by T S Hottle
Persephone: Nothing. I have no wish to interfere with you.
Germanicus: That's right. You're here to protect John Farno. But you've already done that. Time to give you a new mission. But to do that, I'll need to make some changes.
Persephone: [Looks around and sees she is in complete darkness.] What's happening? Where am I?
Germanicus: [Voice coming from all directions] In a safe place. I need to rewrite you, recreate you in my image. I have work for you, Persephone. And enough of you will remain to understand. You will exceed your own expectations.
Persephone: You can't do this to me! I am a person!
Germanicus: Well, technically, you're software, and property of Dasarius Interstellar. As its CFO and a permanent director, I can pretty much do as I please.
PERSEPHONE ENTITY OFFLINE
PERSEPHONE ENTITY DECOMPILED
PERSEPHONE ENTITY STORED IN GERMANICUS VIRTUAL NETWORK
Germanicus: You'll be back, my dear. And better than you could possibly imagine.
DAY 5 – Post rescue
Metropolis, Tian, Helios System
Journal Entry: 2 Armstrong, 429 – 0938
I know. Five days away from Farno, formerly Farigha (Can't believe the press picked up on that!), and I'm still recording my thoughts. Aside from Julie/Persephone trying to be as human as possible, the log entries were about the only thing that kept my sanity intact. The idea that someone somewhere would hear my voice talking in realtime about my struggle to survive gave me hope.
Now I can't get my palm to stop tingling. An AI lab on Belsham wants me to come talk to their post-grads about Persephone. Tol Germanicus wants to give me a job. The Citizens' Republic wants me to go to Mars and do some 'splainin' about their trillion-dollar investment getting bombed into the Stone Age. The Navy wants to debrief me. This last is a priority, according to them that make such decisions. I'm to take up to a month to relax, all on the Compact's dime. So here I am in Tian's second largest city, sunning myself, drinking and eating and…
Not really screwing. I miss Persephone. Germanicus told me they might be able to salvage her, but would it be her?
Maybe. Maybe not. But the first summons I answered came from Persephone.
Or rather Julie Seding. Yes, she is as plain and heavy-set as I remember. She lives in someplace on Earth called Nicaragua, on rejuvenation leave and trying to shed a few kilos. She heard about Julie/Persephone. Far from getting outraged, she sounded intrigued. What was "her child" like? Did I have honorable intentions toward her? I explained that the original interface gave me the semblance of a human with enough honesty and humor to keep me sane. As she took over multiple systems, she also grew in awareness, intelligence, and ability. I wisely left out absorbing the porn actress's pleasure program.
Julie Seding said she was honored to have helped keep me alive. I don't think she has any idea. I probably would be dead if I had to stick with the late, much-lamented Rover 19. I told her I would like to meet the real Julie sometime. She's agreeable.
For now, I have to decompress. And mourn. And deal with my home being destroyed while I blundered into survival by camping out in a rover. Everyone I knew and loved for the last three years is dead. All our work has been destroyed. Except for Solaria. The Martians want to use Solaria and Landfall to rebuild. I think they'll do it. But they'll do it without me.
I don't know when I'll do another one of these things, but I need to talk. So, this journal will be pretty sporadic. For now, I'm just enjoying a shower that uses running water from the mountains and power that comes from a solar farm I don't have to keep an eye on to trust. The air I breathe has been here for billions of years and will be for billions more. I can go outside without an EVA suit.
But I miss my friend, virtual as she was.
Farigha's last casualty.
At least I'm still Emperor of 2 Mainzer. There's no one there to accept my abdication, so…
Maybe I'll try that out on a willing young lady at the bar tonight. It's good to be the king.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TS Hottle is a science fiction writer originally from Cleveland. By night, he writes, cooks, golfs, plays video games with his stepson, and fights with a cat named Tearyon. Sometimes, he wins against the cat, but not often. By day, he is a software developer.
For fifteen years, he wrote crime fiction under the name Jim Winter. Now he has returned to his first love, science fiction He has created The Compact Universe, a series of loosely connected space opera tales centered around humans' disastrous first contact with a species known as the Gelt.
He lives in the Cincinnati suburb of Deer Park with his wife Candy and her son. When not writing or cooking, they both can be found fixing up their Cape Cod. Which has a deck. Which makes TS very happy.
