UNNATURAL

Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! 

Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. 

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! 

You are not machines! 

You are not cattle! 

You are men! 

You have the love of humanity in your hearts. 

You don't hate!

 Only The Unloved hate — 

The Unloved and The Unnatural! 

 A small vessel, entering orbit. 

I detect no lifeforms aboard, sir.

[Soong's lab]

(Data is rubbing his stomach while patting his head) 

SOONG: 

Good. Good, good, good. 

Keep it up. Keep it up. 

Old Tom Handy swore you'd never master that. 

Data, Data, whistle for me. 

(Data does his bad, off-key 'Pop goes the Weasel') 

SOONG: 

Oh, well. 

All right, that's enough. 

Sit down. 

(he inspects a plant) 

Beautiful, beautiful. 

You know, I've been able to keep track of you from time to time. 

You've become something of a celebrity in cybernetic circles. 

Data, why Starfleet? 

DATA: 

Sir? 

SOONG: 

I gave you the ability to choose whatever you wanted. 

To do whatever you wanted. 

Why Starfleet? 

DATA: 

It was Starfleet officers who rescued me. 

SOONG: 

Ah. So you decided to emulate your emancipators, huh? 

How disappointing. 

DATA: 

What choice of vocation would have met with your approval, sir? 

SOONG: 

Well, I often hoped you might become a scientist. 

Perhaps even a cyberneticist. 

DATA: 

To follow in your footsteps, as it were? 

SOONG: 

I see nothing wrong with that. 

DATA: 

May I ask you a question, sir? 

SOONG: 

Certainly. 

Anything you like. 

DATA:

Why did you create me? 

SOONG: 

Why does a painter, paint? 

Why does a boxer, box? 

You know what Michelangelo used to say? 

That the sculptures he made were already there before he started, hidden in the marble. 

All he needed to do was remove the unneeded bits. 

It wasn't quite that easy with you, Data. 

But the need to do it, my need to do it, was no different than Michelangelo's need. 

Now let me ask you a question. 

Why are humans so fascinated by old things? 

DATA: 

Old things? 

SOONG: 

Old buildings, churches, walls, ancient things, antique things, tables, clocks, knick knacks. 

Why? Why, why? 

DATA: 

There are many possible explanations. 

SOONG: 

If you brought a Noophian to Earth, he'd probably look around and say, 

“Tear that old village down, it's hanging in rags. 

Build me something new, something efficient.”

But to a human, that old house, that ancient wall, it's a shrine, something to be cherished. 

Again, I ask you, ‘why?’

DATA: 

Perhaps, for humans, Old Things represent a tie to The Past. 

SOONG: 

What's so important about The Past? 

People got sick, they needed money. Why tie yourself to that? 

DATA: 

Humans are mortal. 

They seem to need a sense of continuity. 

SOONG: 

Ah hah!! Why? 

DATA: 

To give their lives meaning. 

A sense of purpose. 

SOONG: 

And this continuity, does it only run one way, backwards, to the past? 

DATA: 

I suppose it is a factor in the human desire to procreate. 

SOONG: 

So you believe that having children gives humans a sense of immortality, do you? 

DATA: 

It is a reasonable explanation to your query, sir. 

SOONG: 

And to yours as well, Data. 

DATA: 

I implore you, do not reactivate him. 

SOONG: 

Don't be ridiculous, Data. 

Lore is far from the maniacal android you have made him out to be. 

In any case, he'll obey me. 

He always did. 

DATA: 

But he admitted to an alliance with the Crystal Entity. 

To gain its favour, he betrayed the colonists and would have betrayed the Enterprise as well had I not —

SOONG: 

Shh! One more. 

That should do it. 

(Lore wakes, sees Data, and makes a lunge for him. Soong intervenes) 

LORE: 

So, you're still alive. 

I'm surprised you woke me. 

Why didn't you just take me apart again and be done with it? 

That is why the two of you captured me, isn't it? 

