Chapter Twenty Six: Repairs, Reality and Two Rommies

A/N: People, I'm going back to school tomorrow. The summer holidays are over, and my access to my computer is now limitted, 'cause my mum is kinda stiff about not letting me and my sister on the 'puter until homework and studying etc has been done. (I don't mind. I actually kinda need it, 'cause it's my standard grade exams this year, which means I'll actually need to study). But anyway, udates are gonna slow a little bit. They'll keep coming, but they're gonna be kinda iregular (more so than they already, I mean.) Anyway, enjoy this!

In the deep dark of the Maru's under belly, Harper had discovered paradise.

Cold, gloomy, head-ache inducing paradise.

"This is the coolest thing I have ever seen," he declared, pointing at teseract drive.

Shailen, crouched in the middle of a myriad of smoked-out parts a few feet away, looked up and grinned, "told ya."

"I think I'm starting to see how it works," Harper went on, examining some wiring in a panel on a lower section of the teseract drive's base. He was avoiding looking up into the swirling vortex of the core. It was bound to make him nauseous.

"It's less complicated than it looks," Shailen said, chewing distractedly on the end of a nano-welder, "it's just the concepts you gotta get your mind round first. Really, it's just tryin' to make your brain get what you're looking at, rather than makin' it work."

"Shailen, how many times?!" The future Rommie cried, observing from the sidelines as she sorted through a pile of scrap to be made into new parts, "don't chew the nanowelders! That's very, very dangerous!"

Shialen looked abashed, "sorry, Rommie." He put the nanowelder aside and picked up a blackened tube of some sort, then let out a distraught wail, "not the back-burn slider! She was my favourite! We'll never fix her now!"

"Calm down!" Future-Rommie retorted, thrusting a green-tinted white strand of hair behind an ear to keep it out of the way. "She may have been your baby, Shailen, but she's replaceable. It'll just be… harder."

Shialen only howled his frustration, cradling the broken part to his chest. "You don't understand! She was my favourite!"

"He sounds like you, Harper," the present Rommie observed, appearing round the side of the teseract drive, from where she had been studying the base design.

"Hey, kid lost a part," Harper shrugged, "it's harsh, but it happens. You gotta learn to deal with these things, you know? Can of Sparky Cola always cheers me right up."

"Sparky Cola?" Shailen instantly perked up at the mention of his poison of choice.

"No!" Future-Rommie interrupted before the child could get hold of the can Harper was offering him. "Shailen, you used up your quotient for a week this morning!"

"But I want the sparky…" Shailen moaned, pitifully holding out his hands to the drink.

Future-Rommie folded her arms, "I couldn't stop Harper burning holes through his stomach with that stuff, but I am going to stop you."

"Trust me," the present Rommie reappeared again, "you don't want Harper's stomach lining."

"My stomach is made of bio-metal!" Shailen protested, "you couldn't burn holes through it with hydrochloric acid!"

"Bio-metal or no bio-metal," future-Rommie shook her head, "sparky cola is not something you should be drinking in such huge portions. It's bad for your teethe, and that's before we get started on the wrest of your intestines. Not to mention your abilities to reproduce!"

"Yeuch! Gross!" Shailen made a face, "thanks a lot, mom."

Future-Rommie stayed firmly between the boy and the sparky cola, eyebrows raised in her best 'no way in hell' expression. But inside, she flinched, then sighed regretfully. How come he only ever called her that when he was annoyed?

Shailen let out an exaggerated groan of frustration and stood up, stomping off to retrieve another spare part from his tool kit.

Present-Rommie dusted herself off and went to stand next to her future counter part. Her future self was watching the departing back of the boy with a kind of maternal pride that was worrying the first android. Since when did an AI get maternal? It was a human emotion, and she didn't like to think of herself ever feeling that way.

Because she wasn't human. And she never would be.

But, then again, her senses were scrambled, and all her read-outs were out of sink. It was partly the space-time anomaly that had placed two of her into the same time zone, and partly the residual effects of the teseract drive. She didn't like being so close to something which simply refused to be defined. It was irritating of it not to allow itself to be categorised.

Safe to say, Rommie wasn't sure who or what or where or even when she was, right then. Her sensors could no longer be trusted to tell her. She suddenly missed her core AI, and wished vehemently to be away from this place, where she could feel her 'other' selves, pressed lightly against her consciousness. Comforting, safe and warm, even if they were annoying rational at times.

"You miss them, even here," Future-Rommie observed, calmly interrupted her younger self's musings.

Present-Rommie blinked, "who?"
Her counterpart only smiled, "don't pretend to me. I know you. I am you. We both know how our mind works. You miss your core, even when she is this close by. Only the teseract drive blocks her, and you still feel the loss."

"So?" Present-Rommie demanded, a little defensively.

Future-Rommie tucked another strand of hair behind her ear, "I have lived with that feeling for over six years. You have no idea how it feels to watch yourself die."

"Are you trying to warn me of an impending apocalypse or just attempting to 'psyche me out', as Harper would put it?" Present-Rommie asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm telling you to be careful," future-Rommie answered, simply.

Present-Rommie looked away, to where Shailen was helping Harper adjust some kind of wiring on the drive base. She looked back at her counterpart. "What is he, anyway?"

"Shailen?"

"You know how our mind works."

The future-Rommie smirked, "he is a boy."
Present-Rommie rolled her eyes, "oh, come on! You know as well as I do that that child is not a normal human. I've scanned his body. The entire right side of his brain is basically a computer chip! Half his internal organs, his right arm, his feet, his left eye; they're all mechanical parts. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that he was…"

"What?" Future-Rommie tipped her head to one side, coolly, "half android?"

