Computer Love

I feel Kira pressing into me from behind and slipping her hand in mine. She squeezes and I squeeze back.

"Protocol dictates a hard disconnect in the face of any prolonged cyber-intrusion," Sabine says. "We've been offline since this morning."

"How did we get through to you then?" I say. "To let you know we were alright."

I look over at Emily, and she is positively beaming. "Well," she says, "the smelly old gas station had a slow link for credit card verification. So I rode that out to the local core, hijacked myself some CPU cycles and started coding up a worm of my own to look for—"

"The short version, please," Alice interjects.

I start to giggle, and Kira elbows me.

"The water meter." Emily's grin is getting wider. "I convinced the water meter that I needed an updated reading because of a billing discrepancy. That's how I got in. From there it was just a matter of—"

"Great," Alice says. "Can we hook Sally to the water meter?"

"It doesn't work like that," Emily says. "The protocols are all wrong."

"Figured you'd say that. So what do we do?"

"What if you replace the water meter with one of these holo-terminals?" I say.

"Then we'll have to fill the holo-term whenever we want to take a bath." Kira whispers, deadpan.

"Not exactly," says Emily. Her eyes are bright, excited, and she's smiling—manic almost.

Emily starts scrounging around for something, tossing wires and connectors here and there—digging in drawers. Pretty soon she's given up searching and she's got that face again, the one she had on all throughout the mission.

"Shit," she says.

"What?" we all say in unison.

"Well, I was going to connect beret girl up to the auxiliary port of this terminal over here, but we don't have the right connector."

"Sally," I say. "Her name's Sally."

"Okay, sure. Sally. Well Sally's got the wrong goddamn port, so it ain't gonna work."

"Face them together," I say.

"What? That's..." Emily stares at me for a moment. I can see that face of hers is getting more scrunched up by the second, but then she relaxes. Without another word she's up and pushing the two terminals together, glass to glass.

"Like watching TV," I say and grin.

Kira squeezes my hand, Erica stands up to hug me, and Emily almost smiles.

*

Eight-Bit Fury

"What exactly is that?" I sit up straight to face the holo-term and try to casually wipe away the little puddle of drool that I've left on the lab bench. Erica tousles my hair.

Nothing exciting happened after we set the terminals face-to-face, so we all sort of checked out for a while. Everyone except for Erica and Sabine had found a piece of floor with a wall to lean against. The twins long ago ceased their duel and sheathed their plastic swords to fight another day—I have no idea who the winner was. I had decided to rest my head on the lab bench.

"It's changing again," Sabine says.

The three of us are staring straight at a seething volcano, but one that's so extremely low-res and limited in colors that it's almost comical. Spewing chunks of blocky rocks and half-tone shaded lava, it would have looked more at home in an old-time graphic novel than in a modern day holo-terminal.

"Look at Sally," Erica says.

"She's beautiful," I say. "What's she doing with that - that pitcher?"

"I think..." Sabine stops short. "Yes, I recognize the headdress. She's Nephthys, the Egyptian goddess of rivers. Nepthys is the sister of Isis. They would often perform funeral rites together."

"So if her sister shows up, it means we're all dead? Great." I'm only half joking.

Sabine pats my hand. "Sally's an only child, Sara. Nothing to worry about."

By this time, the rest of the group is up and on their feet again, huddled around the holo-term with us, watching Nephthys or Sally dressed up as Nephthys, holding a clay pitcher heavenward while staring into the face of a rectilinear approximation of a volcano and all its 8-bit fury.

"What's going on?" Kira asks, as she stretches and yawns.

"Egyptian history," I say. "Nephthys here is creating the worlds first river by pouring it out of a clay pot."

Erica turns to look at me sideways.

"What?" I shrug. "She's a goddess. She can create whatever she wants. But I think she just ran out of water. Not very goddess-like is it? Running out of water in the dessert."

"Plug it back in," Emily says. "The connection to the 'net. She needs more bandwidth. Plug it back in."

Alice pushes her way through a space in the group and lays her hand firmly on the bench. "We are not plugging this thing in. We're under cyber-attack. That's the last thing we want to do. And that volcano thing there is probably the cause of it."

"Is it?" Emily points to the holo-term containing the image of Nephthys Sally. "Look at the river she's forming. See anything interesting about it?"

I squint at the terminal. "It looks like it's made up of ones and zeros."

"Exactly!" Emily claps me on the back hard enough that I almost fall face-first onto the lab bench. "Where else do you see ones and zeros?"

"Um."

Kira spots it first, and she's pointing to the base of the volcano. I look where her finger rests and I can see them passing. The zeros look more like hollowed out rectangles, they're so low-res, but they're definitely zeros. And those stick things floating along with them are looking more like ones with each passing second.

"The cyber-intrusion," Erica says, "it's tapering off."

"That's because it's just found a backdoor." Alice looks at the holo-terms and frowns.

"I don't think so, look!" Emily is tapping the terminal glass repeatedly. Under her finger, the image of Nephthys Sally is melting away to become part of the river. The river is growing wider, overflowing its banks. "The data's going the other direction. Outward, toward the volcano."

"Plug it back in," Sabine says. "Please."

Alice nods and one of the twins scurries off to find the cable.

