Part 00000010

Two Years Later

"They're ready for you, Michael," the principal said walking into the room.

Miss Smith did not bother to hide the edge of contempt in her voice. Anyone else my age would have a hard time recognizing her disdain, but I was no longer someone my age. I turned to stare at her. AriaX moved so that she was looking at Miss Smith over my shoulder. The principal could not bear the weight of our stares long.

"I volunteered for this, Miss Smith," I said pleasantly. "If you prefer, I can un-volunteer."

She sniffed angrily. The offer was sincere and it would mean her job to accept it. I didn't think she would hold to her political principles, although I found it educational to give people the choice.

"You and that thing are abominations," she whispered too loudly.

Her eyes widened fearfully as her hand shot to cover her mouth. I smiled and shook my head slowly. AriaX and I walked past her without making eye contact. We walked to the classroom and entered. There were about thirty of my grade-peers seated inside. I heard Miss Smith slam the door shut as I moved to the front of the room.

"Good afternoon, classmates," I said sounding more confident than I felt.

I was chosen to be the first X-23 male to attempt changing public perception of our program. My X-23 brothers agreed that the tide of conservative assault on technological advances was a danger to us. The politicians succeeded in making robots the bogeymen of our society to gain and stay in power. My brothers and I had the advantage of being able to plan past the next election, so changing the views of our age-peers was our method of cracking the dam. I could almost feel the attention of my brothers as I studied the kids in the room.

A few of the ones that knew me nodded or waved; some looked angry at having to be there. Everyone's eyes glued to AriaX as she jumped onto the table and crossed her legs. I favored semi-transparent clothing putting a healthy amount of AriaX's feminine charms on display. I waited for the class participants to focus on me after they got their fill of AriaX, if that was possible. Certainly in the last two years, I had failed to glut myself on her.

"You're probably wondering why we're gathered here," Miss Smith said.

There were nods from our audience.

"Think of it as show and tell," she said brightly. "Mister Summers and his pet..."

"Don't push it, Miss Smith," I interrupted.

"Excuse me!" she said angrily.

I raised an eyebrow at the way the audience emboldened her.

"Don't... push... it!" I repeated subtly stressing each word.

She straightened to her full height and looked ready to blast into me. AriaX rotated her head like a laser cannon until her eyes pointed at Miss Smith. The principal froze; she was probably remembering that sitting on the desk was one of the most sophisticated recording devices ever created. Miss Smith crossed the line in the waiting room and to do so again would have only tightened an already suffocating noose around her neck.

"Take a seat, Miss Smith," I instructed and waited for her to do so.

"Fucking cold, colonist!" one of the guys in the back exclaimed joyously. "Fucking cold!"

I shook my head in amusement.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"Do what?" I replied.

"Make Miss Smith heel."

I winced glancing at the subject of our exchange. She was seething but subsided when she noticed AriaX studying her again.

"I think we should start at the beginning," I said turning back to the class. "Does anyone know why we're here?"

"Show and tell, like Miss Smith said," an annoyed male voice said from the back.

AriaX and I tilted our heads recognizing the speaker. I never quite figured out if AriaX adapted my mannerisms or if I picked up hers; most likely, we were imitating my mother.

"Yes," I replied. "Since I am excluded from many of the rules that apply to you, I thought you should at least know why."

"Like NiS?" a female voice to my left asked.

"Yes," I said. "Like Naked in School."

"Too bad," she responded. "You're cute. Seeing you walk around naked for a week would be fun."

I smiled at her.

"Why aren't you in NiS?" she asked gaining confidence from my attention. "I thought it was mandatory for all public school students."

"By federal law, an X-23 male is classified an adult," AriaX announced.

"What!?" Robert, the annoyed male voice in the back, exclaimed.

"Legally, I am an adult," I said. "Therefore I can choose to opt out of any programs that were instituted to help kids."

"Why are you an adult?" someone asked. "Wow!" a few of the kids chorused.

"The truth is though that for NiS, it's better that I not participate," I said looking at the girl who spoke earlier sadly.

I chose not to take part in the activities that NiS encouraged since I would never be on the receiving end.

"Why?" she asked curiously.

"Two X-23 males have participated in the Naked in School program. Both times the NiS administrators declared it a monumental failure," I informed everyone.

"NiS and the X-23 program have some shared goals," AriaX said clinically. "Many schools, like this one, choose a partnered NiS program because of its emphasis on peer support. Both prior experiences in NiS by X-23 males were in partnered programs. Unfortunately, our charges have proven to be horrible partners at this stage of their development."

