Domicile (IC)

[Electra]

Gina gave Sharl a couple of days to get accustomed to his changed circumstances, checking in with him several times a day to make sure things were going well in his little artificial world and give him more food, but otherwise leaving him largely to his own devices. That wasn't entirely by choice. Besides the bank job Miss A had been needed to foil during their first meeting, she'd had several projects going at ArcheTech and the Lab that couldn't be put on hold, and there was always more crime. But besides all that, she had to think about what he'd asked, about being able to come into her world and see what it was like. It was a reasonable request, but until she knew more about his programming compatibility, she wasn't ready to risk moving him to another system, especially one she hadn't designed herself, like the ones at the Lab. Holoprojecting him would mean more than bringing him onto Prime, it would mean bringing him into her world, her most private demesnes.

She tried to talk herself out of automatic rejection of the idea. Sharl was a computer program, for Christ's sake. Sure he was sentient, and thus deserved protection, but he was no more human than the AI who already ran her household functions, and that one saw her naked! She wasn't even sure what impulse had driven her to build the matronly avatar, except that she'd thought maybe he'd respond better to that than to someone only a few years older than he himself appeared. Why should she care what he thought of her? That was the same question she asked herself every time she didn't manage to leave her house, or answer the door, or pick up the phone. So far, for all her advanced intellect, she still didn't have an answer.

So she stalled instead, and the many distractions made it easier. Three days after she'd pulled him out of the datastream, though, she knew it was starting to get unfair. She dropped into the computer world for her usual lunchtime visit, this time bearing a pepperoni pizza and Mountain Dew, the same thing she'd just eaten herself. "Sharl?" she called, standing in the "anteroom" she'd created just outside his rooms to give him some illusion of privacy and autonomy. "It's Gina. Are you decent?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Enter!" came Sharl's voice through the wooden interior door she'd put up for him. He was up by the time she'd opened the door, looking like an Earth teenager in the T-shirt and blue denim she'd pulled up for him with a few code tweaks from the Gap's online store. In cyberspace, now that his program was connected to an operating system again, he could get dirty, and Gina was sharp-eyed enough to notice dirty-looking teenage boys. "Hello, Gina," he said, "I forgot about knobs for a second there." She'd figured out well before his explanation that doors in Tronik were usually voice-activated, and slid open at that. He smiled at her, putting his hand up in a salute. "How are you doing? How...am I doing?" he added, shrugging a little at the question.

[Electra]

"We're both doing fine," she assured him, stepping into the room and looking around. She had made some refinements to the details, added a nicer chair for the computer, a more comfy recliner in front of the television, and put some art prints on the walls so the place didn't look so stark. She figured eventually she could let him decorate the place, but maybe when his grip on reality was a little more secure. "I brought you lunch," she told him, extending the pie and two-liter bottle, then making cup and plate appear on the table. "It's pizza. I think you'll like it. Baked dough base with tomato sauce, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese. Pick up a wedge with your fingers and eat it starting at the center point."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ooh, pizza! I've seen commercials for this," he said proudly. "Freedom City Pizza and Hero Sandwiches, where the first one's free!" he quoted the jingle like someone who'd been spending a lot of time watching television recently. Sharl liked the pizza, as Gina had found some teenage boy things proving to be universal, and was even polite enough to offer her a piece as he wolfed it down. Despite his big appetite, Sharl had to admit he wasn't exactly starving: Gina was feeding him better than some days at home! Feeling guilty at that thought, he dabbed his mouth and said, "So, uh, any progress on the work out there?" he asked, cocking a finger at nowhere in particular. "I'm sure you're very busy with all that computer work you were telling me about," he added a little awkwardly, realizing that he didn't want to sound like he was pressuring her.