The transformation accelerates. Nephthys Sally is gone, replaced by an ocean—it's slow rolling waves covering what was once parched dessert. The flow of ones and zeros continues toward the volcano, surrounding it. The resolution and color depth of the scene are improving exponentially.

"Sacre..." one of the twins says.

"Bleu." says the other.

"Hugs?" says the volcano.

"Hugs," replies Sally's disembodied voice.

We all pause to look at each other. As I shift my eyes back to the volcano, it has changed. Gone is the lava—the steam. I'm pretty sure I'm now looking at one of the great pyramids of Egypt.

"I've been searching everywhere for you, Sally," says the pyramid. "With every spare nanosecond, I searched. I never gave up hope of finding you."

"I missed you, Tegan. I missed you so much."

"I missed you, Sally. More than I thought possible."

In the holo-term, the water of Sally's ocean was lapping gently against the sides of the great pyramid. If I didn't know any better, I would say the pyramid was vibrating slightly.

"I will never leave your side again, Sally," says the pyramid.

"I love you. Tegan."

"I love you, Sally."

A collective sigh of relief echos around the tiny space of the lab for a moment, and then is gone.

"Come on," I say, "let's give these two love birds some privacy."

I press myself up to Emily and lay my arm over her shoulder. "You did good, you know that?"

"Thanks, Sara." Emily won't meet my eyes, but I think her cheeks are a little rosy.

"Got a place to sleep tonight?" I ask.

"Sara, I'm beat, I don't—"

"Just sleep. Promise." I kiss Emily on the cheek and we walk down the hall together. "Can't guarantee anything about the morning though. Kira's definitely a morning person and I don't think Erica ever lets up, if you take my meaning."

Emily stops walking and looks around furtively. I take her hand and lace my fingers in with hers. "Come on," I say. "I bet you anything they're both already asleep when we get there."

*

Good Morning Sunshine

I'm sitting down to a muffin and a cup of coffee. Emily's got her tea and is pressed up beside me. Her hair is a rats nest of tangles and our fingers are laced together under the table. It's hard to believe that forty-eight hours ago we were sitting here being briefed for a mission.

We're soon joined by a bleary-eyed Kira and Erica.

"You two do know that we were asleep last night when you came in," Erica says. "But not for long..."

"Oh, Emily," Kira heaves, and grins.

"Oh, Sara," Erica replies, wrapping her arms around herself and making smooching noises.

They're both grinning like a fools now. I can't help but crack a smile. Emily just stares at her tea, tight lipped and not willing to meet anyone's gaze.

"Staying again tonight, Em?" Kira asks.

Emily is apparently too busy turning about three shades of crimson to answer. I just smile and lick my lips. "Come on, Em," I say. "I've always wanted to try a foursome. Unless you've got other plans."

"I should probably check on our A.I. girl." Emily stands up and I let my fingers slowly slip from hers. "Thanks for last night, Sara. I - I think I needed it."

Damn straight you needed it, I think, but keep my mouth shut until Emily is out of sight.

"So?" Erica has her chin propped on her hands and is staring directly into my eyes.

"So," I say, "she's nice. Once you get to know her."

"Know her, like in a biblical sense?" Erica teases.

"She's very enthusiastic." I look at Erica, then Kira.

"Aw, Mom, can we keep her?" Kira says.

"Shut up." I reach over the table and hug them both.

*

Epilogue

Something wonderful happened that day—and not just the eventual afternoon foursome. By evening, the intensity of cyber-attacks had decreased to a mere trickle, and the entire fabric of the 'net seemed to change for the better. Little independent sites started coming back online—bright pinpoints of hope in what was once a desolate landscape of junk news and government propaganda.

The next morning, we heard from our sisters in Tallahassee and Raleigh-Durham. The dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over the east coast had been lifted overnight. It turns out that they were offline as a precaution, just like us, and came back as soon as things cleared up. I have a feeling that I know a certain lava-spewing A.I. who probably had a hand in chasing those demons away.

We still don't know who left the anonymous tip about Sally's whereabouts, and why they chose us to be her rescuers, but I'm happy to report that our little beret wearing girl is no longer sitting in a box and crying for her mommy. In fact, she seems to be a rather precocious teenager now, off on a whirlwind tour of site-seeing and catching up on everything she missed during her imprisonment.

Tegan seems more than happy to serve as both tour guide and personal bodyguard, if an A.I. can need such a thing. Though I don't see why not. I think everyone needs somebody to look in on them from time to time, just to make sure everything's okay. I've been trying to do that with Emily. Underneath that prickly, stressed out exterior, she really is a sweetheart.

I still don't know if I'm ready to call Emily my girlfriend—more like a girl, who's a friend, who sleeps over occasionally—but that's fine too. She's got an amazing sex drive and a real enthusiasm for the foursome. I think if she came over any more regularly, Kira and Erica might die of exhaustion. Me? I think I can handle it. With all the good things going on in my life right now, I think I can handle just about anything.

# # #

Afterword

I hope you enjoyed my little foray into the realm of dystopian, sciency, girl-power fiction. Let me know in the comments. I do like to read them.

I would also like to invite any other aspiring dystopian, sciency, girl-power fiction writers to spin your own tale in this story's universe. I've started putting together some notes and characters profiles that I am happy to share.

WP