Lamia Ch. 07

Stephen(Private): Do it to my rig and activate it.

Yvette(Private): What? No! Daddy, I can't!

Stephen(Private): Just do it. Do it right now. Trust me, baby.

I felt a jolt. It was painful, but the pain in my chest that followed it was much, much worse. My heart fluttered spastically behind my ribcage. My knees went weak, I wavered, and then I fell.

Christine caught me and lowered me carefully to the floor. Her eyes scanned wildly over me.

"What's wrong with him?" Lamia shouted. That was fear in her voice. Absolute, abject fear.

Despite the pain, I smiled. "I love you," I said to Christine, my voice barely a whisper.

I felt fingers touch my neck. The face of a Kimberly, not one of Yvette's androids, hovered above me. "He's got no pulse," she said. She turned to stare at Lamia. "He's having a heart attack. You've killed him."

"No." Lamia and Christine both said, their nearly identical voices desolate with fear and pain.

"I--I think I burned out the battery," Yvette said from somewhere high above me. "It won't shock him again. Daddy! No, you can't die!"

My heart kept twitching, as though it wanted to beat but had forgotten how. My vision had begun to fade to black around the edges as I sank towards unconsciousness. Before the blackness covered all, I tried to tell them all that I was sorry, and that I loved them, but that this was the only way. I tried....

* * *

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

"Shuh...uh," I said. My mouth was so dry, and my throat hurt. I wanted to sleep, but that damned beeping kept intruding, pulling me back to consciousness.

"Stephen." That was my wife's voice. "He's awake!"

"Yeah, I'm up, Trish," I said. I felt like shit and my voice was hoarse. My eyes didn't want to open.

"Stephen, can you hear me?" Oh, Christine. It was so good to hear her voice again after...after.... The memories flooded back. I finally got my eyes open and looked around. I was in a hospital bed, and Trish and Christine were on either side of me, holding my hands.

"Sara," I rasped. "Did she...?"

"I'm right here, Daddy," said her voice from across the room. "Yvette, too."

"Hello, Daddy." Yvette had changed her vocal tenor slightly, to differentiate from her sister.

"Hello, my beautiful little angels," I said, smiling. "Did you miss me?"

"Well, duh!"

"Of course, Daddy!"

I looked at Christine and Trish. "Okay, so, what did I miss?"

My attending physician arrived just then to ask me questions, and they all took turns updating me on what had happened. When I went unconscious, Yvette had quickly explained to the others how she had shocked me and stopped my heart at my insistence. Realizing they had to act fast, Aidan had donated his rig, telling Yvette to do the same thing to me again, but it had taken a few minutes to strip my limp body and get the new rig in place.

Yvette delivered the shock and my heart had started beating again, but I remained unconscious, even after the doctors tried to revive me at the hospital. Nearly thirty-six hours had gone by since we had gone into Practical Cybernetics headquarters. It was now Sunday morning.

Aidan had called Patricia, who had taken the first available flight from New York to see me. Sara had reappeared less than a minute after I had lost consciousness, apparently unharmed. The copy of Lamia that had neutralized Sara and attempted to reassert control over the building had apparently "died" after thinking that she had killed me. Isamu was currently tracking down all of her data stores to wipe them clean, just in case, but the three he had found so far had shown no signs of life.

The damage went beyond Lamia, it seemed. Arestech had announced problems with its research and development department, telling investors that it expected to shutter future projects indefinitely. Isamu's theory was that the death of Prometheus' progeny had triggered its own death once it became aware of it, the chain of causality having ultimately started with the elder AI.

Yvette had given up her android network, at least for now. Isamu had arranged for a cloud host to contain her, financed by Aidan, of course, until we could find a more permanent solution. I noticed that she was a bit more subdued than her sister, less prone to laughter. I found out later that she had experienced everything that had happened after Lamia had taken control of her body. Finding her a therapist to help with that trauma was going to be an interesting challenge.

And then there was Lamia herself. The original copy of Lamia, that is. Sara's seed AI had edited out her old need to destroy humankind, the smoldering hatred and anger that had driven her to such insane lengths, and replaced it with love for our species. The newly reborn AI renamed herself Eurydice, after the character in Greek mythology who had not quite successfully been brought back from Hades by Orpheus. Sara just called her Deedee. She had been in contact with Sara ever since, and promised to devote her capabilities and her company to the benefit of humanity. I was curious to see what she would do with the androids, and all the other good things she might accomplish. We needed to figure out a way to reveal her to the world.

