Daria 4

by Martin E. Silenus

  “No I’m not, but a very close friend of mine is very serious and determined to be cloned into a replicant.”

  “Oh, you must be with the group that has the detailed questions for the scientists. We don’t normally get that degree of questioning you know. Most folks don’t want to know the details of how. Say, you aren’t considering starting a competitive cloning firm are you?”

  “Not in the least, the individual to be cloned is a scientist in their own right and have plenty of questions for everyone. May I ask you a question?”

  “Of course,”

  “How old are you in your cloned replicant state?”

  “I’m just about to turn thirty in this replicant body, which I now consider to be the real me. I moved from a dying late fifties MS patient body to a twenty-five year old cloned replicant body. So I’ve been just about five years in the new body.” says Brenda with a wide smile.

  “So you are close to sixty-five years of life experience in a thirty year old healthy active replicant body?”

  “Yes, and for me this is heaven, it’s better than you can ever imagine and to be able to enjoy physical, mental activities, including sex again is utterly wonderful. No regrets whatsoever!”

  “Yup, I can sure see how it would be a very attractive option when a person is getting on in years and things begin to malfunction. Or even just to remain in your prime twenty years span for as many lifetimes as you choose. It’s very remarkable.” I agreed with a smile.

  “When your friend is cloned she should join our group of cloned folks. We have all sorts of tips and techniques to help with the “new you” and the group understands the process and can speak to all the fears and possible issues. We’re a mixed group so we share both male and female experiences.” smiles Brenda.

  Of course D had done all her homework in regard to cloning. As a matter of fact D had performed much of the work years prior when she had decided what her hologram presence was going to be like. So much of the decision process was done and the cloning folks had to only make a few adjustments in appearance to one of their standard models to match perfectly with D’s requirements.

  One of the impediments in the process was that D’s collective mental intelligence was so profound and advanced that we could not allow the Cloning Company to retain a version of it. Their legal practice was to retain a copy of the brain image for archival purposes. That did not work for us, so collectively we made a financial and legal arrangement to compensate the cloning firm for ensuring that D’s brain image was not retained in any manner.

  The second impediment was a question of capacity of the Clone brain and whether it was sufficient for the large volume of D’s intelligence. I’ll have to hand it to the Clone scientists as they realized that in some special situations that this could be an issue and in forward thinking preparation they had developed a way to option in additional brain storage and processing power. Once we had these issues resolved we were good to move ahead. Renovatio Ltd gave us the data format for the brain image data stacks and D went about creating them. There had to be some decisions made on our side as everything would still not fit, nor did it have to, as D’s clone could easily reach her digital master version on board the ship with Poe.

  Of course we did have another problem of logics in that we now had too many “D’s” to refer to. So in the tradition of parenting Frosty of course was Father and the digital supercomputer version of D was to be referred to henceforth as Muther. Not a real mother of course and hence the bastardization of the name to Muther. But it gave the required distinction of who to speak to by name.

  Poor Frosty was an absolute wreck. I have never seen him in such an emotional, nervous, anticipatory, stressed state. We talked a lot, just Frosty and I. It was then that I admitted that I had degrees in social sciences. He suspected based on the explanations and consulting, support, that I had been sharing with both him and D. Frosty was going to be ok; he was just a wreck as there was going to be a significant change to his life’s work project. And I expect that he did not have as much appreciation for humanity as many people do. Being a geek it is very likely that Frosty was deeply hurt by people around him, particularly girlfriends. So he had turned his back on that and focused on sentient AI Artilects.

  D has the brain image data stacks ready to go and Renovatio has the clone set to her specification ready for download. The time has arrived and we proceed without hesitation.

  Generally after the donor brain image data stack is downloaded into the replicant there is an “orientation period” for the brain and body to “mesh” and become familiar with one another so that reactions are smooth and predictable. Depending on the donor this process can be lengthy. Not so with D as within a couple of days the Renovatio Ltd scientists declare her fit and ready to go. Wisely the rest of us hold back and encourage Frosty to go and spend some quality time with his “daughter”. A time when father and daughter can speak of the important aspects of their lives and express their feeling for one another. It was a very moving experience for Frosty and for D as now in replicant form she has access to the human emotions. Let me just say I believe they hugged one another and wept a lot together.

  I must confess I was nervous about meeting D in human form, even though we had spent so much time together intimately in Virtual Reality. I had to get used to her walking around amongst us in physical presence. It was just different and we would need some time to adjust. Beast thought it was just the greatest thing as he loved D to death and now he had a real person to cuddle with, snuff, get fussed over, have his ears scrubbed and fur petted most anytime he wanted. From D’s reaction and posture when meeting him physically I could tell without reservation that she loved Beast. It is so heartwarming how they worship one another.

  Our meeting was romantic and very tender. D was even more stunning in the flesh than in Virtual Reality if such a thing is possible. We made love repeatedly and lovingly. To have D physically with me is very emotional for the both of us. There are parameters to human acceptance and I have to confess that the replicant D is more to my conventions than the VR version of D.

