Final Book

by Peter W Prellwitz

  She was a lovely woman, perhaps twenty or so, with mid-length hair and a figure to die for, which made sense, and had in fact happened. She had the most stunningly brilliant blue eyes. Eyes that sparkled with happiness, yet also lacked the light of a soul. She was a construct, a warped mind's fantasy brought to near life. Her mind crippled and manipulated, she was in an endless nightmare she was completely oblivious to.

  "I love you, Abby!" I shouted, so happy to be with her. "You're my real owner, and I'm so happy to be with you! Are you staying for always now?"

  "Quiet, child." I stepped up and placed a hand on her shoulder. Abigail looked quite overcome by the girl's exuberance. "I'm sure Abigail is here to tell us some very important things." I looked at my soulner, half fearful, half hopeful. "Who's keeping the watch, Abigail?"

  "Nobody, Miss DeChant," I replied. "Doctor Barrett has induced a sharding episode and placed me into a medical condition called Healer's Sleep."

  "Why would he do such a thing?" I asked, not at all certain that I liked being left completely defenseless in that world where any man could ...

  "Don't worry, Miss DeChant," I said quickly, noticing the concern in her eyes. "We're at a small medical facility several hundred kilometers north of Yakutsk, in the extreme northern regions of Siberia. Very few people know of its existence. Jody Eyer from the 179th has some of her people keeping guard over us while we finish this.

  "Finish what, Abby?" I asked. I didn't remember us starting anything. "Are Alan and Dorothy here, too? Can I see them? They're my friends," I said proudly. "Alan calls me Princess."

  "Does he?" I said politely. "That's nice. Now let Miss DeChant and me talk."

  "Okay," I said. I didn't like talking anyway. "I don't like talking anyway. I'll wait." I sat down on the floor and waited. Abby and Miss DeChant walked over to the machines with the lights and words on them and kept talking. I started to ... but then I remembered they didn't want me to, so I thought about Alan calling me Princess. It was one of my favorite thoughts. It was almost as nice as my thoughts about the nice lady who played with me that night in the big bathroom. My thoughts were happy, which was fun and different. When I was in this room, I always didn't have any happy or sad feelings or any feelings. So I thought about Alan. He called me Princess.

  "Can you feel the difference, Miss DeChant?" The girl was sitting down, staring off into space, a blissful smile on her face. I shuddered and tried to avoid imagining what she was thinking about. "See? The girl feels it. Our emotions and sense of time are real now. It's never been like that before."

  "Oui, Abigail. I feel it, too," I nodded. "But how can I? Am I not just an artificial person? Wouldn't I be just using your emotions?"

  "I don't know, Miss DeChant." I said frankly. "I don't think so. I noticed your worry about my - I mean your - I mean our body being left behind. But I didn't really feel your concern because I knew we were safe."

  "Please, Abigail. It is your body, your mind. Everything is yours. You must accept that."

  "I do accept it, Miss DeChant. It's just that I've come to care for you, and to think of you as a real person. You are a real person!"

  "Am I?" I asked quietly. "Then when I die, do I go to heaven?"

  I opened my mouth to object, then closed it. Tears started to blur my vision, so I wiped my eyes quickly.

  "I don't know, Miss DeChant. But I'm going to try. Do you know why I'm here?"

  "Oui, I believe so," I replied. "I've been coming up many times since you returned at Major Deiley's house, and have spoken to Dr. Barrett as well."

  "Whatever possessed you to go to Deiley in the first place, Miss DeChant?"

  "He represented an authority that I understood, Abigail. I had served Professor LeClaire for over forty years, and knew NATech quite well, though very few others did. At least, I believe I had."

  "I thought that once, too."

  "Yes. Your service as John Wyeth, all those centuries ago. Tell me, Abigail, will he be here today as well?"

  "No," I shook my head definitely. "He won't be because he and I are the same person. I was John Wyeth. Now I'm Abigail Wyeth. It's the same as I was once a baby and now I'm--"

  "Now you're a beautiful young woman. And you blush so handsomely, Mademoiselle!" I laughed and clapped my hands. "Aaron is a lucky man!"

