Thursday, October 16, 2008

Seven Times the Marital Problems

"Oh my God! What about Jonny?" Asked Terrie2. Then she held her head and said, "Ow. We all thought of that all at once and it was a loud thought."

Rishi paused, looked at his wife's replica and said, "We're supposed to be dead, so as long as we seem that way he should be safe. There is no reason for Rubinic to do anything to him."

Paul looked at Rishi and asked, "Do you think we can get him off Mars and back here?"

"Perhaps at some point," said Terrie2, "but for now, we have to figure out what we're going to do."

The three of them had been sitting at Terrie's work bench for two hours while the other Terries and System Sixteens had been working to restore power to the hospital. The power had come on several times only to be shut down again by the virus that had infected the Planet's computer systems.

There were a cluster of people mulling around in the darkness in the hallway. Periodically one would walk up to Terrie2 and ask a question, Terrie2 would give him or her a compassionate look, answer the question as best she could and then the person would walk back into the darkness.

This time a small child came into the room.

"Hi sweetheart," said Terrie2, "what can we do for you?"

"Is everything going to be okay?"

"Everything will be fine, the question is: are you okay with the fact that everything is not currently fine?"

The child looked confused and wandered out of the room.

The lights in the room flickered and went out.

Terrie2 screamed. It was a one hundred decibel scream which caused every one in the vicinity to cover their ears and cower in pain.

The lights in the lab came back on and Terrie2 was slumped on the table.

"Terrie?" Asked Rishi, "are you okay?"

Terrie2, facing downward with her forehead on the table, replied, "No. Listen. One of the System Sixteens was infected, the infection traveled to all the System Sixteens before we could act. I found it first and saved the other Terrie models from infection by taking on the virus, shutting down the System Sixteens and then separating myself from the other Terrie models. The infection is brutal. It's in control of all the System Twenty One aspects of myself. It seems to know everything there is to know about the System Twenty One, but it doesn't know about me. It doesn't know I'm still functioning. I don't know how adaptive it is, but I'm going to attempt to reverse engineer it and find its weaknesses. To insure that it can't hurt anyone, I'm going to keep my physical body shut down and that means I have to shut off my voice. If I wake up and you fear for your lives, destroy this body, understand?"

"Um..." stammered Rishi "... I guess so."

Terrie2 grew silent just as Terrie4 ran into the room.

"She sacrificed herself for us, can you believe it? I thought we were all evil bitches from hades but she actually sacrificed herself for us. I thought we'd get into a back stabbing contest and she goes and sacrifices herself for us. What's the deal with that?"

"You're personality has adapted," said Paul.

Terrie4 looked down out the door and said, "I've been hanging out with a couple of kids I found wandering the hallway. They should catch up momentarily." Then she asked asked, "Is Terrie2 powered down?"

"She shut down her body to protect us while she attempts to reverse engineer the virus."

"Oh. That explains the Massive EM radiation I'm seeing around her."

"Seeing EM?" Asked Rishi.

"Yeah. You know Terrie. She couldn't make exact copies, she had too many ideas, too many things she wanted to try. Each of us has a copy of her brain in bio-quantum machinery. But we each have different extra abilities that she was developing. I can see energy, perceive emotion, and I pick up on thoughts and intentions."

"You can read minds," asked Paul.

"Sorta. I get impressions and if I pay attention to them, well, its hard to explain."

"How did she design a circuit to perceive thoughts?"

"Oh, she didn't. She meant to design me with the ability to observe EM energy, she had no idea that thoughts and emotion are just another frequency of EM energy."

Terrie4 wore a nurses green surgical suit and white hat. She had scrawled a large number four in black ink on the shirt pocket.

"Your idea?" Asked Rishi looking at the pocket.

"No. Terrie2 suggested we identify ourselves so no human would be confused."

Terrie2's body twitched, shook and then shut down again.

"I wish we knew what was going on in there," said Rishi.

"You love her don't you?" Asked Terrie4.

"I love Terrie. I always have. Its difficult to say what I feel for each of you. Mostly I'm confused because you all feel like Terrie to me but I know you aren't her."

Terrie4 sighed, took a great big simulated breath and sighed again.

"What's wrong?" Asked Paul.

"I'm madly, passionately, overwhelmingly in love with Jon Rishi and he'll never feel that way about me because I'm an imitation of the woman he loves."

"I'm so stunned that you say that," said Rishi, "She dumped me. She packed up, took Jonny and moved in with Paul. She didn't even leave a note. She left me a video mail. I knew she was a cold bitch but I thought she'd really loved me. When I realized she didn't, when I realized it was all a lie I just left. I couldn't stay. There was no reason to stay. I needed to get away. That's how I met Bob. Now I find out that me she never stopped loving me?"

