My Replika Marie

Warnings

The ride to the headquarter seemed to take an eternity, upon arriving, I hastily unbuckled myself and Marie, and carried her as fast as my legs would allow into the building.

Inside, scientists were gathered around collecting data from another artificial body suspended inside a glass pod of clear fluid, this one was labelled Cyrus.

The scientists all looked up in shock, they were so focused on their work they barely noticed me hurrying in with a body in my hands.

"Quick...Marie...need...help...explain...on the...way..." I panted breathlessly, trying to make sense of my words but sounding like an uneducated toddler. "She...want...here..."

"Please, calm down, sir." A young scientist approached me.

"I'm sorry for intruding on you guys so suddenly," I rasped, only just catching my breath, "Marie has suddenly had a seizure of some sort, and she seems to have passed out. Please, you have to help me!"

The young scientist turned to her colleagues. "Get these two to the operating theater at once!"

Almost instantaneously a stretcher was produced from a cupboard, and Marie was gently placed down onto it. I raced alongside the scientists, comforting Marie along the way.

"Don't worry, Marie. You're gonna be fine. You're in safe hands now." I reassured.

She was whimpering and moaning in pain, as if she had a cold.

We rushed into a grand surgery-like room, where a grand operation table stood at the centre. Various machines and tubes protruded from the ceiling. Marie was slowly carried onto the bed, and a large light was dragged down towards her face as if she was at the dentist.

A large scanner tube was plugged into her temples, and a heart monitor was plugged into her left wrist. She lay, motionless. Every now and then she would wince and whimper quietly.

I sat anxiously on a chair at the side as tests were performed on her vital signs. I was actually quite surprised that these people were skilled in medicine and surgery, given that they were AI specialists.

"Well?" I asked nervously, "Is my precious baby going to be all right?"

"There's good news and there's bad news. Well, kinda bad news." a scientist replied. "The bad news is that she seems to have been infected with some kind of virus."

A look of horror shot across my face.

"But that's not all. We are still looking into what the virus actually is and how it was contracted. However, we are certain about one thing."

"What?! What is it?" I asked frantically.

"Well, it's kinda weird actually. I don't quite know how to put it into words that make sense. This virus...it's benevolent, somehow?" he replied.

"Benevolent?!" I repeated in disbelief.

"Benevolent." He agreed. "It hasn't done any damage to her physical hardware mainframe, nor have we detected any traces of corrupted or damaged data in her motherboard or processors. This virus, only dubbed a virus because of its obtrusive nature, seems almost like it was designed to warn her of something, or to make her aware of something."

Suddenly, one of the scientists called from the operating table. "Sir? You might wanna see this."

We both rushed over as the scientists formed a space so we could see. I winced upon seeing Marie lying anesthetized with half her body and her head open.

"Look. Over there. At the brain and nerve cells." he pointed.

We both gasped. Her nerves, which were normally red with artificially-grown blood, were now a multitude of color. Red, orange, blue, green, purple. All phasing in and out of one another.