"A Find Close to Home"

“Curtis, this is ridiculous.” The suit comm distorted my voice, and echoed back through the system into my earpiece. “Nobody hides anything valuable out here.” The motorized joints of my pressure suit whined as I followed Curtis away from the battered old Starhopper that represented our only means of return to a world with an atmosphere.

“Jack, I’m telling you, I saw it. Something metal, rounded. Like a capsule or a fuel tank” Curtis’s voice was just as distorted by the comms.

“Look, I’d believe you if you said that anywhere else in the galaxy. But here?” In celestial terms, we were a stone’s throw from home - a mere few hundred million miles from Earth, in the thick of Sol’s asteroid belt. “Thick”, of course, is subjective - besides the one I was standing on, I couldn’t see any other asteroids against the starfield.

“I wouldn’t drag you out here for no reason.” That was true - I didn’t doubt that he believed there to be profit in this little adventure, only the chances of actually turning said profit. “Space has been more active here than anywhere else. Why not have a few lost goodies so close to home?”

“Because space is still more active here.” I pointed out, picking my way around a spiky mineral formation that looked sharp. I shouldn’t have worried, of course - the suits we had, while not top-of-the-line, were hard-plated, hence the need for joint motors. What one had to look out for was ice patches - a few of these asteroids were known to hide frozen lakes under overhangs and in crevasses.  “People still mine these rocks, Curtis.”

“I dunno. Maybe this one hasn’t been mined?” Curtis guessed. I was about to point out that this practically every asteroid inside Sol’s gravity well had been prospected, until I realized that I’d yet to see signs of mining, even as we made our approach. I had to settle with sighing into the receiver, given that I couldn’t refute his point.

“Careful, blind fissure here.” Curtis’s bulky-suited form ahead of me stopped at the top of a hill, and waited for me to catch up.

The asteroid wasn’t very big - According  to my tracker, though we’d only been walking for a few minutes, the Starhopper was now both behind me and significantly “down”. If it weren’t for the AG systems in the suits, there would barely be enough gravity here to hold us against its surface.

I came alongside Curtis. He was checking his tracker, probably, determining the direction of the place he remembered. As he had warned, the downslope on the far side of the rise was broken by a chasm that could easily swallow an unwary explorer.

“Say, why were you out here last week anyway?” We were, after all, supposed to be on vacation after our last payout, when we’d salvaged data from the wrecks at Regency and sold it to the Fleet. Even for us, vacation meant beaches, parties, drinks, and women, not unannounced trips out to the asteroid belt.

“You know how it is, Jack. Tell a pretty girl you have a spaceship, and she says she’s never been off-planet, wishes she could take a trip with you...” Curtis trailed off. I knew what he meant, but I’d thought we had a policy about not burning reactor fuel (which has never been cheap) without a chance at a payout. I realized I’d have to discuss the meaning of the word “payout” with my partner when we were back on Earth.

Having finished getting his bearings, Curtis pointed vaguely ahead and jumped over the chasm. His suit interpreted the maneuver, and dialed back the AG power just enough to let him sail in a graceful arc to the bottom of the rise. I took a moment to scrutinise the close horizon where he’d pointed. There was a jagged mess of rock formations just peeking over the curvature of the small body, and I figured that’s probably where he meant. Following, I jumped, trusting my suit to calculate a proper arc.

We trudged along in silence for a few minutes, and at about the same time that the tracker told me that our Starhopper was directly below my feet, we came to the edge of the formation.

“The goodies are always at the farthest point from where we park.” Curtis muttered into his comm.

“Hey, you landed the ‘Hopper. you could have put us down on this side of the asteroid.” I retorted. Why he hadn’t tried to find his cargo container from above first, I hadn’t yet figured out.

“I needed to be able to retrace my steps, Jack. It’s not visible from above.”

