by Ralph Rotten
Finally I had to just rip it all off and go to level V morphic material because it would allow her to incorporate random matter into her matrix as she needed to maintain sufficient mass for the components I was stitching into her. With polymorphic parts it's a little hard to explain because they have no form. It's really more of a molecular lattice that is woven into the morphic flesh. You can change the pattern, or structure the layout of the sub-atomic particles. But some layers can't be too close to each other; for instance power and logic have to be specially layered to occupy the same area. Think of it this way; you are building an atomically distributed system so that she can change shape at will. If you used solid state components then she would only be able to move within the confines of those physical components. But if you distribute her devices a few molecules here and a few there, she can rearrange herself all she wants as long as the lattices remain intact. Am I making sense to you?
So by the time I had her the way I wanted her, she stood five foot nine, red hair, and had this whole ethnically-ambiguous look going on. She was smarter than any three PHDs combined, and could emulate over a million different species. Yet still, she had the social intellect of a cow. I went over those systems a thousand times, and when I say a thousand, I really mean 1,024 times. I just couldn't understand why underneath it all she was still just boring old Didra.
I realized that I had been working on this pet project for over two years when I finally stopped to take a break. I'd been circular on so many problems that I was losing track of where I was in the project. Imagine that, even with quantum processing abilities I was getting frazzled. It was like playing too many games of MahJongg in a row. Pretty soon all you see are frickin' schematics and logic plans. I had to get away from it for a while.
So we jump in my Hot Rod and blast our way over to Morbesta's place. He'd promised me a peek at something new he had on the show room floor. It was good to get out into open space. Sort of a Sunday drive with Didra. She stared out the window like a little kid the entire way to Morby's place, so I took the scenic route. We scare some traffic cops, violate a patch of restricted airspace, and outrun three cruisers, but otherwise the trip was uneventful.
Morbesta looked like shit. I don't need my fancy DuNai eyes to see that the guy is being eaten alive by cancer. I suddenly feel bad because I'd neglected him for so long. Some kinda friend I was, here he is using his last breath to build me a new fluidic hot rod, and I've been so busy I haven't stopped by to see him in a three years. It may seem like a drop in the bucket to me, but to a corporeal being it's a helluva chunk of time to not see someone who claims to be a friend. Fuck, he really looked bad. How bad? Bad enough to make me say stupid shit like this little gem:
"Sir, you know what I do for a living. Either Master DorLek or I would be proud to have you work for us for as long as you choose to walk this plane of existence." I said it with a tear in my eye. I was seeing Roxy all over again. I had these great powers, yet I still had to watch people die.
"No!" He waved an angry finger as his lip curled. "Do not even hint of this sacrilege."
"I'm not talking about Ouija boards and satanic chanting, just harvesting you from the dead like you were brand new. Nothing but Mister Science here." I made a gesture like a magician showing I had nothing up my sleeves.
"Heresy!" He objected in a way that surprised me. The old guy was never big on church that I knew of, but then again I had no idea what religion Morby even subscribed to. It wasn't the kinda thing we talked about when I was at his place. But when he slammed the door in my face I was a little stunned. Standing there with Didra I did not fully understand the rookie mistake I had made.
"Two actually." The Boss corrected me from across the path. "Your first mistake was not considering his frame of mind. Morbesta is unusually faithful of late because imminent death often does that to people. Had you consulted the Derre Gospel you would have known that the mere whisper of reincarnation is contrary to the teachings of Zaire and therefore heresy. To even consider the possibility in your own mind is regarded as a menial sin. Speaking of it is unheard of." DorLek detached himself from the wall he had been leaning against and walked over to me.
"And the second mistake?" I asked.
"Asking him." The Boss was matter-of-fact. "Timelords have domain over the dead. They are our chief resource. You do not negotiate on the living side of the equation. We take them after their life is spent and they have faced their own demise, take them when the bargaining power is in our hands, and then we negotiate from a point of strength. No, strike that. We don't negotiate. Temporal Editors present a deal and the harvested soul takes it. No one ever wants to go back where they came from. Don Corleone referred to this as the offer you can't refuse."
