink covered her arms and chest. "I need your help..." she added, the door closing behind her.

"I assume you're talking about holotechnology, Lieutenant," he paused, trying to recall the name. This woman was odd. She looked and acted unlike any Starfleet officer he'd ever encountered. He remembered the name, but stopped himself before he spilled it, giving away the study he'd done on Galileo's crew. "Please, come in. How can I help you?"

"It's about my friend," replied the enigmatic woman as she reached into a black leather purse. After a moment of fumbling around, she produced an isolinear chip, one that was just small enough to be hidden in one's favourite skull-engraved medical tricorder. "Her name is Raven," she added, carefully handing the chip to Edward.

Edward took the chip and walked over to his desk. He set the small piece of plastic and metal on the desktop and bent to pull something out of his bag. "What was Raven's primary function, and what makes you think something is wrong with her?" He unfolded a heavy mat and set it on the floor. One side of the mat was shiny plastic, the other was covered with small glimmering circuits. It was only about a meter square, but that would normally be more than enough for most holographic people.

"Childcare," replied Tuula as she rolled up next to the mat. "She was created, to assist with the growing childcare needs on the Galileo, using the EMH Mark X as a basis. They called her the Emergency Babysitting Hologram, but she seemed to like the name Raven."

Tuula let out a brief smile, remembering when the EBH was first activated and introduced to Lirha. They had programmed her with multiple different physical avatars, representing various alien species, including Orion, but it was the one that looked like Tuula that Raven seemed to like the most.

"The ship was under attack... I tried to save her. I managed to transfer her personality matrix and memory banks, but couldn't get her avatars and some of the stuff from the EMH."

Edward nodded. He activated the firewall, isolating his console from the remainder of the Starfleet Academy systems. He plugged the isolinear chip into a slot in the console. Almost immediately a long string of HIPL appeared on screen.

The lanky engineer scrolled through the code, examining it with the deft eye of an expert. "Did you manually code Raven or did you use the Starfleet Macro System?" he asked, eyes still on the screen. He had already identified several minor issues that the wheelchair-bound woman hadn't mentioned.

"I... I'm not sure how they created her program," replied Tuula, clearly in over her head when they were talking about code instead of internal organs. "I didn't do any coding; I just helped design the physical avatar. I think it was manually coded?"

"Okay. That makes things both simpler and more complicated. When someone uses the Macro System, the computer writes the code and it is technically correct and complete, but it frequently has memory inefficiencies. On the other hand, when someone attempts to manually code a Holoprogram, unless they've got some experience under their belt, they often mess up the code."

"The EMH mk X was one of the designs I worked on, so I recognize the link points you used. It's a solid base design, but the mark eleven will probably work far better in this application." From his system memory Edward pulled a file and began splicing code together. His fingers flew across the keyboard, typing in a language that only faintly resembled Federation Standard.

Tuula nodded in the affirmative before slowly rolling up beside Edward. As she leaned over, she could see his fingers fly across the input device and the lines of code appear on the screen. Even as a surgeon who routinely got a firsthand view of the internal workings of a human body, it was surreal to see the subroutines and lines of code that made up Raven's program. "So... you think you can fix her?"

"Well," Edward said as he typed out the last few characters, "I think I've already come a long way. I've just spliced the EMH program to Raven's personality matrix." He scrolled through the code zipping upward through the dense blocks of code and switched to another subset. "You were right that this was manually coded," he said, pointing at a section of code, "you see how the indenting structure of these lines is different from most of the rest of the program? There are also fewer comments. That generally means that a novice coded this. From what I can tell, they used the Macros to get them part of the way there and then adjusted them to suit their needs."

"Makes sense, I suppose..." replied Tuula, her eyes having glazed over at the blocks and blocks of code. "So... you really know a lot about holograms..."

"It's always been interesting to me," said the lanky man, "that we can create a hologram that imitates the mind and structure of the world's greatest geniuses, but the macros that we create don't use any of the same style or innovation that the hologram--created with the macros, mind you--would if it were writing its own program."

