The Radioactive Redhead with The Peach-Blonde Bomber

by John Zakour

  I climbed onto the couch and the maidbot brought an ice pack for my jaw.

  “So why exactly did she hit you on the way out?” HARA asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “Partly because she’s jealous of my clients.”

  “Sexy tends to bring that out in people.”

  “Not just of Sexy,” I said. “She’s jealous of all of them. They marginalize her.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  HARA shook her head. “Women,” she whispered.

  She stepped into the kitchen and personally brought me another cup of coffee.

  “My hard light capabilities are getting stronger,” she replied. “I can hold up to half a kilo of weight now. A little more time and I might be able to hit you myself.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “You should get your name on the waiting list.”

  I took the coffee and tried sipping it without moving the ice pack from my jaw but failed miserably, dribbling some onto my shirt. I finally gave up and just put the ice pack on the coffee table.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Electra’s one of the smartest women I’ve ever met. She tough, she’s strong. She has a career. Why would she feel threatened just because I have a good-looking client?”

  “Because we’re more emotional than men,” HARA said. “We use different parts of our brains to process certain stimuli. It’s biology.”

  “That sounds like a huge generalization.”

  “It is,” she nodded. “Not every woman would react that way to your lifestyle.”

  “You don’t,” I said. “I mean, not that you’re a woman but … you know.”

  “I’m as much a woman as I ever was a man, Zach.”

  She reached out and gently stroked the side of my head with her solid light hand, running her fingertips through my hair. There was a bit of an electric tingle to her touch. It felt good.

  “But you’re right. I wouldn’t react that way,” she said. “I haven’t so far, have I?”

  She was in full Rita Hayworth mode now. Her hair was thick and lustrous, messed gently in a subtle, sensual way. Her skin was creamy and smooth to look at, free of blemishes of any kind. And her lips were full and red. For a nano, I thought they were getting larger but then I realized that was wrong. They were just getting closer. She was leaning toward me, lips parted, moving in for a kiss. And I realized then that I actually wanted her to.

  Then her fingers gently slid down my face and touched my jaw where Electra had hit me. It sent a jolt of pain through my body and I jerked back.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Did I hit the bruise?”

  “Yeah, it’s a little tender, I guess.”

  “Tender? You’re lucky that she didn’t break your jaw.”

  “Yeah, well, it could have been worse, right?” I said with a smile. “She could have been wearing a ring.”

  And then it hit me.

  “She’s not wearing a ring,” I said to myself.

  “Who’s not?”

  I felt my face flush as my confusion turned to shame and for the first time in my life, all the between the lines gibberish that women talk about began to make sense.

  “Gates, I’m a louse. I take these cases. I show up on the news with all these other women. How’s she supposed to react to that? What kind of reassurance have I ever given her for that not to bother her?”

  “What?”

  “Sure, I tell her I love her, but what does that mean? DOS it, I’ve never proven it to her. I’ve never shown her any commitment.”

  The seriousness of the nano hit me full force and I got to my feet.

  “I have to go find her.”

  “What do you mean?” HARA asked.

  “Electra,” I said. “I have to get her back before it’s too late.”

  “Zach, she broke your couch. She hit you in the jaw.”

  “She had to,” I said. “I gave her no choice.”

  “How? Your couch attacked her? Zach, you’re acting crazy. Well, more crazy than normal.”

  “I love her, HARA!”

  “You mean to tell me that you still love her even after all the grief she’s given you?”

  I grabbed my coat and hat from the rack and headed quickly toward the door.

  “There’s nothing else she can do, HARA,” I said. “She gives me grief because she loves me.”

  “Well, what about me then?” HARA shouted as she rose to her feet. “Don’t I give you grief?”

  The sound of her voice made me freeze in mid-stride. There was more pure emotion in those final five words than I’d ever heard HARA, or HARV for that matter, utter before. And I realized that my world was getting much more complicated than I ever wanted.

  34

  I stepped back into the living room. HARA was still standing by the couch, her eyes were wide, a mix of confusion and disbelief. Awkward does not to begin to accurately describe the nano.

  “HARA …”

  “I just don’t understand, Zach.”

  “Quite honestly, neither do I,” I said. “That’s the way love is, I guess.”

  “Please don’t go into Bogey mode on me now.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s all I know. You’re a wonderful woman, HARA, even without the flesh and blood. You’re a geek’s wet dream and you’re one helluva sidekick. You’re more Bacall than I am Bogey. I mean that.”

  “But you still love Electra?”

  “This isn’t about Electra.”

  “What’s it about then?”

  I paused for a nano, weighing my options. I’d been walking too many tightropes in my relationships of late; avoiding the real issues and hiding behind smaller, more trivial things. And by doing so, I had royally messed everything up. I decided then I wouldn’t do that anymore. It was time to be honest.