The present-Rommie was brought up short. No… no… surely not… "ye-es…" she agreed, hesitantly.

Future-Rommie looked genuinely curious, "does it frighten you that at some point into the future, a way might actually be discovered for an AI to reproduce with an organic?" She toyed with a strand of hair, "I know this is probably around the stage we were still trying to figure out how human we were, what being an avatar meant, what being an AI was… I suppose I figured that out a long time ago… or perhaps… perhaps I just stopped caring. I am Rommie. I love my children. It stops mattering after that."

Present-Rommie shook her head. How could it not matter? And… and… was she telling the truth? Reproduction? With an organic? That was impossible. That was completely and totally impossible. AI's couldn't reproduce, period. It was just… it didn't happen.

Now she really did want her AI core, if only to back her up.

"Are you trying to tell me that an avatar managed to reproduce with a human?" Present-Rommie demanded.

"In a manner of speaking," the future-Rommie shrugged. "Shailen is what he is. Make of it what you will."

"You even talk differently from me!" Rommie cried, "what happened to you? I mean… me. Us. You know what I mean! How did we, you, end up… like you! We are nothing like each other, and you're telling me I'll one day become you?"

"Well, hopefully not," Future-Rommie shrugged. "We are hear to try to prevent our own future from coming into existence, after all."

"But how…" Present-Rommie ran out of words and was left waving her hands in a helpless sort of manner, forced to resort to gesticulation to try to get across the magnitude of what this Rommie had become.

Future-Rommie smiled, "try raising six psychologically messed up children on your own for six years. It does things to you. Don't worry. The maternal instinct isn't quite as bad as we feared it would be. And I get to feel warm and fuzzy a little more often than I used. It's rewarding, in a bleak and despairing kind of way."

"Wonderful," Present-Rommie replied, flatly.

"Hey, peeps!" Hannah suddenly appeared in the entrance of the Maru, carrying a tray, "you guys feel like some food?"

"Hang on!" Shialen yelled, from round one side of the teseract machine.

"It's so-lid…" Hannah sing-songed, wafting the tray in the general direction of the ten year old.

Shailen promptly leapt into view, "solid food? Actual, real, solid food with taste and smell and stickiness?!"

"Grub's up, kiddo," Hannah held out the tray to him.

Shailen lunged for the tray, grabbed the plate from it, dropped into a crouched and began bolting down the food as if he were afraid someone would take it from it. Future-Rommie hastily straightened, "Hey! Hey! Slow down! Chew, for God's sake! You'll choke!"

"I'm okay!" Shailen replied, through a mouthful. He paused, suddenly, looking back to where Harper was still fiddling, "hey, you want some, Harper?"

Harper waved him off, "Na, I ate this morning, I'm fine."

"Harper…" Present-Rommie reprehended, gently, "you have to eat."

"I'm fine, Rom-doll," Harper didn't stop what he was doing. "I promise I'll eat after I'm done with this bit. I just got to do a little more over here…"

"How's stuff looking down here?" Hope arrived behind Hannah, glancing around at the curiously glowing room.

"Look, Hope!" Shailen jumped up, brandishing a chicken wing, "solid food!"

"I know, kid, that's great," Hope waved him off, "but how's the teseract drive?"

"Oh, right," Shailen went back to chomping on his food, and started talking between mouthfuls, "well, the good news," chomp, "is that," chomp, chomp, "by my reckoning," swallow, "we're only… four years out of sink with where we needed to be." Chomp, chomp, "you can chalk that down," chomp, "to Khayos. He's good." Swallow, "unfortunately," chomp, "teseract drive has lost," chomp, "mosta it's parts," chomp, chomp, swallow, "we can replace 'em," chomp, "but it'll take time," chomp, "my guess… like a month," chomp, swallow, chomp, "if we work really fast an' nothing goes wrong." He put aside his chicken wing and picked up another. "That's my best offer, boss."

Hope groaned, "a month?"

"Well, we're screwed," Hannah remarked, rather unhelpfully.

Hope put a hand over his eyes, "Shailen, we have to get out of here quicker than that. The longer we stay, the more messed up the time-space continuum gets. The fabric of reality can't cope with two Rommie's in the same time, let alone two of me. It'll start to pull apart within a couple of weeks. We have to get of here before seven days are up or we are all toast!"

"I get that," Shailen rolled his eyes, "but there's nothing I can do! I'm a super-genius, child-prodigy, all knowing, all powerful, yadda, yadda. But I'm not a freakin' God! The teseract drive ain't just a machine, it's organic, it changes and it has moods and fixin' it is like micro-surgery! One slip, and ca-bloowy! Good by reality! It takes time!"

"Which is precisely what we don't have," Hope sighed.

Hannah grinned her feral grin, "ironic, huh?"

"Hannah, seriously, not a good time to be flippant."

"Since when is it ever? If reality is about to spontaneously combust because of us, we might as well laugh while we can." Hannah seemed unfazed.

Hope flung his arms up in despair, "alright! Great! Keep working! Work fast! Pull one of your miracles out of the bag! But move quickly! I'll go and tell the venerable captain Hunt to baton down the hatches, 'cause the universe is going down the plug hole!"

"No one said this would be easy," Hannah shrugged and bounded after Hope as he strode back out of the room.

Shailen and Harper looked at one another, then at the two Rommies.

"I'm thinking we should be getting to work," Harper suggested.

"Good idea," Shailen agreed, dropping his food.