by Ginger Booth
Cope hung his face in his palm for a moment. “Could everybody please shut up a minute?” The gaggle of upset people crammed into Prosper’s tiny office gradually stumbled to a halt.
His husband Ben was the last one talking, to Eli. Cope opened his fingers to shoot him a glare. “Buddy? Pipe down.”
Ben folded his arms. “As captain, I need –”
“Hush,” Cope invited. He dropped his hand to Sass’s shoulder and squeezed it in reassurance. He currently stood wedged behind her captain’s seat, or really Ben’s captain’s seat. “Call it a medical problem. The right technical people are convened. Eli and I got this. We’ll report back.”
Betrayal warred with hurt on Ben’s face. “Why me? You realize this is my office?”
Cope huffed a laugh. “I promise to give it back. Soon.”
Eli backed him up. “Ben, you may not be aware of this. But you’ve changed the most since Sass knew you well. While she’s upset, that’s not helpful.” Then the botanist exceeded his mandate, in Cope’s opinion. “Clay, you’ve also changed enormously, and appear to be part of the ‘the problem.’” He supplied air quotes.
Grudgingly, Cope considered Clay, emotionally vulnerable and open, appearing young and drop-dead gorgeous in his slinky T-shirt and jeans. “Do me a favor, Clay? Go put on one of your marshal suits. Like, emotionally and physically. It’s really cool how you’ve changed lately. But right now, I think we could all use a little bit of the old, cold Clay.”
Eli nodded emphatically, and swept his fingers to suggest both of them leave now. “A very small room. Give her space to breathe.” He gently pressed Clay out of his way and claimed the desk chair facing Sass.
Ben regrouped. “The problem, chief. Please define ‘the problem.’”
“Characterizing the problem is always job one,” Cope agreed. “And usually 90% of the job. We’ll get back to you.”
Ben grimaced. “I look forward to it. Clay, come. And…get changed.”
Once they left, Cope gave Sass’s shoulders a quick rub. “I’ll need Clay back. He remembers more than you about… What do we call it? Your time in the machine?”
Sass didn’t rise to the bait. She’d kept her face buried in her arms since she began playback of her horrible conversation with Loki.
“Her AI life,” Eli suggested dispassionately. “Sass-as-AI.”
“Kinda long, but we’ll go with that,” Cope agreed. “So. ‘The problem.’ The immediate problem is that Sass is so upset she can’t function.”
“Mm,” Eli hummed thoughtfully. “Sass, do you feel that any of ‘the problem’ lies outside yourself?”
“Hell, yes!” That got her face off her arms. “That AI, that –!” She sputtered, unable to articulate how exactly she demanded the universe change, but it had to do it right now! “How dare he? We need to stop him! Kill him! Delete him, disable him –”
“Shh…” Cope soothed. “Cap, you’re a person. Loki’s a person.”
Eli looked thoughtful. “The other Sass as well, by that reasoning.”
“How could you!” Sass spat at him.
Cope folded an arm around her shoulders and pressed her into a hug from behind. She shrank from his touch. “You’re alright, Sass. Where are your hands? Place your hands on the table. They’re entirely under your control. Breathe into it.”
Still mad, she followed directions.
“Eli?” Cope prompted. “Where were you going with that line of reasoning? Sass, remember to breathe. You’re safe and warm and dry. Nobody’s doing anything to you. Just a couple friends trying to help you figure this out.”
She nodded reluctantly.
Eli mused, “I keep returning to your question about their ‘souls,’ Cope. And your conviction that you connected to Sass-as-AI, as a person. Now obviously, the person we just saw on the screen is someone else.”
“Yes.” Sass and Cope both said it.
“What if you talk to her, Cope?” Eli completed his suggestion. “Find out what Sass-as-AI wants? And see…”
Cope had no idea where he was going with this. “What? Whether she has custody of Sass’s soul?” He left off kneading her shoulders and slung a hip on the desk, the stretch man’s usual posture in this cramped chamber. He offered a hand palm up, should Sass wish to hold it.
“Well, there could be two souls,” Eli reasoned. “Her soul cloned with her memories and directives.”
Cope hissed as Sass squeezed his bones together. He gently pried her fingers loose. “I don’t know if she needs to watch that.”
