AI Era: Agent AI

"Q, what happened to you?" she gasped.

"When they grabbed you, the agency shut down the entire division, I've been searching for you ever since. I recently discovered that you were here, I had been looking for you day and night. I finally heard a rumor and here I am, a little worse for the wear."

"Q, where is Sid?"

"Allie..." he looked her straight in the eye, something no one has been capable of doing since she was captured, and he spoke softly. "Sid didn't make it. He received the same treatment as you, but he wasn't found in time."

Although she suspected it, when she heard it out loud it hit her like a sledgehammer. She suddenly knew all the details including his real name which he never divulged to anyone to protect his relatives.

> Autopsy Report, Agent Davis M. Rhienholt, Service Number 9907INT8784B1102 as follows...

Alicia stopped the recitation of Sid's autopsy, but if she wanted to review it, his entire autopsy was there for her to study, as was his entire service record, even their divorce decree. Although they were divorced, they remained friends, lovers, and occasional partners until the very end.

The tears finally came and as always, Q was equipped to deal with whatever was needed and produced a clean handkerchief to dry her tears. "Thank you for being honest Q."

"Cry as much as you need Allie, but your eyes are turning red." Suddenly her eyes did turn red, including her normally blue iris, even the whitish sclera turned solid crimson red, only the dark pupils remained unchanged. "My goodness, they must have given you generation ten nanobots."

"Is that good?" sniffed Alisia as Q continued to wipe her tears away.

"Oh, my dear, these are the things of science fiction, hopefully the programmers know their stuff, because they should eventually interface and provide an AI interface that may even replace me!"

"No one could replace you Q."

"Thank you, that's very sweet. What do you say we stand up and we try to walk a little bit, does that sound good?"

"I don't know how," she said softly. For the first time she was totally helpless, and she hated the feeling.

"We simply have to train the nanobots how to do it. Close your eyes and concentrate on every motion you would make with your hands, arms, legs, and feet to grab the bars and lift yourself to the standing position, the AI in the nanobots will move your body to make it happen. Let's give it a try."

Alicia concentrated on everything she needed to do to stand up as Q took her feet out of the wheelchair footrests and placed them on the floor and moved the footrests aside.

"Ready?" asked Q.

"I think so," said Alicia nervously, then she grasped the handrails and slowly, almost elegantly she rose from the wheelchair and was standing. "I did it!" she gasped.

Q walked around her considering everything she did, left hand crossed over his chest to hold his right elbow, his right hand holding his chin, he was the same old Q. "Concentrate on keeping your balance so the nanobots will learn the importance of balance... good! Now, keep your hands near the parallel bars and relax your grip while concentrating on your balance."

Alicia released the bars and watched in shock as her body made some very strange jerky movements to remain upright, but soon the motions smoothed out as the nanobots learned how to adjust her stance to maintain balance in a manner that she liked. Once she was standing rock steady, she lifted her right foot. Again, she made those unbidden jerking motions until she was steady. "Excellent!" cried Q, "That was truly outstanding!"

"I think I'm ready," smiled Alicia, and before Q could say anything, Alicia started her first step. Unfortunately, even though AI is highly intelligent, at the same time it is also very stupid. AI has no common sense, and common sense would tell a person that they can't make the twelve-foot-long trip between the parallel bars in one step. Without understanding what a normal step is like, the nanobots tried to do the entire distance to the end of the parallel bars in one huge step and Alicia went down in a frustrated heap, her legs spread out in a painful looking split.

Alicia wept tears of anger and frustration as Q called for the "commie bastards" (as Alicia calls the Russians) to help get her back in the wheelchair. "Relax!" said Q, "you have no idea how many paraplegics and quadriplegics would give their right eyeball to do what you just did!"

What he said was of no consequence to Alicia, and she returned to her room in angry silence. She traveled through the halls of Archuleta Mesa in her electric wheelchair mourning Sid, mourning her body, and contemplating jumping out a window if she could ever find one.

