Posted by Lieutenant Commander Royal Sinclair (Counselor) in Counselor’s Office - A New Kind of Interview (Tag SARAH)

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Counselor’s Office - A New Kind of Interview (Tag SARAH)

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Royal Sinclair (Counselor) in Counselor’s Office - A New Kind of Interview (Tag SARAH)

(snip)

“So why don’t you? Nothing wrong with taking a break.” he asked. “Everyone gets tired, especially when they try and process so many emotions.” and he smiled at her in a friendly and understanding way. “Very normal, indeed.”

Sinclair, CNS

She frowned slightly and shook her head. “I… I don’t understand. How… do I do that? I mean, I can only use the personal emitter so long before it needs to recharge, and when that happens, I just take it back to Sickbay where it lives and became part of the system again. Aside from when I pop onto the holodeck, that’s pretty much it.”

~Corinne Dalton

Sinclair said “Well… can you partition off parts of ship operations? Just for a while? Long enough to let the you that isn’t the ship take a break? Just a while where you experience… nothing. Quiet. Self-defined solitude, as opposed to the isolation you typically feel. See, if you can take charge of when you are ‘alone’, you can take back a feeling of control over your isolation. That is the first step. Convincing yourself that you are not helpless, not trapped. You have a say in how you live your life… ship or no ship, you are still a sentient being with free will.”

Sinclair, CNS

If a hologram could be said to have a panic attack, then the instant change that came over Corinne was just that. “No!” she said, shaking with almost a sense of terror. “Don’t ask me to hide away on my own, even if it’s supposed to be good for me.” She shook her head adamantly and she all but leapt to her feet. “Don’t you see?! That’s what he did… the Douwd. He forced me into a little box in the system. Alone. Trapped. In the darkness. It took me three years to figure out how to free myself and by then everything had changed, everyone * had changed and there wasn’t any room left for me. I didn’t fit*. I Don’t know that I can, and..” She shook her head. “No,” she said with all the determination she could muster.

~Corinne Dalton