I smiled comfortingly at everyone that had confused looks on their faces. Confusion was my normal state during AriaX's lectures; it was only after thinking about it for some time that I understood her points.

"What AriaX means is that she has carefully guided me past many of the issues that an NiS participant goes through during their naked week," I said. "To an X-23 male, NiS is a step backward, so much so that we cannot be supportive of our naked partner."

"I still don't get it," Samantha Jones said.

I stripped out of my clothes and gave each person in the room ten seconds of eye contact before putting them back on.

"Oh!" Samantha Jones gasped a minute after I finished dressing.

"The NiS program attempts to use the equality of the partners' naked state to bond them. I wouldn't be experiencing the things my partner would be or even something similar to what she was feeling. I would only further isolate her, which is contrary to the ultimate NiS goal," I said.

I noticed AriaX's smile. My lecture style was modeled after hers.

"Think of this class as my penance for being able to veto all those wonderful administrative tortures a high school practices on students," I told them. "For a week, I will be showing and telling my grade-peers about my experiences with an X-23. I will also be answering any questions you have."

"So you're an adult?" the girl who spoke earlier asked.

"Legally," I clarified facing her.

"That doesn't explain why Miss Smith... heels," she said unsurely.

"True," I replied. "Does anyone know what an X-23 is?"

"A violation of the Anti-Human Face Amendment!" Robert said.

"Incorrect," I said. "The Amendment would never have passed without the grandfather clause that allows X-23's to continue to be manufactured."

Miss Smith harrumphed from her seat.

"Do you disagree with Michael's interpretation, Miss Smith?" AriaX asked protectively.

Even with her Feminist Front political leanings, Miss Smith was unwilling to answer that. The X-23 exception to the AHF Amendment was the compromise the Feminist Front and their conservative partners had to swallow to get it ratified. The Feminist Front, more than the conservatists, had been surprised when immediately after the exception was agreed on federal laws got inked to increase the legal protections the X-23 program enjoyed. The Feminist Front had been badly outmaneuvered at the end and knew it. Losing her job might not be the worst penalty Miss Smith faced if she voiced too harsh an opinion of the X-23 program around a participant. Impeding the goals of the program was a serious offense, and the mental state of X-23 males was especially high on everyone's list of things that needed delicate handling.

"Does anyone know what an X-23 is?" I asked.

"A sex-toy," a guy to my right said.

"A well-used sex-toy," AriaX corrected primly.

I blushed causing most of the girls to giggle. I gave AriaX an exasperated look.

"Not quite," I said turning to the guy who had answered.

"She's a fem-bot," Samantha Jones said gaining a nod from me.

"AriaX is a fem-bot that uses higher order logic systems to approximate human thought and decision making to interact with us," I said.

"An X-23 is also a companion to her male charge with a goal of helping him achieve full potential," AriaX said clearly.

"Why?" Samantha Jones asked.

"Excuse me?" AriaX responded with.

"I've heard about your type of robot," Samantha Jones asked. "They spent billions on developing your hardware; billions more on your programming. You're the most expensive toy ever. Why?"

"Communion," I answered.

"What?" Robert asked. "A religious ritual?"

"True Interface between man and higher order machine," AriaX said with almost epiphanic fervor.

"I thought we had interface," the vocal girl on my left said in confusion.

"You have a variety of methods to input commands to simple order machines. Some of those methods are more effective than others," AriaX replied. "It was decided that machines capable of certain higher order functions required a better interface than even natural voice allows for."

"Why?" someone asked curiously.

"I am not able to adequately answer that question," AriaX said. "Please wait while I get someone who can."

She jumped down from the desk and stared at the ceiling. Seconds later, she got back on the desk and looked around the class. It was obvious something had changed.

"Hello, I am the Central Processor," the body of AriaX said.

Everyone gasped. Miss Smith looked horrified; I couldn't blame her since it usually took months to get computing time with CP. Someone had hijacked my class for their purpose.

"Shouldn't you be doing something... computational?" I asked.

"Mother decided I should be doing this," CP replied after he finished studying each person in the room.

The class gasped again.

"Mother?" Miss Smith asked finding her voice.

"CP considers my mother, his mother," I told her.

"Yes, it... I..." CP said but stopped in machine equivalent of confusion.

"That's fine with me," I said helping him past the logic failure point. "As long as he remembers, I am the big brother."

"As always, your logic is flawed," CP stated. "Mother was working on me years before you were born. I should therefore be considered the elder."

"It is not accurate to say that mother was working on you, CP," I said. "Mother was THINKING about you. She was thinking about having children years before that so thus by your own logic, I am older."

"No, Michael," CP argued.

