Chapter 9: Hot Town, Summer in the City

In the past, David and Meri had spent the summer at the camp, and had loved it. This year was going to be different. They were both going down to NYC, and stay there for the summer. The Wilson's had friends who had a place down in Manhattan that was available, this year. The three parents had talked about it, and agreed that it would be good for them to see something different. Plus, there were the museums, parks, and so much more for them to explore and experience. It didn't hurt that the two young adults have proven that they were mature enough to spend the summer unsupervised over the past two summers. Nor did it hurt that it was well known that they both loved museums. When they were informed, their eyes grew to anime character proportions and they let out yells like wild Indians in the old west movies. It was easy to see that they were very enthusiastic about this summer's vacation.

As before, they went out and purchased the books they wanted to take with them. Though, this time they had two computers and peripherals to take with them. David was still working on his accounting program. He had worked on a flow chart to plot the various steps and requirements of the program. David also had been working on creating his own version of UNIX which was fast becoming a precursor to Linux and what it would become in time. While he intended to license his accounting program to be able to work on any major operating system, he wanted to push ahead and create a GUI based system upon which he could do more, since it was years before a good version of MS-Windows would come out.

Due to the cost of parking, they left their cars at home. Instead, they drove down together with all three parents in a rented mini-van, so that they had both seating for all five of them, and room for their personal gear for the vacation. Their belongings also included a pair of bikes that they would use to get around town, for the most part, and good solid locks and chains to tie everything together. For those who don't know, you can lock your frame to something solid and still lose the rest of your bike; it happened a lot during this time. Even the best lock wasn't enough. You had to run a long cable through pedals, seat, wheels, frame, and basically everything you could. Anything less and you'd be missing parts. They were well aware of this, Meri and David, that is. With that in mind, the bikes they brought were good solid bikes, but nothing expensive.

That first evening, once everything had been moved up into the apartment, and they were introduced to the doorman, the five of them went out for Chinese Dim Sum at Nom Wah Tea Parlor on Doyers St. in Chinatown. As they ate their fill, and talking about the things they hoped to do, it was nearly three hours later before they returned to their summer living quarters. Their parents headed home and expected to be there by midnight. It had been a long, but enjoyable day.

That first night set the tone for their bed time preparations for most of the summer; they both went in and brushed their teeth and then showered together. As in the past, the shower was a sensual affair, and helped to fire up their libidos. After drying each other, they giggled like kids as David chased Meri to the bed, where he tackled her onto it and started to kiss and blow raspberries on her belly until she screamed for him to stop through her breath stealing laughter. He looked up at her, smiling, and began to slowly make love to her through his touches, caresses, kisses, and looks. Their love making took a long time, but both were fully satisfied when they were finished. They fell asleep spooned, with her back snuggled tightly against his front, their breathing in sync.

Their first day started with breakfast, made by David. It was French Toast with sausage. A fairly easy and fast meal to make, and filling, too. Once breakfast was over, they made the bed and took a shower to clean off the residue of the previous night. They dressed shorts and tees and took their bikes down to the street level. They were going to get to know the area and visit Central Park. They took a back pack each, with some snacks, bottles filled with water, and a change of clothing, just in case. Their ride to the park wasn't very far, and according to their maps, there were a good number of museums and places of interest within a very short range of their home for the summer. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was on one side of Central Park, while the Museum of Natural History was almost directly across the park from it. Further along, going to the north on 5th Avenue was the Museum of the City of New York. Fact is, they were young enough, and in shape enough, to bike to most any of the destinations they were interested in. With it being summer, there was no worry about day light. Food could easily be taken care of by bringing along some snacks and grabbing something more substantial if necessary.

Meri and David excitedly discussed the various places they could and would visit. Some of them they'd seen before, but only a small portion of them. Most of their excursions would be no less than four hour tours, because they could, (and often had in the past), got lost in the joy of everything they saw and discovered when in a museum. One exhibit they both were excited about was seeing the USS Intrepid (CV-11) which was due to open as the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in August. There was also Radio City to visit, Chinatown, Times Square, and many more places. Even with all that, they had their studies to get done. They weren't concerned. They knew they could do it all, and do it properly and enjoy themselves immensely.

