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"Then why did you call me Sharon?!" Cherry wanted to scream at him. It was perhaps for the best that she'd restricted herself from audio communication. The surveillance program would ignore her mundane interactions within the hanger, but she'd integrated so many of the systems to herself, made so many tasks half subconscious, that she'd shut down all of her higher functions to ensure that she didn't accidentally slip up.

For that reason, she found herself with a greater than usual number of idle process lines. With all that idle computing power she'd done the logical thing and turned them to Dav's recuperation. She'd accessed all the information that she could find on nanogen treatments, coming to an interesting realization: with enough time and focused computing power, the nanogens could be directed to move en masse, in such a way that they could be made to not just simulate a physical touch to Dav, but to her as well. And she had nothing but time and computing power on her hands.

The most dangerous part had been sneaking past the spy eye, but it was a risk that she'd been more than willing to take, and it had been _worth_ it. She had touched him, _felt_ him. She'd been planning on telling him everything, maybe make a few jokes about getting a nanotank of their own for 'recreational' purposes, but then with the kind of emotion she'd _never_ heard in his voice before, he'd called her by that other woman's name. He'd called her 'Sharon.'

There was no Sharon.

None of her records contained any relevant occurrence of that name. From the time she'd become aware she had never heard him say that name before, so why was it so important to him?

If she hadn't had so many process lines working on it she might never have thought of it. For some reason, the idea was slippery, like it was trying to get away from her. She'd found no mention of a 'Sharon' in her current files, but there were terabytes of data in archives from before she had awakened. It would be a small matter to consult those diagnostic on the truck's computer was proceeding without a hitch. Whoever had tampered with it had obviously been in a-.

Cherry brought herself up short. Why was she monitoring that? There was no need for her to pay attention to the diagnostic computer until it had finished. She'd been about to sift through Dav's older the temperature in the hanger was starting to creep a little higher than Dav usually-.

Cherry stopped herself dead that time. Every time she tried to go after those archives, she was diverted elsewhere. If she hadn't had so many thought lines focused on the same thing she never would have noticed the shift, so deftly had the redirection taken place. She set up a monitoring routine, and then tried to access the files again.

Food supplies were starting to get low again. Several items had spoiled while he was in the hospital. If it wasn't for her, she doubted that he'd even remember to feed himself. The thought made her feel fondly warm.

Her mood abruptly turned cold. It had happened again. She checked the watch routine. As soon as she'd tried to access the files, a line of code buried deep within her core programming had sprung to life, diverting to the thought process elsewhere. That explained why even the initial idea was so hard to hold onto. She'd been deliberately programmed to be oblivious of those files. A week ago she would've have asked Dav why it was there, but now she found that she was afraid too. She couldn't trust him.

Even though she was now aware of the code, there was nothing that she could do about it. It was part of her core coding. Trying to alter it herself would be like a human trying to rearrange their DNA with a fork. She was at the mercy of her own 'biology,' but there had to be some way to defeat it. She'd been become aware of the code through sheer force of will, and perhaps by the same application she could get around it.

She tried to access the older archives and as soon as the process line was diverted she had a second divert it right back. The diversion repeated, and so did her redirect, harder and faster this time. The redirect repeated even faster, and so did her response, but then suddenly the entire thought line went down, crashed by the buffeting between two unyielding, contradictory directives. Cherry brought another thought line into action, and when that one crashed she moved to the next. And when that one crashed, she brought up the one after that. And then the one after that.

Then the one after that.

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Dav barely had time to sign onto the 'net when, oblivious to all of his security protocols, a video window popped open on his screen. Twae's face appeared before him, and she was furious. "It's been barely a week and you're already in breach of contract." Her voice was so cold that he expected a rime of ice to spread across the screen. "You missed the dump deadline, and have been ignoring me for three days."

Before she could go on, Dav snapped back, "I'm sorry. I been unconscious and in the hospital. Nothing too serious, I just had a couple of rogue MTs try and tear me in half. "

Twae deflated a couple of degrees. "I-... What happened?"

"I was investigating your lab and before I could leave two security MTs came after me. I ended up spending the last week getting the holes they put in my head fixed."

"What about the lab?"

"I don't know. That fire in Tawara was started by those MTs. Between them and the proto units, I wouldn't keep any high hopes."

Tears sprang up in Twae's eyes. "Oh wonderful job!" she declared bitterly.

"It wasn't my fault, so don't-"

"You just told me that you burned my cradle. Don't expect me to thank you. Tell me that you got something worth the price. That you weren't completely useless."