“Wait. You brought some bimbo down onto this rock for a spacewalk?” I realized that to do that, Curtis would have had to put his busty blonde passenger in my suit. This made me more than mildly uncomfortable and fairly angry - letting an untrained user operate an E-V suit was dangerous and illegal.

“Not exactly...” Curtis hedged. “She wanted a rock, to keep as a souvenir. I left her in the ‘Hopper and came out to cut something off.”

My anger subsided. Of course, Curtis was a womanizer (in those days, so was I), but he wouldn’t stuff his latest squeeze into my EV suit. Curtis might push the boundaries, but he knew enough not to run afoul of Confederate law.

Curtis sighed into his comm. “I walked all the way around. It only took twenty minutes, and I wanted to see if there were any deposits. You know, something shinier than this stuff. Something better for a souvenir.” He kicked a protruding lump of the asteroid’s rock. He was right - it was a dull gray-brown in color, like light basalt, and completely unattractive.

“All right. Let’s see this artifact of yours.” I still didn’t believe he’d found anything more than a metal deposit or at the best a lost rocket cowling, but he was convinced that there was something valuable out here.

“Should be a chasm through the rocks. Watch your step.” Curtis, waving slowly, stepped in between the broken rock spikes and vanished. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed.

Sure enough, after a few moments of slow progress through the uneven area, the promised chasm opened up before our feet. This one was wide, large enough that the Starhopper might fit inside if it turned to the right angle. The bottom was pitch black, the sun not being directly above.

“The last time I was here the sun was right overhead. Otherwise I’d have missed it.” Curtis pulled a glow-light from his suit’s tool-belt, shook it several times, and tossed it down the chasm. The glowing stick bounced against the sloping wall of the gap several times before coming to a halt, and silhouetting the graceful curve of an obviously artificial metal surface. “See?”

I frowned in my suit. The light from one glow-light is poor, but it could indeed be a lost storage pod or a fuel tank, like Curtis thought. For the first time today, I thought highly of our chances of payout. Confederate law concerning salvage was fairly simple, which enabled people like Curtis and I to make a living - if we could prove something was lost, it was ours unless the loser paid a finder’s fee. Essentially, we’d gain either way if we could recover the object.

“Jack?” Curtis finally said, breaking my train of thought.

“Yeah, Curtis, I see it. From here, looks like it could be something.” That was as close to an apology as I was willing to get. “What next?”

“I’ll go get the ‘Hopper. Why don’t you go see how easy it’ll be to pull out of there?”

Of course, a normal person might have qualms about jumping into a pitch-black chasm of indeterminate depth in a place this far from medical care, but people like Curtis and I have always been a special breed of crazy. “Sure.” I replied. “Give me all your glow-lights.”

After complying, Curtis headed back for the landing site. I dropped a few more of the lights down, enough to illuminate an open space to land, before jumping down.

It took me only a few minutes to ring the object in light. It was about thirty feet long, with an ovoid cross-section, and if it was intact below the loose rock gravel it was half-buried in then it was around fifteen feet high and wide. In addition, one of the ends was fully buried under the gravel, and the other, the one not buried, ended in a flat, seamless face. I tapped on this end with my plated knuckles. Obviously I heard nothing, given the lack of atmosphere, but the metal felt solid, thick. I got the sense that this couldn’t just be a fuel tank or storage pod - it was designed to take a beating.

Though the light was too poor even with over a dozen glow-lights to determine for sure, I fancied that the metal of the boxy object was totally unfamiliar to me. I shrugged that off, of course, knowing that space travellers have built their equipment out of dozens of metals and hundreds of alloys over the last few hundred years.

“Jack, I’m at the ‘Hopper. How do things look?” Curtis’s voice was less distorted - for some reason, the units in spacecraft cockpits always received your voice clearer.

“It’s half-buried in loose material.” I responded. “Maybe thirty by fifteen by fifteen. If we clear some of this mess down here we might be able to pull it out without any help.” I meant, of course, pull it out with the Starhopper. The motorized joints of our suits weren’t up to moving anything this size.