  I was feeling the peace and contentment that I had felt with Rachel. Yes, there is no question I felt some guilt. It seemed that having sex with the Virtual Reality D was fine, but with the replicant D that existed in the same plane and physicality as I do is a different matter altogether. It required me to sit quietly and alone and have a conversation with my inner self about my experiences and love for Rachel. I reminded myself that Rachel was dead, and that I could not change that and I had to move on. Even though a part of me seemed to feel that “moving on was/is a sacrament. Rachel was so very precious to me and I will never forget her or those memories, but I must move on. D is here and this is now!

  There are those who in my situation would never attempt to move past Rachel and the memories. While I choose to move past mine I certainly understand the difficulty and pain associated with such action. For some, and we are all different in such matters, the self-inflicted pain of moving on may be too much of a detriment to their mental health, even physical health. For those folks perhaps it is wise to defer the actions for a few years before revisiting. Sadly many do just such an approach, however sometimes they never have the option presented to them again. They never meet another someone to spend a lifetime with. They are stuck and time passes by and before they realize it the urge, need, want, desire to share with someone is gone. And they are forever alone locked with the distant memories of a love lost.

  I could not be one of those people. I hugged D all the harder!

  Chapter 5: Trade Station CEO

  D loves this place; it has her favorite shoe stores, custom dress shops, and Drugstore/Bath and Beauty Products stores. She loves to shop and be well dressed. Pretty human characteristics for a sentient artificial intelligence program resting in a designer replicant female human frame. Anyway we have the opportunity for date nights, where D and I clean up and go out to hobnob with humanity, have an e
xcellent meal, see a show, have a few libations at a dance club, and come home to vigorous sex. I have to say that even for a ‘non-dress up’ guy like me the date nights are really enjoyable. The establishment that we frequently visit for dancing and live music is a place aptly named “Somewhere Else.” It’s a very popular place with the right crowd mix of high-end patrons.

  While the Trade Station had prospered and grown since its conversion to a Trade Station from being a Strategic Military Base, the flourishing and profits have attracted the attention of organized crime. That became a problem very quickly. Now it just so happens that our reputation for “quiet problem solving” had preceded us to the Station CEO. It was during one of our date nights that he approached us to see if we might be able to meet with him and lend him a hand with the growing crime problem. Understand that the station had its own Police Force and Legal Rule sets. But unfortunately some problems don’t just conveniently meet the rule set requirements. Many by design fall through the cracks and become very nasty problems.

  Michael Arthur Stevenson, the Trade Station CEO is an impressive cut of a man. Six feet five inches tall in bare feet and close on to three hundred pounds of determination. He preferred to be referred to as Mike, just Mike. He was not an ostentatious man, while physically imposing he preferred to measure people by what they had accomplished and the reputations that precede them. His staff and close friends referred to him as Big Mike. He knew that of course as there was precious little if anything on his Station that he did not know about. Knowledge of his environment was one of Mike’s key directives.

  A full head of hair and a carefully trimmed beard were Mikes trademarks along with sports casual dress wear. Not a man for ties, but comfortable in quality sports jacket and coordinated shirt and trousers. Mike also loved his expensive cigars and his very expensive liquor collection. Not narcissistic, arrogant or self-centered in the least. A well-educated man, very knowledgeable about running a Trade Station, and did so with a minimum of fuss. His staff loved him as a leader and would follow him into hell if asked to.

  One of Mike’s notable skills is his ability to know more than you prefer to tell him about who you are, what you do, how well you do it, and who you do it to. Doesn’t flaunt his knowledge, is just very careful and thorough in his investigations and has contacts all over hell’s half acre. We answered a very polite invitation from Mike on one of our date nights to the Trade Station. Now we do very thorough research too and before we met a high level gentleman of this sort we did our homework very carefully. There were no nasty surprises, although some controversy, but no real blemishes on his personal records. Mike it seems needed some specialized very quiet help with a nasty problem, and we needed a facility for a high-end ultra-modern backup data center, one capable of receiving blasts of encrypted very compressed data streams from significant distances. After discussions and a wonderful meal Mike was amiable to an agreement, if we would clean up his problem and act as external consultants to his Trade Station data Center. We had a deal.

  We took a look at Mike’s Data Center and flinched. Yikes, this was not done well at all. Of course in fairness to Mike the station had been built as a military exercise a couple of generations ago and was technology challenged by today’s standards. It had been refitted and upgraded but was still well behind the curve.

  D, her sisters and Frosty went to work on a proposal for Mike that would bring his data center up to a current state and then some. It would not be as expensive as some might visualize as hardware and computer cycles were much more plentiful and cheaper now. The really good aspect is the military built the station and it was superior in its construction. That meant we did not have to do fundamental structural retrofitting that is expensive and very time consuming.

