Ethics and Morals
Posted on May 11th, 2016 by Kymar Dremel

Ethics and Morals, written with Aoibhe Ni as Kesh Suder

“So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong with the patient now that I’m here, or do I have to keep guessing? I have a few days before I’m due back on Atlantis but I don’t appreciate having to waste my time with guessing games.”

Kymar Dremel’s voice echoed slightly down the long corridor, not quite angry but definitely with a hint of frustration. He’d been intrigued by the call, it wasn’t the first time that he’d played the spy game, but after two days at warp in a cramped transport and being unceremoniously shuffled off into this asteroid facility, his nerves were starting to wear a little thin.

His companion for this trip was a young NCO wearing a caduceus on her lapel, walking along confidently beside him – their escorts, two burly, armoured fellows with no voice didn’t count as companions. She spoke in a light, but serious tone.

“She’s dead, Commander.”

“Right, so is there a lab o-” he did a mental double-take, “She’s dead? You don’t need a doctor then, you need a coroner!” Dremel stopped in his tracks and turned, stepping right into the mountainous form of their security escort. He looked up at the helmeted face with a glare.

The NCO reached out, touching Dremel’s shoulder lightly. “Commander, please at least hold judgement until you’ve spoken with her? We’re there.”

He turned around again, spotting the vague outline of doors built into the corridor wall, suddenly intrigued. “Spoken? Wha-…Stop playing games here, I don’t have ti-”

The doors opened up, revealing the sleek white walls arrayed with various tools around a central, slightly raised dais filled with lights. A woman stood atop the dias, looking towards the open door and the scene outside.

“You are the first to answer my call,” the image of Kesh observed, her dark eyes shifting to focus on Dremel as she spoke. “It is… a relief to see you, Kymar Dremel. How are you?” She blinked once and waited for his reply.

He stepped cautiously into the room, escorts forgotten, his defenses instantly up. It was her voice, her face – somewhat, at least – her manner of dress. It was Kesh. But…”You died. You’re dead. What…how?”

Inside the room, he took a moment to glance around at the equipment, a lot of it medical in nature, except…Is that a holographic matrix? He looked questioningly at the woman standing on the platform.

“I died,” she confirmed flatly, “but my brain was preserved at the moment of death. I remember the moment I passed on. The fear, the confusion, the paralyzing panic. As a fellow doctor, you can appreciate how unique this experience is. I died and I remember it. You’re here to help me live again, Doctor.”

Dremel finally turned and faced the hologram fully, looking at it up and down, an unwanted shudder of revulsion making it’s way up his spine. A look of utter sadness crossed his face, and he was unable and unwilling to wipe it off.

He’d mourned her loss like everyone else, he’d gone through his grief, his anger, his frustration and passed through it – if not clean, then at least without too much lingering weight on his chest. Was this Kesh? At least her memories, her face, her body. But her voice sounded dull and lifeless, none of the fire or passion that he remembered hearing in her tones was there. Her eyes, that he remembered burning with anger, or sparkling with delight, or glistening with tears, now stared at him as if looking at a bulkhead.

“Oh, Kesh, what have they done to you?” His voice wavered on the edge of cracking.

“They have saved me,” she replied calmly. “You look well, Dremel. I trust the data rod I entrusted to Henry made it to you safely?” She watched him silently.

He swallowed, taken aback as he reached up involuntarily to where the chip hung around his neck, burned and useless now – the data now sat in the back of his mind, there wasn’t all that much – but the last thing and the last message he’d ever received from her had been more important than what it contained.

“Yes…Yes I got it. Thank you. I should never have-” He cut himself short, knowing that Kesh would have put him on his ass if he even suggested that she shouldn’t have been involved in something just because it was dangerous. She’d been…she is?…the most capable person he’d ever met. “I got it.” he finished, quietly, unable to pull his eyes away from those calm, lifeless eyes.