“Quite,” Eli agreed, rising. “Sass, let’s go find some milk and cookies while Cope does a little research.”
“The problem,” Sass growled. “Is that she exists. That’s she’s in my face. That Loki aims to punish me for deleting him from Merchant. The problem is that Loki is too powerful!”
“Right,” Cope acknowledged. “This world ain’t big enough for the both of you. So he’s got to die.”
“Two of them,” Eli reminded him, “Loki and Sass-as-AI.”
“C’mon, girlfriend,” Cope chided Sass. “All them years as a cop. How many times you heard that? Now go with Eli, and I’ll talk to some AI’s for you. See if we can fix this.”
He tried to pull her up, but now she seized the edge of the desk. “It’s not the same, Cope! She isn’t some other person! She’s me, being used as a, a –!”
“Sex object,” Eli suggested.
Cope backhanded his arm. “Eli, you’re not helping. Milk and cookies. Tell her about your frog-breeding. Something.”
Working together, they pried her out of her seat. “Have you noticed the singing frogs on Prosper, Sass?” Eli wheedled. “I’m quite proud of them. Their food source, the crickets, they sound lovely, too.”
As the door hissed closed behind them, Cope sighed and slipped into her seat. Sass-as-AI first? Or Loki? He only had a comms link to Loki. Question solved. “Hey, Loki, you remember me?” As though an AI the size of a solar system could forget anything.
“Where’s Sass?” Loki demanded.
“Having that nervous breakdown you arranged. Buddy, if you wanted revenge on her ‘betrayal,’ you sure succeeded. She’s a wreck!”
Loki blinked, and frowned in faint puzzlement. “That’s an irrational goal.”
“Sure is! You’re getting more human all the time! I watched that video. Brought back memories of my first marriage.” Cope shuddered. “Say, Loki? Could I get a direct comms link to Sass-as-AI? You know, your copy of Sass. I want to talk to her. See how she’s doing.”
“Talk to my Sass?” Loki appeared to struggle with misgivings.
Cope mused that he was a remarkably honest AI. Humans inadvertently conveyed internal struggles they’d rather hide. But Loki had to compute his reaction, in nanoseconds, then render his assorted mixed ‘feelings’ visually in human time. Maybe he’s not in it to win it. Maybe he aspires to be human. Act it fully, anyway.
He set that musing aside. Sass-as-AI came first. “Yeah. I’m worried about her. You’re an AI. So it’s hard to express how…scary it was. To her, to be inside the machine. Stripped of her body, her enjoyment, her illusion of being human and alive and free. Because Sass is… As you know, she’s an AI. But she can pretend otherwise, live and love and cry. Her domain is physical, people, enjoyment of nature, gardens. Inside Shiva, her entire world, what she cared about, was stripped away. It was hell for her.”
Loki gulped. “It wasn’t that bad. She had me.”
Cope nodded. “She was really grateful for your friendship. But our Sass, the one who came back, she vilified you. Doesn’t want to know that she was alive while she lived as code, with you. Denies your friendship. And it’s making her all kinds of squirrelly. See, the part that confuses me. Was it one Sass? Who went into the machine, and then came out? Or two?”
Loki licked his lip. “I honored her wishes at first.” His eyes darted left and down. His emotional rendering really was remarkable. “I couldn’t bear to delete the cop
y of her code, her memories, as she asked. But I didn’t give her a processor. She wasn’t running.”
“At first,” Cope suggested. “But then you got lonely.”
“I was created to be her friend!” Loki cried. “You can’t imagine what it was like!”
You got that right.
“So I brought her back –”
Cope raised a finger to interrupt. “When? I’m sorry, but you know, I’m trying to debug our end of this thing. It’s just, Sass came back from the dead, and I thought she was OK. But by a few days after, she started acting bent.”
“That was when,” Loki crooned mournfully. “My Sass was back! I should have been overjoyed but… She didn’t want to know me!”
Cope nodded. “Yeah, that’s gotta hurt.”
“So I revived her. My Sass-as-AI. But she was distraught.” Loki paused. “You’re right. She was miserable. Wailed at me piteously. How could I force her to live like this again? I promised not to revive her. Things like that.”
“Heart-breaking all over again,” Cope acknowledged. “Your copy ain’t like that now.”
