August 25, 2013

Rebecca was so hard at work with the Animus code that she didn't even notice Desmond come in until he startled her by tapping her on the shoulder.

"Gah!" She jerked in surprise, hitting some keys by accident, then growled in frustration and backspaced the error away. "You should learn to turn off your stealth sometimes, Des."

"Hey, I wasn't trying to sneak up on you, honest."

She turned her chair around to face him, and also Andrew, whom he was carrying in his arms. "You need something?"

"I just wanted to see how that Animus stuff is coming along."

"You know, it's really not as tough as I'd thought it'd be," Rebecca said, turning back to the keyboard quickly to save her work. "Reliving someone else's ancestors is a major paradigm shift, but the coding changes actually aren't too radical. Already commented out the functions that check user DNA against the source file, and now I'm finishing up with adjustments to the sync algorithms and stimulus event handlers."

"Uh-huh," Desmond said, putting up a pretense that he'd understood her technical jargon.

"Then I'm gonna run a final debug. Should have it up and running by tomorrow morning." She turned to face Desmond again. "Who d'ya think should be the first guinea pig on this new setup?"

He thought for a brief moment before answering. "Dad, I guess. He's the only other one of us who's ever even been in an Animus before. I mean, it was a hell of a shock to the system the first time I used the thing. So, he'll at least be kinda used to it? Maybe?"

"Hmm. Good idea," Rebecca said, "but that wouldn't be a proper test of allogenetic syncing."

"Of what now?" Oops, there went the pretense of understanding.

"Allogenetic syncing," she repeated. "Reliving memories from someone else's genes. The Kenways are on Bill's side of your family tree, so him being able to relive those memories wouldn't tell me anything about whether this new functionality works."

"Oh. Right, derr." Desmond scuffed his shoe idly along one of the floor tiles. "Well, I dunno, then. I would say you should go in, 'cause you know how everything works, but you probly wanna be the one monitoring whoever it is, so. Eh."

Rebecca shrugged. "We'll just go in alphabetical order then. That makes Colin first."

Just then, Andrew sneezed, the involuntary motion jerking his whole head forward and back.

"Aw, how cuuuute!" Rebecca squealed. She got up from her chair to observe the cuteness more closely. "Where's his carrier?"

"In his room- fff- I mean in our room. I just..." Desmond broke eye contact with her, looking down at his little boy. "I dunno, I like to actually hold him sometimes. The carrier's nice and all, for when I need to use my hands, but, y'know, actually holding him... It's a whole 'nother feeling. It's like we're more connected this way, y'know?" Then he smirked. "Geez. I'm getting all sentimental and crap. Promise me something, Becca?"

"What?"

"If you hear me using baby talk, slap me upside the head, all right?"

"Whaaat?"

"You heard me. All the hugging and holding stuff is one thing, but baby talk, y'know, 'ohh you're such a wuvey widdle babykins, wet's changey your diapey', that sort of nonsense..." He trailed off and shook his head. "Fucking stupid."

Rebecca shrugged. "Whatever you say, Dadmond."

Before he could protest the nickname, Andrew sneezed again, and Desmond's mood shifted to concern. "Aw, geez. All day he's been doing that. Sneezing at random times. I better take him to Stacey, get this checked out."

"I think his nostrils were just a bit clogged," Stacey said. "Nothing to worry about."

Desmond furrowed his brow at this. "You think."

Stacey passed Andrew back to him. "Well, it might be a very mild cold. He doesn't have a fever or anything, though, so I doubt it."

"Well... You're sure it's not asthma or something chronic like that?" Desmond thought of little sickly Petrucchio Auditore.

"I don't think so?" Stacey said, sounding way too unsure for Desmond's comfort. "At his age, diagnosing something like that would be hard."

He sighed and looked down at Andrew. "Well, if he's asthmatic or whatever, I guess there's nothing I can do about it, huh? Serves me right, I probly caused it."

"Caused it? How would you have caused it?"

Desmond's mouth pulled tight into an almost-frown. "You know. From, like, something I did before he was born. Probly the drinking."

"You had one beer, okay? I don't think one beer-"

"It wasn't just one beer!" he cut in. "We went to some bar in São Paulo, and I had a couple of those lime green deals, those caiper-whatevers."

"Oh. Well, that was before you knew you were pregnant."

"No duh, but I still was."

"Relax, Desmond," she said with a smile. "Andrew seems perfectly healthy, so there's no point in beating yourself up about what you drank before he was born."

Desmond was silent a moment, gently bobbing his arms up and down, eliciting burbles of amusement from Andrew. "Well... maybe we'll be lucky and the booze won't have affected him... Or maybe we won't be lucky and he'll turn out autistic or something."

She shrugged. "It's possible, but I don't think prenatal alcohol exposure causes autism. I think it's genetic."

"Argh. Of course it is. Everything's about genes, isn't it. Genes, genes, genes, the cause of every problem in my life. Well, thanks for your time. See you at his one-month checkup. " Desmond got up and started to leave.

"I'm glad you decided to love him, Desmond."

He paused in the doorway. "I didn't really decide that, Stacey. Sure, I decided to keep him and take care of him... But the 'love' part..." He turned around, revealing a smile budding across his face. "That just happened spontaneously."