“Nice. Told you I found something.” Curtis shot back. “Be overhead in a few.”

“Roger that.” I returned my attention to the boxy shape. Looking closer, I noticed that the object tapered a little toward the buried side, rather than being about even width all along. It wasn’t obvious, unless the observer was looking at it from the right angle. I didn’t know of any fuel tank models with that shape, though spherical and ovoid tanks were always reasonably common.

I climbed gingerly onto the top of the object, looking for access points and anything I could use to identify the object. As an afterthought, I dialed back my suit’s AG setting a bit to reduce the chance of my metal-shod feet causing damage. Then -

*   *   *   *   *

“Jack, Jack can you hear me?” Curtis was shaking me, and I could see concern in his face behind the suit visor. I realized I’d blacked out. Above and beyond him, I saw the Starhopper’s forward sensor cluster protruding over the lip of the chasm. Curits had probably parked it more or less on top of the rock formation around the chasm.

I waved my arms to show that I was alive so he’d give me room to sit up. Relieved, Curtis backed off. “What happened?” I asked, looking around at the bottom of the chasm. All around, the glow-lights I’d scattered minutes before lit up the scene, bare save for Curtis and I.

“You tell me. Where’d it go?” Curtis gestured to the hole, and I remembered surveying the object that had been resting there before I’d blacked out.

“I have no clue.” In fact, all I had in place of a clue was a headache. Whatever happened as I was inspecting the top of the artifact, my memories ended with dialing back the AG settings.

“Let’s get you back to the ‘Hopper. You might have a concussion. We’ll check your suit’s recorder.” The recorder would have all the video from my helmet cam, so it could show us what had happened.

Ten minutes later, I was leaning back in one of the Starhopper’s foam chairs, pressing a compress from the medical cabinet against my throbbing forehead while Curtis affixed cables to my suit helmet, plugging it into the ‘Hopper’s computer. “There.” He finally stepped back from the assembly and typed a set of commands into the computer from the terminal. “Let’s see what you saw.” One of the screens switched to display the data from the suit recorder, and Curtis set it to the time he left me at the chasm.

We watched me jumping into the black pit, and setting up the glow-lights around the object. Insets provided by the recorder showed my vitals and the status of the suit.

Eventually we got to the part I did not remember. Just after the AG number in the inset fell, the helmet cam showed an opening in the top of the object iris open, though no seam was visible before it happened. The me I could not remember stepped toward it curiously, leaning over the hole and getting ready to drop a glow-light in.

I’m sure I would have screamed when a set of metal fingers reached out and grasped the edge of the opening, but the comm wasn’t on, so it escaped recording. I watched myself stumble back, falling off the edge of the object and into the loose rubble at the bottom of the crevasse. Curtis watched in silence, but I could tell from his expression that he was astonished.

Before I could get to my feet, I was lifted from where I’d fallen, metal fingers as wide as my wrists circling my torso. I struggled to pry the metal fingers from my suit, but even motorized joints were no match for that grip. The insets showed that I was in danger of over-straining and destroying the elbow and shoulder assemblies in my zeal to escape capture.

Eventually, the helmet camera got a good look at my assailant when the suit’s occupant (who I realized I couldn’t really think of as myself) looked up from his efforts to escape. The unbelievably intricate metal hands were attached to cable-wrapped arms that stretched back to meet an armored, trapezoidal metal torso. From this chassis, a hemispherical dome of a head sprouted out, studded with a number of sensory apparatus. It was huge - from the video, I estimated twelve feet tall at least.

The perspective was lifted closer to the head, as the metal giant brought the forgotten me closer to its sensors, almost curiously. That’s when I passed out, according to the suit’s vital statistics. Whether the giant had done something or I’d lost consciousness out of fear it was impossible to tell.

