Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens

by Robert E Colfax

  “Guys,” Urania announced after about an hour, “this ship is unbelievably fast. We’re no more than three weeks out from Ackalon. And I think we can tune that. We’re actually going to get there sooner than if we hadn’t turned back to fetch Glaurang.”

  ***

  Geena worked at pulling the logs from the two other ships. Urania was already stretched thin dealing with Glaurang’s systems and couldn’t spare the processing power to hack anything else. The story of Witchy-Bitchy Woman was mostly just the ultimately sad story of a small group of women in search of adventure and excitement. They reached their pinnacle when they discovered an enormous derelict starship. Then it tortured and killed them.

  They at least managed to visit a few of the Accord worlds they knew of only from stories and travel holo-vids before they died. Geena grimly reflected that the women’s lives were not really all that different from her own and Ron’s up to the point were Lexi turned everything upside-down around them. Since that time they restored the succession on Ackalon, saved the civilization of two Grammin worlds from collapse, and snatched Ostrieachia out of the clutches of the pirate civilization Unity. Now they managed to recover what was likely the next generation of the Vankovian imperial line. Through it all, they made at least a small dent in resolving the overall pirate problem. I owe Lexi a lot. Life since she came on board has become exciting again, like those first years with my husband.

  The logs from Save Me were far more disturbing. Because they were heavily encrypted, Geena pressed Urania for tips on hacking into computers and once she was in, help with translating them. The official logs listed the names and registries of ships they had taken over the last six years. Statistics on the point of origin, point of destination and quantity of loot taken were recorded.

  She found two other, more subjective, measures. Resistance factor presumably measured either how much fight the victims put up or how difficult it was to take the ship. The implications conveyed by terming the second measure “fun factor” were something Geena didn’t want to think about, although she was forced to when she went through the personal logs. Those made her sick to her stomach.

  This wasn’t the first time Geena viewed logs depicting the horrors of the obscenities pirates perpetrated on the crew and passengers of the ships they captured. She knew what to expect. The personal logs consisted largely of holo-vids. Geena intended to watch them all. Hour after hour she watched three-dimensional audio-visual projections of torture, rape and murder until Urania stopped her. “Geena,” her soft voice said, “You need to stop, dear. This is not doing you any good.”

  “No,” Geena countered. “I have to do it. The things they say in these are giving me information on where they have contacts to sell their merchandise and to service their ships. More often than not, they’re naming specific places, specific people. I can’t let anyone else do this. Lexi is already a little bit crazy about wiping these guys out of existence and I know Ron well enough, that well, we wouldn’t be able to stop him. Compared to what this would do to him, Lexi’s determination to exterminate these vermin would seem mild. It’s one thing to know that this is what they do. It’s another to actually view home holos of it.”

  “I imagine some of that data you’re getting has already been recovered from the ship’s log. But, unfortunately, you’re right; there is value in going through this horror.” Urania paused. “None of us need to see this. I can set up an isolated subsystem to mine all of the personal logs because, frankly, I don’t want to watch any more of this horror show either. I’ll need an hour or two to set it up. You should go join the others. There’s still some ice cream in the freezer. Have some.”

  Chapter 34

  Amusement Park

  For the next two weeks, life returned pretty much to normal. Geena kept to herself more than she usually did. When she was with Lexi and Ron, she talked less. She spent a lot of time in the gun range simulator, her holographic targets identical to the crew of Save Me. Urania explained what she thought was going on with her privately to Lexi and Ron. Lexi spent more nights in Geena’s cabin than in the one she and Ron shared. They didn’t talk much, but the physical contact seemed to help the older woman.

  Despite being docked inside Glaurang, they continued to live on Urania. They didn’t spend time exploring. He was just too large to justify the effort when they had so much else to do. Lexi related more of the story of what happened in the sim from her point of view to Ron and Geena. She also shared her bizarre dreams of married life. Those stories even brought a smile to Geena’s face, at least until she got to the mine explosion where Ron died.

  “Lexi,” Geena remarked at that point, “Ron really was caught in a mine explosion on Hepca. Most of your story so far seems to be derived from movies we’ve all watched and places you’ve been, but that explosion really happened. Geppetto’s Kreesh, considering our plans, had better be real. Remember the Rose of Light was flaring in your head the whole time you were asleep. I see one other thing that sticks out in your story.”

  “Risha?” Lexi asked.

  “Yes, darling. Risha. Your interaction with her was overly specific. When you describe her, you’re describing an Ackalonian. Not only that. you also had a dream analog of the Rose of Light on your table. She handed it to you.”

  Lexi smiled. “Yes, she did. However, if she’s dating my son, we won’t meet the real Risha for quite some time, even if I reverse my contraceptives now. Now just isn’t a good time for that.” Her smile broadened. “Assuming that may have been a precognitive incident, the girl was definitely Ackalonian. She also probably hasn’t been born yet. Maybe Jis will have a daughter someday. I can see my hypothetical son being interested in a hypothetical daughter of Jis.”

