Star Trek Picard: Every Easter Egg & Hidden Reference From 'Stardust City Rag'

In the La Sirena's sickbay, Maddox is barely hanging in there. He reveals to Picard that Dahj and Soji's mother (who appeared in "Remembrance" and "Maps and Legends") is an embedded "mom AI" who wouldn't have activated unless one of them was in grave danger. He later tells Agnes that he couldn't have created the twins without her or Soong.

Maddox is, of course, talking about Doctor Noonian Soong – Data, Lore, and B4's creator. Noonian Soong died in TNG's fourth season episode "Brothers", but left a few traces of himself inside Data's neural net, notably as a dream program in the episode "Birthright, Part I". It's possible Maddox is just crediting Doctor Soong's research as the basis for his own work with synthetic life, or he's had some interaction with a virtual Soong extracted from Data's positronic neurons, mentioned in "Remembrance".

Still, whatever Commodore Oh said to Agnes in "The End is The Beginning", she now feels she has to atone for her work with Maddox and promptly kills him. Nevertheless, Maddox has pointed Picard in the direction of the Artifact and Soji. Rios says it'll double his fee to head to the Artifact in Romulan space and there's that question about money in the 2390s again. Maybe we'll figure this out next week on Star Trek: Picard.