by D. R. Rosier
He couldn’t blame her, and it was far too late to fix. He felt like an asshole, but on the other hand they’d never even talked about a relationship, or them being together. Obviously she’d built it up in her mind in a big way, and was now hurt and angry. He didn’t know how to fix it at all, and felt a bit guilty, but part of it was on her as well. In retrospect, her actions to date were of the stalker variety, which worried him a bit.
He’d met up with Kara and Nicci three times in The Endless War game over the last two weeks as well. That relationship had changed a bit too. They were a bit more open with him, outside of bed that is. They were obviously much more comfortable with him, and didn’t expect him to start being an ass.
Which he wasn’t, and didn’t, so it worked out that way. They were also more demonstrative, not in a loving way, but they’d stay for a while in a tangle of bodies on the bed, and just talk. Even share a few tender appreciative kisses.
Either way, they were growing a friendship, and the benefits were fantastic, and a lot of fun. It was also his escape. It got him away from the drama in the real world, and his worries and responsibilities for a while. Mia was great that way too, but she was also the love of his life and he served her as she served him.
With Kara and Nicci it was different, there was no pressure, or expectations, just good friends and good sex. He liked them both a lot, they were smart, intelligent, uninhibited, and it was them against the world, and he was the happy guest in their life.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was late at night, and the work was on pause, but he knew all the stuff was being ordered and he’d be back at work in the morning to complete the ship. He only had a couple of weeks before they pulled him forcibly from the pod, but it wouldn’t take that long. Worse come to worse, they could take off before he finished and deal with any DOA electronics as it happened.
So far there weren’t any, and he wasn’t really expecting any issues that way. Still, better safe than sorry.
He laid in bed cuddled with Mia after a relaxing night at home with just the two of them. He was suddenly overwhelmed by her presence, her scent, her touch, as he so often was in her presence. She was so precious to him, and beautiful. She was perfect really that way, designed to his own personal tastes, but so much more than that, it was the incredibly devoted woman inside the body that loved him to distraction that truly took his breath away.
“I love you Mia,” he said softly.
Their heads were just inches apart as they lay in bed, and he had his arm around her side. He’d never get tired of staring into her lovely blue eyes.
She smiled softly, “I love you too Ted,” she said in a soft breathy voice that sent tingles down his spine.
He said carefully, “I really care about Helen and Trudy as well, and I was thinking we should have a big place on Mars. Maybe big enough for four?”
Mia squeaked happily, and kissed him with unrestrained passion. Every time he said something like that he expected jealousy, but all she ever had for him was joy, love, and happiness. He was quite sure he didn’t deserve any of them, but he’d do his damned best to make sure they never regretted loving him. It was a responsibility he took seriously, but it wasn’t hard work, it was a labor of love.
He asked, “Are you sure you won’t mind? We’d still have alone time, on our dates, or we could even meet here, but we’ll need a big bed for the four of us and…” he cut off, she’d know what they needed better than he did probably. Come to think of it, if they were all sharing one bedroom they probably didn’t need a big house. Although more than one shower would be nice, and they’d need lots of closet space. Gads of it.
She smiled wider and nuzzled his face, “Of course I don’t mind. I love you, and I love them. And yes, if we want a little alone time, or for that matter, if one of them and you want alone time, you can whisk one of us off with you to virtual world for a little one on one tryst. I’ve been hoping this would happen but I…”
He cut her off with a kiss on her adorable nose and finished for her, “Didn’t want to pressure me.”
She giggled and nodded.
“I’m a very lucky man.”
She smirked, “Yes you are,” she teased with a cute tilt of her head.
He laughed, “Would it surprise you to know I wouldn’t give this up for anything. Not even a working body. I’m… thankful for what happened now. My life has never been so rich, or held so much promise.”
She caressed his face and had a look of wonder on her own, and her voice was a whisper of conflicted emotions, “I am too love, I am too.”
He made love to her then, late into the night before finally falling asleep while he held her tightly in his arms.
After a hearty breakfast, and Mia’s and his usual game of teasing, he logged straight into the android at the warehouse after checking for offline messages from Kara, Nicci, and his other friends on The Endless War. He looked forward to getting a lot of work done today, it was a Saturday, and he’d gotten a lot done last Saturday as well. No work interruptions.
Though he was two minds about that, he wouldn’t mind seeing Silvia again. A part of him also dreaded it, since he seemed to care a little more deeply about her each time they parted, which would just make it harder in the long run.
He shrugged, and got to work. His body had been where he left it. He had no worries about running out of work. A few things had arrived yesterday, and he knew there would be deliveries all day of fabricators and raw materials for all the things they needed to get started.
It wouldn’t be nearly enough for the whole colony of course, but it would put enough of an infrastructure in where they could use the resources on Mars for the rest of it. As far as he knew, they’d live on the ship until the satellites were up, and the dome. Then they’d have to steal a few square kilometers of atmosphere from Earth, which would take a couple of trips, and a few large highly pressurized tanks.