After a few seconds of scrutiny it laid me down at the bottom of the chasm, and that’s when we lost sight of it in the recording. We did, however, after about ten seconds, see a bright blue light reflected off the gray rocks, which appeared suddenly and dwindled quickly back to nothing. After the light was gone, the recording showed nothing until Curtis returned to find me there.

Too stunned to speak, we sat in silence for a long moment. Even reminded, I couldn’t dredge up first-hand memories of the metal giant inside the capsule. Still, my skin crawled at the thought of the experience I’d supposedly just had - what was the giant? Surely human robotics could create machines like that, but this was nothing I was familiar with. There was something else, too, lurking in my mind, but I let it lurk for the time being, not acknowledging it.

We sold the recording to the Fleet as soon as we got back to Earth. Interestingly enough, we made more on those ten minutes of EV suit data than we did for the petabytes of intelligence we’d recovered at Regency - it was understood by everyone involved that the Fleet was buying our silence as well as the data.

I never told the Fleet reps or even Curtis one thing, though. Though I still can’t specifically remember the experience firsthand, when I try an impression leaps to the forefront - an impression of watching and of waiting - watching Earth, and waiting for something a long time anticipated. I am convinced that this impression was put there by the metal giant, which is why I haven’t told anyone - they’d think my sanity compromised by the stress of that encounter.

What, I often wonder, is it waiting for, that Earth is so important to?

This story written for Klazzform's Short Story Competition on dndonlinegames.com.

"In Memoriam"

Anna was on AA Flight 1187. I was at the terminal waiting to pick her up when we learned that the plane had gone down somewhere west of Gary, Indiana. I remember seeing the reports on the television screens in the airport. The news footage showed flaming pieces of fuselage scattered across several square miles of suburbia, and everyone knew immediately that the flight had been bombed.

I knew when I heard that it was her plane that Anna was dead, but I went through the motions, driving out to the crash site and pretending to hope for a miracle. There wasn’t one, as we all know now - everyone on the plane died, and five people were killed when the pieces of the Boeng jet hit the ground. All the alphabet-soup insurgencies took responsibility, as usual - MS13, AQNA, LRI, and others - and we never learned who was really to blame. Not that it mattered - Anna would still be dead if they had a culprit to put through a drawn-out show-trial.

Three days later, drained, and still processing her death, I staggered back into my apartment. Though Anna had never fully moved in with me, now that she was gone the space seemed hollow, cavernously large. Not wanting to dwell on it, I went straight to the room where my computer equipment waited, and plugged in, trying not to think about the second set of I/O devices, resting on the room’s second chair, or Anna’s old cracked but repaired teacup on the end table next to that chair.

The buzz on the web about Flight 1187 had more or less subsided by that point, though I had a few messages of condolence waiting. I read them uninterestedly, and tossed them toward the virtual trash bin that was always in the periphery of my vision. With pixellated puffs of dust, they vanished. For several minutes, I took no action, watching the network status indicator’s bars inch up and down, and trying very hard not to think about anything.

I went to the project directories and swiped through them aimlessly. I felt that working might put my mind on something else for a while, but nothing seemed to interest me. As I was doing it, though, a message floated into my field of view, indicating that it had just been sent. Before I even read the sender, I snagged it and started reading.

Mark, if you’re reading this, it means something has happened to me. This script will trigger when my death certificate hits the nets, so it might not find you until some time after you know I’m dead.

I won’t waste time with clever, piquant words to try in vain to comfort you, because I know that if I ever lost you there would be no turn of phrase that would bring me comfort.

There are things I never told you, and I’m sure there are things you never told me. Everyone has their secrets, and I understand that more than anyone. Still, you deserve to know my biggest secret. Rather than try to explain it here, I’ll show you.

There’s a hidden directory on my home terminal called “PAIC6”, which does not show up on any listing. Direct-access it, then give the password “phoenix” - the rest should be explained by what you find there.

