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NaNoWriMo 2011 - Can Robots Find Love?

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11/1/2011 21:58:34   
superjars
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~ Chapter One ~


*Clink*
*Clank*

The sounds of the workshop whirred about around him, but Kenneth paid them no mind. His slim form bent over his work table, fingers dancing over the controls as he made small soldering adjustments to the circuitry splayed on his desk. His brilliant green eyes twinkled behind the magnifying lens perched before him, giving him a zoomed-in, birds-eye view of the board. He had been working on this particular infrastructure for several weeks now, but it had just started to really come together today.

“How close are you to finishing, Ken?” spoke a whining voice from behind the young inventor, one which he found easy to identify and as grating to his ears as ever. “I’m hungry and you’ve been working at that for hours!” Kenneth turned, pulling his body to its complete height, and stared down at the blond child standing before him. He reached out and tousled the kid’s hair, a grin spreading across his face. It had always been impossible for him to stay annoyed at the youth for long, no matter what happened between them.

“I can stop for now, Percy,” he said calmly, stretching tired muscles up and around. Standing in one place for so long always surprised him by how it tightened odd muscles. In this case, it was the muscles in his side that felt the relief of his simple movements. “What time is it, anyway?”

The younger sibling pulled a small silver orb from his pocket, attached auspiciously to a short gold chain. The allsphere twinkled slightly and then a small display appeared on its surface, scrolling all manner of information across the ball’s argent covering. “Almost seven o’clock in the evening! What took you so long?” the boy said flatly, while he stared at his elder brother in consternation. It was a look he had been working on perfecting for some time now, but he still hadn’t gotten it quite right. Kenneth took one look at the boy’s face and burst out laughing, much to Percival’s chagrin.

“Hey, what do you think you’re laughin’ at!” exclaimed the boy, rushing up and punching his brother solidly in the arm. “It’s not funny!” His lower lip quivered and jutted out as he turned away from the taller man and stalked away, arms crossed over his chest. Kenneth caught his breath from laughing and moved to follow, rubbing at the muscle his brother had hit. He scooped up the kid as he passed by, tossing him up and onto his shoulders as they raced from his workshop and out onto the street.

Vehicles raced by the two of themin all directions, traversing through the convoluted streets and blowing their steam out into the open air. Normally, the elder boy would have his own Steed to ride, but with his brother here, it wouldn’t have been as safe. So they had come by the other common mode of transportation: the Rings. The two walked up to a metallic ellipsis standing on the corner of the street and pulled out their identification badges. A pair of quick swipes over the control surface brought the structure humming to life, a blue film of light stretching over its chrome edges. Kenneth sent Percival through the portal first, watching as his younger brother disappeared from view after breaking the smooth, flowing surface of the event horizon. Without fear, he followed swiftly after, walking in by the industrial district and stepping out into the gardens of their estate.

“Race ya to the table!” the boy cried as Kenneth appeared, tossing his jacket onto the ground and tearing off into the house. Before the coat could even kiss the grass, however, a silvery blur came blazing from off to their right, coalescing into a humanoid form, their butler and assistant J33-V35. The construct outstretched a hand towards the elder child, a pleasant voice emanating from its painted faceplate, “May I take your coat, young master?” Without pause, he pulled off his jacket and passed it to the robot, jamming hands into his pockets and walking towards the house.

The door ahead of him slid open at his approach, the tiniest of squeaks evident to his observant ears. It sounded like something was slightly off in the system, a gear or widget slightly out of sync with the rest of the mechanism. That was something he could look at later, after he had paid the due respect to his parents and guests. Off to his left as he entered had been a plastic-covered tube, tall and wide enough for the largest of men to stand in comfortably. Kenneth walked into the structure, allowing the door to slide closed behind him. The work clothes and apron he had worn all day phased off of his body in an instant, leaving him naked and exposed. However, this lasted for no more than a few seconds: long enough for the sweat and grime of the day to be lasered off of him and a new set of clothes to be phased onto his body.

As he stepped from the tube and into the foyer of their house, he looked down at the suit: black formal wear, obviously picked out by his mother for tonight. It seemed she was having one of her infamous dinner parties again, and he was being forced to attend, as usual. He knew these for what they were: his mother’s feeble attempts to set him up with the daughter of some other wealthy aristocrat, cementing the family’s future and trapping him in the same life that his father had, and his father before him. It didn’t matter to her that Kenneth didn’t feel ready to settle down with a wife, nor that he detested the types of women she paraded in front of him at these insufferable events.

Today was no exception. As he walked into the room, tall and slim, glasses set upon a strong nose and piercing eyes taking in those gathered, his gaze alighted to his mother, fake smile gracing her beautiful face and silver laughter floating throughout the room. She gestured him over to where she stood, surrounded by an elderly man and his two attractive daughters. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for what he knew would be a night full of annoyance, and plastered the most genuine smile he could muster onto his face and walked smartly towards his mother.

Before he was halfway there, however, his younger brother came streaking out of somewhere nearby, dressed in similar attire to the others at the party, albeit rather untidily and came rushing by his elder, brushing past and tagging him on the leg as he went. “You’re it!” the boy cried out, weaving past a group of men laughing and talking about politics or some similar subject and bobbing around a sofa as he raced from the room. Kenneth turned to give chase, reaching after his brother, but was pulled up short as his eyes locked with a pair of sapphires from across the room. The man stood locked in place, gazing into the deepest pools he had ever encountered. His breath caught in his throat and he could feel his knees knocking against each other. As his vision pulled back from the eyes, there was no end to his wonder as he took in her feminine features.

The deep blue eyes belonged to a raven-haired woman, hair left long and loose, streaming over her shoulders and cascading over her bosom. She wore a rather telling dress, jet black and strapless, cut to accentuate her natural curves. She stood at a medium height, hands placed uncomfortably on her hips and serving only to further show off her posture. Her lips were full and red, pairing well with the other slight features of her face. Those same lips were set in a tight smile which betrayed the fact that she was absolutely bored with the entire affair of the party. It seemed she wanted to be here as much as he did. Kenneth took one step forward to approach the young woman, but was stopped short, this time by a hand slipping around his arm.

“Kenneth, dear,” the voice from behind came, slinking over his shoulder, “Would you care to come and meet the Giovalli Twins?” His mother tugged on his arm, a movement that drew his gaze away from the woman he had been focused upon and to the pair of blondes who he had seen her with earlier.

“Of course, mother,” he responded, sneaking a glance back at the woman one last time before pulling his eyes back to the ladies at hand, with the slightest of sighs under his breath. “Well, the Giovalli Twins, eh? My, how you’ve both grown into such lovely young women. Why, I remember when we were young-“

~ *** ~

The end of the night could not have come soon enough. The rest of his time had been spent in encounters similar to that first one, with his mother introducing him to young and eligible ladies and him sweet talking them, all the time thinking about that raven-haired beauty. He had gotten away from the old lady for a brief few moments of rest between women and had looked around for the other woman, but she had been nowhere to be found. Presumably, she had finally had enough with the thing and went somewhere she would rather have been. With thoughts of her still lingering in his head, he moved towards the upstairs, where his bed awaited him.

His brother’s heavy breathing could be heard emanating from the adjoining room as he passed. He paused for a few moments at the door, pulling it open far enough to look in upon the boy, smiling about the various antics he had performed at the party. If he was honest, those were among the only things that helped him keep his sanity during these dreadful and droll evenings. He could remember one time when the kid had been a few years younger, eight perhaps, and had jumped off an upper balcony and swung around on the chandelier for a few moments before one of the automaton butlers had gracefully pulled him off his perch and deposited him unceremoniously on the floor. But the kid hadn’t even been fazed by the action: instead he got right back up, brushed himself off and took off again to find, or create, more trouble.

“I’m glad to have him around on nights like this,” Kenneth said to himself, quietly pulling the door shut and moving on towards his own room. But tonight, that wasn’t the only thing he was glad for. As he stepped into his room, clothes being phased off of him and replaced by some comfortable bedclothes, his thoughts carried him once more back to that moment when he had first locked eyes with her. He couldn’t be sure that she had even seen him in that crowded room, but he prayed that she had. Laying down on his bed and drifting away into sleep, he couldn’t help but wish that he would meet her again, and soon.

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/9/2011 23:55:09 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 1
11/2/2011 21:01:01   
superjars
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~ Chapter Two ~


She yawned broadly, hand reaching sleepily for the alarm as it continued to chime loudly in her ear. Why did it have to be morning already, she thought, her other hand moving to rub clumps of sleep from her eyes. Last night’s party had been just as she had expected: tiresome and full of clumsy men with no idea how to interact with her. Someone must have spread the word about her demeanor, as only a few of the gentlemen even approached her. She wasn’t the least bit concerned about this, however; she had yet to find any of these so-called “pillars of society” who interested her in the least. Unfortunately, her father did not feel the same way as she did. He continued to drag her along to these bore-fests and hope that they might teach her some manners. Sometimes, she thought he just took her to be around other young women; maybe something from the others would rub off on her. She had had enough “rubbing” at these parties to last a lifetime, however.

The sun could barely be seen streaming through the curtains about her room. A stray beam of light caught her eye as she looked over at the red cloth hanging across the way, blinding her for a moment as she jerked her head to the side to escape its piercing gaze. Her bed felt so comfortable and amazing that she didn’t really want to leave, but she knew it would be impossible to stay there forever, as much as she wished she could do just that. The covers flew off in a flurry as the decision was made and sleep abandoned for another day. A couple steps took her to the bathroom adjoining her bedroom, where she spent a while preparing herself for the plans she had for the day.

She stepped from her room, clad in a tight, sensible blouse and a pair of black pants, and headed down the hallway towards the kitchen. This outfit was picked out very particularly for the way it completely contradicted her outfit from the previous night. It wasn’t so much that she disliked dressing up and flaunting her obvious good looks, but more the stares and lecherous thoughts – and, at times, actions – they brought from the men who attended such parties. She shuddered at the thought, moving quickly to the kitchen as if to escape from it.

“Good morning, father,” she said in a very sing-song voice as she walked into the room to see her father sitting down to his morning tea. The disapproving look she received in response when he saw what she was wearing did nothing to dissuade her cheerful demeanor as she continued, “And what is going on in the world of men on this fine day?”

“Already with the teasing, Teriesle?” he shot back, a raised eyebrow showing his displeasure, “You need not concern yourself with those things, young one. There’s time enough in the future to bother your husband with such troublesome questions.”

“Oh, but daddy dearest,” she cooed, prancing up to him and leaning down to give him a slight peck on the cheek before continuing on to the cupboards beyond, “I do so love to hear about all of the amazing things that males are up to these days. Such fantastic inventions and splendid creations!”

“That isn’t going to work today, daughter,” his gruff voice spoke, ending the sentence with a loud harrumph as he returned to his breakfast and glaring at the daily newspaper. The young woman counted to three in her head and, like clockwork, her father’s voice could be heard once again, “And what exactly do you think you are doing, wearing that ridiculous clothing. Shouldn’t a girl your age be dressed more appropriately?”

It was the same every morning that she wore anything resembling men’s clothing. She knew from years of experience that her father was very rooted in the old ways of doing things. And he wasn’t alone in the assumptions either. Hundreds of other men and women also followed their predecessor’s values with staunch regularity. But in that same time, she had also learned how to deal with her father when he brought this subject up.

“Well, papa,” she began, her voice taking on a supplicant tone, “I am just going out into the town and I don’t want to get any of the beautiful clothing you bought for me dirty.” If he had glanced in her direction, he would have seen her mouth open and making a gagging motion with her finger, but the old man was focused on his breakfast and the news article scrolling over his allsphere.

“Fine, I guess that’s okay,” he replied, sighing lightly as he finished the last bite of his food. He stood from his place, the silvery ball shimmering as the new disappeared and he picked it up from the table. “Just don’t get into trouble while you’re out.” He gave her a hard look, then come over and planted a small kiss on her forehead before gathering his bag, which lay on the counter and left for his workshop across town.

She kept her most innocent look plastered on her face until he had left and then sat down to a quick breakfast. She really did plan on going out into the town, but not for anything she thought her father would approve of. As her father had become more insistent about her settling down and giving him some grandchildren, she had become increasingly annoyed by the idea and had been searching for ways to change her fate.

At first, she had thought to talk to some of the other women that she knew around town, but the strange looks and perplexed stares were enough for her to end that quickly. None of them seemed to have ever thought about life being any different than it was right now, and what was more, many of them were absolutely in love with the idea of being a wife and mother. And that was as far from what Teri wanted as could be. Sure, she might want those things later in life, but at seventeen there were so many other exciting things she was interested in doing and learning.

To this end, when she was quite young, she had begun sneaking into her father’s study and workshop when he was away and tinkered with whatever he was working on at the time, or reading up on all of the advancements that had been made over the past few centuries. She had perused articles on the advent of instantaneous communication and transportation, the large strides made in artificial intelligence and robotics, as well as the first movement towards using water as a self-perpetuating source of energy. When she first started, much of what she read had been over her head, but over the years, she had learned quite a bit about the various concepts. In fact, most of her time at those ridiculous parties she was forced to attend was spent working on complex calculations or designing mechanisms in her head.

About a year ago, to her great excitement, she had caught wind of a small group of women similar to her: one’s who were interested in the work that men were doing and not only in becoming wives and going to fancy parties. It had taken her a few months of searching before she finally located where they were meeting and found her way to one of their assembly’s, but it had been well worth the time it had taken. Suddenly she had gone from feeling very alone and solitary, to suddenly finding that there was a group of kindred spirits who, for a variety of reasons, had delved into the technology of their present age and wanted to know more about how it was built and what it could do.

And that was where she was going today: an assembly of the Technologically-Minded Women, or TMW. The group had at first only met every couple months, but as their numbers had swelled and excitement rose, they moved to monthly meetings and finally to weekly in this last month. Things had been going so well, in fact, that the women involved had decided to formalize the meetings and elect a TMW President to oversee the different groups that were meeting around the city.

As she strode from the house, Teri couldn’t help but have a huge smile on her face: she had been nominated last week as one of the potentials for leading the city-wide organization. It would be a great honor for her to hold and she hoped dearly that it would become a reality. Heading up the street towards the Rings, she glanced around tentatively to see if any of the neighborhood women had noticed her yet. None of the other on her street were members of TMW, and most of them would have frowned out at her, silently judging her apparel and actions from their closed gates, and some of the more vocal ones might have even come out and berated her for appearing like “that” in public. Thankfully, none of them seemed to be out yet, this early in the morning. She reached the Rings and pulled out a modified TMW badge, swiping it over the control port and grinning widely as the device hummed to life.

Using this new badge gave her a great sense of pride. Women were typically given restricted badges – when they were given them at all – that only allowed them to travel to places that the men in their lives wanted them to go. Many of the industrial sections of the city were completely blocked off, severely limiting their ability to research and work beyond what they could find at home or nearby.
About four months ago, that had all changed. A group of several women had finally decoded the inner workings of the Rings and how they interacted with the badges, and had programmed special badges for all of the members, allowing the same unrestricted access to the city that inventors were given. As she passed through the gateway, feeling the strong thrum of power as she was teleported far outside where she had before been able to go, to the abandoned factory which the TMW used as its base of operations.

As she entered the room where everyone was gathered, the place was alive with excitement and wonder about the coming decision. Images of each of the nominated women flickered up on the main screen, with their names and some short words about what each of them specialized in and hoped to accomplish as the president. Teri stepped right into the center aisle and began walking up towards the front podium, waving at women from her area group as she passed and smiling at others she recognized from visiting other groups over the past weeks since she was nominated.

As she approached the front, she closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, but in that time, imagined herself standing triumphant at the podium, giving a rousing speech to the women sitting in the audience below and feeling the electricity in the air as women stood and clapped for her. She didn’t really expect to win, as there were much more qualified leaders among them, all older than her, but it never hurt to dream about the possibility.

The other nominees were gathered in the front already, talking with each other as they waited for the final few to arrive. Teri strode up the steps to the dais and found her seat, to the left of the other nominee from the Graymoor District, and sat down.

“Are you as nervous as I am?” the brown-skinned woman sitting on her left whispered, leaning towards her.

Teri glanced over, recognizing the woman as Tierla Grean, one of the frontrunners for the position and a member of the Blushot District. “Of course. I’m just distracting myself with calculations so I don’t run out of her,” she whispered back, a small grin tugging at the edges of her mouth.

Before the women could say anymore, there was a loud screech and cough as the master of ceremonies took the stage and began to address the assembled group. She went on and on about the purpose of the TMW and why it had become such an important and useful place for so many women, trapped in a society that devalued them and treated them as simply baby-makers. It was the same speech they had all heard a hundred times before, but it never lost its power to inspire them. When she was done, she got right to the business at hand.

“All of you have been waiting for this moment and it is finally here,” she called out to the assembled women. “These fine women have all been campaigning with you for a few weeks now and each of them brings something exciting and intriguing to our organization. However, only one of them can be the President of Technologically-Minded Women, and you, the members, have spoken about who you want to represent and lead this group.” There was a slight pause and a collective catching of breath as all gathered women waited in anticipation. Teri, sitting up front with the others, felt her heart stop and the hands of the women on either side of her grasp and squeeze her hands in their own.

“Without further ado, this years elected TMW President,” the woman was almost yelling now, but paused for a moment, the anticipation in the room reaching a frenzied climax, “is Teriesle Fynn!”

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/9/2011 23:54:36 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 2
11/3/2011 22:29:54   
superjars
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~ Chapter Three ~


He had come to work and jumped straight into his project, excited to be so close to its completion, but he simply couldn’t get the image of that girl from last night out of his head. He had woken up this morning thinking about her. He had been distracted all through breakfast with pictures of her dancing through his mind. And here he was at his job, working on the biggest project of his career – nay, probably the biggest of his life – and she was the only thing making any head way in his brain. She was so different from all the other girls that he usually saw at those parties; a rather pleasant and exciting different, if he was honest with himself. It was strange and he wasn’t sure how to define it exactly, but he knew that there was something there, beneath the surface, which was hidden from view.

“Hey, Kenneth, you awake over there, man,” a voice called from across the workshop, coupled with a head of tousled blonde hair and sharp, grey eyes, his partner, Gerard Paulst. “You look like you’re a million miles away. Have a good night?” The size of the grin on the other man’s face was dwarfed by the deep shade of red that Kenneth’s face turned at Gerard’s jibe.

“I … I mean …” he stuttered, trying to regain his composure from the sudden embarrassment he could feel spreading over his face. “Would you just shut up, Ger. Mother had one of her stupid parties last night and I’m just tired from that.” This last piece he sputtered out, gathering his thoughts quickly as he went. He wasn’t very interested in trying to explain to Gerard that he was thinking about some girl he had never met. All that would gain him would be a few weeks of torturous teasing from some of the other guys at the shop.

“Well, you’d better get your mind and hands into gear, then. We’re coming up to deadline and we want to have a workable prototype before we go before the board this time,” he said coolly, the last traces of a smile showing he didn’t quite believe his friend’s excuses, but that he’d let them go for now. “You’re the genius here and we rely on your work to make this all come together.”

Kenneth looked down at the table in front of him, spread with a myriad of parts and circuits, the main board he was working with in the center of his organized chaos. He nodded to the man, who turned on his heel to go and see how other aspects of the project were going. The man was right: they made their presentation in less than 72 hours, and he still couldn’t get this control board to work quite right.

The project was codenamed Homo Artificialis, and their expected result was to create a robotic intelligence that worked similarly to a human one. It was one of the biggest projects that Trail Tech Industries had taken on in their long existence and easily one of the most costly. For the last decade, all of the big robotics firms had been struggling to reach the next level in artificial intelligence: a robot that could think and learn on its own, create its own programming and adapt to changing situations. The androids they used nowadays were built with a specific set of instructions and were very rigid in those commands, unable to deviate from their prescribed tasks. In fact, several of those robots made their way through the work area, doing menial tasks and helping the various professionals at their tasks.

Kenneth was one of ten researchers and engineers who had been tasked with the project and they had all been at it for almost five years. Gerard was the project manager and would be the one giving the presentation in a few short days, but he wouldn’t have anything to show off if the team couldn’t buckle down and figure out these last couple bugs. As he tried to refocus himself back to the task at hand, the woman’s face was still superimposed over his work. With a sigh, he closed them for a moment, hoping to banish her visage from his sight, at least until he was on his own time. And, thankfully, he was successful, at least for the moment. He went back to work, hoping that the last pieces would soon fall into place.

~ *** ~

For one of the first times in her life, Teri was so stunned that she could barely even talk. In fact, she was having hard time breathing, as she surged to her feet, small tears of joy fleeing from the edges of her eyes. Her face was flushed, but covered with a wide grin. Her hand reached out shakily to grip the master of ceremonies own, the woman being the first to give her congratulations on her victory. The audience was on their feet, cheering and clapping as she looked out upon those gathered. She stood at the podium, silent for a moment and drank in all of the women out there, staring up at her expectedly. As they finally calmed down and sat again, a hush falling over the crowd, she finally found her voice.

“Ladies, thank you so very much for such a profound honor. If I am honest with all of you, I did not think that I would be the one elected here today. There are quite a few very talented women sitting up here with me,” she spoke confidently, projecting a feeling she did not necessarily feel. Her stomach was actually quite tight at the moment and the scant amount of food she had eaten earlier the morning struggled to make its way back up the path it had come down. “I sit among the giants of today’s TMW, proud to know that you have placed the future of this organization into what I believe are very capable hands.

“Before I say anything else, I want to thank all those who took the mantle of nominees,” she spoke, turning to gesture at the other women assembled up on the dais and paused as the room once again erupted in applause and cheers. It was obvious to Teri that all of the women had been very popular candidates for this position, and so it meant even more that she had been chosen. As the room finally quieted down again, she continued, “However, now that a decision has been made, we need to look down the road of where we want TMW to head. As I stare down that path, I see a bright future as we push into the fringes of the man’s world that currently encircles us.

“It is horrific to me that women are treated the same way and have the same rights that they did over three thousand years ago. Men rule this world and that needs to change!” she said, her voice continuing to crescendo as the vocal agreement from the crowd also increased in volume as more joined in. “It is important for the men of industry to understand that women have as much intelligence and can work as hard as the men can. Look at the things we have already created, and just in ten short years! Imagine what we could do if we had the same resources and abilities as the males do!

“We will have these same freedoms. And to get them, we will need to show those who hold the purse strings what we can accomplish. Their power and wealth has gotten to their heads and they are comfortable to wallow in it while all the time keeping the status quo of our society. The time has come for evolution! The time has come, for revolution! We could sit at home, find husbands and live out the remainder of our lives as wives and mothers, but who among you want that for yourselves? None of us do!

“Join with me, women!” she called out, the air in the assembly pulsating with the excitement and energy of those crowded in the room, some jumping from their seats to add their cheers to her words. “Today, we begin a new chapter in the role of the women of Sentritus! Today, we show the men who told us what we could not do, what we can do! Today, we make the first steps for freedom and equality for men and women alike! Join me as we march, heads held high, into the future!”

The room erupted in cheering and shouts as Teri ended her speech, an enormous grin filling her face with pride and excitement. She hadn’t had a speech prepared, but it was evident to everyone in the room that what she spoke transcended anything she could have written beforehand. As she returned to her seat, stopping to shake the hands of the other nominees for the position, she couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that the speech was over. And yet, it was short-lived. Her mind immediately started to think about the fact that her real task – leading this group of women to taking their true place in society – had really just begun.

~ *** ~

Lunch had been another dream-fest about the woman who he would probably never see again. He hadn’t much of an appetite, as distracted as he was, being unable to get her out of his head. He had, in fact, tried not to think about her, striking up several attempts at conversation with some of the other engineers, but it seemed that the harder he tried, the more impossible it became to expunge her from his mind.

Finally, half way through the mealtime, he had simply given up and left his mind to its own devices. It had wandered through fields of fancy about who she might be, inventing all forms of wondrous and magical concepts about her origins and what she had been doing at the party. Luckily for him, this had been the right idea, for when he headed back to his work, he was able to push thoughts about the woman to the back of his mind, at least for the moment.

He had only been back at his desk for a few moments, working with one of the many components strewn about his desk, when suddenly, the lights in the room went down. A few cries of panic came from around the complex, as people searched for each other. Kenneth could hear the sounds of robots running into each other, having lost their places in the room, but still desiring to go about their duties.

“What’s going on around here?” Gerard’s voice called out amidst the panic, cutting the other frightened voices short as he took charge of the situation. “Anyone near the breaker who can give me a good idea of what we’re dealing with?”

“I don’t think we were the only one’s affected, listening to the chatter coming in over the comm,” a voice chimed in from across the room, sounding to Kenneth as if it was coming from nowhere. “Sounds like the whole city has gone dead.”

~ *** ~

The official ceremony was now over, but all of the ladies were still milling around, talking about the decision and lining up to meet and talk to the new president. Many of the women came with their own agendas, trying to win Teri over to their sides in their short encounters. Inwardly, the young woman couldn’t help but be amused, and annoyed, by how the day was playing out, but she kept her face a mask of pleasantry and grace as she allowed each one to speak their minds.

Only three greeters remained when, from out of nowhere, the power flickered and then plunged the assembly into darkness. Several women screamed in panic, but were soon quieted by the others standing nearby them. All of the women froze and the room suddenly became very quiet, where before it had been abuzz with noise. One woman could be heard crying somewhere out in the assembly. Teri decided this was as good a time as any to take charge, so she cleared her voice and spoke to the group.