"But if I harvest him and then he refuses the deal, then I'm forced to put his obstinate ass down for good. I just don't know if I could do that to Morby." I wined a little, knowing it would have no effect on the Boss. Across from me he only shook his head sadly.
"Again, had you studied the theological literature of his people you would know that they regard the sanctity of life as absolute. To have a life, regardless of how you obtained it, would be a gift from the Gods and therefore sacred."
It popped in my head as I blurted out the answer aloud.
"So if I brought him back, he couldn't reject the deal because that'd be suicide and a mortal sin in his Val Halla. He'd have no choice but to set up shop and live his life out again." I smiled as I saw it all fit together neatly.
"Assuming he is willing to work for a blasphemer like you. You would be the one who sullied his spirit by your unholy act, how could he work for anyone like that? Besides, he's pretty obstinate. Even if he did take the deal, he would likely be more trouble than Dorat Tuva." The old guy cautioned me.
"Y'know, you were right, I shoulda read the holy books first. I think I have a way to make it all work out right. According to the Book, the way I should go is hostages." I Gave the Boss a wink.
"Very good. He will want to have his family about him. Adding that to the dowry could make him a loyal asset for a millennia or more. You do not have a master craftsman in your cabinet yet. He will be a good addition." DorLek took the rare act of throwing an arm over my shoulder. I could tell he was new to the tradition.
"I'd been thinking about putting together my crew. I have a few picked out as prospects, but I was figuring that I would wait to shop until I got home." I gave a snarky grin.
"Good help is where you find it. Never pass up an opportunity to pick up specialists wherever you can."
And with that, the DorLek vanished. Here one second, gone the next. He was the most temporally efficient being I ever met. The Boss never wasted a second.
So there I am; my mechanic won't talk to me. My boyfriend dumped me, my girlfriends are gone, and my robot still doesn't work right. Shit fuck hell penis dammit crap!
I muddled on from there, adding little bits of personality to Didra between Medical school and advanced Factorization. I still had years of training, then my residency phase for thirty or forty years. I woulda felt bad about abandoning her half-done but I was fracking busy. Sure I have infinite time and I could go back to school anytime I wanted to, but I'm also a little OCD so I have a hard time leaving a thing undone. In fact, it bothers me more to dodge a project than to just go and do the damned thing. Yes, I'm one of those people, the ones who have to fiddle with a thing until its perfect. Now with my enhanced brain, it is virtually impossible to conveniently forget about some work. I've tried, but the Onkx is too good. Sometimes I wonder who the damned thing really works for. Me or the Boss?
Anyhow, I'd been in & out of the house. The Boss had five new students living there now, so I avoided the noobs. They always had so many questions, and DorLek preferred to reveal these things in his own way, so I stayed out of sight.
I was walking past the living room when I passed the FNGs. They were Feljor so the atmosphere was hydrochloric gas throughout the house. I was just mod
ifying my skin to the environment when I noticed there were now six students chatting in the living room. I was almost ready to ignore the addition when my eyes revealed to me that the new Feljor female was actually Didra, morphed to match.
I pretended to keep going, Didra's detection systems were pretty good so I had to be sure and come back fully phased if I wanted to spy on her. I hung around for a few hours and listened to their talking. Mostly I was curious what Didra was contributing to the conversation. It took a while but I finally managed to nail down the topic that fascinated her the most; stories about each of their home worlds. What struck me the most about the whole scene was that Didra had this deep-rooted desire to learn. Sure, everything else she rendered was what I had plugged into her, but the desire to learn more was genuinely her own. Then it hit me. Didra had fantastic knowledge of all things in the universe. What she didn't have was any firsthand experience in any of these places that filled her brain. In fact, she'd only ever left the house that one time when I took her to Morbesta's. That's when I realized that she was dying to get the hell outta the house.
