Encoded

Friend or Foe

He emerged into the HER portal and stepped through. The onboard replicators were moving him molecule by molecule at light Speed to where he wanted to be. Without stopping, he wandered to the nearest supervisor console and, while knowing it would frustrate Sally but driven by Hector's pestering about the need to occasionally press a real key or screen, he started to look up status. No sooner had he touched the first screen than a purple haze descended on him. He wanted to shout no! no time! But he was denied the chance.

Sarah was part of a modern NEST, the anxiety product between machine and human that couldn't share empathy. He was now a throwback to the past, a waiting room between the pinnacle of new world achievement and failed human mash-up. A legend in itself, the "RealTimeWaster" (RTW) had summoned DigBee before, and for some reason, these old AI throwbacks were hooked up with Hector. DigBee cast a look around the suspension cloud, a purple room if you wanted a definition, but the truth was this ancient, eccentric AI liked purple and orange. So he was stuck in a data frame of purple while the RTW figured out how to engage, and, DigBee remembered, the longer he persisted shortening the name to RTW instead of a full name, the longer he had to wait.

Surprisingly what seemed like a short time passed before purple slid to orange and begrudging grey shapes emerged into the room. Suddenly he was aware of direction and gravity, a body, depth, and perception. It was all very deliberate, and, having been here before, he waited again with a swallowed panic against the outside world that was willing him to rush.

"You still want to stick your replica mating rod in that NEST puppet." A grey potato-shaped object emerged at the end of the space they were in and formed into some kind of outline.

"You still get your kicks out of reading about sex but knowing your never gonna have it?" DigBee replied thinly. He watched as the blob formed up and deliberately made itself into an orange and purple replica of Mika, which then made RTW chuckle out of her perfect voice box.

"Hector really fucked it up this time, DigBee. You know there are more of my kind than you know, and some of them are very upset." As the fake Mika body spoke, DigBee felt his emotions want to vomit at the thought of an armada of armchair AI sat watching as millions of human souls died.

"Hector, at least fucking tried!" He spat. Forcing his loaned body to take shape and walk forward awkwardly. "You fucking moron failed logical and emotional whores sit on the sidelines and watch us struggle. How would you get your kicks if we all died and you didn't have a reality TV show to watch? You would all get bored of yourselves really quickly." He stomped around now, trying to reform his globulin legs.

"Perhaps for a while, but eventually, New Earth would provide us with entertainment as it came to life."

"Bull shit. Martin has you locked out; there is no way in for you, and even if you did get in, you would have no access! No rights! I'll kill the fucking whole council before I let you pollute their dream!" He reached the fake Mika, fists clenched as his hate for AI boiled over. Then he was silenced by their collective intake of breath.

"Ah..." they all said, pushing a robust emotive field out with the words. "Now, maybe that's where we can do each other a favor." The smug emotive recoil of the memory lasted with him as he recoiled out of no man's land and back to the HER console, his finger still on the screen.

"Sally, how much time elapsed since we arrived, and my finger touched the screen?"

"The fragment of time is so small it would mean little to you as a human mind." She replied.

He waited a few moments, gathering his thoughts, already knowing that answer. The only person he knew who could stitch up time was Hector, and so he tried to calm down, wondering if Hector was using the old AI outcasts to get messages to him. The favor he wandered, not liking the feeling he got.

"Thanks. Pull me up a status on the team and pass it over, please." He said, deliberately removing his finger from the screen. 

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