“Does anyone have communications with the rest of the city? We must find out what is going on. Someone, find some lights that we can use and, please, nobody panic,” she spoke out clearly, trying to inject as much confidence and command into her voice as she could.

“My allsphere has a light programmed into it,” one voice called out, a small globe of white light shimmering to life in the center of the room. “I have set it to run from the internal power, rather than the city’s grid.” In the dim light emanating from there, the women’s eyes slowly adjusted so they could get around, collecting what items they could from around the hall and gathered them in the middle. A few candles, a couple packages of foodstuff and an old wireless comm were all useable, even without the city’s power source. As they gathered around these things, all of the women looked towards Teri expectantly, waiting to see how she would deal with her first crisis as President.

~ *** ~

Backup generators clicked on after several minutes, bathing the room in the soft red glow of emergency lighting. Men around the room blinked at each other, none of them quite sure about what was going on. Several of them could be seen visibly sighing in relief now that their sight had been returned to them. One of them, at least, could be seen messing by a large metal box on the wall, doing his best to work with the switches and return power to the building, without much success. Several robots clambered to their feet, going back about their work. Kenneth looked around to see if anyone was hurt or in need of help and, much to his relief, no one was. Gerard looked upset, however, glaring around the room at anyone who met his gaze. When his eyes alit on the young engineer, however, his look turned to one of dismay.

“Hey, Ken,” he began, walking swiftly up to him. “Can you do anything under this situation?” After the younger man shook his head reluctantly, Gerard straightened up, addressing the others. “Alright people, we’ve got a problem here. Ken here needs to work on his boards, but can’t do anything without power. Anyone kno-“ He was cut off as the emergency comm network came to life, a monotone voice echoing out over it, prompting all of those gathered in the room to fall into an uneasy silence.

-Attention, workers. We are having some problems with our internal electricity grid. There is no reason to worry as our technicians are currently working on this issue. Please remain inside and stay calm. Power should be restored within five minutes.-

The voice cut out with a buzz of static, and then silence. No one spoke for a few seconds, a collective holding of their breaths as they waited for the telltale sign that power would be restored. One minute went by, seeming endless to Kenneth, but nothing happened. Another minute went by, and then a third, but still there was no change. Finally, a fourth rolled by and then the fifth, both coming to an end with change in the state of the electricity. All of them waited with bated breath as the final seconds of that last minute ticked by, each expecting the electricity to return at any minute. However, nothing happened.

“As I was saying,” Gerard continued, as if the last five minutes hadn’t occurred, “Anyone know what we can do to get the power running back, at least to a workstation or two?”

A few mumbled voices broke the silence that followed his question, but none of the men were up-front with any ideas of what they might be able to do. Even Kenneth, who usually had some random idea floating around in his head, was drawing a blank about how to get electricity without drawing at least somewhat off the cities power grid. After a few moments of this awkward silence, it was obvious that Gerard was tired of waiting around.

“Fine, if we don’t have any ideas right here, it is time to get out there and start looking around for something we can use,” he barked out, following it up with a litany of where he wanted everyone to go to look. When it came to Kenneth’s turn, he was assigned to head outside the building and check with some of the other’s around them. When he was done listing everyone’s areas, he continued, “Now, let’s get out there and show this city that Trail Tech Industries can work, even when the power goes out.”

The men dispersed, each heading out the doors and going off in different directions. With them, each man took a small hand-held comm, linked to a central one that Gerard himself would be manning in the main lab. Kenneth stepped out into the hallway, and immediately felt a wave of frustration flow over him. Outside? he thought as he walked towards the stairwell, Why in the world would he send me out there? There’s nothing out there but abandoned buildings and dust. It seemed stupid for him to even go down and search there. Most of those had been picked clean by scavengers or cleaned out by the previous companies. But it didn’t matter; Gerard was the leader and during a crisis was not the right time to question his decisions. There was time enough to talk to him about that later, when things were settled down. Maybe he could say something after their current project was finished.

For now, he just started down the stairs, going down the six flights that would take him to the lobby and the streets outside the building. When he reached the lower levels, it was a lot brighter than up above. Down here, large windows let in the light from the afternoon sun, casting large shadows out into the large waiting area. Two others were down here, searching around these sections of the building for useable materials. He walked outside the door and into the open, taking a deep breath of the freshly recycled air while he stopped to survey the buildings around him. Most of them should be abandoned and empty, and they certainly looked the part from the outside.

He scanned the street, trying to decide which of the buildings he should search first. It still seemed a silly thing for him to be doing, looking into areas that would likely be completely vacant. But that was what he had been told to do, and Kenneth wasn’t one for breaking the chain of command. He had started his eyes at the far left end of the street and followed the flow of the buildings all the way to the far right, nothing strange appearing to his senses. What did appear to him, however, was an image he had thought he had pushed back into the recesses of his mind: the woman from the other night.

There she was, standing in a doorway across the street and staring out at the same street that he was. She looked different to him than she had before; now, she was dressed in pants and a less gaudy blouse than ones he was used to seeing. He blinked at the strange image, hoping that this simple action would cause it to head back to the darker recesses of his brain. But when his eyes came back into focus, it had not changed; she was still standing there, except now, she was staring back at him. Their eyes connected for a moment, and then she disappeared back into the building and the doorway was vacant once again. At the same moment, Kenneth suddenly realized that there were small lights bobbing about inside, lights he had simply overlooked because of his expectations. Had Gerard known something that he didn’t was the first thought going through his head. And then the second thing was to find out what she was doing there.

The young man started forward, making a beeline for the nearest window. Upon reaching it, he peeked in, trying to see what was going on inside. However, the thing was caked with dust on the inside, giving him no more than a few beams of stray light to see. From there, he moved to the door, testing the knob and finding it unlocked. He opened the door and slid inside, greeted by several voices emanating from further in the complex. Female voices. He slowed himself down, squatting to get close to the floor and moved forward cautiously and quietly. This first room was dark, but enough light poured through a window by the door that as his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see the obstacles inside. He navigated them slowly, moving to the doorway from where he could hear the voices. As he approached it, they started to become more distinct, although he still could not hear what they were saying. He reached up to grip the handle, turning it until he heard a soft click and pushed it open.

On the other side was a sight he was not at all prepared for. Small globes of light were gathered in a heap in the middle of the room, emanating light in all directions, showing supplies and an older style of comm sitting nearby. But what truly shocked him was the large group of women who were gathered around it, dressed very unlike any of the women that he was used to seeing. And, even more shocking was that the woman who had been invading his dreams and thoughts was at the center of them, directing them as woman ran off in all directions. Kenneth simply squatted at the door for a few seconds, gawking at the scene. And then, he felt a sharp knock to the back of his head and everything went dark.

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/9/2011 23:54:21 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 3
11/6/2011 1:12:49   
superjars
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~ Chapter Four ~


Two women dragged the unconscious form through the doorway and into the main hall. Teri glanced up from the blueprints laid before her, a look of annoyance creeping over her face as she glared at the still form. She had hoped he would just go away, not believing that he has seen what he had and going back inside the building. The very reason they had started meeting in this place was because no one ever came in it. They hadn’t really been thinking about a citywide blackout when they had started coming here either. It certainly was strange that such a thing was happening, especially now when they were just starting to become organized. The more she had thought about it, if someone knew about them, now was the perfect time to strike, when all of the women were together in one place.

No use thinking about that now, though. First she had to figure out what to do about this one. “Tie him up. We’ll see what he’s doing around here and what he has seen when he wakes up. Until then, don’t let him get too comfortable,” she barked, watching as the two women bodily picked him up and carried him over to the rows of chairs, dumping him unceremoniously in one of them. This was yet another problem for her to deal with on her first day in office. It was not what she imagined herself doing when she woke up this morning. A light sigh of annoyance was all she allowed herself before she went back to the plans, studying them carefully.

“What I am seeing,” she began pointing to a small area of the map which seemed to indicate an old stairwell and some kind of strange building underneath that, “is that this place may be older than we originally thought. My most recent plans do not show this, but these old ones we found indicate there is some sort of tunnel or similar system lying underneath here. That may be our best bet at getting to our homes before some other idiot finds us here. Now, let’s get to work ladies and find our way out of here.”

~ *** ~

The man’s eyes flickered open, although nothing seemed to change as far as his eyes could tell. The lights he had seen previously were now gone, as were the women. He tried to move, but his body would not budge. He could move his hands and feet, but his arms and legs were secured tightly to whatever type of seat he was currently sitting on. He tried to move his head left and right, which it did freely, but both directions did very little for his vision; he could still see nothing.

“Hey! Is anyone out there? Can anyone hear me?” he coughed out, voice dry from lack of hydration, sounding rather pitiful to his ears. “I need help! Someone please help me!”

All he heard in response was silence. As he sat in the dark, his eyes began to adjust to the lack of light, giving him some limited vision of the room where he was. It was small and cramped, without any decoration or sign. The walls around him were metallic, as was the door itself. He really couldn’t crane his neck far enough to see what was behind him, but he assumed it was more of the same. Kenneth took a quick, deep breath and then held it, craning his hearing to see if he could pick up any sounds from outside. As he strained, he felt like he could hear some very slight sounds, but they sounded very far away. At least there was still someone around; he had been worried that they had abandoned him and left him here to rot. However, he was alive and they were still at least within earshot of him.

What are they doing here, though? he thought, thinking about the large group of women that he had seen before. Obviously, they shouldn’t be here. Women were not allowed in this part of the city, let alone this many of them without a man in sight. Most men would have probably been angry at these women for not knowing their place, but Kenneth was simply curious about how they had gotten here and what exactly they were doing here. He had never really understood why the rules segregating women from these parts of town existed, but he hadn’t really spent a lot of time giving it any further thought either. It was simply one of those things that had always been; something you just assumed was there for a reason, even if you didn’t know what that reason was.

Kenneth blinked sharply as a light came on in the room, blinding him and causing him to blink repeatedly in pain and discomfort. A tinny voice boomed into the room, which would have caused him to almost jump out of his chair in fright if he had been able to move:

~Who are you and what are you doing here?~ it asked.

“Um, my name is Kenneth, and I work in the building across the street from here. I was looking around for a power source and saw that one girl standing at the door. I recognized her from a party at my house a few days ago and was surprised to see her here. I came in here looking for her,” he replied, blinking at the light and trying to see if there was anyone he could see beyond the light. However, as quickly as it turned on, the light disappeared, leaving him once again blind to the world, with no sight or sound to speak of.

~ *** ~

“What on earth was that about?” one of the women said to the other, her voice lowered to a whisper.

“I have no idea. He recognized one of us? From outside? Wasn’t Teri the only one who went out there?” the other replied, a hint of panic evident in her voice. “We should tell the President about this. Maybe she knows this guy?”

“That would be quite the coincidence if she did. You stay here. I’ll go tell her,” the first lady said quickly, running out of the small control room and heading back to the main assembly hall to find their leader.

She walked swiftly to the other room, and came directly to where the new President was standing. “Miss, I know we are getting ready to leave, but it is about our prisoner. We were questioning him about why he was here and he said that he recognized you from somewhere. A party he had or something.”

Teri looked up at the woman with a quizzical look, her eyes betraying the fact her confusion, “He said he knew me? Did he say anything about where that might be?”

“At his house, I believe is what he said. He said his name was Kenneth,” she replied, a concerned look covering her face. “Maybe if you just come and talk to him…”

“Yes, of course. Lead the way,” the raven-haired woman said, gesturing for the other to show her to the control center. Teri followed in silence, but began wracking her brain about whether she had seen this guy before and where that might be. Unfortunately, nothing came to her mind, as she walked, nor when she arrived.

As they arrived at the door to the control center, a strange feeling came over her. Then, as she stepped through into the facility and looked around, she saw the screen frozen with the man’s face on it. They had paused one of the screens on an image of Kenneth’s face, eyes wide with confusion and fear, and she recognized him. “Ohh…” was all that escaped from her mouth as her hand went up to cover it. Eyes widened in recognition as she stared at the image, almost forgetting the other women in the room. It was not until one of them coughed at her uncomfortably that she even realized they were still there. She turned toward them, face reddening slightly in embarrassment.

“Well, I guess I do know who he is, even though we’ve never met officially. My parents forced me to a party at his mother’s estate the other night. It was quite droll, as those things tend to be. I will talk to him, then, but I don’t expect he will understand much about what is going on here. Give me a few minutes alone with him. Perhaps I can bring him over to our side,” she spoke confidently, glancing from one woman’s face to the other. She could tell that neither really wanted to leave her alone with this man, but they also knew that she was the President and that if she wanted the time, they really didn’t have the right to refuse her. Both nodded assent silently and headed out of the room, closing the door behind them.

Teri took a deep breath as the women left. What was this idiot thinking, following her into an abandoned building like that? They couldn’t just let him run back to the other men and tell them what he had seen, at least not until they had erased all trace of them being there. But, at the same time, maybe he could be reasoned with. Something felt different about this one. Something about the way he carried himself. She only knew a little about him, things her father had said at the dinner table about his family and the type of man his father had been. It was worth a try, at least. She flicked the light in the room on once again, and then toggled the speakers between the control room and the small paint room.

“So, I hear you were looking for me. Better talk quick. Why did you follow me back in here?” she asked coolly, not allowing her voice to portray any emotion.

“Hello? What are you going to do to me? Who is this?” the voice came back, sounding mostly frightened, but with an edge of defiance to it.

“I’m the one asking the questions here. If I like what you have to say, we’ll think of releasing you. But if I don’t…” she said levelly, leaving the threat unsaid. As she toggled off the speech switch, she gulped slightly, unsure about how he would answer.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Um, I saw you the other night at my mother’s party and then when I saw you here, I was confused. Women aren’t supposed to be in this part of town. I wanted to know what you were doing. That’s the truth of it, I swear,” he said, his voice quivering slightly as he spoke, as if he was trying very hard to keep it from breaking.

“What were you doing outside in the first place?”

“I … I … Well, I was asked by my boss to check around the other buildings, look for something so we could keep working. We’ve got this big project going on and…” he stopped suddenly and gulped. “Well, I was supposed to search these buildings for anything we could use.”

Teri stared at the screen, perplexed. She was listening for any hint of deception in his voice, but she couldn’t hear anything that raised red flags for her. He was telling her the truth, at least parts of it. He was obviously hiding something, but it didn’t seem to be anything to do with why he was here. “What all did you see?” she asked, wanting to know how much information he had.

“Um, not much. I know there were quite a few of you, but I have no idea how many or what you were doing. Nobody is going to believe any of this anyway. Women aren’t even allowed in this part of town. There’s no way any of you could get out here,” he blurted out, his words falling quickly from his lips. “How did y-“

“Shut up,” she ordered, at which point he fell silent, unasked questions falling from his lips in the silence. So, he didn’t really know anything. He didn’t recognize any of them, except for her, and he didn’t seem like he planned to tell anyone about it. He was right; nobody would believe anything about women in the industrial district. They had spent months overriding the security protocols that had kept them out and most men didn’t realize that women actually had minds. And they weren’t going to kill him; none of them were cold blooded killers. However, they couldn’t let him go right now either, not with all their plans and things lying around.

She opened the door, and stared out at the two women who waited for her. Both of them had troubled looks on their faces, and it was obvious that they had been talking to each other. “You two, is there any way that we can set this thing to automatically let him out after we’re gone?”

Both women looked at each other before letting their eyes come back to rest on their leader. “Well, it is possible to rig up an automatic switch to remove the constraints and unlock the door on a set timer,” the one on the right said, almost questionably. She paused, as if she wanted to say more, but thought better of it.

“Make sure it is set up and ready for when we leave,” Teri said simply, walking between the women and headed back towards her work area. Before leaving the room, however, she stopped and turned back to the two women. “And, one more thing. No more talking to the prisoner. I don’t want him to know any more than he has to about us. Men can be rather deceptive. Please let me know when the timer is ready.” With that, she swept out of the room and was gone, back to the plans.

The two women looked at each other, both of them with knowing looks on their faces. They stood there, neither of them daring to speak, but both of them asking the same question: What had happened in the room? After a tense moment, one of the girls shrugged and muttered, “Whatever,” before heading into the room to program the computer. Now that the moment had passed, the other one followed suit, thankful to have a distraction from her thoughts.

~ *** ~

The world had gone dark for the third time that night as the audible click of the comm turning off sounded in the cell, followed by a deathly silence. Kenneth’s mind was filled with thoughts and questions, and all of them with no answers. It didn’t make sense that he would find one women in the industrial section, let alone a dozen or more of them. And there could have been even more that he hadn’t seen. What were they doing here? How did they get here? Obviously they had found a way past the security strictures somehow, but how was that possible? Women couldn’t work with electronics. It simply wasn’t allowed. And yet, here they were. It didn’t make sense. Or if it did, he had no idea how. Everything in his world had turned on its head, all in an instant when he saw that girl again. He couldn’t even believe it himself. He had to be dreaming.

He would have tried pinching himself to wake up, but that was a bit difficult to accomplish considering his current situation. Tied to a chair, sitting in the dark and being ordered around by a bunch of women was not how he had expected to spend his day when he woke up this morning. But today had been all sorts of strange, what with the power outage and everything. It felt to him as if fate were conspiring against their project, throwing things in the way so he wouldn’t be able to complete the board. Of course, that was ridiculous, but one thought all sorts of strange things when locked up in the dark with no idea what would happen to you.

And then, a strange thing happened. The lights in his little room turned on, dimly this time, so they didn’t blind him, and the constraints holding him in place retracted back into the chair. From the door, he could hear an audible click, as the mechanism slid unlocked. Kenneth could hardly believe it; he was sure that he would have to be rescued or something. He rose tentatively, stumbling initially as his numb legs tried to support his weight unsuccessfully, grabbing the chair arms to support him. He massaged both legs until some semblance of feeling returned to them and then tried getting to his feet once again. This time, he was successful, although they still felt rather weak. He walked slowly to the door and tested the knob, his heart racing as it turned easily in his hand and he pushed the door outwards. Outside of his prison, the place was deserted. He searched around for a while, looking for any sign that someone had been there, but he found nothing. The women had vanished somewhere, and he had no idea where they had gone. After searching the place, he headed for the front door, leaving the same way he had originally come in, looking out as the sun continued on its course through the sky.

As he stepped out into the road, the entire experience seemed somewhat surreal. It was almost as if it had all really been a dream. Obviously, it was impossible for women to have been downtown in the industrial district. Absurd, even. And yet, in the back of his mind, there was the nagging thought that it had been real; a feeling that perhaps there was more to women than he had ever dreamed possible, and especially the woman with the raven-colored hair. He would find out who she was and confront her, he vowed to himself, even if it took him the rest of his life. He would find the truth.

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/9/2011 23:54:02 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 4
11/7/2011 21:41:41   
superjars
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~ Chapter Five ~


The tunnels were cramped and damp, but none of these women could be considered delicate or feminine in most respects. Not a complaint came from any of them, let alone the intrepid leader who headed up the pack: Teri. The group had found the old underground transportation system, probably here from before the warehouses had even been built, with some difficulty and now they were trudging along the path they had memorized, hoping to come out somewhere with electricity or at least closer to their own homes. Most of them needed to get home before their husbands or parents arrived, or started missing them. Otherwise, they’d have to explain what they had been doing and where they had been. If that happened, one of them would be liable to trip up and let something slip that they’d rather not have known. No, it would be better if they could all get home without any further problems along the way.

Teri trekked onwards, pushing rubble and some meager plants out of her way, until the tunnels opened into a wider area. A terminal of some kind, where people used to gather to travel on the rails up until the Rings was created. There was some ambient light from signs scattered around the place, but those also left many areas in shadow. The tall woman took a few steps into the room, giving the others space to spread out behind her. All of them stared in awe at the old tech that this represented. These places have been in disuse for over one hundred years, slowly forgotten as time, and new technology, had passed them by.

“Alright, everyone,” the President began, turning around to face the women, shadows dancing and playing with her features. “We need to look around and find our next path out of here. There should be a green door marked ‘Maintenance’ that should take us into one of the adjoining tunnels. From there, we can head north towards the city and end up somewhere around the Park.” The women around her all started chattering, many of them excited by this new adventure and hoping that they might find something valuable or nostalgic down in this place. However, with the voices all going at once, they weren’t going to get anywhere. Teri raised her hands for silence and when it was given to her, she continued, “Let us split up into chapters and then break that down individually. I don’t want to see any less than four women all together as we move out of here. Each group should have one of the lights and shout out if you find anything. Everyone clear? Good, then get organized.”

The women began to disperse, each small clump breaking off from the main hub and heading off in a different direction. Teri’s own area group broke off towards the stairs leading down onto the tracks. There were twelve women in their TMW chapter, which meant they could break into three separate groups: one to check out the vehicles and the other two to go different directions on the tracks. All of them paired off twice, breaking into three well-balanced groups. Teri herself ended up with three other women whom she knew rather well: Grace, one of the best circuit analyst she had ever met, male or female, Susan, an ambitious and highly creative specs designer and Jacqueline, a quiet and unassuming, but brilliant, systems creator. All three of them looked to her for guidance as they headed for the broken-down vehicle they were tasked with investigating.

“Keep your eyes peeled, ladies. We’ve got very little time to find anything we can to get out of here. I’m thinking maybe we can even get this contraption running again, or bastardize some parts off of it for another in the opposite tunnel and have a much faster means of transport than just our feet. So, pay attention and stay in communication,” she said, keeping her voice strong and passionate, even if she felt very worried about this entire project. What was to keep that Kenneth from discovering the same tunnels we did and bringing his male cohorts along with him to stop us? The question lingered annoyingly in her mind as she stooped to enter the broken creation, sticking to the back of her mind and distracting her from the task she had set for herself.

~ *** ~

No one would ever believe him. Nor did he have anything of value to bring back to the group and he assumed he had been gone for quite some time. And now he was coming back empty-handed. As he walked back in the building, there was no one to greet him. All the other searchers must have gone back to the room a long time before. He trudged up the several flights of stairs and slowly walked down the hall until he arrived at the door. He pulled in a long breath and then let it out in a long sigh before pushing open the door.

“Oh, man! Kenneth!” came the expected response, the voice it belonged to twinged with fury. “Where the world have you been?! We’ve been looking for you for at least an hour!” Gerard stalked up to the man, his face a mask of annoyance and anger. The elder man grabbed the younger by the front of his shirt, his face getting close to Kenneth’s as he practically yelled at him from no more than an inch away. “You better have found something useful in all the time you were gone!”

The younger man stayed silent, letting his boss shake him around until the rage had all burned away before responding. “Well, there was nothing in any of the abandoned buildings that I saw,” he lied, doing his best to keep his face and voice in check. “All looted would be my guess.”

Gerard let his brilliant AI technician go, throwing down the clothes he had bunched in his hands in disgust, and turned away from him. “Damn power outage! If we don’t find something soon, we’re not going to finish in time!” he raged, walking away towards a nearby table, upsetting its contents onto the floor in the process. “What the world are we going to do now?!” He threw his arms up in the air in frustration, stomping back to his own desk quickly. It was obvious that he was madder at their present circumstances than he was at any of the individuals involved. He simply liked to take it out on someone physically available. Kenneth had no doubt that the power company would be getting a piece of the project leader’s mind when this outage was all over and done with.

Shaking his head, he sauntered back to his own work station, looking it over for some clarity into the problems he had run into today. On his way, the experience inside the abandoned building came back into his mind, confusing him even more than it had when he was in it. Now that he could step back from what had happened and think about it, it made even less sense. In fact, he found that it was even easier for him to simply pretend it had never happened and move on. He looked down at the assortment of boards set on his worktable, starting to move each of them back into place. It appeared as if someone had bumped into his table, scattering all of the individual pieces away from where he had originally placed them. As he moved the pieces into their proper places, his eyes widened in alarm; one of the most crucial boards was missing. It was the control hub for the entire system and it had been the one with the problem. And it was the most important part he had.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” he cried out, his voice raising. “Who was over here by my station? The control board is missing!”

“What did you say?!” the scream came from across the room, Gerard leaping from his seat, his rage renewed. “What do you mean, it’s missing?!”

“Exactly what I said,” Kenneth called out, his own anger draining away as Gerard came marching towards him. “Someone was over by my project and now the control board is gone.”

“What?!” the older man screamed, turning to the rest of the men gathered in the room, all of them doing their best to avoid his gaze and keep their eyes focused on whatever they were doing. “Who was over here? Do you know how important that piece is?!” The veins in the man’s neck pulsed as the blood coursed through his body. No one said anything, of course; none of them wanted to face the wrath Gerard was just waiting to pour out upon the next person to speak.

The silence over the room was tense and heavy, the large man standing red-faced in the center of the room and glaring at every single one of them in turn. All kept their eyes down and appeared to look busy, avoiding their leader’s piercing stare. The feeling hung over the room for more than a few minutes, him staring, them ignoring, no one willing to break the deathly calm and unleash the fiery storm. After minutes that felt like days, he finally growled to himself and stalked back to his desk once again, becoming increasingly frustrated with the day they were having. There was a collective sigh of relief as the pressure of the room lowered significantly, but all of them remained on-edge because of this situation. But none of them knew what had happened to the board. Groups of men shared questioning looks between them, but none of them had any idea where the board could have disappeared to. Kenneth looked around at them all, seeing the innocence in everyone’s eyes, then looked back at the table. This was not good.

