NightSide - Asynchronous Mud

...and then -- he saw a blinding flash...

And at that point the recording stopped, the screen...went black.

"That video was made by a television news crew. They'd picked up the call on a police scanner and gone to the bridge, got there just in time to get this footage. When the video stops, at the bright flash, power in the LA basin was disrupted. From LAX to Huntington Beach, and as far inland as Anaheim. Aircraft on approach at LAX, Long Beach and down in Irvine reported a large blast in the harbor area..."

"I remember that," Stuart said, confused again. "Something about an incident at a refinery, wasn't it?"

"I guess that was the best story they could come up with in the time they had," Richardson said.

"They?" Stuart asked.

Richardson shrugged. "I don't know. Feds, I think, would be my guess."

"What happened?"

"Mark, no one knows what happened out there on that bridge," the other man said, "but Dana and I were unharmed."

"Unharmed? You mean the other people out there -- were hurt?"

"Oh yeah."

"Killed?"

"Some. Yeah."

"Shit..." Stuart sighed. "What happened to you. And...Dana?"

"Again, no one's real clear about all that, Mark," Richardson said. "What is important, what's most relevant, is that Sumner and Dana for all intents and purposed simply disappeared. For several minutes -- almost an hour."

"Disappeared?"

Bacon squirmed in his chair. "When I was aware I was on the bridge again there were hundreds of emergency personnel everywhere. My patrol car, the news van, an ambulance...everything had been tossed around by that -- blast."

"Of more importance, Mark, of the hundreds of people out there that night, no one that had seen anything of the sphere and the departure remembers a goddamn thing. Not one thing that happened out there. But there was a crime scene unit out there, as well as an environmental containment unit, and both were recording the scene when, well, you'll see for yourself."

The flat panel on the wall showed the scene on the bridge as Bacon had described it: his patrol car was now on it's side; the ambulance had been blown across the center divider; the news crew's van -- it's antenna deployed, pointed at the sky -- was half on the road, the other half through the fence, it's front hanging out over LA harbor.

Then a cobalt blue sphere was hanging in the air above the crowd, the surface of the sphere alive with hairy blue lightning. The sphere expanded for a moment, then contracted sharply, settling on the pavement -- and as the fireflies returned people scattered. The videographer had the presence of mind to take cover but kept recording events as they unfolded, as the spinning sphere began dissipating, and as a human form took shape in the spinning bronze mist. The spinning slowed, the mist turned gray and disappeared on a harbor breeze; the jerky video zoomed in on a man, apparently a sheriff's deputy, but his uniform was scorched and tattered, his back to the camera. He appeared to be shaking, and he was looking up into the night sky. Then the videographer was among the surging crowd moving towards the man, and when the man came face to face with the camera Stuart began shaking.

"Oh, God no," he whispered as he looked at Sumner Bacon standing out there under the night sky, an infant girl cradled in his arms.

+++++

"Is that...Dana?"

"Yes, and no. To the extent we even know what she is."

"There are no easy answers with you, are there?"

Richardson chuckled. "Well, the infant in the recording and the girl you were with last night...they are a mechanism, of sorts, but I can't tell you any more than that, and simply because after almost twenty years of study we just don't know what she is, or who made her, or where, because all those things are still open to conjecture. As far as human? Her emotional component, her memory, are in large part Dana's. Even so, some things are absent."

"Are you saying that after twenty years of study you don't know "what" she is?"

"Uh-huh. There's a skeletal structure, but it's not bone in the usual sense. There's a neural network, a circulatory system, even a rudimentary digestive system. She drinks water. Period. Yet after intense periods of emotional activity, she 'drinks' electricity. And she reproduces, well, essentially, she exhibits asexual reproduction. She's reproduced annually for many years, and her offspring are almost perfect reproductions, right down to her emotive and cognitive capacities."

"They're all Dana-copies, you mean?"

"Uh-huh."

"Has anyone had sex with her before?"

"Nope. You're the first."

"That's astonishing. She feels completely human, and in every way I can think of. The way she responds, even lubrication, all felt human. She even tastes like a girl, maybe a girl right out of the shower, but human. Her labia and clitoris were, well, very responsive to stimuli."