August 26, 2013

The first trial of the allegenetic syncing function drew an anxious audience that nearly filled the Animus workroom. This would be the first time Desmond saw the Animus in action from this side of things. He eyed Rebecca's multi-monitor setup with newfound fascination. One screen displayed a jumble of code alongside a DNA timeline, which looked different than any of the ones he'd navigated, but was still recognizable as such. A second screen was blank save for the words "NO MEMORY IN PROGRESS", and a third screen had a program running to monitor Colin's vital signs.

"Sure hope this works," Spencer said. "Don't want to have to go break into Abstergo again."

Desmond looked at him quizzically. "Huh? Why would we hafta do that?"

Rebecca answered for him. "We thought we'd have to steal those blood samples, because your DNA might not have Edward's memories anymore since Juno fucked around with it, but actually I was able to sidestep that whole issue." She tapped a finger on the timeline screen to point out the words "MilesDesmond. ddna" near the top. "I pulled the backup file from when you were reliving Ezio, which is built off your pre-pregnant DNA, so we're using that as the source."

"Nifty." Desmond shifted in his seat and adjusted Andrew in his arms. "What's the extra D for?"

Rebecca shrugged. "I didn't invent the extension. You'd have to ask Vidic."

"But he's dead now," Colin said cheerily from the Animus chair. "So I guess we'll never know the secret of the extra D."

"Enough talk," William said. "Every minute we waste is another minute Abstergo's getting ahead of us."

"Let's get to it, then," Rebecca said. "Right, Col, keep your head still, I'll make sure the system has a good connection."

Colin gulped quietly and stared at the ceiling. Desmond watched a bead of sweat run down his face. Then his eyes went unfocused and an image loaded on the previously-blank monitor.

"Everything seems to be in order. How d'ya feel?" Rebecca asked.

Onscreen, Colin's avatar looked around the white room, then down at his hands. Meanwhile, in the real world, his body remained motionless, except his mouth, which said, "This is bizarre."

"You get used to it," Desmond said, then chuckled when Colin's avatar looked up into the "sky" in a vain attempt to locate the speaker. "You get used to hearing voices outta nowhere too."

"Just so long as you don't start hearing voices after you exit the thing," Spencer said.

"He shouldn't," said William. "None of us should, as long as we stick to the three-hour limit. And need I remind you, that's a firm limit. No exceptions, do you hear me, Miss Crane?"

"Not gonna happen, I promise," Rebecca said, crossing her fingers over her heart. "Okay, let's start you off with a training sequence so you can get your bearings before we jump into Edward."

The white void onscreen was replaced by silvery walls. Desmond recognized this as the same thing he'd gone through before the first memory of Haytham.

"Make your way to the marker... okay, now try climbing these objects... whoops, no prob, Col, just try it again," she said with a smile when he lost his grip and fell.

"C'mon, dude, you know how to climb!" Desmond mock-taunted him.

"I know, but in here it's... it's not the same... it's bizarre!"

Colin eventually got past the climbing portion and the freerunning portion. "Next up, we got some enemies to assassinate," said Rebecca as two foppish-looking guards in tricorn hats materialized a short distance away from him.

Colin gulped again. "Oh boy."

"It's just like in real life, Col," Desmond said.

"I've never done it in real life!"

Desmond blinked. "Well... there's a first time for everything, isn't there, Andrew?"

Spencer gave Desmond an odd look. "Why you asking him?"

"'Cause talking to your baby helps him learn to talk faster," Desmond said, as if it should have been obvious.

William snapped his fingers impatiently. "Let's focus, please. Mr. McCorquodale, you've got a Hidden Blade in there, correct?"

Colin's avatar looked down at his wrist. "Oh. So I do. Was that there before?"

"Who cares, you've got it now," Desmond said. "Just use those sneaky sneaking skills of yours and stab those dudes before they even know you're there."

Colin flexed his wrist to test the mechanism, seemingly surprised when it worked and the blade actually shot out. "Well, here I go." Without retracting the blade, he slowly sidled up to one of the virtual guards, held his breath, and thrust his arm out, slicing through the dirty yellow uniform and staining it with red.

"Way to go, Col!" hooted Rebecca.

Both Colin's avatar and his actual body smiled ecstatically.

Andrew made a small gurgling sound and a brief thought flitted through Desmond's mind about whether it was appropriate for a baby to witness people being killed, even virtually. "I, uh... I'm gonna go put Andrew down for a nap."

"Don't go!" shouted Colin. "I might need more of your Animus Expert advice!"

"You'll be fine," Desmond assured him. "But here's one last tip: Your yelling just alerted that other guard."

Colin spun around and put up his arm just in time to deflect a sword with the bracer of his Hidden Blade. "Fuck! Help!"

"He's left his gut exposed, get 'im there!" Spencer said, jabbing a finger on the screen.

"Hands off the hardware!" Rebecca yanked Spencer's arm away as Colin socked the guard in the stomach. The punch was weak, but in this practice program, the foes were weak too, and he staggered backward hyperbolically, affording Colin the opportunity to land another fatal blow with his Hidden Blade.

Desmond covered Andrew's innocent blue eyes and pulled himself away from the Animus room with a touch of regret. "C'mon kiddo, let's go do something more age-appropriate," he said quietly. "How about more Alice in Wonderland, huh? What weird hijinks is she gonna get up to next?"