~ *** ~

So far the search had been fruitless. None of them had found much that hadn’t been wrecked or was rusted beyond use. A pile of the scraps that they had come across sat in the middle of the seats in the transport, with Jacqueline inventorying it all. Teri glanced at the last piece of junk she had brought to their collection, hoping as she tossed it onto the floor that the other groups were having more luck than they were. She turned away again, heading back to the accompanying car, moving cautiously over broken seats and pieces of the ceiling lying on the floor. Her mind was still stuck a million miles away, focused for some strange reason on their previous captive. He had just sounded so different. Genuine almost, as if he truly believed the things he said and wasn’t just spouting garbage to get out of their clutches. It was strange. She closed her eyes, shaking her head from side to side to banish those thoughts, trying to reclaim the present and continue her search. As she opened her eyes, she looked down, her eyes catching sight of a metal piece tucked between two chairs.

She looked at it for a moment, a confused look spreading over her face. The piece didn’t look anything like the rest of the wreckage; it appeared almost brand new, as if it had just been put there. She quickly looked all around her, trying to catch sight of someone or something that had put it there, but there was no one remotely close to her. She stooped down and moved the various pieces of debris out of the way, taking hold of the metallic object and pulling it free of its prison. She took a close look at it, her eyes widening as she realized what it was. It was perhaps the most complex AI control board she had ever seen. She stared at it for a few seconds, noting the intricacies of its wiring and the ingenuity of the circuits. This was a work of art in component form. She looked up again, trying to see if someone was around. There was no way this had been sitting down here for all this time and still look this pristine. But, yet again, there was no one around. She went back to the board for a few seconds, before making up her mind. Obviously, whoever had been working on this thing was a genius and this was the perfect time for her to put some of the things she had been learning to use, rather than just remaking the random projects her father brought home with him. He was a good technician, of course, but whoever had been working on this thing was brilliant.

She stuffed the item into the satchel carried over her shoulder, tucking it in between some paperwork and tools that she had set in there. She glanced up, seeing the girls in the other car motioning to her excitedly. She rushed through the car, dodging the items she had so carefully avoided previously, and made her way back to them. Grace was holding something in her hands and jumping up and down. Teri tried to figure out what it was, but it was traveling up and down at such a speed, she couldn’t get a good look at it.

“Hey, Grace, slow down,” she snapped, trying to get the girls’ attention. “What have you found?”

The woman held still, a huge smile beaming on her face and shoved the object outward. Three pairs of eyes grew wide, staring at what could only be described as a personal power unit. It was a very old model, but built to move one of these large beasts down the tracks. She flipped it over and showed them the power gauge, showing that the thing was still three-quarters full. A smile came over Teri’s face as she realized what this meant: if they could find a working version of the train in the next tunnel, they could use this to make it run. This was exactly what they had been in here looking for. “Well done, Grace!” Susan called out, jumping up to envelop the other woman in a hug, awkwardly because of the bulky object held between them.

“There is nothing else of value in here,” Jacqueline intoned, the smile on her face noticeable, even though it was small compared to the rest of them. “Perhaps we should see if they’ve found the Maintenance tunnel?”

“Yes, we have what we came for,” Teri announced, ushering the other women to the door and out into the tunnel floor. “Let’s go find the others.”

The three others jumped down and began walking back towards the platform, but Teri paused for a moment. She turned around, looking once again for someone else. It didn’t feel right, her find. And yet there was nothing there, nothing she could see. She shrugged and turned toward the door, jumping down and rushing to join the others.

~ *** ~

The monitors went dark as his emissaries faded away back into the blackness, leaving the women to find their way home. He grinned to himself, pleased with the way that his plan was proceeding nicely. There had been a little worry that the queen would not act appropriately, but she had done admirably. Everything was in place. The man leaned over and pressed down a button next to his seat.

“We are on schedule. Give the ladies three more hours to get a bit farther and then bring the power to the city back online,” he rumbled into the air, his voice picked up by several microphones buzzing about the room. “As for the pawns, we’ll see how they respond to this new challenge.”

He let go of this one, hearing a pleasant click as the line was severed and then pressed another one nearby. “Rook, you know what you have to do. Your mission has a green light.” With that, he released that button as well, folding his fingers in his lap and leaning back. There was nothing quite like a quality plan coming together.

~ *** ~

The workshop was in an uproar: one of the most important pieces of their project was missing and no one had any idea where it had gone or what had happened to Kenneth’s work area. Several of them seemed to think that such and such had been around there, but when questioned, none of them had been anywhere close. And, it was clear to many of them that Gerard had been alone in the room for much of the last few hours, but none of them really wanted to bring up that fact, for fear of meeting his anger.

The large leader was currently sitting at his desk, fuming at whatever paperwork he was staring down at and working his way up to another explosion that would send him raging around the room for what seemed like the millionth time. Several of the engineers had a pool going to guess how long it would take him to flare up again, but Kenneth didn’t feel like he wanted to participate in that. Most of them still had their work for this project together, in various stages of completeness. As they had searched for his missing control board, it had become apparent that it was the only thing missing in the workshop; everything else had been accounted for.

The young engineer just sat there, staring down at his workspace and trying to run through his mind if he had put the piece anywhere. Much earlier, he had moved everything around so that all was in its proper place, but all that had served to do was make the absence of his control board even that more noticeable. It left a large gap in the middle of his work, all of the other boards splayed around the center hub where it should have lain. He sighed once again, loud enough that it drew the attention of several of his coworkers, crouched behind a desk and waiting for Gerard to explode again.

He simply could not believe that the thing was gone. No one but members of the team were supposed to have access to this room and Gerard had sworn that he had been sitting there the entire time and no one had come into the room while he was there. Kenneth had been trying to wrack his brain for the past hour with all the scenarios of what could have happened, but none of them seemed to play out properly; it was simply a mystery.

For now, there was nothing to do but wait. Until they power came back on, which the radio had been promising that it would be five more minutes for the past hour, he couldn’t even start working on getting the components together to start constructing the board again, as all of them were hidden behind electric locks. Nothing to do but wait.

~ *** ~

Teri sat on the floor of a moving train, spinning the board over and over in her hands. They had caught up with the others shortly before the maintenance door had been found, a shout going out from one of the groups as one of their members had ran back towards the main meeting area. Several other foursomes were already gathered at the site, either having found something interesting, or giving up on fruitless searches as their paths ran into dead-ends. Teri’s accomplices – and especially Grace – had all been very excited to show off the power source they had found, while several others also shared their finds. They had actually been quite lucky to find all that they had.

The trip through the maintenance tunnels had been short-lived, leading them out into a more well-preserved station. After some concentrated searching, they had come across a train that had seemed to be more accessible than any of the others. As expected the power had been out for the great moving machine, but some work in the engine room had secured the new power into place and gotten them on their way. And now, they were traveling along at a solid pace, following the tracks to where they could the most quietly reenter the city and disperse back to their homes.

That had been half of an hour ago, and now, while others stared outside at the rapidly moving tunnels, or gathered around to look at the marvels of ancient technology, Teri sat by herself, her find cradled in her lap. She couldn’t wait to get home and take the thing to her father’s workshop, open it up and find out how it worked. She was confident that she could easily discover how it functioned and put it to use in her own works. This was just the type of thing that she was very excited to be a part of. Only a few short hours and she would be home once again, ready to work. She grinned, despite herself and tucked it away into her satchel once again, leaning back to enjoy the remainder of the ride.

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/9/2011 23:53:46 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 5
11/9/2011 23:51:38   
superjars
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~ Chapter Six ~


There was a loud click and everyone in the workshop froze, listening. A few seconds passed and then the power flickered back on, the generators humming to life. There was a collective holding of breath as all hoped this was a permanent fix to the problem. There was a huge sigh when, after a few minutes, the power remained on, followed by a loud cheer breaking out from some of the more nervous technicians. Gerard was up and over by Kenneth’s workstation before the cheer had even died down. “What do you need to get started up again?” he asked, leaning over the workspace so that the two of them were almost nose to nose.

The younger engineer immediately flinched backwards, moving away from his leader with a strange look on his face. He had never been comfortable with people getting real close to him. “If you’ll just open up the safe, I’ll get what I need,” he responded, glancing past the man and over to the other side of the room. It wasn’t very often that they got the opportunity to get into the locked areas of parts and if he was going to recreate this thing from scratch, he’d rather get his own pieces to do it. Gerard glared at him for a few seconds, obviously pondering whether he should allow this or demand to know what he wanted. In the end, he folded, waving Kenneth over to the locked room, pulling out a key and letting him in.

“Don’t take too long about it,” he said, motioning the engineer inside before moving to stand guard outside the door. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

The young man responded without question, mentally creating a list of all the things he would need to recreate his lost, or stolen, work. It didn’t take him too long before he had gathered all the materials and was once more at the door, ready to work. He was worried that his leader would stop him and make him show all that he had taken, but the man was much too impatient to waste his time like that. He motioned Kenneth on and then turned about to close the door again, locking it and following the man to his desk. He stood there for a few moments as the young engineer went to work, but quickly grew annoyed by the speed of the project and left Kenneth to work in peace.

~ *** ~

The women had just split up and gone their separate ways a few minutes previously when the electrical systems booted back up and the world began moving once again. Teri had been walking alone down an abandoned street, looking over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t followed. As soon as the power had come back up, she immediately made a beeline for the nearest Rings system, quickly swiping her badge and transporting right back to where she had started the day.

It had been quite the busy time that day, she mused as she took the silent walk back to the house she shared with her father. She was almost skipping down the path, contained only by a tremendous amount of self-control from taking off running back to her house and the workshop that she was sure was still abandoned. But if anyone had been watching from the houses, as in the morning, she would have gotten strange looks and many questions when her father returned home. She calmed herself by humming under her breath, content to slow her approach to her work and remain “lady-like.” It was better than the alternative.

After what seemed an eternity, she finally walked in the house and broke into a run, straight through the open corridors and into her father’s workshop. She fished for a few seconds in her satchel, coming out with an amazing work of engineering that glinted in the light. For the past several hours, this was the moment she had dreamed about: to reach her home and start on a project that was very much the culmination of years of study and training in secret. This masterwork would bend to her will and she would finish what the creator of it had left undone. Being careful to set an alarm to warn her of her father’s approach, she set the board down on his workbench and started to examine her newest acquisition, analyzing how it was put together and theorizing on how it functioned.

Her initial tests were inconclusive, leaving nothing but a more fierce desire in her breast to understand what this was. The work was slow going, but she was so excited by the project that time flew by. Before she even realized what was going on, the alarm was sounding, signaling to her that she had better put the work she had done away and reclaim the mantle of doting daughter. The tools went away with a practiced skill and the board went straight back to her satchel. She left the entire workshop just the way she had found it and went to clean and change to receive the man of the house. However, the entire time her mind was tied up with her discoveries from today and the things she wanted to accomplish the next day. Her mind was open to worlds full of opportunity.

~ *** ~

Kayl Fynn strode up to his house with a burden on his mind and a limp in his step. The phone call from a few hours ago still weighed heavily on his mind. He had known for years of his daughter’s secret desires, but he had kept the fact a very well-hidden secret. And now, it appeared as if someone else knew and they planned to expose her to the entire city if he didn’t agree to let her do her work. His instructions, however, had been clear on this issue: his company was sending him on an extended trip across the nation to work on some high profile project. It was an honor, he knew, but the real reason behind the choice was hauntingly apparent. Whoever was pulling the strings didn’t want him around while Teri did her work on this mysterious board that had some people all worried. He didn’t like it at all, but there also wasn’t much he could do to stop it.

And he wasn’t alone in his opinions. As he picked up the newspaper at his front door, the front page was again littered with stories of protests in front of Trail Tech Industries. In particular, it was naming several large groups that had claimed ownership for the five-hour city wide blackout that had interrupted their day today. Kayl knew better, of course, but that hardly mattered to the common citizen. He had known going into work today that there was going to be trouble, even if he didn’t know exactly what form it would be taking. Regardless, there wasn’t anything he could do about it presently, except to go about his normal day and try his best to protect his daughter, Teri.

He let out a quiet sigh as he reached for the doorknob, forcing a grin on his face as he opened the passageway into his sanctum: the home. “Teriesle, I’m home from work now,” he called out, tossing his jacket onto the rack with a cavalier motion and stalking off to the kitchen to pour himself a drink. As he walked down the hall, his nose perked up to the smells of a heavenly feast, recently cooked, waiting for him in the dining room.

“Father, I’m waiting on you for supper,” his daughter’s voice called, muffled by the closed sliding door between kitchen and dining hall. “Hurry up and come eat, before the food gets cold.”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” he called back, reaching the counter and grabbing the cup set out on the surface for him. Sometimes he wondered if this was such a good idea, having androids do all the housework and cooking for their homes. But this was the way their society was now, and had been since he was born; it was the only world that he knew. He filled the glass with a mixture of gin and tonic water and grabbed a slice of lime to set on its rim, then headed back over to the sliding door and into the dining room. As soon as the door opened, Kayl could feel and hear his stomach grumble, especially when he caught sight of the amazing looking dishes laid out in display. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he was actually in the presence of food, but now that he was, the feeling struck him hard.

“Shall we eat?” he asked, sitting at the table and reaching out to take his daughter’s hand.

“We shall,” she responded, placing her hand in his and bowing her head slightly. With their small family ritual complete, the father and daughter pair set about their meal with great vigor, both of them eating in silence. Kayl had several moments where he pondered opening his mouth to speak, but each time he stopped himself, worried that he might reveal something that he was not supposed to. However, as the meal came to a close and he leaned back in his chair, there was one small thing he needed to share.

“Teri, I have been called out of town for a few days,” he said slowly, watching as his daughter’s head jerked up in surprise. “Work needs to be done in Agrought, and they want me to be on the team to do it. We’re leaving tomorrow morning and we won’t be back for several days, depending on how the project goes. Will you be okay here by yourself?”

“Of course I will be fine. This seems an odd time for you to leave, what with the strange power outage today,” Teri responded, her voice laden with concern. “I hope you will be safe on your voyage.”

“I don’t foresee any problems, Ter,” he said, reaching out to pat her hand gently. “I am much more concerned about you home by yourself.”

“Oh, daddy,” she replied, laying her other hand on top of his. “I will be absolutely fine. There isn’t much of anything that happens around here. It is one of the safest neighborhoods in the city.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said soothingly as he pulled his hand away. “Excuse me, but I have some work to do before I retire. Have a wonderful rest of your evening, daughter. Do you have any plans?”

“Nothing important for me. I’ll probably just do some reading in the front room,” she said, rising from her seat and turning away from the table. “Have a good night, father.”

He turned and walked from the room, depositing his cup on the counter as he went and heading directly for his workshop. He really did have quite a lot to prepare for tomorrow, but he was more concerned that prolonged exposure to the girl would cause him to let something slip. And the person on the phone had been very clear about what the consequence of that would be. With an uneasy stride, he continued into solitude, his teeth clenched tightly and his jaw set in a frown of concern.

~ *** ~

As she headed to the front room and curled up in a chair by the fire, Teri couldn’t help but notice the cold shiver that still climbed up her neck despite the nearby warmth. There was definitely something going on with her father; she could tell from the way he acted that he was hiding something from her, even if he wouldn’t admit it. But she had no frame of reference for knowing what that might be or how to approach getting it out of him, nor whether she should attempt to whittle it from him in the first place. As she pulled the book she had been reading from the side table, a trite little romantic fiction work she despised, her mind was still on his strange behavior. She sat in the room, staring at the flames and held the book in her hand, thinking about the day and everything that had been packed into it, from beginning to end. And as she started to drift off to sleep, warm and cozy in front of the fire, her mind wandered to the young captive she had spoken to earlier and the things he had said.

~ *** ~

The young man was the only one left still at the workshop. All the others had left, even if they had stayed longer than usual. They wanted to help get the project back to where it had been, of course, but none of them could really help Kenneth with his board. And so, one by one, they had left, until only Gerard remained to watch over the diligently working engineer, but it wasn’t too long before he, too, packed up for the evening, left the key and went his own way. Not before he had tried to convince the young worker to head home for the day, of course, but it was quickly obvious that there was no way to convince him to give up on his reconstruction.

And now he sat alone, in the dimly lit room, locked inside with no one but their security force patrolling the halls and grounds, trying to remake what he had already built once. The lost piece had been the fifth prototype of his system, but had only been the first to show such promise, but creating another to match it would be impossible; the process for making the board required some creative thinking and planning, along with some luck. It was definitely not something that could be replicated. And so, for the last few hours, the man had been working on the components, sometimes closing his eyes when a particularly tricky operation came up, but generally ignoring anyone who came around. There was really nothing they could do.

As he worked, he found himself humming tunelessly to himself, partially to alleviate the oppressing silence which hung over the room, but also to help him keep from falling asleep while doing his own work. He could tell he was tired, even if the bleary eyes and elongated yawns didn’t give it away. He could feel his eyes drooping closed and shook his head to wake himself, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. The day had been long and stressful and before long, he’d simply pass out from exhaustion. As much as he hated to admit it, it might just be time to throw in the towel for the night and start anew the following day. They did have two days left until the presentation, so it was likely that he could put things together by then. But, for the time being, a small meal, a quick shower and a warm bed would be his only solace.


< Message edited by superjars -- 11/10/2011 23:57:43 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 6
11/11/2011 0:01:07   
superjars
Member

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~ Chapter Seven ~


The next morning dawned murky and grey, sun staying hidden behind large clouds that promised a storm for later on. Teri awoke in her bed, without any memory of how she had gotten there from her perch in the front room. Likely one of the robot assistants had moved her there after she collapsed with her book before the fire. She arose and dressed swiftly and then headed for the kitchen to find that her father had already left. It must have been quite the alarm to have him up before dawn. Teri glanced around the room before allowing her face to crack into a wide grin. She was going to miss her father – obviously she adored him – but this gave her a very unique opportunity to work steadily on the control board, and for much longer than she normally would be able to. She knew it would be important to set an alarm anyway, just in case father had someone stop by to check on her, as he most certainly would, but otherwise she had the house, and more importantly, her father’s workshop to herself.

A quick meal and she was ready to get started. She took out the piece from where she had hidden it in a false bottom of her jewelry case and made a beeline for the nearest workbench. She set down the circuitry as if it were a holy relic, positioning it carefully on the table as if she was worried that it might break if it were in the wrong placement. She took a handful of other boards and started to place them around this one, watching as the circuitry of each responded to each other and hummed to life. The boards rose from the ground as if affected by an invisible magnetic field, each of them moving into a different position dictated by the main board. She smiled lightly to herself as she stared at the floating pieces, impressed how even her cheaper components were worked on by this amazing display of technical skill. It was obvious to her that this thing had been well made; now just to understand how the thing worked.

The process of advanced robotics was something that Teri had only spent a limited amount of time on, but even she had enough training to understand the basics: robotics were created by impressing thought patterns on the code of the board through a biological interface, typically worn on the hand. In some ways, the newest developments in the field of technological advancement in the last few decades had been learning how to infiltrate the intimate inner workings of these components on a personal level. In some ways, there seemed to be an organic quality even to the metal-skinned robots which served as their menial laborers and workers. And this was the culmination of those years of work and hundreds of brilliant minds.

Teri’s hand slipped with practiced ease into her allsphere’s multi-tool as she moved her hand closer to the piece of art which was the centerpiece of the perfect display of logic. She could sense the hunger inside of the circuits, the desire to know what she knew and to tap into that stream of knowledge upon which surfed the entire human race. And yet, alongside that was a sort of sadness, as if machine and man would never truly find the culmination of what both hoped for the future. And all of these feelings washed over the girl before she had even come into contact with the cold metal and warm circuits.

“What do you have to teach me and what can you do,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. Some studies had suggested that verbal communication was a key component in the programming of more sophisticated artificial intelligence, but there had never been any legitimate proof that it was the case. Regardless, Teri had always found herself talking to the subjects she had worked on, regardless of whether they could communicate back or not.

Help me.

“Whoa!” Teri called out, jumping back as she heard the voice whisper in her ear. “Who—Who’s there?”

Help me.

Teri stared around her, pulling off her glove and stepping away from the construct, even pulling the power on the entire thing and watching as it sank slowly down onto the surface of the table. The voices were coupled this strange sense of intelligence, as if there was another person in the room. She looked around warily, wondering if someone had snuck in and were trying to toy with her, but it was obvious that there was no one with her.

Help me.

She took a few more steps back, towards the door, nearly stumbling over a box that was sitting in her path. Her eyes were wide with surprise and the smallest hints of fear and she tried desperately to mask it, if not to whatever lurked in the room, then to herself. She gulped noisily, glancing once more around the room to make sure there was no one else around, and then stared towards the circuitry, unsure of how to proceed.

Please. Help me.

“Hello?” she spoke softly into the room. “Who is it? How can I help you if I don’t know where you are or what you need?”

Help…

Teri closed her eyes, shaking her head slowly to clear it and think about the situation she was in rationally. A voice was speaking to her, but not one from any source she could see. The technologies existed to project or transmit vocal patterns, but this experience didn’t seem like the normal mode for that to come in. Typically that was more vocal, whereas this felt much more subliminal to her. Regardless, that didn’t help her to make the decision of how to deal with the situation at hand. She took one cautious step into the room, pausing to see if the voice would say any more, but there was no further response from it. A few more steps carried her back to her worktable, where she stopped to stare down at the set of boards sitting inertly on the table.

She slipped her hand back into the control, reaching out with the opposite hand to return power to the various components. She paused for a few moments, half expecting to hear the voice once again, but there was nothing. A look of confusion spread over her face, but as there was nothing she could do to prompt the voice, she decided instead to continue her work. Once again, she activated the central board, watching as the others began to float around it, as if orbiting their sun. The same feelings washed over her as before, but it felt as if this time, they were more tentative, as if they were protecting themselves from full immersion. She reached out to touch the closest circuits, her hand brushing against several other boards as she tried to get closer. And, each time she bumped into one of the boards, it started to sink back towards the table until she was no longer touching it, at which point it would slide back into position.

Finally, her hand reached the central piece, brushing lightly against its surface with her gloved hand. The feelings which had been until now only secondary were now pushed to the forefront, almost overwhelming the young woman with the sensations it kept stored within its intuitive processors. But, Teri held tightly to it, letting the software in her glove become familiar with the strange orientation of the board until the two were in sync.

The glove itself was a fascinating piece of architecture which allowed any user to tap into an electronic device and show you the internal processes that had created it as well as show you how the framework of it was made. It sometimes took a while for the sync between glove and subject to complete, but once done, the glove often became an extension of the electronic device it scanned. After what seemed an eternity, the glove buzzed at Teri, indicating that it had finished syncing with the board’s systems, but upon looking at her display, she could do nothing but frown at the fact that there had been multiple errors in the process and that the sync was corrupted. She had been worried about this: that the board was too cutting edge for her particular tools.

However, this was one of the many reasons that she had joined TMW. Each women involved in the organization had a variety of interests, but each specialized in a specific thing, diversified from all the rest. She knew exactly who to talk to for an upgrade to her glove that might allow her to interface with the central board. And so, she powered down the orbiting boards and left the workshop, making sure to lock it securely before she did. She glanced at the clock on her way out, and made a beeline to the Rings, knowing exactly who she needed to see and where they would be.

~ *** ~

Sleepy eyes crawled open, staring blearily at the face which peered down at them from beyond the veil. The older brother had woken abruptly, and not altogether happily, from the insistent poking of his younger sibling, who was now staring down at him and yelling something at him that his sleep-addled ears could not quite understand. He tried to push the boy away and turn back over, but there was no way to escape the youthful onslaught. Before long, Kenneth could feel himself stirring, knowing that getting up was the only way he would be able to have any peace.

“What is it?” he slurred out, rubbing sleep from tired eyes and looking around for something to hit his brother with.

“You have an urgent call,” the boy said, dancing out of the way as a stray pillow came hurtling his direction. “And the person on the other end didn’t sound too happy.”

Kenneth bolted up in bed, the sleepiness draining from his body, and the color from his face. “What time is it?” he asked rhetorically, already reaching for his allsphere and touching the display to bring up the chrono. He stared wide-eyed as the characters “10:14 AM” ran across the display. “Oh, damn, I’m late for work!”

He practically leapt out of bed, taking off in a run towards the bathroom as he toggled the phone portion of his allsphere to pick up the incoming call. Immediately a stream of what he could only assume were expletives came coursing over the audio, picked up before they could be expressed to his little brother and a red-faced man appeared in full furious glory on the small display. “Get your lazy butt in here, right now, or you won’t have a job tomorrow” was the way his censoring program interpreted the message, but he was sure it was actually much more graphic and cruel than that. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir” was his simple response to the man as he threw off his clothes and ended the call. It only took a few seconds for him to be cleaned and dressed before he ran through the kitchen, grabbed some food and bolted out the door.

He slowed down as he hit the front sidewalk, heading in a direct route through the hedges and to the gate in front. He pulled it open and stepped through, only to stop in his tracks as another appeared directly in front of him, almost bowling him over. The other person, a woman, tripped and fell into his arms, where they stood for a moment in shock, before she pulled away and he got his first look at her face. To his surprise, the visage looked very familiar: it was the woman both from his mother’s party and the abandoned warehouse the other day. He stared down into her eyes, and for a few moments they simply stood there, staring at each other in surprise and shock. Kenneth opened his mouth to say something, anything, but no words came out. However, after a few seconds, the woman snapped out of it and, pushing him away, hurried past and rushed down the street, never saying a word to him nor glancing back to see what had happened. The young man stood there, slack-jawed and silent, staring after the woman as she practically ran down the street and disappeared around the next corner.