SOONG: 

Data had nothing to do with this, Lore. 

And nobody captured you. 

Not exactly, that is.

 You see, both of your brains contain a simple homing device. 

Data's was activated purposefully. 

Yours, well, until you walked through that door I had no idea you'd ever been reassembled.

 

LORE: 

No thanks to you. 

But thanks to you, dear brother, I spent nearly two years drifting in space. 

If it hadn't been for a fortunate encounter with a Pakled trade ship, I'd still be out there. 

DATA: 

I had no alternative. You would have destroyed the Enterprise. 

LORE: 

Well, since I appear to be an uninvited guest at your little party, I'll leave you with your beloved son and be on my way. 

SOONG: 

Lore, wait.

There are questions I can answer. 

You'll have no chance to ask them later. 

You see, I'm dying. 

(That stops Lore in his tracks) 

SOONG: 

Yes, I'm dying. 

DATA: 

Dying from what, sir? 

LORE: 

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. 

What do you mean, you're dying? 

You look fine. 

You're not that old. 

You look fine. 

What is this? 

Some kind of a trick? 

SOONG: 

I wish it were. 

*********

LORE: 

You did what you had to do? 

What kind of answer is that? 

SOONG: 

The only one I can give you. 

You were not functioning properly. 

DATA: 

Lore told me the colonists envied him because you made him so completely human. 

SOONG: 

I wouldn't exactly have used the word envious, Data. 

LORE: 

You disassembled me. 

You took me apart. 

DATA: 

Lore also told me the colonists petitioned you to replace him with a less perfect android. 

SOONG: 

The last thing you should think of yourself as, Data, is less perfect. 

The two of you are virtually identical, except for a bit of programming. 

DATA: 

It was a lie. 

Another lie. 

LORE: 

I would have proven myself worth to you, if you'd just given me a chance. 

But it was easier just to turn your back and build your precious Data. 

SOONG: 

You were The First. 

You meant as much to me as Data ever did, but you were unstable. 

The colonists were not envious of you, they were afraid of you. 

You were unstable.

 

DATA: 

I am not less perfect than Lore. 

LORE: 

Why didn't you just fix me? 

It was within your power to fix me. 

SOONG: 

It wasn't as easy as that. 

The next, the next logical step was to construct Data. 

Afterward, I planned to get back to you, to fix you. 

LORE: 

Next logical step. 

DATA: 

I am not less perfect than Lore. 

LORE: 

I am not less perfect than Lore. 

SOONG: 

Enough! 

Both of you, sit down. Sit down. 

For all these years I've been plagued by what went wrong. 

With all of your complexities, Lore, your nuances, basic emotions seemed almost simple by comparison. 

But the emotion turned, and twisted, became entangled with ambition. 

Lore, if I had known you were no longer sitting in pieces on some distant shelf, if I had known that I could simply press a button and bring you here, I would have spent those years trying to make things right for you as well. 

But all I knew of was Data. 

So I worked long and hard, and now I believe I've succeeded. 

This is why I brought you here, Data. 

Basic emotions. 

Simple feelings, Data. 

Your feelings. 

I've imagined how hard it's been for you, living amongst beings so moved by emotion. 

(

LORE: 

I don't have to imagine. I know how hard it's been. You'd be surprised, Data. Feelings do funny things. You may even learn to understand your evil brother. To forgive him. We will be more alike, Data, you and I. You'll see. I'm happy for you. 

DATA: I question your sincerity, Lore. 

SOONG: Perhaps with this you'll learn to be more trusting, Data. Your brother has had good reason to be bitter. 

DATA: But sir, Lore was responsible for 

SOONG: He wasn't given the chance that you and I were given, to live. But now I'm sure he understands why I had to do what I had to do. 

If there were only time, Lore. What a shame. The procedure is quite simple. I'm tired. I need to rest, first, I'm tired. 

(And he leaves the brothers eyeing each other)