Anxious Offstage Voice

A collective, disembodied presence heard anxiously beyond the room where Data tends the sleeping child Sarjenka. These voices register alarm and concern without identifying themselves, framing the android’s furtive compassion as a fragile act performed under communal scrutiny. Functioning as background narrators of local anxiety, they escalate emotional stakes, signal non‑compliance risk, and embody the planet’s civilian response—urgent, nameless witnesses whose agitation propels Data’s hurried departure.