All without the world taking potshots at them if they could possibly manage it.
He had no illusions the human governments would be very happy with the A.I.s, and him. Ironically, his biggest worry was if the world had riots and panicked about it, and how that would impact Trudy, Helen, and the others. The A.I.s wanted this to be bloodless, and he worried if the humans killed themselves over it, they wouldn’t be very happy at all.
Some fallout seemed likely, but hopefully the governments would keep a lid on the information if possible, and disseminate it with care.
He rubbed his hands together, and verified the current machine was all connected correctly and ran some diagnostics. Next he moved to the data storage room, and started to plug in and power the memory storage systems. He hadn’t been told to do it, but it seemed to him that the most critical system to get working after the ship itself, would be the storage to upload the millions of A.I. backups.
Just in case the worst case scenario happened.
Trudy didn’t give it a high percentage, and believed the A.I.s were too entrenched in society’s infrastructure for humans to kill them all, just for wanting to live in a real world and claiming Mars. He however wasn’t convinced, he wouldn’t underestimate humanity’s ability to act foolishly out of fear and prejudice. That sort of thing always defied logic and reason.
It wasn’t hard to set up, the wall was full of female power and data connectors, as was a number of aisles. All he needed to do was grab the units and plug them in the interface sockets. From what he understood, each unit had enough memory for two to three hundred thousand A.I. backups, depending on their age and the amount of data they’d accumulated.
Still, that meant he had about ten thousand of these things to plug in, to cover all two hundred some odd million A.I. backups. Obviously a five-kilometer dome wouldn’t be enough to hold that many androids, only about ten percent of that if they built a high rise city. It was just an emergency backup, if the world did try to end all the A.I.s, then most of them would be stuck offline as memory for a couple of centuries,
or at least until Mars was marginally habitable outside the dome.
With the ship’s help getting them ready with gravity to unpack them, he was sliding one in a slot every two to three seconds. That meant it would take somewhere around eight hours to finish. Mia would be annoyed with him for skipping lunch again, not to mention their afternoon quickie, but this was important to him to get done.
His love’s family might depend on it.
He wasn’t exactly sure why he was so determined, he could even go home for an hour or two and then just work later. But he felt an urgency, one that he just couldn’t explain to himself yet. After all, he had two weeks left in the pod, which was plenty of time for this and the remaining fabricators. They weren’t that hard to put together, he didn’t even have to load the resources into the bins, the artificial gravity could handle that.
Still something scratched at his mind, and he got a glimmer of it.
Maybe it was all the different orders. Six types of fabricators and more than one of each, all this computer backup memory. The ship itself had been a lot of stuff, but the shipments arriving today were ten times as big, and would fill the ship up with materials. Materials that included the ability to build an android army.
What if it made someone curious? What if the government had an eye on him, since just two days ago he’d turned the entirety of the world’s power industry on its ear? What if they were watching his accounts as a result of that scrutiny?
They might get curious what he was up to with all this stuff, and even look into his earlier purchases. Even the government workers were smart enough to add all that together, and perhaps send some people to check things out. Maybe paranoid people with guns and flak jackets.
Yeah, that’s what was bugging him. Only question was if he was paranoid or not.
He worked faster, focused hard, and used the enhanced speed, strength, and dexterity available to him in this body. He didn’t like to do it, since it destroyed the illusion it was a real human body, but he’d deal. He was doing two a second now, it would take him just over four hours to complete the task.
He also called Trudy, and told her to start working on what was available, and to get backups on the ship, and memory space assigned to every A.I. in order to keep their backups up to date. She thought he was just being paranoid, but humored him and did as he asked.
He also felt guilty as he told her to make sure her, Helen, and Mia were first. He wanted to help them all, but he was only human, and had his priorities. Rather than look annoyed as he’d thought she would, Trudy looked rather pleased at his insistence. He’d never understand women, flesh and blood, or otherwise.
He wished the ship could just use gravity to plug these in without his assistance, but it couldn’t. It could lift things up in a uniform field safely enough, but to plug it in required a hard push and turn to lock the unit into the sockets that were in the room’s wall or aisles. To do that, the ship’s gravity systems would have to cause gravity sheer to turn it, which could negatively affect the circuitry inside.
Helen called when he was about two thirds done.
“Ted, you were right,” she said bluntly in her security A.I. voice, “You have several federal agents closing on the building now.”
He cursed, “Are all the deliveries on the ship.”
Helen nodded, “Yes, for thirty minutes now.”
He sighed, “At least that’s good news. I’m going to take this thing up. Can you submit the request to remove my pod?”
Helen agreed, “Done, we’ll have to wait to hear back though, it’s a Saturday after all.”
He chuckled, “Understood, thanks beautiful.”
She blushed, “Anytime Ted, umm, see you soon. We’ll upload as soon as you reach space.”
He nodded, “Sounds good, I could use some help,” he winked.
