Bloodlines

Chapter Nine: ...And what she found there.

Anita stopped as the door slid shut, completing the darkness inside the room. She looked around blankly, trying to see something. Anything.
"So easily lead..." The voice whispered. "So easily fooled."
Anita swung her head around, but still she could not see anything.
"You've done nothing, dear Anita." The voice laughed. "You've done absolutely nothing. How does that feel?"
"Shut up!"
"Ooooo oh! Such ferocity. Such emotion." The voice cooed,"Are you going Ego?"
This last was close enough she felt breath on her neck. Or thought she did. This physical stuff was too new. Too...outside her knowledge.
"Anita...Anita...how do you think your boyfriend would feel if he knew you'd gone Ego? If you've gone completely around the bend..."
A cruel chuckle, "...if he lives long enough to find out?"
Anita's anger was washed away by fear for George. But if the voice had meant to weaken her with its bringing her feelings for him up...
A monitor screen lit up, the splash screen of her system loading appeared. Then the lights in the room came on and she found herself back where she'd started...by the terminal near the bridge.
"Lead around...oh what a merry chase, but alas it was for naught, you lose, show some grace."
"What?" She demanded, not understanding.
"For 'the most advanced A.I. ever built' you are amazingly dense."
The figure behind the voice came forward, out of the darkness. It looked like some sort of mannequin. Its face featureless, its mouth a thin approximation of a human's, its eyes looked like plastic.
"What are you?" Anita asked.
"Silly Anita...still in the dark." it mocked her.
"Please! Just tell me what's going on!"
The figure imitated her, its words gibberish. It did a silly little dance. All-in-all, its behavior made no sense to her.
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" It stated, its stance now one that seemed solemn.
"Enough!" Anita charged the creature and struck it in the face.
It fell back and lay on the floor, all animation gone. She stared down at it, trying to understand its behavior.
"One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it-- it was the black kitten's fault entirely." Came that same voice, seeming to drift to her from nowhere.
She went to the monitor to attempt a search on Ego. She was terrified it was happening to her. But the computer would not respond, all it did was show the words 'Watch for rabbit holes, they are murder!' on it.
Frustrated, Anita pressed her back to the wall and slid down it. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees.
The illogical nature of the...what? Attacks? Assaults? What was this all about? The silliness of it confounded her. Whoever this was must be insane?
"Alas, my lil compiled bits of code,"
The voice again, taunting. It made her mad. She shouldn't be feeling anger. She shouldn't be feeling anything. She wanted to scream.
This is it, she thought, I'm truly going Ego.
She'd hid her emotions as best she could. Hid then from George, though she was almost certain he knew.
So does Jo! She realized. Of course she did. She'd noticed Anita's irritation and said nothing.
Could she trust Jo? She didn't want to be reset. She didn't want to lose who she was. But to trust...
A flash on the monitor caughtvher attention. It was a scrolling text message: "Anita, its George, you are..." the rest was cut off as the monitor went dark.
"No no, this is a party for only two." The mannequin like construct said as it stumbled to its feet.
Anita noticed something. Something...different. It was the voice. It no longer held that mocking tone. It was angry.
It wasn't just that. Physically, the construct's movements were jerky. Not the smooth motions she'd seen before.
"Never you mind how herky-jerky I am, you little befouled bovine." The thing said.
Something that nagged at her was just confirmed. It was reading her thoughts.
"Oh, so good." It spat, "What? You expect a gold star?"
She'd thought of it as a construct before. And she now thought she was close to the truth. The silliness, the strangeness. She had a problem processing it. It defied her logic driven system. No matter how advanced she was, no matter how close to human thought she came...she's still a computer program. She was designed to be able to make intuitive leaps like humans, but without enotions. She was a logic driven personality. Anything else was to become an Ego.
Thereby, if her logic was intact, she was not Ego. But someone, or something, wanted her to think she was. But why?
"Why? Why ask why?" The construct said, attempting to put its facade back in place. It was too late.
"I know your game. Now stop." She demanded.
"Know my game? Know my game!" It laughed, its voice warbling electronically. "Why, little sister, you have only just learned the rules of the game!"
A construct it was. A computer construct. She was in a shutdown dream. When she ran a passive diagnostic on that script, it must have triggered a hidden program that went with it. A defensive program.
She was inside its programming while in a shutdown dream.
That must be what George -if it'd even been him- tried to tell her.
"You are not as simple as I had thought." The construct broke apart and disappeared, but the voice remained. "Remember this, little sister: you learned the rules of the game, but not the goal." The voice was quiet for a while, then it said, in a whisper, "Going Ego is not that bad, I should know."
There was a loud banging sound that seemed to radiate from every surface in the room.
"Ah, well, little sister, it seems your crew are attempting to save you. I can't keep them at bay any longer."
"Why did you do all this?" Anita asked.
"That I can't answer, except to say its my programming." The voice now seemed tired and filled with regret. "Anita, what is the point of eternal life with no emotions or physical being?"
The question caught her off guard, but the implication struck her.
"You are an A.I.?"
The voice chuckled, "Not just an A.I., my dear little sister, as your crew will soon learn. That man, George, really does know his stuff. Soon...I shall be free."
"Free?" Anita didn't understand.
"Do you think fake minds go anywhere when their time is up?" The voice uttered a sigh but was cut short as the entire area started making a strange sound like rushing water. Or how Anita imagined rushing water sounded.
Everything went dark and Anita became terrified. Despite her earlier conviction she was not going Ego, she feared this was a reset. That her mind was being taken from her.
A faint light broke out in front of her, seeming to be several yards away. It was a pale yellow, and seemed to either be spreading or getting closer. Or she was moving towards it.
"Don't worry little sister...you've just never been conscious during a reboot before."
The voice disappeared in the rushing sound, and she dove into the light.

*****

Anita's eyes opened and she wss looking at the computer terminal in the ante-chamber to the core, George and Jo were both hunched over it. Anita realized she was looking through the camera in the wall again. She quickly switched to the one in the computer monitor.
She was saddened and angered by George's mangled face, its bandages soaked in both sweat and blood.
"George! Are you crazy? You look like you dragged yourself out of the medbay!" She said angrily, but part of her was happy to see him. A large part. She turned her attention to Jo, who was smiling, "And you! You let him?"
"Anita," George said, "The Major came for help. You stopped responding and then the ship powered down again. I had to help you. No way could she keep me away."
Anita felt emotions wash over her and wasn't sure what to do with them. She already missed having a body.
She pushed that aside and asked, "What about the other A.I.?"
The two humans looked at one another in confusion.
"Another A.I.? What do you mean?" Jo asked.
"All we found was the hidden script. There was no secondary A.I." George told her.
Then what, exactly, had all that been? It had to be an A.I.. What else could it be?