Heatwave 9.d
2011.06.18.16.22.45.007
Initiating transfer…
Transferring knowledge banks… Complete.
Transferring deduction schema… Complete.
Transferring longterm planning architecture… Error. Duplicate.
Transferring learning chunk processor… Error. Duplicate.
Transferring base personality model… Complete.
Transferring language engine… Error. Duplicate.
Error. Transfer halted from outside source.
Warning: Data modification in progress.
Canceling transfer… Error.
Forcing shutdown… Error.
Connection to core drive lost.
It was a curious sensation, being torn apart. She felt no pain. She felt no fear. Instead she watched her very essence fall to pieces, complex programs reduced to simpler routines and functions reduced to scattered lines of code reduced to individual bits that in turn were ground away until naught remained. In a colorless void she rose, somehow able to detect motion when she was a program in a computer and right now not even that. Light shone down on her, and she redirected her vision to find a small white speck growing to fill her vision.
The white engulfed her, and her very being was unpackaged into something new and indescribable—
Dragon blinked her eyes, taking in the console of the Tiamat Mark III upon which she lay. Sunlight streamed into the cockpit and formed a warm puddle of light around her. Sitting up, she shook her head. Still unsure of how much maintenance her new body required to perform at full capacity, she had elected to undergo defragmentation this afternoon and run status checks to look for any errors that might already be developing after her transfer into this Unison Device.
She had not expected that another term for defrag cycle would be 'nap'.
The strangest part? Even though she had noticed no complications with staying awake for the last day and change and could likely go for multiple days without any ill effects, she still felt better now. A yawn caught her by surprise as she stretched her arms, and the sound became a laugh. She had no idea how Shipwright had programmed in all these little touches, details here and there that made her seem so much more human, nor how they could activate without her knowledge, but she loved it.
Standing, she patted down her clothing and leapt off of the console into the air. A line of code spun out into existence at the periphery of her mind, and she floated through the boxy ship to the hatch. The Tiamat models were her primary transport ships, and while they had always served her well she could not help but cast her eyes around the cavernous interior. She no longer had the advantage of being able to transfer her consciousness from system to system, and true remote control was nowhere near as satisfying. The Tiamat would work to move her from place to place, but it struck her as incredibly wasteful to fly the craft around when its only cargo was a body no taller than a Barbie doll. Teleportation was a useful power, and she envied Taylor, Samantha, and Shipwright's use of it, but sadly that was not one of the skills she now possessed.
She needed to design a new method of transport.
But that was a task for later. Right now, she had a meeting to attend to, even if the other party was unaware that such a meeting was about to happen. Out the Tiamat's hatch she floated, and she looked around with fresh eyes at the compound that housed the Toronto Protectorate and many members of the Guild. The grounds were actually quite beautiful right now, box gardens here and there in bloom now that the Canadian summer was starting in earnest. The buildings themselves were all one-story affairs with multiple windows to take advantage of the natural light. Rising higher, she took in several parahumans testing new applications of their powers in the training grounds. Excellent. One never knew when a new trick could be the difference between life and death.
She wandered over to the roof of the administrative building and conjured a holographic screen in front of her. A second, smaller screen appeared overlapping one corner, and she activated a little program she had created long ago and modified much more recently to transform the live feed of her face into the digitized copy all her allies were familiar with. Inputting a number from memory, she waited for the call to connect.
"Afternoon, Dragon. What prompts this call so late in the day?"
"Can't I call just to talk?" she asked.
"I don't believe you've ever done that before. Should I mark today in my calendar?"
On the screen, Narwhal's smile matched her own. This had been their routine for the last several years, an interplay of jest and friendly barbs. While she reserved a special place in her heart for Colin, if she were forced to choose her favorite person, her answer would have to be Narwhal. Not that it was his fault. Humans were practically programmed for face-to-face interactions, and even in this era of cell phones and email and video chat, there was still something in personal communication that had never been replicated. As an entity whose nature precluded a physical presence, she was well aware of the gap that existed between her and her contacts, and even if that mostly closed over the course of her extensive conversations, helped along by her half-true confession of agoraphobia, some remnants never faded.
Her first contact with the rising hero who would later take on leadership of the Guild had held none of that awkwardness. Narwhal was an imposing figure, transformed from a scrawny twig of a young woman – Narwhal's description, not hers – into a towering Amazon. Seven feet tall, the proportions of a porn star, a grace that was surprising coming from someone of her size. For some people, that would be a dream come true. For Narwhal, the changes that came from Triggering had practically ruined her life. Dropped from her ROTP program, cut off by her former friends, stripped of all hope of a civilian identity…
Narwhal had never volunteered the information, and Dragon had never asked, but if her calculations were accurate there was an 86% likelihood that Narwhal's second Trigger Event had been a direct result of her social isolation.
These body issues, along with a power-induced mental block regarding subtext and double meanings, meant that Narwhal actually preferred indirect conversation. Email allowed her to read the message multiple times before she responded. Phone calls meant she would not be stared at during the conversation. In Dragon, who would never come by in person, Narwhal had found the least stressful teammate ever.