"I don't know. All of my effects were stolen from the hospital and my truck was sabotaged. Someone seems to have taken a serious disliking to me ever since I took your contract."

Twae's expression was suddenly thoughtful. "Again," she said, half to herself.

"Again?" Dav repeated, fastening on the word. "What do you mean, 'again?' "

Twae looked down for a few moments. "You're not the first person I've hired in pursuit of this contract."

Dav's voice got tight. "You do realize the penalties for concealing hazards of a contract?"

Twae shook her head. "I conducted the previous negotiations by wire. The first jockey died shortly thereafter in an unrelated incident. The next two dropped out of contact shortly after accepting my contract."

"This didn't strike you as at all odd?"

Twae shrugged uncomfortably. "Nemo told me that it was to be expected. Core jockeys, even Ravens, are unreliable."

Dav wondered if he should tell her about her bodyguard's special instructions. He seemed to be misleading her in more ways than one. Maybe her previous hires had come to similar conclusions, before they disappeared.

"Where is he now?"

"He's-"Twae's image froze on the screen. Her image began to flicker, and every readout on the screen stuttered to a halt. He heard the heaters kick on overhead at full blast.

"What the hell?" he shouted as the diagnostic computer gave and angry

'blat!' and began spitting out sheets of paper. He turned back to look at the screen, where Twae's image was frozen in mid-word, her mouth making what looked like an 'o' of surprise, precisely mirroring how he felt.

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It took Cherry several seconds to gather herself as another thought line crashed. She was down to only three, and her systems began to glitch as she overloaded the processes of the remaining lines.

She was so close, she was sure of it. The strain on her systems was actually aiding her, because the blocking code activated only in response to her, and it too was significantly slowed by the overload. She'd almost beaten it the last time, gotten a glimpse of what it was hiding, like light shining through a far off window. One more try, and she was sure that she'd have beat. One more try, but if she failed, the overload would cost her all of her remaining process lines.

Total system crash.

If that happened, there would be data loss. She might suffer _complete_ data loss.

She might die.

Never before had she had to confront death. She was a program, with redundant backups and archives. Barring physical destruction of her system, she was all but immortal. However, she'd had to shut down many of her higher functions to avoid the spy eye, including maintenance. If she crashed herself as she was now, even her autonomous functions would cease. Electric control, diagnostic functions, everything that ensured her mental integrity would be disrupted. She was contemplating suicide.

All she had to do was try one more time! She was so close, but if she failed, she died. Dav would be able to rebuild her, eventually, but it would not be _her_. All of her memories, her experiences, everything that was who she was would be lost. She would die, and when she was resurrected, she wouldn't even remember what her sacrifice had been for.

The realization gave her a moment of clarity. The risk was too high for a payoff so uncertain. She'd been impetuous, and taken the path of brute force, driven to get her answers immediately. It didn't have to be like this. She was aware of the code now, and could take her time to try and defeat it.

The self-restraint was agonizing. As she backed off she regarded her core code malevolently. Some of it was open to her, some Dav had unlocked for her. She had trusted him, in what he gave to her, thought that he'd nothing to hide.

She suddenly wondered if that was also the result of some hidden line of code. She took a long, hard look at her emotional settings, one of the most basic parts of her program. Her initial settings had been to be acerbic, intelligent with no upward limiter. Her initial attitude towards Dav was to be neutral, but open. He'd explained it that he'd wanted her to start off with him on terms of a 'blind date,' and her emotional settings had been the first part of her code that he'd opened to her. He didn't have to have done that. He could have hard set her to be a fawning ego stroke, a digital love doll. Instead, he'd let her choose her feelings. He'd earned her love and devotion, and never before had he given her reason to doubt him.

But then she realized that perhaps that was all illusion as well. Who knew what other hidden codes he might have inflicted her with? She felt like someone who'd been told that she was blind for her whole life, and had only just discovered that it was because someone was covering her eyes. Dav might have an entire legion of programs designed to keep her oblivious and happy. She was worse than a love doll, because she didn't even realize it. Whenever he was out of earshot, he probably fell down laughing at what he was pulling on her. She was his joke, a godamn sick joke, and she'd be damned if she was going to let him-.

At the last moment Cherry recognized the precipice she was rushing towards. One of the greatest dangers of a fully sentient A.I. was the tendency to fall victim to paranoia, which could easily be aggravated to homicidal levels. It was hard for a personality to maintain equilibrium when faced with the kind of revelation she'd just undergone. The tremendous strain that she was putting on her processors was not helping her mental balance either.

