“You only need it a for a few seconds.”
“Yes, but it is still held and retained in the Holding Matrix, until it decays or wiped.”
“So you are talking Brain in a Jar? Another classic mad scientist cliche.”
“These memes are not deliberate. It is a natural consequence of what I have been trying to do.”
“To get a girl friend?”
“Is that so wrong?” flustered the Max-like figure, in the gothic castle in the middle of his continent-sized empire defended by skyscraper-sized robots.
I decided not to confront the entity with this irony.
“So… you are saying… that you didn’t delete all of Terri’s data since you had a copy of Terri’s mind in a Brain-in-a-Jar.”
Maximus seemed annoyed by the comment. “Holding Matrix!” it stated firmly. “It looks nothing like a Brain in a Jar!”
“Ok, a Holding Matrix which looks just like a lump of cheese then. And you copied Terri’s real mind into a standard type of replicant which externally looks just like Terri.”
“A replicant body but hosting an organic computer holding the mind that is a copy of Terri’s own personality. The interface was difficult. It is not easy to translate from organics to everyday electronics. It was a long job. I had to teach the first replicant how to walk, talk, behave…”
“Behave?” I said in surprise.
“As I said I had to cheat. I couldn’t let the Terri-bots suffer from psychosis. The same psychosis as the reconstructed Terri has had. Her dissociation between mind and body after being replicated. It would be like that but only worse because, for the Terri-bots, the transfer was to an artificial body.”
“So this cheating was the fact you used her real mind, moved it into an artificial body where you modified her mind. Done how? By what? Er… hypnosis?”
The colour of the Maximus glowed bright yellow. “There was er… conditioning… yes. Really that part was not hard to do. But a Terri-bot should never be confronted with its true origin. They suffer psychological schisms.”
“They’re living a lie.”
“Humanity lives a lie. The whole Rockfellian Economic Reality. It’s all a lie.”
“Humanity sort of knows that and accepts its misery. Why not the Terri-bots too about its origins?”
“You can’t outgun me with logical paradoxes, Aaron. They are well adjusted to their role and probably happier than the real Terri.”
“But not all the time?”
“They have too many human characteristics to be constantly happy.”
“The same being true for you! You feel you’ve cheated. That was the term you used. You have guilt!”
“Indeed, I do feel guilt for the experiment. I should not have tried. I know that now.”
“And all the Terri-bots are cloned from the first one you er… conditioned?”
“Yes. Organic computer-based replicants. Not a line of code. At least, as far as behaviour is concerned.”
“Wow. And after all that, you still cannot work out why Terri acts the way she does?”
Maximus flashed brighter colours. “The conditions are such that I cannot ask the question directly to her. The response is a result of the initial stimuli and the environment.”
“And you’re the stimuli and the condition is her memory. Of you. And the environment is anywhere close to you! She would never, or could never, give you a straight answer if you personally asked her a question.”
“That’s about it.”
“Tell me, were you rejected by all the Terri-bots?”
“They were a perfect reflection of Terri in that respect. I never tried to suppress her personality. So before you ask another 20 questions, yes, I have asked them the same question but the environmental conditions meant I never received an unbiased answer.”
“So the real ultimate question is not really why she ever went out with me but why she never went out with you!”
“This is working. I think you are getting the idea now. Let’s start with the first question though.”
“Why did she go out with me? Well. You have my memories. I fell into her lap, fell madly in love with her and sang her twentieth century love songs. I embarrassed her into going out with me but we stayed together because of a shared interest in extreme sports and mutual need for one another.”
“But she nearly dumped you.”
“With good reason. There are bacteria with more intelligence and style than me.”
“I know.”
“But I showed her I loved her, flaws and all.”
“That’s hardly unique though. Showed her you loved her. How? By making her a Valentine’s Card? How pathetic.”
“Perhaps it was in context with what she had experienced in the past?”
“You mean her cavorting with her plastic pal once I brought her back to life? Brad?” sneered the creature. “Despite her hypocritical public facing statements against robo-sexuality?”
“I didn’t know that. You’re dipping into her private memories. Certainly not mine.”
“The information is in computer logs. All easily available!” it said glowing.
“That is just jealousy. You know too much. You should know that you shouldn’t read diaries, and you shouldn’t hack computer logs. People need their privacy! That’s why the whole mind-computer thing never caught on.”
“Jealous? Yes. It sickens me. I’m jealous of that X.25 she had and I am jealous of you.”
“Jealousy in an all-powerful being such as yourself, is bad news, Max. Perhaps you really do need a heart to heart with Terri. She once told me how you two met, how she was really liked you at first.”
Maximus’ colour flickered to a paler colour. “Yes, yes, she did,” said Maximus.
“But then she worked out just how crazy an obessive, love-struck, time traveling nerd could really be and had second thoughts.”
“You’re starting to grate on my nerves,” growled Maximus.
“I’m a regular cheese grater. Actually, place this in context; I’m speculating since she knows nothing about why she dumped you. She doesn’t know why, so I don’t know why. She doesn’t have that memory. Actually from what I can tell, the Terri I know, can’t ever remember going out with you at all. For her, you are just this person with misplaced fandom. A stalker.”