  Ron frowned. “Something for us to look forward to, the son we don’t have dating a girl who doesn’t exist yet. Lexi, unless this war you’ve invited us to drags on for decades, I don’t want to father a child in the middle of it.”

  “I’m with you there, sweetie.” Lexi’s smile became a frown as she added, “What scares me, my loves, is I first handed her the Rose and she handed it back to me. It could have already been turned on and sitting on our table.”

  “Do you think there’s meaning in that, Lexi?” Urania asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lexi admitted. “It’s like Geena said, it was overly specific.”

  ***

  They watched movies, worked out in the gym and continued the never-ending combat training. Lexi gave them a heads up that she put work on the hulk-meds aside to work on Klaavaanit technology for Urania. Glaurang’s Klaavaanit field was shut down until further notice. It was far too powerful and potentially a killer. Lexi expected to be able to do amazing things with the technology if her ideas panned out. One of those amazing things included recording updated educational rubrics.

  Still, Ron had a shock while still five days out from Ackalon when he found Lexi unconscious in the control bay with the educator cap on her head. As he rushed to her side, he heard a familiar giggle from the ship’s kitchenette. A second Lexi, stark naked except for her gripper socks, which were still necessary because the mini-grav fields didn’t overlap. Smiling broadly, she walked up to him, wrapped her arms around him, and delivered a passionate kiss. Although he responded appropriately, when she released him and stepped back, he spun her around and smacked her on her bare bottom, saying, “Are you really in there? I’m going to make coffee. I suppose you’ll need to wake up if you want any.” Clearly, she was making significant progress with her Klaavaanit work, he thought. He was pretty sure he had just been kissed by an avatar.

  Lexi pouted. “If you hadn’t seen the real me in the chair, would you have known?”

  “Of course.” He eyed her appraisingly. “It might have taken me an extra few seconds to work it out, though. You certainly look the part. And everything felt authentic. Holograms aren’t solid, so I know you must be a force field. That has got to be a really neat trick. You sound the same. But you had your tong
ue in my mouth, kiddo, and I didn’t taste you. You don’t smell like anything either.”

  Lexi smiled evilly. “I could fix that, you know. You’re inside a Klaavaanit field now. I could tweak it to simulate taste and smell in your mind when you’re interacting with my avatar.”

  “That would probably fool me,” Ron admitted. Then without even cracking a smile, he asked, “Want a mug of coffee?”

  “Very funny, smart ass. I can only drink simulated coffee when I’m like this and you know it.” She smiled. “Hey, want to see something really cool?”

  He laughed. Then with an exaggerated leer, said, “I’ve been looking at something really hot, so sure. Go ahead. Balance the books for me.”

  Lexi-avatar walked over to Lexi-in-the-chair and turned the chair to face Ron-in-the-kitchen. Standing behind herself, she put her hands on the educator helmet and with an abrupt motion tossed it into the air. Lexi-in-the-chair reached up and caught it. She smiled at Ron, who was smiling appreciatively while clapping his hands, and asked, “Coffee ready?” Her avatar vanished as soon as the educator left Lexi’s head.

  “How are you able to do that? Touch objects, I mean,” Ron asked. “When you were fighting Meat, surely you were in the machine, so to speak, like everything else, without a real-world physical presence. So it made sense in that context.”

  “Yes, we were in a sim-world on the derelict without a physical existence. Inside this ship, I set up the Klaavaanit field differently. The Wraix didn’t really understand the full potential of what they built. I’m not sure I do, either. I’m still wrestling with the full capabilities it presents. My work is based on the Wraixain model, but, well, for one thing, it is completely isolated from Urania. She can only access it through a subsystem. Nor is it interactive with the computer it’s running on in the way the educators are interactive with Urania. What I’ve done won’t be creating another sentient computer.”

  She accepted a mug of coffee from him, once again grateful that her miniature grav-pads worked. And worked well. “It’s far less powerful than the field Meat used. Unlike Meat’s, it’s not ship-wide. I’ll be generating separate fields for each section of the ship if we ever have a reason to do that. That’s just a precaution, and probably an unnecessary one, but I’m still working my way through this. The fields will touch each other, so an avatar will be able to walk from one to another.”

  After a pause to enjoy a sip of coffee, she said, “As you just saw, the field allows me to create avatars in the real world. My consciousness was in the projection, not in my head. They’re not really perfected yet. I still have work to do, but wanted to show off what I had so far. And like I said, I could make you think you tasted and smelled me. In the wrong hands, I suppose it could be almost as dangerous as the one on Glaurang. By the way, what do I smell like?”

  Ron refilled her cup of coffee as she stepped closer to him. As she cupped it in her hands, feeling the warmth, he cupped his hands over hers, saying, “I’m comfortable that it is not in the wrong hands. But you didn’t answer my question. And frankly, my dear, you smell like you. Even after a heavy workout in the gym, it’s a quite pleasant smell.”