So I started to travel with my girl in tow. She actually made a pretty good assistant. Smart enough for complex duties, yet strong enough to beast her way through the assholes. She was the whole package. I didn't even have to feed her since she had solar cells in her skin. The more places I dragged her to, the happier she seemed to get.
I could see her coming alive with each new experience. Along the way she was picking up food and culture along with the breathtaking sights that we Temporal Editors are privy to. It wasn't long before I was making side trips to show her some of the cool places I'd discovered in my travels. She loved these detours and would bug me for more.
Didra had such a hunger for these new places and experiences that it didn't take long for the side trips to start interfering with the main trip. I had tons of work to do before I started my residency, and she was driving me nuts about taking a trip or a vacation, or mebbe go see the next galaxy over...what's it like? Can we play in the gas giant? I would have put an end to it but the mother in me just couldn't get enough of that look she got on her face when I showed her something truly amazing. She had this gleam in her eye that made me so proud. I just didn't have the heart to put the kibosh on her exploration. So instead I gave her my hot rod and ordered her to go and see it all. Or at least what could be reached in a Slipspeed class vessel. I felt a little like a stupid bumper sticker as I watched her fly away;
If you love something set it free.
If it doesn't come back then it was never yours in the first place.
But really, that's what I was doing, wasn't I? Setting my little robot free to go find herself in a fast ship?
I didn't see her again for a few years. I was busy with medical school, Industrial Development training, World Finance, and doing a stint as a lawman. No, I did not misspeak; for my Species finals I had to...not be a law woman, let's just leave it at that. I don't wanna talk about it. Okay?
Although I picked up snippets about her in the Guf, I had enough on my plate to make me forget about my Didra until she showed up one day at the house.
She looked different as she leaned up against the battered transport that she had morphed the hotrod into. My eyes were telling me all sorts of interesting things about the mods she had done to my old ship. To say the changes were interesting would be like saying the X15 was a neat airplane. Some of the work she had done to the vehicle was downright fascinating. For instance, she had duplicated the systems in such a way that the ship could split into multiple craft, each managed by Didra's incredibly powerful mind. She could be her own attack squadron. Seemed pretty cool to me anyhow.
What really caught my eye was the cloaking assembly. It was massive, like you would use if you wanted to pretend to be a moon or planetoid.
"Didra girl, what'd you do to the family station wagon?" I kidded her as I ran a hand over the hot rod.
"I'm Meesha now." She looked at me hopefully, unsure how I'd react.
"Just a first name?" I inquired, letting slip a wry smile. I was indeed proud to hear of this development. Choosing her own name was a key indicator in the Felzier scale of sentience.
"So far." She shrugged with a smile.
"Well, did you see it all?" I asked, gesturing to the sky above.
"I saw enough to know what I want to do with my life." Meesha leaned against the ship casually.
"Oh?" I had a feeling this would be interesting. She had been out there by herself for over five years. In robot-years that was like a century. I had a feeling she might have come to a few revelations while she was finding herself.
"I want to be your Galactic Engineer." She looked me right in the eye and said it without flinching.
I took a few pica-seconds to consider the prospect. She had the skills, she had the abilities, and I was responsible for hiring my own crew. No problem there. But members of a Timelord's immediate crew were each equipped with an Onkx to get around. Only the Master's was enabled for temporal relocation, but otherwise their devices were no different than mine. But that's where the rub came in; the Onkx is bio-morphic. Just two drops of clear fluid dropped on your palms and your entire atomic makeup was completely altered. It burned like fire in my veins though. Installing the Onkx was equivalent to compressing childbirth into sixty seconds.
