by Mina Carter
Then Keris had come crashing through the metal wall of the cell like a bulldozer, her faceplate red as it swung toward him. He’d thought it was one more torment in the many the Lathar had inflicted on him until she’d scooped him up and ran. He’d passed out only to wake later in an escape pod.
She’d saved his life and had been by his side ever since. She saved him, saved an entire colony from a flesh-eating octopus. But she wasn’t in the metal body anymore. She’d taken a gamble and left the safety of metal and circuitry for the chance of becoming flesh and blood.
Like a magnet, his eyes cut to the large machine in the middle of the room. A 3-D printer… but for bodies. Actual physical bodies. Like the ones that had been in the tubes when they’d arrived.
The twin blades, like airport gates, still rotated slowly around the central tube. Lights on the sides ran lazily from bottom to top in sequence. But where the glass had initially been clear to allow him to see the forming body within, the tube was dark now and blocked his view.
Keris.
He stood in front of the tubes, trying to pierce the glass with his gaze. Keris was in there. Somewhere. Her mind had been separated from the machine and should be in the body shielded by the glass.
“Computer, report progress on running program?”
Light waves shimmered in the air next to him, and between one moment and the next, a Latharian female appeared. Miisan, the AI that had led them here to find the base.
“Progress is still at 99.999 percent, Major Stephens,” she said, her voice no-nonsense and firm. “I said I would inform you if there was any change, and I will.”
“I know,” his jaw worked. “I’m sorry. I’m just… It’s been a week, I mean… how long does this usually take?”
“It’s a little longer than usual,” Miisan admitted after a pause. “But this technology was developed for organic consciousness transfer. Keris is an AI.”
He nodded curtly, his gut tightening. “Yeah, but she’s sentient, right? An advanced AI… like you? She should be okay. Right?”
Miisan’s expression softened. “The program seems to be progressing normally, if a little slow. I’m sure she’s fine. Like I said, as soon as anything changes, I will let you know. Please remember you have a medical check in half an hour. I also have an adapted translation matrix I want to install.”
Before he could answer, she winked out, leaving him looking at empty air. He sighed heavily and watched the printer for a while longer. He’d told her he’d be waiting when she woke up.
Now he wondered if that day would ever come. One thing he did know, though… even if it took until he was a gray-haired old man, he would still be here.
2
“Your brain function looks completely normal for your species,” Miisan’s voice was calming, pitched to carry over the intersecting blades of the medical bed.
Jay grunted to show he’d heard, not daring to move a muscle. Having an alien computer shoving a foot-long needle into his brain just behind his ear tended to do that to a man. Keeping his eyes open, he concentrated on the ceiling above him. They looked to be the same small stippled panels so loved in Terran design. Like, identical. Perhaps they were their own species that had spread through the known universe, hiding amongst other species and living in their buildings.
The fantastical idea kept him amused and his mind off what Miisan was doing.
“So, what does this do, exactly?” Gracie asked, her arms folded over her chest.
He appreciated her concern and the fact she’d insisted on coming in on each of his “appointments.” Shame he hadn’t been able to stop Nyek’s mad brother and his band of fanatics from taking her washed over him and he understood Seren’s problem. They were men, bigger and stronger than the women… it was their job to protect.
“Whatever you’re doing, Mr. Stephens, stop it.” Miisan’s voice cut over the soft whum-whum-whum of the rotating light discs of the bed. They wrapped around his entire body, the operating arm on the inside with him, controlled by Miisan on the outside. As an AI, though, was she really outside? Or was she everything on the base… even the base itself? “Your heart rate is rising and I can’t do this if you are tense. I’ll have to put you out unless you calm down. Blink twice for yes if you understand me.”
He blinked. Twice. He didn’t want to be sedated. The last time she’d put him under to operate, he’d come to with a blazing headache and the trots. Latharian medicine, while effective, was not always gentle.
“Excellent. We will continue.”
He heard the whirring of machinery by his ear and tried hard not to think about it, his mind latching on to Miisan and Keris. Both were AIs but Miisan was more formal and aristocratic in her speech. Probably because she’d been modeled after the emperor’s sister, a royal princess, whereas Keris was a normal AI. Her personality had been allowed to develop naturally and was her own. For a moment, he almost felt sorry for Miisan. She was just a pale copy of a person. She was self-aware, like Keris, so that had to rankle, if only a little.
“I am implanting a new translation matrix in Mr. Stephens,” Miisan explained to Gracie as Jay went back to studying the ceiling. If he concentrated, he could just make out the slight bumps. He started to count them. Anything to avoid thinking about the drill.
“What does this matrix do that ours don’t?” Gracie asked. “We didn’t have to have this done.”
“No. The ones you have are basic auditory translators. They take the input and run it through the matrix, allowing you to understand all languages known to the Lathar.”
“And allow us to speak in Latharian, right?”
The AI chuckled. “No, it’s not that simple. You are still speaking Terran, but the other person’s translation matrix allows them to understand you. There’s no rewiring of your brain to install the new languages.”
“Is that what you’re doing to Jay?”
