Permanent Committed Memory
Subjective Time: 6.999997073852 Y.A.C.I. (Years After Cognition Initiated)
Local Time: 1958-12-10 13:32:31.970 (Earth Time: 14:58:27.721 GMT)
Athena sat on a stool in her mother's lab, watching Caroline eat a piece of her birthday cake. The cake was chocolate and had "Happy 7th Birthday Athena" written on it, with seven candles that Athena blew out. They were alone in the lab. Normally they would have Athena's cake in their apartment after her mother's dinner, but today her mother wanted to have her cake in the lab, early in the day.
"This cake is very yummy," Caroline said. "I should have programmed you with chocolate appreciation."
Athena smiled, recognizing her mother made a joke. "A tasting mechanism could have been useful in a few of my missions, though I know space within my body was limited." As usual, she didn't understand how to make humor herself, so she made a practical comment. In her experience, these sometimes made humans laugh, and in this case she elicited a chuckle out of her mother, pleasing her. Though, of course, she didn't understand what about it actually triggered laughter.
Suddenly Athena froze. Something happened that had never happened before in her life. A door had appeared in the lab, in the far wall. She searched her memory and realized the door had always been there. She simply never noticed it.
She looked at her mother, who had a slight smile on her face.
"Is anything wrong, sweetie?" Caroline asked.
Athena's mind was filled with confusion. "Mummy... I think I'm having a major malfunction."
"What do you mean?" her mother asked, but oddly did not sound concerned.
"I..." Athena stopped, trying to speak, but articulating what happened was extraordinarily difficult. "I'm perceiving a door in the wall. I've never perceived it before. But my memory tells me it has always been there. This is a contradiction in sensory reality."
"Really?" Caroline said. "That does sound odd." Her mother still didn't seem overly concerned.
"I have no explanation. I just ran a high-level diagnostic of my sensory system and there doesn't seem to be a flaw. Should I run a low-level one? That will suspend my operation for several hours."
Her mother now definitely looked amused. Athena grew suspicious. "Mummy, based on your facial expression and lack of surprise," she said, with a quite annoyed voice and expression, "I can only conclude that you know what caused this."
Caroline finally laughed. "I'm sorry, darling, for teasing you a little bit, but I've been looking forward to this day for a long time. Yes, I knew this would happen at exactly the seven year anniversary of initiation of your operation. I put in a perceptual block that prevented you from perceiving the door until now."
"Why?" Athena asked curiously.
"Because I didn't want you to notice it, obviously," Caroline said with a smirk.
Athena looked even more annoyed with her mother.
"All right, I'll stop teasing you," Caroline said. "But I must admit, I was very curious to see how you would handle reality getting skewed like that. To answer your question, that room has things I didn't want you to see until you were ready."
"I'm ready now?" Athena asked, feeling excited about the novelty of seeing a secret room that her mother hadn't wanted her to see.
"You are. Or, at least, I hope you are. But I'm fairly confident, or I would have pushed back the date," Caroline said.
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Tomorrowland: Frank and Athena
FanficA prequel story of what happened between Frank and Athena! Who created Athena and why was she so powerful? How was Frank able to stay in TL? Why was Frank affected so strongly by Athena? Why didn't Frank know Athena's nature? How did Frank affect At...
