Data Tears Himself Apart to Make a Demonstration
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Data reveals his plan to adapt a phaser by cannibalizing his own servocircuits to overcome the hyperonic radiation interference.
Ard'rian expresses admiration for Data's ingenuity as he utilizes his own neural subprocessors to modify the weapon.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Torn between awe at Data's skill and shock at the brutality of his decision; stunned, conflicted, and momentarily speechless.
Ard'rian watches in the shuttle's confined space as Data cannibalizes his arm components, reacts with a mix of fascination and horror, and receives Data's instruction to tell Gosheven about the impending attack, struggling to reply.
- • Understand and assist the technical improvisation where possible
- • Process and respond to the ethical shock of Data's threat—either to stop it or to carry out his orders
- • Data's abilities are extraordinary and can solve problems others cannot
- • Destroying the aqueduct would be a catastrophic action with real human consequences that must be prevented if possible
Not shown on stage; inferred as defiant and resistant to outside orders, which invites confrontation.
Gosheven is not physically present but is directly implicated: Data orders that he be informed that the aqueduct will be destroyed should he refuse evacuation, making Gosheven the intended target of coercion and moral choice.
- • Maintain local authority and the colony's claim to land and infrastructure (inferred)
- • Resist forced evacuation and preserve communal memory and autonomy (inferred)
- • The colony's history and sacrifices legitimize staying on the land (inferred)
- • External threats to sovereignty must be met with local resolve (inferred)
Controlled and resolute with a clinical affect; beneath the surface lies moral urgency turned into deliberate coercion.
Data opens his forearm, extracts servocircuits and neural subprocessors, integrates them into a phaser assembly, explains the technical rationale, and issues a blunt, strategic threat ordering Gosheven notified.
- • Restore phaser function so it will operate reliably under hyperonic radiation
- • Escalate pressure on the colony by threatening infrastructure to force evacuation compliance
- • Technical improvisation can translate into leverage over human political choices
- • The preservation of lives justifies personal bodily damage and moral provocation
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
A phaser (represented here by the canonical phaser system) is opened and adapted; the salvaged servocircuit is wired into its control path to continuously recollimate the beam in the presence of hyperonic interference, turning it into a reliable threat weapon.
The colony aqueduct is invoked as the threatened target: a communal water conduit whose destruction would cripple the settlement. It functions narratively as leverage—threatened infrastructure to force moral choice and collective evacuation.
Data's cannibalized servocircuit is physically removed from his forearm, examined and reconfigured as the core stabilizing element in the phaser assembly. Narratively, it functions as the literal price Data pays—his own components become the instrument of coercion.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The shuttlecraft cockpit is the confined workspace where Data performs mechanical surgery on his arm and adapts the phaser; its cramped intimacy makes the technical act viscerally immediate and the moral ultimatum unavoidable.
The Main Street Pumping Station is cited as the rendezvous and threatened action point where Data says he will come to destroy the aqueduct; though not onscreen, it functions as the implied battleground for the forthcoming confrontation.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Key Dialogue
"DATA: Hyperonic radiation randomizes phaser beams. But I believe I can improvise a servocircuit which will compensate by continuously recollimating the output."
"ARD'RIAN: You're using your own neural subprocessors to build a smarter phaser."
"DATA: Get word to Gosheven. Tell him I am coming to the pumping station. Tell him I am going to destroy the aqueduct."