How to be a Mother when you're a Hologram or Even an Ex-Spy

Posted on Wed Dec 25th, 2019 @ 1:17pm by Maica III 47 & Jaeih Dox-t'Aan
Edited on on Sat Dec 28th, 2019 @ 4:22am

Mission: Neutral Zone Neutrality
Location: The Captain's Quarters
Timeline: 2396

The sword was raised at Jaeih Dox's throat as the Romulan Intel Agent raised her arms up. "Well well well. It appears you have won this day. I yield to the greater swordswoman. All I ask is that you not strike me down this day... I BEG you... mercy, mighty warrior."

On the other end of the stubby, bright blue plastic sword, Moira Artan sat on her diapered rump and giggled at the dramatic performance of her unexpected godmother who knelt before the spotted, green baby. Bouncing up and down, little Moira puffed up her cheeks and made a sound not unlike a fart, which made her just giggle that much more intensely as she waggled the plastic sword at her target.

Without ever actually being touched, the 75-year-old Romulan woman in the gray Intel tunic adorned with a comm badge in the shape of the Romulan sigil flung a hand to her forehead and called out, "I am undone! Bested on the field of battle this day! And now... I shall perish before you!"

Allowing herself to flump to the deck in the lavishly appointed quarters of the Hera's Captain and her wife, Jaeih laid on her back, pushed up against the tiny tot with a warm smile. "I hope you're happy, dear heart. This is the third time today that you've killed me. It's quite an inconvenience, I'll have you know."

The young baby flumped over the elder Romulan woman's chest, hugging her and giggling. As she did, from the kitchenette, one of the tots two mothers, the photonic life form Maica came out with a tray for lunch.

"Yoohoo! I made some lemon bars and some coffee from real Romulan beans we got a little while back." Maica set the tray down on the coffee table and stood up, clasping her hands in front of her. "I also have a bottle for Moira, though I'm not sure the temperature is right. I keep messing that up. The instructions say to test the fluid temperature on your wrist, but I have no thermal senses there... so I have to use the cabin internal sensors... And they aren't the most reliable..."

Pulling herself up with a slightly exaggerated grunt for a woman in as good of shape as Jaeih was, the elder woman smiled softly as she replied, "Ah, thank you. Leave it to Enalia to procure the best."

Then she raised an eyebrow to Maica and pondered what she had said. She was well aware of the issues the photonic woman had, but also didn't want to simply do it for her and take her agency. So she pondered the problem for a moment, sipping her coffee. "Where else do you have personal sensors that can detect temperature? You are quite the cook, after all."

"The kitchenette has a small sensor palette built into it for me, but they're tuned for cooking rather than biological..." Then Maica started processing the data a different way and looked back into the kitchenette. She then picked up the bottle and walked back into the kitchenette before splashing a few drops on her wrist, staring at it for several seconds as she accessed and recalibrated the kitchenette sensors.

After several long moments, Maica wiped the milk off her wrist and headed back into the main room. "Thirty-five point eight degrees celsius. Is this acceptable?"

A light smirk graced Jaeih's face slightly as she was happy to see Maica work it out for herself. As she sat down and took a sip of her coffee and raised an eyebrow. "I would say yes, that's in the range. I have a similar issue, you see, that requires a bit of creative application of technology as well for preparing her bottle. Romulans have much thicker skin and a higher body temperature. My wrist isn't all that sensitive."

"If you do not mind the observation, you seem… stressed." Jaeih added, leadingly.

"Stress is something I try to account for... But my subroutines have been running in circles more than usual lately." As she replied, Maica picked up a few dishes on Enalia's desk and started tidying up a bit.

Taking the dishes gently, the elder Romulan nodded to Maica. "Here. Enalia made me your daughter's Theirr’anov. That gives me license to mother you a bit, my dear." Taking the dishes to the small kitchenette and putting then in the reclamator, she turned to Maica and continued.