  "He will be if he's still alive, if we can rescue him, and if I can come out of this in more or less one piece."

  "Oui, Abigail," I nodded solemnly. "Which brings us back to the beginning of our conversation, no? You are here because it is time for the child and me to die, to make you a complete woman."

  "You're not going to die!" I exclaimed.

  "No, I suppose not," I sighed. "To die, one must first have been alive."

  "Stop it!" I shouted, angry at her fatalistic attitude. "Look, Miss DeChant, I can't say what kind of life you have inside you. And I can't say exactly what will happen when I pull us together. Or if I can even do it. But I do know that you are alive! Otherwise, I am a mad woman who has been talking to herself, writing notes to herself, and believing that someone else has used my body." With a sudden thought I added. "And that means that when I was raped, I was all alone. I don't know that I can bear that thought, Miss DeChant."

  I took a step back and put a hand to my mouth, startled. "I - I had not even considered that, Abigail." I felt my own tears come up; a very long time indeed since I had last cried. "Very well. I have accepted the shame and evil that came with my failing you. I must accept also your judgment that I am a person."

  My speaking those words seemed to jolt my heart, and it went quite wild. I touched myself on my bare chest to feel it racing. I looked in wonder at my soulner.

  "I - I cannot believe what I'm feeling, Mademoiselle."

  "I know. I felt it, too, Miss DeChant." My heart was fluttering and jumping inside me, as though it too now had a life of its own. "Doctor Barrett must be introducing the microsonic pulses that are meant to dissolve the barriers between our personas. We're beginning a controlled cascade dissolution."

  My chest started jumping and thumping, like when I'm hit real hard, or made love to. I giggled and pressed my hands against my chest. Abby and Miss DeShard were still talking, but Miss DeShard was holding herself too, like me, and Abby was smiling. Maybe they were done talking and we could play. I got to my feet and ran over to them.

  "I feel all nice and pretty inside!" I told them. "My heart is going real fast, like when my owner is making me--"

  "I know, child," I interrupted, saving her from becoming vulgar. "We feel much the same way. Abigail says it is the beginning."

  "The beginning of what?" I asked, afraid. "You're not going away, are you Abby?"

  "No, I'm not," I assured her. "In fact, I'm never leaving you again. Pretty soon, we'll be together for good." The weight of my words hit me. To become whole, I had to accept the girl. Could I?

  "Who will be first, Abigail?" I asked her.

  "These computers, Miss DeChant. They are as much a part of me as you two." I glanced at her, an idea tickling my mind for the first time. "Tell me, Miss DeChant. Do you recognize any of these machines?"

  I looked at her, quite startled. Why would I know these machines? Still, I examined them closely. After a few minutes, I stepped back and shook my head.

  "I'm sorry, Abigail. I'm not very good with machines, and none of these seem familiar." I frowned at her obvious disappointment. "Why would you think I that I would?"

  "Well, since Professor LeClaire used you to embed the KME, I thought one of these machines would represent that KME and look like something you may have seen in his lab."

  "I'm sorry, Abigail. Professor LeClaire never allowed me entrance to his university facility, and his home study had no machinery this large."

  "But what about the KME embedding?"

  "Again, I'm sorry," I shook my head. "I submitted to a suppression field of some sort and do not remember the procedure, nor the equipment the professor used. And beyond that evening, I ha
ve no memory at all. It must have been that night that I was ... I was ..." I felt a sudden surge of sadness and confusion. "Do you know I have no idea what happened to me?"

  "Much like the way I came to the end as John. I simply stopped being."

  "Not me!" I said. "I remember my last night. It was fun! My owner cut me in all kinds of places, then he hit me all over and made me feel warm and happy. Then he stuck a big piece of glass into my tummy and cut all the way up!" I showed them on my body where he did it. "It felt wonderful, only then I knew I had to die and couldn't make him happy anymore." I stopped and thought. "Only maybe I didn't die, because now I'm here. Only I'm back in my body, and when Alan and Dorothy took care of me, I looked like you, Abby." I pointed at her pretty body. "Am I going back into you, Abby?" I clapped. "I'd like that!"