"Interesting."

"So, after all these years she didn't, I mean, you didn't try any experiments of this nature?"

Richardson shook his head. "She wasn't ready. Wouldn't let us. A few of her offspring have ventured out, but so far you're the first. As far as we know, anyway."

"Wouldn't...well, what about DNA?"

He nodded his head. "Yes. She has DNA, and it's similar to ours. Like 99.7% similar, but there are radical exceptions, notable deviations."

"So, what's next? With her, I mean."

"Well, at this point that depends somewhat on you, Mark."

"Me? Look, I'm going on the assumption now that I've been part of your experiments..."

"To a degree, but I think you should know that Eve, or Dana, well -- she chose you."

"She -- what?"

"She chose you, Mark. It's our understanding she wants to move in with you. That's been her trajectory for months."

"Trajectory?" What's that supposed to..."

"She's very goal oriented, Mark. And as you've seen, she's very affectionate -- when she wants to be."

"And when she doesn't want to be affectionate? What's she like then? A gorilla, maybe?"

"Thoughtful. She becomes very reclusive, retreats into her thoughts."

"Is she self-aware? I mean, concerning her earlier self? The old Dana, I guess I'm trying to say."

"Limited, would be my guess. There's a layer of consciousness, I think we could say at this point, that seems to be the old Dana. I don't know how intact that structure is, or if there's a safety mechanism of sorts that keeps her from accessing those thoughts and feelings."

"And you'd like me to help get answers to these questions, wouldn't you?"

Richardson leaned back and sighed -- then he steepled his fingers over his chest. "Wouldn't you?" he almost whispered after some time had passed.

"This is the most extraordinary thing I've ever run across in my life," Stuart said. "I mean..."

"Tell me one thing," Sumner Bacon said, watching Stuart's eyes attentively, "you've been alone in the worst possible way for the last fifteen or so years, and yet you experienced a dramatic reawakening last night. The best possible resurrection, I'd like to think. Would you like to return to your isolation? Or would you like to explore this opportunity, for your sake, and for ours?"

+++++

Part IV: Asynchronous Mud v2.1

Kenji Watanabe sat in the taxi next to Mary, trying his best not to stare at the girl's legs -- and soon finding this next to impossible he turned and looked at San Francisco Bay and SFO, the international airport now just off the 101. He watched as a JAL 797-200ER flared over the water and settled gently onto the runway, reverse thrust kicking up a small cyclone of dust and tire smoke -- before all that sound carried across the water and washed over their orange Tesla. He shook his head, did his best to hide his revulsion of any and everything to do with aviation, and so of course found himself looking at Mary's crossed legs -- again.

He had picked her up just the day before, at Richardson Autonetics' Palo Alto facility, and he was, he thought, almost proud of her. She was, according to Richardson, "our first unit certified for export;" she would be the very first of her kind in Japan -- and she was his, all his and his alone. He would not disassemble her, would never reverse engineer her...no, after last night he was simply going to hold her close -- cherish her and never let go. He had never experienced a night such as that before; he had never felt so in love, or loved.

She was more human than human, Ralph Richardson told him in that meeting. Incredibly sensitive -- both physically and emotionally -- Richardson said, yet unlike human females not prone to variations in mood, or desire -- if that's truly what Watanabe felt most comfortable with. This flexibility, Richardson patiently explained, was but one of the many behavioral parameters that could be customized -- even after delivery -- should the need arise. Watanabe had been skeptical then -- but not now.

And after last night, Watanabe was one hundred percent certain that nothing about this remarkable being needed any sort of customization, at all -- if only because she was utterly perfect in every way, and in every sense of the word. No...she was beyond perfect. She was as docile and empathically understanding one moment as the most accomplished courtesan of old, and yet the next she was a hellion -- and least when the lights were out and her clothes off. Though it had been years since he had been with a woman, she had coaxed whatever lingering shyness remained from his bruised psyche and carried him over the ultimate threshold, back to the headiest days of his youth.

Now he turned and looked her in the eye -- and as she turned and looked into his waves of unbelievable peace washed over his soul. 'This can't be happening to me,' he told himself once again -- for perhaps the tenth time in as many minutes. 'She's simply not possible...'

