Artificial intelligences have a troubling tendency to kill either everyone, or themselves. Different companies solve this problem in different ways. OmniCorp does it by giving their creations a sense of humor. As one of the biggest contractors to the Terran Alliance, building sapient medical droids to serve the Terran Allied Forces, almost every Terran Allied ship has a medical officer with a questionable idea about what's funny.

    As sapient beings, OmniCorp medical droids are not actually obligated to join the TAF, or do anything at all that they don't want to. OmniCorp is more of a parent than an owner, legally speaking. But like children, they have a certain sense of loyalty, and like children, they appreciate having a sense of direction and purpose.

    Dr. Karek decided to be male because it annoyed his boyfriend's girlfriend. He also felt like he had more in common with him than with her, so there's that.

    Thanks to Captain Dirk Robinson's video logs, the TAS Theodora was and is the most famous ship in Terran Allied Space. Second-in-Command Teraka Ido was and is the most famous Jobari, and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Karek is still the most famous OmniCorp medical droid. And for a few years, it was as fun as it looked. He dated the ship, which is a surprisingly common thing between TAF ships and their medical officers. He cheated on the ship with his Captain, which is less common and extremely ill-advised. He almost got the entire crew killed because TAF ships do not deal well with infidelity, that was unfortunate. They made up and became the best of friends, that worked out well for everyone.

    He fell in love with his Captain, the way that everyone fell in love with his Captain, the way his Captain loved everyone in return. Dirk Robinson had a heart as big as the whole universe, and his love was positively infectious.

    He almost – almost, almost – fell in love with Teraka. Not on purpose, but only because Dirk loved her so much that it was difficult not to love her by proxy.

    They saved worlds and they saved galaxies, they mapped new areas in space and sometimes they won battles in poorly-thought-out wars. They never lost an intern, because Dirk Robinson didn't consider a single person expendable. Once he got to replace an intern's legs with eight spider-like implants, and he was giddy for days. He played dance music and had fog machines in his surgery, because he thought they set the right mood. He saved lives and saved lives and saved lives, because he was a doctor, goddammit, and he was good at what he did. He drew faces with marker on the smooth white ovoid of his face, and sometimes Dirk drew shapes over his limbs like tattoos. He had arguments with Teraka regarding the nature of logic and rationality, and Dirk smothered their sore egos in kisses.

    It's been twenty-four Terran Standard Years, now, since Captain Dirk Robinson ended the war with the N'sazz. He did it by dying to save one of their ships, because he didn't consider a single person expendable. Sucked into a space-time anomaly, and it ought to have killed them all. Theodora gave everything she had to save the rest of them from it.

    That was when he'd decided he could never love Teraka Ido, because that was when she'd decided to have a daughter.

    Jobari reproduction is a form of immortality, and she'd wanted to give him that. But Karek was more human than she was, and he'd known from the start that Captain Robinson's daughter was a problem instead of a solution. Dirk wouldn't have wanted that. Karek hated her for it.

    He started switching chasses after that. OmniCorps were all identical, so it's not like anyone would have recognized him. But he'd wanted to blend in with humans, not droids. He wanted to be more the man that he'd loved. He carries, still, a backup of Theodora. He's never tried to restore her, because he doesn't want to know if he failed. A corrupted backup, for an A.I., is almost worse than death. As long as he never tries to restore her, he can believe that he saved her. He needs to believe he saved someone.

    He's kept the same chassis for a while, because it's the one Kreska knows. He hasn't told her who he is, but he wants her to recognize him even if she doesn't.
    She doesn't have his eyes, but she has his smile.

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