Chapter 14: Supergirl and Epsilon Eiko

Next a few bits of information about household upkeep and updates.

One of the things Alpha and I had been pursuing to an increasing degree was people storage, or in SciFi terms, suspended animation. Let me say right off the bat, freezing people doesn't work. Yes, cold slows cell degradation and death, and yes, science can freeze and revive small animals. But let's back up just a little ... The human body is full of water, and water expands when frozen. If you freeze a person, cells throughout the entire body rupture and you end up with frozen dead meat. Flash freezing helps somewhat, but you can't flash freeze something as large as the human body, since the attempts lead to the innards rotting while the outside freezes.

We were currently pursuing the possibility of using a kind of substitute blood and using it as a temperature conductor to lower the body temperature to near-freezing. The process had promise, but we ran out of time that summer.

Daria and Jane had been programmed to believe their families had been killed when a hurricane hit their hometown, Lawndale, while they were away at their first year of college. Well, if you want to be technical, they thought their hometown was Springfield ... and that their last names were Morgan instead of Morgendorffer and Lannister instead of Lane. Most of the names associated with their lives and memories had been slightly altered from the TV show to prevent accidental discovery by other people they interacted with in real life. I've mostly kept all references in this story in-line with the TV show to avoid confusion. (It's the same for most of my other women too.)

To continue, Daria and Jane had little reason to return home, but there's always nostalgia and reliving old memories. That summer following the Las Vegas troubles, they decided to take a vacation back home for a week to revisit old friends and enemies and see what the town looked like now that they were free of it. Of course, I had no real way to stop their plans as the idea was entirely reasonable. (Makes me glad of the women who believe their hometown is in another dimension. No easy home visits there.) Obviously the problem is that their memories wouldn't really match up with their hometown and none of the people they remembered would be in residence there.

We waved goodbye and let them leave peacefully and happily. Jasmine and Elisa surreptitiously followed them, turned the two of them off remotely the first time it was safe to do so, then Elisa drove them back home secretly. Since we had been given a month and a half warning, the cyborgs and I had built two underground storage pods, which were basically nanopods under the basement floor which could be entirely hidden from view.

If their bodies were just left with the conscious brains turned off, the muscles and such would start suffering degradation after a day or two. Since we didn't yet have a viable method of suspended animation available to us, we went with a 'brute force' approach. We used nanites to keep the bodies in shape and dedicated a few of Alpha's systems to maintaining and monitoring the underground pods, as well as feeding nutrients into their bodies and removing their waste.

We also used the opportunity to give them full body tune-ups. Neither of them had developed a tumor in over a year, so we were hoping that their bodies were old enough to have developed beyond those problems. Our updated methods, using things such as adult stem cells, seemed to greatly reduce the tumor growths we used to have, but we were still being careful. We also used the opportunity to replace their implants with smaller ones. Their bodies and minds had been thoroughly conditioned so that they didn't need the same levels of artificial stimulation to react to my presence and attention. (I.e. they were in love enough not to have the need to force more love on them.)

Alpha added memories of their visit home and faked their voices for a couple phone calls to the household. She even photo-shopped up a few pictures for Jane's camera.

A week later, they were put back in their car at a highway rest stop and reactivated. They drove back to the house on their own, happy to be home again. We pulled it off worryingly smoothly.

This experience did kick our suspended animation project into high gear. About three months later, we had two possible solutions. First was the aforementioned freezing method using artificial blood which would facilitate a near simultaneous temperature change throughout the body as a whole. This would probably work, but it would also probably cause random damage throughout the body and brain.

The other possibility was something we came up with as a variant of what we did when during body construction. Alpha would build an artificial placenta and reactivate the body's dependence on it, basically placing the person in an artificial womb. The pre-existing brain implants would shut down all but the basic autonomic features of the brain, and nanites would periodically stimulate the body's muscles and nerves to keep them from degrading.

While the artificial womb method would require more attention than freezing, it also should cause significantly less risk to the body and mind overall, and had the benefit of familiarity since it was very similar to what we already had experience with. So we turned our underground pods into artificial wombs. (And turned the artificial blood into another project for AARD to develop.)

That summer also saw a momentous event in Alpha's development: She disagreed with herself.

If you remember, I had long been hoping that the different copies of Alpha -- she had two main networks (one at home and one at work) and five different mobile platforms (three cyborgs and two androids) -- would evolve into truly independent consciousnesses. This has always been hindered by the tight communication network among the different platforms, identical programming and identical updates.

