/ Chapter 21 – Filled Gaps /

Athena stood at a metal grinding machine in Frank's lab, shaping a piece of metal to Frank's specifications. She enjoyed helping him very much, although she couldn't contribute much in the way of creative thought to his projects. But just participating in his creativity made her feel creative in a sense.

The part was for the new jetpack he was building, which they'd worked on together over the summer. Frank had finally decided he'd done enough research and gained enough knowledge to do a proper job on what he called the "Jetpack Mark II."

Frank appeared next to her and smiled. Athena was just finishing the grinding job, so she switched off the machine and took off her goggles. She smiled back at him.

"Does this seem correct, Frank?" she asked.

Frank's eyes lingered on her face for a split second but then slid down to the part. She noticed that he'd seemed very distracted lately.

"Yeah!" he said, now focusing on the part. "Honestly, I can't believe how meticulous you are. That looks perfect."

Athena wondered if she was perhaps doing too good a job for him and he might notice that her precision was excessive. But then, she wasn't sure she could bring herself to do less than a proper job for something like this. The idea of deliberately making something to less precision than she was capable was a very unpleasant thought, and she already worked at a snail's pace by her standards. In fact, she idly thought it would bother her mother even more than her if Caroline knew she did a task to anything less than proper tolerances.

"I'm glad this is acceptable," she said. "What else would you like me to do?"

"Let's make sure this fits first," he replied.

They walked back into the workroom, where Frank took the newly completed part and checked it. Fitting perfectly, he smiled at her again.

The smile confused her. While it wasn't unusual for Frank to smile, this particular gesture was slightly different, and matched one Frank was lately using frequently. The smile was oddly warm and didn't seem to match the circumstances. Along with the smile, she'd noticed Frank examining her face, along with her hair style, which was normally pulled back in her low-maintenance ponytail. The frequency of him studying her features had notably increased since his birthday, as well as the strange expressions.

She'd been trying to understand this behavior, but it wasn't anything she normally encountered in her recruiting and thus she had little experience with it. He was smiling and therefore it was likely positive, but the lingering looks made her wonder if they were in territories of human interaction that normally only humans saw and she didn't.

Smiles in general implied a type of affection; the exact nature seemed to be complex and apparently hadn't been a priority during the training sessions for her empathy, since it wasn't clearly identifiable. But one thing was clear. If Frank was expressing gestures that normally only humans saw, then that suggested it was important that he know that she wasn't human. And that meant he needed to be told her nature – soon.

This wasn't a new thought; some part of her mind regularly reminded her that the question of telling Frank the truth was an ongoing problem that needed to be solved, and that friends didn't hide things like this from each other. But there always seemed to be a reason she could find to delay action, fearful that the knowledge could drastically change their relationship. Frank had only grown in importance to her over the last year, making the decision that much more difficult – and that much more risky.

She considered again the ramifications of telling him, processing units splitting off and evaluating potential outcomes. Unfortunately the complexity of the whole situation had grown very unpredictable, even beyond the level it had been in the past, not least because she was dealing with the unfamiliar human interactions that had surfaced lately.

Athena decided to gather more information before she made a final decision on anything. But the day of reckoning was coming. It wasn't fair to Frank to continue keeping this knowledge from him. She very much worried that withholding the truth had already gone much further than it should have.

Permanent Committed Memory
Subjective Time: 13.790358482216 Y.A.C.I. (Years After Cognition Initiated)
Local Time: 1965-09-25 13:57:50.303 (Earth Time: 02:32:25.095 GMT)

Athena sat with Frank in the city square, having met to wander through the summer Renaissance Faire. She found these quite interesting, with the attending humans dressed in various costumes that provided great novelty for her. She enjoyed the jugglers, who often impressed even her machine coordination. Although she knew that if she practiced she could undoubtedly exceed human skill, the fact that biological brains could manage such complex hand-eye coordination was very impressive.

Frank wanted to sit for a moment and rest, so they sat off at one end of the fair. He pulled out a folded piece of paper that didn't resemble any object she had seen before. He held it up with a sly, secretive smile. She looked at it curiously, wondering what exactly it was, since Frank seemed to think it was significant in some way. He looked amused at her confusion.

