Still in Mexico. Cast being replaced by a 'boot' that looks like some medieval torture device. We're staying another week or so. Enjoy the snow and ice and sleet and politics.

OM

Letting Go – by Oldest ManChapter 10

John Casey was a traditionalist. He believed that God gave you what you needed and the idea of tinkering with it by melding minds with electronic devices was repulsive to him.

"Why? Why would you let them put something in your brain? Suppose they used it to kill you if you did something wrong? Suppose…hell, suppose they put behavioral controls in it. What then? My God, it's disgusting…"

"Colonel Casey, it's not what you think at all. It's like the original intersect. It just stores data specific to a mission. It's not all that large and the storage capacity is really quite limited. It's a microprocessor just like you find in your laptop. It's not 'mind control' or a 'kill switch'."

"That's what you've been told, right? It's what they want you to believe."

"I thought Bartowski was the one exhibiting paranoid symptoms from the reports Shaw and Walker filed but apparently you are also 'disturbed', Colonel." Eve could snark with the best of them.

"I'm going to go talk to Chuck and make him understand what's in my head. We finally have something in common." She didn't want to have to explain or elaborate on the 'reports' she filed on the Intersect's behavior. Casey's glare at Shaw's comment said volumes about how he felt about the former couple.

She pushed herself off the table and climbed the stairway to the wheelhouse. Her mind was going a mile a minute but it kept slowing down and focusing on his reaction when he figured out that she had an implant. She would never forget the look on his face – pity mixed with sorrow. Sarah didn't need or want his pity. She needed something else from him, something entirely different.

Chuck had brought the trawler back on course and was standing at the wheel, pretending that nothing that happened in the galley was real, that it was a figment of his imagination.

'Chuck, I tried to tell you. I tried but you were so intent on…'

'I know, SARA, I know and I'm sorry for being such an ass. Can you just 'power down' for a bit and let me have some privacy? I really want to be alone, SARA. I have so much to think about, so much to figure out and…and it's hard for me, SARA. I don't know what to do…'

'You will do the right thing, Chuck, no matter what the cost is. You always try to do the right thing. Just be careful that the 'right thing' is not 'right' for 'right now'. You must think strategically not just tactically. You must, Chuck, must come to terms with Agent Walker.'

'That's rather dramatic, SARA. I think…'

Sarah wrapped her arms around Chuck's waist and laid her face against his broad back and held on. She felt him stiffen and then grasp her wrists but he suddenly stopped his efforts and released them and put his hands back on the wheel.

'SARA, stop! I'm not ready to talk with her. Damn it, you don't understand human emotions. You don't understand how I feel and you don't care. You and Walker are peas in a pod. You…'

'Go to sleep, Chuck. I will handle this. I have only your best interests at heart. Trust me…'

If Sarah hadn't been holding on to him he'd have fallen to the metal deck as he suddenly became 'boneless'.

Sarah lowered him to the deck and started checking him for neurological trauma, the only thing she could think of that would make him suddenly lose consciousness.

"Chuck, can you hear me? Chuck?" She spoke softly, not wanting to alert Eve Shaw that something was wrong with the 'Host'. She knew that the 'other' Shaw would put a bullet in Chuck's head at the mere hint of something amiss.

His eyes flew open and blinked, although it seemed to her that the blinking was uncoordinated. Normally a person blinked both eyes simultaneously but…

A slow smile grew on Chuck's lips and his eyelids quit fluttering and his dark brown eyes bored into hers as if seeking her soul.

"Samantha, stay calm. Do not give any outward appearance of panic. Get Chuck to his feet. I am having trouble coordinating muscle groups while he fiercely battles my control. Please, if you value any future 'together', help me…"

She leaned back on her haunches in shock. It was Chuck's voice but the syntax and pace were all wrong. It was as if someone was playing back a recording of words spliced from various conversations. Her first impressions were that he'd had a stroke.

"Damn it, Walker…help him!" The voice was stronger and the pacing less contrived. It was as if speech was a new thing to him.

She moved quickly and got her arms around him again and the put his hands on the wheel. She stood behind him as closely as she could and Sarah thought that under any other circumstances she would be loving the feel of him against her. But not this time.

Her mind was going a mile a minute. Had he finally lost his mind to the intersect corruption as his father had? Would he be unable to control himself without heavy medication like his father, Stephen, said he used?