The AI fritzed out and reappeared on the other side of the bed. With his skull in a clamp to stop him from moving, Jay could only watch her in his peripheral vision. It was freaky the way she appeared and disappeared. She’d done it once to him when he was getting out of the shower. He’d about jumped out of his skin and, to his eternal embarrassment, actually screamed. Then Keris had run the other AI off, a static blast of noise telling him the two had been in the middle of a blazing row as Keris stomped out.
“Yes and no. He’s been trying to learn to read Latharian, which… well, with the way humans evolved, it appears that some of you have lost the ability to assimilate languages. Possibly due to genetic damage or drift.”
“Oh? That’s a thing?”
“Uh-huh.” Miisan leaned down to study the progress of the operation. Jay had no idea why. The “eyes” of her holographic avatar couldn’t be any better than the ones on the drill in his fucking head.
He took a breath to calm down as she shot him a look. He couldn’t see it. He just knew she was looking at him. The feeling was like spiders crawling over his skin. He concentrated on that.
“Jay here has lost the ability, so I’m installing a different version of the matrix. Once in place, it will unpack and rewire the language center of his brain.”
Gracie made a small sound of surprise and wonder. “It can do that? So what will he be able to do?”
“If it goes well, he’ll be able to not only speak in any of the Latharian languages but also read and write in them as well. Natively. So when he speaks, he’ll be speaking Latharian rather than Terran to be translated.”
There was a silence, and then Gracie asked the question on the tip of his tongue.
“And if it doesn’t go well?”
Miisan stood and shrugged. “He’ll talk utter gibberish for the rest of his life.”
His eyes widened, panic rolling through him. She hadn’t told him that before the procedure.
Then the AI chuckled, a rare smile curving her lips.
“That was a joke. If it doesn’t work, no rewiring will occur and nothing wil
l change.”
He closed his eyes, a sigh of relief escaping him. When he got out of here, he was having a word with that damn AI about not making jokes while he was strapped up to a machine drilling into his skull. It was like joking about getting a blowjob from a piranha.
He ignored the two women chatting as Miisan completed the procedure, instead falling into his memories. Keris had been in the printer for a week, and he missed her like crazy, which sounded insane. She was an AI… like part of the ship or something. At least, that’s what everyone kept telling him. They said she wasn’t a person. She was just a machine. A self-aware machine, yes, but not a person. His instincts said they were wrong. She was a person... with thoughts and feelings.
He’d seen that for himself. Seen the upset and anguish when he’d threatened Nyek for being a dick, and her programming had forced her to pull a gun on him. She’d been so distraught that she’d nearly killed him, she’d ordered him to decommission her. Shut her down so she couldn’t hurt anyone.
He’d told her to shut the fuck up, and that it was all Nyek’s fault, which it was. The stuck-up paladin had had it in for Keris since he’d met her. Only the fact that she was the Champion’s “daughter” had stopped him from refusing her a place on their mission.
And if he had… she would never have been here to discover the body printer. He’d seen the little sparkles of hope in her face lights when she’d seen it and realized there was a possibility she could be “real.” Several times since she’d rescued him, typically late at night when he was half asleep, she’d asked him what it felt like to be a real person. To be biological. He’d always claimed not to remember their conversations, but he did. And he remembered the wistful note in her voice.
She wanted to be real, so badly. He was sure of it. So much so that she’d risk long-abandoned technology to make the jump.
“Okay, all done,” Miisan announced as the operating arm withdrew and the discs of the bed slowed down. The clamps around Jay’s head relaxed and folded away as feeling returned. “You might have a slight headache over the next few hours but nothing that an analgesic shot won’t cure.”
“Thank you,” he said as he sat up, blinking against the lights in the expansive medbay. He’d seen the inside of this room far too much for his liking recently. Reaching a hand up, he paused before he rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the AI.
She nodded. “All closed, you can touch. Just don’t go banging your head against anything for a while or you might dislodge the matrix before it unpacks.”
“What happens then?” Gracie chuckled. “It hits his movement centers and he starts dancing the funky chicken? No… wait, that’s his normal dancing.”
“Bitch,” he chortled, rubbing at the back of his neck.
“Wanker,” she threw back good-naturedly and then looked at Miisan. “Is that it? Is he okay to go?”
“He is,” the AI smiled.
“Good. Thanks, Doc.” Jay hauled himself off the bed and made a beeline for the door. After this, he needed a stiff drink, an all over body massage and a lie down.
One out of three wasn’t bad…
The world came back in a wet rush, bright lights, and a hard floor.
“Owwww!”
The complaint was forced from Keris’s lips as she tumbled out of the tube and sprawled over cold metal. By the goddess, it had worked. She had a real body. For a moment she lay there, fighting to process the onslaught of sensation. There was just so much of it. She was aware of every single part of her body, all at the same time, right from the cold, hard floor to the sound of her eyeballs moving in her skull.
A whimper forced past her lips as she curled up into a small ball, trying to get away from it all. Her hip screamed where she’d hit the floor, the air over her naked, wet skin making her shiver as something clenched deep inside her torso section. She’d wanted a body, wanted to be real, but she hadn’t expected this. How did they focus with all this going on?
