Except it wasn’t. She felt as if Morgan was still there with her, watching over her, whispering consoling words to her as she dropped off to sleep. She would have hoped that it would have eased her loneliness; instead it made it all the more painful.

With her off-duty hours stretching to infinity in the team room, Robin began spending more and more time at her post. Her continued presence started eliciting comments, but Robin turned a deaf ear to them all. At Burgoyne’s urging, Calhoun considered ordering her to take time off. Ultimately, he decided against it.

“Everyone deals with grief in their own way, Burgy,” he had said. “Who am I to decide what’s right and wrong for Robin Letter? Besides, we’re stuck here at starbase. It’s not as if we need her at peak performance because we’re about to head into battle. We have some margin for error.”

And so the bridge became Robin’s second home as she did all she could to try and bring operations systems back up to speed. During those times where repairs called for the ops station to be offline, she would just sit there and stare out at the emptiness of space, picturing her mother’s coffin tumbling away toward its fiery fate at the heart of a star.

“Wake up.”

The words jolted Robin from her reverie. She rubbed her eyes and leaned forward at her post, realizing to her chagrin that she had indeed fallen asleep. Robin turned in her seat to see Soleta staring down at her with that vague Vulcan annoyance she so easily projected. “Ohhh God,” muttered Robin, stretching her arms. “Falling asleep at my post. I’m turning into McHenry.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she felt mortified. Soleta’s face was like an expressionless mask. Zak Kebron, still at his post even though there was no need for him to be, looked up but said nothing. The rest of the bridge was filled with techies working on bringing systems online, and the name of McHenry meant nothing to them, but even they sensed that the mood on the bridge had abruptly shifted.

“I’m sorry. Sorry, folks,” Robin said with genuine chagrin. “I ... it’s ...”

“It is difficult to think of him as gone?” asked Soleta quietly.

Immediately Robin nodded, feeling a rush of relief. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

“Understandable. Particularly considering the curiosity of his ‘corpse’ in the sickbay.”

Robin shuddered at that. The entire thing had taken on an air of ghoulishness. Starfleet had even sent someone from the surgeon general’s office, and she hadn’t been able to make any more sense of it than Selar or her people. It seemed that McHenry’s body was caught in some sort of ... of cellular stasis, as Robin had heard it (admittedly thirdhand). There had been a brief hope that some sort of miracle might occur, that a regeneration of the cells would commence. Such had not been the case. He was just lying there. Starfleet had requested the body be turned over to them for more detailed analysis, and Calhoun had point-blank refused. That she had heard about firsthand, specifically because everyone on the bridge had heard Calhoun’s raised voice from within his ready room ... a certainly unusual-enough occurrence.

“You people can’t seem to determine whether he’s alive or dead!” he’d said loudly and clearly. “Until such time as you do, he’s still under my command, even if he’s just lying there. And there is where he’s going to stay until we get this sorted out.” Perhaps realizing he’d let himself get too loud, Calhoun had promptly reined himself in and the rest of the conversation was lost. The end result, though, was that “there” was indeed where McHenry had stayed.

Now Robin looked up at Soleta and shook her head in bewilderment. “Do they have any clearer idea of what’s happened with him than they did before?”

“None,” said Soleta. “It is ... perplexing. I ...”

She looked briefly uncomfortable, and Robin frowned. “What?” she asked in a lowered voice. “What is it?”

Soleta glanced right and left, seemingly ill at ease over the prospect of anyone else listening to her lowering her guard, however incrementally. But the rest of the bridge crew had returned to its respective duties and was paying no attention. “It is most illogical for me to find it frustrating ... yet I do. I have known McHenry for many years, going back to the Academy. I dislike the current situation, and I am increasingly of the opinion that, if I can find some way in which to take a hand, I am obligated to do so. I have not yet determined, however, what that might be.”

“It sounds to me like you actually might have determined it, and just don’t want to think about it.”

Appearing momentarily amused, Soleta replied, “You are most perceptive for a human.”

A muttered curse came from across the way at the engineering station. A cybertech named Devereaux was working on it. Although he was in his twenties and purportedly quite brilliant (having spent his internship at the Daystrom Institute), he looked to Robin as if he was about twelve years old. Not surprising; most of the best and brightest computer experts looked like juveniles.

Soleta, who had been leaning over, stood. “Problem, Mr. Devereaux?” she inquired.

He scowled at her. “The mnemonics in your whole computer system are still off by a huge margin.”

“How so?” She glanced at Robin and said, “The system has been functioning in a satisfactory manner, has it not?”

“Aside from when it screamed a few weeks back, yeah,” Robin replied with a shrug.

“Yeah, well, it shouldn’t be. The rhythmics are completely out of whack.”

“Rhythmics?” asked Robin.

“Lord, don’t they teach you people anything?” Devereaux said impatiently. “Rhythmics are ...”

“Rhythmics are the electron flow of a computer’s ‘thinking,’ ” Soleta cut in, not even bothering to glance in Devereaux’s direction.

“Right, except computers don’t actually think,” said Devereaux. “They process information, but draw no conclusions, nor do they have personalities beyond what we program into them to give a semblance of personalities. So the rhythmic for a computer is very, very consistent. It never changes, because it doesn’t react to anything.”

“And that is not the case here?” asked Soleta.

He shook his head vigorously. “They’re all over the damned place. It’s like the computer is ... I don’t know. Studying its own databases. Trying to comprehend what it knows rather than just regurgitate on command. Except it’s impossible. The only time I’ve ever seen anything like it is in textbooks.”

“So you’re saying it’s a textbook case?” Robin asked, confused.

“History textbooks. The M5 computer. A computer that Richard Daystrom had imprinted with human en-grams. That had these kinds of hiccups ... except this is a hundred times worse. I just don’t get it.”

“I am certain,” Soleta told him, “that you will figure it out.”

He gave her a sour look that indicated just how much her confidence in him meant before returning to work.

Leaning back in toward Robin, Soleta said softly, “You have detected nothing unusual in ops?”

“All systems seem normal,” replied Robin. “Then again, I’m not running the sort of detailed analysis that he is.” Then she chuckled and added, “Maybe I should ask my mother for guidance.”

“Your mother?” Soleta’s eyebrows came together in a puzzled frown. “Is that some manner of intended jest?”

“No, I ...” Robin’s cheeks colored slightly. “Not at all. I’m sorry, that probably sounded a little weird.”

“Just a touch,” Soleta acknowledged.

“I was just thinking about that program you created for the holodeck. It seemed so ... so realistic. So much like her. And since she always seemed to have all the answers ...”

“Wait.” Soleta’s head was cocked like a curious bulldog. “What are you talking about?”

“I know, I know,” sighed Robin. “I should have thanked you for it ages ago. I’m sure you went to a lot of work for that, and I’m sorry, I simply got distracted with all of the ...”