Electra

Erin laughed and hung on tight as they tore through the quiet of the night and back up towards the palace. The scenery was a blur around them, the lights of the city smears of color as the engine purred and the wind whipped. "This has been the best birthday ever," she told him, head still nestled comfortably on his shoulder. "Makes up for all the ones I missed these past few years, and then some. Thanks." There was much more to say, but she figured he understood.

"You're always welcome," Stesha assured GK with a smile, even as she headed towards the giant beehive to check it out. "And I think you've definitely made friends for life today. Look at the size of it! It's going to be so cozy and secure!" Next to the bee-made hives, the new hive looked especially sturdy, a brick house among wooden shacks. "I can't wait to see what the Queen is going to think of this. I promised I would give them a better place to live. Now they have one!"

"That's a symbol for radiation," Stesha told the giant bee, her face crinkling with concern. "It means danger, it means that there are very poisonous things in the area. You should stay far away from anywhere you see that symbol. Where did you see it?" She was hoping that the bees had found an old fallout shelter, but suspected that might be too fine a distinction for them to make. Better for them to simply stay away from all signs of radiation. They didn't need any more mutations!

"Beautiful!" Stesha replied enthusiastically. She knew immediately that it was not a real, living flower, but the likeness was excellent, and it had a lovely symmetrical perfection that was hard to find in natural sunflowers. "You really are very talented. I'm so eager to see what the painting turns out to look like. I thought about just getting photographs taken, but this is so much more special and meaningful. And I really wanted to meet you anyway, so it worked out perfectly."

"It's not that it isn't real," Gina pointed out, folding one leg over the other and lacing her hands together over one knee. "It's just that it's real in a different way than you thought. Your thoughts aren't any less real than mine because mine originate in an organic blob of squishy pink meat, and yours originate in a circuit board. Your perceptions aren't less valid because your eyes perceive signals made of computer code instead of light particles. You're still real. And the person who did it... well, he was misguided, but I think he had good intentions. He wanted to save something of your world, so he digitized your city before it could be destroyed by the Cataclysm."

"I've never been to Tronik," Gina told him, "and I've never seen the machine it runs on personally. I'm going from detailed reports made by another scientist. He says that the program has been experiencing lossage and glitches periodically for several years now, but the server is robust enough to keep the simulation running. I have a strong suspicion that in order to keep Tronik running indefinitely, something is going to have to be done to increase the memory space and shore up the weak areas in the programming. Doing that might require alerting the citizens to the nature of their reality. But as I'm sure you understand, it's not an easy piece of information to absorb."

"I don't know," she admitted. That was never an easy thing for Gina to say, and she was having to say it more often than she preferred today. Still, it was better than telling him things that weren't true. "There's an interdiction on Tronik, it's not a place that people even visit without great care. When the Centurion, Earth's greatest superhero, came across Tronik, he decided that the kindest thing to do would be to simply allow the city to continue to exist without revealing its nature to the inhabitants. I'm sure you can understand why," she told him with a nod. "A lot of coming and going from Prime could risk the stability of the system, or create the possibility for people to learn that their lives have unfolded inside a computer, rather than on the planet they thought they were on. It's going to take investigation."

"No, no, that's a fine question," Miss A assured him. "I sometimes lose track and forget that Christmas is coming up. I like all sorts of things. I love books and classical music, and candy is always nice. Really, getting warm holiday wishes from a friend is sometimes the best gift of all. I think Christmas is the best time of year to be grateful for one's friends and to tell them that." She suspected that Murdock did not have a lot of money to be buying Christmas presents with, and all those things, especially the talk, were nice and cheap.

"I'm a cyberkinetic," she told him, "some people call me a technopath, but it's the same thing. I can leave my body behind and let my consciousness enter into computers and other electronic objects, then manipulate them to suit myself. It's like programming in a way, but I do it intuitively with my mind as much as through any formal programming language. You're in my computer mainframe right now, so I can do pretty much anything I want. I don't really want to give you a demonstration, because I think you're probably in the mood for a little stability right now, unless I miss my guess. How are you feeling?" she asked.

