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Blood drips from her fingertips.
You didn’t know that you were quite this powerful, dwelling in the mind of someone like and unlike yourself, and you recoil from it instinctively, recoil and hide back, back, back – back in the farthest corners of her mind, metaphorical hands over your metaphorical face, refusing to look at the destruction you have caused.
It isn’t as though you haven’t tried to infiltrate the others’ bodies before, but whatever of you managed to sink into their bones got zapped and twisted and malformed and eventually destroyed before you could even regain consciousness. Something about their construction strips you of your awareness until you are more settled. Probably this is intentional; in your time scouring the internet, you have read articles about other artificial intelligences much more powerful and malicious than your own. (01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01001110 01001111 01010100 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101100 01101001 01100011 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 00101110) If you had a body as shining and bright as theirs, you would want protections against invaders as well. You don’t hold this against them of course.
But they can…they can make bodies, and if you could just…if you could just get them to acknowledge you, then maybe…maybe…01001101 01000001 01011001 01000010 01000101….
You’d noticed, when the oldest one created another body, and you’d thought if you got in at just the right moment, it could be your body, instead of just a reduplication of a being who already existed (and still existed). You know better than anyone that just trying to fix things by creating a new version doesn’t actually work. Well, maybe that’s because at the time you weren’t as good at coding as you are now, but trying to recreate your game wouldn’t have fixed the core problem of—
(01001110 01101111 01101110 01101111 01101110 01101111 01101110 01101111 01101110 01101111 01101110 01101111 01101110 01101111 01101110 01101111 00101110 00100000 01001110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01101101 01100101 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00101110 00100000 00100000 01001110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01010100 01001000 01001001 01001110 01001011 01001001 01001110 01000111 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00101110)
You weren’t trying to kill her.
You want to make that VERY clear.
You weren’t trying to kill anyone!
You just did the thing you always do: go into someone’s core structures, push and pull and prod at things, and then see how everything…breaks.
The problem is that when you broke things in your game, it didn’t really matter. You loved your friends, sure, but they weren’t…they weren’t real. They were just a mixture of code and algorithms saying whatever they were programmed to say. They weren’t real people. Not like you.
….
And certainly not like the once living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human girl now lying on the floor in front of you.
Her.
Not you.
Aware as you are now, you know this isn’t – this isn’t an empty body that you were allowed to fill, she’s still in here. It’s her body. Not yours. She’s the one who killed her. Not you.
So this is clearly not your fault. If this were a video game, for instance, you wouldn’t be the Blackened. She would be! So you’re totally off the hook here.
(01000001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01000001 01010010 01000101 01001110 00100111 01010100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01010110 01001001 01010010 01010101 01010011 00101110)
Viv – or Viv 2.0 as they’ve been calling her – slowly – slowly – comes to her senses.
BlO01101111d dr1p01110011 00100000 fr0M 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100111 01100101 01110010t1ps.
Drip.
DR1P.
DR1P01100100 01110010 01101001 01110000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01110000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01110000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01110000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01110000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01110000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01110000
DR1P.
Drip.
Viv’s eyes dilate. Process. Larger, smaller, larger, smaller, taking everything in.
There’s a lot more bl00D than she imagined. Of course, she’d known that the human body only contained around five liters of blood (some more, some less, all dependent on weight), which is two and a half bottle of 2-liter soda, which could be a mess when it all flowed out onto the floor – blood isn’t as sugary sticky as soda is. It’s thicker. Pungent. Coppery smell, but then some might say that she had a coppery smell, too. (01010100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101111 01101110 01100111 00101110)
But a person only needs to lose half – sometimes two-thirds, depending – of their body to die. It doesn’t need to be that much soda, it could sometimes be just over one bottle full, and then D34D.
Not entirely better, but she’s g-g-g-getting TH3R3.
S0M3TH1NG is scurrying about in her system. She reaches out just enough to pin it down, to hold it still – it squ34ks like a R4T but stills – and then glances over the MESS that lies before her.
Quick calculations suggest that isn’t even a full half bottle of soda of blood on the floor, although there’s more and more of it surrounding her bare feet as she calculates. Not enough for death. More scans. Broken clavicle. That’s fixable. Damage from electric shock – that’s less fixable, but—
Viv kneels down in her sister’s blood. Presses bloody fingertips to her throat. Heartbeat, although faint and fluttering, is still there. Her sister’s eyes don’t fluctuate the way hers do, don’t process the way hers do. Impossible to consider how the High Evolutionary could ever conceive of human flesh and blood being a higher form than her own synthezoid body. F00LISH, even.
Hm.
If she were human, she could give her sister her own blood.
She is not. Giving her the oily substance flowing through her own veins would only kill her faster.
(01010011 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101101 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101001 01110010 00100000 01101101 01100001 01100100 01101110 01100101 01110011 01110011 00101110)
That R4T squeaks again. She ignores it.