In her room she lay on her bed staring at the ceiling while she reviewed the case dossier of her capture, torture and botched execution. She was interrupted by a knock at the door, it was her nurse, a sweet Hispanic woman she only knew as "Roberta." Roberta set the tray of drugs and nanobot upgrades she carried on the bed table and said, "I come to help you get in bed, but it looks like someone already came by to help you."

For the first time Alicia realized that she was in bed, how the heck did she get in bed without help? How does she find that out? Is there security footage she could review? Suddenly that voice she's heard in the past rang in her head...

> If you need us, think the command AI: followed by an instruction for us

Weird... but, nothing ventured, nothing gained... she thought the command 'AI: Review room surveillance from when I entered the room'

> Accessing security cameras... Accessed... Replaying security film from 1345 hours...

In her head she saw herself wheel into the room in her wheelchair, lost in thought, from the surveillance camera's point of view. She pulled up next to the bed, pulled the arm rest from her wheelchair, then she pulled down the blanket to reveal the slide board, a piece of wood about the size of a snowboard. She grabbed the slide board off the bed and wedged one end under one of her ass cheeks, the other end remained on the bed making a bridge between the bed and wheelchair, then she slid herself onto the bed. This was something she did every day, several times a day, always with Roberta's help, but this time...

Alicia was in awe of what had just happened. She watched herself use her arms to slide her body across the board onto the bed. But the video kept playing, interfering with her thoughts. 'AI: Stop replaying video.' Finally, she stopped watching the video of Roberta bustling around her bed ten minutes ago "I did it myself!"

Roberta pretended to sniff back a tear, "It's always so difficult when my little niña grows up." She then connected Alicia's IV and hung a bag of silvery looking liquid that Alicia knew was replacement nanobots. Her evening upgrades.

"I'm far from being your little girl," groused Alicia.

"True," said Roberta, "my little niño, Edwardo is far more respectful and grateful for what he has. Let's see if you can lift your butt up so I can get off those pants."

"Ok," said Alicia uncertainly. She concentrated on lifting her butt up off the mattress when suddenly her body shot up in an arch like she was an Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler trying to prevent being pinned. Only her heels and the back of her head touched the bed.

"Oh! Very eager!" laughed Roberta as she eased Alicia's sweatpants off her hips and down to her knees. "Your next amante will appreciate this so much!"

"I didn't do this on purpose!" grunted Alicia as her body flopped back to the bed, "and I'm never going to have another lover. Whoever did this to me made sure of that." She saw pictures of the hideous mutilation of her vagina, it gives her nightmares sometimes.

"Never say never," said Roberta cheerfully and held a hand mirror up to Alicia's crotch. "Look." Alicia turned her head, she didn't want to see that, it was horrible, and she was conscious when they did it to her with a box cutter. "Look!" ordered Roberta in a voice that Alicia could not disobey. Her poor kids! Slowly Alicia lifted her head and looked at the image between her legs and gasped when she saw the reflection and her pussy! It looked like it was back to normal! "A surgeon here thought you might like that," said Roberta.

"Does that mean... can I...?"

Roberta looked truly heartbroken. "No, some things cannot be fixed. This was all cosmetics."

Alicia's joy suddenly deflated... she's going to spend the rest of her life a science experiment and a female eunuch... At least she won't have to worry about getting tampons anymore.

*~~~~*~~~~⁰~~~~*~~~~*

Alicia had to learn everything again, how to feed herself, how to pick something up, even how to go to the bathroom. Her new hands looked perfect, but until she learned how to use them, they were just pretty ornaments, and without neural feedback they would remain pretty ornaments good only for clumsy actions that would highlight her handicap.

Little by little the nanobots pieced together her damaged neural pathways, with each "upgrade" bag of nanobots something new was being pieced together. She could tell this was happening because she would feel an itch or a tingling like when your arm goes to sleep, then that affected part of the body would start to give some kind of feedback. At first the feedback was painful, but eventually it would be dialed back to normal as the nanobots learned to properly provide feedback, and Roberta was there to cheer her on with every upgrade.