“I am…relieved to know that. It was a regret I held until the very end. I would like to have been the one to bring it to you.” She blinked. It seemed deliberate. “Will you help me?”

The Bajoran man stood there for a moment, his mouth working but no sound coming out. How was he supposed to help her? Live again? She was just a series of memory engrams tied to a holographic matrix, stuck in limbo, some sort of undeath…Was that what she wanted, for him to turn her off and let her finally pass in peace? The Kesh he’d known was dead, her body gone, her spirit had departed this plane almost a year ago and yet…her memories were here. She could live again but…would he be just as selfish as those who had tried and so obviously failed to resurrect her before? Would he be doing this for himself, knowing that the person he’d known, the person he’d cared about was long since dead and this facsimile would be in her place?

What right did he have?

He floundered for an answer, then turned to the one person who had always been his moral compass.

“What would you do, Kesh?”

“Would?” she asked, confused. “This situation is unprecedented. I can’t say what I would do because I have never done it. Speculation requires intuition, prejudice, emotion, instinct. I have no access to these things.” Suder tilted her head. “Life is life, Dremel. Do you value one type over others?”

“This isn’t life, Kesh! This is…is torture!”

“I feel no pain.”

“It’s not about pain- You’re not you! Your body died, your brain is dead, your spirit, your soul, whatever you want to call it is with the Prophets, or in Stovokor, or in the Great Fire – you’re just memories, there’s nothing physical or metaphysical left of…of-of you! Of Kesh’ir Suder! Do you want to go through life knowing that, that you’re just a facsimile, a copy, that the person you replaced is dead? That you’re just her clone?” He let it all out in a breath, everything in his mind and on his heart, all of his fear and anger and leftover emotion that never left after his grieving. His chest heaved as he stared at the holographic image of his departed friend.

She stood perfectly still and deadly silent, his emotive words echoing around the room. After several seconds she stepped off the dias, moving with a deliberate slowness over to him. She stopped and examined his face.

“Every humanoid species replicates, duplicates and destroys cells as they age. By approximately fifteen, most specimens will have completely copied their original make up. By thirty, they are each a clone of a clone. By forty five…” She held his gaze, expressionless. “You are a clone, of a clone, of a clone, Dremel. You have died, piece by piece, three times already. How is this different?”

He laughed with sarcasm and shook his head, circling her like they had done during arguments so many times in the past. “Don’t pull the whole ‘axe of my father’ trick on me, Kesh – this isn’t Intermediate Philosophy as SFM, there’s a tangible quality to ‘life’ and ‘sentience’ over cell replication. Your body didn’t replace itself, it got vaporised!”

Folding his arms across his chest, he gestured with his chin. “If you want to do philosophy, how about we start with the Clone Paradox, huh? Or a speech on transporter ethics? You probably remember perfectly Doctor Woodrow’s talk on the consciousness pandemic and the legality of cloning – he basically wrote those laws, there’s a reason they’re there.”

“Your own recovery was perfectly legal?” She said no more.

“I didn’t bring myself back from the dead after my friends had finished mourning for me!”, he shot back, his voice thick with anger and hurt.

She turned her gaze to a spot a few inches above his head, tilted her head and spoke; “Do you remember the cell? The time we were taken from the Hooke, and held against our will?”

His eyes glistened with tear from unwanted memories, taking a deep breath before he spoke low and angrily. “Dammit Kesh, you can’t bring that up. Prophets damn you, Kesh fucking Suder!” He roared, spinning and lashing out with his fist, slamming it into the side of one of the consoles hard enough to leave a dent; the sound of flesh smacking metal reverberating through the room.

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly and deliberately, his eyes closed, his chest right with all of the righteous anger, frustration and pain that was bubbling to the surface. Only Kesh had ever been able to frustrate him like that. Whatever she was now, whatever had been done to her, her memories were still there, her mannerisms showed through even under the dull, emotionless exterior. Her mind was working exactly the same way as it always had.

“You really are still in there, aren’t you?” he whispered.