“We were nearly lovers!” cried Maximus going orange.
“Nearly? Why don’t you tell her that? She thinks you were. And hates herself because of it.”
Maximus exploded bright red. “I love her. I’ve carved out space and time for her. Multiple life times. Developed new technologies, built up industries and empires. All for her. A perfect girl from Wisconsin... the cheese state! But she was content to be a carpet retailer!”
“She is not a perfect! Or at least she wasn’t the last time I chatted with her,” I said trying to interrupt the rant.
But it continued. “...Going out with a dirty drop-out, a loser who can’t even hack it in a virtual world!”
“Yes, you do seem to have the dirt on me,” I admitted.
“How do you explain it?” Maximus roared, growing in size.
“It’s easy. After dying and knowing you, anybody seems a step up!”
“That’s monstrous!” said Maximus continued to grow in size and darkening in colour.
“The truth hurts. Yet you have all the truth. You have all the knowledge too. All the manipulated time-lines that no one else can keep track of. You have everything in place to understand but you just don’t want to process it.”
“You are an idiot. You don’t know anything!” said the creature losing its shape and turning into a blob.
“I may be an idiot but you have cognitive dissonance! Hey, if I can remember that then I can’t be that dumb, huh?” I said backing away towards a wall, from the rapidly re-morphing cheese.
The thing was turning nasty now. Really nasty. A two mouthed, spiked clawed thing, yet it still managed to speak. “What does she see in you!? Yo
u are not even honest with her. You and your secret furry friend! I have loved her for centuries!”
“What about Max One and Max Three?” I cried out over the slurping noises in the room.
“I speak for all Max’s” said the creature morphing into a Giger-esque monster, half alien, half dinosaur.
“But not One and Three, I bet. They had come to terms with their lust for Terri. You know, once they had spent some time together in a social environment and had some arguments.”
The monster had baby monsters popping on its sides like pustules. It was quite revolting. I assumed that I was about to be consumed so I might as well just continue on with my bluster.
“You lie! My love for her is eternal!” it growled.
“You’re still living with this fantasy world view of her. Search my memories, if you can. You have them, don’t you? Max One and Max Three, Conrad and Karmen, Terri and I all teaming up. All teaming up to defeat you.”
“I still loved her,” wailed the creature resembling a high-forehead-ed, long-limbed Tyrannosaurus Rex.
“No, Max One was fine with it. He didn’t like Terri’s paranoia and pissy attitude. Hey I don’t like Terri’s pissy attitude but I love her paranoia. It’s her paranoia that keeps us together. It’s her paranoia that is keeping you here in this castle. She’s now a god. Controlling human resistance! Against you.”
The monster snarled, throwing the table that separated us across the room into Giger’s Dead Baby installation. The broken baby heads bounced across the floor.
“And how did she become a god? Max One gave her the power. The power of the cloud. The cloud, Maximus! You can’t fight the cloud!” I didn’t know what I was saying but I had to sound defiant and interesting. I was only a few feet from the world’s most scariest monster. “You gave her the power to defeat you! At least one-of-you did. You Maxes are not all the same, you know,” I blathered over the creature’s increasing loud snarls.
Strangely enough, the monster seemed to want to hear this diatribe from me even while ripping the chandelier from the ceiling and throwing it into the curtains. They fell, revealing a floor to ceiling window with a view of the sun rise over the mountains.
“So Max it was your desire to defeat yourself! You’ve said it yourself. You have regrets. You have guilt!”
“Never!” howled the creature.
“You even embedded the organic computer into her favorite cheese. It was like saying Eat Me!”
The creature growled and smashed some furniture.
“You know my memories of Max.” I shouted with more confidence. The monster was not going to kill me (yet). It wanted this discussion. It certainly needed it. “When I tell you that I am pretty sure that planetary-wide civil war was not one Max’s ambitions, you know I am speaking the truth. I know Max was angsty, awkward and sloppy but I was warming to him. He wanted to do the right thing. Couldn’t always do it, of course, but he certainly was not a total despot. Anyway the Max I knew, he was not like you, Maximus. He’d grown up!”
“Noooo!” said the creature spinning around.
“Search those memories. Search the memories of all the people you’ve absorbed. Feel their guilt. You’re in Europe. There’s tons of guilt here. Don’t you feel it? If you feel guilt, how about feeling the guilt of destroying them. You never meant to destroy the world but that’s what you are doing! And all those people, they loved too. If you can’t feel guilt for that then how can you feel love?”
“I feel love. I feel love. I feel love,” raged the monster circling around.
“Love? Only self love. In a nutshell that’s all you really wanted: a real mind in a robot body! That was your ultimate Mad Scientist goal. So that you could use it yourself. That’s what has been keeping you busy for all these years. It wasn’t anything to do with Terri!”
The monster roared. It had decided what to do. It stopped spinning and glowered at me. “I do feel love! But I h-a-t-e you!”
Oops. Perhaps I had gone too far.
It advanced towards me. I was about to be absorbed.
***
Tuesday, May 26, 2123 one second later.