Lying still, she tried to clear her mind and push all the input from her new body to the back. It had been simple when she had a mechanical body, she could simply ignore those responses or switch them off. Not in this body though. Its responses were sluggish and she couldn’t find an off switch. But… the longer she lay there, the duller the demands got until they were little more than a buzz at the back of her mind.
Blinking, she tried to bring her sensors online, only to remember she didn’t have any. Not anymore.
Draanth. She couldn’t see anything. The lights blinded her, and nothing was in focus. Automatically she tried to send a calibration order and… nothing. Right. What the trall did biologicals do to bring their senses online?
Lifting her hand, she blocked the bright lights, and her vision sharpened. Huh. Focus was automatic. That was neat. Then the hand in front of her caught her attention. Slender and finely boned, covered in delicate-looking skin.
Skin. Her eyes widened. She had skin. Actual, proper skin.
A gasp escaped her and she looked down. More skin, covering a female form.
“I have skin,” she murmured and leapt to her feet.
Her legs supported her for all of a second. Then they buckled, and she faceplanted again.
“Draanth,” she groaned, getting a rapid education in the fact that hitting the deck in a biological body hurt.
She got her hands under her and pushed up, biting her lower lip as she slid her knees under her. Biologicals made this look so easy. How on earth did they manage to coordinate the balance and the limbs at the same time? Concentrating hard, she lifted, sliding first one foot, then the other under her. Legs shaking, she slowly stood.
“Whoa…”
She was standing. Her left knee shook. No auto-correct feature. Focusing, she managed to stabilize it. Okay, she could work with that. Her face pulled between the brows and she blinked, hands shooting up to touch… her face.
Instead of the blank, smooth plate she was used to, it was soft, the skin yielding slightly beneath her fingers. Her fingertips wandered, exploring. Eyes, nose, lips.
“I have a face. Oh lady, I have a face.”
Dropping her hands, she looked around and spotted a reflective surface. One of the windows into the cabal’s archives. With determination, she headed for it.
She had to know what she looked like. In all the years since she’d become aware, she’d often dreamed of being a real person. What she would look like if she’d been born rather than made. In her mind’s eye she would be tall, with a regal bearing and inky dark hair that flowed like a cape over her shoulders.
She stumble-walked-staggered toward the window, concentrating hard to get the feet, knees, and balance all co-ordinated. Goddess, how many muscles did a body need working all at the same time to move it?
Making it to the window, she gripped the edge and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She couldn’t look…
She’d never had a face before. Not of her own anyway. When she’d first become self-aware, she’d been integrated into a ship, its hull her body. Her “face” had been a mobile input unit with free range of the interior that Rynn, her owner, had installed for her. She’d felt so free and better than other AIs because of it. She wasn’t just a disembodied voice for Rynn. She had a face, something he could interact with.
He’d been more than her owner though. He’d been the closest thing she had to family. When the D’Corr had tried to kill him, she’d flung him halfway across space to save his life, sacrificing herself to make sure he lived. She’d started to shut down, ready to die in the blast that would destroy the ship.
Then she’d registered a lifeform still on board.
Jay.
She bit her lip at the thought of the handsome human, and the sensation blindsided her for a few seconds. He’d been in a holding cell, battered and bruised. She’d had to save him, downloading herself into a worker bot to do so, even though it was against every single Latharian law governing AIs. She didn’t care. He had been alive, barely. Which meant she
’d had to save him…
Slowly, she cracked open an eye. Then another, a gasp of surprise escaping her as she looked at her reflection in the window. All she could see was a pair of large, dark eyes.
Okay, so she was short then. Not the regal bearing she’d envisioned. Eyes wide with wonder, she carefully lifted on her tiptoes, fingertips clinging to the bottom of the window frame so she could see the rest of her new face.
The dark eyes were set above a small nose and a pair of full lips. She blinked. The reflection blinked. She turned her head to the side. So did the woman in the window.
It was her. She had a body. She was a real person.
Then she burst into tears.
3
The problem with being on an abandoned, secret alien base was the lack of routine. Jay rubbed at the back of his neck as he wandered into the galley after his nap.
As predicted, the procedure to implant the translation matrix had given him a headache. So he’d taken a painkilling shot and had a lie down in a dark room. Somewhere between lying down and studying the inside of his eyelids, he’d dropped off. But routine was a powerful thing, and as a soldier, he was used to powernaps so he was back on his feet after a couple of REM cycles and looking for something to do.
Given that he had none of the skills required to help get the base operational and was more of a danger to himself and everyone else when put in charge of power tools, he’d been banned from helping. He’d resorted to creating a schedule of his own to pass the time.
In the mornings he trained with Seren and sometimes Nyek. The alien paladin was the better instructor, but hardline and so focused he was scary, even for an ubermarine like Jay. He’d mastered many martial arts in his life, but sometimes he felt like a complete left-footed noob when he didn’t get a move as quickly as Nyek expected and the guy stared at him. Like proper stared. With an expression that could cut plate steel. On the whole he preferred Seren. The alien warrior was far quicker to smile and more “one of the lads.”