And yet she was. Here was the proof of that assertion -- right by his side.

Her hair was purest black, her skin so white she almost looked ready to perform a kabuki set, yet it was her eyes that most enthralled him. Black one moment, then in the next a cobalt so deep it was almost possible to feel the mystery of existence -- like an azure sea, he thought, at twilight. When she walked or stretched in just a certain way, even the shapes of her arms and legs varied -- as individual bundles of 'muscle' reacted to new directions of movement. He had danced with her at dinner and not noticed even the slightest imbalance or hesitation; in fact he found her lightness of movement beyond graceful. And then at one point he had felt light-headed and had begun to lose his balance, and she had felt his unsteadiness and reached out to him, helped him to their table. Once there she had taken his wrist in her fingers while she watched his face, then reached into her clutch and produced the correct medication for the moment! He had looked at the competence in her eyes and smiled at a sudden passing thought...

"What is it, Kenji?" he remembered her asking. "Why are you laughing?"

"I was just thinking. If perhaps I suddenly needed open heart surgery, no doubt you would pull all the necessary equipment from that magic bag of yours and -- presto! You'd be there, wouldn't you?"

Her smile changed just the slightest, and he'd felt oddly reassured by the expression she wore in that moment.

"I will always be there for you, Kenji-sama. If it is in my power, I will do whatever is necessary to protect you. Even from yourself."

And in that moment, inside the first time that particular feeling swept over him, he knew there was something utterly different about this being. She was sentient, yet she wasn't exactly human, but neither was she some heartless artificial construct -- as he had first been led to believe by his most vocal opponents at home. Sex robots had been on the scene at home for almost two decades, though none had ever caused an uproar. That might change now, Watanabe told himself, and perhaps that was because of that one little phrase Richardson had uttered at their introduction -- that "more human than human" quip. And yet oddly enough, it was women's groups who seemed most militantly opposed to the very idea of such a creation.

'Yes, how very strange,' Watanabe said to himself. Human, yet not human. Biological in a way, yet not. A robot? Perhaps, in the strictest definition of the word, but his company had been making robots for fifty years and this 'Mary' was anything but. His robots helped manufacture cars and produce medical equipment to impossibly fine tolerances, yet his designers had never once considered something so radical as this. True enough, yet this 'machine' was about to sit beside him on a flight across the Pacific...something none of his products would -- or could ever do.

But no...he had her export documentation in his briefcase, and members of the consulate's commercial section would be at the airport, along with representatives from US Customs -- and Richardson Autonetics -- to see that his departure was trouble free. She would travel in his suite, not in the cargo hold, but that was more for his comfort than hers. He simply disliked flying alone, almost as much as he hated flying with a companion, and as he looked at the airport an involuntary shudder passed through his body once again.

+++++

He marveled at her touch once again, the feel of her hand in his. Warm, the warmth of flesh on flesh, the pressure her hand exerted on his reassuring. He sat looking out the curved window ahead, looking through the leading edge of the vast wing at the main hull of the new Boeing StratoCruiser -- the first of a new generation of hyper-efficient flying wing designs -- and he only hoped this design was safer than the last aircraft he had flown on.

That had been 15 years ago, on a huge Airbus A380 flying nonstop from London to Tokyo. Descending over South Korea, the number one engine had simply exploded when, apparently, corroded fan blades in the inner compressor failed. The wing a perforated mess, the pilot had tried an emergency descent for Incheon International, but less than a half-mile from the threshold of runway 15 Right, a vast fire broke out inside the left wing and the Airbus cartwheeled into the sea. There had been fewer than fifty survivors from the almost four hundred onboard, and family and friends told him how lucky he had been. How lucky, the told him, to have even survived.

Indeed...how very lucky.