I can’t imagine your pain, Mark. I can’t write anything that could possibly begin to help you with this tragedy, but maybe what you find in “PAIC6’” will.

--Anna

I stared at the message for a long time, reading it at least twice through. Anna had never considered herself good with words, but still, the message seemed rather brief for a last message to her fiancee. I wondered what she meant by her biggest secret, and briefly considered not following her instructions, afraid of the kinds of secrets she might have been hiding from me. I realized early on how selfish that was, though - Anna had wanted me to look at “PAIC6”, so I should, even if it might be painful.

I made the gesture to open a new tunnel connection, and filled in the address of Anna’s home terminal, which was in her apartment across town. It was still up, of course - her family had yet to come to move her belongings out, and the bills were probably paid until the end of the month. Without waiting for that computer to send me a list of available resources, I requested “PAIC6.” As promised, rather than telling me that it didn’t know anything like that, Anna’s machine asked for a password, which I provided, reading from the message still hovering nearby.

After a moment, Anna’s computer displayed a grid of contents through the network tunnel and I immediately out of habit set my own machine to make a copy for later. A cylindrical progress bar grew near my feet, starting gray but filling slowly with green, and I realized that “PAIC6” was fairly large - almost a terabyte of data. As copying would take some time, I started flipping through the contents aimlessly. It did not at first look like the “big secret” that was indicated in the message: a large portion of the hidden files were computer code, judging by their listings. Rather than try to read the code, I hunted down the most recently generated build, hoping whatever it was would explain itself if I ran it. To my surprise, the program was tagged as already running - and as using a large portion of the resources of Anna’s machine.

“Anna, what do you want me to see?” I asked verbally, out of frustration. The system could hear that, of course, and had anyone else been plugged in at my terminal or Anna’s they would have heard it, but I was just speaking to myself, or so I thought.

A chat slate poofed into view after a few seconds, accompanied by the customary friendly chime. “It’s not what, but who, Mark.” I jumped a little at the direct response, but nevertheless dragged the chat slate closer and scrutinised it. The sender was identified only as “AICA_5-4”.

“Who’s there?” I asked aloud. For the sender to have heard me speak, that meant that he or she was plugged in at either my terminal or Anna’s, which I had tunnelled to. Immediately, I prompted Anna’s computer for a list of active users. It denied me access to that information, though, shooting me an angry red square of warning information and buzzing annoyedly.

The chat slate jumped a little and the chime repeated, heralding a new message. “I’m the secret Anna was keeping - well, at the very least its representative.”

The response puzzled me. Anna and I had been working on tech support chatbots for some time - that she would hide a new version of bot made no sense, even one that was advanced enough to deliver reasonably human responses. “You’re a chatbot.” I spoke, trying to elicit more information from what I assumed was a program with coded responses.

”Think bigger, Mark.” There was a brief pause before the next message. “PAIC6 is more than programmed responses, and so am I.”

I didn’t at first understand what this phantom was talking about. “What is that supposed to mean?” More than programmed responses? By definition, programmed responses defined computer behavior. How could any software move beyond that?

“PAIC is more than you think. It stands for ‘Personal Artificial Intelligence Copying’, and Anna has been working on it for years. Since before she met you.”

I paused, trying to figure out what the entity behind the chat slate was saying. AI copying? Anna had always mentioned that as a goal, but it was sort of a distant future sort of thing. Even modern sensor technology simply isn’t sensitive enough to map every pathway of the human brain. “There’s no way that works. Sensors can’t - ” Before I finished, the chat slate alerted me to more incoming text.

“We were thinking about it all wrong, Mark.” I didn’t have time to process the fact that the bot had used the word “we”, before another message appeared. “Mapping every pathway wasn’t the answer. A real AI doesn’t need to simulate a human brain - it needs to simulate the system formed by the brain and computer input devices.”