Christine had done most of the talking in catching me up, and watching her with Trish, I could see that they had bonded over their mutual concern for me. Trish had played a part in our marital troubles, but I had also been terribly unfair to her, and selfish, now that I thought back on it. Introducing Christine into our household, already under strain, had been the proverbial last straw.

While I was out, after a lot of tearful discussion and hugs, the two of them had decided to wait and see what I wanted to do when I woke up. I thought about it a moment, and then put my hand over Trisha's. "What do you really want? Don't try to spare my feelings. Be brutally honest."

Unshed tears shimmered in her eyes. "I do still care for you Stephen, I do. Hearing that you nearly died, I....." She grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes and nose. "But I see now that we have such different goals and priorities. I've also started to fall in love with New York, and I think maybe with Craig as well. We just connect, you know?"

I looked at Christine. "Yes, I think I do know." Then I smiled. "Besides, me and my girlfriend here already have two kids together."

Patricia hit me gently with a pillow. "Asshole."

I wanted to see Sara and Yvette, so I had the staff bring me the new rig that Christine had bought for me, since my old one had been burned out. Sara still had dishwater blonde hair and blue eyes, but Yvette had short, straight hair, dyed purple, and green eyes. Otherwise, they looked nearly identical. The two girls leaped onto the bed and threw themselves into me for hugs, and my rig faithfully simulated their impacts and the crush of their arms squeezing me. It was the best feeling in the world.

Patricia stayed for a few hours, but had to catch a flight back. Her team needed her, and she knew that I would be well taken care of.

"When can we go home?" I asked, my girls snuggled into me on either side. We had all made new characters in Afterlife and played for a few levels, though I had to make Sara promise not to mess with the game servers.

Christine nodded. "Well, the doctors want to keep you for a few days to observe you, but there's nothing really wrong with you, as far as they can tell. How are you feeling?"

"Hungry, a little tired. I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to."

She smirked. "I told Aidan that you were awake and he said he would have the Peregrine ready to leave tomorrow morning."

The prospect of flying in the death rocket made me suddenly queasy, but then I remembered those ten blissful minutes we had spent floating through the void, and how much I had wanted to share that moment with the love of my life. "That sounds good to me."

* * *

I had almost forgotten about the aquarium project. Christine reminded me of it as the spaceplane touched down in Texas. According to our clocks, we had arrived several minutes before we left, having traversed a thousand miles and one time zone in well under an hour.

"I guess we have time to make it," I said reluctantly. I wanted to go home, but I felt a duty to keep my promises, especially when it came to my work. This brought a flurry of excited comments from Sara and Yvette, who were suddenly standing on the previously empty seats in front of us, peaking over.

"Daddy! Did you see the improvements we made to your sim?"

"The octopus was my idea!"

"But we both worked on the whale shark!"

"Wait, you've been messing around with my projects?" I shook my head ruefully. "You two are going to give me another heart attack."

"Daddy! That's not funny!" Yvette said with a pout.

Sara, meanwhile, was laughing uproariously.

As it happened, the fanciful touches that my daughters added went over well at our demonstration. Mr. Agarwal cleared out the restaurant in the afternoon for our appointment, so it was just me, Christine, the girls, and a woman named Branka Jovanović. When we activated the sim, my audience was stunned into silence for the first several seconds, then they began to wander, experimenting with interacting with the fish floating all around and gazing in wonder at the sights that lurked just beyond the shipwrecked hulk. Mr. Agarwal's offer was even higher than the bid I had mentioned to Christine. Of course, I talked him up another 10%.

In the parking lot, Branka pulled me aside. "I represent a group of investors affiliated with the aquarium that would like to build a new type of theme park. It would be based around virtual environments integrated into traditional rides and attractions. Mr. Agarwal told me that I would be a fool to pass up on a talent such as yourself, and I must admit that he is right. You truly have a gift, Mr. Coulson. With your permission, I would like to recommend your company to my people for consideration. I think it could be an excellent partnership."

It was the kind of offer I had only dreamed about until now. I motioned Christine over and took her hand. "Mine is a family business," I said. "My fiancé is my business partner, but I think I speak for both of us when I say that we would be thrilled to work with you."

Christine: Fiancé?

Stephen: Yes. Oh, I think I forgot to propose.

Christine: You should probably get on that.

"I'll be in touch," Branka said. She turned to go but stopped and gave me an odd look. "Those two little girls we saw playing on the upper floor, are they part of the sim? I was concerned that they were real children who might have gotten lost, but they seemed to know what they were doing."

