Ragnarok

Chapter 19 - Replicant

When Micah awoke, she saw that Rei had came back online a few hours before, made initial surveys of the new series of final bosses that had arrived along with Yggdrasil, sent off replies to most of his e-mails, and done the entirety of the paperwork that was required for him to walk into the manufacturing bay at 1100 hours. She had even gone ahead and queued up the most recent translations of Ragnarok's story, which looked to be fascinating viewing. Narrated by a passable simulation of the late Morgan Freeman, no doubt.

She had done all of that in about a half an hour, then had taken herself offline again. Micah wasn't sure when Rei slept, or if she slept at all. Or for that matter, if she did, what sort of electric sheep she dreamed of.

Rei sensed him awakening, as always, and appeared within his sensorium. She was trying on a different look today; still with hair the color of the seas on a sunny day, bound by a slender golden tiara woven with daisies. Her new form now bore elvish ears and grace, eyes like emeralds and a short, tight overcoat of gold and cyan. "Good morning, Master. I take it you're well rested after your Valentine's Day celebrations with Mistress Mia?" She put a little bit of a flirtatious inflection on the word 'celebrations', and lifted a sculpted eyebrow meaningfully.

"Very much so, yes," Micah said, yawning and stretching in the low gravity. "Apparently just in time to get selected to have my brain copied and uploaded into a robotic clone of myself. Along with a copy of you, from what a quick scan showed me. Only with a real body this time."

"I get to be a real girl, Master?" Rei gave a coquettish smile that was infectious, and he tried not to notice how close Rei was leaning to him, or how well that tight-fitting coat clung to her most definitely feminine form.

Micah cleared his throat, adjusting himself uncomfortably. Rei's smile seemed to flicker into a smirk for a moment; she couldn't help but notice the change in blood flow, after all. "There'll be plenty of time for that after we finish up in the Robotics Bay, master. For now, you could use a quick shower, shave and some nutrition, the usual ablutions."

Micah nodded, standing up and opening the door to his shower pod. "I'll let you take care of this one, Rei. I could use a few more minutes' worth of sleep. How about you take over the autopilot for me?"

"Whatever you wish, Master," Rei said with an indulgent sigh and another small smile. There was a pause, and then Micah experienced the usual disconnected feeling of his mind being set adrift within his own body. He thought, therefore he was; everything else was Rei. And then for a little while, he didn't think at all.

* * *

An interminable amount of time later, Micah woke up to find his body was automatically shoveling concentrated sugar, grain and protein into his jaws. As a breakfast, the fare wasn't terrible, though. Tasted vaguely of reconstructed cocoa and peanuts. Off to one side, there was a few lengths of chewy pork jerky that tasted strongly of bacon.

"Welcome back, Master," Rei said immediately, though only Micah was able to hear her.  His body was strapped back into the hammock, with the food being suspended by some sort of repulsor technology. 

"How long was I out? Felt like only a few seconds," Micah mumbled.

"Roughly 2.3 hours, Master," Rei replied. "You missed a rather lovesick call from Mistress Mia, the contents of which I'll leave for you to listen to.  Unless you really *want* me to narrate that one."

"No need, the vocal track will do fine," Micah said hastily.  "She a bit stressed about the replication process?"

"Not overly much," Rei said offhandedly. "Given Mia's normal energy levels, anyway.  There were no issues in her own copy; her clone is already in the materialization chamber, a mind copied to quantum disc drives and then cooled by nonconductive mineral oils, which can stay liquid at near absolute zero or billions of degrees.  Frankly, Mia's robot body is far hardier than her mortal one, even as fit as she keeps herself."