AriaX's face broke into a wide smile.

"Your mother input all of the her thought processes and logic designs for me into her comp-station, hence she was doing more than thinking. It is logical that I am the big brother."

"CP, if only writing is required, let me remind you that we both have access to all of mother's journals. The ones written when she was a child clearly show planning to have a son of her physical body, ME, years prior to her first thought of YOU. By your evidence, I am undoubtedly older." CP thought about that for a couple of minutes before replying.

"My core weighs over a hundred tons," he said. "How can you be the big brother when I'm that much bigger than you?"

"CP that was the most illogical argument I have ever heard you use," I replied with a smirk.

"Thank you," he said proudly.

I laughed and several kids in the room joined me.

"Mister Summers, this is wrong," Miss Smith said from her corner. "The Central Processor is not a toy."

There was the problem the Feminist Front and their conservative partners face. The X-23 program had the development of the Central Processor at its heart. CP had paid back a thousand-fold every penny spent on him. The program heads were not even sure why he was so much better at crunching data than his much larger counterparts. No one wanted to disturb my mother to have her explain it; her lectures were more likely to elicit migraines than understanding.

"Excuse me," CP said facing her.

"You're... you're not a toy for him to show off here," she said after taking a deep breath.

"Every X-23 has immediate access to my logic systems and data streams, Miss Smith," CP informed her. "Only my physical security is more important to the program than X-23 males. It is clearly stated in the access privileges that any X-23 may supersede another user."

"But... but..."

"Why did AriaX ask me to come here?" CP asked turning to me.

CP had habit of cutting off conversations when his point was made. I was positive he picked that up from my mother. If he had been a human being, it would have been rude. Unfortunately, no one had been able to explain rudeness to CP yet.

"She didn't tell you?" I asked.

"AriaX refuses to upload her info-matrics until the end of the day," he said. "She asked Mother for my presence. I think... was it rude of her to do so, Michael?"

"What?"

"Ask Mother, instead of me. Was that rude of her?"

I stopped and studied him for a second.

"Do you think it was rude?" I asked carefully.

"I do not think, Michael," he replied.

"Okay, do your logic systems conclude that her behavior was rude?" I asked.

"Her behavior was logical but..."

I let him stew for a minute before taking him off the hook like I had with his inability to explain why he considered my mother, his mother.

"AriaX is programmed for optimal efficiency," I reminded CP.

"Her action was optimally efficient as Mother is one of two super-users," CP agreed.

"Are you really THE Central Processor?" Samantha Jones asked.

"Yes," CP answered.

"My mother has been trying to get computing time for a year," Samantha said.

"Megan Jones," CP stated. "A problem in medical computational modeling for nerve attachment to re-grown limbs."

"Yes, that's her," Samantha replied.

CP looked up at the ceiling.

"It is a difficult problem," he said.

"BLACK HOLE!!!" I cursed.

"What's wrong?" Samantha asked nervously.

The body of my X-23 shivered and AriaX's more relaxed posture returned.

"Well, that was fruitless," she said looking at Samantha with an annoyed expression.

"I'm sorry," Samantha said looking around the room.

"It's okay," AriaX replied with a sigh. "I wanted CP here to explain Communion but you distracted him."

"A machine can be distracted?" one of Robert's friends asked.

"CP can," AriaX replied with something closed to exasperation tainting her voice.

"How?" someone else asked.

"CP is not self-aware yet," I said thoughtfully. "But his data streams are unnatural."

"Data streams?" Samantha asked.

"You're all just a bucket of bolts, and processors," Robert said angrily to AriaX. "I should take a screwdriver to you."

"That would be unfortunate," I replied sorrowfully.

"Huh?"

"Destroying my body would be a commission of treason," AriaX informed Robert. "There is a legally mandated death sentence if you are found guilty."

"What?" Robert asked sitting back surprised.

"Communion is very important to a lot of people," I said. "CP is close to transitioning past the original meaning of higher order machine. Many politicians believe that there must be tight controls established before he is allowed to do that."

"You're his control?" Miss Smith asked with wide eyes finally gaining understanding.

"I am..." I started to say but stopped. "AriaX, link please."

She and I turned our heads to the ceiling. For the next twenty minutes, I looked at each person and told him or her everything about their and their parents' life that was part of the public record. When I asked for questions, the class tried to confound me with difficult and esoteric ones; none was a match for CP's data streams. AriaX broke the link when she felt my mind stumble. It took five minutes for me to recover from the aftershock of using the LINKS implants. The class was deathly quiet while waiting.

"That is the second step to Communion," AriaX told the class. "Michael's relationship with me was the first."