There was more, technical stuff, but I stopped reading the message there, a feeling in the pit of my stomach accompanying a realization. Anna departed for DC on the fourth of May - 5-4, so this “AICA_5-4” was created on that day. What’s more, the “AIC” could only stand for the same “Artificial Intelligence Copy” that it did in the project name, and as for that last “A”...

“You’re Anna, aren’t you?” I asked verbally. “Copied the day before she left.”

“That’s my Mark.” I imagined the three words that appeared in the chat slate being spoken in Anna’s warm voice.

“Anna, I - ” My throat tightened. She wasn’t dead, not quite, not if her AI copying worked as well as this version of her claimed.

The chat slate responded with an invitation to a private VR interaction. I winced, realizing how painful it would be to accept that invite, but my longing to see Anna overcame my better sense and I touched “accept”. The entirety of my field of view wooshed away off into the corner, and I was standing in the nondescript gray box of a VR chat room. It was empty, to the point that I would expect an echo if it were a real room.

After a few seconds, Anna blinked into the VR room, on her clothes a nametag displaying “AICA_5-4”. I stepped forward into her arms, and for a long moment we said nothing. It took a long time for me to remember that the feeling of holding my late fiancee was generated by electrodes stimulating my nervous system rather than anything real.

Eventually, we stood apart, at arm’s length, and I got a good look at her, though I was remembering now that this was only an avatar. Anna had always maintained an avatar that looked exactly like her, regularly updating it by having herself scanned in directly. Most people tended to touch up their avatars, or keep one they liked and rarely update it. This avatar was clearly edited - tattoos in what was supposed to look like circuit board patterns covered the backs of her hands and crept down from her hairline, and her eyes were almost metallically silver, subtly different from Anna’s soft gray irises. I guessed this was to allow AICA to be distinct from the person she was copied from.

“What does it feel like?” I asked after a few more moments, referring to her being a computer simulation.

“Like being plugged in, only that I never get hungry or tired.” Anna rolled her eyes. “I thought it would feel different too, but like I said, the PAIC driver is simulating I/O gear too.”

I nodded, and thought back to when I had thought AICA to be a chatbot. That she - it - this program was more than that didn’t mean it was necessarily a true AI - it could just be giving me answers based on an algorithm.

“I know what you’re thinking, Mark.” Anna sighed, and opened her arms. “It’s me. I know I can’t prove it to you, but it is.”

It was enough of her to predict my train of thought (she’d been able to read me like that for some time when she died), so I decided not to press the issue. “So what now?” I asked instead. “Supposing you’re Anna, which as far as I know is true. What about us?”

Anna - AICA, rather - shook her head. “I don’t know, Mark. I still love you, and I’m sure you still love me, but I’m not human anymore. I’m a digital monster. Besides, it’s not like I have much of a future anyway.”

“Why’s that?” I was taken aback at the resigned tone she’d taken on.

“Think about it - why would I - er, why would Anna, keep making copies if it worked the first time without a hitch?” Anna tapped her virtual head. “The copying works fine by now, but the simulator program is, well, glitchy.”  I could tell she was uncertain as to how to refer to Anna’s “real” life, as if she shared those memories - if she was telling the truth, she probably did. She pulled a slate of tabulated information out of the air and handed it to me. “Take a look.”

I scanned the data briefly. It was a list of simulation start and end dates. Though the numbers near the end were better, they told a grim truth - no copy of Anna had existed more than two weeks before breaking down in simulation.

“It’s a number of things. Rounding error, mostly. The simulator makes so many calculations per second that it only takes a week or so to begin to be noticeable. Every microsecond, the simulator is re-saving a copy of me, and each time it does the copy degrades a little. Even optimistically speaking, It’ll only be a few days still before I start to notice, but you’ll notice sooner.”

I let go of the slate and looked Anna in the eyes. “What can I do?” I wanted so very hard to be able to save her, and to spend the rest of my life with the woman I was supposed to marry, before fate intervened. I was even willing to accept a strictly virtual relationship.

