by Scott Baron
“How the hell did you do that, Daze? That thing just cut through metal.”
Daisy spun the sword around and offered it to her sister, handle-first.
“This was created for me on Dark Side. It’s a living sword that feeds on organic material.”
“Trippy.”
“Yeah. I call him Stabby McStabberton. Stabby for short.”
Sarah chuckled and shook her head at her ridiculous sister, then swung the sword in a short arc.
“Cool, Daze. Kinda like a ninja.”
“Yes!”
“No! You’re still not a ninja!” Sarah countered with a chuckle. “But I wonder, Daze. Can she make him sharp like you can? She’s family, and close, genetically.”
“I don’t know,” Daisy replied.
“What was I saying this time?” Sarah asked.
“Wondering if you could make Stabby work.”
“It’s a sword. Anyone can make it work.”
“That’s what you think. Take a swing at that bench over there,” Daisy directed her sister.
“Okay, but it’ll just cut through it, like you did with the door.”
Sarah swung the blade, but its dull edge bounced off.
“Huh,” she said, carefully feeling the blade. “Daisy, this thing is dull.”
“Yep. That’s what she was asking about.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s keyed to my DNA, basically. Here, I’ll show you,” she said, carefully taking the sword from her sister.
Stabby, for his part, had become increasingly attuned to her desires, and would even keep his blade dull when Daisy needed, like when she wanted to make sure she didn’t cut her sister’s new arm off.
Daisy gently swung the sword and lopped off a piece of the bench with ease.
“How the hell?”
“Fatima and Chu designed it. Grown from my own bone and responsive to my touch. For anyone else, it's a dull club. For me, it’s got a blade sharp down to a molecular level.”
“Wicked cool.”
“Seriously, right?”
“Where do I get one of those?”
“We’ll have to see if they can make you one once we catch up to the right timeline. We’re sisters, after all, so you have pretty much the same bone genetics as I do.”
“I hate to break up your fun, but you––the other you––are going to be running through this place any minute now.”
“Head Sarah’s right. We need to get moving.”
“You did not just call me that.”
Totally did. At least there aren’t any boys around, Daisy said with a chuckle.
They were about to leave when Daisy stopped in her tracks.
“What is it, Daze?”
“Hang on. Something’s not right.”
She slowed her thoughts and let the space tell her what was different. A minute later she saw it.
“That statue.”
“The ugly one?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t there before. It was over here,” she said, tapping the floor with her foot. “That’s what saved me when the bomb––of course.”
“Of course, what?”
“Come here, Sarah. Give me a hand.”
“Redecorating? At a time like this?” she joked as they hefted the massive sculpture with their genetically-enhanced limbs.
“There,” Daisy said once it was in place. “Thanks. I couldn’t have moved it on my own. This thing saved my life. If it hadn’t been there, the blast would have torn me apart. It seemed so out of place at the time. But now––”
“Now it makes sense why it was there,” Sarah finished the thought. “Maybe you really are your own guardian angel, Daze.”
“Maybe,” she replied, just as the first sounds of conflict reached their ears. “Shit, it’s starting. Come on! We’ve gotta get out of here!”
Daisy and Sarah bolted out the rear doors just as her other self ran in from the streets. She knew what was going to happen, and felt confident they weren’t needed, so they hightailed it back to Freya to pull clear of the area and monitor from a safe distance.
“Once the fight’s over I want to check in on Dark Side,” she said, watching the video feeds as they quietly distanced themselves.
“Hey, Daisy?” Freya asked once they were relocated. “I was wondering, if you could save Sarah, maybe we can also save Joshua.”
“He’s the Colorado Springs AI you told me about, right?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah. Freya’s got something of a crush on him.”
“Daisy!” Freya blurted.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But you know we can’t interfere with fixed events.”
“But you saved Sarah. That was a fixed event.”
“It was, but it wasn’t,” Daisy replied. “All we had was a recording of a few seconds of the event, not what happened after.”
“But you didn’t know that it wouldn’t make a paradox. So maybe Joshua’s the same.”
“He died in a nuclear blast, Freya. No one escapes that. Not even the most brilliant and connected AI ever born. He dies, and that’s all there is to it. Cheyenne Mountain has to blow, and there’s nothing we can do to stop that from happening.”
“A little harsh, Daze.”
But she needs it. A little brutal reality now will save her a lot of heartbreak later. Joshua dies, Sis, and much as I wish he didn’t, there’s nothing we can do to stop that.
“I get it, Daisy,” Freya said, dejectedly.
“I’m sorry, kiddo. I really am. But as much as you think outside the box, this time, it can’t be done.”
Daisy and Sarah interpreted Freya’s silence as a depressive acceptance. In reality, the brilliant AI took those last words to heart. As an intellect that not only thought, but essentially lived outside the box, she found herself forming a ridiculous, yet somehow feasible, hypothesis.
The mighty ship was quiet as they flew back to the vacuum of space.