“I’m not sure, but it might be possible,†Gina said after a moment’s thought. “It would take a lot of work, getting the emulator slaved to a holoemitter without sacrificing the coherency of the data. You’re a massive file,†she explained to him, “and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what every component part does. I’d hate to start projecting you and realize I forgot to bring your arms along, or your head.†She couldn’t help but smile at the look on his face at that. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll mount a scratch monkey when I test it out, I won’t risk your head doing it. It won’t be very soon. In the meantime, though, you have a lot of tools for learning at your disposal.â€

“You’re welcome.†Gina looked at the plates and they disappeared without so much as a movement of air to mark their passage. She debated telling him that the Cataclysm did indeed destroy all life on his planet, including Tronik, as far as Daedelus’ research had been able to confirm. That seemed unnecessary right now, though, when he had enough to try and absorb. “You’re definitely not alone. There have even been several information-gathering and repair trips into Tronik by disguised teams over the past two decades. Earth Prime alone holds more than six billion humans and many forms of animal life.â€

“No, not really,†Gina told him. “The systems of wealth and resources distribution on Earth is very complicated, but it’s almost never a matter of literally taking food away from someone else. People may refer to that in hyperbolistic terms, but it’s much more complicated than that. In Tronik, everyone is in the same geographical boat, so there’s the same access to food and materials, and only social differences distinguish between the haves and the have-nots. Earth is many, many times the size of Tronik, and full of geographical and climate diversity. Some countries have abundant natural resources, some have few. Some have governments that have developed effective resources management, some have not." Obviously well into lecture mode, Gina ignored the fact that Sharl was ignoring her in favor of the meal. "Some countries, like the United States, where your drive is physically sourced at the moment, have far more food than they need, though much of it is designed more for taste and low cost than for any health benefit. In fact, in this country, people with less access to resources are more likely to be fat because they cannot afford food that is good for them. In other countries, poor people are more likely to starve because there is no food available at all. People are working on all aspects of that problem, hoping to balance the food equation across the board, but it’s a long and difficult process.†One corner of her mouth quirked in a wry grin. “I assure you, no one is going hungry because of your imaginary hamburger, so eat up.â€

“It’s a hamburger,†Gina told him, looking amused. “You pick up the whole thing at once and eat it, biting into all the layers at once. The bread on the outside is to keep your hands cleaner.†A second hamburger appeared in her hands and she demonstrated the technique, then vanished the rest of the burger. “I figured that if you like fried food and fizzy drinks, this was a good place to start. Not exactly a balanced diet, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter what you eat anyway, as long as it’s coded to trip the no_hunger switch. Guess you must not have a lot of fat people in Tronik.â€

“I spent a lot more on the equipment than the house, though I laid out 250k for a house that size in Hanover,†Gina told him. “Got a deal though, would’ve been 300 a few years earlier, so hey. All right,†she said suddenly, looking up. A table appeared in the middle of the room, then a chair, then a plate and cup. The cup filled with a fizzy brown liquid, and moments later a strange object appeared on the plate. It had a soft and pillowy top and bottom, with a juicy-looking center that seemed reminiscent of fried protein beans, and had red and green discs and leaves on top of it. Next to it, a pile of pale yellow crinkled sticks appeared. It all smelled very appealing. “We’ll try you on a hamburger with french fries and Coke to start with,†she told him, gesturing to the food. “If you don’t like it or it doesn’t work, I can go back to the drawing board.â€

“Mmm, two-story colonial revival, twenty-four hundred square feet exclusive of semi-furnished basement, four bedroom, two and a half bath, refurbed kitchen, attached garage, and a screened-in porch over the backyard,†Gina told him. She was simply parroting the details of the house as they’d been given her by the real-estate agent, her photographic memory allowing her to devote most of her prodigious concentration to building something for the kid to eat. “It’s blue,†she added as an afterthought, the only point of description besides square footage that likely meant a thing to him.

“Oh, plant compounds with specific biochemical properties,†she said offhandedly, “the most important of which being that they are uniquely suited to transposition to electronic signaling, and from there I was able to gather a wide range of data regarding the chemical signals that create the taste of certain foods. What it means for you is that I have data available on how to make computerized food taste like it should. As for you not being hungry yet, it looks like the system clock function on your biomechanical simulator is ticking, so you didn’t break anything there. You’ve got an adrenal subprocess running that’s interfering with it. When you start relaxing, you’ll probably start feeling hungry. So I’ll try and work fast. Tell me about your home,†she suggested, her fingers flying across the pad as she worked.

He was startled by movement in the room, and looked up to find he’d been joined by a matronly middle-aged woman with ashy blond hair in a bun, wearing a blue coverall. She was carrying a pad that was obviously a computer terminal of some sort. “Hello, Sharl,†she told him, and the voice was Gina’s. The voice didn’t quite fit the face, but that might just be some artifact of the broadcast system. “Sorry for the delay, there was a matter down by the First National Bank that couldn’t wait. I hope you weren’t too bored. I’m going to see what I can get you to eat now, and maybe make some more refinements later. You’re lucky I’ve done some extensive research into the electrochemical properties of flavanoids.â€

“I haven’t got a compatible skin,†she told him. “Which is to say, I don’t have a program that’s compatible with this environment. I could work something up... ah, crap. One second.†The voice faded out entirely for a minute, then came back. “Sharl, I have to leave for a little bit, I have something important to do. This partition is self-securing and self perpetuating, so you don’t have anything to worry about, you’re perfectly safe. Go ahead and rest or use the TV or the computer. I promise I’ll get right onto the food issue when I get back.†Just like that, she was gone, with a quick flicker of the lightbulb and then silence except for the noise of the television.