  She replied with a smile. “You know,” she explained, “tractor beams, the mini grav-pads, and the new transporter pad, once we build it, are all applications based on artificial gravity, the mathematics of which I now understand extremely well. With some oddball things I got from the Wraixain technology, I figured out how to generate variable-density, shaped, gravity fields. I adapted your design for making the three ships look like rocks to make the avatar look like me. That was brilliant work, by the way. Saved me a lot of trouble. You called the avatar body a force field. We may as well call them that. It’s as good a name as any.”

  She laughed softly. “I should have waited until Geena got up. I’m going to have to run through this again for her, aren’t I? Anyway, gravity manipulation was one of the areas in which the Wraix were behind us. Wraix didn’t have the ability to create avatars. Meat figured out how to do that once he taught himself how to generate a simulation. Before that, he was hunting his crew in their minds only via the Klaavaanit interface. It wasn’t a big leap combined with what I already knew. My avatar was a hologram, but one based on diffracted gravity as well as diffracted light. I can adjust how solid the projection feels, its hardness, and a whole lot else. It takes an excruciatingly enormous amount of computing power, of course.”

  Urania cut in at that point. “She co-opted my back-up system. You guys are going to need to buy me a new one.” She had argued with Lexi about that. Lexi pointed out that docked inside Glaurang, it was very unlikely Urania would be so damaged that they needed to switch to her non-sentient backup. Urania grudging conceded that she was probably right.

  Lexi laughed. “We will, dear. Don’t forget that all of our assets are one-fourth yours. You can buy whatever you want.” Then, continuing her conversation with Ron, said, “Felt pretty real, didn’t I? I worked hard on that. It’s basically a matter of syncing up the force fields with the Klaavaanit field. In fact, now that you’ve brought it up, I could probably take it further and make a gravity-walled container inside the avatar allowing it to swallow real coffee. Maybe I will.” She laughed. “That’ll fix you. I suppose it would be a waste of good coffee though.” She paused. “Oh, and Urania, love, give me a day or two and I should be able to generate an avatar for you, too. Before I go to the trouble of coding one, that’s what I did with mine, I want to see if I can set the technology up to automatically default the force fields to what you think you look like. If Meat’s sim could do it, I should be able to as well.”

  Ron said, “Urania, I’ll volunteer to scrub your back in the shower.”

  Lexi looked at him with an admiring expression on her face. He picked up on that really fast. “By the way, can we run the gravity rubric I’m working on for you? I almost have it finished and could use some help with this stuff.”

  He broke in on her. “Whoa there, kiddo. You can make new rubrics?”

  She smiled, embarrassed that she hadn’t thought to mention that to any of them. “Yes. It’s a derivative of the Klaavaanit technology. I’m so wrapped up in all of this stuff that I didn’t realize I failed to mention that. I’m sorry. But Ron, we’re going to want the transporter technology pretty soon. And the tractor beams installed on Urania can be made a lot more efficient. Decent presser beams should be a possibility too. We should upgrade while we have the time. Glaurung has tractors of a sort but no pressers. Kind of an odd miss there. But upgrading him is too big a job for us to tackle without a crew. I’m also certain we can use focused gravity to maneuver a ship while in hyperspace rather than the micro-burst method you and Urania used to get us close to Glaurang. Maybe you can look into that too.”

  “Sure. Umm...” He paused. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to use the shower as a transporter room. I’ll put it in one of the storage areas; we have the space.”

  Lexi laughed. “Ron-sim warned me you would worry about hitting something with your butt and winding up wet and naked somewhere else.” Still smiling, she added, “I was under extreme time constraints in the sim and used what I had. Otherwise, I don’t think I would have chosen the shower either. What I needed was a gravity pad housed in an enclosed space in order to ensure everyone was fully in the field. The shower was all we had and other than it being a tight fit with four of us in there, it fit the bill perfectly. More to the point, Mister Samue, I have done a lot of redesign on the entire educator interface in order to generate avatars. I think the upgraded tech will prove much easier on you.”

  Chapter 35

  Klaavaanit

  Three days later, Lexi gently placed the redesigned educator helmet on Ron’s head. He smiled at her as he lay back on the medical bed. Lexi connected the educator to the equipment in the medical suite so that the medical-grade scanners could be used for monitoring. With Urania’s help, they spent several minutes running diagnostic programs and examining the effect
the new circuitry was having on his brain.

  With Geena looking on with great interest while stoically containing her anxiety, the educator was powered on, causing Ron to slump back unconscious. We all trust Lexi with our lives, Urania thought. Still, she didn’t always get it right the first time. She almost killed Ron two years ago with her immortality serum, well, the male contraceptive that went with it. It was apparent that Geena didn’t really like her son being a guinea pig for the new educator, but then again, someone had to try it. Geena had jumped right in to be the guinea pig for the immortality serum. Since he had more of a technological bent than she did, Ron was the logical choice for this. And as brilliant as she is, at this point, Lexi really does need help with the work she is doing.

  In the holographic monitor, Ron’s brain lit up with areas of increased activity. Still, it was nothing like the fireball they had so recently witnessed in Lexi’s head. Geena relaxed as she noticed Lexi was smiling. Urania said after a short while, “Everything looks as it should. He’s taking the rubric at a greatly accelerated rate compared to his norm.”