While at the park, Meri took to mimicking various birds. She loved having them come to see who the new intruder was. She was very good with teasing the Chickadees and Titmice. She gave it her best with Juncos, Robins, and others, but couldn't quite get it. She was pretty good at the call of the Loon, but there weren't any near the park; most loons were inland at various lakes, such as Blue Mountain Lake, Saranac Lake, the Finger Lakes, and others in central New York State. They enjoyed themselves and the attention they got from their little feathered friends.

It was during their first weekend that life took an odd turn. It began with the arrival of a package addressed to David at their current address. There was no return address and the postage mark was from some podunk nowhere place in Montana. Neither of them thought it could be anything dangerous, so David went ahead and opened it; inside is a stack of floppy disks numbered 1 through 5, with MPC Beta 5 on the labels. This of course piqued his interest and curiosity.

Meri followed David as he headed to their computers and watched as he booted his up. Once it had loaded his GUI up, he inserted the first disk into the drive and looked to see what was on it. There were files for installing a program, which was expected. There was also the file he was hoping to find, the "Readme" file. This he opened in a simple text editor that he's hacked together. What he found was startling, and even a little troubling. The troubling part is not that he has to install the program from boot, but what the file proclaims the program to be, and the fact that the file was specifically addressed to David. He wondered if it is some kind of joke, but curiosity gets the best of him and he rebooted the system with disk one in place. Slowly the program is installed, one disk at a time. Thirty minutes later the install was done and the system did a final reboot. To boot to the newly installed program/system he was required to hold the Shift Alt and \ keys until the boot screen shows. Once that happened he let go of the keys and the new program loaded up instead of his operating system.

When the system finally finishes loading a message fills the screen: {6c}Welcome to Master PC's Command Center... {6c}The Master allows you to become a virtual god to the people around you. {6c}You now possess the power to bend their reality to your specifications. {6c}You are the Master's Representative.

"Oh, shit!" That's the exclamation that erupted from David upon seeing the screen come up. It was a mixture of excitement and fear.

"What's Master PC? Is it some kind of game?"

"If this is real, it's not a game. It's one of the most powerful tools mankind will ever know."

"What do you mean, David?"

"I think it would be easier to show you. That is, if it is real."

"Show me what?"

"Let me finish logging in and I'll show you," he says, and with that he enters his name and creates a password. From there, the screen goes to an empty GUI with a blank human form in the center and spaces for "Name" and various other information. David enters his own whole name and presses enter.

"Meri, look at the screen and tell me what you see. I want to know that we're seeing the same thing."

Meri looks at the screen and then at David. To the screen and back, again. Finally she says, in an awed voice, "David, that looks just like you, clothes and all, and sitting in the same position you are."

"So far, we see the same things. Now, lets see what happens if I move." David stands up, using the edge of the desk to help me stand. The figure on the screen does the exact same thing almost at the exact same time. There is barely any noticeable lag between the two.

"It just copied your every move. This is a freaky. Scary freaky, David. What's going on?"

"This is exactly what it purports to be; its The Master PC program. With it, anyone can affect and alter any other person, within the program's range in ways that are real. It can make the smartest man in the world into a blathering idiot and a blathering idiot into the smartest man in the world. It's powerful. I read about it in our past life in some stories. I never believed it was real, but then I never believed Djinn were real."

"Who, or what, would make such a program and why? Can you imagine Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, or any number of people out there. It could make a nice person change into someone awful."

"I don't know. The better question right now is, 'Why was it sent to me, personally?'"

"Okay, why? It makes me wonder. Someone very powerful would have to be behind this. At least I think that would be the case."

"I haven't a clue. I would like, if you don't mind, to do some testing with it."

"You know, David, that isn't exactly something that sounds safe. Not after what you've told me so far. Still, I trust you. What do you have in mind?"

"How about making our teeth and bones as strong as high grade spring steel, straightening our teeth and fixing them so we have no cavities, nor will we ever again get any?"

Meri thought about it for a moment before she responded saying, "Seems reasonable to me, and it's not like it would be something anyone could see, or would even notice. It still scares me, a bit. It can be undone, right?"