"Even a brain with subroutines needs a break and needs to account for stress. You clearly experience it, so you must learn to manage it. Enalia has all the responsibilities of this ship, but you are responsible for her, little Moira, and ultimately, yourself. So, stop worrying about what needs to be down around the house here for a moment, sit and relax. Moira is fine and you need to tell me what's going on in those subroutines of yours."

"I... What?... Sit?..." For a moment, the sexy holographic life form looked around confused before she headed over to the couch and just... Sat down. She clasped her hands in her lap and thought about it a moment before speaking. "Well... I'm supposed to be this perfect wife... A perfect life form... I try to meet Enalia's every needs and anticipate every desire... And she does her best to do the same for me. It may sound weird, but we really do love each other - it's not just the subroutines talking."

"But knowing something and having the experience to use that knowledge... That's the one thing that the original Maica found was necessary to differentiate between us. So that we could grow into unique individuals and so that some virus wouldn't wipe out our whole family someday. But at times... I really wish I didn't have to learn how to do some things from scratch. It's like being able to read a manual and still having to figure out how to assemble an IKEA dream house using your memory of that manual."

With a blank expression, Jaeih picked up little Moira, cradled her in her arms and gave her the bottle Maica had brought. And as the tiny, green spotted baby began to drink, the Rihannsu godmother simply spoke. "Allow me to attack that all one point at a time. You are a sentient being, correct?"

"Rhetorical, I know full well you are." Jaeih replied, cutting herself off in an unusual manner as she raised and eyebrow and smirked. "Which means you are supposed to be noting but what you choose. You owe nobody perfection, only that which you choose to give. And you love Enalia and Moira, so you choose to be a wife and a mother."

"You see what I am doing now? I had no idea how to do this with Mnhei'sahe. It took someone else to teach me and I still failed at it more often than not." Jaeih looked down at little Moira, who she was holding like an old pro. "I too wish I could simply know what to do, but it doesn't work that way for me, and clearly not for you. So, you have chosen a path of challenge. And when challenged earlier, you showed that you are more than capable of rising to the needs. But, I suspect, you are fighting against more than just a lack of knowledge. It seems as if you are fighting against your fear of failure?"

"Yeah... I think you might be right..." Maica said softly. "I mean, after all, I had to learn how to cook, starting with how to boil water, right? Then again, a recipe is easier to follow."

"Well, congratulations, then. You are struggling with the same concern that has gripped every parent ever. And, in regards to your analogy regarding building a house, few build houses by themselves, my dear. You have Enalia and you have me and likely many others onboard that can help you move from boiling water to baking pies, as it were."

"That was a bit of a strained metaphor, to be sure." Jaeih smirked a bit more. "But the point is, there is nothing here you cannot achieve. And you can always ask for help. Believe me, I wish I had had help with Mnhei'sahe. How she survived my rearing is nothing short of a miracle. And yet here she is, so much more than what I 'programmed' her to be."

"And a fine woman and officer she is," Maica confirmed with a smile and a nod. Then her countenance turned thoughtful again. "You're right though. I've been trying to learn everything on my own. I've been employing my five-point learning process, but I haven't been asking for help learning. This is a failure... No... Not a failure... A point of pride... That I need to get past."

"Is it pride... or do you feel you need to excel beyond expectations due to your nature? To the preconceptions you must deal with?" Jaeih asked pointedly.

"I think the normal reply is to say I'm not programmed with pride, but that wouldn't be right. I've grown into a wider range of emotions, including pride, jealousy, and stubbornness. So I'm going to say it's a bit of both?" Maica fidgetted a bit, wringing her hands as she sat there, looking a bit uncomfortable as she made that admission. "My pride as a photonic life form is on the line and I should be able to pick this sort of thing up with ease, right?"

"My dear, lifeforms from every corner of the galaxy have been trying to figure out how to raise children since time began, and for every generation, it never gets any easier." Jaeih leaned over and handed the comfortable baby, still drinking her milk, to her photonic mother. "Here, let us take turns. I would greatly like to try those lemon bars. They smell delightful."