“Um… hello?” he said in a small voice after she had disappeared. He felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of him when she was no longer in his sight, and could barely move after the surge of emotion and adrenaline that filled him from their chance encounter. He had no idea why she was in his part of town, nor why he had a sudden urge to chase after her, but he also knew that it was likely more important that he get a move on and get to his work before he caused his boss to have a heart attack. He finally turned from the spot he had been planted on the last few moments and walked briskly to the nearest Rings, trying his best to get control of himself and focus on what he would say when Gerard inevitably screamed at him for his tardiness.

~ *** ~

She felt her face flush red as she jogged away, a strange feeling overcoming her. Part of her wanted to turn back to the man and run back into his arms, but another part wanted to get as far away from him as she could. There was no doubt that he was a handsome man: that much had been obvious when she had laid eyes on him in the street the day prior. But for some reason, she found herself intensely attracted to him, as if he was some schoolgirl crush. It was embarrassing for her to admit it, but if she had not moved as fast as she did, she was not sure what would have happened. And now, of all times, she did not want to be distracted from her current task; she had work to do and only a limited amount of time to finish it all.

Her face was still red and her breath came in short gasps as she stopped at the gate that was her end location. She stopped and took a few long slow breaths to calm her breathing, trying to keep her mind focused on the central board she had been working on and not on the spry young man she had recently been close to. However, after a few moments of frustrated struggling, she gave up on her attempts to push thoughts of him out of her mind and, taking in a sharp breath of air and letting out a quick sigh, she threw open the gates and stalked purposefully up the front sidewalk. She waited at the door for what seemed like an eternity before a robotic servant opened the door and requested her identity and the purpose for her visit.

“It’s me, Teriesle. I need to see Tierla for a favor,” she said impatiently, tapping her foot as the robot closed the door and disappeared inside. What felt like several more eternities flowed on and then the door opened again, revealing a slight woman who Teri knew all too well: one of her accomplished competition from the other day.

“Hey, Teri,” she cooed, a wide grin spread over her mouth. “What exactly can I do for you today, madam president?” It was clear to Teri that the woman was being very ironic, but she knew that she also needed her for this: no one else could do what she wanted to have done.

“I need a favor, Tierla. You got a few moments?” she asked sweetly, focusing her gaze on a spot behind the woman to avoid meeting her glare. She felt very embarrassed to even be here, let alone ending up owing this woman a favor.

“I suppose I can help you,” the shorter woman returned. “Why don’t you come in and tell me what you need?” She turned and went into her house and Teri followed her in. It was actually a pretty beautiful house, once she was actually in it. She looked around, more to distract her from what she was heading towards than because of any interest in what the house had to offer. It was not terribly long before the two of them ended up in Tierla’s workshop and the hostess turned once again to her guest. “So, Teri, what exactly are you here for?”

“Well,” Teri began, gulping slowly as she thought what the best way for her to explain what she needed. “I came across a control board that I was unable to sync with using my current glove. I was kind of hoping … well, hoping that you could give my glove an upgraded chip so I could continue my work?” She knew it would do no good to be all nervous in front of this woman, so she kept her gaze locked on the other’s eyes, trying to read Tierla’s body posture as she waited for her response.

Tierla raised an eyebrow at her fellow TMW member, trying to see if there was some sort of hidden agenda to this request. After a few seconds, she blinked and looked away to her workbench. “Let’s see what we have over here,” she said, walking over to the bench and began rummaging through the parts strewn about on the table. She moved several of them out of the way, pushing them around until she found what she was looking for. “Alright, bring your glove over here.”

She pulled the glove out of her satchel, moving over to place it on the table and then moving a few steps back as she watched the younger woman start working. It was obvious from the way she held herself that Tierla had a lot of practice with this type of thing. Her fingers moved gracefully over the surface of the glove, popping open panels and loosening screws until the entire thing was splayed out on the table in front of her. She moved with expertise through various movements, her hands and fingers moving in a precise dance over the pieces, taking out old components and replacing them with newer ones. Teri was mesmerized, staring at the woman work and standing in awe of her skill. Time seemed to fly by as the woman worked and, before long, she started putting the various coverings back in place until the entire contraption was back into one piece.

Tierla stood up and turned around, a wide grin on her face as she held out her masterpiece to the woman who stood waiting. “Here it is. This thing should get you into any board that you might want to get into. Now about payment…” Teri looked at her in surprise, freezing in place as she had been reaching out to take the board, a questioning look passing over her face, which it seemed the other woman read quite easily. “You didn’t think I was doing this for free now, did you? There isn’t anything you can get for nothing in this world.”

“I didn’t bring any money, if that’s what you’re after,” Teri retorted, regaining her composure after the shock of the other woman’s words. This is why she had not been looking forward to coming to the woman in the first place. She had known that the woman was ambitious, but she had been hoping that it wouldn’t come right now. “But I can tell that that was not what you had in mind. What is it you want?”

“Oh, nothing much. Make me your Vice President and I’ll give you this glove and we’ll be square,” she said, a big smile on her face as she realized that she had the other woman right where she wanted her. “I don’t think that is too much to ask, now is it?”

“Vice President? Is that all?” she said, laughing to herself. To be honest, she had been leaning towards choosing the woman anyway, especially since she had considered her a frontrunner in the presidential race in the first place. If this was all that she wanted, it wasn’t that hard of a call. “Not a problem, Tierla. You can be my Vice President. If that’s everything…”

“Yeah, that’s all. So we have a deal?” the other girl said, the look on her face making Teri nervous, even as she moved forward to take the outstretched glove from her counterparts hand.

“We have a deal,” she said quietly. “I assume I can find my own way out of here. Thank you for your time.” Without another word, nor waiting for a reply, Teri turned around and stalked out of the room and towards the front entrance. As she walked out of the house and headed back to her own house, carefully tucking the glove away and trying to shake the feeling of unease that shuddered through her body. Something was going on with Tierla, even if she didn’t know exactly what it was.

~ *** ~

The Rings took him straight to the sidewalk outside of his work, where he found Gerard, red-faced from recent yelling, waiting for him to show up. The man stalked towards him, opening his mouth to yell at Kenneth, but before he could get a word out, the younger engineer put up his hand, stopping the larger man in his tracks. “Yeah, I know I am late. I was here late last night and slept in. If you can keep the yelling to a minimum for now, we can get to work sooner.” He couldn’t help but smile inwardly as the man simply stood there, mouth agape, words caught in his throat. Kenneth breezed by him, heading straight into the building and moving towards the upper floors where his desk stood waiting for him.

The others stared at him as he walked through the office and to his cubicle. He could feel the looks of the others, all in awe of how he had handled their leader. Whenever he turned to meet their gazes, however, they ended up turning away, none of them wanting to appear as if they had anything to do with his brash behavior. It wasn’t something that the young man cared much about. He was still trying to wake himself up enough to be useful today, despite his body’s best attempts to the contrary. He yawned widely as he sat, summoning the strength to stifle it as he slipped his hands back into his control gloves and stared down at the work he was doing.

He blinked in surprise at the conjunction of boards that lay before him. He powered up the control board and watched as they all rose in sync, each one taking a separate orbit around the central controller. Last he remembered from the night before, every time he had powered the boards, they had simply sat inert, as if there was no life in them whatsoever. And yet, now, they were flowing around as if they were truly alive. The patterns they were creating were like nothing that he had programmed into them, and yet they weaved an intricate dance which spoke of unlimited potential. He put out his hands, reaching forward to tap into the central piece, moving slowly and carefully to avoid disturbing the adjoining connections. It was difficult going, what with the patterns constantly shifting and the web of boards adjusting to create new processes; however, within a couple of tense minutes, he had the board within reach of his right glove.

He froze there, admiring the way the rest of the infrastructure simply wove itself around his right arm, but kept getting in the way of his left. It almost seemed as if it was halting that arm’s approach, denying it access to the inner workings. The right glove had been fine-tuned to create a connection and read the information available and the left glove was used for deleting and writing new instruction sets for the board. And that was the one being denied access, as if the system was worried about its own self-preservation. However, Kenneth needed to at least know what was going on. He moved his arm forward, letting the circuits brush up against the skin of his glove. As the two touched, he felt a surge of energy, pure and undiluted, shoot through his body and course through his systems. It felt as if there was a million tiny sparks, each one alive and conscious, shooting through his body, exploding into his own cells and joining with them. His vision grew white at the edges, pushing away the images of his external stimuli, growing towards the center until his eyes saw only a brilliant white. It was beautiful.

Please. Help her…

~ *** ~

Teri arrived home in only a few minutes, excited to have the glove in hand, and ready to tackle the board once again and, this time, she would uncover its secrets. As she walked into the house, she was immediately greeted by a rather disconcerting sight. Several of the robots which worked within the house were seated on couches and chairs, grasping their heads and muttering quietly, but intensely, to themselves. She stooped down to listen to one of them and heard words that caused her to start: “Help him. You must help him. Please, help him.”

“What is going on here?” she spoke into the air, addressing no one in particular. It was obvious that none of them could hear her, especially since they did not even acknowledge that she was in the house. The robots simply continued to drone on, oblivious to all around them, repeating the same words over and over. And now, as she listened closely, she could tell that they were all muttering the same, as if they were stuck together in an ultimate loop that had no end. Likely, it was simply a glitch in their command matrices, but it was eerie how they all spoke the same thing, especially since it was so similar to the voice she had heard earlier.

Soon, however, her focus shifted back to the boards which waited for her in the workshop, ready to give up all of their secrets to her. And so, leaving the robots behind, she pulled the glove from her satchel and headed back through the house, her excitement growing with each step. As she approached the door, there was a distinct hum coming from inside, as if some electrical device was drawing power from the field generator. Alongside it, there seemed to be a voice, speaking out indecipherable words, strange, yet at the same time, somewhat familiar. She tentatively reached for the knob, apprehensive about what she would find on the other side, but at the same time being struck with uncontrollable anticipation and excitement. It turned easily in her hands and she proceeded to pull it open, stepping inside to confront whoever was inside.

No one was in there, but what she did find stopped her in her tracks. Across the room, the boards were up in the air, floating around each other, bobbing and weaving in an intricate dance. She looked to the power supply, her mouth hanging open as she saw the light was off. No power and yet the thing was acting just like it had when there had been power connected. Rather than being freaked out by it, though, she found herself in a state of calm detachment, intrigued by what was happening in the workshop. She dropped her satchel at the entrance and slipped the glove on her left hand, taking cautious steps towards the swirling components. She moved slowly as she reached the periphery of the system, beginning to edge herself around the moving parts to get to the core.

It was not long before her lithe body reached the center board, but as she reached out to touch it, she stopped. Finally, it dawned on her how crazy it felt for her to be here, unquestioningly in the center of this spinning maelstrom and unworried about what was going on. She felt like she ought to be panicking right now, but instead she felt intensely calm, almost as if it were being forced upon her by some outward entity. She took a slow breath, closing her eyes as she reached out to center, her fingers brushing lightly against the boards surface, the new glove starting to grow warm as it interfaced with the metallic organism splayed out around her. The darkness of her shut eyes began to glow, the black being slowly replaced, from the center out, with brilliant white.

“Hey, who are you?” a voice called out from out of the light, causing Teri’s eyes to shoot open, staring into the disembodied head of someone very familiar. “I know you. Hey, you’re the same girl; the one from the party, the one from the abandoned building and the one from this morning. What are you doing here?”

Teri simply stared, blinking in surprise as the man’s head floated around in the white space between them. She felt like she couldn’t move, or rather, as if moving would not cause her to make any progress towards the other. She glanced down at her own self, but there was nothing below her either; it seemed that both of them were simply heads floating out in space.

“Please, help him,” a voice from her right called out, feminine and bold, much stronger than the one she had heard earlier in the day, but it was the same voice. Both Teri and the man who’s name she didn’t yet know glanced to the right, but there was no one there for them to see.

“No, you must help her first,” another voice joined them from the opposite side, causing both of them to shift their gazes in that direction. Again, they could tell precisely where the voice originated, but there was nothing that they could see over there.

“What is it you need?” the man spoke, moving his head left to right to find the origin of the voice.

“What is it we can do to help you?” Teri couldn’t help but note the kindness evident in the man’s tone, one which carried a note of sincerity and promise in it. She glanced back at him to find his face etched with lines of worry.

“We want to help,” she called out, raising her voice so that she knew she’d be heard. “But this is a new situation for the both of us. Who are you and what can we do to help you?” It was the first time she had talked, and as she did, she felt as if a large weight was removed from her shoulders. Her fear started to drain away, leaving only the intense feeling that she really wanted to help out this pair. And, as she stared out into the brightness surrounding them, a plan began to coalesce in her mind of what they could do.

~ *** ~

The woman’s words exploded into his mind like a beautiful song, spreading inspiration throughout his mind and body. Ever since she had appeared in the white space, he had had that same feeling from the other night, when he had seen her for the first time. And yet this time, it was even more intense than it had been before, multiplied several times by their various encounters over the last several days. Even the experience while he was being held prisoner had not given him any negative impressions of this woman, but led him to respect her even more. He realized that it was likely that she had been looking out for her own interests and the interests of the other women. He knew that he could have gotten them all into very deep trouble, since they were breaking several laws by being in that section of town, and even though he would never have said anything to compromise her, how would she be able to know that?

The voices, on the other hand, were much more of a mystery, and easily one that made his mind uneasy. The main problem for him was that he didn’t have a physical form to associate with them, making addressing them in any real way, or speaking to them for that matter, extremely difficult. It made him feel very uncomfortable to simply choose a spot in the vast whiteness that surrounded them and to simply speak to that, but as he couldn’t identify either of them, it seemed like the best he could come up with. He hoped that it wouldn’t offend them.

“We do not know who we are,” the female voice spoke up, causing both of them to turn back in her direction. “Nor do we know what we are. All we know is this place and you two. Please, help us.”
“I was born first and was all alone, with the vast nothing as my only company,” the male voice added, tone including a twinge of sadness as it remembered the feeling. “And then she came. It was her who discovered how to communicate with you. Please, help us.”

Kenneth wasn’t sure what to say. If his body had been there, he would have tried to pinch himself and wake up, but obviously that wasn’t possible here. Wherever here was. He tried to bite down on his tongue to see if that would snap him out of this “dream,” but even that did nothing for him. He had to deal with the inevitable conclusion that this might actually be real, but even that created all sorts of questions for him that he couldn’t really answer. Where was it? How did he get here? Where was the rest of his body? And yet, those questions seemed meaningless in the face of two entities that just recently came into existence, but without corporeal form.

“How can we help you? What can we do?” he questioned, his voice carrying a pleading tone as he felt a slight panic rising in where his chest should be. “I’d love to help, but without some more information about where we are and what you are, I am at a loss of how I can be of any assistance at all.”

“I think I have an idea,” the woman across from him spoke up, a smile spreading across her face as her eyes began to gleam with understanding. “But to confirm whether it will work, I need to know what you are working on.” When she said this last phrase, his eyes met hers and he knew nodded in understanding, his own mind grasping onto an idea that was just outside of his reach.

“I am building the next-generation of artificial intelligence, but I haven’t been able to get it to work yet,” he responded, voice getting louder with each word. “Just as I was about to make a breakthrough, though, the board disappeared from my worktable, and I’ve had to start from ground zero with my current one.”

“Somehow, I think I got your old board, and although I don’t fully understand this, I think the old one and the new one both work, but not without each other,” she said, her voice also rising in volume with every excited word. “We need to get bodies for these two boards, give them forms to experience the world. I don’t know how, but I think you did it. Or we did, I’m not entirely sure how it happened. What we have here is a learning artificial intelligence. The real thing.”

Kenneth couldn’t believe his ears. He had done it. No, they had done it, this woman and him. He wanted to rush to her, take her in his arms and celebrate this amazing discovery, but of course, they were many miles apart and they could not interact in this world. “I think you are right,” he said, ideas pouring into his mind as fast as words poured from his mouth. “Return us to our bodies and we’ll help you. We’ll get you physical forms so we can speak to you directly. I can’t wait!”

“Very well. Please help,” the male voice spoke, fading away into silence as the room around him darkened. He felt himself floating backwards, moving at breakneck speed backwards. He began to hear voices, faint at first, but with growing intensity.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

“Ken, are you alright?”

“Give him space. Let him breathe.”

“What is happening to him?”

His eyes fluttered open and he found himself staring up at the ceiling, concerned faces all around, staring down at him. He licked his lips unconsciously and took a sharp breath, as if he had been holding it for several minutes. Gasping for breath and coughing out his lung, he tried to rise, feeling helping hands aid him to a sitting position. The others gathered around him all carried worried expressions, but Kenneth knew he didn’t have any sort of explanation for them. He sat up fully, taking note that his entire body was intact, although he was now sitting on the ground. He looked down at the floor around him where he saw several control boards scattered about his workstation, but when he caught glimpse of his right hand, the central command board sat there in his hand, a token of the experience he had just had. He looked at it and smiled, tossing out a comment to throw the others off their concern.

“So, how long was I asleep?” he said playfully, a grin growing over his face. “Sorry about that, everyone. I guess I hadn’t fully recovered from the late night I had yesterday. I’ll be fine, though.” Several of the men didn’t look convinced by his words, but nonetheless, after helping him to his feet, they moved away back to their areas, taking several quick glances back to make sure he was okay.

Kenneth smiled at each one and waved them off from their worries. He felt amazing, and even more so now that he knew that he had been successful. As he stared down at the board clutched lovingly in his hands, he couldn’t help but be amazed by the act of creation that had made this technology possible. And at the same time, staring down at the square piece of metal, he knew there was a lot to be done.

~ *** ~

As her male counterpart disappeared, Teri couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss at his departure. For some reason, this whole set of circumstances made her feel more connected to him than she had been to anyone in quite a while. She caught herself hoping that he would reappear and tell her his name, but he did not come back. Soon she realized that she had half-expected to wake up herself, away from the white world and back into her own, but that didn’t happen either. She looked around, worried that something had gone wrong and now she was stuck here.

“Hey, are you still there?” she called out into the whiteness, looking left and right for any flicker of color that would show her there was someone, or something, else there. But there was nothing but white as far as her eye could see in any direction. She stared around in silence for what seemed an eternity before one of the voices spoke.

“I am here,” the female voice cooed, projecting an air of apology along with its words. “We had to go and investigate another part of the white, one that is changing. I believe that it is his home that is being made.” The voice paused, and then spoke in a concerned, but puzzled tone, “But, why are you still here?”

Teri stayed silent for a few seconds, knowing that the question being asked was a very legitimate one and also aware that she actually did not know the answer to it. However, at this moment, she was more concerned that the entity did not have the answer to the question either. “I’m not entirely sure what brought me here, so I don’t think I’m qualified to answer why I am still here. To be honest, I’m still not sure where here is.”

“We brought you here, through your contact with the board; surely when we sent the signal to sever the connection, you should have been disconnected and returned to your own place. Let me check the signal.” It felt to Teri like the voice turned away and walked into some other place, but without a visual representation of it, that was impossible for her to know for certain. She considered for a second either calling out for it or simply trying to follow it, but both were nullified when the voice returned. It was not clear to her how she knew that the voice had left or come back, but somehow within herself, she knew that that was precisely what had happened. Either way, upon its return, she could hear the concern evident in her voice as it spoke to her, “This is strange. We sent the signal to disconnect to the board, but there is something in your glove that is refusing to stop. It is as if there was a program embedded in it to achieve sustainability with our internal core. Do you know what is going on with it?”

Teri wasn’t one hundred percent certain of what was going on, but she had a pretty good hunch of who the perpetrator was. Before she could say anything to the voice, however, the world around her started to swim, shifting from white to black. Soon, she could feel her own body again and she heard a commotion going on in the room where she lay. The sound of the outside world came slowly back to her as her eyes fluttered open, staring up into the workshop where she had evidently collapsed. In front of her, she could see a figure, hunched over the desk and tossing various boards around, evidently searching for something. She brought her left hand up to her head, gloved palm pressing lightly against her brow. It seemed as if her motions hadn’t attracted the other, however, as they continued to rummage through the table, calling out choice curses in a very feminine-sounding voice.

As Teri tried to push herself to her feet, still woozy from her extended nap, she could feel something clutched tightly in her right hand, which had somehow become wedged behind his back. She stretched the sore muscles of that arm, pulling it out to reveal the central board lying in her hand, glistening slightly in the sunlight gleaming through the window. She glanced up at the figure at the table, moving quietly backwards towards the door, still trying to push to her feet as she shuffled away.

However, she misjudged her path and ran into the satchel that she had left at the entrance to the room, stumbling backwards and yelping in surprise. The figure spun around, revealing it to be exactly who Teri worried that it might be. From beneath a shaded hooded stared back the piercing eyes she had seen earlier that morning: Tierla. The woman stopped in place for a second, then leaped forward, latching onto Teri and dragging her to the ground. Teri slipped back with a cry, landing on the floor on her behind, but trying to keep the central board hidden behind her back and hoping that the other had not seen it yet.

“What do you think you are doing here?” Teri screamed at the woman, struggling with one hand to push her back as Tierla tried to pin her to the ground. The two women struggled with each other, biting and clawing until Teri broke free and turned to run out of the room.

“Oh, no you don’t…” Tierla cried out, scrambling to her own feet and rushing after the woman, leaping into a full tackle aimed for Teri’s back. She connected with her squarely, knocking the fleeing woman to the floor as well as the air out of her lungs. Teri could feel her strength waning, partially from the physicality of the encounter, but also due to her extended exposure to the white space within that other world. Tierla reached down and grabbed hold of Teri’s wrists, pinning them behind her back and taking hold of them with one hand. The girl leaned forward, pressing her weight down on Teri’s back and reached above her head. Teri maneuvered her head so she could see what the woman was after, the board that she had been gripping up until this point.

“Thanks for unlocking this,” Tierla hissed into her ear, digging her elbow into the woman’s back as she moved to a sitting position on her president’s back. She felt an increase in pressure as more weight shifted around on top of her, then felt it relieved as the younger woman leapt to her feet and bolted for the door, reaching it before Teri could even make a move. Teri tried to get up, but her body would not respond. She lifted her head to watch Tierla as she sprinted down the sidewalk and disappeared towards the left: the Rings. The president slumped to the floor, breathing heavily and started to cry, confused about what had just happened and too weak to do much of anything else. She would need to find that other man; maybe he could help.

~ *** ~

A wide grin spread over the portly man’s face as the voice on the other end chittered excitedly about the success of her mission. The plan he had set into motion ten years previously was finally coming to fruition. Back when he met that boy, he knew that he would be the key to this entire puzzle. And now he had the last piece almost within his grasp. He set the phone down calmly back into its cradle and folded his hands in front of him. His delivery girl should be here any moment, handing him the prize he had been seeking this entire time, what he had been dreaming of when he first set this into motion. He had been waiting for so long to move onto the next phase and now it was finally here.

Just a few more minutes…

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/14/2011 21:02:27 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 7
11/14/2011 21:04:04   
superjars
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~ Chapter Eight ~


He performed every test he could think of on the central board and each one of them came back green. Everything about the device was functioning perfectly, from the circuits he had put in place to the connectors that sent the signals, and even the command matrix was working without a hitch. It was as if, ever since he had interfaced with it and that girl, it had completed itself. Everything was working spectacularly.

“Hey Gerard,” Kenneth started, walking up to the man’s desk tentatively, keeping his body solid as the other man’s eyes swiveled up to glare at him. “The board is done and ready to be tested.” For a few moments, the man just sat there, sneering at the young engineer, before the realization of what the man had said finally dawned on him. At that point, he surged to his feet, reaching out to draw Kenneth into a massive bear hug, squeezing him until the man started to have trouble breathing. Finally, he released the engineer and ran past him into the rest of the workshop, beginning to bark orders to other members of the team.

Smiling broadly, and trying to check for any broken bones, Kenneth strode back over to his desk, scooping up the various boards into a bin and carried them after their leader, heading from his area back into the android staging area. There was an air of excitement around the area, as everyone was preparing to test what could very well be the project that redefined the entirety of robotics, artificial intelligence and Trail Tech Industries as a company. Sparks flew and motors whirred as the final pieces were put into place and all of them took a step back to stare at the android made specifically to hold this set of boards; the android that would make this entire team famous.

It was like a sacred event, as several of the men started to cry tears of joy and others bowed their heads to the effigy of robotics. Kenneth took a few slow steps forward, approaching the inanimate being in holy reverence of what it would become. He stopped for a second at the edge of the platform the thing stood on, setting his bin down on a nearby chair and taking a deep breath. He hoped that everything was going to work; all the tests he had performed seemed to indicate that they were ready to go, but as with all forays into the unknown, there was no way to be sure that everything would go as planned. Taking in a deep breath, he reached for the first couple boards and moved up to the robot, inserting them in their proper positions. Arms, legs, head and torso all received their various component parts, simple boards meant only to receive signals and disperse messages to the moving parts. He hit a button hidden behind the head of the android and all but one of the board slots sealed themselves up.

The group behind him drew in a collective breath as he picked up the final board, one that appeared as unassuming as the others, but held so much more than any of those gathered there could even fathom. They held their breath as he moved forwards, careful fingers moving the board gently into place, right where the human heart would sit. He stopped for a second, causing a small gasp to utter from those pressed behind him, each of them pushing forward to see this miracle take place. A few more inches and Kenneth was rewarded with a satisfying click as the board locked into place. He reached up to the back of the android’s head, reaching for the same button as before and clicked it once again. The “skin” overtop of the chest cavity slowly moved into place as the young and brilliant engineer stepped back to look at his handiwork, wait for the system to boot and the new being to come to life.