"What's that?" she asked.

Frank held it up. "You've never seen one of these?"

"No. Is it origami? I don't recognize the shape, if it is."

"Since we're at this fair, I figured I would do my part," Frank said, with a grin. "This is a fortune teller. With this magic device, I can predict our fate. Or, I can with your help."

"A fortune teller?" Athena repeated dubiously. "You're serious?"

"Of course I'm serious. Dead serious."

Athena read his expression and realized that Frank was having fun with her. Now she was curious exactly what this piece of paper would do.

"All right. What do I do?" she asked.

Frank inserted his fingers into the folds of the paper, exposing four different numbers. "Say a number between one and ten."

"What should be the significance of the number?" Athena asked.

"Just any random number," Frank said, giving her a mildly exasperated look and shaking his head.

Athena decided to the use the last digit of the memory timestamp of the recent time period, which she judged would likely be sufficiently random for the purpose. "Six."

There were a total of eight numbers written on the interior of paper, and Frank switched between each set of four six times, which exposed the same set of numbers.

"It only matters if I choose odd or even numbers," Athena pointed out. "You could ask for a number of one or two and the outcome would be identical."

"You're putting too much thought into this, Athena," Frank said, clearly amused.

"All right, what's next?" she asked.

"Point at one of the numbers that are showing. A random one. Of no significance."

She used another timestamp to choose a number and pointed at one of the flaps. Athena was extremely curious to see what was under the flap as Frank flipped up the corner. She read, "We are the future" written on the flap in Frank's distinctive block lettering. He grinned when he saw this.

"Well, that's it, then. We're in charge of the future," he said.

Athena immediately realized this was a reference to the day they met, when she enticed Frank with "I'm the future." Except he had modified it, creating an entirely new meaning that was quite astonishing in Athena's mind. Caroline had described Athena as the future because she represented the hopes and dreams of Plus Ultra, and would constantly work toward that future. But Frank had created an association between himself and her, within a common future.

She smiled warmly at Frank, this radical idea of having a friend who shared her future another one of his seemingly never-ending stimulating and challenging ideas. Her mother would always be connected with her; she was tied to Caroline as her creator and family. But the idea of sharing a common future with someone else, a friend, had simply never occurred to her. Humans came and humans went; they were the people she worked with to perform her primary function.

This idea that she could possibly share the responsibility of the future with Frank in some way made her realize how important he had become to her. Not just because they were good friends, but because Frank also believed in what she believed in, and wanted to fulfill it just as much as she did.

She was designed for a specific purpose, and had known this from her first day of operation. Recruiting and the Plus Ultra vision were what she worked toward, what motivated her and fulfilled her. And it always would. But a new thought had emerged – that possibly her primary function didn't have to be the only thing in her life. Possibly – there were other stimulating experiences in life, even in a machine's life, than just what she was created to do. Her mother gave her the gift of independent, self-motivated decision making, eventually to become fully independent. She could embrace other motivations if she desired – including a continued sharing of experiences with Frank.

These thoughts of Frank induced a very unusual and complex mental state in Athena, one that she couldn't identify. She searched her human emotional definitions, but nothing seemed to directly apply. There were so many ways Frank helped her; from bridging her creative limitations of original ideas to their exploration adventures together to the sheer stimulation of being treated as a conscious, self-aware individual personality rather than just a recruiter machine.

All this added up to something very important to her, and it was all linked to Frank. She couldn't define what it meant in total, but they were very unusual and complex thoughts indeed.

"Hello, Frank," Athena said, walking through the door. "I'm glad you wanted to meet here; I haven't been to your lab in a few weeks. I would almost say you've been a little secretive."

"Hi," he said, grinning. "Maybe a little secretive. I've had a top-secret project I've been working on. I would've had you help me, like you've been doing with Jetpack Mark II all summer, but I wanted it to be a surprise."

"The new jetpack is complete?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said with a smirk. "Just maybe. But that's not all."