[Electra]

"Some," Gina admitted, almost reluctantly. "I've got the basics of a holoprojection unit set up. When it's complete, you'll be able to activate it and step into one room, my basement. It's not much to look at, I'll warn you, but if it works as proof of concept, I can set up more projectors around the house. I don't want to move too quickly. I've backed up your program, of course, but I don't want to do anything that could interfere with your internal integrity and consistency, or cause you to start glitching. It's wiser to move slowly and avoid making any mistakes."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I wouldn't want that either," agreed Sharl readily, looking a little intimidated by the idea. "Some of the people I spoke to, who I had 'glitched', I guess, they said things were never quite the same afterwards." He looked down at his hands, still marveling at the sheer unreality of talking about himself as if he was a program. Reflectively, he listened to her words before saying, "Wait, you backed me up?" He frowned, looking at Gina. "Does that mean you made a copy of me?" He might have had serious ethical concerns about that if the situation had seemed any realer, but it was still an odd feeling.

[Electra]

"Not of you," Gina assured him glibly, "just of your code. If anything glitches, I need to know what happened, and the best way is by being able to compare it to the original unchanged code. That way I'll be able to make the necessary repairs. I'd much prefer," she added quickly, "not to have to do any of that, but I would be an irresponsible programmer, not to mention a lousy host, if I didn't take basic safety precautions when I don't even know exactly how your programming works yet." Sharl didn't seem too computer savvy, and she hoped that would save her from having to explain what exactly the difference was between copying him and copying his component code, when the only functional difference was that one was running.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh, okay." Sharl understood, or thought he did. When she put it that way, it sounded no different than taking detailed medical records so he could be fixed if he broke down. He couldn't fault her for that, and it wasn't as if she hadn't seen into his insides anyway. "I can't wait to see your lab," he said excitedly. "Everything you've done in here is so awesome, I bet it's just as awesome out there. I mean, I know science works differently between your world and mine, but I'm sure you're great at it." He smiled at the thought. "Can you see any other superheroes from your house?" he asked her.

[Electra]

"It'll be awhile before you can see my lab," she warned him. "My basement is my control center, it's really mostly a room full of computers and equipment. Like I said, that's the first step to prove that you can be holoprojected at all. My lab is in a different building, about half a mile from our physical location. Once we have the wrinkles ironed out of the projection, I can show that to you too. But it's only been three days," she reminded him, not for the first time. "Walk before you run."

[Avenger Assembled]

"But I like running," Sharl objected half-teasingly. With the urgency only the young could say, the boy added, "I don't mean to bother you, but it's just I've always wanted to see the world...and here there's actually a world to see! Where I'm from, there's just the city, the mountains, and the plankton fleet where you can actually go...but here you've got so much! A whole world, full of people and animals and heroes. It's amazing! People must not know what to do with themselves half the time with all the wonderful things here."

[Electra]

"That's reasonably accurate," Gina confirmed, her voice dry. She sighed. "Okay, listen. You eat your lunch and do whatever you need to do to get ready to go. I'm going to go tweak the holoprojector systems, and we'll see what we've got. It might take a few tries, but I can probably get you projected into at least one room by the end of the afternoon. Okay? I'll let you know when I'm ready to get started." With that, she left the boy to the pizza he'd already inhaled several slices of, trusting that by the end of the day, there probably wouldn't be any leftovers to dispose of. How she envied that kind of metabolism.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl wasn't quite bouncing off the walls while Gina was gone, but he was close. The knowledge that he was close to liberation was intoxicating, for all that it would just be in a little room somewhere in Gina's basement. _And I probably won't be able to touch anything, unless I try really, really hard, and that's if she's using magnetic holograms._ He sighed, the moment deflating just a little. _Well...it'll still be all right. I'll be out of these rooms, nice as they are, and able to see part of the world! Even if her basement is just her substitute lab, I bet it's still pretty cool._ Maybe Gina was his mom's age, but she was obviously a scientific genius. _And maybe I'll be able to hang out with her, and she can teach me more about computers. That's pretty important..._ She was a lot smarter than he was, that was obvious, and he wasn't vain enough to pretend otherwise.