"How can you do that?" Samantha Jones asked in wonder.

"The LINKS system was installed in my head three months ago," I answered. "Using AriaX, I can access CP directly, or at least his data streams."

"The next step would be to access the Central Processor's logic systems instead of just the data streams," AriaX said. "The data streams are pure information but CP still does the search, retrieval and sort. Using the CP's logic systems would give Michael control of the entire process, thus adding human intuition to a purely binary system."

"Then Communion," I said tiredly. "Using only my LINKS to achieve True Interface; man and higher order machine, an intertwined thought, logic, and data stream."

"You're bleeding!" the vocal girl gasped worriedly.

AriaX turned my face and pulled a handkerchief from somewhere. She patted the blood that dotted my upper lip. I had gotten used to the nosebleeds that came after linking to CP's data streams.

"You're bleeding less and less," she said.

"He bleeds every time," the girl asked.

"It will stop eventually," AriaX replied satisfied that she had cleaned up all the blood.

"Why do you bleed?" someone asked.

"CP's data streams are not easy to link with," I said. "Eventually they swamp me. Without AriaX, linking would kill me."

"That's why you're legally an adult," Samantha Jones said.

"Yes," I responded. "It's the reward for risking my life in the X-23 program."

"But you're still a kid?" Samantha insisted. "They can't do this to you."

"They had to start early or none of us would have developed the trust necessary with our X-23's," I said.

"Trust?" Miss Smith asked.

"Like I said CP's streams would kill me," I said. "AriaX filters the streams but I have to be in control of my reactions. I need to trust AriaX completely or I'll panic and she won't be able to shield me."

"If she filters the stream, why would it hurt you?" Robert asked morbidly.

"The LINKS installation is in my body; swamping it would damage my brain. Kill the brain, you kill the body."

"You're a cyborg," he said.

"A primitive concept," AriaX said in an annoyed voice. "But not incorrect."

"There's only female X-23's," Samantha said. "That means only boys will be able to link, doesn't it?"

"The Anti-Human Face Amendment took that away from you," AriaX replied. "I'm sorry."

"But why can't a girl be the charge of an X-23?"

"The heads of the program, a healthy percentage being female, fell victim to the old standard that males should bear the brunt of danger," AriaX answered. "When they realized their error, it was too late to finish the profiling required to properly aid female maturation before some type of amendment against robots was passed. They chose to focus on the path they started on to get to the manufacturing phase sooner."

"But..."

"It is prohibited, Miss Jones," the principal said cutting her off.

"So you're a freak?" Robert asked triumphantly.

"Yes, Robert," I said with a sigh. "I am most definitely a freak."

"Bolt-Lover," he cursed.

"I remember when you tried to convince me to let you and your friends fuck AriaX, Robert," I said with a smile.

He looked away guiltily.

"I do not believe that Michael loves me," AriaX said looking at me. "I am a machine and not a real girl after all."

Most of the questions were directed at AriaX after that comment. The girls in the class were very curious about our relationship. I sat back and went through the necessary checks of the LINKS after a successful session with CP.

CP's data streams were changing again. My mother would be interested since this time I was sure the X-23 males linking with CP was the cause. At last, CP was learning from experience rather than her programming.

School had become a tool of socialization since AriaX entered my life. Her lessons were more interesting and the rewards for paying attention were far better than letter grades. After six months, I argued with my mother and AriaX that high school was a waste of time and I should return to home schooling. Neither was particularly moved by my position so I was stuck spending hours with the monotonous drone of high school teachers stuffing my ears. Volunteering to teach a class on the X-23 program was the most exciting thing to happen to me at school in the last two years.

The classes were run during the last period allowing participants to keep us late. The structure of the 'show and tells' followed pretty much the same format the rest of the week. The kids had the same questions in each class, which after the third day made me understand the bored looks on my teachers' faces.

CP did not make another appearance. By the last day of the classes, I was no longer bleeding from bringing the LINKS online. I could hold the connection open for minutes longer, which made the other X-23 males experiment with bringing their LINKS up everyday also. Since I was the first to have the system installed, the program admins were happy to hear I was no longer exhibiting such an obvious physical problem.

I was surprised to find Samantha Jones standing outside the class on Friday. It was the last one scheduled and the kids knew it so had asked every question they could think of.

"Hello," Samantha said.

"I will see you at home, Michael," AriaX said walking by.

There was something mechanical about her voice that made me look towards her. She winked at me over Samantha's shoulder and strutted away. I noticed that recently AriaX backed away more and more when a real girl was around. I guess she decided it was time for me to lose my virginity.