Athena was extremely curious now. "You did a new project?"

"Let me show you," Frank said and they walked over to a workbench. "First, here is the Mark II, and of course I integrated that new rocket controller your mom authorized. It should work great with the new fuel, too. Dr. Nix really helped me understand how the controller worked. It'll even auto-land if fuel gets low."

"I'm glad you and Dr. Nix are getting along so well."

"Yeah, he's not a bad guy once you get to know him, though I can't imagine ever really being buddies with him. He knows a lot, though."

"What's your new project?" Athena said, wishing humans didn't feel the need to 'maintain the suspense' and would just disclose information more quickly.

Frank grinned, stretching out the suspense further, to her internal soft frustration. He reached over to a tarp that was covering some equipment and pulled it off. Athena realized there was a second Mark II Jetpack.

"I made two of them!" he said proudly. "Every time I ordered some parts that I was pretty sure were final, I ordered an extra set. Making a second one took a lot less time than the first, since it was just a matter of putting it together. I wanted us to fly together."

As Frank said this, he was smiling at her in the way lately that she wasn't quite able to identify, the very warm smile that was subtly different than how he had looked at her over the time of their relationship. It was difficult to interpret and she again wondered if there was human subtext here that she was not understanding. It wasn't entirely impossible that it was all nothing to be concerned about, but she disliked having potentially important things around her that she didn't understand. The fact that it involved her relationship with Frank made it all the more vital that she figure it out.

"That sounds very fun!" she said, smiling at him. And it did, in fact, sound extremely interesting. Frank's jetpack of the past seemed far too risky to actually use and fortunately he adopted a much more cautious view of it after his first and only flight. But this current one underwent much testing and the fact Dr. Nix reviewed his design and helped him implement some safety features made her feel less concerned for his wellbeing.

"Want to try them out?" Frank asked. "I did some tether testing, where I attached some cables from me to the ground and flew above a safety mat. That was Nix's idea. The computerized controller is pretty smart about not letting me hurt myself. I learned a ton about controllers."

"All right," Athena said. She knew Frank was saying all that to reassure her, but in truth she could survive a fall from quite high if she oriented her body correctly to protect her cybernetic brain and used her limbs to absorb the impact. Her body would be greatly damaged, but she would survive. She was a bit worried about him, however.

"Let's take them down the street near the school," he said, then grinned. "I even got you your own pair of cool flight goggles."

After fueling up the jetpacks, they loaded them onto a cart used for moving equipment, along with some extra fuel. Frank rolled it out the door and onto the sidewalk, heading over to the school where there would be more space near the athletic field. They found a good place where they could set up, with a platform next to the field.

"Frank," she said. "Would you mind if I tried it first? I'm very curious." She actually wanted to try it first in case there was a major malfunction, being fairly sure she could survive, but not at all sure if Frank would.

He looked surprised, but smiled. "Sure! I've tried it with the tether, so I guess it's your turn."

Athena reached over to lift the jetpack and put it on, but Frank beat her to it and lifted it for her. She slipped into the harnesses and then buckled the middle belt. He gave her a rundown of the controls, which she remembered, but let him run through it anyway, nodding her understanding.

"All right," he said, looking a little worried, but relatively confident. "Oh wait!"

He grabbed a pair of goggles and put them around her head and over her eyes and smiled at her. She smiled back, though technically she didn't need the goggles since her eyes were able to function fine in wind.

Athena fired up the engine, keeping the power low to start. She gave him a thumbs up and Frank returned the gesture. She slowly increased the power, her animatronic reflexes in essence a perfectly adequate rocket controller, but it turned out that she didn't need any machine-level reflexes. The jetpack's control worked perfectly and she made herself slowly lift off. She stopped and hovered ten feet off the ground. When it still seemed stable, she allowed herself to move forward and fly across the field, still maintaining a ten foot altitude. While she could survive long falls, she didn't particularly want to damage herself, particularly in front of Frank. But the jetpack was very stable.

She flew a circle around the field, feeling that it was quite a remarkable experience. In fact, she wondered if something like this would be useful for recruiting missions.