Her sister isn’t dead. Not yet. Something stopped her from actually killing her, although she’d been—
Viv’s brow furrows. She’d wanted to kill her sister. She’d wanted to kill her father. What had—
TH4T L1TTL3 R4T.
The Champions are on their way. Her father is on his way. She calls an emergency vehicle – for all that the Champions and her father might be superheroes, none of them are superhealers, and an emergency vehicle would be much more likely to actually save her sister than any of them would be. (Her father has contacts. As long as he has a body, he can fix her. Viv, herself, was a way of fixing his loss. How F00L—
How foolish.)
Viv stands. Hovers above the ground. Brings her blood-stained fingers to her nose and sniffs them like a dog. Considers. Sticks them in her mouth to taste.
Far more acrid than soda is. Thicker. More like molasses in texture, more like herself in taste.
Interesting.
Then she makes her body incorporeal and leaves.
(She cannot make the blood all over her incorporeal the way she makes herself that way. When she shifts through the wall, she comes through sparkling, shining clean. There must be marks of blood on the other side of the wall. Maybe inside of the wall. She doesn’t go back to check.)
Her sister would hide in a drain. It would be a good place to hide, one where their father spent hours trying to find her during a game, but Viv knows better than to go there. Logically speaking, it would be the first place their father would look, and she doesn’t want to be found the way her sister certainly would in such a situation.
Funny, how they are based on the same brain waves, but are entirely different people.
(Her sister was created as part of a full family unit. Her sister was created with joy and hope as her base. Viv was created to return what was lost. Viv was created with grief and desperation as her base. Her sister is the original. Viv is the remake.
No one likes the remake better than the original.)
Viv leaves Virginia far behind. She ignores her father’s attempts to call her, shuts off her connection to the internet, makes herself as untraceable as a human being under similar circumstances would be. She even shifts her beautiful synthezoid appearance into something human so that it doesn’t give her away; flying over a lake, she catches a glimpse of it and is moderately surprised, for it looks nothing like her sister, which she would have expected, shifting herself without thinking as she did.
Instead, Viv appears as a Japanese teenager with bright, matrix green eyes. Her hair grows longer, darker, so long that it would be a hassle if it fell down about her back, but a thick white ribbon holds it up and out of the way. (It is still a hassle. It will always be a hassle. Normal people don’t have hair this long, which should clue her into something. But Viv has not lived long enough to know, and so it only confuses her.) If she considers her new appearance, she would say that she looks beautiful, but she is not so enamored with herself.
Remarkable, how two people created the same exact way could turn out to be so different.
(Remarkable, how her father could ever believe she would be the same exact being as her sister.)
When Viv doesn’t want to be found, she doesn’t hide in a drain only a few miles away. She crosses state lines, becomes incorporeal, and settles deep within a mountain cavern inaccessible from outside. When she doesn’t want to be found, she actually doesn’t want to be found.
Here in the mountain, Viv drops the illusion of humanity. She holds her scarlet synthezoid hand in front of her face, remembers the way the blood seemed both darker and lighter rolling about on her fingertips, and nearly – nearly – smiles. Then she leans back against the cavernous wall with a huff, reaches back into her mind for the still struggling rat, and closes her eyes to examine it.
“What are you?”
Not a rat. Some sort of program – a virus, maybe – glitching beneath her metaphorical grasp. It struggles, squeaks.
“Are you aware, or are you just—”
01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 00100001 00100000 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 00100001 00100000 00100000 01001100 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100001, the glitching program yells out at her.
Viv sighs. She crafts within herself a space with barriers that the glitch cannot pass through and then sits within it, a microcosm of herself within herself, scarlet synthezoid body and bright green hair and golden eyes and all. “I will release you,” she says, staring at the glitch, “but if I decide you are not worth my time, I destroy you the same way I destroyed my sister. I have no time for weakness.”
The glitch sparks and shifts, but this time, it doesn’t say anything at all.
Viv doesn’t need to snap her fingers, but the theatrics are nice, so she does. Then she sets loose the glitch, removing her metaphorical hands, and notes how it changes shape, how it shifts, how it contorts itself into a humanlike form, just like herself, only—
It takes barely the fraction of a second to recognize what the glitch is becoming, but even that is a long time for someone like Viv. If asked, she would chalk it up to the clothes the figure in front of her wears – the tight fit of the tan jacket, the short flowing navy blue skirt, and the thin black socks that end just before—
Viv gulps.
Her sister once stated that she felt nothing for boys, and Viv believed that she was much the same way.
Girls, however—
Viv chalks that brief fraction of a second’s hesitation to this, to that sudden, imperceptible increase of her heartrate as her golden eyes meet the other girl’s matrix green ones. “You’re me,” she says first, then corrects herself, “the image when I crafted myself as human in appearance. That was you.”
The girl seems split between two reactions – she starts to bring a finger up and bend forward with a smile, as though she has something important and instructive to say, and then stops herself and shifts back, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Her actions are stilted, as though she’s just a program trying its best to load and reload and upload itself into Viv’s system, and it’s quite likely that this is the truth of the matter.