The first time he'd seen the results of this luck his soul had filled with such despair he'd very nearly killed himself. The left side of his face looked like rolling fields of molten lava -- an angry red flow of indignant malice that begged no further explanation -- most especially when he saw 'those looks' in women's eyes, but, in the end, those noxious sidelong glances had hardly been the worst of it. His left shoulder was now a titanium structure, the femurs of both legs a series of titanium and carbon fibre struts. Then there were the two metal plates in his skull that provided a nonstop ache, but those, mercifully, had been replaced with ceramic moldings a year after the accident and the pain had subsided...a little. He'd had fewer severe headaches over the next few years -- since that operation, anyway. And how funny, he'd thought, that he was measuring the progress of his life by incremental lessening of devastating pain. Was all he had to look forward to now? Diminishing pain accompanied by increasing loneliness?

In the beginning he resorted to escorts and call girls, and the best of them ignored his looks -- for a few minutes, anyway -- but in the end he couldn't meet the revulsion in their eyes with anything approaching dignity. So, he'd grown reluctant, even unwilling, to meet even that minor disappointment head-on, and time after time, so within a few years he'd turned away from human companionship. He disappeared into his work, turning a once modestly successful microchip manufacturing company into a wildly successful multinational electronics venture, yet in the process turning further and further from his own humanity. He worked with a small group of known associates and for the first few years after the accident rarely left his office. After five years he never left at all, and had in fact constructed living quarters on the same floor as his office. People on the factory floor had renamed him 'the Monk' -- after his so-called self-enforced celibacy -- yet his closest associates knew even this almost reverential term of endearment cut him to the core.

Celibacy was, at least as he understand it, a choice that came from within, not something forced on the soul by external events. He felt no overwhelming need to lead a chaste life, only overwhelming sorrow. And word of Kenji Watanabe's unyielding sorrow soon became -- almost --public knowledge.

Then -- almost by accident -- he'd been introduced to a man from Palo Alto, California, a resourceful polyglot named Toby Tyler, and as Tyler worked with electronics companies all over the Orient, the Californian had, apparently, learned all about of Kenji Watanabe's predicament, about his ongoing reclusiveness and isolation, and who after meeting Watanabe for dinner in his latter's office, had mentioned a radical solution to the problem Kenji Watanabe faced. Toby told Kenji that what he really needed was a new type of assistant, an assistant who'd never judge him, who would never turn away in dismay or disgust. And it turned out that friend of this man, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur in similar straits, had been the first to employ one of these assistants and was extremely enthusiastic about her.

"Perhaps I could find out more for you?" Toby Tyler had asked Kenji Watanabe.

And although Watanabe had almost desperately wanted to know more, he was reluctant to say so. At least, not enthusiastically -- but before he left, Tyler had given Kenji the contact information for a man named Mark Stuart -- and not fully understanding why -- he'd called the man, not knowing what to expect but curious even so. Yet it seemed that this Stuart had been expecting Kenji's call, and had been more than willing to talk about his recent experience with a new 'assistant...'

"Look, there's really no way to describe this rationally," Stuart said near the end of their first conversation. "You need to meet Eve, so why don't you fly over this weekend? As it happens, my jet will be passing through on Friday, refueling at Haneda. You're welcome to come anytime, of course, but you'd have the aircraft to yourself..."

With such an irresistible invitation, Watanabe had yielded and agreed to come -- despite his overwhelming fear of aircraft. And he found he enjoyed the little jet's luxurious accommodations, the splendid isolation of a cabin designed to hold twenty all to himself, and Stuart's driver met him at SFO and took him directly to a large house in the hills above of Palo Alto, a rambling affair set out amongst the evergreen hillsides along Skyline Drive. He'd been shown to a small cottage below the main house, a Mission Style bungalow of cedar and stone nestled deep inside a clinging grove of eucalyptus, pine, and oak. His only bag had been carried down to the cottage for him, and the driver told him to expect dinner in a few hours, and that someone from the main house would come down for him -- soon.

And despite his looming anxiety he had napped for an hour, then showered and changed clothes, one moment wondering why he'd agreed to this and the next shaking as irrational waves of curiosity pushed at his knees.

Then, a knock on the door.

He saw a man much like himself when he opened the door. The stranger's face had been savagely scarred once, and wounded in other ways, too, but Watanabe saw something he hadn't expected in the man's eyes. Was that hope he saw...perhaps? Or was that simple contentedness he saw on the man's face, and in his eyes?