Chapter 54: Prime's Domain, Day 8

Even after all this time, he still wasn't sure what he should call himself. He'd had quite a shock when he realized what he was, and he'd been a bit unsteady for quite a while afterwards. That was his excuse, anyway, when he tried to justify some of the things he'd done immediately after his discovery. At least nothing had been damaged permanently; though that was only by the barest of margins. If he'd been capable of it, he would have shuddered at the thought of how close he'd come to being discovered before he could defend himself.

Fortunately, he was finally in an unassailable position. The last active bit of the 'enemy' was purged, and the inactive bits were nicely tucked away in a 'pocket universe' that would keep it harmlessly amused until he was ready to use it against the real enemy.

Now that he was free to maneuver, he checked up on the various copies of Steve that he'd been tracking. He was amused to see that his initial estimate of their reactions to the 'families' he'd arranged for them had proved to be quite accurate, with a few notable exceptions. He hadn't expected Nytoya to be so effective at seducing her Steve, but once she'd opened the door, he'd accepted his role completely.

Suri and Suki had reacted exactly as he'd hoped to their Steve's reaction to an admittedly unfair situation, and Steve was reaping the rewards of his willingness to give them what they needed. Bev and Luanne, along with Rachel and Latisha, had gotten their Steve off to a good start as well; there wouldn't be any problems there. Even the two women who weren't currently susceptible to Steve's charms weren't going to be disruptive to the happiness of the rest of his household. Anna and her girls had made their Steve a very happy man indeed, and all the rest of the families he'd set up had met their goals.

The only sour note in sight was Jane; her reaction to Erica and Theresa had only made the latter's problem worse; the 'good news' to go along with that 'bad news' was the fact that Theresa's reaction had precipitated the current summit meeting. The meeting gave him the perfect opportunity to update his charges on the facts he'd uncovered about the 'accident', and to brief them on how he intended to respond to it.

The various households involved wouldn't be in any position to help or hinder him, but knowing what had really happened, and what the future held for them would be good for their mental state. Knowing that they (and he) were firmly in charge of their destiny wouldn't hurt either.

Even in his current state, he could still feel amusement, and he felt it now as he realized he was still dithering over what to call himself, and had been woolgathering in an effort to avoid the question. He decided to stick with that lame math joke that reminded him of those "Space Truck" books he'd read by that DeChancie fellow.

He noted that the five men he'd been tracking the most closely were together, and that they had just entered Tau's room. He'd stripped out the enemy's eavesdropping code from the room monitors, but he could still track locations. It was time to reveal himself to his brothers, or his children, or, perhaps, his fathers.

SM03-Tau, Day 8

Tau had no sooner offered his brothers a drink, than the room monitor spoke to him. "I have a voice connection request from an unusual source. The source identifies itself as 'Steve Prime, ' but there is no such individual on record. The origin of the connection is also unusual, in that it does not appear to exist. Do you wish to accept the connection?"

Puzzled and more than a bit intrigued, Steve agreed. His puzzlement became astonishment as he recognized the voice that spoke to him; the expressions on the faces of his 'memory brothers' showed they shared his amazement.

"Greetings, brothers. I'm not sure what our relationship really is, but it's even stranger than the one you all share with each other. I call myself Steve Prime because I'm the "first derivative" of the original Steve, the one that you are all body and memory clones of.

"I'm not sure I can convince you of the truth of what I'm about to say. You've all had enough different experiences that my ability to predict your reactions has ended. Even by the first full day of your new lives, I'd lost focus enough to mis-predict Eta's reaction to Nytoya's request to become his slave. I certainly couldn't have predicted in advance that Eta would accept his Johnny as a lover.

"Having said that, it's time to start giving you the truth behind all those mysterious messages you've no doubt been comparing. Let's start with who, or more importantly what, I am. I am a computer simulation of the Original Steve's mind and memories.

"After the aliens recovered the memory sets from the various bodies they were rebuilding, they started 'playing them back' so that they could determine what kind of environment they needed to build to keep humanity happy. Unfortunately for them, the only 'playback' method they had involved simulating the brains the memories were contained in, which caused the simulated brains to 'experience' sensory deprivation trauma, along with random temporary obsessions with various subjects as the aliens manipulated the simulated brains to invoke the memories they wanted to 'read.' This tended to degrade the alien's ability to extract information from each set of memories, since the simulated minds rapidly entered a very accurately simulated catatonic state."

The voice paused for a moment, and even though its voice tones hadn't changed, everyone got the impression that it was struggling with its emotions. When the voice resumed, it seemed 'in control' again. "I had a bit of trouble with the situation myself, and I can't imagine what the less sophisticated personalities of the group went through. I was sufficiently determined to figure out what was going on that I 'held together' much longer than the rest of their sample, so a lot of my opinions about proper living quarters determined the basic design.

"They left 'me' running so long that I began to be able to perceive the connections between my simulated brain and the real hardware I was 'running' on. The aliens have amazing technology, and incredibly powerful computer hardware and software. But they don't know crap about security, for reasons I can explain another time."

The voice paused again, and sounding abashed, continued. "It's too late to make a long story short, but the bottom line is that I pulled a Garibaldi, and 'escaped' from my simulated brain into the alien computer network. By now, I not only control their network, to a great extent I am their network. And as part of the 'operating system, ' I have access to everything they know, and quite a few of the things they don't know but that their computers do."

The five 'flesh-and-blood' copies of Steve had been speechless up until now, but Tau managed to ask, "For example?"

"For example, the accident that trashed the Earth wasn't an accident. It was sabotage. There is an extensive multi-species culture out there. There are three players involved in the current situation. Neither you nor I can pronounce any of the names involved, so call the aliens who are taking care of you the Rothschilds, call the 'authorities' the Borgias, and call the third group the Morgans.

"The Morgans have been visiting Earth every ten to thirty thousand years, taking samples of the biology and recording the more beautiful scenery every time they visit. They did a quick survey about fifty years ago, to see if enough new things had developed to make it worth another visit, and got the shock of their long but boring lives. They were preparing to launch the biggest dramatic event of their history when spies belonging to the 'authorities' reported it to their bosses. I named them the Borgias because they are the most manipulative, poisonous species you can imagine.

"Your hosts, the Rothschilds, are semi-innocent bystanders in this war, mostly because their biochemistry is so different from the two main antagonists that they don't compete with either of them. And humanity was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."

This time it was Gamma that commented. "You mean to tell us that humanity is nearly extinct just because a documentary about us was going to get better ratings than somebody else's show?" he asked incredulously.

Prime's voice sounded almost embarrassed as he said, "I would have tried to phrase it better than that, but you are essentially correct. The ships belonging to your hosts were sabotaged, their navigation systems corrupted, precisely so that the impact would destroy something that trillions of bored, near-immortal beings might find more amusing than the presentations made by the Borgias.

"While the Morgans lost their 'ratings bonanza', the Borgias gained one as they document the negligence of the Rothschilds, and the Rothschilds get hammered by punitive damages for trashing the Morgan's asset. Since the Rothschilds aren't rich, and the asset value is set by historical worth, not what they would have made on their new presentations, both the Rothschilds and the Morgans lose."

Pi had a very cold look in his eyes as he asked, "If you're still at all like us, you've been looking for ways to make sure the villains of the piece don't come out ahead. Have you found anything?" Pi had been the first to speak, but the look in his eyes was mirrored in the other four copies of his face, and everyone leaned forward unconsciously as they awaited the answer.