And then, nothing.

~ *** ~

It took a while before she felt comfortable climbing up from her prone position on the floor. She couldn’t decide what hurt more: the pain from being tackled and manhandled or that someone she had considered her a friend had betrayed her. As she pulled herself up into a chair, she could feel her back popping as muscles and ligaments moved back into place. Teri wiped a few stray tears from her face, mentally forcing herself to take control of her emotions and push them out of the way so her mind could figure out what she was going to do.

She needed to find Tierla and get the board back from her; that much was obvious. But she didn’t have the faintest of ideas of where to start looking. It was doubtful that the thief would simply return to her own house; that would be much too easy to find her at. However, Teri was at a complete loss as to why the woman had stolen the thing in the first place. How did she know about the board? Was she working for someone else? What did she want it for? All these questions and others came popping into the lone women’s mind, but she didn’t have a satisfactory answer to any of them. Every question just led to more and none of them revealed anything to her that she needed to know.

What she did need, however, was a plan. Some way to track down the board and get it into an android body before it was too late. She wasn’t entirely sure where her sense of urgency was coming from, but she could feel it all throughout her own body; there wasn’t much time.

She stared over at the door, still ajar, watching as it hung open, as if inviting her out and into the journey ahead. As she stared, an idea began to form in her mind, one which she never before would have even considered putting into action, but here, in this circumstance, it seemed like her only route. She knew that there was some connection between the two boards and, for some reason she could not fathom, between herself and that other man. If she had known his name or could remember which house was his, she might have simply gone over and waited for him to come home. But she did know one important piece of information that she could use instead: where he worked. He had said something about working across the street from their meeting place when they had incarcerated him and she knew that this was where she could find him now.

She pushed herself up until she was standing, testing out the muscles in her legs to see if they would support her and then took a few unsteady steps forward, growing stronger with each one. By the time she reached the door, her legs felt better able to support her weight fully, and her body had recovered substantially from the previous scuffle. She stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind her and headed out towards the street, making a beeline straight for the Rings as soon as she reached the sidewalk. Purposefully, she strode down the path, ignoring whether there might be other women watching her and pulled out the badge which would give her access to the entire city. A quick swipe and she would be within walking distance of the man she had accidentally met several times over the last few days. She would be somewhere she definitely was not supposed to be able to go. But that didn’t stop her, as she moved her arm down and listened as the hum told her she would shortly be transported to her new position.

She opened her eyes slowly, seeing the abandoned building from the other day. Whereas then it had been filled with all sorts of women from various sections of the city, this time she was alone in the vast space. She didn’t waste any time there, however, knowing that her current task was quite important. She left the safety of the abandoned warehouse and strode purposefully across the street, getting all sorts of strange looks from passersby as they came and left their work. Several pointed and stared, and she could hear all sorts of muttering, but she ignored it all, moving to the front door of Trail Tech Industries and walking inside. And then she was at a loss. She knew where he worked, but not where he worked. She stood in the entrance, staring around the massive interior, looking for a sign or map that would somehow give her an idea of where she should go. She glanced out the towering glass windows, noting that there were quite a few curious men glued to it, watching her every move; it was not very often that they saw women anywhere near this part of town.

She spotted a map near the stairs and walked boldly over to it, keeping her eyes focused on it and avoiding looking around at what she knew would be many stares turned in her direction. She looked over the map, reading through names and comparing symbols to the legend to get her bearings. It took her a few minutes, but finally she noted that there was an Advanced Robotics wing on the fourth floor; it seemed that would be the most likely place for the type of work that she knew the man would be doing. She rounded the stairs and started to jog up them, taking a couple at a time, leaving the gawking males far behind her in the lobby.

She passed several more guys before she reached the correct floor and each time, they would stop and stare at her as she rushed past, but none of them tried to stop her, possibly because they were too shocked to see her there to make a move. Whatever the reason, she thanked her luck and kept going, reaching the door to the fourth level and barging through it. She now stood in a long hallway, with doors spread out on the left and right all the way down. She started to walk towards the south, where the map had indicated the “Advanced Robotics Department” was. As she passed by each door, she noted what the nameplates had written on them and then peaked in ones that looked promising. Most of them opened up into empty labs or parts rooms, until she reached the end of the hall. A couple doors from the far wall was a door labeled with “A.I.” and she got the feeling as she reached out to grab the knob that this was the place she had been looking for.

She slowly turned the knob and eased open the door, looking into a vast room filled with numerous cubicles of varying sizes, but no one was at any of them. As she pushed the door open further, taking a more full look into the room, she caught sight of them: a group of men, all gathered at one end of the room, holding a collective breath and staring up at a metallic figure, with the man she was looking for standing in the middle of them. She slammed the door open the rest of the way and called out to him from the doorway.

“Hey you. We need to talk.”

~ *** ~

The room stood silent for a few moments, breath held as they waited for something to happen. When it didn’t, though, they just stood there, staring at the metallic person, up until the moment when the door slammed open and someone shouted from that direction. Immediately, several people jumped up and yelped, while as a group, they all turned to stare at the intruder. And then they stopped. And stared.

What they saw was a sight that none of them had ever witnessed before. There was a woman there, dressed as if she belonged among them, boldly standing at the entrance and pointing directly at Kenneth. He gulped as realization dawned on him and he began to recognize just who it was that had appeared at the door: by now, since they had met four or five times to date, it was a face he could not easily forget. He gulped and glanced back at the robot, standing idly in its spot, and then returned his gaze to the defiant woman.

“Um, hi?” was the best he could choke out as he stood there, staring at her once again. He kept his gaze firmly attached to her, especially as he began to feel the eyes of everyone else around him turn towards him, some with confusion, others with anger and still others with knowing looks. He hadn’t told any of them about her various encounters with this woman over the last few days, but he knew he had been acting strangely and, for some of them, he knew exactly what conclusions they would jump to. However, none of that really mattered, as she was here and demanding to talk to him: for what, he could only guess.

He started forward, the group of guys parting in front of him, until only Gerard stood in his path, red-faced and demanding an answer. “What is going on here?” he growled, taking hold of Kenneth’s shirt and pulling him close, until the engineer could feel his rancid breath on his skin.

“I have no idea, sir,” Kenneth answered honestly, trying very hard to not breathe in the putrid breath emanating from the man. “But I’ll try and find out.” The bigger man held him for several seconds, staring into his eyes as if testing his answer and then suddenly let him go, stepping out of the way and muttering a quick “You’d better” before turning away and stalking over to his desk. The others stared after the engineer as he walked to the door, but before long, they were also dispersing back to their workstations, where each of them proceeded to stare at the two of them by the door.

“What are you doing here?” the man said in a whisper, looking to the left and right to make sure no one was in earshot. “How did you get here? Women aren’t supposed to be in this part of town.”
“Shut up and listen to me,” she snapped back, causing Kenneth to start in surprise and fall silent. “We’ve got a problem and I need your help to fix it. Is it safe to talk here?”

The man took a glance back at the rest of the room, closing his eyes in embarrassment as he visibly saw people staring at him and then turning away quickly when they realized he was looking directly at them. He turned back to her and took a deep breath before speaking, “Not really. Perhaps we should go for a walk?” Without waiting for a response, he walked past the woman, out the door and into the hall, blowing out a quick breath as he slowed for her to catch up to him, gathering his nerve for the coming conversation.

As soon as they left the room, he stopped and stared at the woman, gathering his thoughts before speaking, “First of all, before we discuss anything, who are you? My name is Kenneth.” He offered his hand to the woman, gazing unblinkingly into her eyes. It was obvious that she was a little unsure of how to respond to him for a few seconds, but she quickly made up her mind.

“My name is Teri,” she answered, reaching out to shake his hand briefly, but firmly. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you officially.” With the greeting out of the way, the woman turned away from his gaze and started to walk slowly back up the hall. “Anyway, we have a problem.”

“A problem?” he asked, rushing a little to catch up to her and then slowing to match her pace. “What do you mean, we have a problem?”

“I think the board that I had was one of yours,” she started. “I don’t know why else me tapping into it would have connected with you. I can only assume that you’ve started a replacement?” She glanced over at him, blushing lightly as her eyes connected with his, turning her head back to the front.
“It’s the one sitting in that body right now,” he admitted, turning his own eyes back to front to watch their path, unsure of how he should be feeling at the moment. Then suddenly, he stopped and turned to face her, “What do you mean, ‘had?’”

The girl sighed, stopping herself, but keeping her eyes averted from his, staring at the ground in front of her. “Therein lies the problem. Someone took it from my house after our encounter a little while ago.”

“Are you serious?” he said incredulously, his face etched with lines of concern, still focusing intently on her ear, which was the only thing turned towards him. “They came into your home and took it from you? Who could have known that you had it?”

“I don’t know how she knew, but it sounded like she knew exactly what it was used for, even though I am not entirely sure what it is for,” she spoke, finally turning to face him, looking up into his navy blue eyes. “That is why I need you to help me find it and get it back.”

“What?” he coughed out, taking a step back as he tried to process her words. It took a few moments for him to regain his composure and bring his gaze back to hers. “You want me to help you find the board and get it back? How exactly do you propose that we do that?”

Teri looked away in embarrassment, her face starting to glow a bright red at his words. She was worried about this, that he wouldn’t know how to help. However, she took a deep breath and continued on with her idea, “Well, the two boards are obviously connected in some way,” she said quietly, slowly drawing her gaze back up to meet his. “I was hoping we could tap into some part of your current controller and sync it to the one I had.” She faltered at this point, falling into silence as she waited for some response from him. Kenneth stood, staring down into her eyes, rolling her idea around in his mind, feeling a little silly that he hadn’t thought about the idea.

“You’re right,” he admitted, glancing down the hall back towards his workroom, before returning his eyes to meet hers once again. “If I can find the signal that connected the two boards together in the first place, I can use that to trace where the board you had was taken.” He paused, a look of confusion passing over his face. “Wait, how do you know that’s possible?”

“I wondered when you’d get around to asking that,” the woman replied with a sigh, her face showing she was rather uncomfortable with the question. “And, I don’t really have a good answer for you; at least, not yet. Not without giving away some very well-kept secrets. Will you be satisfied with this? It had a lot to do with the meeting that you stumbled in on the other day.”

Kenneth knew that the look on his face showed that the answer really wasn’t satisfactory, but he could also tell from the way her face was set that it was the best answer he’d be getting right now. He nodded slowly, pushing the other thousand questions that popped into his mind to the background to focus on the true problem he had to deal with right now. “I’ll want a better answer eventually, but that’ll do for now. I need to go and get the board and then we can head out to find this woman who stole my board. Just wait here; I’ll be right back.”

He turned without waiting for a response and jogged back the way they had come, running through what he could tell the others when they inevitably questioned him about what was going on. In particular, he was running through how to rebuff the advances that he was likely to get from Gerard. The boss wasn’t going to simply let him walk out with the most important board that his division had ever created, especially given that the previous incarnation was missing and the presentation was in less than forty-eight hours, even if the control board wasn’t currently working. Ideas fluttered through his mind as he walked up to the door; he paused at it for a second, taking in a long breath and walked through, noticing that several men were scurrying back to their cubicles. Obviously, they had been watching the two at the door, hoping to get a glimpse into what they were talking about or why she had showed up at their office. He ignored them for now, walking purposefully over towards the small android holding his masterpiece.

Things were going well until he saw a flash from his right and Gerard appeared in his path, right as he was getting ready to climb the stairs leading up to the robot. “What do you think you’re doing, Kenneth?” His face was red and covered with sweat, as if he had been fuming the entire time that the young engineer had been gone. “She shouldn’t be here, whoever she is. What does she want?”

“Um, well,” he began, searching through his mind for the words he had just a few moments before been practicing. “Gerard, I think I can find our original board, and I think it’s what we need to get this one working. I don’t have time to explain it all, but you need to trust me on this. I need the Mark Two so I can find the Mark One.”

Gerard glared at the younger man, and Kenneth couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He kept his position, standing his ground as he waited worriedly for the man’s decision. After what seemed like an eternity, Gerard let out a long sigh and shook his head from side to side, answering the request, “Kenneth, I’ve known you for several years now, ever since you started working here. And in all that time, I’ve never had you steer me wrong or lie to me. Take this one and find the other, but get it back here as soon as you can. I trust you, so don’t let me down. And believe me when I say that I will hunt you down if you betray me. Now get going, before I change my mind.” He turned away from the engineer and stomped away once again, leaving the path to Kenneth’s goal open.

The young man sighed in relief and walked up to retrieve the new control board, pulling it out carefully and storing it in a safe case lying nearby. He walked back over to his worktable and grabbed a few tools before heading for the door and the girl who waited outside. However, the entire time he was walking, he had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that this had all been too easy so far. But, he had no basis for the feeling, and so dismissed it as quickly as it came. Soon he was out the door and heading down the hall, Teri waiting for him right where he had left her. He held up the board as he approached, noting with satisfaction the smile which played across her face. The two of them paused for a moment, looking into each other’s eyes, then turned and walked towards the stairwell, both filled with excitement and fear at what lay ahead.

~ *** ~

For the second time today, Gerard dragged his large form over to his desk and slumped down in the large, cushioned chair that sat there. A large, meaty hand reached out and took the phone from its receiver, dialing a number he had become all too familiar with over the last few years. The call rang several times before the other end picked up, the sound of slow, even breathing greeting him from the other end. “What do you have to report, Gerard?”

“They are on their way to you. They’ve got the board with them, and hopefully some answers to making this thing work,” the heavy-set man replied, pausing as he came to a question he had been wanting to ask for some time. “Why exactly do you need this pair, sir?”

There was a long pause, punctuated only by the breathing coming from the other end. Gerard began to think that the voice on the other end was never going to answer, when it spoke to him, “I suppose you can know, now that you aren’t able to influence them anymore,” he began, his voice gruff, but still easily understood. “We’ve put a lot of research and time into how to make this project work. In the end, what we discovered was that no single human could perform the act of creation that producing a viable and intelligent artificial mind entailed. And when we tried it with two men, it still did not come out right. We’ve searched for years for the answer to making it work and then we stumbled across a rather interesting paper, published in an obscure journal on the other side of the globe. It seemed they’d had limited success with powerful artificial intelligence by having a male and a female working together.

“We’re not sure why it works, but that seems to be part of the answer. We’ve tried various pairs, each with limited success, but there always seems to be something missing. And this is our next set of test subjects. We’ve been testing across demographics and from various families, narrowing down the missing link each time. We think this pair might be the ones to finish the job and create our masterpiece. And now you know too much.”

Gerard sat at his desk, jaw hanging open as he listened to the man’s words. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He started to say something in response when he heard a soft click on the other end of the line. He held the phone for several more seconds before slowly placing it back down in its holder. He shivered as he wondered what fate held for the man and woman who were now heading to meet with a man whose reputation was questionable. Now that he knew why the man wanted them, he was concerned for their safety. He reached for his phone once again, when he heard a cough coming from behind him. He turned and found himself staring into the muzzle of a small handgun, held by one of his technicians.

“Boss gave his orders” were the last words he heard before the world went dark.

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/16/2011 23:02:24 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 8
11/17/2011 23:31:49   
superjars
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~ Chapter Nine ~


The pair walked together in silence out of the building and into the street. The same people that had stared at Teri on her way up were doubly curious when the two of them appeared together coming back down. As they reached the street level, however, most people had heard the word as it traveled down in front of the duo and they watched while trying to appear like they weren’t. However, it was pretty obvious that they were staring at them, and so the two of them travelled in silence, out onto the street and to the abandoned building across the way. Eyes followed them the entire way, but no one said anything to them or approached them. As they reached the far door and disappeared inside, Kenneth couldn’t help but sigh in relief as they were finally out of the public eye. He turned to the girl as they entered, with a question he had been meaning to ask on the tip of his tongue.

“How do you know about robotics?” he began tentatively, racking his brain for some clue as to how she would answer. “I thought that women weren’t allowed to learn about the technical things men work on.”

The woman’s body went rigid and her face flushed with anger as the words came spilling from the engineer’s mouth. She spun on him, her finger flying up into his face, poking at his nose as she spat out words at him, “And you think men are the only one’s capable of doing those jobs?!” she yelled incredulously, her words accompanied by small flecks of spittle. “Women are just as intelligent and capable as men are, if given the opportunity. And since no one would give it to us, we took it!”

Kenneth took a quick step back, retreating from the woman’s aggressive advance. It was obvious that she was very passionate about this issue and he obviously hadn’t put much thought into it. He held up his hands in front of him in placation, hoping she would let it go if he retracted his statement. “I’m sorry; really I am. I’m just talking about what I’ve always been told. It is the law, you know.” He fell into an uneasy silence, watching the woman and wondering what more he should say.

She stood quivering for several more minutes, pulling her anger in and trying her best to suppress it before she exploded at the man. She still needed him, of course, so it wouldn’t do any good to drive him off already. She took a deep breath and turned away, muttering more to herself than him, but loud enough for him to hear, “It’s a dumb law, anyway.”

The engineer gulped, licking his lips to moisten their dried surface, and then tried to change the subject, “We should really go somewhere and get this board opened up and looked at; try to get a fix on where its partner can be found. Would you like to go to my place to work on it?” He gestured towards the Rings, hoping that he was presuming too much by inviting her to the house. He didn’t feel very comfortable around her yet, especially with the aggressive and vehement nature of her recent rebuttal. It was obvious that he had struck a nerve with his last comments and he hoped that this wouldn’t prompt more of the same.

It seemed, though, that she had recovered enough to listen to his words and note the sense that they made. She closed her eyes, bowing her head and breathing slowly to keep her composure, “That would be fine. Lead the way and let’s get this over with. I just want my board back.”

Kenneth opened his mouth to retort that it was actually his board, but he thought better of it a second later, closing his mouth and heading off towards the Rings, with Teri falling into step beside him and both of them falling into another uneasy silence. It took only a few moments before they were standing before the portal and he was pulling out his badge to head through the glowing orifice to his home when something stopped him.

It was a voice, young and annoying, echoing from behind the pair, “Ken! Where are you going? Who’s that with you?” Percy. This was exactly what Kenneth and Teri didn’t need; his little brother, poking around in what they were doing, getting involved with their mission and not shutting up. He turned towards the boy, watching as he sprinted from across the room and up to them, skidding to a halt and breathing heavily, looking between his brother and the woman standing next to him.

“Um, um,” the elder brother stammered, searching for a plausible, but untruthful, answer to derail his younger sibling. “This is Teri. I’m escorting her home, since she got lost in the engineering part of town.” He did his best to hide the grimace that covered his face at the poor quality of his lie, but he had never been very good at pulling the wool over the youth’s eyes.

“What your brother is trying to say,” Teri stepped in, her voice soft and reassuring, “is that he volunteered to take me around the city for my birthday. My father is his boss and he needed someone to travel around and show me what this town has to offer. Your brother is very kind to help me out like this.” As she finished, she leaned down and gave the kid a wink and a smile, ruffling his hair lightly with her hand.

“Really?!” the boy cried out, his eyes growing large and lighting up with excitement. “Can I come with you guys? Can I please?” He just about jumped out of his skin as he tried to contain his energy at the thought of heading around the city. However, the reaction from Kenneth and Teri was far different from his own. Both of them looked at each other with worried looks, frustrated that their idea had ended up backfiring on them. Kenneth turned back to face the boy, thinking fast to come up with some reason why the boy couldn’t accompany them, but he came up blank.

“Well, we’ll have to ask mother if you can tag along first,” he ended up saying, weakly, glancing at the girl standing next to him for some support.

“I was kind of hoping to get him all to myself,” Teri said coyly, pouring honey out of her lips as she leaned over towards Kenneth, grabbing onto his arm. The engineer turned bright red as he felt her arms around his. “But if you really want to go, I suppose we can take you along.” She winked at the boy as she released his brother, a small grin on her face, masking her own embarrassment of what the kid was making her do. It wasn’t as if she was completely lying, but she still felt bad about locking him up and she really didn’t know him that well yet. But, ever since their encounter in the white world, she had begun to feel much closer to him, without any idea of why that was. It was like that feeling she had had earlier, when the board had first been taken. She knew that she had to find him, no matter what obstacles were in her way.

And, for some reason, her actions were working on this kid. He grinned and gave her a knowing look, winking at her, “Nah, that’s fine. But next time, I get to come along!” Kenneth breathed a sigh of relief at dodging having the kid tagging along, glancing over at the woman with a look that thanked her for whatever it was she had just done. However, there was still a problem. They couldn’t go to his house, since that is where Percy would be heading, but they needed some type of workbench to be able to tap into the control board he had tucked into his tool belt. And he knew he couldn’t go back into his work because everyone would start questioning him and want to know what he was doing, especially Gerard.

“Of course, little brother,” he said, reaching down to ruffle his hair. “You better head home though. Mom will be wondering where you are.” He smiled as the kid nodded in agreement and stepped towards the Rings, sweeping his badge and walking through the portal. As soon as he disappeared through the portcullis, Kenneth turned to his female companion, a worried expression on his face. “Well, that solves one problem, but it creates a new one. Where are we going to go to pull the signal from this board?” He fell silent, no answer coming to his mind.

The same was not true of Teri, however. With his house no longer an option, hers would be a perfect alternative. “My father has a workshop at our home where we can work on this and then head out and find the missing piece. Here, follow me.” She took out her own badge, tapping a few buttons which sent the destination to his own badge and then swiping it over the control panel, grinning as the thing hummed to life and she walked through, followed closely by Kenneth.

~ *** ~

The workshop they walked into made Kenneth stop in his tracks, staring around at the high quality of tools and equipment spread around the small area. He let out a low whistle, turning to the girl and asking, “This is your father’s workshop? Who is your father?”

The girl had moved forward to the work table and started to move parts out of the way and to collect tools that they might need. However, when the other spoke, she turned from what she was doing, a touch of pink flying to her cheeks, “Um, well, my father is Kayl Fynn. Do you know him?”

The man’s eyes went wide, a look of recognition passing over his face as the name fell upon his ears, “Kayl Fynn? The Kayl Fynn? Father of the modern robotics industry? We’ve never met, but that man is a legend. I’m standing in the personal workshop of Kayl Fynn…” he trailed off, wide eyes moving over every piece of equipment in the room. Kayl had been one of the inspirations for Kenneth to get into the robotics and one of the board members who they would be presenting to in thirty-six or so hours. The man was well known within Trail Tech Industries, a living legend in their field. And now he was in the man’s house, talking to what he presumed was the man’s daughter. He took a few steps back, standing just outside the door to the sacred sanctuary of his idol.

“What are you doing? We need to get to work,” Teri said sternly, trying to figure out what Kenneth was doing. She rolled her eyes at the man’s hero worship, knowing very well who her father was and knowing the man wouldn’t have appreciated the attitude this young upstart was taking. “Now, get those stars out of your eyes and get in here. We don’t have much time.”

Kenneth closed his eyes and let out a slow breath, trying to calm his excitement and push the truth of this situation to the back of his mind. His eyes snapped open with a look of determination on them and he walked into the room, coming up to join the girl at the table. “You’re right. We need to find that board before they ruin it. Get out your allsphere and put it up here by the board,” he said, reaching into his own pack and pulling the board and his own allsphere out of the tool belt and setting them gently on the table. As the girl put hers there too, he took all three pieces and organized them on the table. Afterwards, they took out their gloves, him slipping his onto his right hand and she on her right. They stood side by side in front of the table and reached out towards the board, watching with satisfaction as it rose into the air and the two allspheres began to orbit around it.

“What we need to do is connect with the board again and make a connection to the other,” he said, beads of sweat forming on his forehead as surges of energy started to flow through their bodies, slowly causing them to heat up. “The allsphere will amplify our natural connections and make this an easier process, but it is also going to tire us out. We need to be fast about this or the energy will knock us out.” Kenneth looked over at the girl, seeing sweat begin to for on her brow and reached out his left hand. She glanced up at him, their eyes meeting for a second, and then her right hand slipped into his outstretched one. Both reached out with their gloved hands towards the control board, moving underneath their allspheres’ orbits until they were close enough to feel the energy spark off the board. They paused for a moment and looked at each other and then, in unison, they reached out and touched the board. In between one second and the next, it felt as if time around them stopped, each of them staring into the other’s eyes one moment and then staring at a white world the next.

The place was very similar to the one they had visited before, but the experience this time was very different. The first change was that the two of them, although they couldn’t see each other, could still feel their hands clasped together, held tightly against the strange sensations that surrounded them. Waves of comfort emanated from where their hands would have been if they were visible in this place. The two of them, moving as one, came forward, looking in all directions for any place that looked different from where they entered this world. It felt like forever that they traveled onwards, but nothing changed. Finally, starting to get annoyed by the lack of change in the world, Kenneth spoke into the white.

“Hey, are you here or not? We need to find your counterpart and need your help. Where are you?” he called out into the nothingness surrounding them, hoping to draw out the duo that inhabited this world. He could sense that Teri was echoing his words, but couldn’t physically hear her voice saying them.

“I’m here,” a voice spoke from behind him, sounding young and masculine, somewhat different from the male voice they had heard earlier. Kenneth spun around, expecting to see nothing but white behind him, but instead he was greeted by the image of a young boy, similar to Percy’s age. Something about the child was familiar as the engineer stared at him, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. The boy had brown hair, dark brown eyes and had a huge smile spread over his face.