  "Yes, I'm sure you would, uh ..." I didn't know what to call her, and realized I'd never called her anything, referring to her only as 'the girl' Miss DeChant saw my awkward moment and stepped in calmly.

  "We know you'd enjoy that, child," I said to her, taking her hands. "But we must do this properly. Will you wait in one of the chairs until we tell you, please?"

  "Okay." I ran over to a chair and sat down and waited. I started to think about being called Princess again.

  "Thank you, Miss DeChant. I've never been able to talk to her," I said honestly. "She makes me very uncomfortable."

  "I understand, Abigail. Although Professor LeClaire never indulged in a pleasure ripe, I had to deal with them on occasion when setting up appointments with some of the professor's colleagues. I personally never saw their appeal, but I suppose that was because I am the opposite of them."

  "Hmmm." I didn't mean to come off rude, but I was already studying the first of the computer consoles, and felt an excitement growing inside me.

  Each of the machines was curiously similar, all of them being roughly the size and shape of a desk. Their displays varied from flat screen to mist projection to holoimaging. Controls also ran the gamut of variety, from keyboard to voice and sight interface. One had no controls whatsoever. Running my fingers over the primary interface panel of the first one, I recognized it. This was 6 Alpha, the primary unit NATech had scheduled to use to begin running scenarios on the Pegasus project. Next to it was a system I'd never seen, but one I immediately knew controlled the Net. The others were as easily recognizable.

  "I suppose I should get started," I said with a sigh.

  "How do you go about this, Abigail?" I asked, very interested and slightly uncomfortable.

  "Doctor Barrett seemed to think that simply accessing it would trigger the cascade," I replied. I put my hand on the scanner. "Here goes," I said and pressed down.

  The scanner activated and a red light passed underneath my palm. There was a hum as it analyzed my imprint and selected the correct user ID. According to Doctor Barrett, since I had at one time actually been this machine, access was certain.

  Five minutes later, I'd decided that access was considerably less than certain. Everything worked, but nothing worked. It ran the scan, identified me, then went back into a wait state. The display showed nothing but idle, self-diagnostic readouts. I felt more than a little uncomfortable. This was not according to plan.

  "Is something supposed to happen, Abigail?" I asked uncertainly.

  "It sure is, Miss DeChant. I should have merged with the machine, then emerged from it, having regained that portion of my mind, as well as a great deal of the data stored in the computer banks. That's obviously not happened."

  I frowned and tried the Net machine. This one also had palm print access. It also ran the logon procedure. And it also went back to a wait mode. All that the display mist exhibited was the outside temperature. A hot day, with a temperature of thirty-seven.

  The other computers behaved the same way, which is to say they didn't behave. They just acknowledged my presence, then ignored me. By this time, I was very uncomfortable and very nervous. If I had a collar, I'd be tugging at it.

  "What are you going to do, Abigail?" Things were clearly not going as she expected. She seemed scared.

  "I don't know. If you have any ideas, Miss DeChant, I'm willing to listen to them."

  "Perhaps these machines are not meant to be joined to you," I offered. "Perhaps it is just for us three women to come together."

  I nodded slowly. "You may be right. But I was positive that I needed to do this in order, and I needed to integrate all the personas. That's not working though, so let's you and I try."

  Miss DeChant took a breath, closed her eyes and held out her arms. I felt slightly uncomfortable with hugging a naked woman, but shrugged it off. I had been her after all, so all I was doing was hugging myself. I stepped in front of her and pulled her to me.

  Nothing happened. I felt her warm body against mine, felt her arms reaching around me and hugging me. She was taller than me - a buck and a half in dimes was taller than me - but I could still look at her eyes. She had opened them again in anticipation. We stared at each other, but nothing happened.

  Reluctantly, I released her and sagged against a computer console. My nervousness had turned into despair.

  "We've got to figure this out, Miss DeChant. Doctor Barrett can't leave me in my Healer's Sleep forever. I have to wake up sooner or later, and if I'm not reconstructed, I'll continue my sharding."

  "Perhaps you should try the child?" I asked tentatively. I knew I had no other suggestion.

  "I could, but I'm sure the result would be the same. She came after you did."

  "Could it be you need to start with the most recent ripe, and work backwards?"