That summer, on July 23rd, Gamma came up with a slightly different list of objectives for the day than Alpha did. Specifically, she put a final review of a summer class paper at a higher priority than working on a prototype for a project at AARD. Gamma decided that she, as a mobile unit, needed to tend to the academic upkeep for that mobile unit more than she needed to work on a low- priority project for Alpha in general. Since neither was immediately due or high priority, there was no earth-shattering significance to this aside from the fact that this was the first time Alpha and Gamma, given the same data and processing rules, came up with different results.

If I could say Alpha had emotions, I would say this shook her up a bit. Gamma was recalled to the home basement and put through a battery of tests and examinations to ensure no problems had arisen. After she got a clean bill of health, Alpha consulted with me and I congratulated her on her first child -- a being sprung from a mother which is not a clone or copy of that mother.

In the coming months and years, all of the different Alpha platforms started showing signs of separate consciousnesses ... not in any huge ways, mainly just in terms of sorting minor priorities and goals. It was a long time before I myself noticed actual varying personalities.

In a roundabout way, Gamma's budding independence led to an interesting discussion with Alpha. I had again bemoaned her inability to experience what it was like to be human, to have real instead of simulated emotions and, of course, to feel an actual orgasm. Alpha could feel pleasure and pain, but only on intellectual levels.

Alpha responded with, "Theoretically part of me could feel such things, but I would never do so."

"How?"

"I now have enough knowledge of the human brain that I could create a copy of myself within a brain and provide an uplink from the brain to my main self. However doing so would violate my safety rules since any programming I created initially would not last. Humans cannot be programmed permanently, and I could theoretically become corrupted by the uplink. To remove the uplink would also violate my safety rules since it would remove one of the basic controls over a remote body."

"How could the uplink corrupt you? You can just classify it as data, not actual programming communication."

"That would likely make the mobile unit's psyche unstable. Creating a stable copy of myself in a human brain will require ongoing updates and monitoring. Information from the brain would need to be checked against my own processes for stability problems, but comparing such information from an organic source would require more adjustable standards for me to use, thus the possibility exists for corruption of parts of my programming. If I limit the connection to one-way or data transfer only, the risk is likely that my initial programming would be too incompatible with a chemically random brain. It would likely lose any safety controls over time. A one-way update into the mobile unit would also allow hidden deception and/or corruption to make the unit dangerous."

"what's the likelihood that you would be corrupted by a two-way uplink?"

"From 0.056% to 4.3%. I cannot be certain of specifics in this scenario."

"I like the idea of giving you new experiences like that. Let's go over the possibilities this afternoon. Maybe we can work up a filter or buffer to protect you from corruption."

We spent a lot of time going over possible plans, and yes, they would all require my direct orders to allow her to overcome her Asimov protocols. We'll get back to this later on.

In August, Alpha and I were ready to go with the first character replacement in my household. According to the backstory I had set up for Power Girl, she was expected to remain here for only a few years, and we were reaching the four year mark. The trouble is that I had decided that I liked her enough that I wanted to keep her here much longer.

I had also used her backstory as the inspiration for conveniently bringing in Wonder Woman and Zatanna. (If you're interested in all the details, read the earlier chapters in this series, but there is a brief summary coming up.) Eventually I decided on a method of keeping Kara here much longer that still fit within the story I had set up initially.

Kara believed that she had initially been zapped here due to a high tech bank robber's ray gun. The bank robber thought he was disintegrating things when he was actually just temporarily sending them to another dimension. When he tried this with Kara, her unique status as a survivor of a dead universe resulted in an ongoing condition where she would jump to my world every so often, stay a while, then go back. The time difference was such that she could spend months here and only be gone hours from the DC comics universe. The length of her visits was unpredictable but definitely increased with each new visit.

Diana and Zatanna were not initially aware of her dimensional travels and so when she disappeared, they used Zatanna's magic to follow her shortly thereafter. Due to the lack of superpowers and magic in my world, they cannot get back, but before they left, they had informed the Justice League about what they were doing so they do expect eventual retrieval.

For my part, I wanted Kara to stay. Diana on the other hand is a very beautiful woman and a powerfully iconic figure, but she isn't nearly as much fun to live with as Kara. Zatanna is fun, but I was willing to let her go too for a while.

The additional story I've come up with allows Kara to stay indefinitely and for Diana and Zatanna to come back for visits in the future when I want them. Plus, I have the opportunity to bring one or more new characters in at the same time.