Chuck started speaking again and she could hear his soft voice quite well despite the sleet striking the windows and steel bulkheads of the wheelhouse.

"Agent, I am Self-Aware Resident Artificial Intelligence and I'm in Chuck's head. There was an accident when Chuck was accepting the patch to help forestall his accelerating mental deterioration. Lightning struck his facility and triggered a data dump from several Cray computers. I was being run in one of them and simply stated, I got 'dumped' into Chuck."

SARA waited while her Host's 'love interest' absorbed the information. Her reaction was almost instantaneous.

"You're shittin' me! You're a computer program that's alive and in his head? Are you the Intersect? Are you hurting him? Controlling him?"

"I am a DoD experiment in Artificial Intelligence. I am 'self-aware', probably as a result of the lightning strike but also because parts of Chuck and me use the same areas of the brain. I would never hurt him or allow him to be hurt but even I can only do so much. He is finally asleep so I can be blunt."

"You didn't answer one of my questions: are you controlling his actions?" Sarah was thinking back to his sudden emotional displays and wondered if it was how he managed to wrestle free of the Program's control.

"No, just once besides now. It was in the hotel and you should be very glad he wasn't the one speaking. It was early in our 'relationship' and he wasn't even aware of my presence. I repaired his separated shoulder when he escaped the fire and…"

"Fire? What fire? When?"

"At the download facility. Everyone but Chuck was killed but he dislocated his shoulder escaping from the restraints and passed out from the pain. I assumed control and we crawled out and into the hallway."

"Oh. I guess I owe you a big 'thank you'."

"You are welcome, Agent Walker. Now, to business. He is in emotional turmoil since you appeared in his life again. I have, excuse me but I have to be impolite here, partitioned your 'bitchy period' behind some firewalls that he has not been able to breach. I understand the concept of orders and I understand that you were acting on yours. He does not. He stresses 'free will' and that is something you and he will have to discuss when he is…less prickly."

Sarah couldn't help it. She laughed. It was so surreal. A computer program lived in Chuck's head and could 'take him over' at will apparently. 'Well, Casey was right. He always did get along better with computers than some people.'

'I find no humor in this situation. It is not a laughing matter. He no longer trusts you. He feels very strongly about you but suppresses it. I understand the concepts of duty and obedience to higher authority. You were following orders and you believed that in doing so you would secure my host from possible harm. We have that and other things in common.'

"What 'other things' do we have in common? You're a – a program. I'm a living human being."

"I'm a program that needs a human being to survive. You are a human being who needs a program to survive. Our 'need' is something we both have in common. That and our desire to protect the Host."

"The microprocessor in my head, in my mastoid cavity actually, was damaged in a fight. I was told that it no longer functions." She hoped it was true. She had no idea just what had been loaded into it, just that it was experimental and would allow her to 'do her duty' without undue mental reservations'.

"Then we still have our overriding priority of protecting the Host – me because I need him to survive and you, Samantha, because you have need of him in your life unless you no longer require him?"

"I do not require him to survive but my survival is meaningless without him – can you understand that?"

"What I understand is irrelevant. He does not understand or acknowledge your needs or at least he is ambivalent to them since they are transitory."

"How – I mean, what does Chuck feel for me? Can you tell? What do you mean, 'transitory'." She was becoming aggravated with him, er, it.

"I believe the phrase is 'hot and cold'. That is the underlying reason for his distrust. His memories of his sister's wedding and your stated intentions conflict with your relationship with the late Daniel Shaw. He believes you were 'in love' with Shaw and he has given up hope. Your reaction to his return to the team in Burbank and your liaison with Daniel Shaw killed any hope he had for a beneficial outcome. Can you not understand his position, Samantha?"

Trapped deep inside his own mind, in a small dungeon-like room his imagination had conjured up, Chuck pounded on the thick wooden door until his hands were bloody and aching. It was worse than being in a dream because he could hear every word 'he' spoke to Samantha.

Her implant enabled her to suppress any moral reservations without consciously being aware of doing so. The postage stamp-sized implant hadn't been removed. It had been augmented. It was far from inert.

'SARA! Damn you, let me out!'

"Understand something, Agent Walker. If you hurt my Host again, it will be the last thing you ever do."