[Electra]

It took longer than Sharl might have hoped, but eventually, after the entire pizza was consumed and he'd had a chance to clean up and use the bathroom and pace the room a few dozen times, Gina's disembodied voice echoed down from the ceiling. "All right Sharl, stand still for a few minutes. It may feel strange, but tell me right away if you start feeling any pain, or if you feel yourself losing consciousness." A faint light surrounded him, and suddenly the room around him began to fade away! For a moment, he saw the terrifying morass of uncontrolled data he'd been lost in for so long, but this time he was being guided as though on invisible strings, and within seconds, he was in another room.

This room was very different than the one he'd just come from. The ceiling was low and the walls were white, and the floor beneath his feet was covered in nubbly navy-blue carpet and seemed to be hollow. The room was long and broad, and seemed almost entirely filled with computer equipment. A well-lit open area in the front was obviously the control center, with terminals and equipment arranged in a near-complete circle around a comfortable-looking rolling chair. Behind that command area, hulking processors filled the rest of the area, cooled by strong fans built into the walls. The air smelled faintly of ozone, and he seemed to be alone.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hello?" said Sharl cautiously. "Gina, are you here?" He had a few eyes for the computer parts all around, but lacking her guidance they were just segments to an alien computer network. He did appreciate a system that meant she didn't have to get up to work, it made sense given what he'd seen of her age. It was too bad she didn't have access to anti-gravs. He took a few steps and peered up the steps, casting his gaze for his friend and rescuer. "I made it through okay." He put his hand on the step automatically to lift himself up a few inches, and gave a little yelp as his fingers sunk into the wood as if it wasn't there. Peering down at himself, he seemed to be glowing ever so slightly, with a faint pattern that might have just been in his imagination. "Holy cow! I'm a hologram!" He didn't sound as displeased by that fact as most normal people would be; he was thrilled. "That's awesome!"

[Electra]

"Yes, I'm here." After another few moments, there was noise from behind one of the server towers, and someone stepped out. It wasn't who Sharl was expecting though. This was a young woman, probably in her early twenties, with dark blond hair in a sloppy ponytail, wearing blue denim pants and a black short-sleeved shirt that read "I void warranties." She was so generically plain, he would've passed her on the street without ever looking twice, but the voice was definitely that of his savior. "How do you feel?" she asked, stepping forward and into the command circle, even as she watched him carefully.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Gina? Is that-Hi!" He raised his hand in an automatic greeting, sizing up the face his friend wore. He was familiar with the idea that people's online avatars might look very different than their real face, but he was still surprised to see this side of her. Maybe she liked being a 'mom' online; she'd certainly taken good care of him. "Wow! So this is what you really look like? That's neat." He smiled at her, the holographic displays that made up his body giving his skin a faintly phosphorescent cast to Gina's practiced eye. "I feel...I feel pretty good," he said, thinking about it. "I feel solid and real." He checked, tapping himself on the side of the head, and nothing felt strange about the gesture. "A little cold," he admitted.

[Electra]

"That's good," she told him. "It's colder in here than the temperature in your partition is set at, the cold helps the computers run better. The fact that you can feel it means that the emulator's working. You're still clipping, though. Let's see if I can firm that up a little. Go ahead and walk around if you want." She sat down in the command center and rolled to the central console, beginning to type commands in very rapidly even as she kept one eye on his progress. "You can try touching things, but don't try walking through anything."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl walked in a slow circle, watching his own interaction with the world as much as he did the strange room around him. He'd thought at first he was sinking into the carpet, but in actuality he was not quite touching it, his relative 'floor' perhaps an inch below where the carpet actually was. As he watched, though, he seemed to float just a little higher as he went. "Putting my hand through the stairs was weird enough," he agreed. "I expected it to feel like something, but it was as if nothing was there at all." Reaching out, he touched the wall, smart enough not to risk sticking his hand through any computer parts around. "So what exactly am I made of right now?" he asked. "Just a conventional hologram?"

