“Will I feel it happening?”
“Not n-neh-necessarily,” Barclay said with obvious effort.
Conlon rose and crossed to the hologram, staring up at herself. When she turned back to face him, her eyes were glistening.
“Maybe this is a bad idea,” she said.
“It is your choice,” Barclay said. “Personally, I believe the Doctor will be able to cure your physical body well before any serious loss is sustained.”
“But he could still do that if he just places me in a coma.”
“He could, but…”
“But you’d be left without a chief engineer.”
Barclay nodded.
Conlon lifted both hands to her cheeks and held her head. Finally, she asked, “Can we do a test run? A partial transfer, just so I can get a sense of it?”
“I wouldn’t suggest that,” Barclay said. “What I can promise you is that if the transfer is unsuccessful, or you find your new state unbearable, we can terminate the procedure at any time.”
“If I ask you to do that, how will you know it’s me?” Conlon asked.
Barclay considered the question, then said, “Step back for a moment, please.”
Conlon did as he had requested and suddenly, the hologram came to “life.” She first turned to Conlon and said cheerfully, “Good evening, Lieutenant Conlon.” She then directed her attention to Barclay. “Hello, Lieutenant Barclay. How may I be of service to you?”
Conlon stared at the hologram, holding herself with her arms crossed at her chest. “That’s not me.”
“No, it isn’t,” Barclay agreed. “And it won’t be until the transfer happens. Trust me, I will always know the difference.”
Conlon approached herself and said, “I am in the process of redesigning a benamite recrystallization chamber. Can you give me the specification of our current model?”
“Module X016.2 was activated on stardate…” she began, but immediately fritzed.
Conlon turned to Barclay. “Did I break it?”
“No, hang on,” Barclay said, running a quick diagnostic. “The initial program includes our basic engineering database as well as modifications specific to Galen as a part of your primary reference library. This is meant to be a backup for your own knowledge base.”
“Every test I take from now on will be open book?”
“Something like that,” Barclay said. “It might come in handy. But there is a processing lag I don’t understand.”
Conlon moved back to his display and peered over his shoulder.
“I’m no holographic expert, but it looks like those partitions are too small,” she noted.
“Let’s try this again.” Addressing the hologram he said, “Please continue with your recitation of the technical specification of Module X016.2.”
The hologram opened its mouth to speak but only gibberish came out. The form again lost cohesion and, moments later, vanished.
Barclay looked again at his diagnostic and immediately recognized the problem. “Thank you for your time, Lieutenant,” he said. “I believe my request was premature. There are a few issues that will require resolution before we can proceed.”
“What issues?” Conlon asked.
“N-neh-no-nothing to worry about,” Barclay stammered.
“Reg, we’re talking about my life here. You have to tell me,” Conlon insisted.
Barclay didn’t want to tell her. He wanted to double-check his results and make sure he was right. Except that he already knew he was right. He had created the maximum possible space to allow for the integration of Conlon’s consciousness into the matrix. It required all available space once designated for the thirty-three other holograms that had served on board.
But it wasn’t going to be enough.
There was an answer, of course. Just not one he had ever anticipated proposing.
As these dispiriting thoughts ran through his mind, Conlon said, “It’s okay, Reg. If we can’t do it, we can’t do it.”
“Oh, we can do it,” Barclay said. We just might lose the Doctor in the process.
“I don’t understand,” Commander Glenn said. “This ship was created to run dozens of holograms simultaneously, including Meegan. How is this suddenly a problem?”
The Doctor was curious as well, although he didn’t doubt Barclay’s conclusion. The trio sat in his private office off the main medical bay.
“Meegan was a special case,” Barclay said. “We created a version of the Doctor’s holographic emitter, extremely advanced technology acquired from the twenty-ninth century, in order to allow her holomatrix to expand along with her sentience. But that emitter was lost when her program was stolen by the Seriareen. The rest of our holograms were not designed to evolve in the same way. We optimized for quantity rather than this particular quality. I hoped that by purging all of our other holograms, there would be sufficient room in our computer to sustain Nancy’s consciousness within the matrix, but I no longer believe it is going to work. Even in the absence of her consciousness, the empty partitions still require more processing space than we can accommodate.”
“You built one mobile emitter and it seemed to function perfectly,” Glenn said. “Build another.”
“That module was created on Jupiter Station by Lewis Zimmerman,” the Doctor said. “It contains a number of alloys we cannot replicate.”
Glenn glanced between them. “So, you’re telling me that my choices are to lose my chief engineer or my chief medical officer?”
“The Doctor’s program can be run through the Galen’s main holomatrix generator,” Barclay said quickly. “That was part of our original specifications for the vessel. We would not necessarily lose him.”
“Unless we suffer a catastrophic power loss, which, given the fact that we are operating on our main fusion reactor with no source of supplemental warp plasma and are alone at the ass end of the quadrant tens of thousands of light-years from any help and at the mercy of an alien species, is not entirely outside the realm of possibility,” Glenn countered.
Barclay shrugged. “I didn’t say I was happy about this.”
Glenn turned her attention to the Doctor. “What do you think?”
“Under any other circumstances, I would say that using my mobile emitter to sustain Lieutenant Conlon’s consciousness in a holomatrix would not be my first choice.”
“But under these circumstances, it is?” Glenn asked.
“I have already begun