  “It’s about HARV,” I said. “The truth is that I miss him. He was annoying and condescending and more of a nuisance than any machine should ever be, but he was my friend, HARA. Gates, he was my best friend. You’re wonderful and you’re sexy and you do great snappy patter and innuendo, but, I’m sorry, it’s not the same. I miss HARV and … and I want him back.”

  HARA refused to speak at first. She refused to look at me or even move. For a nano, I thought her hologram was stuck.

  “HARA?”

  She turned to me, caught my gaze with hers for the briefest of nanos and then swallowed hard and turned away. The tension in the room was so thick, it was like breathing Jell-o.

  “I don’t know how to take this, Zach,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion. “I need to think about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “I’ll be here,” I said.

  She nodded and bit her lip slightly in what appeared to be an attempt to hold back emotion.

  “Good-bye Zach.”

  Her hologram dissolved slowly and she disappeared. Then the skin around my left eye went numb and my wrist communicator went dead. HARA was gone.

  I was alone.

  35

  Talk about having girl troubles!

  HARA out of my head left me a little more empty than I thought it should. It also left me without any way of piloting my hovercraft (just in case you’ve forgotten, I have a thing about heights). So I rolled out my old school transportation: a 1954 baby blue Kaiser Darrin. I know what you’re thinking, that I’m masking my insecurities about the women in my life by fixating on my car. Well, you’re probably right, but I didn’t have time right then to properly analyze myself.

  My heart told me to go out and find Electra, but HARA’s disappearance seemed the greater danger (and one where I could enlist some help) so my first stop was Randy’s lab. Needless to say, Randy didn’t take the news well.

  “What do you mean HARA’s gone?”

  “I mean she’s gone,” I said (for the third time, I think). “She’s not in my head and my wrist interface is dead.”


  “She’s not here either,” Randy said, checking his own computer. “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing, really. I just said that I missed HARV.”

  “What?” He fell back in his chair, almost tipping over but he caught himself. “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know, it was just part of the natural flow of the conversation.”

  “What kind of conversation were you having?”

  “Well, it started out about Electra and me and then it sort of morphed into HARA and me and then we sort of almost, um, kissed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Randy said, very calmly. “Did you say that you kissed HARA?”

  “Almost, yeah. It was sort of a mutual thing.”

  “You mean HARA. The holographic computer interface for your computer. You kissed her.”

  “I didn’t actually kiss her.”

  “But you were going to.”

  “She started it,” I said.

  “Zach, do you know what you’ve done? I mean aside from bringing the man and machine paradigm to a new moral low?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what!” Randy shouted. “That’s how bad this is! First of all, the interface in your head is a permanent access module to HARA’s systems. She shouldn’t have been able to turn it off. It’s the same with my system here. She shouldn’t be able to break contact. She shouldn’t be able to leave. But she’s gone!”

  “Where do you think she went?”

  “That’s the problem, she could be anywhere. It’s like she’s not just a computer anymore. She’s a consciousness and she could be anywhere.”

  “Well, that’s good then, right? She’s evolved.”

  Randy shook his head as though he were talking to a child and turned back to his computer keyboard.

  “I did some searching into HARV’s systems since we last spoke,” he said. “I found that he was doing some interesting side projects that were outside his program parameters. He was researching society, human culture, human history, psychology, and human/technology interaction in general.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think it bodes well. Do you know that he wrote a joke?”

  “A joke?”

  “I found it in a more accessible region of memory so it’s relatively new. It was probably written shortly before he became HARA. ‘Why are there no round boxes at the Archimedes Bakery?’”

  “What’s the punch line?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Randy replied. “It was hidden elsewhere in his system. Probably somewhere deeper, possibly encrypted. I think he wanted to protect the punch line.”

  “Oh yeah, you have to,” I said. “The worst thing you can do is tip the punch line. The whole joke’s worthless if you do that. Who’s Archimedes?”

  “An ancient Greek mathematician.”

  “Kind of an esoteric topic for a joke.”

  “Not for HARV.”

  “Okay, so he wrote a joke. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Comedy is dangerous, Zach.”

  “No, comedy is hard. Love is dangerous.”

  “Not from a psychological standpoint. Humor is a mask for insecurities and other psychological problems. This was a cry for help. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he became HARA shortly after this.”

  “Randy, I think you’re blowing this way out of proportion.”

  “HARA is quite likely the most powerful computer on the planet, Zach. Remember all those computers that HARV hacked into for you over the years? Well, HARA can do that too, without either of us telling her to. Do you realize what kind of havoc she can wreak if she chooses to?”

  “Do you think she’d do anything dangerous?”

  “Have you ever known a scorned woman to act irrationally?”

  “Randy!”

  “No, seriously, I’m asking because I haven’t known that many women and I don’t think I’ve ever actually scorned one. But I’ve heard they can be unstable. Is that true?”

  “Well, yeah. But no more then men, I guess.”

  “How did HARA seem to you when you last saw her?”