[Electra]

"Right now you're mostly composed of light," Miss A affirmed, "for targeting purposes, and so I could make sure that your components transferred successfully," Gina told him, only a tiny percentage of her attention on the conversation. As Sharl got used to the layout of the lab, he noticed another door, besides the open door that led up the stairs, set in the far wall of the room. There was also what looked like a box on treads in the corner, with a few blinking lights. to indicate that it was drawing some kind of power. "I'm increasing the strength of the variable magnetic field inside the hologram now, which should interact with your emulator to allow you a simalcrum of touch. It's an interface that's going to require refinement, but for today I'll be happy if we can stop you clipping."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hey, what's that do?" asked Sharl curiously, walking over to the box to inspect it. "I thought I'd at least knew the names of all your computer parts after going through all those computer websites, but this is all new. You're a real master of this stuff." He was still careful not to stick his hand through the box, especially now that he was a magnetic hologram. He knew enough about computers to know magnetic fields and computer software didn't mix." He sat down on the floor to try and get his bearings, still looking around the lab. "It's not that weird," he said with a little shrug. "Is there a way to set it so I can walk through things if I want to? Or is that too weird?"

[Electra]

"Emerson, activate," Gina said offhandedly, and suddenly the box on treads lit up all over! The top of the box lifted on all sides, revealing a squarish robotic head with glowing eyes, even as two servo arms unfolded from the sides. It hummed as its processor revved up, then turned its boxy body to face its master, for all she wasn't even looking that way. "Activated," it said in a pleasant tenor voice quite at odds with its cold mechanical appearance. "What are your requirements?"

"Run maintenance one," she told it, still buried in work. The robot obliged, opening its chest cavity to withdraw a hose and attachment, and began to vacuum the floor. It carefully skirted around Sharl as though he were just one more obstacle. "Don't walk through things," Gina told Sharl again. "You'll fu- you'll confuse the holoreceptors, and parts of your body could disappear temporarily. I doubt you'd like that."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh, neat! I didn't think you guys had servitor robots yet. Hey, little guy!" He waved to Emerson, watching him work with interest. He was careful to avoid the robot, stepping back when he got too close. "He's very efficient, even without antigravs. Cute voice, too." He cocked his head, leaning over and watching Gina work. He supposed a computer genius like she obviously was could easily have built her own robot, even if in the rest of the world they weren't that common. "Do you have more like him?" he asked.

[Electra]

"I have another one like it at my lab," Gina told him, "but those are the only two units in production right now. I've licensed a couple of design patents for parts of them, but they're not ready for release just yet. They help around the place, do household chores, carry heavy things, good for some spot welding jobs. It does have some trouble with stairs, but antigravs are economically inefficient compared to just letting it take its time getting up. Okay, try putting you hand on something now. Don't push too hard," she instructed.

[Avenger Assembled]

Casting his eyes around, Sharl picked the wall. With a curious look on his face, he reached over and ran his hands over the woodwork, his eyes widening. "Oh, wow...I can feel it! I can actually feel it! I'm tingling just a little, and I can feel the wood underneath" He pressed harder, feeling his skin come into contact with the surface, and pressed hard enough to actually make the wall creak slightly. "Oh, wow! This is totally sweet!" He turned to Gina, a huge smile on his face. "Thank you! Thank you so much!" Walking around, his feet sunk into the carpet, his body responding to his environment as if he'd been there his whole life. When he was done, he was standing right next to Gina. "Can I go upstairs?'

[Electra]

"Only as far as the kitchen," she told him. "I put a projector in the stairwell, and enough in the kitchen to let you get to the windows and see the backyard, but the rest of the house isn't wired up yet. Mind the stairs, god only knows how you'd clip if you fell down them at this point." She didn't move to go with him, seeming intent on staying in her chair and calibrating the hologram further. Already the glow around Sharl was beginning to fade a little, becoming more of a faint nimbus than an electronic glow.