Chapter Fourteen
Dark Side was abuzz with activity as Tamara and the others scrambled in preparation for an impromptu rescue mission. Within just a few hours of Alma, the mad AI’s, attempt to infect Dark Side Base they had devised a plan and swung into action. Not long thereafter they were already barreling toward Earth’s atmosphere, while Freya silently followed.
“Damn, they’re really hauling ass, Daisy,” Sarah noted. “And that little ship––”
“His name’s Bob.”
“Yeah, Bob. He’s got some moves.”
“His pilot helps out.”
“Tandem system, then?”
“Either can pilot, but yeah, Donovan and Bob usually share the work. Each has a few skills the other lacks, so it makes for a really symbiotic relationship.”
Freya, despite her greater size, was invisible to the smaller ship’s scans, and she would periodically push a piece of debris on a similar trajectory to help mask the non-stealth ship’s entry into the atmosphere.
Daisy felt a swell of emotion as she watched her friends race so recklessly to Earth to come to her aid. Even Tamara, with whom she was still on slightly off terms at this point in her timeline, was giving the rescue mission her all.
The buffeting of the winds on Bob’s hull at those speeds were making him judder and shimmy erratically as he bee-lined for Los Angeles. Nevertheless, he held course, somehow, powering downward to the source of the signal from the stolen comms device.
“It’s going to be a rough touchdown for that craft at that speed,” Freya said as Bob neared the ground.
“He can handle it,” Daisy replied. “But their dust off is going to be hairy.”
“Quick burn?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah. And with missiles targeting them on the way out as well.”
‘If they survive the landing.”
“They will,” she said, confidently.
Sure enough, the team––her friends––poured out of the craft as soon as it touched down, racing into the underground tunnel network even as t
heir ride blasted off behind them.
“Now is when they come and save my ass,” Daisy said, remembering the event like it was yesterday.
The little ship increased speed as he flew farther from the drop-off point, but he was still not moving as fast as he needed to, Daisy noticed. Freya saw it too.
“I don’t know how Bob managed to evade them. He’s not really built for atmospheric maneuvering,” Freya said.
Cal’s words sprang to Daisy’s mind.
“An EM burst,” she said.
“What?”
“An EM burst.”
“I heard what you said, Daze. What I meant was how do you propose––”
“Freya,” Daisy interrupted. “There’s a power generation facility on the outskirts, correct?”
“Yeah, there are a few, actually.”
“I want you to target the one with the lowest likelihood of knocking down any of Cal’s systems. Can you do that?”
“Are you really asking me if I can hit a stationary, defenseless target?”
“More sass.”
I’ll deal with it later.
“Just target it and fire, Freya.”
Donovan and Bob were running with their engines on a full-burn, pushing hard for the relative safety of space, but the missiles launched would be locking on them in seconds.
“Freya, there’s no time to wait!”
“Don’t rush me!”
The stealth ship’s smaller cannon powered up and fired a series of blasts in rapid succession. The explosion that resulted a little way across town was not terribly massive, but the electromagnetic blast emitted by the impacts was powerful enough––just barely––to knock out the missiles’ guidance systems.
It wasn’t a permanent fix, by any stretch, but the time it took for the missiles to reboot their tracking systems and scan for a target was just long enough to allow Bob to slip through their grasp and into space, just as Freya had calculated it would.
“How did you know that would work, Daze?” Sarah asked.
“Something Cal said when I first met him. Something about an EM blast masking their escape.”
“Which we just provided them.”
“Exactly.”
Daisy watched as the little ship sped to safety high above.
“Find us a quiet spot, Freya. We need to sit down and really evaluate the things that are about to happen."
“Evaluate?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah. A lot is about to go down, Sis, and now that there are two of us––”
“Ahem.”
“Three of us.”
“Hey!”
“Yes, Freya, you count as well. Four of us. I was just mentioning the human contingent at the moment.”
“Yeah, no one’s forgetting you, hon. You’re a key part of the team.”
“That she is,” Daisy agreed. “Just one thing, though. We’re more than just a team. We’re a family.”
It was beneath the crystal-clear waters of Lake Tahoe that Freya eventually settled down. She didn’t need to submerge herself to remain invisible to the Ra’az and their loyalists, but she found it relaxing, gently floating in the water.
Always the curious one, when she had learned that the now-clear waters of the lake had, at the end of humanity’s days, seen their famous visibility reduced by more than half due to rising temperatures and algae blooms, she knew she would have to come see it for herself.
Now, after centuries without mankind meddling with nature, the waters had reclaimed their former clarity, returning to the pristine state they were in long before humans had ever placed their muddy feet on the lake’s shoreline.
After a day of monitoring the time-delayed communications between Cal and Dark Side Base, the sisters and their youthful ship had decided on a plan of action for the soon-to-unfold events.
“So it really does seem like we’re affecting events in ways we were always meant to,” Sarah said. “And if that’s the case, whatever we decide to do should line up with the future timeline.”
“Yes and no,” Freya interjected. “It’s like a lottery. Sure, you may be destined to win it, but you still have to buy a ticket.”
“How do you know about lotteries? They haven’t existed in hundreds of years,” Sarah asked.