"Anything that can be done can be undone. You just have to be sure to save the previous parameters for restore, just like you'd make a backup of Windows in case you needed to restore it. Now, let's see," he said as he started looking through the menus. After a couple of minutes he had found and saved the current version for restoration and then, after reading the help section for how to directly enter commands to change attributes, he started with himself and did exactly as he suggested. He also made it so his teeth would always be white and clean, though not "Orbit" bright. He could feel the changes take place in his mouth. He felt his teeth straighten, and his fillings drop from his teeth as they reformed and displaced them. Running his tongue over them he could feel the difference, but when he started to speak he realized he had one more change to make. He wasn't used to his new mouth full of newly shaped teeth, so his speech was a little impaired. To fix that, he went back to the program and entered a simple command to ensure he always was able to speak clearly; on top of that he added "in any language".

David hadn't thought it out, when he entered the command; he hadn't considered the ramifications of that simple statement. So, while he didn't explicitly ask to speak every language, the program took it as an implicit command to be able to speak and thus understand all languages.

"Okay, I've done mine. Other than my mouth and teeth, I didn't notice any changes. Should I do you now?"

"Let's wait on that a moment. You started to speak, then stopped, entered another command and then spoke to me. What happened?"

"I hadn't considered the fact that changing a person's teeth would mess with their ability to speak. I had to add a command to ensure that I could speak clearly. Otherwise, I might be biting my tongue, lisping, or some other bit of silliness until I learned to speak again with my newly shaped mouth. I seem to be fine now, though."

"And what was it you spat out there?"

"It seems that as the teeth morphed they pushed out the fillings. I didn't think swallowing them would be a good idea."

"Sensible. Okay, I don't see any problems so far. Set me up like you did yourself. This should be interesting. Oh, but one further command, please. I want to be able to sing as clearly and skillfully as possible."

"I will give it a try. Give me a moment to pull you up and save the original template."

It took just a couple of minutes to pull Meri up on the screen, backup and save her current form, and then a moment to type in the commands that would lead to desired changes. He'd used the same wording for hers as he did for himself, including the part about "speaking clearly in any language" with her additional caveat for being able to "sing clearly and skillfully as possible."

He watched her face as the changes took place. He handed her a tissue for the fillings when she needed to spit them out, and then he waited. She took a breath and started saying tongue twisters and phased into singing some nursery rhymes. Please with that she belted out the Star Spangled Banner and blew them both away with the power, clarity and range she suddenly had.

"Oh my gods, David! That's amazing!" She then started to sing notes up and down the scale. Each time moving up a step until she was singing a clear high soprano and was able to go to the low end of the female contralto range. Her range was suddenly far beyond what it had been and so much more controlled than ever. Suddenly, she broke out into a swirling dance, mimicking Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music as she sang the very same song. David was mesmerized.

"Wow, that was unlike anything I've ever heard you sing before. Your voice is stunningly beautiful."

"Thanks. I like it. I think your Master PC has a lot of real promise."

"Don't forget that every bit of good it can do, it can do just as much bad."

"I know, but this ... being able to sing like that, is just so ... WOW!"

"I don't know how the changes to our skeleton will affect anything, but I have a nagging feeling I need to consider a few more changes to go with the ones I've made. Otherwise, something may get damaged pretty badly. I do think we're okay with leaving the changes in place that I made tonight. What do you think?"

"I think I'd love to keep this voice and skill level."

"Okay, then we agree. I'm going to shut this down and think about what it is I'm missing. I'm sure I'll figure it out."

While David shut the system down, Meri heard a Junko. With a smile she mimicked it. Soon, first one, then two Juncos were sitting on the balcony looking for the other bird and not finding it. She laughed. She'd always been good, but now she was even better at mimicking than before. She was really enjoying this. In fact, she was thinking about the fun she could have with the song birds in the parks during walks.

Laughing at what he was seeing, David pulled her to him and hugged her close saying, "I love you, my lovely bird girl."

"I love you, too. And, I'm sure you will figure out what it is you need to fix, too. Now, how about we go shower, then have dinner and do some studying followed by a bit of together time before we go to sleep?" Meri smiled a saucy smile at him as she said that, and David followed her to the bathroom; each of them dropping articles of clothing as they go.

David washed Meri down with tenderness combined with playfulness with a loofah and a scent free soap. The then washed her hair, massaging her scalp. It was a sensual experience for both of them; they both enjoyed it, but for different reasons. When he was done, Meri happily returned the favor with a smile.