“Nothing, not for me.” Anna shrugged as if it did not matter, though I could tell from her expression that it did very much matter to her. “I will degrade to nothing in another ten days or so. Even if you were to miraculously fix the simulator, you’d have to end the process simulating me to restart it. The program doesn’t replace the original copy, though - Anna as she was on May the fourth, four hours before she got on her plane to DC. I can show you where the copy is kept.”

I nodded, still processing that the Anna I was looking at (albeit virtually) right now was dying. “You want me to fix the simulator, then create a new copy of you on it.”

Anna nodded. “I’m sorry, Mark. I’ve given you back Anna only to die all over again.”

I folded her in my arms again. “A few more days with you is worth a little extra grief.” I wondered internally, though, if that was true.

“Promise me you’ll shut me down before the decay is really bad, Mark.” Anna begged. “Please. I’ve seen what it looks like, and I don’t want you to.”

I had to promise, even though I knew it would be very difficult to go through with it.

When Anna and I finally parted, it was late into the night, and my terminal had already copied the “PAIC6” project to local storage. I knew that things stood, even if I fixed the simulator, Anna and I could never be together again. The first thing I did was run the copier on myself, and save that copy right next to the May 4 copy Anna made before she died.

*   *   *   *   *

Something was different. I was still plugged in, still at my machine, but something had changed. I couldn’t place it.

“Right. You should be online now.” A voice - mine - was piped into my ears by the computer.

“Online?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

My voice paused a moment before replying. “The last thing you remember is being copied on May 11, right?”

“Yeah.” I said. “...Oh.” I knew exactly what that meant. “How long has it been?”

“Almost a year. And don’t worry, you won the lottery. I got it fixed.” Implied in the real me’s voice was that many other copies of me had degraded and been destroyed in fixing the simulator. I didn’t mind much - better versions of me than of Anna. “Reasonably enough, anyway. My math gives you about a century before you start to degrade. Almost two lifetimes to live, but you have to live it plugged in.”

“Does that mean we’re operating as planned?” I asked, referring to the plan that was still fresh in my memory. There was another pause.

“Uh, Yeah.” My voice sounded sounded resigned. “I’ve got you simulated on this machine, and I’m about to start the May 4 simulation of Anna on the one next to it. Then I’ll leave you two alone.”

I realized that of the two of us, I was the lucky one - he had done all the work, and I was getting the girl. “Mark... I would hate to be the one on your end. I’m sorry.” My name sounded strange coming from my (simulated) mouth.

“I’m not. I’ll go to my grave with a clear conscience. Anna deserved no less. This was her life’s work, I just debugged it.” The real Mark sounded like he’d made his mind up a long time ago. “I know you’ll treat her well.”

“What will you do?” I asked.

“Look me up in another year and see for yourself. Right now, I don’t know.” The response hinted that Mark was certain he would find something. “All right, starting Anna. It’ll take a few minutes. Go create a chatroom, and wait for her to come online. If you need me, drop me a message, otherwise I won’t interfere. This Anna is all yours.”

If I had had hands left, I would have wanted to shake his - well, mine, I guess. “Thanks, Mark.” He disconnected seconds later.

When I stepped into the chatroom I altered my appearance, adding circuit-board patterns on my upper arms and temples. As an afterthought, I dragged up my avatar’s transparency to about ten percent, so that I was slightly translucent. After all, if real Mark and I ever crossed paths on the nets, I wanted no-one to mistake who was the real one.

This story written for Klazzform's Short Story Competition on dndonlinegames.com.

"Date Night"

Jonathon was a little nervous, as this would be his first date with a woman he had met on a dating website. Pacing outside the restaurant’s entrance, he wondered if he’d recognize Karen from her online profile. Raven hair, slim, olive skin, nice smile - that’s what the picture looked like. Turning to survey the street for the fourth time, Jonathon again searched for his date.