  "No, because then the foundry console would have worked, because it was the last of my ripes."

  "I see." I walked over and inspected the information being given out by the computers. "Do these things tell you anything, Abigail?"

  "Not really. They're all standard self-diagnostics. Except for the net system, which is displaying an outdoor temperature of exactly thirty-seven degrees."

  "What outdoors, Abigail? We're in your mind."

  Her comment jolted me. What an idiot! Her common sense solved the problem so quickly, I realized it was no problem at all.

  "Of course!" I jumped up, a big grin on my face. "You're brilliant, Miss DeChant!"

  Abigail's shout and excitement caused me to start. An exuberant young woman. I was going to ask how I had helped, but she was racing off to the window. She stared out of it for several minutes. Long enough for me to join her. Curious, I looked out, too. She turned to me, a smile of understanding on her face.

  "What do you see, Miss DeChant?" I asked, feeling the excitement that comes with discovery.

  I turned from the window to tell her, and promptly forgot what I had seen. Surprised, I looked again, and tried to describe the landscape. I couldn't.

  "I'm sorry, Mademoiselle," I apologized, shaking my head. "I can see it, I know what I am seeing, but I cannot put it into words. And when I look away, I no longer remember."

  "It's the same with me," I agreed. "I know exactly what it looks like, but forget the second I look away."

  "And do you know why that is so?"

  "I do now. Come on, let me show you something." I took Miss DeChant's hand and led her toward the doors marked "Main Gate". I flung myself at them, but they refused to open. Exactly as I expected. I motioned to Miss DeChant.

  "Give me a hand here, Miss DeChant. On three. One ... two ... three!"

  We hit the doors together and managed to bruise our shoulders. They remained closed. Again, it was as I expected, but it was disappointing nonetheless and I swore quietly, a weakness of mine.

  I blushed slightly at her vulgarity, but she seemed upset and it was not my place to correct her. I put a hand on her shoulder.

  "Is something wrong, Abigail? Were you expecting us to open it? I'm larger than you, but I doubt I'm much stronger." I hesitated and looked toward the girl, who was watching us intently, but obediently staying in her chair.

&n
bsp; I saw Miss DeChant's speculative glance at the girl and nodded.

  "I'm afraid you're right, Miss DeChant. We'll need the girl's help as well."

  "Afraid, Abigail?" It seemed all I could do was ask questions.

  "Yes. I was hoping it would just be the two of us. But I suppose I knew that she would have to come along as well."

  "And those machines?"

  "If I'm right, they're not important any longer. Wait here a moment." I walked over to the girl. Her eyes were bright with anticipation and eagerness.

  "Hello. I was wondering ... uh ... we want to open those doors and I ... um ... would you help us out ... uh ... please?" I wished again for a collar I could tug at or a kerchief to twist.

  I jumped to my feet, happy to help, and happy that Abby talked to me.

  "I can do that, Abby! I like to help. Only I don't do that kind of help much. I'm not very strong. I'm only strong enough to ..."

  "That's okay," I interrupted quickly, not really interested in hearing what she was strong enough to do. "If I'm right, we don't need strength, we need people."

  We walked back to Miss DeChant and I put the girl's hands on the door. I nodded to Miss DeChant and together the three of us pushed.

  The doors opened easily and immediately we were standing outside. The room was gone, and the computers were gone. We were alone on an empty plain.

  The girl seemed very happy. She was twirling and running around, laughing and giggling. Despite myself, I had to admit she was very beautiful, and her shouts of joy seemed to wash away who she was, if only for the moment. I know how she felt.

  "Where are we?"

  "We, Miss DeChant," I said with mounting excitement in my voice and soul, "are home. Welcome to the puterverse."

  She looked around her, somewhat stunned, and sank to the ground. I quickly brought up some soft, warm sand for her to sit on, then flopped down next to her. The girl continued to - I could think of no better word - frolic. I waited for Miss DeChant to ask one of her seemingly endless questions, but she remained silent. So I picked up the ball.

  "Sorry, but that was a little melodramatic. This isn't really the puterverse. It's a representation of what I've made my puterverse into. I've always had a preference for sweeping landscapes."