AN: Sorry for the wait. Again.
Pain was the first thing that happened. It reached out and touched every part of his mind. James was just about to pull the chip out when a cooling sensation overrode the pain. Removed it. It was like mercury and James was aware of another mind in his. He was also aware of his heart, which normally would have taken much longer to slow down, was already back to normal.
Maybe this wasn't a good idea.
"You're just like your father."
The voice was just like another thought. James could feel it come from inside of his head but it wasn't his voice. It was the AI. It was Franz.
"It will take a while to get used to me being here. Don't worry. It took your father nearly two weeks."
James took a deep breath. "You're Franz?"
"Yes I am. Allison told you about me."
"Yeah."
"She wanted you to know about you family." James nodded. "Then I am here to tell you. Pick up that picture." For some reason James knew exactly which picture Franz was talking about. He picked up a picture of Church leaning over a table writing something. "Tex found a camera and Caboose never put it down. When Allison was in the military she was nicknamed 'Tex'," Franz explained. "This is Leonard Church. As you have already guessed, he and Caboose were lovers. They didn't start out that way. At first they hated each other. It's what happened in the end that you care about. In the end they had you. Did you know you were birthed by a male?"
"No…"
"He's not what you excepted. That's understandable. He inherited a gene allowing him to have you. Something that Caboose will not tell you is that you have that gene too. If Church was around he would have told you about it."
"Why didn't he tell me about it?"
"He thought that if you knew, you'd try to become pregnant."
"Is that a problem?"
"Yes. If that gene is activated, if you become pregnant, if you carry the child to term, you will die. That's the way it works. If you create life, you must also take one. Your dad is afraid of losing you."
"How do you know that?"
"I looked at your memories of him and use that with my knowledge of him."
James groaned. "You looked at my memories? How deep can you go?"
"There is no barrier I can't over come. However you don't have to worry; I'm not telling anyone. By the way, it seems that your father has come home early…"
And then James heard it. A car coming up the drive.
"Leave things as they are here. We'll be back."
Wasting no time James made his way out of the attic and ran down the stairs. "I don't think you need me to remind you but don't tell your father about me. He will be less than pleased if he found out anyone had told you about me. Or him."
He got to his room just in time; his dad walked though the front door. "James?"
"Yeah?"
"Come down and help with the groceries!"
"'Kay!" James paused only long enough to throw the pictures of Church into his dresser.
James was in class. It was math and he didn't like it. He was in the same situation as he was before; ace the final or fail. He didn't really have a lot of hope.
"Correction: you didn't have a lot of hope. Now you do."
He sighed and tried to make sense of the strange symbols on the paper before him. In reality they were not strange at all; they were simple numbers but he just couldn't figure out how they were connected.
"Fibonacci."
The word meant nothing to James.
"Not a word, a name. He's famous for this sequence of numbers." James laughed to himself;What a thing to be famous for….
"It works like this: add the first two numbers. What do you get?"
One plus one was two. Two was the next number in the sequence.
"Now add that answer with the one before it."
Two plus one equaled three. Three was the next number in the sequence.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89…
But how did one get the first number? Where did one come from?
"What is the number before it?"
James frowned. Zero came before one… "Exactly. Zero plus one is…" And it clicked.
The bell rang sometime later but James didn't quite want to leave. If it had been any other teacher he would have stayed but Ms. Jackson was mean. No one liked her. She had been teaching for well over thirty years and she didn't allow any new ideas in her class.
Outside he noticed a few changes, about himself. His hearing had always been better than most but now it was amazing; he could hear Stacy and Kyle yelling at each other from the gym. The gym was about two blocks a way. His sight was improved too; the colors were richer and lines were shaper.
"Did you do this?"
"You could say that. All I did was enhance what you already had. You weren't using everything you could. I fixed that."
"It's amazing."
Even his sense of smell had been enhanced. Suddenly he could smell the hot dogs people around him were eating. The smell of ketchup filled his nose as did hot sauce, chocolate, candy, and … blood?