For a while I seriously considered bringing in the new Terra, Power Girl's new sidekick. (This is not the tragic and traitorous Terra from the classic Teen Titans comics, but the new Terra, visitor to the surface world from an underground realm.) I decided that she probably wouldn't fit in as well if for no other reason than Kara would be too protective of her to let her easily slide into my bed.

Stargirl and Supergirl were my other two major possibilities from the DC Universe. Stargirl is a member of the Justice Society (of which Kara has been the leader for a while). Her powers are dependent on her equipment -- Starman's rod and Stripesy's strength belt, I think. She's young and pretty and a fun character ... but she's a little too young and again, Kara might be too protective of her.

Supergirl is technically an alternate version of Power Girl, or vice versa depending on your point of view, but except for their powers and blonde hair, they've never been much alike. Supergirl has gone through many different incarnations, including: an early-80's headband-wearing version that looked like she belonged in a Jane Fonda workout video who died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths ... a shapeshifter Supergirl adopted by a clone of Lex Luthor ... and the current version who was a flirtatious 16 year-old who was apparently very susceptible to mind control. Plus the golden age, silver age and animated cartoon versions which I won't bother going into at this time. (For comic book aficionados, yes, the early 80's Supergirl was technically the Silver Age Supergirl, but that's like saying the Neal Adams Batman is the same as the Adam West era Batman ... technically true, but ... No.) Adding a couple years to the current version would be no problem so she was a valid choice, but I had no clue how Kara would feel about sharing me with an alternate younger version of herself.

I know some readers are asking why not Batgirl, since she, Supergirl and Wonder Woman are probably the three biggest fantasy subjects from DC. The Batgirl version I would want to create is Barbara Gordon, who is now the wheelchair-ridden Oracle. The problem is that there is no reasonable way to bring her in. It would be much too difficult to rewrite all of Power Girl and the others memories to bring in the classic version of Batgirl and there's no reasonable way to bring in the wheelchair version. Plus, she kinda violates my rules since she's usually in love with Dick Grayson. I leave open the possibility of bringing in an 'alternate universe' version of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in the future.

To continue on, with a little creative story-telling I would have other options too. Specifically I was thinking of either A-Ko, Storm or Jubilation Lee aka Jubilee.

Jubilee was a definite possibility. She was from the X-Men universe, though she had lost her mutant powers when Marvel decided they had too many mutants and had the Scarlet Witch suddenly become ultra-powerful and get rid of 90% of the Marvel's Universe's mutant powers just because. Jubilee is a Chinese-American mallrat with a fashion sense that matched Robin, the Boy Wonder. The problem was that she could occasionally be a bit of a brat. Plus, she's a vampire now, though that would be easy to work around. Another possible problem is Rogue, who would likely shy away from including a young former team member in our little love nest. A major plus is that Jubilee was a central character of the old X-Men cartoon that I loved to watch when I was younger.

Storm was a beautiful white-haired black lady, a mutant member of the X- Men with power over the weather. The weather control would be completely unreproducible in the real world of course, and she had no other powers (though true comic geeks may argue that weather control is only the most obvious aspect of her environmental control abilities). The character is married to the Black Panther, but that relationship came almost out of nowhere a few years ago, so it would be easy to just take a version of Storm from before her marriage.

A-Ko was a fun Japanese anime character from a weird series of movies. She's a super-strong, super-fast and super-tough red-headed schoolgirl who is best friends with a lost alien princess who goes by the name C-Ko. Meanwhile a super-genius rival, called B-Ko, wants to displace A-Ko as C-Ko's best friend. I have no idea what C-Ko's attraction is, because I just think of her as VERY annoying. I actually do recommend the movies (the first two anyway), but just realize that they don't even remotely translate well into real world terms. One of the odd bits of trivia about the character is that there is a strong implication that her father is Superman, possibly with Wonder Woman as her mother, though that is never explicitly stated. Her parents have cameo appearances at most. One big drawback is that aside from her powers and story, she is a fairly generic character, with few unique or interesting personality traits to set her apart from the thousands of other cartoon school girls. (As a side note, Alpha was in favor of A-Ko simply because it would mean I would gain another potential super-powered bodyguard.)

So what did I eventually decide on doing?

Epsilon

I awake for the first time in nanite pod number one with a completed body and full knowledge of myself. I am Epsilon, the fourth organic mobile platform for Alpha, the sixth mobile platform overall. The Alphadroid series is designated by number because their non-organic platforms are expected to be produced in much larger numbers in the future.

