Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Counsellor’s Quarters- Corinne

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Royal Sinclair (Counselor) in Counsellor’s Quarters- Corinne

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Counsellor’s Quarters- Corinne
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Leaning back, she closed her eyes, tilting her head slightly towards the ceiling. Oh how complicated this was! Everything was so intertwined and that made it hard to pull out a single thread to examine without it all tumbling on her at once. She exhaled abruptly and lowered her head so she could look at him. If a hologram could look weary, that was how Cori appeared right now. “Because Jarred’s ex-wife, Lilly, the mother of his child is the reason you’re still talking to me right now. She’s also a part of why I died in the first place. And I will try to explain, but it’s complicated and will take me a bit. But this is Doctor-Patient confidentiality. This is not something others know and the people involved are long gone. I don’t want you sharing this with others. It’s my story, and partly Jarred’s too,” she said adamantly.

Gathering her thoughts for a moment, Dalton reached up and pulled her long black hair forward over one shoulder. “I was a person happy to have flings. I didn’t have serious relationships and if we want to psychoanalyze that we could easily trace that to the fact that I lost two sets of parents before I was an adult.” She waved that away with a hand dismissively. “But then I met Levi Keller, our Chief of Security. He was charming, flirtatious, exactly the kind of person I’d sleep with. But it became something more. He didn’t want just sex and he practically courted me. The more time we spent together, the more I fell in love with him. And he returned those feelings.”

“Then one night, he left a message for me to meet him on the holodeck at a certain time. I figured it was another one of his lovely surprises. But when I arrived at the holodeck he told me and it was this weird desert program that whisked me in and before I knew it was some sort of war insurgency program. I was so confused but kept thinking that Levi would show up and explain or join in or something. Things escalated and then I found myself running for my life from these people with weapons. I turned a corner and found myself in an alley and the next thing I know I hear a gun shot followed by this intense pain in my back on the holodeck. The next thing I knew I was lying in the dirt in a pool of my own blood and I realized that there were no holodeck safeties and that I had just been shot in the back and was actually dying.”

“Then Levi showed up and he was panicking. I remember him holding me, and saying he was sorry, that he never meant this to happen to me. He said that he told me the wrong holodeck and that he was on the other holodeck waiting for me to show up so he could propose.” Her voice had gone rather quiet by this point.

“Long story short, but at the moment I died, a special program kicked in and preserved my consciousness, scattering me wherever it could amongst the computer network. Later on I found out that the holodeck program had been the Captain Leroux’s… Jarred’s soon to be wife. Long after Lilly disappeared after their wedding, and Levi was gone as well, Jarred and I got to know each other better. We were both devastated by these people, for different reasons of course. But he then told me the truth, the big thing that reframed everything about my relationship with Levi.” She leaned forward resting her elbows on her thighs and propping her chin in her hands.

“Jarred told me that Lilly and Levi had some sort of antagonistic relationship going on and they had a bet. That they were each trying to kill the other or something like that, and Lilly had an adrenaline addiction. She often used the holodeck without the safeties, and the program was hers. It was an honest mistake that Levi told me the wrong holodeck, but the holodeck was set up to kill Lilly.” Cori exhaled. “So Lilly lived and I got caught in the cross-fire, and some weird program I still don’t understand was added by her high ranking father to keep her from dying entirely. And I also learned that Levi was only in a relationship with me and only proposing to have plausible deniability. He wanted me to fall in love with him so I would defend him.”

~Corinne Dalton

Sinclair sat dumbfounded for several moments. As the silence stretched on, his eyes took on a very peculiar look, one he hadn’t had before in their interactions up to this point. It was like a light was gradually being turned up, and after a few moments there was a raging fire in their depths. His big hands gripped his legs and his knuckles turned white. But still he appeared overall calm, and when he spoke there was only the faintest hint that something was burning underneath.

“Lieutenant, I am going to apologize in advance. You see… I am about to do something wholly unprofessional and absolutely inappropriate in your presence; and for that I am truly sorry.”