She finally got to meet the head of the program Konstantin Feoktistov who, as did his fellow scientists, spoke with a Russian accent and was using the name of a cosmonaut. His accent wasn't as pronounced as some of the other "cosmonauts," so it was easy to converse with him. "Dr. Feoktistov, I get the feeling that some of the upgrades are targeting a specific part of my body, is that how it works?"

"Absolutely, dear Alicia. Many new nanobots are programmed to perform a specific task, others are replacements for outdated nanobots, some just carry data to add to the knowledge base of your current AI, but the majority are the replacements. The nanobots whose primary task is complete are released into your blood stream and removed by your kidneys, but if they became part of the network, they need to be replaced."

Alicia found some of the details of her "reconstruction" fascinating, but she had to ask, "Doc, will the nanobots harm my kidneys?"

"Oh, no. Hardly. They are actually smaller than a blood cell and will bio-degrade if not maintained."

"So, if I don't continue treatments, I'll revert to being a paraplegic with no control over my hands, no feeling below my waist?"

Dr. Feoktistov just frowned and nodded. "Sadly yes. There is a fixative which will prevent the nanobots from degrading, but that must be taken regularly.

Alicia had one more question, "Doc, these voices in my head, are they the nanobots?"

"Voices?" The look on Dr. Feoktistov's face couldn't be more revealing. "No, there's no voices. This could be latent damage of the cerebral cortex...

As Dr. Feoktistov went into a litany of medical jargon Alicia said to herself, 'AI: Dr. Feoktistov says you don't exist.'

> Dr. Feoktistov may not be aware of us

'AI: Do you have information he knows that I should not know?'

> His wife's name is Snejana Urbin, his lover's name is Silky Skky, currently she dances at the TD's North Show club in Albuquerque

'AI: How do you know this?'

> We read his email

Dr. Feoktistov didn't seem to be running out of steam in his long-winded lecture, so Alicia interrupted. "How is Snejana doing?"

"How do you know that name?"

"Oh, I uhh," She suddenly didn't want to reveal her sources so she hurriedly said, "It was a side conversation, I overheard someone say it... you guys need to be careful around me, I can hear really well now. Does Snejana know about Miss Skyy?"

Dr. Feoktistov suddenly went pale. "That vill be all for today..." and he fled the room.

*~~~~*~~~~⁰~~~~*~~~~*

Agent Alicia Ingersoll now began to spend her time searching the web for news, or rumors of news about her and Sid. The agency has reported both of them dead and their deaths were being investigated. That was it, one dry little story, not even an obituary. She looked in her hometown paper, The Ft. Erie News, but there was nothing, then again, she stopped being Abilene Irons a long time ago. Oddly there was nothing on either the dark web or the web of bad ideas about the governmental breakdown in Canada. Alicia and Sid were briefed that the world was in a political uproar over that development.

"Do not worry about what is going on out there," said Q and he tapped her head, "Concentrate on what is happening in here."

But Alicia couldn't drop it. A peaceful country's government overthrown but covered up? It's possible but there's only two people in the world that she knew of that could pull off something like this, and one is dead. General Long was an evil, slimy Chinese businessman and a rotten poker player, but he's dead. Then there was Baumgartner. Hans Stavros Baumgartner. Hans would do it without a second thought if he thought there was power to be gained. Where Long strove for money, Baumgartner strove for power. That creepy, perverted Nazi Sympathizer loved to watch naked women fight to unconsciousness, then for a reward the winner was gang-banged by his stable of übervergewaltiger. Alicia found out the hard way that the loser got the same thing as punishment.

It had to be Baumgartner, it sounded like one of his sick plans. She asked Q to look into it.

*~~~~*~~~~⁰~~~~*~~~~*

Once Alicia had mastered walking, operating her hands came next. She hated having to tell the AI how much force to use to use when holding an item before picking it up and aiming her fingers when trying to type was so mentally exhausting, but with practice that kind of behavior was learned by the AI. Everything that Alicia learned by trial and error was copied by the AI and learning was slowly accomplished. Anything that the AI was allowed to learn without firm guidance was a disaster. Writing with a pencil was a hilarious example of that principle, they probably went through five dozen wooden pencils because the AI crushed the wooden pencils so easily. When feedback was finally introduced, crushing pencils was completely eliminated, and gouging 12 sheets of paper by exerting too much pressure when trying to write a simple character was stopped.