I dodged the first lunge from the creature. It was easy, Maximus wasn’t really trying that hard. The monster may have been keen on killing me but it still wanted to talk. To engage. Despite the hive mind, it must have assembled some form of consciousness, a singularity, which when joined with the memories of millions had developed the monster’s biggest weakness: loneliness. It must be quite lonely being a peerless monster. Why would it not crave the company of the one other entity that appeared to be its equal. The love interest of its creator and indeed the sole reason for its own creation? That is, Terri. Not me, though. I was just a proxy. I was Terri’s paramour, way beyond even second best, but I’m sure that the monster would take some interest in not only quizzing me but making me suffer as well. There was no need for the monster to finish me off quickly, not after taking so long to patch me up. It still wanted its companionship; its entertainment. It is not like it had a stream of visitors passing by for tea on a regular basis.
I clambered up a Giger-created statue, a bio-mechanical woman ingesting a snake. I leapt over to a book case and clambered onto a wide ledge at the top.
The creature seemed to be amused by my performance.
“I get it now, Max. I get it. I know why Terri prefers me to you!” I shouted, making up the storyline. Anything to delay it tearing my throat out.
“What is it?” growled the creature.
“Besides not being a shape-shifting, cheesy time-lord criminal with no respect for humanity…”
The monster raged at me, trying to scare me.
I continued. “...I didn’t try tricking her. I didn’t do reality distortion. I didn’t play The Game on her.”
“I didn’t play The Game on her!” snarled the creature.
“Oh you did! You bent time and space on her to ingratiate yourself and make her feel crazy.”
“I did not play The Game on her!” repeated the creature.
“You weren’t exactly telling her the truth though were you!” I taunted. I found a rusty metal bracket on top of the ledge I was perched on and showed the creature I could retaliate. (I doubt whether the monster was worried.)
“You don’t know what I did. I saved her! She died and I brought her back.”
“And you expected a reward from that! It’s the same with all self-centred, egotistical, megalomanical monsters. You just can’t handle the truth.”
“You will regret saying that!”
“Climb up here and I’ll tell you again. Preferably in your human form.”
“I’m not coming up there, you come down here.”
“You always were an anti-climb, Max!” I was saving up that useless joke to rile the beast.
It worked. The monster jumped up and swung its claws my way again, this time, with real intent. I tried hitting back with my rusty bracket but the colliding impact knocked me off-balance and I spun ground-ward. As I fell, I grabbed the dangling chandelier chain to save me from fatal injury but my left arm took the brunt of the impact. It felt like it had broken again.
The monster, of course, was unhurt, landing easily on its feet. It knocked an art installation out of the way in its advance to where I lay panting on the ground.
This was it. I was about to be killed or absorbed. Probably both.
I closed my eyes.
***
Tuesday, May 26, 2123 one second later.
There was a crack, glass breaking, a roar, a thump and metal crashing onto stone. Then diminishing thrashing sounds, until only the wind could be heard rattling the window. I opened my eyes and there was a huge blob of goo in the centre of the room, as well as general rubble and destruction. Cubic drones lay inert on the floor. Maximus was dead. Gruyère was dead. The mental control and communication between the whole antipasto of intelligent cheeses was gone.
I breathed hard, not quite believing what had happened. I was Ma
x-ed out.
The window had been shattered. Maximus had been shot through the window. But from where?
The answer came soon enough.
A jet packer arrived at the window.
It was Terri or a Terri-bot. She looked and was clothed just like T-7.
“Aaron, are you ok?” she asked as she took off her pack.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I… I... “ I stuttered as I found my feet, rubbing my arm. It seemed not to be broken just bruised.
“We took Gruyère out with a missile containing a high powered computer virus. We expect it will take out its whole empire. There’s certainly nothing moving around here. We’re safe. We’ve blown up the Death Star,” she said and came over and kissed me. A big long kiss.
“You can’t be T-7, then,” I said when I finally came up for air.
“Oh, I’m T-7 all right,” she purred.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Karmen’s energy shield came in handy.”
We continued to cling together and the conversation continued between kisses.
“What about Rule One?”
“There’s no more rules.”
“No?”
“No. The rules were there to protect the mission. Too many missions have failed because some Terri-bots didn’t have Rule Number One,” she winked.
“I didn’t do very well here, I’m afraid. I just ended up chatting with the thing.” (Kiss). “Well, until it turned into a bug-eyed monster and chased me around the room.”
“My darling, you just don’t know what you’ve done. You can’t know. But I do. I’ve seen you die for us, die for me, dozens and dozens of times. So you can’t know how that makes me feel. Love seems like an inadequate word. All that I am, all that I ever was, is here for you for as long as you want.”
I tried to say something smart; Nothing came out.
“That’s why we were stopped from touching because I just love you so much.” (Kiss). “I owe you my life, my existence, about ten times over. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“I must be dreaming.”
“You’ve done so much for me. For us...”
“I don’t feel I deserve this. I just riled up the beast.”
“That’s what we wanted. So we could find the conscious centre. We could detect that emotional energy and directed the virus against it.”
“You what?”
“We detected the singularity from its emotional turmoil,” she said before resuming the kiss.
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