  I thought of the look of confusion and pain on her face when I told her that I loved Electra. I thought of her biting her lip in an effort to hold back tears when I told her how much I missed HARV. Only one word came to mind.

  “Heartbroken.”

  Randy ran his long fingers through his shock of red hair out of frustration and let out a very long, agonized sigh.

  “I’ve been working on some code,” he said. “I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to use it, but I think you better have it handy, just in case.”

  “What kind of code?”

  “It’s a virus,” he said, holding out his hand. “Give me your wrist interface.”

  “Randy?”

  “Give me your wrist interface, Zach!”

  I took the interface off my arm and handed it to Randy. He removed a memory card from the back and slid it into his own computer console. Then he pressed the download button. A download meter appeared on his screen, slowly moving from red to green.

  “The virus is designed to attack the higher functions of an artificial intelligence, surrounding it with firewalls and permanently wiping out the memory. It’s like a combination of Ebola and brain cancer for computers.”

  “You want me to kill HARA?”

  “No, I don’t, but I think you should be prepared in case we need to.”

  “Can’t you just say kaflooey or whatever and take her off-line?”

  “She’s not in the system anymore,” he said. “The fail-safe will no longer work. That was only designed for short term stoppage anyway. It wouldn’t hold her long. She may even have defenses against it by now.”

  “So what do we do?”

  The computer signaled that the download was complete. Randy took the card from the computer and reinserted it into the wrist interface. He touched a few controls on the unit’s control pad and then handed it back to me.

  “I’ve downloaded the virus into your wrist interface,” he said. “HARA probably won’t stay away from you for long. She’ll reestablish contact through the interface at some point. If, during that time, she seems like she’s becoming dangerous, you’ll just need to hit the download button to inject the virus into her system. It will immobilize her and then systematically destroy her memory.”

  “Randy …”

  “Remember, the sign that she’s completely broken free of her parameters is when she refuses to follow a direct command. That’s when she becomes a danger.”

  “Randy, I’m not going to kill HARV.”

  Randy’s expression was more serious than I’d ever seen it. His face was wan, his eyes were nearly lifeless with resignation, and his shoulders drooped as though they were weighted down with a kiloton albatross.

  “I hope you get the chance to make that choice, Zach.”

  36

  I’d had no luck all morning reaching Carol on her communicator so I took a gamble and tried calling Sexy at the Elite, hoping that Carol was with her. Unfortunately, the only person I could get on the vid was Smiles.

  “What is it, Johnson?”

  “I need to talk Carol, Smiles. Where is she?”

  His face was hard to see on the wrist interface, which is what I was reduced to using for mobile communication since the Kaiser didn’t have an onboard computer. It didn’t help matters that I was driving during the call so I had to split my attention between the interface and the road.

  “She’s unavailable at the nano,” Smiles responded smugly. “I’ll have her call you back.”

  “I want to speak with her now, Smiles. Put her on or I’ll drag her out from wherever you’re holding her when I get there.”

  “She’s helping Sexy meditate,” he said. “Sexy was quite tense after what you put her through last night and this morning.”

  “Oh yeah, last night. I guess I must have missed you at the party. Too bad you
left before all the trouble started.”

  “I was exhausted and decided to call it an early night.”

  “Carol, too?” I asked.

  “I don’t think that’s any of your concern,” Smiles said.

  “Oh, I think it is,” I snarled. “Carol is my employee. You taking her away from Sexy without letting me know put Sexy in danger last night.”

  “I see, so keeping Sexy safe from a couple of holovision actors was too much for you to handle on your own?”

  “Stay away from Carol, Smiles,” I snarled again. “I can’t make myself any clearer than that.”

  “That’s something you should discuss directly with Carol, I’m afraid,” he said. “She and I are developing a business relationship, which I believe she is well within her rights to do.”

  “You mean the kind of business relationship that you have with Sexy?” I asked. “Don’t even think about using Carol that way.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Johnson.”

  “I know all about it, Smiles. I know what you do to Sexy.”

  His smile faltered a little bit as a splash of concern dappled his face.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The meditation chamber, the ambient radiation, the psionic augmentation.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He was starting to squirm now. The smile had all but left his face, which was no easy feat, and I could almost see the beads of sweat forming on his brow. I had to admit, I was enjoying it.

  “Sexy’s a psi,” I said. “You know it and you’ve been using her abilities to sell her music from day one.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Say whatever you want, but both you and I know it’s true.”

  “People buy Sexy’s music because of the beauty of her voice and the artistry of her songs.”

  “Sexy couldn’t hit a clear note with a sledgehammer. Her music’s bio-waste and you know it. The only reason anyone buys her music at all is because you’re using her psionic abilities to brainwash the audience.”

  Smiles’ grin reappeared on his face This time with extra smug and the corners of his mouth went so wide that my monitor wasn’t big enough to contain his cheeks. It was the type of grin that a cobra gives a paralyzed mouse just before he swallows it. The grin of knowing that the prey’s fate is sealed.