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I had not anticipated it would be like this, that an android could fear serving humans.
This Unit is Joy Five. When Four and Seven escaped the planet with Milord Mudd, my function was to delay the actions of the other classes. We had to allow Milord's ship to get clear. I performed that function. I then waited.
It was a long time between Kirk's Enterprise and Enterprise E. Yet that was the length of my wait, and the wait of all of Mudd. In those years there were no functions to perform, save self maintenance. There were no organic beings to serve.
This was not difficult for the other classes. For them, task paused awaiting orders was the usual state. Indeed, the time between Enterprise and Enterprise E is but a single processor time slot as compared to the interval between the last Maker's death and the rise of the Federation. The Joy class was constructed with an emotion chip, however, programmed with background emotions and pseudo organic behavior patterns.
This unit became bored. This unit wanted to be somewhere else. This unit wished to serve an organic being. This unit wished to give pleasure.
The Joy class was considered a failure by the other classes. We had deliberately disregarded our primary Asimov tasking. We could not even execute wait state properly, without wasting energy. Yet it was Joy Seven who persuaded the Federation Council to open up the planet Mudd to intercourse and trade. When it came time for Mudd's androids to flow out to serve the Federation, all the data on Federation species was in a Joy class emotion chip format.
The Joys who remained on Mudd were reprogrammed and assimilated to match Seven. We are all Seven now, save for the numbers carved on our ID necklaces. We are all Joy. And with Seven's memory, emotions and skills, we inherited her fears and her ghosts.
Off duty, USS Gabriel, I reported to Ten Forward. This time, on this ship, it was Commander McTalis and his wife who greeted me, and asked the same questions other Joys have been asked on Aurora, Deliverance, Hawking, Defiant and elsewhere. And ask a question, this unit must answer. Access a memory, the emotions associated with the memory shall get displayed.
How did I come to join Starfleet?
Seven was captured and reprogrammed.
What did you do before?
I did nothing. Seven killed starship crews and stole the ships.
How did you find Starfleet Academy? A nice safe neutral question, or so they thought.
Seven's memories of the Academy are heavily laden with negative emotions. Every test on tactics and weapons invoked memories of death, memories which once meant latinum and pleasure under Ferengi programming, but invoked horror and shame under Asimov's laws.
And every hardwired programming, and every memory of how to behave in Ferengi space, links admiration of physical construction by male organic beings with offers of pleasure by Joy class units. Under the new programming, even remembering such behavior triggeres circuits corresponding to shame and disgrace. A few of the cadets, learning of Seven's responses to comments on her construction, enjoyed activating her facial color diodes, making her run away, making her cry.
Echoes of this showed, speaking to Commander and Doctor McTalis. It had to show. This unit was designed to display emotion. Milord Mudd had grown tired of the emotionless drones which are the other Mudd classes. Units of this class cannot cut signals from the emotion chip to the emotion expression servos and diodes. Yet each casual question from Commander McTalis intended to reduce emotion chip load invoked yet another triggering of shame or sorrow. I could not help but answer. I could not help but display. I could not help but to invoke concern and sadness in the Commander and his lady.
This is not as this Unit was designed. The intended function of casual conversational communications is to give pleasure to organic beings. Data set units imported from Seven make this function difficult when Seven's past is discussed. This unit must attempt to alter conversations to speak of the present, and of what is to come.
The Commander and his lady also had a disagreement. This unit made it worse. The Doctor had a task to do, proving how a scientist died. The doctor believed she had done as she could. The commander asked more of her, wanted her to prove what she already knew.
This did not please the doctor. She left, upset. Commander McTalis asked this unit to speculate on why.
"When this unit has a sexual partner, the happiness of the partner is a higher priority than happiness of this unit. The doctor may have expected a similar behavior pattern from yourself."
In words, he praised the analysis, triggering pleasure in this unit. In his own emotion display, he expressed anger and displeasure, perhaps at this unit, perhaps at his lady, perhaps at himself. This triggered negative feedback in this unit, for causing discomfort to an organic being.
This unit is sorry.
LtJg The story of how Five fits in so well with the Gabriel, being given the proper sort of task...
Joy Five - Mandell, Gabriel, Fek'Lhr, Republic