But even though Didra was built from class V morphic material, she was still only a hundred kilos of shape-shifting goo. The biomorphic Onkx would never work on her synthetic morphic systems. The Onkx only worked on biological beings. Without the ability to jump from point to point, she would be stuck riding the bus to work every day, in a manner of speaking. Meesha would have to be ferried about in a linear vessel or by someone with an Onkx. Mebbe she could use the P2P portals that the worker bees would use? I wanted to say yes, but I wasn't sure how I would solve her mobility issues.
"I have a resume." She said before holding out her left arm. As I watched, I could see the familiar shape of the Onkx interface growing outwards from her forearm. I had to give the sight a laugh; I had only ever seen the keyboard a few times, back when I was a total green-horn. That's the only time you use the thing. The Onkx is in your head, just like the Guf. Why the hell would you use a tactile interface when you could just think it?
Still, I was tantalized by the idea that Didra could really have created a non-organic Onkx. I had been taught that her morphic matter would reject installation of any such device. It was a core prohibition added by the original DuNai makers. Any attempt to unlock this feature would cause a subatomic failure of the molecules, turning the object into a puddle of syrup.
"That's not just for looks?" I said skeptically pointing to the device on her wrist. A split second later the Guf told me she was coming.
Like a flash, she was there, just inches away. I had to give that a laugh. Her technique was interesting. She started her lateral insertion before she was fully phased so there was a streaking effect to the whole movement. But true to her word, she seemed to have a functioning Onkx.
"So you can jump across a room, how about some follow the leader?" I gave her a smile before pushing her back with one finger. As I did, my touch transmitted to her an image of Gravada Flats on Thelkor. Immediately I was gone.
I hadn't been there more than a second when she appeared in a dim flash of light. Her reentry was rough, but she had just chased me halfway across the galaxy.
"Your turn." She poked me back, delivering an image of Rakagani Major. I knew exactly where she was headed.
As I jumped, I could see her tearing through crumpled space. She had good form, her energy outputs were perfect, and she was on an optimum course through the underneath of the universe. I doubted I could outpace her, so I did what any Timelord would do. Shifting into temporal insertion, I cheated by dialing back the chronometer a few minutes. Technically she still beat me there, I just arrived earlier on the timeline.
As soon as I materialized, the stench of the old volca
no reminded me where I was. Standing a third taller than Olympus Mons, Cerous Glans is a monster of a volcano. From where I stood I could see the wrecked landscape of Rakagani Major on my left, and the boiling caldera to my right. Remembering that I was only just a few minutes ahead of Meesha, I worked quickly. Pressing my palm against the dirt, I commanded the atomic material to convert to morphic matter. It only took a few of my cells to begin the conversion of the ambient materials. That was the biggest difference between class IV and V; the ability to incorporate matter into your matrix.
As I stepped back I could see the effect spread out as the sulfur and frozen lava turned a drab shade of gray before it began to form into objects. One by one they popped up until I had a Caribbean getaway assembled. Complete with a wet bar, deck chairs, and a bartender named Fabio, it was everything a busy working woman needs. I plunked down into the nearest folding chair and relaxed as the blender mixed me a pitcher of Margaritas. Changing my clothes, I cycled through a series of bathing suits until I found this cute little one-piece with matching sunglasses. I looked fabulous.
"Cheater cheater pumpkin eater." Meesha gave a smile as she materialized in the chair next to me.
"What took you so long?" I smiled back as I enjoyed the warmth of the caldera. The ambient temperature was hot enough to melt lead, but we were both heavily altered to survive in that environment. So for us it was really just a day at the beach. Hell, I might go for a lava swim later.
"How'd you do it?" I asked her as Fabio was pouring us each a tall glass of citrus flavored glycol. Real Margaritas would vaporize on Cerous Glans. "How'd you get your frame to accept the P2P technology?"
"I didn't." She shrugged before taking a sip of her drink. "Didn't you notice my new body?" She held out her arms to let me look her over. I had to admit, things did seem to be in different places than where I had originally installed them. The lattices were woven differently, like chainmail almost. The patterns were so delicate and fine that I had to admire the embroidery.