#but maybe that'll be good motivation for a re-read if and when this goes up on ao3 🙈

[procrastinatorproject]

Apparently, we are now moving fully into the realm of angst... 🙈

This chapter (of technically still the same story, though we are moving further away from the original prompt with every paragraph 😅) is veering into explicit AU territory of the "Everyone lives, no-one is turned into a Borg Queen" variety. I'm not sure how much I'll go into the details of how we got here, some of it will definitely come up during this chapter, but I haven't picked the fix-it version I like best for season 2. So for now, let's just say: "S2 happened mostly the same, except Agnes and Rios have returned safely with the rest of the motley crew."

(also: not sure how coherent this is, but it is late and I'm trying not to stay up until 2am for once. I'll do some proper editing before I post this to AO3 in the semi-near future 😋)

---

“How are you today, Dr Jurati?”

Despite herself, Agnes had to smile. “Emil, how many times have I told you to call me Agnes?”

“Force of habit.” She could hear that the EMH, too, was smiling. Or… he would have been smiling, if he currently had a physical matrix.

“How are you doing?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and looking at the ceiling. As an academic with contacts in faraway sectors, it wasn’t unusual for her to have calls that were voice-only. Even with the latest advances in subspace communications technology, the latency of inter-quadrant calls was greatly reduced if you didn’t try to submit an image at the same time.

Still, this wasn’t your average voice call, and it was difficult to stop herself from picking at the corner of the loudspeaker, where a slim gap had formed between rim and grill that was vibrating ever so slightly every time the device emitted the EMH’s voice.

Emil seemed to be pondering her question. After a long moment, he said: “All my systems are operating within normal parameters. The ones I have access to, anyway.” He sighed. “It really is rather inconvenient, but I suppose this has to count as an improvement.”

Agnes ran a finger along the edge of the speaker. “Well, I’m glad to finally be talking to you again.”

“We spoke only last week,” the EMH said mildly.

Agnes rapped a knuckle against the grill. “That wasn’t the same.”

There was a brief pause before Emil said: “No, it wasn’t.” Another pause, then: “I’m glad, too. I’ve missed our chats.”

For a moment, silence hung between them as each dwelt on their own thoughts. Finally, Emil made a noise like he was clicking his tongue, even though in his current state, he had neither the tongue nor the palate to perform this action. When he spoke, he sounded a lot more composed. “Commandr Barclay is to be commended; I didn’t expect he’d make progress this quickly.”

“I was pretty amazed, too. I guess the new algorithms helped more than we’d thought.” Agnes felt a familiar tingle on her right cheek and she started fiddling with the zipper-pull on the edge of her sleeve.

Even though he didn’t have any meaningful access to the ship’s visual sensors, Emil must have noticed her sudden discomfort, because he asked: “Would you like to talk about that?”

Agnes pulled the zip up a few centimetres, then back down to her wrist. “I’m really sorry we haven’t been able to fully untangle your programmes.”

“That’s not what I —”

“It should only be a matter of time now,” Agnes continued quickly. “I had a message from professor L’Nel this morning. She’s finally managed to look at the data we sent her, and she thinks we can significantly reduce the risk of algorithmic fragmentation. We’ll probably have to work backwards to your root architecture and save all alterations and augmentations along the way, but with a large enough external processor, it should be doable.”

“Dr Jurati…”

The zipper had gotten snagged and no matter how hard Agnes pulled, she couldn’t free it again. “I was thinking we might ask Seven and Raffi if they have time for a detour to Vulcan. I still have contacts at the Science Academy and who knows. With my new-found powers of persuasion, I might just get them to lend us their supercomputer for a few hours.” She was babbling now, but she couldn’t make herself stop. “It would take some time to iron out all the kinks in interoperability-interfacing, but now that Ian can help us with insights into Sirena’s computer system, we’re a lot closer to a solution.”

“Agnes.”

The zipper finally came loose, but she had pulled on it with so much force that it slipped over the delicate stopper at the hem of her sleeve cuff and landed on the desk with a quiet clink. Agnes took a deep breath, staring at her now permanently zipped-up sleeve. So much for getting unstuck…