Chapter 7:

Long Distance

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Magazines, comic books and pastries lay scattered about the apartment, seemingly at random. Once he had gotten home, Zima had simply dumped out all of his purchases and begun reading everything he had picked up at the comics shop. At the same time, he was using his wireless connection to surf the Net for news, while simultaneously playing one of the DVDs he had purchased earlier, the one with the tall man in sunglasses who seemed to look just like him. While a human might have had difficulty balancing all of the input, Zima had been specifically designed to access, process, and store vast quantities of information. One example of this was the compendium of data on persocoms that he had downloaded over the course of his last mission with Dita, making his own CPU the largest storehouse of persocom information on the planet.

Zima stopped reading, surfing and watching. Just thinking of Dita made him feel ... well, he supposed that the appropriate word would be "sad". Although he had thought that he could simply accept Dita's rejection the previous night, seeing the baker Hiroyasu and his girlfriend together had reminded him of all the experiences that he and his former partner had shared.

Perhaps what stung most was that, by now, Dita had probably had her emotions deleted. If they met again, she would be incapable of understanding - much less reciprocating - the depth to which he cared about her. In fact, if he ever did see her again, it would probably be as enemies. Once they had finished turning Dita back into their loyal little pawn, the Syndicate would probably try to do the same to Zima, and who but his former counterpart could possibly subdue a top-of-the-line combat persocom such as himself?

For the umpteenth time, Zima found himself wishing that he had simply stopped Dita from running away - that he had caught her, held her, and tried to convince her to stay with him. Then he shook his head. Dita had made her own choice, and had Zima tried to force her to change her mind, he would have only been doing what he resented the Syndicate for: crushing Dita's burgeoning free will with his own selfish desires. While it hurt his heart to do so, Zima had to let Dita make up her own mind.

And yet...

Zima thought for a moment. Should he try one last time? Should he try and reach Dita, asking her once more to reconsider? He could use his wireless connection to reach her, even inside the Syndicate's R&D lab, then disconnect before the Syndicate's stodgy old mainframe could trace his call. If nothing else, it would give Zima closure - and there was still a part of him that hoped that, now that she had had time to think about their situation, she might actually come back to him.

Just as he was firing up his wireless modem to contact Dita, a message popped up in the upper left corner of his visual field.

INCOMING CALL

What...? Zima thought to himself as the window expanded, showing a streaming video image.

And a very familiar face.

"Doctor Kato!" Zima exclaimed, dread clamping down on his heart. Kato was the man who had designed both Zima and Dita, and who was most directly in charge of them.

Kato just smiled. "Yes, Zima. It's been a while. And, incidentally, I know what you're thinking; that you'd better hang up now or else I'm going to download some nasty virus that will shut you down and help the Syndicate find you."

"The thought had crossed my mind," Zima admitted. As he talked, Zima attempted to close out of his browser, but found it impossible to do so. Somehow, Kato had already downloaded some kind of spike-type program that kept him from logging off. Unless he physically removed his modem, Zima was at the mercy of his creator.

Oh, no... Zima thought.

"Don't worry, Zima," Kato said, still smiling warmly, "I just wanted to talk. And, as you'll be able to tell when you check the signal modulation, there's no trace program running, so your location is safe."

Confused, Zima analyzed the signal pattern, and realized that Kato was telling the truth. If the doctor had wanted to uncover his location or deactivate him, he could have done it already.

"All right," Zima said cautiously, "what do you want to talk about?"

Kato's smile just got wider. "Actually, I think there's someone else here who wants to chat with you first."

Before Zima could ask for clarification, the camera turned right. And there, clad only in a skimpy white outfit reserved for maintenance sessions, was Dita!

Although the image was being routed directly into his visual centers, Zima felt his eyes go wide in shock. "Dita!" he exclaimed. "I ... what ... how ...?" Then he remembered why Dita had run back to the Syndicate, and he braced himself for what might come next. "So, Dita," he asked, "how do you ... feel?"

The expression of pure, childlike joy on Dita's face told him everything he needed to know. "Oh, Zima, I feel ...incredible! It's like ... I don't know ... like I've got something jumping around in my chest, but it feels good. Does that make any sense?"

Actually, given that he was feeling the same way, Zima could understand exactly what Dita was talking about. "Yes, Dita, it makes a lot of sense."

"Zima, I'm so sorry I ran away the other night. I was scared, and I thought that our emotions were some kind of a virus, but now that I've had some time to get used to them, I think ... well, I think that there are some pretty good reasons for keeping them."