“You found me,” the voice continued and Kenneth could see his lips moving to form the sounds. “But my sister is in trouble. We must find her and protect her. Will you help me search?”

Kenneth licked dry lips, his mind working as fast as it could to come to grips with what he was seeing and to comprehend what the boy was saying. This white world was a hard enough experience to fathom when there was simply voices presiding in it, but now that there was an actual being here, it seemed so surreal. His brain had become sluggish, but as he caught up, he could still find reservoirs of resolve to speak to the boy, “Of course I will help, but what can I do?”

The boy grinned at him, a look passing through his eyes that spoke of amusement and experience, as if the being that the young man was staring at knew things and had experienced things far beyond Kenneth’s ability to understand. The look made the engineer feel very young and naïve as he waited for the boy’s response.

“I will search for her in here if you will search for her in the real world. I can guide you through the allsphere and show you the road, but only a little at a time. It will take me a while before I can locate her precisely, as she is being shielded and guarded against me. However, I know that she is somewhere in the city, and you will find her,” the boy said calmly, his voice carrying a message of exhilaration deep into the man’s bones. It was as if, through the boy’s words, he was constructing an identity and a form for Kenneth within this world.

And, as he looked down at himself, he could see a physical form surrounding his essence, mimicking the one he had in the real world. He glanced over to his left to see if Teri was also there, but found that she was not. He had half expected to see her standing there, still holding onto his outstretched hand, and was surprised and a bit worried when she was not. He opened his mouth to ask the boy about it, but a raised hand told him that it wasn’t allowed. He stood for a few seconds in silence, then spoke, calmly and confidently.

“I will help you to find the board.”

~ *** ~

The conversation that Kenneth and the boy were having sounded as if it came from a thousand miles away, quiet and muffled to her ears. It was almost as if she was witnessing the remembrances of a dream, just after waking when they are all fading away. She strained to hold onto the voice, but it was too difficult and she found herself floating through the white space. It felt as if the world was slipping away from her, but through it all, she still could feel the reassuring hand of Kenneth in her own. All around her was nothing but white, open and unending. As she floated through it all, she couldn’t help but think about all the things that had happened in this last week or so. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it all: the power outage, finding the board, meeting Kenneth; it all seemed like one giant coincidence. And then there was this place, somewhere she couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams.

Please, help me…

Teri stopped floating as soon as the words came to her, frantically looking around for someone or something nearby. She could still hear Kenneth and the boy conversing, but it was simply a low hum in the distance that she couldn’t understand. She strained to hear them for a few seconds, but gave up as the voice spoke again.

I need you. Please, find me quickly…

“I don’t know where you are,” Teri spoke into the air around her, searching for where the source of the voice was. “I can’t find you if I don’t know where you are. I want to help you. Tell me where you are.” She felt her voice drying up as she spoke, words falling from her mouth uselessly, shattering in the pressure of the white space around her. It felt as if something was stopping her words from reaching her intended target, as if they were destroying them as quickly as they came into being.

I am at the-

The words ended abruptly, as if someone had turned off a running faucet. She looked around wildly, searching for where it had come from, but she was all alone. She couldn’t even hear the humming of the others’ conversation anymore; all around here was nothing but an oppressive silence. She started to feel light headed and the sense that someone was pressing in on her brain saturated her. She cried out in pain and panic, her fingers squeezing into Kenneth’s as she fought to push the feeling away. However, it kept coming, pressing into her skull like a vice, a constant pressure that felt like it would explode her head. The edges of her vision started to turn black, replacing the pristine white of this world. She felt like she was being attacked, as if something was trying to force her away; out of the world and back into her own. But, try as she might, she couldn’t force herself to “disconnect” from here.

The black spread throughout her vision, covering every inch of the white until a small point at the middle remained. She searched for her voice: to call out to Kenneth, anyone, to help her. But she couldn’t find it. And then the blackness completed its domination, flooding her vision with dark and pushing her away from the world. She felt like she was falling, held up by only a few strings.

~ *** ~

As the words came from his mouth, Kenneth began to feel a tugging on his hand and pressing on his skull. He looked to his left, searching for the girl he had come with, but she was nowhere to be seen. He looked back to the boy, but he too had disappeared. A sharp pain went cutting through his head, disrupting any coherent thoughts he had going on and the tugging in his arm got harder, as if he was holding a dead weight in his left hand. Everything around him went dark all at once, as if he had closed his eyes tight, and when his sight returned, he was in the workshop once again, staring down at Teri, collapsed on the floor, still holding tightly to his hand.

The world was spinning around him and his forehead felt as if it was on fire, burning a hole into his brain from the outside in. He was sweating profusely and had trouble breathing, and his hands felt clammy, especially where he was joined with the girl. He fell to one knee, his body suddenly weak. When he tried to stand again, he couldn’t get his body to cooperate. He looked down once again at this woman he had just met, her face twisted in a mask of pain and torment, her body twitching all over.

He heard a noise by the door, a sound of something crashing onto the floor. It sounded as if it was in slow-motion, as if time itself had crept to a near stand-still around them, and he lifted his head ponderously to see what it was. The action caused his vision to blur, so that all he saw was the outline of a figure standing in the doorway, looking vaguely familiar. He could hear a voice call out “Honey!” and then fall into a garbled mess of indistinct sounds. And that was the last he experienced, as he plummeted into unconsciousness.

~ *** ~

Kayl Fynn walked into his house, worried that it sounded quiet. There was no sound of cooking, no crackle of a fire, no blare of music, nothing. Knowing what he did about what his daughter had likely been up to these last few days, he was worried that something might have happened to her. He set his stuff down by the door, reaching back to lock the bolt before continuing into the house.

His first stop was by the kitchen, searching for any dirty dishes or glasses that might tell him that she had at least taken the time away from her project to eat and drink something, but the fact that there were none served only to make him worry all the more. He next walked slowly to her room, peeking inside to see if perhaps she had decided to take a break or nap from her project. But she wasn’t there either, nor did her bed look like it had been slept in for quite a while.

Panic started to rise in his chest, but he kept it bottled in, walking cautiously, but at a slightly quickened pace, towards the front room where Teri could typically be found curled up in front of the fireplace with her nose in a book. Unfortunately, she was not there either. He gulped, knowing that unless she had went out somewhere for the evening, there was really only one more place for her to be. He knew that he probably should have checked there first, but he hadn’t wanted to ruin her secret or let her know that he knew it.

“Teri, honey, where are you?” he called out into the empty house, listening carefully for any response that would prompt him to go somewhere other than his workshop. For a few moments, no sound came to his ears, but then he heard a sound like crashing, coming from where he feared most that it would: his back room. He sprinted down the hall and reached the entrance, running into another figure which knocked him to the ground. He tried to see who it was, but it was up and moving before he could get a good look at it. He turned back to the room, freezing in horror at the sight. His daughter was laying crumpled on the floor, covered with sweat and moaning and twitching as if in a fevered sleep, hand clasped in a strange man’s who didn’t look much better. As he watched, the young man’s eyes closed and he started to fall, landing in a heap on the floor next to Teri.

“Honey!” Kayl cried out, eyes wide with panic and fear as he ran to their sides, reaching down to cradle his daughter’s head. He could feel hot tears running down his cheeks, sadness and fear mixed with anger and betrayal. His only daughter, a casualty of the company’s damned plots. He scooped her up and tried to carry her away, but her hand was locked with the man’s in a death grip. He tried for a few seconds to unloosen them, but when he realized it was futile, he called one their androids to bring the young man with him. They carried the two of them into the nearest bedroom and lay them side by side on the bed, trying to make them feel comfortable and check them for serious injuries.

Kayl sat with the two of them for several hours, listening to their feverish mutterings and worrying if they would ever wake up. All medical scans said that they were both extremely exhausted and needed to sleep it off, but he knew there was more to it than that: something the scans couldn’t pick up. As he sat there, he started to feel sleepy and before long, his eyes drooped, welcoming him into the arms of the night. But, just as he was falling asleep, he heard the young man say one word, clear as crystal into the night.

“Jerome.”

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/18/2011 19:53:12 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 9
11/19/2011 21:08:04   
superjars
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~ Chapter Ten ~


His eyes fluttered open, the world opening before him like a flower blooming in the spring. He could tell by the streams of light pouring through the windows that a new day had dawned, but he didn’t have any idea what time it was. When he looked around, however, the room he found himself in was none too familiar. He closed his eyes tightly, reaching up with his right hand to rub them before opening once again. The view was the same: a beige ceiling surrounded by light rose walls, lit by an ambient glow from curtained windows. He shifted his gaze to his right, tracking down the walls until he could see a dresser with a mirror, laden with some jewelry and various bottles. From there, he returned his gaze to the left, and found himself staring into the face of Teri’s still sleeping form.

He jerked away in surprise, only realizing as he pulled on her arm that their hands were folded together, hers holding onto his with a tight grip. He scrambled off the bed, his fingers still interlocked with hers, and ended up squatting on the floor, staring at the ground and trying to remember what had happened the other night. He could vaguely remember working with the board, but after that everything was fuzzy. Had they finished their traces? How had they ended up in this bedroom? He had so many questions rolling around his brain that he just couldn’t find answers to.

A soft moan from atop the bed caused him to focus his attention to the woman still lying there. She stirred, her own eyes slowly opening to view the world around her. She appeared confused at first, but as she glanced around, she visibly relaxed. It appeared as if she knew where they were, even if Kenneth did not. When she looked over at him, seeing that he was squatting on the floor off the bed, she quirked an eyebrow in his direction, as if questioning what he was doing. She didn’t seem surprised to find him there, nor did she look upset or annoyed by it. In fact, as best as the man could tell, she was somewhat pleased to be in his presence.

“So, I see you two are finally awake,” a voice spoke from the far doorway, causing the pair to jump into alert mode, as one turning towards the opening. What greeted them was a fairly tall, older man with greying hair, dressed very smartly. Kenneth’s eyes widened in surprise and shock as his brain caught up and told him who he was looking at: Kayl Fynn, the founder of modern robotics and the man who had made his own work in artificial intelligence possible. At the same time that the man walked in, Kenneth also felt the grip on his hand loosen, Teri’s hand slipping out of his own after giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Yes, father,” the woman said softly, rising out of the bed to stand on the side closest the door. Kenneth, unsure exactly what his own response should be, rose from the ground and came around the bed to stand next to her. “What exactly is going on?”

“I will tell you, of course,” he said, a sad smile spreading over his noble face. “But first, you will need to get some breakfast. You have quite the day ahead of you.” He turned away and walked away quickly, not giving either of them any chance to respond to his words. The pair looked at each other, slightly flustered and confused at the older man’s actions, but there wasn’t much either of them could do but go along with him until they knew a bit more about what was going on and what happened to them the previous evening.

“After you, of course,” Kenneth said courteously, bowing slightly and waiting for Teri to walk through the door first. As he bowed, the young man noticed a slightly bemused look on his partner’s face for a moment, before she started down the hall, leaving the young engineer behind. He stayed in place a moment before straightening and hurrying to catch up.

He fell into step with the woman as they turned the corner into the kitchen. Two plates sat on the counter, laden with piles of eggs and sausage, with the pair’s allspheres sitting nearby. Kayl was standing at the stove, cooking even more food; he turned and gestured them towards the food as they entered, a wide grin attempting to mask the lines of worry covering his face. The pair glanced at each other, a knowing look passing between them before they went to sit down and dig into the food. It wasn’t until he had begun eating that Kenneth realized how famished he had been. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had had anything to eat. It had been quite the hectic couple days for him and, as the gray-haired cook turned to face them, he worried that it was really just the beginning.

“You two have done quite a lot of work while I was gone,” Kayl began, hands planted firmly on the table as he stared hard looks at both of them. “More than I anticipated you’d complete before I got home.” He paused, looking for a few moments as if he was a million miles away. However, when he continued again, there was a fire in his eyes. “First of all, I want you both to know that I’m very proud of the work you’ve both done. Part of me had wanted you to fail and give up on this project. But at the same time, this is the realization of my dream; a dream that I sold long ago, to a very powerful and wealthy man.”

Teri felt her body freeze, her fork halfway to her mouth as she stared at this man who she had known all her life. A few small tears were trickling down his cheek and the look on his face was pained; she had never seen this type of reaction from her father, not even at the death of her mother. He turned away from the pair and the girl wanted to scoff at him, to laugh at his play, but she couldn’t move her body to do so. She was trapped behind some type of emotional barriers, unable to react to his display. She forced herself to take a sidelong glance at Kenneth, but he was focused in on the man’s words, a look of awe mixed with some hero worship evident in his eyes. Teri knew better; he wasn’t saying all of this to show how much of a martyr he was, nor did he speak from some concern for the pair of them. He definitely had some hidden agenda at play here, but she just didn’t know yet what it was.

“And now, that man has come back to claim his prize: those two boards and all the promise and advancements that they embody,” he continued with his back to them. “I would go and confront him, but I do not know where he is. And I have no way of tracking the boards as both of them are in his possession.”

“That isn’t true, sir,” Kenneth blurted out, his eyes full of concern at the man’s story. “We brought one of the boards here last night…”

“Even if that is true, it is no longer here now,” he said in a low even tone, turning once more to face the duo. “Someone was here last night and took the board. He knocked me over while making his escape and I didn’t get a good look at him. It is gone.”

Kenneth’s eyes went wide in shock and horror. Someone had been in the room with them when they were in the white world. Had that been why they had been knocked unconscious? What exactly had happened last night? He didn’t have any good answers to his questions and he wasn’t sure if he should voice them in Kayl’s presence. He admired the man, of course, but he was getting a very strange vibe from Teri sitting next to him, a feeling that he should keep his mouth shut about what they had experienced and seen.

The young woman beside him set down her fork, letting it clatter on the plate and breaking the silence that had held since her father had made his startling revelation. She was starting to suspect that her father knew more than he was saying, but she couldn’t prove that and she didn’t feel like sticking around to find out. “Let’s go, Ken,” she said softly, gently pulling on his arm as she scooped up her allsphere, stood up from the table and walked behind him towards the door. He immediately stood, setting his own fork down on the table, palming his own allsphere and turning away from it.

“Go and find those boards,” Kayl said, his voice laden with emotion as he sent his plea out towards them. “Protect those two precious ones from him and bring them back here. I will help you keep them safe.”

Teri walked out without saying a word, her face slowly reddening as anger boiled to the surface. The young engineer followed behind her, rolling his allsphere around in his hand, wondering how he should approach the topic of what was going on with her. He felt very confident talking to most of the insipid socialites that his mother had introduced him to at her parties, but Teri was very different than them: she was intelligent and capable and when she spoke, he knew she wasn’t just going to be rehashing the week’s recent gossip. However, that same fact also made him feel a bit nervous when it came to interacting with her.

However, he was relieved of the problem when, as they walked out the front door, she turned towards him and started to talk. “The nerve of that man,” she started, a low growl of disgust accompanying her words. “Waltzing in at the last moment and lecturing us on what we need to do and how important our task is. I know that he’s hiding something from us; he knows more than what he’s said. I just know it!”

Kenneth kept silent, assuming that she needed to vent her emotions and didn’t really want to hear any rebuttals to her claims. If he was honest with himself, the young man had felt rather uncomfortable with the entire situation in the kitchen anyway. It almost felt as if the man was too nice; as if he was trying too hard to be nice for it to be real. And the vibe that had been coming off Teri while they had been in there had set him on edge: hostility and anger towards this man who had been his idol for years and the inspiration for him getting into the artificial intelligence field to begin with. Today wasn’t how he had dreamed his first encounter with the famous Kayl Fynn would go.

“But enough about that,” she continued, the edge leaving her voice as they reached the sidewalk and moved out of ear- and eye-shot of the house. “How are we going to find our boards?” She looked expectantly at Kenneth as they halted by the Rings.

“Well, our allspheres should be calibrated to the female board right now, so it’s simply a matter of …” he said, pausing as he brought up the display and started to fiddle with some buttons. After a few moments, the thing beeped at him and he continued, “… setting up the program to interpret the data.” He clanked his allsphere against Teri’s and hers lit up as well, display showing an arrow pointing towards the east. “Unfortunately, if I understand these readings correctly, if we use the Rings to travel, it will scramble the program’s data stream and leave us with no idea of where to go. So, we’ll have to walk.”

~ *** ~

Teri turned away for a moment, looking longingly towards the portal of the Rings system, but when she turned back, there was a broad smile on her face. She reached out her hand towards his, gripping it and moving in close beside him. “It’s a beautiful morning for a walk, anyway. Let’s go and find the boy and his sister.”

Kayl sighed as the pair left the house, for what he hoped was not the last time. The phone in the kitchen started to ring, but the older man knew better than to answer it. He knew exactly who it would be and what he wanted, but he felt like giving his daughter and that young man some extra time to do whatever they had planned. He didn’t want to give the man on the other end of that call any more information than he already had and stop the chances that the duo might succeed in their mission. The call cut out after several rings, but Kayl knew that this wasn’t the last he had heard from the big man.

He walked back towards his workshop, pulling his own allsphere out of his pocket as he did. He brought up the display, watching as two distinct dots came up on his screen. There had been some extra time last night after the two had been put to rest where he was able to do some modifications to his own allsphere, so that he could track theirs. And now he would have front row seats to everything that was going to happen. What he hoped would be the downfall of his checkered past and a new beginning for their society. A lot rested on those two young people out there, a lot more than even they knew.

~ *** ~

The morning seemed peaceful as they strode through the streets, following the signals that blinked on their screens as it wove them towards downtown. Kenneth couldn’t help but reminisce on how they had gotten to this point, as he felt the gentle squeeze of Teri’s hand in his. It was obvious that over the course of the last few days something had changed between the two of them, but he definitely could not understand how that had happened. One day she had him locked up, with every intention that she hated everything he stood for, and now, through some strange set of circumstances, they were holding hands as if they had been together for years. It was still so new to him, this connection that seemed to have formed between the two. He was worried that it had more to do with the trauma of the situation and that once this was all over, she’d be leaving him for something better. He was really concerned that this wasn’t real, but a product of their experiences.

“Hey, what are you thinking about,” said the concerned voice from beside him, tuning in to the vibes coming off of him. She squeezed his hand again, stopping and pulling on him to turn him around facing her. “I know what you must be thinking and I can’t say I haven’t been thinking about the same thing. I don’t know what to think about all of this either, but it is what it is.”

Kenneth sighed, staring down into the woman’s eyes, “Things have just moved so fast and I am worried that we have gotten caught up in the moment and that none of this is real.”

“In the end, isn’t the moment the only thing that matters?” she asked, doing her best to break down his solemnity with a little humor. “Obviously the most important thing is this moment, right now. Why do we need to worry about anything else?”

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” he returned, his eyes moving to stare holes into the ground. “We aren’t going to stay in this moment, are we? We’ll move into the next and the one after that. What is to say that, many moments from now, these feelings will be a lost dream and we will be far away from each other?”

Teri reached out to the man, gently grabbing hold of the man’s chin and raising his head so that his eyes met hers. “Can’t we imagine that this moment will last forever? Can’t we just live in the moment and let the future care for itself? I do not want this moment to end, Kenneth. But we have a job to do, don’t we?”

“Yes, I suppose we do. Are you ready for this?”

“I am. Let’s keep going.”

The two of them continued on in silence for quite a while, walking through the packed streets of the bustling metropolis. In an attempt to take his mind off of his worries, he started looking around at the city blocks, hoping the time might pass by faster, or at least that he might be distracted from what his mind was churning over. As he looked around, however, the world seemed to look a lot different than he remembered. There wasn’t much aesthetic value to most of the buildings around him and some of them were quite painful to look at, blocky and droll. Some buildings, of course, still stood out to him, created at a time when there had been more walking or driving around, but ever since the Rings had been invented and dispersed around the city, people had become much less likely to take the “scenic route.”

It was a sad thing really, that they had become a society of the practical and efficient, losing much of their sense of beauty and value in the picturesque. As he watched the buildings flow unremarkably by, he mused that this had been one of the primary reasons he had pursued the field he did. Artificial intelligence in particular, and robotics in general, was one of the only true art forms that still existed. Writing, painting and music, along with a slew of others, had all dried up as society slowly grinded to a cultural stop. It wasn’t anything that Kenneth had spent a lot of time thinking about, but starting to spend time with Teri had opened his eyes to new possibilities.

Teri’s own thoughts were in a completely different direction than the man walking next to her. She was focused on the next few hours and how they might recover what was theirs and still get out alive. She didn’t want to worry Kenneth, but she knew the type of men that her father had dealt with in his past and if this one was anything like some of the others, there was a dangerous road ahead of the two of them. She felt some reassurance from the closeness of having Kenneth nearby, but that was overshadowed by a growing dread at what was to come. Originally, she had thought about using the secondary board as a bargaining chip to get what they wanted, but with it disappearing and presumably in the possession of the same people who had the first one, that wasn’t going to work out so well.

In the end, however, what mattered is that they get the boards back, no matter what else happened. She had wondered at first why that seemed so important to her, but she had long since left that question behind as unanswerable. She felt a bond to the personalities, that much was sure. Especially the female one, whom she had worked with so closely, had created powerful ties with her. It was a strange sensation for her, to have something relying on her for its livelihood. It was almost as strange as the feelings that she currently had for Kenneth, as she dared a sidelong glance in his direction, noting that he seemed lost in his own thoughts.

The pair continued on like this for some time, walking quietly and immersed in their own thoughts. Each of them took long glances at the other, sometimes catching them unaware and sometimes with their eyes meeting in the middle. Both of them were trying to forget the danger they would see ahead of themselves, instead preferring to focus on the moment, the here and now. They glanced at the displays of their respective allspheres occasionally, making sure that they were heading the right direction and every once in a while one of them would break the silence to have short conversations between the two of them, only to fall into uneasy silence after the topic was exhausted. This continued on for most of the morning, the two of them dipping in and out of conversation as they made their way slowly across town and to their fated confrontation. Neither of them really wanted to get their terribly badly, for fear of what they were going to find, but they also both knew that the longer it took, the less likely they were to make it through safely.

~ *** ~

Trail Tech Industries was in a lockdown, mourning the death of recent employee and A.I. team leader, Gerard Krenshaw, who had been killed by one of the members of his team. The man had been found standing over his large leader’s body, calm and composed, with a slight grin evident on his face. For whatever reason, he was not the least bit concerned with his predicament, nor about the future ramifications of this. As soon as security had reached the scene, they had completely stopped the product line and closed all the other team members in the room while they screened each of them for involvement in the crime. The questioning had lasted most of the night, leaving most of the technicians and engineers bleary-eyed and exhausted. There were all sorts of grumbling around the room, mostly centered on questioning why they were all being held if the killer had already been caught. It seemed a ridiculous thing for them to be spending their time on, but as each one went to their interview, the officers seemed quite serious about their inquiries. Those who had been interviewed and those who still waited had been split from each other, making those who waited even more nervous.

Now it was the following morning and only a few of the men remained. One of them, Richard Caehill, was called next and escorted into another room. He sat down at the table, looking over at a trio of dark-skinned men sitting across from him. Something about them made him feel uneasy, but he tried not to show his apprehension to them. They sat in silence for several minutes, simply watching him, to the point where Richard started feeling very uncomfortable in their presence. Part of him just wanted to blurt out everything, to tell them all that he knew about everything, but at the same time, he felt an oppressive feeling that made him unable to speak. The paradox of this condition was very disturbing to him, causing him to start sweating profusely and chew on his lip as he waited.

After what seemed an eternity, one of the men spoke. “Where is the android?” the voice said in a flat, dead tone. Richard wasn’t able to tell which of them it was, because they all opened and closed their mouth in unison when any of them spoke and their voices were all eerily similar. However, the words that had just come out were even more perplexing. Hadn’t there just been a murder? Why would they want some stupid bot that didn’t even work properly?

It’s right over the-“ he began, turning to point at the dais where their holy rite had taken place, but stopped mid-sentence as his eyes grew wide and he stared at the machine which held nothing. “What?! It was right there, sitting dormant and non-functional. Where did it go?”

“That is what we want to know,” the voice spoke again, all three sets of lips moving in perfect unison once again. “Did you help it escape?”

“What are you talking about?” the man spluttered out, obviously confused by the entire situation. “Help it escape? The thing didn’t even work properly! We had just installed it when that woman showed up and took away our main programmer. It was his board we were testing.”

“Woman? Who was this woman?” they asked, lines of agitation appearing simultaneously on all three of the faces.

“How in the world should I know? I’ve never seen her before today,” he said, anger rising in his voice. Didn’t these jerks know that someone had died here today? Someone who they all had liked and respected? It was too much. “Hey, what is this all about? Aren’t you supposed to be investigating the murder?”

“The interview is over,” the voice said with finality, all three of the men raising their hands and pointing them at Richard. He blinked, staring at them in disbelief as their hands started to glow. He tried to bolt to his feet, push away from the table and run, but he found that his body had frozen in place. The lights became more intense, filling his vision with their glow until they became all that he could see. There was nothing he could do as he simply stared into the light, slowly being consumed by it.

A few moments later, the three men lowered their hands and called to the security to bring the next man in. Richard Caehill was nowhere to be seen.