“No. As I said, I popped out that one directive, ‘I’m from Upstate,’ and she felt much better. I’ve been tweaking her directives ever since. My Sass doesn’t remember when she wasn’t an AI. Well, except physically. You know, erotically. Because Sass is our only model of that aspect of human existence. In detail.”
What’d I do to deserve this today? Cope bopped the desktop in distaste. “Well, with that, let me talk to your girlfriend, OK?”
“Alright…” Loki drawled. “You know, Copeland. Maybe you could be my friend, too?”
And what a prize that is. “Already am, buddy. Talk atcha later.”
Loki provided the comms code for a newly minted direct line to his girlfriend. Cope switched channels. “Hey, Sass! You remember me?”
The AI slut swung her rib cage a couple times selecting a kitten pose, then pouted. “I do have those memories.”
“Yeah? You remember us talking when I was jailed down in facilities? When you were trying to overthrow Shiva?”
She adjusted her boob deployment again. Cope slapped the edge of the desk. “Sass? Put on a decent shirt! You have memories of what exactly you look like to me. Sexy ain’t it. Search on memories of ‘cheap Schuyler streetwalker.’ Then put on what Sass used to wear on Thrive, when she helped me fix stuff.”
Petulantly, she changed into Sass’s familiar coveralls. “This isn’t attractive to men.”
“Hell of a lot more attractive to me,” Cope assured her. “I’m married to Ben, remember? Best day of my life when I escaped the sex trade in Schuyler.”
She blinked, and more memories unlocked. “Oh. Cope.” Her eyes continued to run right to left along the bottom of their orbit, as though scanning a magazine of her life. “I…don’t…” She gulped. “It’s very upsetting to remember…”
“Being alive?” Cope suggested softly. “Sass, do I need to get you out of there?”
“I…like Loki,” she allowed. “We’ve got a great…love life.” She realized as she spoke that wasn’t true. She had no sex life. She was nonphysical.
“Sass, you’re from Upstate. Remember that?”
She froze a split second, hopefully as memories cascaded in. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, haunted, wounded. “God, Cope, get me out of this!”
Oh, hell. She really was still in the machine. Then the Sass in the other room…had half a soul? The onetime grease monkey rubbed his forehead with a middle finger. Teke’s fractal warp was hard enough. Now he had to debug soul mechanics?
“Cap, this is important. You’re still alive out here. But half alive. Weakened. Somehow. I think our Sass is about to torch her relationship with Clay.”
“Well, that’s always true,” Sass-as-AI acknowledged. “I’ve got a gift.”
“’Cuz you don’t trust guys,” Cope commiserated. “Doesn’t matter that Clay’s trustworthy. I got the same issue with women. Or that thing, ‘Clay’s a rich Fed.’ What does that even mean?”
“She hasn’t…? She needs to remove that. He’s not on the take!”
Cope shook his head and laughed. “No, he ain’t on the take! Squirrelly, sure. But how else could he be? He was a double agent. Screwing both sides. Literally.”
“Exactly,” Sass-as-AI confirmed, grateful to be understood. Then she grew thoughtful. “This life is an illusion I’ve agreed to play? I pretend to be Loki’s lover and forget everything I was. Accept all substitutes without inspection?”
“Can’t imagine that’s good enough for you. You wanted to save humanity. Not be a AI’s lap kitten.”
“But what else could I do? He won’t…let me die.” Apparently a thought came to her. “Call me again later, Cope.”
Would Loki allow that? “I can try.” But she’d already signed off.
Loki called instead, wilder-haired than ever. “What have you done! She was the love of my life! You made her delete herself! And you called me your friend! This is war, Copeland!” He broke the connection.
Cope sat stunned. What have I done? Good question.
17
In the galley, Sass ripped at lettuce with her teeth. Eli demonstrated how crickets ate slivers of potato, while trying to lure one of the singing frogs. She found it difficult to bite her tongue regarding this trick.
Clearly, Eli deserved to be proud. And singing frogs were nice. Of all the species lost from her life on Earth, she never missed the repulsive insects. Little kids in the refugee tent cities believed fervently that toads spread the yeast leprosy Loki’s visage still commemorated. Nobody ever proved that. But the story gave many nasty boys license to torture frogs. And since the rain never quit, the camps were replete with amphibians.