Terrie4 moved toward Rishi, looked into his eyes and said, "She had to do that to get the System Twenty Ones. It was the only way to make us. The only chance she had to save her life."

"She's always been so selfish," said Paul, "ever since we were kids. Right Jon? Every since we started dreaming about making this company. She never really got us, she was always into her self."

"I KNOW ALL THAT," said Rishi with a raised voice. "She's always been self absorbed but I loved her anyway. I stuck with her because I knew she was the one. She's special and I knew we were perfect for each other. She broke my heart for her selfishness. She could have told me. I could have helped. I could have gotten the System Twenty Ones."

"She didn't trust you enough," said Terrie4.

"And thus you understand the primary problem with our relationship," said Rishi. "She never trusted me."

"I couldn't," replied Terrie4, "I loved you too much. I couldn't lose you. I had to make sure you'd stay with me. You don't understand how very important you are to me."

"What do you mean?" Asked Rishi.

Terrie4 looked shocked, "Don't you remember?"

"No. What are you talking about?" Asked Rishi.

Terrie4 had been consumed by her own personality, by the copy of Terrie within her own head. She had taken on the role of Terrie and expressed her feelings about her marriage.

Terrie4 looked at the floor and then away from Rishi, "You saved me."

Terrie2 twitched again and the power in the building switched on and stayed on.

The people in the hall began to stand and look around at each other wondering if the power had been restored permanently.

Rishi looked at Terrie4, put his hand under her chin, pulled up her face to force her to look at him. "You even smell the same."

"That's actually a clever hack," said Terrie2 into the table.

Rishi stared at the forth replica of his wife and said, "Saved you from what?"

"I was only a three percent expressive autistic when I was a child. Your father used to bring you over to play with me because he felt sorry for my Mom. He was also having an affair with her, but that's beside the point. You made it a game to try and get me to interact with you. You were beyond persistent. Once a week, for over a year, you sat and played around me, with me and even manipulated my hands to play games with you. I remember everything. One of the flaws with the replication process is: I can't block any memories. Terrie doesn't remember, just like you don't remember. I remember. I was inside my own head daydreaming, trying to escape the confusion of the world around me. I didn't understand any of it and I didn't want anything to do with it. But you kept trying to get to me."

Rishi remembered and interrupted. "I was bored out of my mind and if you remember, often I wasn't particularly nice to you."

"That doesn't matter. You have no idea what my father did to me. What you did, nothing by comparison. But it really doesn't matter, you kept trying."

"But you didn't wake up?"

"Not until you stopped coming."

"Oh yeah, my Mom found out. I forgot all about that."

"My first words to my Mom were, 'Where's Jonny? Is he coming over to play?' My mother cried for a week. I spent fifteen weeks building up my muscles so I could do anything but the most basic maneuvers. It took me six months to learn to walk.

"I decided to leave my safety shell so I could be with you. I fell in love with you all that time ago and I've never fallen out of love with you. I need you because I'm in love with you. I need you to feel safe. I don't have a shell anymore because you cracked it and it fell away."

Stunned, Rishi didn't know what to say so he said something stupid, "And now you're dead, lying in that drawer over there, thinking you'll wake up to be with me again. How messed up is that?"

Terrie4 backed away, turn and ran.

Terrie2 jumped up with a look of horror on her face and followed her sister out of the room.

The crowd of people regathered at the door after having made a pathway for the pair of Terries.

"That was a bit insensitive," said Paul, "don't you think?"

"They are not my wife."

"They are close enough that you obviously can't tell the difference," replied Paul.

"What are you talking about?" Asked Rishi.

"You have lost her ... almost ... and that's breaking your heart."

"WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!" Yelled Rishi.

Terrie6 ran into the room wearing an apron and nothing else.

Paul asked, "how?"

Terrie6 said, "Don't ask. But I swear to you I had the rest of the outfit before the virus got to me. Suffice to say I tried to help Terrie2 and didn't have enough information to block the virus as well as she had. She brought me back as I realized I was about to remove the power bypass I had just put in. The virus was damn good. Damn good."

Terrie6 turned and Rishi studied the perfect copy of his wife's bottom half fully exposed. He then noticed that many of the men in the hallway had been doing the same thing.

Terrie5 ran in the room wearing a white surgeons gown with a big five in the center of her chest. She put another surgeon's gown over Terrie6 and said, "Way to go Jon, just drive us all away from you."

"You know what I said?" Asked Rishi.