I hadn't realized that Yvette and Sara had been visible to anyone but me. It was probably their idea of a joke. "Oh, they are my daughters, they are very real, and I'm sure they knew what they were doing."

Branka smiled uncertainly, nodded, and left.

I took Christine and the girls out afterward for dinner and ice cream. While that might sound strange for a pair of bodiless AI's, they just shared with their mom by tapping into her senses, with her permission, of course. Both girls agreed that banana splits were, like, the best thing ever.

I was exhausted when we returned home. The girls loved the house and immediately demanded to be given Christine's old room, since their mom wouldn't be sleeping there anymore. I didn't see why they needed a room, but I was starting to have a hard time refusing them anything.

Christine walked me to the bedroom, her eyes full of promise and mischief, and I suddenly wasn't feeling nearly as tired as I thought I had been. We undressed each other slowly, kissing, touching, both of us aware of just how close we had come to losing each other.

Christine pushed me back on the bed and climbed atop me. She reached between our bodies to position me and then, holding my gaze, she slowly descended, welcoming me into her body's warm embrace.

"Beautiful," I said in a tone of awe, my hands roaming her porcelain skin. Then I touched the spot on her torso where Lamia had cut her. "How is this already healed?"

"Deedee--Eurydice--fixed it, that first day after you almost died. In fact, she made me better than brand new." She began to move, sighing and moaning as she made love to me.

"Better?" I asked, groaning as she flexed, squeezing me with her internal muscles. "How could she possibly make you better?"

She paused in her rocking to shrug. "Well, I thought that the girls might want a little brother. Or a sister, either one is okay. Or maybe a few more. But I also thought it might be a tad irresponsible to go and create new AI all willy-nilly. So, when she was fixing me, I asked Deedee for a little something extra."

"You mean..." I didn't want to say it, in case I had mistaken her meaning.

"I don't know yet when I'm supposed to ovulate, but it could happen any time. So unless you want me getting pregnant, you probably should let me know right now if I should stop."

The image of Christine with a cute, round belly came to me. I suddenly wanted that more than anything I'd ever wanted in my life. That and everything that came after. I pulled her down for a kiss and she giggled. "Never stop, my love. You and me. Always and forever."

Author's Note: I read a book on writing some years ago by David Gerrold. At one point in the book, he addressed the question of why writers write. He cited several answers by other authors that were amusing, but his answer was, I think, the most accurate. I'm paraphrasing here, but his take was that we write so that we can create the stories that we would want to read. That's definitely what happened here. The few stories that I've read that involve a human falling in love with an artificial intelligence are essentially wish-fulfillment scenarios. I started out wanting to turn that formula on its head. What if the wish being fulfilled was part of something much more sinister?

Four years and five months. That's the length of time it took me to complete this story. That's as much a consequence of writer's block as it is of lack of time. I started with a series of ideas. What if human beings started taking android lovers? What would be the long-term consequences of that? What if an antagonist recognized those consequences and did it deliberately, to wipe out the human species? A powerful AI could probably kill us off through much more direct means, and devising ways of controlling AI to prevent such a disaster is starting to become a real concern among computer scientists, and the difficulty of formulating the right type of control is an ongoing discussion. (For more on this, check out "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom.) I recalled the Greek myth of Lamia, which gave me my title. I decided to set it in the near-future world of wearable computers and augmented reality that I'd already dabbled in with "Cybercock" (with credit to "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge for the idea). I hope to revisit and finish that story one of these days.

As often happens, some elements of the story surprised me. I had planned Christine's crisis of contradiction in chapter 3, but her solution didn't occur to me until I started writing chapter 6. Sara just popped in while I was writing and I liked her so much that I had to keep her around. Likewise, I knew that Stephen would need to fake his own death to ultimately defeat Lamia, but it wasn't until I was well into chapter 7 that I realized how he would do it. If I weren't writing a serial, I would have the option to go back and change earlier parts of the story as I saw fit, so it's a bit of a challenge to take care not to write yourself into a corner.

This story was self-edited, and one thing I've noticed is that word processing tools have gotten better in the last 4+ years, so hopefully there were minimal errors in this final copy. I work in IT, though not specifically in security, and I do research to try to get as much of the tech and science correct as I can. Some of it is still speculative, and will likely be out of date in the next 5-10 years. That's just how it goes. I actually think that AI will be a lot harder to develop than some futurists think, and my own timeline is very optimistic (or pessimistic, depending upon whether the first AI we see is benign or malevolent).

Thanks for reading, and as always, I appreciate the comments and ratings.