"So... would you say that advanced holograms like Raven are sentient?" asked Tuula. While she initially had a rivalry with the EMH and felt that holograms could never replace flesh and blood doctors, she had grown fond of Raven in their time together. Something told her that her holographic friend was something more than a talking tricorder, but when she examined her feelings, she didn't know whether they were based in logic, emotion, or a little of both.

Edward stopped typing for a few seconds, then resumed the process of cleaning up the hologram's code. "That's a difficult and complicated question. There are a lot of people who feel strongly one way or another. To me, it's really simple, though completely baffling at the same time." The tall man paused and frowned at the screen briefly. "Hmm...ah, yes." His fingers flew once again. "I've worked on holograms my entire career, I've even studied the code underlying Voyager's doctor."

"From a purely empirical and programmatic standpoint, I can't say that there's any evidence of sentience there. Raven, at the moment, isn't anything more than a bundle of HIPL code. The issue comes in when you consider the whole person. I've met Voyager's EMH. He's not the same as others of his model. And somehow it goes beyond the code. I think that the Doctor has gone beyond his programming and gained sentience. I think it's possible, perhaps even inevitable for many holograms to reach that point. The issue is defining when that happens." He glanced at the woman beside him. "I know that doesn't answer your question, but did it at least make sense?"

"I suppose..." replied Tuula, slightly crestfallen at his conclusion that Raven wasn't a sentient being. "She did seem to like the avatar I designed for her; I will have to remake it though. I wonder how she would feel about some pink highlights mixed into the black and purple hair."

"Oh, you won't have to remake her avatar, at least not entirely. That's a part of the thing that's so sticky about whether holograms are sentient or not. Modern designs even have a self image. Raven's image of herself and her desired appearance are stored in her memories. Holograms can seem just as real as the people they are based on. Sometimes we prefer the artificial version." He continued to type as he spoke. His skinny fingers clacked out a staccato rhythm on the keys. "Especially because they're usually programmed to react positively toward flesh-and-blood people."

He scrolled through a section of code, entered a few comments here and there, then closed the console window. "Lieutenant, there is something I need you to understand about rebuilding much of Raven's code base. It's not going to be easy to hear."

"Go ahead," said Tuula. As a doctor, she had a bad feeling about what she was about to hear. She had given the same speech in her career too many times.

"You see, although she still has memory logs, much of who Raven was was lost or corrupted. I've spliced in many of the missing pieces, but they may not be fitted the same way they were before." He paused, then continued. "In a very real way, Raven died. I've done my best to revive her, but she will likely not be exactly as you remember her, in appearance or in personality."

Tuula sighed and blinked a single tear away. "There will still be children who need her... we have to do what we can. For her and for them."

"Absolutely," Edward said, trying to reassure his guest. The air over the mat that he had unfolded on the floor shimmered and misted. "The program is attempting to fill in gaps in the programming based on the memory files you saved." The process continued for several minutes. "I know it looks bad, but this is actually a very good sign. Having the program take this long to assemble pieces means that the memory files have a lot of information that needs to be integrated into the program."

It took a few more minutes, but slowly the shimmering mist formed a solid outline and resolved into the image of a young woman with dark hair and purple highlights. She had a very similar style to the chair-bound woman Edward sat next to.

"Good afternoon, Raven," Edward said in greeting.

"Good afternoon," replied Raven, very softly. She looked around the unfamiliar surroundings, realizing she definitely wasn't on the Galileo anymore. "Tuula?" she asked, looking down at her. "What... where... when...?"

"Raven, how much do you remember?" Edward asked. "Your program was damaged when Galileo was destroyed. The Lieutenant was able to save most of your memory logs, and I've tried to restore your program." Her answer would tell him a lot. Although she looked and acted like a human, she was being projected out of a diagnostic pad. All of the processes she was running were being recorded and examined by the computer. Edward would then compare then to what memory and usage logs remained from Galileo and make adjustments from there.