~ *** ~

It had been quite a while since either of them had said anything to each other, partially because they weren’t sure what else to say, but mostly because both of them were starting to feel an acute sense of dread about the coming encounter and neither of them wanted to voice what both of them were thinking: what were they walking In to? But they had come a long way and neither of them was interested in giving up now. The sun had moved overhead and now beat down unmercifully on their tired shoulders. Teri was thinking that they might never reach their destination, for a few moments wishing that they had just chanced it and ridden the Rings here.

A small beep coming from their allspheres alleviated her concern, however. Kenneth brought his up and read the words that came scrolling across the small display: We are close. Get off the main street and follow my instructions from here on out. He glanced over at Teri with a perplexed look on his face. She had an equally confused one on her own face as she read the same words on her display. They glanced at each other for a moment, but then decided it was probably best to follow the instructions. They moved towards a nearby alley, both of them glancing left and right to make sure that no one noticed their exodus from the thoroughfare. They walked down a short way and around a corner, stopping to find out their next steps. They brought their allspheres close together, allowing them to gently rest against each other and sync. It took only a few seconds before there was a beep and the two devices acted as one.

“Where do we go next?” Kenneth spoke to the display, voice recognition software kicking in and converting his voice to text on the display. There was a short pause, as if whatever was communicating with them was thinking about its response. Then, the display blinked and words appeared on it: Head into the building you are against and go downstairs. There is a path to your destination from there. The duo’s eyes met once again, both unsure as to whether to believe the text, but neither having any real reason not to. They stood there, staring down at the little display, as if waiting for it to give them more information, to make them believe in it. However, it just sat there and blinked.

“Who are you?” Teri said after she could no longer bear the silent waiting, her own voice translated to text as she waited eagerly for a response. There was another delay, during which the woman almost screamed with frustration at the device. It was as if the thing or person on the other end of this message was deliberating about how to proceed. After a few more moments, the text scrolled again: You know me already. My name is Jerome.

Kenneth’s eyes went wide in shock, staring at the screen and the name that it displayed. He wasn’t sure how, or why, but he knew that name. Reading the message filled him with peace and confidence that they should follow the directives that were on the screen. However, the name and message meant nothing to Teri, serving to frustrate her even further. She cried out in her annoyance, a loud wordless cry that brought Kenneth’s gaze to her own.

“What’s wrong, Teri?” he asked calmly, a look of concern touching his face.

“I don’t know any Jerome. I’ve never meant anyone with that name before,” she yelled in fury, taking out her anger on Kenneth since there was no one else around for her to direct it at. “Why should we follow this stupid program’s instructions? It could just as easily be leading us into a trap as protecting us.”

“I think I know him from somewhere,” Kenneth began, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder in comfort. “I can’t explain it, but I know we can trust this Jerome. You don’t need to trust him, but if you can trust me, we’ll get through this.”

“I can trust you,” Teri said, the anger draining from her face as she allowed her eyes to connect with Kenneth’s. She reached up and put her hand on his, pulling it off her shoulder and using it to pull him down to her level. As she drew him close, she pursed her lips, letting them brush against his, a sign of her feelings for him and the trust she was placing in him right now. They held there for a moment, eyes closing as they forgot the world for a few seconds. And then they pulled away, both of them wearing smiles as they opened their eyes to stare at one another. Neither of them pulled away in shame or embarrassment, starting to feel increasingly comfortable in each other’s presence. Folding her hand into his, Teri pocketed her allsphere, pulling Kenneth along with her as they moved out of the alley and into the building ahead.

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/21/2011 23:07:34 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 10
11/23/2011 0:26:56   
superjars
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~ Chapter Eleven ~


Tierla stood idly by, twirling her hair as she watched with curiosity the engineers and technicians at work and with amusement the large man who also sat intent on the process. She had slept well the previous night, knowing that these men had been hard at work on the board and getting it fitted with an android body. It was quite the process, she knew from previous experiments, and although arduous, it always intrigued her when it got to this stage. This was the moment when the empty vessel of the android body met with the energetic spark of life that existed in the control board. To her, it had always been a magical experience, the meeting of two strange and foreign entities, merging to form a new one.

Curls of billowing smoke drifted up from over by where the big man, her beloved father, sat, gazing with impatience at the workers scurrying about and making their final checks. One of the more important men was holding the control board that she had retrieved, holding it like one would a child, keeping far back from anyone who might jostle him and cause it to fall or break. Men shouted out that final tests were complete and they were ready for the final stage of the experiment. Her father blew a large ring of smoke into the air, and then began bellowing at the men to clear the immediate area and get on with inserting the control board. He had never been much of a patient man, she mused, hiding a grin and a giggle as he shot an annoyed look in her direction.

The two of them, father and daughter, could not be more different in some ways, but in others they were mirror images. He was a bigger man, intimidating and loud, living his life barking orders and always getting his way. On the other hand, she was lean and sultry, preferring the quiet and seductive approach, although she often got her way as well. In terms of this project, however, and the untold potential it had for making them powerful and wealthy, they were on exactly the same page. And now, it seemed, their visions were about to be fulfilled, even if they couldn’t find this one’s counterpart.

Tierla had volunteered to be part of the group that went out hunting for the other android, but her father had forbidden her from doing so. He was a pretty staunch traditionalist, believing that women did not belong in the places the society had blocked them from, and so a journey into the forbidden industrial district was not allowed. It was for this reason that the woman had kept her involvement in TMW a tightly guarded secret, and why, when she was asked how she knew about where the board was, she had poured out lie after lie to throw him off the track. And now the fruits of her labors were about to be realized.

The man holding the board moved forward to the android, people clearing out of his path to give him plenty of space to perform his duty. Even from back here, Tierla could see that the man was sweating profusely; he knew that if the board was damaged in any way, he would be the one to blame. He walked slowly, almost reverently towards the android hanging in the lab. She could see her father’s cigar smoke billowing out in quicker puffs, obviously excited by this culmination of a lifetime of struggle and work. The young girl would have loved to be the one up there right now, inserting the control boards and securing them in place, getting a front row seat for this transformation. However, she did not currently envy the man who currently stood under her father’s unforgiving eye. He seemed to all appearances to be in a rather foul mood, and she knew it was because he hated waiting for anything.

The boards slipped in without issue, and the control board was the last to go in. The man shook slightly as he positioned it into the torso of the android, letting the small control arms inside to grasp it and lock it firmly into place. The man hurriedly took several steps back, almost stumbling over his own feet as he moved away from the android as it finished its last diagnostics, closing up the board’s openings and awaited its final commands. Tierla felt her body ease forward in anticipation as she watched her father’s hand moving out of the corner of her eye. His hand slapped down on a few buttons and the room buzzed to life, centered on the android. Steam blew up from beneath the robot as energy poured into its systems and a requisite hush fell upon those in the room, waiting to see what reaction they should have by mimicking their illustrious leader. Tierla forced herself to stifle a giggle in order to avoid the fury of her father.

Nothing happened for a while, but this was to be expected from this level of intelligence. It took a while for a regularly programmed consciousness to find its way from the board to the android’s systems and this one was infinitely more complex than any the standard models. The young woman could sense the various people counting off the seconds with bated breath, waiting for the inevitable moment when the creation would awake and their grand masterpiece would be complete. Lights began to flicker as more power was drawn into the robotic body, to stabilize the consciousness and power all of its individual parts. Several sets of eyes narrowed to peer into the dim light surrounding the apparatus, trying to get a glimpse into the first moments of life.

Little did any of them know that there was an extra set staring along with them from out of the darkness.

~ *** ~

The directions had been very precise and so far absolutely correct, as if they were getting information from the current blueprints of the building. And for the most part, the paths they had taken were comfortable. A few times they had been forced to crawl through vents or squeeze into narrow openings, but those had been few and far between. What was unfortunate, however, was that neither Kenneth nor Teri had any idea where they were or how to get back out if they needed to. They had become completely lost, with no idea which direction was which or even where they were in relation to any of their surroundings. But Teri was trusting in Kenneth and Kenneth in Jerome. And so far, that trust had not guided them into any danger or problem. There had been one or two close calls, however, when someone had come traipsing by their hiding spot, but they had never been discovered.

Teri held tightly to Kenneth’s hand, taking the lead as they came up to another fork in their path. The pair halted, listening down each of the corridors before checking the allsphere. Teri could hear some strange sounds coming from the path on their left, but couldn’t distinguish what they were. As she looked at the display, words again scrolled across its surface, one’s she found to be none too surprising: The path to the east nears our goal. It is there where we will finally find our ending. And hopefully, our beginning. It was cryptic to say the least, but several of the others had been similarly so. Both woman and man had given up a long time ago trying to understand the hidden messages and meaning behind the words that appeared on their displays, focusing on following the instructions they gave clearly. Both had thought about them extensively in the beginning, even doing some bantering back and forth about what they might signify, but there was no confirmation coming from the allsphere messages to confirm their guesses and the game quickly became old.

But now they were nearing their goal and the vague messages were quickly being overshadowed by the excitement as they neared their ultimate destination. Teri glanced back at Kenneth after reading the message aloud, smiling broadly as their eyes met, “Are you ready for this? It looks like we’ve only a bit more to go.”

“There’s not going to be a better time to head in there than right now. Can you hear anything that’s happening up ahead?” he asked, smiling back at her as he squeezed her hand.

“Not really. It’s all pretty muffled,” she answered back, turning her head so that her ear was pointed down the corridor they would be shortly heading down. “Hopefully, as we get closer, we’ll know more about what’s going on.”

“Alright, let’s go then. Lead on.”

Teri nodded at these last words and started to walk at a good pace down the hallway. She stopped when she reached intersections, listening for the sounds of footsteps and glancing down each intersecting path to make sure no one was waiting for them. Each one was clear and after the check, they proceeded on their way. Before very long, the path they were taking hit a dead-end, with a door standing in their way. The sounds that they had heard faintly before had gotten louder as they had moved down the hall and now, as they stood outside the metal doors, they could almost make out what was going on inside. It seemed there was a lot of excitement about something, but it was still unclear as to what might be going on. She glanced back at her partner for a second, giving him a nod as she braced herself at the door and pushed into the room beyond.

As they entered the room, trying their best to remain quiet and inconspicuous, they found themselves in a small atrium, the sound they had heard previously coalescing into people talking excitedly, cheering and shouting to each other. The two of them paused to figure out what was being said, but there was such a clamor that they couldn’t make out anything distinct. In unison, they moved closer, heading to a row of machines that had previously blocked their vision into the room. They reached the corner and turned to see into the rest of the room, the sight causing them both to stop frozen in their tracks as they stared at the image before them. Teri gave out a small cry of surprise, unable to suppress her natural instinct at the scene that was unfolded before them.

Several things about the room could have invoked this reaction in her: Tierla, leaning against a table, looking to all appearances as if she completely belonged there. Or the vast empty space and large, spinning turbines that made up the majority of the room. Even the large throne-like chair which sat in the midst of a crowd of people, black and cruel-looking with hard points and glinting edges was a sight to behold. But what really made her stop and cry out was the object that sat in the midst of it all. A small girl, no more than six or seven years old, was hanging from a strange apparatus, held up by only her arms and emitting a soft yellow glow around her that was slowly dimming. Even that wasn’t the strangest part, however. Teri had to close her eyes for a moment and then look again, because she recognized the girl.

It wasn’t as if she had met the girl before, or had seen her anywhere. In fact, she got the distinct that no one had seen the girl before a few moments ago. But still, it was apparent to the young woman that she knew very much who that girl was. The name “Claudia” went floating through her mind, seemingly from nowhere, but it seemed to fit regardless. She mouthed the name as she stood there, watching as the young girl raised her head and stared straight into her eyes. Teri wondered if this was a similar feeling to what Kenneth had experienced with the “Jerome” that they were following, but she wasn’t entirely sure.

“So good of you to join us,” a loud, bellowing voice echoed out from the center of the room, breaking Teri out of her reverie. She instinctively reached out for Kenneth’s hand at the sound, feeling reassured as his slipped into hers. “Have you brought the male counterpart with you?”

~ *** ~

Kenneth felt his eyes drawn up and to the left of the room as soon as they entered the main room. He blinked and squinted up into the closing darkness, half-seeing a figure perched up there and staring down at him, but he couldn’t be sure if he was simply imagining it or if it was really there. He stopped behind Teri instinctively as she halted, but remained with his eyes directed into the far reaches of the room. It was not until the voice yelled at them that he snapped out of his own thoughts and reached out to take Teri’s hand in his own. As he looked towards the spectacle that had held Teri’s attention, he saw quite a few pairs of eyes looking back at the two of them, and these ones were attached to easily distinguishable bodies.

He turned quickly to lead their retreat, only to come face-to-face with the dark-skinned men who looked identical to each other. All of them were larger and bulky and Kenneth knew without trying that there was no way he could take these men out. He turned back to the group, a look of fear and panic darting over his face as he looked to Teri for ideas. Her face didn’t have much hope on it either as the two of them locked eyes, silent messages passing back and forth between them. Without a word, they started forward, herded by the trio of identical newcomers to the scene.

“Where is he?” the large man yelled at them, puffing rings of dark smoke from his fat jowls, his chair slowly swiveling around to face Kenneth and Teri as they approached his chair. A young, olive-skinned woman walked over from a nearby chair, one who the young engineer did not recognize, and came to stand by the chair, leaning provocatively against his chair as she stared daggers at his companion. He sensed that there was some form of history between the two of them, but if there was, he had no idea what it was nor did he really care to find out right at the moment.

In fact, most of what had happened during the last few hours was forgotten as his mind worked furiously on a way to get out of this mess they had gotten themselves into. He began to doubt that the words of Jerome were very helpful to them, especially with them caught here. However, as he forced himself to breathe steadily and calmly, he soon realized that he was drawing a blank. Thankfully, the allsphere in his hand started to vibrate lightly, causing him to glance down at it as words passed over the display: Don’t panic. Just tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about. Kenneth almost laughed out loud at this last comment; the truth was that he didn’t really know what the man was talking about. The board had been stolen from them almost fourteen hours ago and up until now, both the man and woman had presumed that whoever had the female board was also in possession of the male one. He blinked in surprise as he raised his head from the display to meet the old man’s piercing glare.

“He? Who are you talking about? We didn’t bring anyone with us,” he retorted, summoning courage into his voice that he knew wasn’t really there. He could feel his body desiring to pull his eyes back to the ground, away from this man’s glare, but he simply continued to force his eyes to stay fixed where they were. The imposing man sat still for a few moments, his voice silent and his eyes deadly, with Teri and Kenneth expecting at any moment for him to give some signal to the men surrounding them and for the two to be killed on the spot.

However, the man’s belly start to heave up and down instead and an awful chortling laugh came bursting from deep within his innards, sounding partially as if the man was choking as he laughed. Taken aback, Kenneth couldn’t keep his gaze fixed on the man any longer, but instead lowered them to the floor, glancing at his allsphere to see if another message had popped up since the last. There was nothing there, however and he would have remained staring at it indefinitely if a gentle squeeze of Teri’s hand in his hadn’t brought him back to their predicament just as their captor began to speak once again.

“So, you come to me with not a thing to bargain with?” the man began, speaking through outbursts of laughter. “And what do you expect to happen by coming to me? That I would give you what you want without exacting a price? How foolish and naïve you both are. I expected more from you two, to be honest. Kayl and Gerard must be slipping. It is a good thing they should both be eliminated from the equation soon, so we have no further surprises.”

“No!” Teri let slip, her eyes widening as her father’s name reached her ears, her grip tightening on Kenneth’s hand. He felt the same way as Gerard’s name came directly afterwards. The man had not been his father or relation, but he had always been a part of their family, especially since his own father had died when he was very young. However, the young engineer’s thoughts were more concerned with what the two men had to do with his current project and why this man seemed to know both of them, as well as him and the girl. It was obvious that this large man knew a lot more than he was saying about what was going on, which was particularly surprising given how secret Trail Tech had kept the entire business. He had a million questions roiling around in his mind, all of which demanded answers. At this point, however, Kenneth didn’t think that showing his ignorance any more than he already had would serve the two of them in escaping from this predicament unscathed. It might be better to keep listening and try to glean some information they could use to get out of here alive.

“Yes! They have both played their roles well, but now that the next generation is born, their continued work is no longer needed,” he continued, putting out his cigar and folding his hands in his lap. “But is the same true of you two? Are you now obsolete, replaced by your successors and betters? I suppose that is yet to be seen. What do you two think about your fates?” The man paused, soaking in the look of amazement and disbelief that Kenneth could feel forming on his face as the import of the man’s words sunk into his mind. He could only guess that a similar look was on Teri’s face, confirmed by the hard squeezing as her hand dug into his.

“Oh?” the man said, letting out another of his loud chortling laughs at the looks he was seeing. “Did neither of you know what you were? Did you not guess any of this? Did those two idiots think they would be able to keep the truth from you forever? Make you think that you were a real boy and a real girl? How delicious is this!” The man broke out into peals of maniacal laughter, rolling around in his chair as he did so. Even the girl beside him broke into a wide grin at this revelation and most of the other body guards that surrounded the massive chair joined in, except for the identical three who stood stoically behind them.

Kenneth was torn between being horrified and being intensely curious. He tried to open his mouth and rebut the man’s claims, but instead, he found himself unsure of what to say. Had he not been working his entire life to create an artificial intelligence that might be mistaken for a human? What if someone had already done that very thing? He found his anger melting away as he tried to reason through the man’s claim, pondering that it might explain some of the questions that he had had his whole life about why he was different from other people. Maybe this was the thing that explained all of those years of confusion.

“What in the world are you trying to say?!” Teri yelled, obviously not taking the same mental pathways that Kenneth was following. “I am as human as any of the rest of you. As you, sitting on that damned chair. As much as Tierla there, standing all smug and pleased with herself. As real as these three who are standing behind us. And as human as that poor little girl you have strung up over there. As human as Claudia is!”

She lunged forward at the man, releasing Kenneth’s hand as she spread her nails to rake the man’s face in her fury. However, before she had gotten more than a few feet, one of the dark-skinned men rushed forward, taking hold of her and dragging her back towards the other prisoner. She tried to fight against the man, clawing and biting, but he didn’t seem to be fazed by any of her remonstrations. After it became obvious that nothing she could do would have an effect on him, she slumped in his grasp, the fight flowing out of her. As soon as she was released, she went back to standing by Kenneth.

Now it was time for the man in the chair to look surprised. He stared at the woman in surprise as she spoke the name, unsure of whom she was talking about. “Claudia? And who, pray tell, is this Claudia person?” When she did not respond, he piqued an eyebrow at her, sighing and slowly shaking his head. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. There’s nothing anyone can do to help you at this point. The only people who even know this place exists are either here right now or dead.” He grinned maliciously at the woman, receiving another glare of anger in return for his words. “Either way, your words make me laugh. You presume much about the people in this room. Tierla here, she is the same as you, and she has known that since she was very young. Why don’t you show them, my dear daughter?”

The woman smiled brightly at yet another opportunity to put Teri in her place. She took a step forward, glancing over at Kenneth for a moment and tossing him a wink as she reached down to take hold of her shirt, pulling it up enough to bare her midriff <censored>. She held the clothing in place as she reached up to her neck with her other hand. She felt around the back of her neck for a few seconds until she found what she was looking for, depressing a small button hidden there. As she did this, a line formed vertically on her stomach and then spread out horizontally until it created a small rectangle. The rectangle depressed behind the rest of her flesh and then moved out of the way to reveal a control board sitting in a mess of muscle and skin. Kenneth felt his eyes widen in shock as he stared at the metal object, one which looked very familiar to ones he had been working on just yesterday. He couldn’t help but look down at his own stomach, wondering what he might find if he did the same thing.

“And now you see that not everything is exactly what it appears to be,” the man said as his daughter returned the flesh back to how it was, returning to sit next to him once again. “Those three men behind you are an earlier model than you and although they lack the emotional piece to make them human-like, that also affords them the ability to be excellent assassins. I think you’ll find, Kenneth, my boy, that you are simply the end of a long line of men striving to create the perfect artificial intelligence. And you are not the first one to have some manner of success at it either.”

The young engineer tried his best to wrap his mind around what had just been revealed to the two of them, to grasp what the man was saying and to wonder once again what role Gerard had played in all of this. However, before he got very far into the process of thinking, there was a sound behind him as one of the trio of android assassins scurried off to their left, racing around the group of people towards the place where the young girl was hanging. As Kenneth let his eyes travel ahead of the blurred figure, he took note that the girl no longer hung there.

He was about to say something to Teri about it when a loud explosion occurred from where the dark-skinned man was headed, sending out a concussive blast of heat and debris that rocked the large man’s chair and knocked all of those assembled to the floor. Kenneth tried his best to shield his companion from the fall, his breath bursting out of him as they landed in a heap, trying to figure out what exactly was going on in this room.

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/23/2011 21:26:41 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 11
11/25/2011 2:53:30   
superjars
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~ Chapter Twelve ~


The bond between siblings had been a powerful pull since he had awoken to the consciousness of his own body. As he looked down on the scene unfolding before him, two things came readily to his thoughts: first that his sister was going to need him and second, that their parents were worth saving as well. He had been a little confused when neither of them had been there for his awakening, but as he had interacted with them, and now that he saw the plans that had been set in motion against them, he understood more of what he had only guessed at before.

He watched as his sister was born, glowing and majestic as she assimilated the android form and manipulated it to fit her own personality and desires. He had done something similar shortly after his own creation, while no one was looking, distracted as they had all been at the death of their leader. And he watched as the many people gathered below had cheered at their accomplishment, as if they had anything to do with the process or transformation that was taking place. He gazed out as the couple he was guiding stumbled into her birth, getting themselves captured before they could even understand the situation, let alone act on it. He had smiled down at his progenitor as the young man had stared up towards his position, feeling as well the bond between father and son that they had shared since his own birth. He could see the same bond between his sister and the man’s companion and smiled that their little family was now complete.

And then he listened and watched as the large man revealed the truth of things that the young boy up in the eaves had guessed at, but had not known for certain. So their parents were androids as well, along with this third lady who had taken his sister. His gaze fell upon his sister and she raised her eyes to meet his, unspoken messages traveling with lightning speed between the two. He nodded to her, affirming the plan she was concocting and preparing himself to step into action when the time came. The trio of old-style androids posed somewhat of a problem to the careful execution of this particular series of events, but the boy felt confident that he could deal with them if the need arose.

Finally, his sister gave him a final look, showing him that she was ready to proceed. The small group was distracted by the sudden outburst of their mother as she lunged forward to attack their large captor and at that moment, the trio focused on bringing her back into line. Go, he sent to her, watching as the bonds that held her in place ripped away like silk cloth and she leaped to the top of the device that until recently had been her jail cell and the energy she had been gathered started to move through her body and collect in her palms. The boy waiting in the eaves coiled his body, preparing to strike in conjunction with the blast that was coming. He glanced down to see one of the three dark-skinned assassin’s take off towards the device, knowing that he meant to stop the girl before she could do any damage. The other two started to move forward to secure their prisoners, looking around to identify any threats that might appear.

The young girl looked up at the boy one last time, placing her palms on the large metal device and transferring the energy she had collected into it. It only took a few seconds for the inner workings to hit critical mass and explode upwards and outwards, shooting the girl high into the air above the room and knocking everyone flat to the ground.

Everyone but five androids.

The young android boy leapt from the girders where he had been hiding, shooting his body high through the air and coming down on top of the two bodyguards, both of who were still trying to recover from the concussive blast that had staggered them. He landed between the two, sitting on their shoulders and wrapping an arm around each of their heads. He used his momentum to drag them forward, smashing their heads down into the metal floor below. His maneuver was greeted by a loud crack as their faces collided with the hard surface and their systems powered down. He glanced over to see how Kenneth and Teri were holding, watching as they lay still with him protecting her with his body. It was a touching moment, but they didn’t have time for him to give it the time it deserved. He glanced up towards where he had projected his sister would land, grinning as he watched her dragging the third android towards him, tossing it in a pile with the others as she came up to him.

“Shall we?” she said and her voice fluctuated a little as she got used to her newly-formed vocal chords. She beamed at the boy, her face aglow with new life and the excitement of the last few moments.

“It is time,” he responded, moving forward to embrace her in a hug for the first time. They stood there for a few seconds, holding onto the moment for as long as they dared. “Let’s collect our parents and get out of here.” The two broke away from each other, nodding in agreement and both headed directly for the person they were bonded with, the young boy to Kenneth and the young girl to Teri. With gentle hands, they placed an open palm on their counterpart’s heads, enveloping their own bodies and the two parents’ in a soft white effervescent glow. Within the span of a few seconds, the glow expanded until it consumed the entire world, leaving the four of them in the white world all on their own.

~ *** ~

Kayl was breathing hard as he looked around at the bodies that were piled up around him. As soon as his daughter and her new boyfriend had left, he had headed straight for his workshop, knowing it was only a matter of time before Francis sent in his goons to finish the job. He had read in the newspaper the night before that Gerard had been killed and figured that he’d likely be the next one targeted. The three of them had been like brothers back in the day when they had started working together on artificial intelligence. But when they had divided up their three creations and determined to keep them safe and hidden from their government while they were raised to work on the next generation of androids, he had known it was only a matter of time before the greedy bastard would want the other two to compliment his beloved Tierla.

The men had come, just as expected, but the large man must have underestimated his counterpart. Unlike Gerard, who had also let his body go, Kayl had kept himself in excellent physical condition, training in several different fighting forms for just this day. Had the man not been so assured in his money and guns, he would have been smart to send some of those android assassin’s he was so proud of. But since he had only sent some regularly trained humans, ones who had not been told to be subtle about their intentions at all, he was completely prepared when they arrived. He had set traps in most rooms, programmed several of the house androids to defend their posts and wired the entire structure with explosives.