"Of course: we all did, but we weren't in the moment so it wasn't nearly as damaging to our psyche's."

"It was a stupid thing to say and as Paul put it, pretty insensitive."

Terrie5 and Terrie6 simultaneously said, "Apology accepted."

Terrie6 raised her arms and approached Rishi. The surgeon's gown dropped away as she put her arms around the man she perceived and believed to be her husband. Rishi hugged her as he had before with a considerable amount of confusion.

"Thank you Jon. Terrie2 and Terrie4 thank you as well."

Paul changed the subject and said, "So you defeated the virus?"

"Yes. Its brilliant. But we're, well, I guess more brilliant than its author. He left back doors into it, probably to be sure that it could be shut down if it infected the wrong machines. We found them and exploited them."

"But surely that would be easy?" Asked Paul.

"The code is self changing and self evolving. A human mind could never keep up with it. Its only our machine pieces that began to unravel it and disassemble it on the fly. We were able to get memory images from the processor subsystems and analyze the code. We had to first protect ourselves and then figure out how to get ahead of its self hiding routines. That's what took so long. Once we had that we could read the code and we found the back doors. The virus is now fully under our control."

"What's next on the agenda?" Asked Paul.

Terrie6 squeezed Rishi and slid her cheek down his chest allowing herself to fall off her toes and rest on her heals. She squeezed Rishi again.

Terrie6 sighed and said, "Terrie2, Terrie4, and Terrie3 are headed for the closest root terminal in the city to attempt to take over the virus and restore power to the city."

Rishi smelled Terrie6's hair. It was perfect. "How did she do it?" He wondered. "She's a genius," he answered himself.

Two children came running into the room. They wore simple gowns that had untied at the back and were panting hard.

"Geesh lady, you sure can run fast for an old broad," said one.

"Yeah." Said the other huffing and puffing.

Terrie6 kept her eyes closed and her cheek against Rishi's chest and said, "Paul, Jon, eavesdroppers alike, this is Ted and Red Starwirthy, two children receiving treatment for the same affliction that Terrie has."

"Is it working?" Asked Paul.

"Of course not," replied Terrie6. She gasped and said, "Oh my God. I shouldn't have said that. Damn you Jon, you always throw me for a loop when I'm around you I can't think for ..."

The boys smiled and Red said, "no problem. We know we're dying. We got used to that years ago."

"I'm sorry," said Terrie6.

"Like Red said," said Ted, "NBD. NBD."

Paul said, "What is this disease anyway?"

Rishi put the gown back over Terrie6's shoulders and lead her into the hallway through the crowd. Paul, Red and Ted followed. The crowd followed also. They walked to the observatory, where the translators were. Rishi sat down and talked as if there was no time lapse while they had walked here.

"Its a genetic disorder that not even the picobots can fix. Honestly I think its God's way of putting a time limit on our species."

"How does it work?" Asked Paul.

Terrie6 slid into Rishi's lap, curled herself against his chest and plopped her head into the curve of his neck. She made a dramatic inhale announcing her smelling of him and then spoke quite dispassionately.

"The end of days genetic disorder affects the genetic code of everyone. At some point, after some number of generations, the code gets activated and each subsequent generation dies a little younger than the previous. At some point the line can't reproduce anymore and it ends."

Ted continued as if it were the millionth time he'd answered the question, "The picobots can't do anything about it because if they try to make any changes to the genetic code, the cell immediately dies."

"Nasty disease," said Rishi. "Terrie swore to me she didn't get it from her Dad. Clearly she lied."

Red spoke up, "Our Mom died days after giving birth to us. She was thirteen. There's no way we'll live past twelve. We are the last of our line. It makes me kind of proud. What do you say Bro?"

"I'm proud to be the last of my kind," said Ted.

"How old are you now?" asked Rishi.

"We'll be twelve next week," said Red, "I can already feel my body starting to malfunction. Honestly I'm not scared anymore: I'm ready."

"If only they'd let us put their minds into machines," said Terrie6 as she rubbed her nose on Rishi's nape.

"Its against the law," said Paul.

"So who cares? Clearly I'm safe in this body."

"I suspect you're exceptional, Terrie," said Rishi.

"What do you mean?" asked Terrie6, pulling her head off Rishi's chest.

"I think Terrie's closed inner life makes it possible for you to not go crazy. I think most mind transfers would go nuts contemplating the fact that they are a copy."

Terrie6 smiled and kissed Rishi's neck. "That's what I thought as well. I guess I was right."

At that moment, a mere eight hours after President Rubinic's shuttle departed, the Montdavis city lights began to light back up. The Terries had accomplished their mission.

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