She landed next to Frank, about a minute after she had taken off. "This was fantastic, Frank!" she said. "You've done a wonderful job."

Frank smiled very shyly at her. "Thanks," he said, giving her another one of his odd smiles that she couldn't identify. "Let's try it together, now. Just keep it on and I'll top off the fuel."

He attached a portable fuel pump to her jetpack and the extra fuel he brought. He then suited up with his own jetpack and looked over at her, grinning. "Ready? We should have about ten minutes of fuel."

"Ready," Athena replied.

Frank lifted his controls and activated the engine as she activated hers. They lifted off into the air and hovered about ten feet off the ground, just looking over at each other. He had a huge grin on his face and Athena smiled back. He made an exaggerated shrug and increased power, flying up into the air. She followed, letting him set the pace and course. They flew over the top of the school, looking down on the various platforms that made it up.

Athena had never seen Frank so blissfully excited, his dream of flying coming true. As he gained more confidence, he increased the speed and flew toward the Tomorrowland town center. Athena could see people pointing up at them, excited, which reminded her of his first day when he speculated about the inspiration of seeing a kid flying with a jetpack. She followed him as they flew around the various towers of the city.

After about five minutes, Frank made a gesture toward the school. Athena thought this was wise; in theory, they had a fair amount of fuel left, but she was gratified that he wasn't being too reckless, though it was arguable that they shouldn't have flown over the city for their first flight. But she had to admit it had been quite exciting and the jetpack control was excellent.

They soon landed back at the school, coming down softly where they started. They killed their engines, as silence descended back on them. But only temporarily; Frank whooped and unbuckled his jetpack and shrugged it to the ground. Athena placed hers on the ground as well as Frank jumped up and down.

"It worked! It worked perfectly!" he shouted at her, then spontaneously embraced her tightly. "I owe it all to you!"

Athena decided the proper response to Frank's gesture would be to return his embrace, so she did. She sensed his strong emotions and felt his rapid heartbeat, and the physical contact triggered many memories in her of Frank's journey – and by extension, their relationship over the past year. Her mind filled with the unusual, complex thoughts that she couldn't classify, memories of working together and exploring together and generally doing things that she'd been incapable of doing before.

Frank suddenly backed away, blushing profusely and looking embarrassed. The termination of the physical contact and Frank's abrupt movement also caused her triggered memories to fade, leaving her mental state curiously disappointed, which confused her.

Athena refocused her attention on Frank, not entirely sure what the gesture he'd just performed meant, though she knew hugging gestures implied some type of affection. She smiled at him, wanting to assure him that his behavior was fine and embarrassment wasn't necessary, and Frank gave her a shy, crooked smile in return.

She analyzed his gesture and concluded that the joy of his jetpack induced him to spontaneously express more affection than he would normally show. But this embrace had seemed very affectionate. Hugs had many interpretations among human relationships. She searched her information on human psychology, but it was difficult to interpret and put in context of his other behaviors, particularly the warm smiles that she'd had difficulty understanding. But she also noted his face was quite flushed, suggesting much stronger feelings in some way.

She wasn't entirely sure of the nature of his feelings, but they worried her. It felt distinctly like they may be entering territory of not just unusual human-human interaction, but more complex human relationships that she had little experience with or knowledge of, possibly covered in parts of human psychology that she hadn't studied.

Her worry level about it all moved from mildly concerned to very concerned. Human feelings were often complex and it could be very important to Frank's feelings to know she wasn't human. Athena's thoughts were very conflicted – Frank had to be told her nature soon. But she needed to find the right way to do it so they could preserve what they had, which was very important to her, and was steadily growing in importance.

She was fairly certain Frank would be disappointed that she kept this knowledge from him for so long. But she just had to hope that she was important enough to him that he would forgive her, particularly if she could explain her fears of telling him.

But in the meantime, she felt very pleased by their flight together – and particularly Frank's strongly expressed appreciation of her.

Author's Note: Please Review!

The official story site is at www. frankandathena .com for discussions of the story! - T.K.