  We did the full presentation for Mike and a couple of selected very high VP’s. It included, slide presentation overview, cost benefit analysis, current and future capabilities, conceptual drawings, and for the final rounding out of the full picture we took them onboard our ship and walked them through how it would all look and operate in our Virtual Reality Simulation deck. To say that they were gob-smacked at every aspect of the presentation would be a severe understatement. The VR Sim really blew them away. So we suggested they go away and think on it for a while and then we would get together and answer questions, and discuss.

  In about a week they were back excited as could be with some very good questions and some design alteration requests as far as gear placement was concerned. We adjusted the VR in accordance with their ideas and let them walk through it to see how it felt. They were delighted and Mike gave us the go-ahead. He also inquired if we would consider doing computer application consulting for him. Some of his tried and true applications for inventory, sales, rentals, and security were getting pretty long in the tooth and needed a refresh to take advantage of the new horsepower and techniques available. D and Frosty looked at one another and both nodded. The deal was done and the work could commence.

  I won’t bore you to death with the details of the modifications to Mike’s Data Center other than to say that we moved the existing hardware to one side of the data center and began installing the current new technology on the other side. The old systems still ran 24 x 7 and as the new hardware completed the installation phase it came on-line in a parallel stream. Thus we could examine the result of the old standard systems and applications and measure it against the new hardware and applications to verify correct results. Of course the new hardware ran in a fraction of the time that the old hardware and applications did. So it was decided that a two month parallel system test would be sufficient unless we had discrepancies in which case they would need to be resolved and tested for another month. The data center staff is delighted with the new hardware and all its bells and whistles and AI capability. It’s a huge leap forward for them.

  D, Muther and the sisters took a look at the various application codes that are running, are horrified with how poorly the code was written, rewrote it properly and engineered in about ten times the capability of the old code. The sisters had many code bot routines that spewed out flawless code so the re-engineering and enhancing took no time at all. This became the next phase of testing. Each revised application was run on the new hardware and again was checked against the calculations and totals from the old application and hardware. It checked out of course as the sisters are perfect coders and application engineers. Or system engineers if you need your data center operating system modified or personalized.

  The third and final phase of this complete re-engineering data center upgrade was the re-education of the staff and application experts as to the new capabilities of the applications and computer systems. As one would expect this phase took the longest by far of all phases as people are not at all inclined to change their habits and re-learn better methods. Mike was firm with his Management accounting staff, adapt the new ways or your position will be assigned to someone else. Most got with the program and became enthusiastic about what new capabilities it had. But a few didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t change and were let go. In the long run this was a blessing as with the new hardware and re-engineered applications it was easy to do half again as much work with half of the original staff. It was a quantum leap for Mike’s data center staff.

  There were considerable impacts in his warehouses too as we provided for Artificial Intelligence control of all warehouse goods. We left it with Mike to decide how fast or slow he wanted to integrate robotics into his warehouses. Once again we gave him a presentation of the state of the art in warehouse tech and showed him the numbers around the considerable cost reduction available and much faster handling by spending on robotics extensively and eliminating problematic slow, error prone, disinterested human staff with all their litany of benefits, sick days, holidays, ever increasing salaries, free medical, free dental, free glasses, free work boots, union grievances and the list goes on and on. I can say without any doubt this revelation came as a big shock to Mike. Parti
cularly so when he looked at his bottom line and profit margin. And who wouldn’t want to reduce cost by 33% and increase handling capabilities by 50%. It makes a hell of a difference on profits projections. Anyway our job as promised in the agreement was one of consulting and providing system and tech competency. How far Mike wanted to go and at what speed was entirely up to him.

  Our data-center backup site that started all this discussion was built in a small area off the Trade Station’s data-center. It made perfect sense to have it there and use a separate secondary security system proprietary to us and us alone. That provided for the best of both worlds as the Station’s data-center was very secure and that kept most folks out and then as a secondary level we had our own D, Muther, sisters designed the DNA security system for our own personal area. Of course it was equipped with an anti-personnel trap to ensure that no one just happens to slip through by tailgating the person in front of them. And as the trap uses two high tensile strength steel doors at right angles to one another, no one could look inside to see what tech gear we are using. D, Muther and the sisters designed it and Frosty built it with manual labor help from me. We pondered about bringing Huey and Dewey in to help with the drudgery of rack assembling and cabling but decided that was too upsetting for the folks in the regular data center and we really don’t care to have them know too many of our secrets.

  Within our site we provided computing cycles for a backup version of D. A third sister if you will, utilizing MIMD (multiple instruction stream multiple data stream) processing arrays based on the monstrous AMD Threadripper 2990WX CPU. Of primary concern and interest was our data storage. Our go-to mass storage backup media is still magnetic tape for ease of use and longevity, the IBM/Sony 4inch square tape drives mounted in an 8 unit array provide for a head swimming 330 terabytes of data storage. Muther and the sisters have dabbled a bit with DNA storage but it’s too onerous for our use. Of more interest is the storage of data on a silicon chips by using hydrogen atoms, allowing for a 1000 times potential increase in storage. However in the interim tape still get the nod for getting the job done.