"The Galileo..." Shocked, Raven grasped her head. The Galileo was more than just a home for her. Her program was tightly integrated into the medical and linguistic database. Everyone she had ever known was on the ship. The children, the parents, the rest of the crew. And more than that, her entire purpose was tied into the existence of the Galileo and the children. "Were there... casualties...?"

"A few..." replied Tuula, a lump forming in her throat as she tried to explain it to Raven. "Not many."

"The children?" asked Raven, on the verge of tears. "And... copper?"

"Copper?" asked Tuula, raising an eyebrow. "You mean the exocomp? I... I don't know. I can't imagine that he would have made it off--"

At that, Raven let out a cry. She had thought the little robot was cute and wanted to get to know him better, but was afraid to talk to him. Now, it was all too late. "I... I..." She took a deep breath before changing the subject. "My program... is it... stable?"

Edward half shrugged. "Yes, but you'll still undergo minor shifts as your program finds and adapts to new memories and remembered behavioral patterns." He glanced at the diagnostic screen. "By what I see here, I'd guess your program should be fully stabilized within the next couple of days. The Lieutenant did an exceptional job saving as much of your code as she did."

Raven smirked. "She is a doctor after all," she replied. "So, what's the plan? Should I deactivate my program while everything stabilizes, or would it be better for me to wander around and make sure everything is working?"

"Either would be fine," Edward said. "If you deactivate your program I'll run it through an accelerated compilation script. That should result in a stable program more quickly. If you'd rather spend time active, you can do so. I will restrict your program from moving through unprotected network systems, as the instabilities could affect the performance of other tasks. It'll take longer, but the Lieutenant could enjoy your company."

"I..." Pausing for a moment, Raven tugged at her clothes. "I guess I could use a nap..." she said.

Edward nodded. "Alright. Before I deactivate your program, I want both the Lieutenant and yourself to understand that there will probably still be minor fluctuations in personality after the compilation script runs. It can do most of the work, but it can't synthesize missing information. Your program will have to adapt to situations for which it has no record."

"I understand," replied Raven. "I think."

Raven disappeared as Edward tapped out a couple of commands on his console. He determined that he'd spend some time making the program more memory efficient while the personality matrix compiled. "Was she what you hoped she would be?"

"Exactly," replied Tuula, before her eyes awkwardly wandered off towards the window. "Though... in my excitement to get her program operational again, I didn't think about having to explain what happened to the Galileo to her..."

The lanky man didn't turn around for an awkward moment. He wasn't entirely sure what to say. He'd never really had to deal with the kind of loss or trauma that Tuula had been forced to endure. When he finally did turn his sympathy was clear in his expression. "I can't pretend to understand how hard it must be to deal with that."

Tuula nodded in agreement. "In some ways, she's like a child. She has all these advanced personality subroutines, but in the end, she's really only a few months old..."

Edward shrugged. "Her program has already processed the news. It's now extrapolating emotional responses based on her personality grid." He knew it sounded cold. He just hoped saying it would help get his point across. "Raven will be fine, you don't have to worry about her. Your own health comes first. I think that, as a doctor, you already know that." The engineer knew he had overstepped, but he'd said what he'd said, and hopefully it helped.

"Yeah, I..." Tuula sighed deeply as she backed up in her chair. "I suppose I could really use some shore leave..."

"Take some time," he said, sympathy on his face, "I'll take good care of Raven while you do. She'll be almost good as new when you come to pick up the program." He opened the door for the wheelchair-bound woman. "Thank you for bringing her to me. It feels like forever since I worked on a holo-program."

"Thanks for helping her..." replied Tuula as she made it to the door. "I'll be back to pick her up in a couple weeks..."

[OFF]

Lieutenant Tuula Voutilainen
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

EBH Mark I "Raven"
Emergency Babysitting Hologram
USS Galileo

RSS Feed

Comments (1)