“I like to read a lot,” she replied. “But what I was saying is that you still have to go through the motions. I mean, like, just like you’re supposed to make things happen and doing so doesn’t cause a paradox, then maybe your not doing something could actually cause one.”
Daisy looked stunned.
“Shit. I actually hadn’t thought of it like that,” she said.
“The kid makes sense, Daze.”
“That she does,” Daisy replied.
“We really need to get that neuro-link working, Freya. It’s too strange having someone be a middleman to talk to myself.”
“It’s coming along, Sarah. Hopefully I’ll have a version working soon.”
“Thanks, kid.”
Freya replayed a bit of the communications she had intercepted over her speakers for all to hear. It was a discussion about the risks of the AI virus and how a relay with a kill switch and a delay would be needed to keep the AIs on Earth and Dark Side Base safe from infection should they wish to talk.
“Daisy, you know I could just cure it.”
“But you also know we can’t,” she replied.
“Not even secretly? Like giving them an inoculation?”
“Sorry, kiddo. I know you like Joshua, but he definitely became infected with the virus before detonating his warhead. No matter how much we would like to, we simply can’t alter the past like that. Especially not in a way this big. Emotional impulses aside, you do see that, don’t you?”
“I guess,” she answered, dejectedly. “It just seems like such a waste.”
“On that we are in agreement,” Daisy said.
Sarah pored over the events that had not yet happened that Freya had laid out for them on her planning table’s screen. Multiple teams in multiple locations. She had the reports, but actual footage was lacking. They’d just have to wing it.
“So, since the people in LA are going to split up, we split up also, and clean up after them if need be. Sound about right, Daze?”
“You got it, Sis.”
“From what you guys have said about these Shelly and Omar characters, I don’t think they’ll need much help, but Finn and Reggie? Those idiots are going to lose one of the secure comms units. I’ll have to either retrieve it or destroy it before the Chithiid can get their hands on it, then I’ll keep an eye on the fellas until they get clear. I think those jokers will need every bit of help they can get.”
“You know you like him.”
“Not a chance,” Sarah replied.
“Admittedly, I actually do. But back then, I wasn’t so open about it.”
“Sarah says you do, by the way,” Daisy noted.
“Shut up, Me,” she said with a smirk. “Disembodiment can make you like all sorts of strange things. Including crazy, ginger chefs.”
“Tell her she should give him a chance.”
“She says you should give him a chance.”
“Yeah, not happening.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind one day.”
“Until that happens, let’s just get on with our job, shall we?”
“Fine. Freya, drop Sarah in Phoenix. It got pretty hairy for them at that point in their timestream. From there, hop east and take me to Colorado Springs. I think that there, if anywhere, is where things could really go wrong.”
“Will do, Daisy,” the young AI said as she slowly rose from the depths of the lake, breaking the surface gently before silently ascending into the sky.
Chapter Fifteen
“Okay, so you’ve done really well with the weapons training the past few weeks, but I’m still a little concerned about leaving you totally on your own out here,” Daisy said from the shaded safety of the University of Phoenix stadi
um’s partially deconstructed dome.
“I’ll be fine, Daze.”
“I know. Of course you will.”
“Not very convincing, Sis.”
“It’s just that we haven’t really had time to drill so many other things to prepare you.” She paused and thought about it a moment longer. “You know what? I’m going to stick around and help out for a bit. I’m sure the Colorado Springs team will be fine.”
Sarah flashed an annoyed glare.
“Daisy, I love you like a sister––”
“I am your sister.”
“––But I will kick your ass up and down this city if you don’t get your butt to Colorado to help that team and just let me do my thing here.”
“Damn. I sure told you, didn’t I? Sarah said with a chuckle. “It’s kinda fun watching me whip you in line.”
Eat me, Sarah.
“You say that to me, but will you dare say that to her?”
Daisy chuckled quietly to herself.
“Daisy?” Freya chimed in. “I can help Sarah get ready.”
“Thanks, kiddo, but there’s no time to run a new neuro-stim upload.”
“Yeah, well, about that...”
Sarah’s ears perked up.
“Freya, what did you do to me?”
“Nothing bad! Promise!”
“Freyyaaa,” Daisy moaned. “What did you do?”
“I just knew that your neuro-stim burst gave you all sorts of useful knowledge back on the Váli––”
“And could have killed me,” Daisy added.
“Well, yeah. Duh. But I figured Sarah was already being reconstructed, and the nanites would be able to buffer any spikes and surges, so I took the liberty of loading a full combat and tactics data packet into her stim hookup.”
“But I don’t know that stuff, Freya,” Sarah said. “It didn’t work.”
“I didn’t know if it would affect your nanites’ reconstruction cycle negatively, so I had them partition the data in a way that would be easiest on your healing body’s neurological system.”
“Daisy, did she...?”
“Yeah, Sis. I think she did,” she replied with a sigh. “So how do we access it, Freya?”
“Easy!” she chirped, thrilled she wasn’t in trouble. “Sarah, just slip the neuro-stim on, and I’ll send the release sequence to your nanites. Technically, you should be able to command them to do it yourself, but that kind of thing will probably take you a long time to learn to do.”