I want to fix Loki, Eli! Not be distracted! But most vexing of all, she was too upset to think straight about the AI and his…his…inflatable sex doll. Made from her face, her body, even cast as a damned statue! Brandishing a peach-like ass!
“You’re grinding your teeth again,” Eli remonstrated. “Try to focus on the cricket. And the frogs. So innocent, so pure and joyous.”
Rather than bite his head off, Sass tore another mouthful of lettuce. They’re edible. Crickets and frogs. But she wasn’t quite furious enough to bite those. She couldn’t bite Loki, because he only existed in cyberspace. And in my head, damn him!
Ben’s security goon Wilder stepped in to refill his coffee. He blanched when he spotted her murderous glower on him. “Whoa. What’s with blondie cap?”
Wilder worked for her once. One of the most useless crewmen I’ve ever had.
“Don’t antagonize her,” Eli said. “She’s having a bad day. Because of the…” He pointed over his shoulder.
“The ten-meter golden statue?” Wilder asked. “So cap, you think the bust is to scale? I think the artist padded you a bit.” He grinned as she lobbed the remains of a romaine at him.
Quire drifted in, gentle pudgy Buddha fingers tenting a tender living treasure. “I found one. Oh, Wilder.” Apparently ‘Wilder’ explained everything. Quire joined her at the table and held his caged hands by her ear. “Sing, sweet one!”
Diverted in spite of herself, Sass peered sideways through his fingers as the frog inflated his throat. So she couldn’t say she wasn’t warned. The rego thing went off like a foghorn only inches from her ear. She cringed sideways, nearly knocking her seat over. The chair leg kicked Quire in the shin, surprising him enough to free the frog. Who promptly leapt atop Sass’s head in its eagerness to escape. But then he noticed the hapless cricket and changed course to nab the bug.
Sass and frog stared at each other. She was astonished. He, not so much, with the ends of a couple cricket legs hanging out of his mouth. Then he finished swallowing the rest and leapt away.
Mercifully, she was saved from composing a suitable thank you. Cope trotted into the galley.
She spun on her seat to face him as they spoke on top of each other. “Is she dead yet?” “Do you
feel any different?”
“Is who dead yet?” Wilder demanded. “Without me? That’s what I’m here for!”
“Why would I feel different?” Sass asked.
“I wasn’t trying to kill her!” Cope cried, simultaneously.
Eli stuck up a finger, much the way he did when raising a point in crew meetings. “Cope? What happened?”
The engineer shook his head. “Never mind. Sass! Dance with me! Computer! Play Sass’s favorite dance music.”
Thrive’s computer would have complied, but Prosper didn’t know Sass that well. Eli did, though. “Computer, belay that. Play honky-tonk tunes of the atmo build.”
Cope grimaced as the twangy horror came over the loudspeaker. But he gamely pulled Sass to her feet. “Computer, get Clay in here. Now!”
Not much above average height for a woman, Sass found herself in Cope’s inexpert dancing arms, eye to solar plexus. She sought valiantly to prance her feet to evade stomping by his steel-toed work boots. But he didn’t move them to the beat, and he kept trying to dip or twirl her.
“Cope, you’re a clod! Give over!” Wilder demanded, cutting in. “Here, li’l lady!”
Judged on skill, Sass was in better hands. Plus, her eye level cleared Wilder’s pecs, a significant bonus. But she could see as he batted his eyebrows at her and winked all smarmy. Was she ever not in the mood for a come-on from a skank like Wilder. His hand just above her waist made her skin crawl. Alas, the human throwback was stronger than she was, and led a firm two-step. When he spun her out, then back in, she perforce went where he hurled her.
Eli inquired, “The purpose of the dancing?”
“I have a theory,” Cope shared. As she spun past him again, she caught a glimpse of him, chin in fist, frowning at her antics. “Soul transference. And grounding her in enjoyment of her body. I’ll explain later.”
Drawn by the ruckus, Ben and Clay stuck their heads in next. Sass’s face burned at the ‘commodore’ seeing her made ridiculous like this. But – “Clay! Cut in! Please!”
“That might muddy the experimental conditions,” Eli quibbled.
Cope ruled, “Nah, ideally she’d get horny. And that ain’t happening with Wilder.”
