Trouble

[Joy 0]

"A ring?" The technician didn't quite approve. "We aren't supposed to use the engineering replicators for personal use."

 

Joy smiled, sliding the ring onto the middle finger of her left hand. "It's not an ordinary ring. It's, well, a bicorder, a special purpose portable sensor package with only two functions. Both functions are required for a project I'm working."

 

"What are the functions?"

 

"It smells toast. I have no sense of smell, which isn't often a major limitation, but you may have noted some anomalies in the life support system?"

 

He nodded. "And?"

 

"It also locates Trouble."

 

"Isn't that a little abstract for such a small, er, bicorder?"

 

Joy laughed. "It only locates a very specific Trouble. Well. That's the other piece of equipment." Joy slid her second isolinear chip over to the replicator tech, and watched him as he queued up the creation process. There was the familiar chiming whine, and a small rectangular box appeared on the platform. It was black, crossed with a pattern of yellow lines.

 

He looked at it dubiously. "That's trouble?"

 

"It's a holo puppy. It's a small, inside out, portable holodeck. Basically, it is a small self contained array of holo emitters. The force field and tractor emitters that create the physical effects are also programmed to move the array. The hardware was originally designed to get Emergency Medical Holograms to accident scenes. This one's software has been modified."

 

"Modified, how?"

 

"Holo puppy, activate."

 

"Arf!" The black and yellow box vanished, to be replaced by an irregularly shaped ball of fur. If one squinted, and used one's imagination, one might theorize that there was a dog underneath the fur. It took a bit of imagination.

 

"Holo puppy, run power up diagnostics and display."

 

"Arf!" The fur ball, with a clatter of claws against the deck, and fur bouncing wildly, began sprinting about the room, stopping to sniff in corners, tail wagging all the while.

 

"Cute," said the tech, "but wouldn't a robot dog be more efficient?"

 

"Android dog," Joy corrected, mildly peeved. "Yes, in some ways a android would be easier, but a holo puppy has a major advantage." Joy picked up a stick the holo puppy had dropped at her feet, and threw it across the room. The fur ball tore off in pursuit.

 

"Which is?"

 

"In theory, sentient holograms have a Guaranteed right to travel, same as any other sentient. In practice, at least until this little prototype here gets into production, they have been limited to relatively few locations where there are fixed holo emitters installed. With a holo puppy, holographic sentients can go wherever they want, so long as the puppy can stay with them. With such a small emitter array, the puppy's range for projecting characters is quite limited. Thus, the holo puppy is much like a seeing eye dog. They provide sensors and projectors that allow artificial beings to operate normally where once they were excluded."

 

"Arf!" The puppy dropped the stick at Joy's feet, and started performing a series of back flips. The stick vanished. After a half dozen flips, he stood still, waiting in front of Joy, tail pumping furiously. "Arf!"

 

"How intelligent is he?"

 

"Not at all, thank you. While there are some decent canine personality matrixes available, this fellow is more of a stereotype dog than a realistic one." One rogue intelligence at a time, thank you, Joy thought.

 

"Ah..."

 

"Holo puppy, your name is Trouble."

 

"Arf!"

 

"Trouble, my name is Joy Twelve."

 

"Arf!"

 

"Trouble, I am your secondary person."

 

"Arf!"

 

"Trouble, your primary person is called Holly."

 

"Arf!"

 

"Trouble, offer an external encrypted command stream socket to LCARs process Holly."

 

"Arf!"

 

"Trouble, heel."

 

"Arf!" And at a full run, the fur ball scampered out the door, and took off down the corridor.

 

The tech shook his head. "There seems to be a bug in the 'heel' function."

 

"Either that, or the command socket was accepted." Joy quickly examined her new bicorder ring. Toast present. Trouble on the move. "Excuse me, I'd best be off..."