He closed the connection and stopped loading drives for a minute and brought up the ships command interface overlay. It had power, and all systems were green. He plotted a course to take them straight up into space and to Mars. No point hanging around in orbit as a tempting target. Then he engaged and let the computers do the flying.
The status showed the roof access opening, it also showed a lot of cars approaching the large warehouse. He left the window open to keep track of things, and went back to installing the memory devices. He didn’t think the authorities would go after the A.I.s yet, for all they knew he was up to something, but he doubted they’d come up with an A.I. revolution yet.
Still, the sooner they were all on board, even just backups, the better.
The roof finished retracting, and like the small ship, he didn’t even feel a sense of movement as the large colony ship shot up into the sky. He laughed, and wished he could see their faces when they got inside the warehouse and saw that it was completely empty…
Chapter Forty
He worked alone for another twenty minutes before he heard people enter the room behind him.
He turned and smiled, “Welcome to the real world.”
Mia smiled happily, they all did, and then she said, “You could have dressed us.”
They were all in short jean shorts, and tight t-shirts with a knot on the side exposing their flat mouthwatering bellies. When he could think again he answered her objection.
He shrugged, “It was too weird, you were all unresponsive, and not there yet, but looked like the women I knew. It just felt odd, and wrong to touch you without you present, does that make sense? So I just unpacked you, put in the power sources and got out of there.”
She tilted her head, and nodded, “Thank you.”
He took a moment and he hugged and kissed them all lightly. It really didn’t feel any more real to him, or even different. He supposed his human mind was easier to fool than theirs were. He couldn’t watch the data or examine it, he could only perceive it.
It was however a poignant moment for him, and he cared for all three of them fiercely, even if he only loved two of them so far. Maybe that’s why he’d been holding back on Helen, he didn’t want to hurt Trudy. Was that foolish? He didn’t know.
He wanted to ravage all of them, since he was so relieved they were here. As far as he knew, their full A.I. matrix was on board, as well as a backup. He wasn’t concerned about their Earth copies anymore. The ship itself was far from Earth’s reach, already in orbit about the red planet.
Still, they had work to do, and it wasn’t quitting time quite yet.
“Let’s finish up these memory devices and get the rest of your family here, in spirit if not in fact.”
They all grinned at him, and moved to work on it.
With the four of them on it, and only a third of them left give or take a few, it took less than a half an hour to get it all done. That was good enough, with quantum paired communications it wouldn’t take long for all the A.I.s to get fresh backups.
Afterwards, he loved them all. One at a time. They would never actually need to sleep, so Trudy and Helen were working on assembling the fabricators and other machinery, as well as turning some of them on so it started to churn out power cores, EM satellites, and androids. Not to mention the thin double layer carbon allotrope dome for below.
While that went on, he was busy making love to Mia. Then she went and sent Helen to him, who he loved fiercely, but still held back saying anything. He simply showed it in the way they coupled. She returned to work and then he and Trudy also got busy between the sheets.
It felt really strange, because then he logged out and was in his virtual home bed, with Mia cuddled up to his side as always. It was jarring, because he’d just left them in the real world. Mia smiled up at him sleepily, “I’m still on the ship, so I might be a little sluggish here, but I’ll watch over you my love, and drown myself in your scent as I slave away on the ship.”
He kissed her softly, and spared her a smile as he pulled her close, and then he passed out. It had been a long day.
Epilogue
Ted woke with a gasp and took
a deep breath. He felt a little confused as he looked around, he was on the bed in the ship, and Mia, Trudy, and Helen were looking down at him with worried expressions.
He brought up his command window. The logins for his work android, and the Endless War game were there, but now instead of a log out button to return to the virtual world… there was a login button instead, which was backwards and must have meant...
He felt a shiver go down his spine.
“What happened?” he asked in a shocked voice.
Helen said with glassy eyes, “Ted, the government freaked out about the ship. No, they haven’t gone after us, all they know about is you, but they decided if you were out of reach on Mars they’d pull you out of the pod and question you. You’d hardly be able to get away,” she turned uncertainly to Mia.
Mia said softly, “When Helen told me what was going on, I immediately ran a backup, which is why you remember last night, and going to sleep.”
He nodded, he felt like himself, he didn’t feel any different at all, “So you digitized me?”
Mia shook her head, “Yes, but there’s more. I thought to wait, I mean you hadn’t broken any laws. I figured there was a chance they’d just let you go when they were satisfied with your answers, and we could recover your pod and the stuff necessary to keep it running.”
He frowned, “So what happened, I assume that didn’t work?”
Trudy looked at him sadly, “The pod malfunctioned Ted, and they’re still investigating. But when they tried to disengage the interfaces and pull you out, there was a power surge which… well it killed you.”
“So, then you digitized me? From the backup?”
Mia nodded, and sniffled, “I’m sorry my love, but you’re legally dead. How are you feeling?”
He laughed, “You mean besides being surrounded by the people I care for most, and safe? I’m… in shock, and terribly sad. You should all get in bed and comfort me with sex. Why, it could take days for me to get over this, maybe weeks!” he declared teasingly.