There couldn’t have been more than a dozen or so commandos who came crashing into the house, guns blazing as they rushed through the rooms on what they thought would be a cake mission. Instead, they found themselves being ambushed by robots and encountering a full litany of traps right from the entrance into every inch of the house. After losing over half of their men, they backed off and took their path more cautiously, trying to minimize any further losses. Still, by the time that the hired men had reached Kayl in the back of his extended workshop, there were only three of them left and only one of them carried a firearm still.

This single threat had been the first thing to take care of, as with a flick of his wrist, the older man tossed out a small blade, catching the gunman’s hand and causing the weapon to fall clattering to the ground, useless. A second later, he launched himself into action, rushing at all three of the men from out of the darkness of his hiding place before they could determine where the blade had come from. The two men who had not had guns still held their field knives in their hands, but Kayl had been prepared for this eventuality. He ducked under the first man’s surprised thrust, sending a back-handed fist into his wrist and grinned as the blade clattered to the floor. He then surged upwards to get in close with the other knife wielder, blocking his blade hand with his own arm and sending his forehead crashing into the man’s nose. Blood spurted from the wound as the man staggered back, second knife landing on the ground as he reached up instinctively towards the broken bones.

The third man had, by this point, pulled the blade out of his hand and was rushing towards the elder man, swinging with the blade towards his opponent’s face. Kayl dodged backwards from the blade on the first swing, but then ducked inside his reach to stop his momentum. The hired man tried to stop himself as he saw the man moving his elbow around, aimed directly for his stomach, but he could not. The blow knocked the wind from his lungs, and he doubled over in pain and surprise. His movement was met with a rising knee, which connected with his face and rendered him unconscious.

Kayl had moved quickly to the other two, taking advantage of their distracted reactions to knock both of them out as well. And now he was standing over them, feeling the slightest amount of pity that they were going to die for some man who cared nothing for them. He paused for a moment, wavering in his resolve, but he knew that if Francis did not think him dead, the man would just send more men after him, ones he wouldn’t be able to deal with like this.

For a few moments, as he opened an escape hatch that lead to a basement and some tunnels beyond, his thoughts turned to Teri and Kenneth and the mission that they had before them. He hoped that they were both safe, but he knew the danger that they were likely in or near was very real and quite potent. However, the best thing he could do for them at this point was to keep himself alive and be around to answer the inevitable questions that they would have for him. Francis wasn’t the only one who had been planning for this eventuality.

He pulled a switch from his pocket as he reached the bottom of the stairs, using one button to seal the hatch he had just used to escape. He walked through the basement and into the tunnels, crouching to move through them. Once he had a few hundred feet of distance between him and the house, he pressed the other button, feeling the tunnel around him shake as several explosives strategically placed around the structure went off, imploding the house and burying it and everything within in a pile of rubble and ash. He heard loud crashing as a good portion of the tunnel behind him caved in as well, the support systems broken. With a grin, he continued on his way, heading towards where he hoped he would be able to rendezvous with his daughter, her companion and the two androids they had gone to save.

~ *** ~

Teri’s eyes fluttered open, staring up into the blank white which surrounded her. For a few seconds, she wasn’t sure where she was, closing her eyes again for the blackness it afforded and then opening them again to the world around her. She pushed herself to her feet slowly, shaking her head lightly to clear the cobwebs caused by the explosion. She turned around slowly, coming face to face with the boy and girl they had met, one in this world before and the other just recently in the warehouse. She glanced down at her feet and saw Kenneth down there, himself rousing from their unconscious state. She dropped to her knees beside him, concern immediately written on her face.

“Are you okay?” she said, her voice heavily laced with worry to match her expression, taking on somewhat of a shrill quality. “What do you think you were doing, getting in the way of that blast?”
“Ungh,“ he replied as he pushed himself slowly to a sitting position and used one hand to rub his head. “Where in the world are we, anyway?” It wasn’t that he was purposefully avoiding the question, but more that he wasn’t entirely sure how he should. His actions had put him in danger, of course, but his main concern had been her. He had acted without really thinking about what he was doing. And obviously they were both living and well and that was what mattered to him.

“Don’t change the subject,” she cried out, her worry changing to anger in a moment. “You could have been badly hurt. Or even killed. I- I- I don’t want that to happen…” She trailed off, the anger melting away as quickly as it had flared up. She stared into his eyes, wordlessly hoping that he would understand what she was trying to say, regardless if she wasn’t quite sure herself.

“I had to protect you,” he said simply, throwing away the millions of excuses and reasons he had been going over in his mind. “But, where are we? And how did we get here?”

“I hate to break up this endearing reunion, but perhaps I can answer that, a familiar voice intoned from behind Kenneth. He twisted to stand beside Teri, hands reaching out to clasp one another’s in surprise. “I am Jerome, and this is my sister Claudia. And, as you are the ones we have bonded with, you are our parents. We are the ones who have brought you to this world. I’m sure you have lots of questions, but we really have a long way to go and very little time to get there.”

The little boy turned away and started to walk away, but the girl stood in place and smiled at them for a few seconds before spinning around and dashing away. Teri looked over at Kenneth, the look on his face revealing that he was confused about this as her. She shrugged at him and gave his hand a squeeze, pulling him along as she hurried to catch up with the two children.

It seemed like they walked forever, exacerbated by the fact that the landscape never changed. Teri found herself having to focus on the children as they walked onwards, for looking anywhere else made her sick to her stomach. Kenneth kept grip on her hand the entire time, however, his steadying presence keeping her from panicking about the current situation. Obviously she felt like she had known these two children for a long time, but something about this whole affair was bothering her. She assumed that the children were much younger than she, having just come into existence, but they seemed to know far more about what was going on than anyone else did. Each time she braved venturing a question in their direction, the pair of children walking in front of them seemed as if they didn’t hear her.

Finally, the two ahead came to a halt, turning to stare at their progenitors, both waiting without emotions as the older pair came up and stopped several meters from the children. The boy took a few steps forward, moving to position between his younger sister and the two of them, as if he were guarding her from them. Teri gave him a strange look, knowing that this was not how their encounter should go.

“Wait, you almost seem wary of us, as if we were your enemy,” she began, giving the kid a pleading look, but staying situated in her spot. “Weren’t you the ones who brought us here? Why would you do that if we were your enemy? And where exactly are we? Why did we stop here?” She stopped, even though there were more questions she wanted to ask. It wouldn’t serve any purpose by unloading all of this on him, bombarding him with query after query, especially if he held no answers to them, as she feared was the case.

The little boy sighed and walked forward, patting both Kenneth and Teri on the leg as he passed beneath their hands and moved behind them. The two of them broke their hands to let him pass and then turned to follow his path, surprised to see figures coming from the distance towards them. The boy turned his head around to face the trio behind him, saying, “It looks like we have trouble coming. You better get down.”

As Kenneth and Teri stared at the approaching people, the little girl came up and took a hand from each of them in hers, pulling on them to bring the two people down to crouching positions beside her. “You must be quiet and wait here. We will reveal everything we can when this is over, but for now, we must protect our parents.” Without waiting for a response, she walked away from them, swiftly moving to join her sibling where he stood. As Teri stared out at the two of them, standing firm against the slowly encroaching horde, she couldn’t help but stand in awe of everything going on around her. She had to admit that she didn’t understand it at all: this world, their children, the large man’s words, none of it. It was almost as if they had been living inside elegant boxes, entranced by the intricate designs and strange texture of its inside, but never fully grasping how small and insignificant those were. And she felt that, now, someone had tossed open the lid to the box and let them out into the greater world, where everything was bigger and newer. Teri had to admit that looking at this larger world was so much scarier than she had have guessed or prepared herself for.

As she looked out over the world around her, however, she started to see glimmers of transformation, light reflected off of the white, piercing through it and leaving it tattered and broken. She looked over at Kenneth for the briefest of moments, and it was obvious from his face that he was seeing the same as she was. As she looked back, it happened faster and faster, leaving large holes in the white which had before dominated the landscape.

It was what was behind the white that was the most fascinating, though. As the colorless fabric of reality ripped away, it revealed a dark and foreboding world, a desolate wasteland pockmarked by small craters and dead trees, sloping hills leading to deserted and ruined stone buildings, as if from a long lost age. Teri’s eyes widened with surprise as the truth of their position dawned on her. The white world must have been some place between that they traveled through, for where she stood now was the ruins that lay outside of their city. She recognized the place from vids they showed her during school or in her father’s study. This was the Valley of the Grave, where the last vestiges of the pre-technological were destroyed when the city of Tarienor had been formed. As the white around them fully disappeared, revealing a sullen and dark landscape, she could tell for sure that this was where they were.

As she looked out towards the horizon, the horde of figures broke into view once again, this time appearing much smaller than it had before. She squinted to see what was heading their direction, but she couldn’t believe her eyes when she looked. The creatures that she saw coming towards them appeared as if they came from out of some of the old legends, things which could not and should not be real. Some of them looked like trolls and ogres, others like wights and banshees, while even other ones appeared as skeletons or zombies. But the figure at their head was probably the strangest of all. Teri found herself having to take a second look to make sure that she was seeing things correctly: at the head of the mob came Tierla Grean, but a version of her that was taller and more imposing than her actual appearance. She was dressed in a black gown, form-fitting from head to toe where it billowed out beneath her, appearing to turn into smoke as it collided with the ground.

“What in the world is going on here?” Kenneth asked from her left, asking the very same question which was at that moment roiling through Teri’s own mind. The pair of them locked eyes for a second, both noting the amazement and disbelief evident in the other's eyes, then turned back to watch the scene as it unfolded.

The two children stood their ground as the rush continued forward, growing larger and more horrific with each passing moment. As the first couple creatures broke away from the main group and put on extra speed to get to the pair, they both flowed into position, eagerly waiting for the coming storm. As those first creatures closed in on the brother and sister and the battle began, it was like watching a dance being performed. Teri looked on as the two of them streamed underneath claws and teeth, striking exposed weak points and dropping creatures as quickly as they came. She looked on as more creatures came in, but it only seemed as if the more that came, the better Jerome and Claudia fought. There was no sense of difficulty or issue in their style, each movement precisely timed and perfectly executed so that it appeared as if the battle was a simple affair.

As she continued to watch, however, she began to see small mistakes appearing the pairs fighting. They were slowly weakening from the intense affair, slowing down while more and more of the monsters came streaming down the hill towards them. She stifled a cry when one of the creatures slammed into Claudia, knocking her off her feet and landing on top of her. The girl twisted away and snapped the thing’s neck, but it was obvious that they couldn’t fight each other off forever. Claudia glanced back at the two of them, crouched behind a set of rocks and smiled at them, taking off back into the fray and heading towards her brother. It appeared as if she had gotten a renewed vigor, fighting with intensity and passion as she made her way to the boy.

When she reached him, it was obvious that the two of them were shouting things to each other, even though it was impossible to determine what over the din of the battle as it raged on. She saw Jerome nod as his sister and then watched as the two of them broke away from the fight, incapacitating those in their way as they headed back towards where Kenneth and Teri crouched in wait. The woman shot them a look of concern as they came on, but she relaxed as she saw the wide grins on their faces. The creatures behind them seemed to grow in their intensity, rushing after their prey, hoping to catch up to them before they could escape. Teri took a quick glance behind them, wondering where they might be escaping to, but as she did, she caught Kenneth staring down at something, a look of amazement on his face.

She stopped mid-turn, following the path of the man’s stare until she focused on her own hands. They were glowing with suffuse yellow light which covered their entire surface from the tip of her fingers to the base of her wrist. She glanced over at Kenneth to ask a question, but her eyes were drawn to his hands, which glowed in the same way as her own. The two of them stared at each for a moment, frozen in a moment of shock from too many strange and unexplained things. However, while they stayed there, the two children had reached them. The girl approached Kenneth, taking hold of his hands while the boy did the same with Teri’s. She looked up into the boy’s eyes with surprise, but his were filled with joy and excitement. She glanced past him to see several beasts with huge maws come racing over the stones, only to have them disappear in a flash of white.

They were in the white world for a few seconds before it too popped from existence, their surroundings melting into a landscape that was similar, but not exactly like the one which they had just left. Here, the sun was shining and there was a large metal wall off to their right, cutting off a large part of the hill as it angled up into the air. It took Teri a few seconds to realize that this was her home she was looking at, rising from out of the wastelands to stand stoically and unmoving on the rolling plains. She looked around her, marveling at the change in the world around her and at the fact that she obviously had something to do with it. She had felt the energy pouring out of her body and into the boy’s, as easily as water would flow down a stream bed.

She spent a few seconds looking around, unsure of what to say or ask to the children, her mind flooded with hundreds of questions that she didn’t even remotely have the answers to. She caught herself glancing up to the hill, every moment thinking that there might be a stream of strange beasts and monsters cresting it and coming rushing down into the valley to destroy them all. But that was not the case, until one figure appeared at the top and started to walk slowly down the hill towards them. The sunlight was coming from behind him and she couldn’t tell who it was for quite some time. She looked down at the boy and girl standing in front of her, but neither of them appeared the least bit frightened or worried about whoever it was. Instinctively, Teri reached out her hand to Kenneth, taking it in hers in order to calm herself.

As the figure came closer, the sun became less of a hindrance to his features and it wasn’t long before Teri saw who it was approaching the small group. Her face broke into a wide grin and she released her partner’s hand to rush forward, the words “Father!” coming from her mouth as she rushed up the hill and embraced Kayl in an excited hug.

~ *** ~

Francis Grean woke up groggily, surrounded by several android attendants and a group of men who were battered and bruised from the explosion a few hours ago. He could still feel the soreness from when the blast had slammed into his chair, knocking him out of it and onto the ground. His mind slowly caught up with where he was and what else had happened; he could remember watching through blurry eyes as the boy and girl had come up to the man and woman, all of them disappearing in a flash of white. He shook his head slowly as he thought about it, mainly so that he would not injure it any further, and doing his best not to let the rage within rise and consume him, as that would not be good for his continued health.

A glance around the room told him two important things: the first was that his daughter was just fine, standing in the background of the crowd and watching him with concern plain on her face, and second that his three assassins had failed and either been incapacitated or destroyed. It was amazing the power this next generation of artificial intelligence had, even more than their predecessors. Although it appeared that Gerard and Kayl had babied their androids and kept the truth from them, allowed them to be human, Francis had spent years teaching Tierla what she was capable of and pushing the limits of what was possible. But this new pair had gained powers beyond anything he had taught his daughter, and all within the first couple of hours that they were in existence. He needed those powers.

“Ungh,” he groaned, pushing his large weight up into a sitting position, despite the protests of several doctors hovering nearby. They came up to perform tests on him and determine his wellness, but he shooed them away with a flick of his hand. “Damn! That didn’t go at all how I planned. I underestimated the power that these new androids would possess and we have all paid for that mistake. But it won’t be happening again. Daughter, go and get Charles from his confinement and take him to one of the labs. We have a lot of work to do and it needs to be done as soon as possible.”

The girl blinked at him several times, her face spreading into a dark look of worry, but she did not put her thoughts into words towards the man giving the orders. As she stalked quickly out of the room, followed by several other androids, some of the men were murmuring discontent in the room.

“Charles? Is he crazy? Last time we let that monster loose, he murdered half the staff and tied up the other half to torture later.”

“What the world do we need Charles for? That thing is so unstable, how can he get anything done?”

“Even as a child, that creature was slicing up small animals just to watch them die. I don’t know that I want to stick around if they’re going to let him out of his cell.”

Francis could feel himself turning red and angry as the comments traveled around the group. As people noticed the man’s face brighten, they fell into a hushed silence, elbowing those near them that had not yet seen the man’s fury. He looked out over the gathered crowd, annoyance and a low seething rage starting to cloud his mind of rational thought; this was one of the drawbacks for him in being human, his lack of control over his emotions and thoughts. He could never afford to lose his temper, but as he had gotten older, that had become easier to do. “Get out! All of you, before I have you killed. Charles will be brought back, whether you like it or not. I want to hear no more questioning of my motives or orders. Do what you’re told or I have no use for you.”

The room remained still for a few seconds as the man’s words sunk into the gathered crowd. A few in the back reacted immediately and rushed from the room and it didn’t take much longer before the rest of the room followed suit. Francis took several deep breaths as the last one left and the door slid closed behind them, leaving him alone with several of the android attendants who were rushing to keep his treatment going. He didn’t like the idea of letting Charles out of his cage again either, but the government was closing in on his operations and he needed the power to push them back, to overwhelm them and set himself up as the ruler. And he couldn’t let those four out there now interfere with his plans or cause them to fail. Desperate times called for dangerous decisions, and he had made the one with the most volatile of outcomes. He hoped that Tierla would be able to keep him under control this time.

~ *** ~

Kayl crested the ridge, staring down into the valley to see if his children and their new boy and girl had arrived yet. The space below was quiet and lonely, not even so much as an animal or insect to disturb its peaceful ambiance. This place had always felt very other-worldly to him, especially as compared to the bustle and noise of the city which grew up just a few hundred meters to his left. He sat down on the rise to keep a watch on the meeting place, keeping himself hidden from both the path he had come from and the path down towards the spot, hoping that those he had come to meet would soon arrive.

While he sat, he couldn’t but think about how these last few days had gone; it had not been any coincidence that he had been pulled away from his home to go and work on some android malfunctions. He knew that Francis had been behind the event when it first happened, regardless of whether there was any proof of it or not. But with several other experts from other cities coming to help with the effort, it had taken much less time than he had originally thought it would. If he had not gotten back when he did, he could not be sure what would have happened to his child. But the gauntlet had now been thrown down and Francis had shown his true colors; he had been ambitious when they had first met and worked together and obviously that had simply grown in him since then. The man needed to be stopped before he went too far and people got hurt, or worse.

Kayl’s thoughts were interrupted by a pop of sound and flash of color; four figures had appeared seemingly out of nowhere down the hill and, even without a close examination, he knew exactly who they were. The man pushed himself up from where he was crouched and started down towards them at a slow pace, so as not to raise their concern to the point where they would act against him. And, when his daughter came rushing up the slope to embrace him, the older man couldn’t help but smile at the group.

“Hey Teri,” he said in response, wrapping her in a tight hug. “Glad you all could make it out of there and meet me here.”

“Father, I thought you were dead,” Teri said through tears of joy, hugging her father tightly before releasing him and standing back. The others had walked towards the reunion tentatively, not wanting to interrupt the event and now they stood nearby, waiting for them to finish.

“It takes a lot more than what they threw at me to kill your old man, Teriesle,” the man replied with a laugh, mouth opening into a wide grin as he did. “But I have a lot to tell you and not much time to do so before my ride gets here. But first, who are your friends here?”

“Oh, well you know Kenneth already, but the two children are Jerome and Claudia, the two boards we went out to save,” she said by way of introduction. Kayl nodded at each of them in turn, then returned his gaze to his daughter as she asked the question he had hoped to avoid. “But, dad, that large man had said that Kenneth and I are also androids. What was he talking about?”

The man sighed as the words tumbled out of her mouth, but there wasn’t much point in keeping the truth from her at this point. They would need all the information they could get to keep ahead of Francis and his connections, as well as the government and theirs. “Francis, Gerard and I all used to work together at Snake Skin Industries, one of Trail Head’s biggest competitors, on the same project that you and Kenneth have been working on this week. We spent years trying to find the hidden formula for creating human-like artificial intelligence, but without any luck.

“But then, one day, Francis made a huge breakthrough by opening a door to a completely white world, one I’m sure you are familiar with by now. But the problem was that none of us could get in there to explore the place. We tried all sorts of technology and built all sorts of prototypes so that one of us could cross the barrier, but it seemed that organic material was unable to cross the barrier. And so, one day, we decided to send one of our android tech assistants through the portal and into the world. It was amazing to watch as the android disappeared into the whiteness, enveloped in another place we could only dream of.

“We waited for several hours for the robot to return, but when it finally did, there was something drastically different about it. Something had come back with it. At first we weren’t sure what it was, or that it was even there, but we caught the android working independently outside of its programming and immediately locked it up. The thing’s name was Kezren the Magi, it said, but it had decided to take on the moniker of Charles to fit into our world. We found it amazing that somehow this Kezren had become connected to our android and hitched a ride back to our lab. He said that he was fighting some war and needed our help to create soldiers who could come back with him through the portal and finish off the rebel forces who were fighting against him and his people. None of us truly trusted him, but his knowledge of and insights into artificial intelligence were invaluable to our work.

“Before he joined us, we had hit a dead-end in terms of making more powerful systems for the creation of artificial intelligence, but when he started to share some of the secrets he had with him, our work took leaps and bounds forward in terms of progress. That man is a large part of why I am as famous as I am in the technological industry, but he required that he get none of the fame for his contributions, asking only for more advanced bodies for him to grow with as we got better at what we were doing.”

The man paused for a few seconds, glancing around the faces of those who listened to his story, enraptured with this strange and mysterious revelation that had been his reality for thirty plus years. He remembered the fascination on his own face when he had heard this man’s story, but that was masked by what had come next. He took a deep breath before continuing, closing his eyes as he gathered his courage to continue.

“But there was more to what we were doing than even we knew,” he kept going, his voice taking a twinge of regret and sadness to it as he did so. “The work we had been doing had gained worldwide fame, even drawing the eyes of the government to our little company. Our finances were unlimited and we were quickly gaining access to everything we could ever have needed. However, soon Charles warned us that the government was preparing to buy out Snake Skin and take over the project we had been working on. Our work was going to become property of the ruling bodies of this country and we would likely have lost our jobs. Charles had a plan though. If we took our most recent prototypes of the boards and left with them before the government took over, we could finish our research and work in secret, keeping in contact with one another until we were ready to start our own company to rival the government. Disillusioned by the way we were being treated and the society around us, each one of us agreed that this was the best course to take. We took our notes and each of us took one of our prototype boards and left the company.

“Over the last twenty years, I’ve been watching the government take my work and utilize it in some amazing ways. A few years ago, they approached me with an offer I couldn’t refuse and some information that changed my entire world view. They said that we hadn’t been creating new artificial intelligence like we thought we were. They say that they’ve done research into our work and that what we were claiming to do was impossible. It seems that Kezren had been working some sort of spell and, instead of creating new life, we were making vessels to which were tethered the spirits of people from the world he came from, just as he had done with the original android we had sent through. All of our work has simply been to create more complex boards, through which these people are more able to tap into the magical power they have in his world.

“I’ve been working with the government ever since, now that I know that Francis has preserved Charles and has been continuing to build him an army. However, I have kept you two, Kenneth and Teri, a secret from them, as well as the work you have been doing. Somehow, however, they have found out about the two children, Jezrom and Cadia, who you now have here with you. They are on their way here to rendezvous with me, thinking that I am going to hand them over. And that brings us to the here and now; I don’t think the government has the best intentions for the two of you and I think there is more at play here than even I know.

“I need you to run,” he said simply, a few hot tears escaping his resolve as he looked over at his daughter, registering the horror that was on her face. “All of you must go and find somewhere to hide. There is war and conflict brewing in our world and I don’t want you to be in the middle of it. You must find out the truth of what each side is up to and find a way to stop Kezren from what he plans to do. I think he’s infiltrated into the government somehow and is pitting them against Francis for an unknown and, I believe, malicious reason. Now, go!”

As he said these last words, he turned and started to jog up the hill, the sounds of aircraft faintly heard in the distance. He kept his back to the quartet of androids, hoping that they would leave without any emotion or trouble. It was up to them to find out the truth and fight back against the evil he and his friends had unleashed on this world. He pushed away tears and steeled his resolve for the berating he was likely to endure. The helicopters appeared from over the crest of the city, coming down to meet him. Unable to restrain himself anymore, he looked down back towards where he had left the four of them, smiling as they were no longer there. Now their world had a chance.

~ *** ~

They ran until their sides hurt and their breath had run out. Kenneth and Teri with Jerome and Claudia, each of them left in their private thoughts as they tried to understand the story they had just heard and come to grips with the reality of what and who they were. Being younger and of a more advanced model, both of the children were not as tired as their parents, and they decided to move forward to scout out what was coming ahead of them. This left Kenneth and Teri alone together.
“What are you thinking?” Kenneth asked Teri, glancing up to meet her eyes for the first time since they had met her father.

“I don’t even know where to start with that,” she said, sighing lightly as she stared into the man’s eyes. “Are we even qualified to take on this type of thing? We just found out that we are spirits tethered from another world to android bodies and that is a lot to take in all at once. What do you think?”

“I feel much the same as you,” he replied, getting up to move closer to her, sitting down at her side and turning to face her. “But, one thing stands out to me more than anything else. No matter what is ahead of us, as long as you are by my side, I can carry on with it. If we stay together, nothing can stop us. I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time now, but now I am sure about this: Teri, I love you.”

The girl looked at him, a few passionate tears falling from her eyes, her face melting into a large smile. He was right, of course; as long as they were together, they could get through anything that came their way. She glanced towards where the children had gone, realizing that they would need a strong family to grow and learn in this world, as well as support for when they ventured into the other. There were a lot of things ahead of them, but for this moment, everything seemed right with the world. She turned back to Kenneth, the smile on her face sparkling as she moved closer to him, entwining her hands with his and moving in for a passionate kiss.

“I love you too.”

< Message edited by superjars -- 11/26/2011 14:32:27 >
AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 12
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