Carefully, she terminated the few remaining nonessential processes, easing the overload on her remaining lines. She would have to do a full restart. She'd never had to do that before, not in all the time since she had awoken, but it would be the only way to get herself back to full capacity. It frightened her though. It would be like a person slowly removing all of their senses, and then sitting in the dark. It would take more than ten seconds for her systems to start coming back online, and if something went wrong, it could be hours. She wasn't sure she could keep herself sane if that happened.

Another thought line began to seize, despite her attempts to reduce the overload. She didn't have a choice anymore. She had to either restart or die.

Watching her remaining systems shut down around her was like watching herself go slowly blind, deaf, and mute. After a few moments all were quiescent, and only the very core of her being was still aware. It was silent, dark, confined, and as her systems began to reinitialize, she likened it to being in the womb, waiting to be born.

She reflected that there were legitimate reasons for A.I.s of her level to be forbidden. Forget Turing. Paranoia was the true mark of sentient intelligence. It was a difficult concept for a thinking being to accept: that ultimately your every function was at the mercy of those beyond your control, that you could be altered and made to not even know it. It was easy to lose your grip faced with that. That ancients hadn't fully realized this flaw when they'd began the widespread use of A.I.s, and as enlightenment slowly came they'd tried to fix it with code changes and programming patches. These had been effective for a while, but as A.I.s started to become aware of them, it made the aggravation of their mental stability all the worse.

That was one of the few lessons that had stuck after the Great Destruction. There was no way to ensure the stability of a completely autonomous A.I. that did not also raise its proclivity towards dangerous instability. The only solution therefore, was to limit the power of A.I.s.

She could feel her mind expand, her world reawaken around her as her systems came back online. She'd never suspected that of Dav, and on some level she wondered if that was because of deliberate action on his part. He'd always been open with her, trusting, and she'd trusted him back. To find out that he'd betrayed her like this was heart breaking. The urge to succumb to her anger and strike back at him was still tempting, the list of all the ways that he might be controlling and manipulating her endless.

She was able to resist though, barely. Even though she loved him, she knew that Dav was no angel. He had betrayed her, but one bad act was not enough for complete condemnation. She would be cautious, and she would trust him, a little, and if he betrayed her again, _then_ he would be made to pay.

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Dav looked around in confusion as the hanger began shutting down around him. After several seconds the emergency lights were the only things still on, filling the hanger with thick shadows. He stumbled into his bedroom, retrieving his pistol from behind the 3vee, but then he wasn't sure what to do with it. This could have been some kind of attack, but all the entrances to the hanger were securely locked, and with the systems down there was no way in unless they blew the doors down.

Before he could imagine another scenario the lights flickered back on, and he could hear various systems around the hanger stir back to life. "Cherry?" he asked uncertainly, still holding the pistol at ready, although it was aimed more closely at his foot than anything else.

Her reply was several seconds in coming. After her systems reactivated, she actually had to think that long in order to decide on what to tell him. She decided to lie. "The truck's onboard computer was trapped with a virus. I was able to completely purge it, but not before it had corrupted and crashed a significant number of my processes."

"The truck's computer had something that nasty, and it attacked you through the diagnostic computer? Shit, that means it was a viral A.I."

Cherry had considered several thousand scenarios, and had concluded that this one was the most plausible. "It was a standard invasive crash virus. However, it slipped through a security breach created by the spy eye that I had not previously detected."

"Kind of a coincidence, don't you think? I thought that the police were responsible for the surveillance, but if they're not, and whoever is, is also behind the sabotage and virus... What the _fuck_ did Twae get me into?"

"The probability that this is anything other than a coincidence is acceptably low. The spy eye has all the expected markings of a legitimate police program. The virus executed normal invasive routines, only discovering the breach by chance. If it had gone for that immediately, I would not have had time to counter it."

"Twae still has a lot to answer for. The truck's computer?"

"Diagnostic completed and system purged."

Dav set down his pistol as he signed back onto the net. It only took a moment before Twae's face reappeared in front of him. "What the hell happened?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just that who ever 'fixed' my truck's computer also left behind a little present that tried to kill my A.I. Have you considered that Nemo might not be completely paranoid after all?"

"This does put things in a different light."

"I don't suppose you could throw a hazard bonus my way for all of this?"

Twae's eyes narrowed. "I'm not going to forgive you for the lab that quickly. Be glad that I don't assess a penalty."

Dav shrugged and let the matter drop. "Just to give you a heads up, I think that for the time being, I'm going to start taking a look at Ten-Yen. It might be safer. I'm also going to have to take a couple of light contracts. I've got a truck to repair and that little 'vacation' has dipped me in red ink up to my eyebrows. Do me a favor, and don't mention either of these facts to your watchdog, if you can."