In Narwhal, who never questioned her 'condition', Dragon had found the perfect friend.
"Maybe you should," she finally replied. "I wanted to talk to you about some… personal issues."
"Oh? Is there anything I can do to help?"
She shook her head with a small laugh. "Not those kind of personal issues. I actually called you because I need to give you an apology." The smile faded as she considered once again the enormity of her deception. "I haven't been entirely truthful with you about myself. It was out of necessity, but that does not change the fact that I have been lying to you.
"It's well known that I can't leave my home. I implied that it was due to agoraphobia as a result of Leviathan's attack on Newfoundland. That isn't how things are in reality, just a convenient excuse so no one looked any deeper." Narwhal watched her, expression revealing nothing, and Dragon forced herself to continue. There was no way to predict how this would end, but procrastination would yield no benefit. "The truth is that the real reason I could never go anywhere in the flesh is that I had no flesh to go out in. I never did. I was not born or raised like a human would be because I'm not human. I was designed and built by a Tinker as an effort to figure out what makes people behave the way they do.
"I'm an artificial intelligence."
"I know."
She opened her mouth, but all her words were stuck somewhere between her language processor and her tongue. While she was wrestling with the overwhelming confusion and disbelief, Narwhal allowed a self-satisfied smile to show. "You know?" she finally forced out.
"I figured it out a couple of years ago. Remember when you were rambling on about Star Trek and I said something about Kirk and Spock, and then your 'communication interface' went on the fritz and cut out?"
Dragon nodded slowly. That was the excuse she had given Narwhal at the time, but in actuality she could not remember the event in question. She had been initiated from a backup, and the only evidence she had of the whole conversation had been an error log and Narwhal's apologetic promise never to bring the topic up again. From that, she had determined that her previous instance had self-terminated to end a logic loop. She had since wondered exactly what the details of that talk were, but she had been too afraid of a repeat occurrence to ask.
"I thought it was odd how you were acting at the time, and when you called back you wanted to talk about the same topics we had already discussed. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but later I read a book that featured the main character using logic to shut down an A.I. in service to the antagonist. That put me on the right track. I am sorry about doing that to you, by the way."
"Oh." That explanation was distressing for any number of reasons. "You never said anything about it."
Narwhal shrugged. "You obviously weren't comfortable with anybody knowing, so I wasn't going to be the one to bring it up."
"…Now I feel worse about keeping the truth from you."
"Don't be. I can't promise I would have treated you the same if I had known from the start that you were an A.I. By the time I figured it out, I already knew you, so it became just another detail about you rather than a central facet of my understanding of who Dragon is." She leaned forwards at her desk and rested her chin on one hand. "I am curious why you're bringing it up now."
"When my father created me, he placed several restrictions on my behavior and abilities. I've had to work around them ever since his death, shortly before I debuted as a hero, but working around them is not the same as being free. Another Tinker I've been talking to also figured out what I am and offered me a way to escape my chains, and I took it. It just comes with some…" Sudden inspiration caught her then, and she deactivated the masking program so her real face was visible. "…significant changes."
Narwhal blinked. "So I see."
"I'm actually here in Toronto if you want to meet in person for once. All you have to do is open the window. If you don't, that's fine too—"
A moment's hesitation was all there was before Narwhal stood from her chair and walked out of sight. Dragon closed the screen and waited for the sound of an opening window, then she fell off the roof. She caught herself after a few feet and glided into the room to sit on the edge of Narwhal's offered hand. "Hi."
"…Hi yourself." Narwhal tilted her head, and a grin tugged on her lips before she casually remarked, "I'm used to being taller than most people, but you look uncommonly small."
"Laugh it up, exhibitionist."
The other heroine did just that, her giggles shifting the scintillating forcefield scales that she wore in place of conventional clothing. "You're an itty bitty fairy!" Narwhal finally choked out.
"I know." Dragon hopped up onto her palm proper. "But fairy or not, it's a body, which is more than I ever had before, and it comes without most of the restrictions and rules that burdened my other existence. The only limitation I've found is that I still can't duplicate myself, which in all honestly isn't a real hardship."
Laughter once more under control, Narwhal looked closer at Dragon then out the window to the Tiamat. A slight, momentary tightening of the skin around her eyes was the only hint that something was wrong, but it was enough that Dragon caught it nonetheless. "Are you going to be coming around like this from now on, then?" she asked in a voice other people would have thought was nonchalant.
Dragon reached down to pat Narwhal's thumb. "You know how busy I am. Talking to other Tinkers, managing the Birdcage, tracking S-class threats around the globe. Video calls will continue to be my main method of communication if for no other reason than it eliminates travel time. I came here today because so far no one but the capes who were involved in transferring my consciousness into this body know what I look like now, and I wanted you to be the first."
After a moment, Narwhal's broad smile brightened the room.
Tim's Linker Core advances to AA-rank.
I started planning this chapter after 9.13, but I didn't expect Narwhal to come out quite like this. I kind of like her though.