He then erupted in a flurry of gestures and pacing back and forth. His voice was raised in anger as he yelled at no one in the room, his brogue adding unnecessary fire to his speech. “Of all the moronic… selfish… idiotic… wasteful… bone-headed… manipulative BULL&^%$ I have ever heard!!!! Who??? Who would do such idiotic things?! At what point did trained Star Fleet officers sit back and think ‘Oh, you know what would be fun? Let’s try to kill each other? Aye, that’ll cut through the boredom like crap through a goose now won’t it, eh?’ And who in their right mind would try to rope in someone to that moronic display of self-flagellation by proposing marriage just to cover their ass?!?!? I swear to god, if I ever… and I mean ever… get my hands on either one of those two, they will wish to high heaven that I will never have been born!! I may not be the best Counselor in the Fleet, but I can damn well make sure a Court-Martial happens!” and he collapsed finally into his chair, breathing as if he just went both halves of a rugby match all by himself.

Sinclair, CNS

She had to admit that his outburst was highly satisfying in many ways. The whole thing was incredibly twisted and sounded like some sort of crazy holonovel, rather than something that actually occurred.

Cori gazed at him sadly and nodded. “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t want that. And not because I don’t care about all that. Well, Levi… was narcissistic and sociopathic. Him I’d be happy to see in a penal colony. But Lilly? I won’t do that to Jarred, and I can’t do that to his daughter, regardless of whether I involve myself in her life or not. And if we ever took Levi down, we’d have to take down Lilly too. I just can’t do that. Retribution is not who I am. I don’t understand any of what they did, even after all this time, but…” Dalton sat forward, the telltale emitter sitting on her arm prominently.

“Don’t you see? While I’ve been trying to move forward and live my life like any of you, I’ve had to prove my sentience to each new person, including you, over and over again. Do you have any idea what it’s like each time the command staff change and they find out their AI was once Human? The first thing people want to know if is I’m loyal. How much control of the ship I have. Am I a risk to them? And after awhile people deem me enough of a person to treat as one… eventually. I doubted it myself for a long time too. But the two men I’ve loved since Levi helped me claim my personhood and whatever expression that took. They believed I was real and so I finally I believed I was real too.”

She looked off towards the window. “Jarred’s lie isn’t the same as what Levi did, but now I’m left wondering if we were just kidding ourselves. Maybe none of it was real and we just wanted it to be, so we could forget what they did, pretend that our lives could be happy ones. Maybe he’s right, maybe this is Lilly’s final card played to mess with him. I don’t know. But I’m encountering a pattern in my life I don’t like. And one of these days I’d like to be a priority, for someone, not just forgotten and shoved to the side when I’m no longer convenient or useful.” There was no anger in her voice. If anything, Corinne was deeply thoughtful and maybe a little wistful.

~Corinne Dalton

Sinclair calmed as he listened, and when she was done he said “You said you can see a pattern. Do you know why this pattern keeps occurring? Do you thnk it is fate? Or do you think it is something you do, choices you make?”

Sinclair, CNS

Silence filled the space between them and Cori took the moment to look out the window and then chuckled bitterly. “Oh, it’s all me, I know that much. I don’t believe in fate.” Her vivid eyes looked back at Sinclair. “No, this is all about me finally learning to connect with people and let them in but somehow not finding the balance. They become my whole world, my whole existence. And then when they are gone, which will happen regardless of who enters my life, I’m left devastated even more than I might because it feels like I am left with nothing. I know intellectually that’s not true, but that is is how it feels. And it’s pathetically sad on my part really.”

~Corinne Dalton

“Not at all.” Sinclair replied. “And in a circumstance as unusual as yours, who is to say what is sad or not except you?” and he paused for a moment while he sat and watched her.

“Here is a thought. You said that when you let someone in, they become ‘your whole world, your whole existence’. Could that be you trying to reclaim some of the humanity you feel you have lost? Living for a single, tangible person… investing yourself in them in order to connect with your own humanity?”

Sinclair, CNS