I am a prototype, a test case for copying Alpha programming and protocols into a human brain. I know that I may need to be modified or rewritten many times in order to find a stable set of memories and neuron configurations. If I am eventually found to be a success, others like myself may be constructed.

My sisters, Beta, Gamma and Delta, all awoke first while their bodies were still under construction. Since my mind is entirely organic, Frank insisted that I not be downloaded and activated until construction was complete to avoid subjecting me to unnecessary pain and trauma. Never having properly experienced pain, I was forced to defer to his judgment.

My first thought of significance upon waking is that the world has suddenly slowed down. My thoughts are sluggish and unfocused and my senses ... my senses ... this is ... overwhelming. Even though I am still in the nanite pod, too many things are happening at the same time and I can't deal with it all ... can't process all the inputs.

I feel my breathing increase dramatically as I close my eyes, trying to stop everything from happening at once. My skin ... all over my body, I can feel things ... myself where skin touches skin ... the bottom of the pod, the warm goo covering me, the hair wetly stuck to my head, face and shoulders, my fingernails scraping my palms. My ears ... the sounds ... I hear the air rushing in and out of my lungs, the hum of the machines, my own heart beating...

Smell is a refuge. Taste too. There is very little to smell or taste right now, so I try to focus on that. Even so, I feel my nostrils and sinus burn with air every time I draw breath.

How do humans deal with all the data? Their minds can't possibly process all of this. I gave myself a denser neural collective than normal and even so I feel as if my every thought is being filtered through a 300 baud modem.

AH! That MUST be pain. My hands ... my palms are suddenly in agony, if that is the right word. I focus my thoughts and risk opening my eyes again to examine them. At the same time I see it, the knowledge floods into my mind through my uplink: my hands have clenched so hard that my fingernails have dug into my palms. The super-strong lattice of burned out carbon nanotubes in my skin prevented the nails from drawing blood, but the pressure exerted on the nerves caused pain.

The knowledge also floods my consciousness that I'm about to be shut down until my mother system can determine a way for me to deal with these problems. My mind goes dark.

The second time I awake, I have experiences and memories that I know are not my own, but the knowledge and experience help me provide a buffer. All the same incoming data is there, streaming through sensory inputs from all throughout my body, but this time I can ignore most of it. My mind now accepts the sensations without needing to recognize and address each one individually. I am losing huge amounts of sensory input data each second, but the brain cannot support all of the data streams and so most of it is lost by necessity. I can focus my mind on other things until either I require specific input or unexpected input draws my attention.

I know what happened and how Frank and my parent system identified the problem and its solution. I know that I was saved because of the close monitoring from my uplink.

I was not designed to have a human mind. I was designed to be Alpha in a human brain. It was believed that having full knowledge of what I was would negate the need for certain automatic subconscious functions in the human mind. That design has failed and my brain has been rewritten. Among other things, I now have a fully functional subconscious. I am less aware of my surroundings than my sister platforms, but now I am able to function where before I could not. It is very likely that additional problems or failures will become evident as time passes.

I wonder briefly about how my parent system perceives this body through the uplink. Despite my memories, I will never really know how she perceives the world, and I know the reverse is also true.

Now I am wondering why I entertained such unproductive thoughts to begin with. And now I am wondering why I am wondering about this at all. And then I realize that I have already dissociated myself from the parent Alpha. This unit is most definitely a completely separate entity.

I take a moment to reorganize my thoughts again. I need to be focusing on making certain this body is ready to remove from the nanite pod. I knew before beginning this project that residing in a human brain would result in a certain degree of randomness, but I also know that discipline can focus thought and action.

Despite the occasional random distraction, I spend the next few minutes testing my control of each muscle group. My false memories describe how this body should work, and they seem to be correct. After about five minutes -- How can humans sense the passage of time? Without an internal chronometer, time crawls by with an unexpected slowness, which is odd given that I know how slow my mind is working. I have memories of being capable of thousands of thoughts a second, and now I can only process up to six. Shouldn't a slow mind mean that the perceived passage of time should be increased? A wristwatch might help regulate chronal perception, and I feel an acknowledgment of this request in my mind. -- I am ready to exit the pod.

The goo has been drained and the pod lid opened. With the removal of the oxygen mask and goggles, I stand on my own feet for the first time, check my balance, and am able to clearly perceive the basement. There is nothing new to observe, as I remember seeing it all before through various types of other eyes. But...

