Dahj Asha

Dahj Asha was a female android and twin sister of Soji Asha who lived during the late 24th century.

History[]

Dahj was created by Bruce Maddox and Altan Soong on Coppelius circa 2396. The two men had salvaged the memories and a single positronic neuron of the late Lieutenant Commander Data and used these to create new sentient synths through fractal neuronic cloning. This process always produced a pair of androids, essentially twins, with Dahj and her sister Soji being one of these pairs. Dahj and Soji were created as mostly-flesh-and-blood synthetics, combining Human bodily functions with higher levels of deployable strength, speed, and agility. Unlike their siblings, however, Soji and Dahj did not have the typical golden skin and yellow eyes marking a Soong-type android. Instead, they were made to look fully Human. The illusion was sophisticated enough that the two were able to live among organics undetected for several years. (PIC: "Remembrance", "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1")

Soji and Dahj, in addition to the earlier pair of Jana and Sutra, shared their appearance with a painting by Data, called Daughter. (PIC: "Remembrance", "Broken Pieces") The painting itself was evidently based on the appearance of Kore Soong and her sisters, genetically engineered Humans created by Adam Soong in the 20th and 21st century. (PIC: "Two of One")

Dahj only spent a short time on Coppelius after her creation, before Maddox took her and Soji away. Maddox wanted to discover the truth behind the Attack on Mars and subsequent ban on synthetics. He hoped to obtain this information by sending the two women undercover, with Dahj aiming for the Daystrom Institute, and Soji working at the Borg Reclamation Project on the Artifact, a derelict Borg cube. To make their cover perfect, Maddox created extremely elaborate false identities for Soji and Dahj. He programmed them to forget they were synths and made them believe their fully Human cover stories instead. (PIC: "Stardust City Rag")

Per this fabricated identity, Dahj believed that she was Human; she apparently had a Human-like physiology, being capable of drinking, suffering lacerations, bleeding, and having lacerations healed with a dermal regenerator. Dahj remembered being raised in Seattle, and her father, a xenobotanist, developing a new breed of orchid and naming it after her: Orchidaceae Dahj oncidium.

In 2399, Dahj resided in an apartment in the Greater Boston area, and had just been accepted to the Daystrom Institute as a research fellow in artificial intelligence and quantum consciousness. (PIC: "Remembrance") Among her credentials supporting her application for the fellowship were transcripts from education at R3SA on Regulus; Dr. Agnes Jurati later characterized her resume as making her a "perfect candidate" for this fellowship, but later discovered that there was no direct record of her attendance, and that her identity appeared to have been created about three years earlier, around 2396, possibly by Bruce Maddox. (PIC: "Maps and Legends")

While celebrating this acceptance with her boyfriend, Caler, she was attacked by Romulan assassins. Activating previously unknown combat skills, she killed her attackers and fled in shock. Seeing visions of Jean-Luc Picard, and witnessing part of his Federation News Network interview on the anniversary of the Romulan supernova, she sought out him out at Château Picard in France, where she expressed her uncertainty to Picard about what was happening to her and her feeling that she was safe with him.

Although Picard allowed Dahj to stay at his home that night, she departed before morning, believing she was putting him at risk. She contacted what she believed to be her mother, who urged her to return to Picard, despite Dahj never having mentioned his name. She became suspicious, and, using android-like skill and speed, hacked into surveillance systems to locate Picard at the Starfleet Museum Archive, shortly after Picard had confirmed that Dahj's image appeared in a painting made by Data in 2369 entitled Daughter. Around the same time, she noticed heightened abilities, such as the ability to hear conversations at long distances, and became concerned that she was suffering from schizophrenia or head trauma.

After revealing to Dahj his suspicions that she was an android connected somehow with Data, Dahj and Picard were attacked by Romulan assassins. Dahj protected Picard and fought the assassins, one of whom spat a corrosive substance on her and the rifle she had taken. Shortly after the rifle exploded, destroying Dahj. There was no record of her apparent death in any surveillance footage.

Dahj possessed a necklace which was (at least in her recollection) given to her by her father, with a pendant in the form of two interlocking circles. After meeting Picard, she left the necklace on a table they were sitting at, having not put it back on after showing it to him. After Dahj's apparent death, cyberneticist Dr. Agnes Jurati recognized the pendant as a symbol of fractal neuronic cloning. Jurati speculated that Dahj was created via that technique, a radical idea proposed by Bruce Maddox that suggested that a positronic brain could be created entirely from a single positronic neuron, in this case, from the late Lieutenant Commander Data. Such processes would produce two twin androids; Dahj's twin, Soji Asha, appearing totally identical in appearance, was, at the same time, working at the Romulan Reclamation Site. (PIC: "Remembrance")

Soji kept a picture of her and Dahj by her bedside, and it was one of the objects she scanned with a Romulan dating device as her fabricated identity unraveled. According to that device, the image was only 37 months old. (PIC: "The Impossible Box")

Appendices[]

Background information[]

It was never clarified if Dahj (and Soji) already had the surname "Asha" before embarking on the infiltration mission with Bruce Maddox.

Appearances[]

External link[]

• Dahj Asha at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works