As Maica took Moira gently into her arms, Jaeih sat back with her cup of coffee and a lemon bar, examining it in her fingers as she continued. "Soooo, jealousy?"

As she cradled her daughter, Maica nodded. "A bit. Fiona and Briaar are wonderful mothers and I can't help but be a bit green with envy at how naturally motherhood comes for them. Then again, I'm only... Well, I guess I'm almost four now, aren't I? I guess I didn't realize it but I'm older than I thought."

"And here I just turned seventy-five. Heh." Jaeih chuckled lightly as she continued, "Miss Gavarus is the middle child of SEVENTEEN. Miss O'Dell has, I believe six brothers and a multitude of cousins. They both had little choice but to learn the basic skills at young ages. But it doesn't stop them from making mistakes or driving themselves insane with doubt." Jaeih said as she took a sip of her coffee. "And they have a book apparently written by a goddess to help them. But they, like you and Enalia, love their child. And you, like they, will work out what needs to be done."

"Tell me about this five-stage process you described?"

"Documentation, study and adaptation, experience, mimicry and imitation, direct education, and guestimation. I go through each layer looking for clues, finally landing on guestimation to actually perform the task. If I'm missing data from any of them, I'll try to seek it out if I can, but often it proves either unobtainable or worse, unreliable." As Maica spoke, she waved a hand in the air and summoned a holographic flow chart that laid out a basic subset of her learning methods.

"It's not every day your spouse comes with a manual and though Enalia's read parts of it, she's... Ah, she's skipped over most of it. She says she prefers to think of me as a person than a program and if she reads all this, then she might not think of me as her wife anymore." The green woman grinned a bit sheepishly as she motioned towards the floating display.

"So, as I understand it, you work things out in... essentially the same fashion any other functional adult organic, sentient being does? You just have a pull-down menu." Jaeih said, almost dismissively as she sipped her coffee and crossed her legs. "And, as we saw earlier, you can adapt and try new things and experiment for better results. Sounds like a person to me."

"And anyone who doesn't believe we all... organic or photonic... don't function on programming should try punching my daughter in the face and see how that works out for them. We are all the sum of how we were programmed, and we all take that and exceed it as needed as circumstances dictate." Jaeih continued. "Indeed, did we not just complete a rather lengthy tribunal process so Enalia could prove she was more than what Arenara programmed her to be? How is that any different than you struggling to be a better mother? The pure fact that you are struggling and continue to push yourself is proof that you are most certainly a person, my dear. Never doubt that."

"That's..." As she looked down at her daughter - as genetically hers as any being could possibly be and truly her own child, she thought about what Jaeih just said. She had never really questioned her sentience before, though she had been envious of how easy others made things look. Now she realized that it was all because of life experience and she was building all of that now. Compared to the rest of the crew, she may look and act like an adult in many ways, but beyond her maturity, her experiences were still that of a four-year-old woman.

"I see what you mean. I think... Along those lines... What I've really been jealous of, is the vast difference of levels of experience between myself and the rest of the crew. I just have to be patient and keep working towards my goals, don't I? And ask for help when I'm stuck."

Nodding, Jaeih smiled. "Indeed, Maica. Trust me, I wish I had not..." There was the slightest of pauses as Jaeih stopped herself mid-sentence before continuing, "I wish I have had more resources to call upon when I had Mnhei'sahe. I had no experience to draw upon and no ship like this filled with those willing to help. Now, I have both and it has fooled a great many of you all into thinking I know what I'm doing as a parent. You understand this, just don't be afraid to ask."

Taking a final sip, then setting her empty cup down, Jaeih got up to clear the dishes off of the table, letting Maica simply sit and hold her daughter without worrying about serving anyone else. "It is as Commander Paris is fond of saying, we are all stronger together."