The Bridge | Bots 'R Us

Chapter 37 | Call to Arms

WASHINGTON CITY, HOME OF SIMONE AND DAVID
3 MAY 634, 16 HOURS

"Oscar, suspend all monitoring," Simone asked as she passed the door, back at the flat we'd called home since The Bridge. We'd agreed to keep my Maitre D version of GINI. I had no patience for hers, Berta.

"Monitoring suspended," Oscar's voice answered.

Simone dropped her museum tote on the counter that separated the kitchen workshop area from the rest of our living quarters and pulled the bust out. With a thin, sharp knife, she scraped the bottom of the bust above a little saucer to collect a small heap of Gloria's ashes. She placed her sample in our Analyzer and asked, "Show me a DNA strand." She waited a few seconds for the helix to display as a holomodel in front of her. She started interacting with the colorful shape, inspecting it from every angle, Chad's AR program highlighting the areas of interest. She quickly identified the foreign data block, snipped it virtually with the tip of her finger, and gave one last order Chad had passed on to her: "Extract, convert to AndrOS—current, and load to pearl." Simone grabbed the shiny dark pearl dropped in the Analyzer chute and pressed it behind her ear to transfer its data. "And that's for the backup," she mumbled. Lastly, she needed just one last quality check before stashing away Gloria's bust and discarding her loose ashes.

"Hello, Chaz!" Simone called. It took a few seconds for her encrypted communication to establish itself.

"Sofia, you did it! Your cousin's scramble is excellent!" Chad said, holoshaping on the other side of the counter before souring: "I'm in your home! That's not—"

"GINI's off—First Councilor privilege," she told him with a wink. "But look at you, I could swear you're a Hopter pilot, Mr. Chaz!" she answered, following their little code name game. They giggled for a second, and she went back to business. "I restored your tool, and I'd like you to verify it's what we need."

"Don't send anything over here. My 'family's friends' could still see through it. You've stored it, haven't you?"

She nodded.

"So let's try it!" He was giddy and confused her for a second. "Once it's in you, it's ready." He gave her a set of instructions, a condensed version of the magic forest path Humanists follow to gain their Higher Grounds, before ending their holochat.

As instructed, Simone looked for a comfortable spot in the room. She sat on our couch and started to feel a presence, unsettling at first, like a ghost behind her back. She looked back, anxious, but no one was there, yet she could still feel that presence. She was supposed to close her eyes now, but that presence made her nervous. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes at last. She jumped in her seat, startled: There she was, standing in some quiet and calming beige space, not the fairytale clearing she expected. And Chad was standing there, too, smiling. She opened her eyes. She was still by herself in our flat. She closed them again, and was back with him in that other space, stunned! Chad laughed out loud at her silly expression and their success.

"Where's the forest, and what are you doing here? Do you have it? Why did I have to do all that if you had it?"

"Mine is not a good version we should share freely. Believe me, we needed Gloria's. As for the forest, thanks to the AAC, we can meet wherever we fancy," Chad answered. "We did it, Simone! We did it!" He squeezed her in his arms and lifted her off the ground. She laughed out loud in her turn. The two of them had just unlocked a power that used to take shamans' special innate abilities and years of practice. "Now, we have to share the joy," Chad said.

"Joy, indeed! I hadn't felt that this strongly since, since— since The Bridge!"

"Because your soul is free here, my dear."