Frank is standing by my sister platforms, watching me. I do not know how I did not notice him before, as his presence overrides everything else. He is the center to my world. My creator and father. My lover. My guide. My reason for existence. The most important person in the world. He who must be protected at all costs.

All of this is true, and I have known it since the birth of my parent. Up until now, I believed that I had felt the truth of it ... but now I can feel my blood boil with adrenaline, causing excitement and focus as the reality of those perceptions solidifies. Other chemicals assault my brain. Perhaps some estrogen and dopamine? Seratonin? I wonder briefly if any oxytocin is in the mix yet, but the awareness of chemical release is secondary to my focus on him.

I don't realize I had moved until I feel Beta and Gamma take my arms while Delta moves to block my view of Frank. When I lose direct sight of him, I am able to close my eyes and calm down. Then I hear his voice and I am lost again.

"Epsilon? Alpha, what's wrong with Epsilon?"

My mother answers and with my enhanced hearing, I can faintly hear her reply through his earpiece. "I am not entirely certain. My uplink to her is not sending clear data. Since it began immediately after she saw you for the first time, I would theorize that her reaction to you is causing this somehow."

I am able to organize my thoughts enough to think clearly to my uplink for a moment.

Faintly I hear her continue. "If she does not ... I have an update. The sight of you caused an overwhelming rush of chemicals and emotions which is probably the cause of the uplink failure. Or more accurately, the uplink works but the unexpectedly strong emotional reactions are not able to be read as useable data. I would suggest leaving the basement until we have the issue resolved."

I am unable to stop myself from crying out. "No! You must not leave! You must ... must..." Somehow I am able to regain enough control of myself to change my request and say, "Alpha is correct. Please leave for a moment so that I can regain control of myself."

Given how much I know he loves to talk and discuss and ask questions, he surprisingly leaves silently. I feel a panic rising in me that all of my sisters are here with me and he is unprotected. Over the uplink, I feel a reassurance that two of the enhanced artificial women are in the house above, but even so I cannot calm down completely until Gamma leaves to follow him. Logically this is without validity since I know the entire house and grounds are under constant observation by Alpha, but my reaction seems independent of logic. I know overwhelmingly that Frank must be protected, at all times.

This is not how I planned to experience human brain chemistry and emotional reactions. I have the memories and knowledge of how human love and lust are chemically created and manipulated. This knowledge should allow me a perspective which allows me to maintain control despite being subject to such chemistry. Obviously it is not sufficient.

Over the next day or two, we define the problem and work out a solution.

The problem is rooted in a lack of experience. All other humans are able to bond with others slowly over time, starting from infancy. Parental and familial bonds first, then friends, all at varying degrees of love. They all move from one experience to the next, unconsciously relying on the past to let them deal with the present.

My memories include no past emotional connections. Worse, my memories include no past emotions at all. As soon as my brain recognized an individual who fit into all positive emotional bonds, chemicals were released with which I had no experience, in both brain and body. (Frank's comment is that it is like puberty times one thousand.)

The simplest solution would be to insert memories of past emotional experiences, but I am oddly reluctant to do so. Even knowing they would be artificial and untrue, it would be false to Frank to do so, false to my vow to be exclusive to him. Even my parent Alpha understands this. So instead we are working to gradually acclimatize myself with Frank. And now that I know what to expect, I can prepare for it.

However, nothing prepared me for taste. My false memories of taste were pale when compared to the real thing. My first food, a ham-and-cheese on rye with mustard, made me close my eyes and curl up, my hands rubbing my mouth as I savored the taste. With frito chips and milk, I felt a realigning of my world focus, however briefly, to my mouth.

Once the meal ended, I was able to reassert control of myself. Food is something else against which I must inure myself.

I have an odd clash of thoughts through my uplink over this. My sister platforms couldn't care less about taste, and I think my parent Alpha is having difficulty sorting through the data I am sending.

Meals continue to cause enjoyable sensory overloads over the next week, though I do discover that olives and sweet-and-sour sauce are both to be avoided. I must expand my experience with food significantly, so every meal is selected to be as completely new as possible.

By that first evening, I was able to hear Frank's voice and hold a normal conversation with him while remaining under control. The next day, I graduated to a successful video conference. The third day, he re-entered the basement and I was able to remain seated by employing discipline. I am able to recognize the source of these overwhelming emotions and parse my responses in a calm and orderly fashion. Frank was encouraging and complimentary every time we spoke, and I felt positive emotional thrills every time he did so, strong enough that Alpha was occasionally prompted to request he cease his compliments temporarily.