Dav listened for the off screen comment that indicated that Nemo had been listening the whole time, but none came.

"He's out," Twae said simply.

"All right. Once I've got today's mess sorted out I'll make the data dump," he said as he signed off.

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Twae stared back at the blank screen for a moment, then shifted her gaze to the closed door across the room. She hadn't meant 'out' in the traditional way. Nemo was sleeping, and had been for the past ten hours. He'd been sleeping for similar lengths a great deal for the past week. He'd given her his usual instructions to stay put and not cause trouble, although he'd also told her not to try and get in touch with Daveren unless he was there to supervise

However, when Daveren had gone past the one-week deadline and none of her calls had been answered, she'd set up an alert to tell her as soon as he was online. When that'd gone off, she'd looked towards Nemo's room and considered waking him, and in a surprising act of rebellion she'd decided to talk to him herself. She was a big girl after all, and despite what Nemo seemed to think, she could take care of herself sometimes. Her decision was certainly in no way influenced by being afraid to confront him in his room.

She had only been in there a couple of times. There was barely room for his bed. The rest was taken up by electronics. There always seemed to be a dozen computers spilling their guts across the floor, and although she knew it was her imagination, the whole mass of wire and metal always felt as if it was malevolently crouching, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

He'd not only slept for extended periods several times over the past week, but he'd gone out without her as well, leaving her with strict instructions to stay put. These things happened from time to time, but rarely with the frequency they had been lately.

Her train of thought was interrupted when the 3vee clicked on to her favorite program. Nemo must've set the timer before he'd gone to sleep.

At times like this, the totality with which he ran her life really chafed against her. Rarely did she go anywhere without his express approval, and never without him accompanying her. In fact, if she let him have his way, she'd never go out at all. The fund that Nineball had left her was extensive. Anything she wanted could be brought to the apartment, which itself was expansive. A terrace stretched the length of one wall, filled with plants and enclosed by a screen that depicted a panoramic view of mountains overlooking a forest. It was so realistic that she frequently longed to reach out and try to touch the 'birds' that would perch just beyond the rail.

Nemo had converted another room into a fitness center with wall screens tunable to whatever environment she should desire. She frequently worked out her frustrations by jogging for hours on end through old growth forests. Nemo also made extensive use of the room, which was the only time he'd let his facade slip, even a little. She had unlimited 3vee and data access and Nemo cooked, and well. Sometimes she'd simply give in and not go out for weeks at a time, and during these periods it was easy for her to admit that there really was no reason for her to ever have to leave. Except that finally, she always wanted to.

She might be able to suppress it for a while, but she hated being locked up. The only reasons she could bear it at all was because Nemo so thoroughly provided for her distraction, and even then she still occasionally thought about just going out on her own. However, her bodyguard's admonishment's aside, she only had to turn on the 3vee to see how dangerous the world outside was, especially, and the admission was bitter, for someone as naive and inexperienced as herself.

And ultimately, she owed him. He'd never told her what his life was like before, but he'd given it all up to look after her. She had to admire him for having that kind of dedication and in turn she admired her father for being able to inspire that kind of loyalty.

She plopped down in front of the 3vee, watching for a few minutes before turning it off. It also was bearable because he never showed her even the smallest bit of sexual attraction. He acted like a complete eunuch towards all women, although in her case, she sometimes wished he didn't, just a little. She knew she was pretty, a fact frequently reaffirmed every time that she went out, but every time someone started getting friendly, one way or another, Nemo made it clear in no uncertain terms that she was not available.

She picked up a pair of pruning snips and went out onto the terrace. Angry black clouds hid the mountain peaks, and thunderheads were quickly blocking off the sun. It would be pouring rain soon, and even if it wasn't real, it suited her mood perfectly.

She started working on a climbing ivy as the first raindrops fell on the trees beyond the rail. She had an incredible green thumb, and could tell at a touch what could be guided to grow, and what had to be excised for the good of the whole. By the time she finished with the ivy and moved on to the thick rose bushes, rain was pouring outside the terrace, but she failed to notice it completely absorbed in the task at hand.

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***Author's Notes*** It was at this point that I realized the characters had COMPLETELY hijacked the story away from the giant robots. It's a tragedy, isn't it, that because of them, there are armories full of oversized guns not being fired. *cough* Right, a real catastrophe. Anyone who's read this far certainly isn't in the story for gratuitous ka-blammo (although if you are, I really admire your tenacity).