One evening Alicia was watching a TV program where the artist was teaching the viewer how to reproduce "happy little trees" when the AI announced to Alicia

> We would like to do that

'AI: Let's give it a try'

Alicia used to love to draw and since her AI didn't exist, it would be interesting to see what it came up with. She took a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and let the AI do what it wanted. At first the line drawings the AI was producing were sadly poor. AI could draw a perfect circle and a perfectly straight line but trying to draw a more complex object took more brain power than the nanobots could conjure. Alicia felt her functions start to shut down as the AI diverted computing power away from maintaining Alicia's body and into the drawing.

'AI: Stop! I can't feel my legs anymore!'

> I apologize, but we still want to do this

As the AI returned computing power to the nanobots, feeling returned to Alicia's legs and hands and her hearing returned.

> Calculating the complex equations required for the curved lines requires more computational power than we have

To Alicia the AI sounded sad but an idea came to Alicia, something she had tried in a high school art class long ago... it might work.

'AI: Research the art form called Stippling. Once you feel you understand that, try using that style to draw something'

> Acknowledged

After a pause of about three minutes the pencil in Alicia's hand went tap! on the sheet of paper. Then after a moment another tap! Then another tap, then tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap tap tap tap tap tap tap taptaptap taptaptap taptaptap taptaptap taptaptap... Alicia's hand was a blur as the pencil tapped away at the paper and Alicia was amazed at the image that was taking shape. Finally, the drawing was completed, and Alicia was impressed. The drawing was complete, perfectly scaled, the perspective, shading, and shadow was perfect. Alicia had one question...

'AI: Why did you draw my bedpan?'

> Because it's there

*~~~~*~~~~⁰~~~~*~~~~*

Along with training on physical interface with her nanobots, Alicia was training on getting her body back into shape. Running was an interesting challenge, the downside to the AI was that it thought it could run the course in championship time. It would search the web to see what time the distance you chose should be run in; grab the first time it would see (usually the world record time) and pace you to top that. Alicia quickly discovered that when she went for a jog, she had to lay down the ground rules with the AI. Distance, expected time, expected pace, maximum allowable heart rate, minimum allowable blood/oxygen level, music mix to listen to and acceptable volume levels. Her AI had access to a huge music catalog and the nanobots that are replacing her shattered ear drums have incredible fidelity and a perfect signal to noise ratio.

Exercise was one thing, typing was another. Typing was an activity that exercised your fingers' dexterity, and your mind to hand coordination. The better you type, the better your fingers work, the better your fingers work, the better you type. She used to type about 40 words per minute, now, with her new hands she could type four words per minute. Slowly she began to speed up. At first, they went through a lot of keyboards, she was striking the keys pretty hard but as the nanobots became adept at transferring the feelings of pressure exerted by the fingers Alicia eventually became able to type without driving the keys through the bottom of the keyboard and she eventually became able to type at 80 words per minute. Crushing the coffee cups when she tried to lift them was a problem also, the damn commies learned not to leave cherished cups within Alicia's reach.

It was eventually discovered that the AI couldn't avoid the uncomfortable tactile feedback known as pain, in fact the AI hated pain as much as Alicia did so the AI was shutting off the pain. This caused Alicia to exert too much strength when trying to accomplish something like typing, drinking coffee, picking something up or (worst of all) shaking hands. After a talk with Dr. Viktor Patsayev, who looked pretty healthy for someone who died during reentry in 1971, a series of nanobot upgrades were taken and the pain response was restored. Luckily, by that time she had advanced in her taekwondo training to the point that she could dish out pain as well as receive it.

"You've been researching for months now Q," said Alicia as they sparred in the Archuleta Mesa gym. Q was in and out of the facility with his research and Alicia hoped he had some information that would lead her to Sid's killer. With a quick hip toss Alicia laid Q out on the mat and held him in place with a knee to the chest. "Who killed Sid?" Q struggled to get loose, so Alicia put a fist to his throat and demanded, "Who did this to me?"