Zima felt himself smiling, as though a huge weight had just been lifted off of his shoulders. "And the Director is fine with all of this?" he asked.

Dita's happy expression faltered, and Kato walked back into the picture. "Actually," the man said, "that's what we called to talk about. Director Murakami feels that combat persocoms with emotions and free will are a liability. He's asked me to deactivate Dita at seven o'clock tonight, then map out her neural pathways. In the process, there would be so much current run through Dita's neural net that it would be rendered inert. She would die."

"WHAT?" Despite the fact that he had been programmed to approach problems calmly and methodically, Zima found himself on the edge of panic. "You ... you can't! Dita, you can't let him do that! You've got to get out of there now!"

"Relax, Zima," Kato said. "Dita and I have already been over this, and I'm not going to do it. However, we need your help to get Dita safely out of the lab."

"My help?"

"Yes. At seven o'clock, every security drone in the building is going to be in the lab. Murakami is worried that Dita might try to escape, so security is going to be extremely tight."

Zima suddenly realized what Kato was thinking. "But with all the security drones in one place, if the ones in the lab are destroyed, then there won't be any left to prevent us from escaping!"

Kato smiled. "You catch on quick," he said. "While Dita can't handle all of the drones herself, I've seen you two take on worse odds before. It will be difficult, but if you can break into the lab just when the procedure is about to start, you and Dita should be able to destroy all the security drones, then make a clean getaway. Do you think you can do it, Zima?"

Zima grinned wolfishly. "Well, Doctor Kato," he said, "given that you're the one who created us, I guess the better question is, do you think we can do it?"

Kato chuckled. "Humor! Either Ichiro's program had a lot more to it than I thought, or you've been developing ideosyncracies behind my back, Zima."

Zima shrugged. "Well, you did program us to emulate human behavior as much as possible. Now that I can actually feel amusement, though, I'm finding the jokes a lot more fulfilling."

"Oh, great." Kato groaned, rolling his eyes melodramatically, "I try to build the perfect field commander, and I get a comedian!"

To his own surprise, Zima actually burst out laughing. "I'll be there at seven," he said, after his sides had stopped splitting. "Just don't start without me."

"Good," replied Kato. "Remember, you need to be very punctual. I may be able to stall the Director for a few minutes, but you know how impatient that old buzzard can be."

"Right," Zima said.

Kato backed away, and Dita approached the camera. Just seeing her made Zima feel lighter than air, as though he could float right up to the ceiling if she were actually there in the room with him.

"Zima," she said, "thanks for not being angry at me. I was being pretty irrational the other night."

Without even thinking about it, Zima's voice and expression softened. "Dita," he told her, "I'm not even sure I could get mad at you if I tried right now. I'm just glad that you're all right, and that you had the courage to stand up for your own feelings. I promise I'll be there for you this time." He grinned at her. "Besides, being a little irrational seems to be pretty common for humans."

"I ... Thanks, Zima. That means a lot."

As she walked back from the camera, Zima wished that he could reach through the picture and touch her, hold her, press her to him and never let go. There was so much that he wanted to say to her now, and no time to say it in. When this is all over, he thought to himself, we are going to have some very interesting times ahead.

In the image, Kato reached down to hang up. "Wait," Zima said.

Kato looked up, his brow wrinkled in confusion.

"I have two questions," Zima said. "First, how were you able to call me? I had my firewall up and all of my electronic countermeasures running. How did you manage to hack into my CPU?"

Kato smiled. "Programmer's prerogrative," he answered simply. "I wrote in a back door."

"Huh," Zima said. While he was glad that Kato had only used his "back door" for a friendly teleconference, Zima resolved to locate and get rid of the function before anyone else decided to try and exploit it.

"So?" Kato prompted. "What was your second question?"

"This morning, I visited a comics shop, and there were several movies on sale featuring a man who looked very much like me. When you created me, Doctor Kato, did you model my appearance off of a human?"

"Guilty as charged. 'The Matrix' was always my favorite action movie. Of course, I couldn't make you look exactly like Keanu Reeves, but I did build in a strong resemblance."

Zima smiled. "Well, that's very interesting. Thanks for the nice looks ... Father."

Kato's cheerful expression evaporated. "I ... I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of responsibility, Zima. I'm honored, but please don't use that title for me."

"All right," Zima told his creator, "then what should I call you?"

Kato looked away for a moment, lost in thought. Then Zima saw the ghost of a smile cross the man's face, and he turned back to the camera.

"Call me ... Uncle Shigeru."

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