Gina knew that the world she was creating for Sharl wasn’t like the one he knew, but decided that was probably for the best. She could’ve made a world more similar to the descriptions, some of them quite detailed, that she’d found while poking around in the Freedom League’s databases, but that wouldn’t have helped the kid cope with the fact that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore, or indeed, even on the plane of reality to which he’d become accustomed. Might as well make a Primelike atmosphere, give him a taste of what the organic machines were up to these days. She saved some time by grabbing furniture skins from a couple of Second Life websites and kludging up the coding to make them work in this environment, then hooking the inputs to her own cable and internet hookups. If nothing else, a thousand channels with no parental controls would be educational, or maybe take his mind off his troubles. She materialized a remote control next to his hand and made sure he knew how to use it. By now all the on-the-fly programming was giving her a bit of a headache, but at least it was a challenge!

“Mmm, well, food may take a little while,†Gina admitted. “I need to figure out how the food programming interacts with your system before I can emulate it in a way that’s going to actually have any effect on you. But the rest is easy enough.†A doorframe grew in the far wall, the open door leading into a plain bedroom with a bed covered by a blue spread, a four-drawer wooden dresser and another lamp as its main features. Another door led into a bathroom that was almost entirely cosmetic at this point. Gina figured she’d have to deal with that problem as it came up. Or whatever. “You can get some rest in here, if you want.â€

“Don’t worry,†Gina told him. “You’re safe now. Nobody is going to toss you out on the Net. Not only would it be cruel, but you’d probably take out half the ISPs on the East Coast, and then I’d really be in trouble.†She chuckled, the sound a little odd coming from a disembodied voice. “I can rig up a television feed in there if you want. Hell, I can probably give you internet access through a virtual terminal, access that you can control like an organic person would. Do you need to eat or sleep?†she asked curiously.

“I’ll do whatever I can to get you home again,†Gina repeated, “but it’s not going to happen right away. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that everything I’ve told you is correct, and that getting you home is akin to adding a subroutine back into an incredibly complex computer program. We need to check your program to make sure that nothing has become corrupted or infected before we try and reintegrate you into Tronik. A flaw or glitch could destabilize the system and cause disaster. I need to talk to Daedelus at the Freedom League before anything else.â€

“I can’t be sure,†Gina admitted, even as she continued to tweak the system and add details to the room. A lamp appeared in one corner, giving a source to the room’s ambient light, and the window sprouted panes, a sill, and some pinned back curtains. The table was joined by a sofa, then a coffee table, then a colorful area rug. “You were knocking around in some pretty remote territory for awhile, and you may have been in the University of Alaska’s old Usenet partition for some amount of time we can’t measure. Coming down from as far north as you did, you didn’t encounter a lot of heavily trafficked backbone for awhile. My... friend and I have been trying to run you down for about three weeks, in between other projects, but it became more vital as you started actively disrupting major networks. I imagine you didn’t realize what you were doing?â€

“That’s all right,†Gina assured him. “You don’t have to believe me right now, but I had to tell you. I don’t want to eventually have you wondering if everything I’ve told you is a lie because I misled you about the first big thing. Much better to tell you an unbelievable truth, then let you accept it in time. We’ll stick to smaller truths for now.†A frame appeared on the wall, a mirror that reflected the room and Sharl himself. “Is this what you’re supposed to look like?†she asked him. “I’ve got an emulator running the code, but it’s still a kludge at the moment. Once I’m sure I’ve got the syntax correct, I’ll try for something a bit more elegant.â€

“That’s all right,†Gina assured him. “You don’t have to believe me right now, but I had to tell you. I don’t want to eventually have you wondering if everything I’ve told you is a lie because I misled you about the first big thing. Much better to tell you an unbelievable truth, then let you accept it in time. We’ll stick to smaller truths for now.†A frame appeared on the wall, a mirror that reflected the room and Sharl himself. “Is this what you’re supposed to look like?†she asked him. “I’ve got an emulator running the code, but it’s still a kludge at the moment. Once I’m sure I’ve got the syntax correct, I’ll try for something a bit more elegant.â€