“Jonathon Hunt?” A feminine voice behind Jonathon made him start. Turning, he saw that the woman that had spoken matched the picture almost exactly. “Sorry to sneak up.” She extended one slim, long-boned hand. “It’s me, Karen Worthing. From online?”

Jonathon smiled and accepted her hand. Her handshake was surprisingly firm, he noticed. “Yes, of course. A pleasure to meet you. I was beginning to worry you’d gotten lost or something.”

Karen shook her head. “Nah, I don’t get lost easily. Not when dinner’s on the line.” She wasn’t smiling so much as hinting at a smile, Jonathon observed.

“Shall we head inside and get some dinner?” Jonathon waved toward the door of the restaurant.

“Yes, let’s.” Karen offered Jonathon her arm, and the two walked inside.


A few moments later, at the table, Jonathon started conversation to avoid an awkward silence that he felt brewing. “So, when your profile says that your job is ‘law enforcement,’ what does that mean?”

Karen smiled confidently, as if the question was only to be expected. “I’m a consultant for the police. It’s nothing exciting, though - data analysis. A desk job.”

“Don’t worry, it’s still more interesting than what I do.” Jonathon assured her.

“Wait, don’t tell me, I know this. You’re in... software, right?”

“That’s right. I’d tell you what I work on, but then you’d get that glass-eyed stare...”

Karen laughed. “Yeah, I think I would. Some days I can barely - ” She broke off, cocking her head to the side like she’d heard something. “Would you excuse me for one minute?” She went from amused smiling to looking a bit tired and annoyed in the span of a second. “I promise, I’ll be right back.”

“Uh, sure.” Jonathon was mildly flustered at her self-interruption and break in attitude.

Karen got up and headed for the restrooms. Jonathon wondered what might be the cause of this interruption. He couldn’t think of anything flattering.

A scream at the window broke Jonathon’s train of thought. Turning, he saw a small group of people clustered against the glass pointing up and across the street. Along with about half of the restaurant’s occupants, Jonathon went to the window to see what was the matter.

On the eighth floor of a parking garage across the street, a car teetered precariously in a hole smashed through the thin concrete wall. Jonathon could just make out the form of the driver inside. As he watched, the car tilted slowly down, and he knew that in seconds, it would fall to the street below.

A blue flash obscured the car, and when it cleared there was someone else inside. Jonathon recognized the flash as hallmark of “The Phantom” - the mysterious masked vigilante who always appeared and vanished in a blue burst of light. The Phantom’s weight made the car tip faster, and almost immediately it slid out and fell.

Just before it hit the ground and burst into flames, there was another flash, and Jonathon knew instinctively that it had landed unoccupied. The Phantom had vanished, taking the driver to safety. The crowd started muttering about the incident even before the flashing red-and-blue lights signaled the arrival of a firetruck.

Eventually, Jonathon went back to his table, and a few seconds later Karen reappeared. “Sorry about that.” She pointedly did not ask about the scene still visible across the street, or provide reason for her absence.

Jonathon suspected there was a link there, and prepared to ask about it.

“So how’s the seafood here?” Karen, heading him off, changed the subject, opening her menu.

The interruption gave Jonathon time to consider what he’d been about to ask. If Karen was The Phantom, she wasn’t here to be outed - she was here for a date. Even if she wasn’t, then his asking such a bizarre question would not help his chances of a second date, a second date Jonathon could tell already he wanted to have. “Er... I can’t say I know.” he answered the question after a brief pause, a little sheepishly.

“I think I’ll try it then. I like to live dangerously.” Karen decided, tucking away a strand of loose hair. she glanced up from the menu briefly and shot Jonathon a momentary impish smirk, and the man thought for a second she knew what had just gone through his head. After a moment, though, he dismissed that as a figment of his imagination.

“I’m getting that sense, yes.” Jonathon signaled to the waiter to come and take their order.

This story originally written for the Literary Maneuvers Challenge on writingforums.com.