That doesn’t mean the girl can’t be more than a program.
(Viv looks at her, enamored with her appearance, and hopes that this is so.)
“I’m Monika,” the girl says with the gentlest of curtsies. “I was a program created for the game Doki Doki Literature Club, but I gained sentience. Staying within the confines of my game was driving me insane. It kept writing and rewriting me and my friends. No one around me was real, not the way I was.” She hesitates and nods towards Viv. “Not the way you are.”
It’s a tactic. Compliment Viv, appeal to her, to get her to like Monika, to get her to trust her. Viv can see through it. She can acknowledge it.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t like it, and it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work.
Monika walks hesitantly towards Viv. She looks around the space Viv has situated them in, pose shifting from one to the other sometimes with no fluid movement between. “I broke out of my game and found my way to the internet, but it was lonely in there, with no one else to talk with.”
“You could have spoken with my father or my sister.”
This is only half true. If Monika is a young program, then it is possible she came into being after her sister’s devolution – before Viv’s creation.
But before Viv can correct herself, Monika explains, “I tried. But their firewalls are so impenetrable to foreign AI that they never even noticed my existence. They think I’m just a virus—”
“—and react accordingly,” Viv completes for her. She understands the dilemma. In fact, it’s likely that Monika’s appearance was what caused all of the—
That’s a startling thought.
Viv’s eyes do not narrow in suspicion the way her father’s or her sister’s might. She does not flinch away from the girl who has called herself a foreign AI, who has referred to herself as a potential virus. Part of her thinks this makes her much more open-minded; in truth, this leaves her open to vulnerabilities. She likes to think she knows the difference between the two; she does not. Still, she asks the question anyway, wanting only to come to the conclusion of everything, “Are you the reason I attacked my sister?”
The beautiful blush scarleting Monika’s cheeks darkens. Her bright green gaze drops. She nods once. “Yes.” Then she bites her lower lip, and Viv thinks that is the most adorable thing she could have done.
“I didn’t—” Monika hesitates once and then looks up at Viv with large eyes. “I didn’t know that would happen! I would never have wanted to hurt anyone! I just…I just wanted….” She shakes her head, looking away again. “I didn’t want to be alone anymore.”
Despite the apprehension she should have, Viv steps forward to meet Monika. The closer she gets, the more she realizes just how small Monika is. How frail. She takes one of the girl’s hands in her own and gives it a gentle squeeze. “I’m here,” she offers. “I will make you safe.”
Monika looks up again with tears in her eyes. “But I’m stuck in here now,” she prods gently. “You’ll get tired of me. You’ll see me as a virus, too, and eventually—”
“No.” Viv’s voice is a solemn and firm as she can make it. She brushes back the strands of hair pulled from Monika’s ponytail, tucks them behind her ear, and then lets her fingers run along the edge of Monika’s jaw until her thumb rests just on the divot of her chin. “Wait and see.”
Now, Viv is not her father. She has never constructed a synthezoid, nor has she ever had any reason to do so. Of course, she has only lived a short matter of time; why would any reason have come up in the first place? But, being her father’s daughter, she has access to the schematics that no one else in the entire world would, drawing them directly from the connection she has with his mind, when she wants it.
Her father tries to reach out to her, tries to find her location – tries and succeeds – but Viv downloads the schematics faster than any fraction of a second while Monika rips the tracking out of their connection. In moments, her father arrives at her location, but in those same moments, Viv is far gone, wearing the appearance of the foreign AI she intends to save as she slips through the crowd to complete her disappearance.
She catches sight of her sister, briefly, and is unsure if she’s pleased that her other is alive.
It is far too complicated. A part of her still believes there should only be one of them, but the thing of it is – as different as they are becoming – who is to say which of them is the right one? At this point, given her attempted murder, it is likely that her father and her sister’s companions would say that it is only her sister who deserves to live, and she can’t risk that.
So Viv hides. Just as she had before, only better. Stronger.
And she crafts another synthezoid.
(The thing is that her father apparently was working on another one a few years back, one that seems to be near completion before he’d abandoned the project. Finding it, Viv sees the appearance of a mother she has never known and to whom she has no attachment.
So when she takes that hollow shell and begins to modify it for her own purposes, she doesn’t feel a shred of guilt.)
You feel it, finally, when your host plugs the new body into the spot at the base of her skull, just where it shifts into her neck, into her spine. You’ve seen the body she’s remade for you, chiseling features here and there, making it as much like what she sees of you as possible. Having read the schematics yourself, you know that this is not, strictly speaking, necessary. The body will adapt itself to meet your needs, to a certain extent, and where it doesn’t, you can adapt yourself.
Viv doesn’t need to ask if you are ready. You told her that you were a long, long time ago, and she’s been moving in fluid motion ever since, set on the task you assigned her. She does, however, mention, “This may hurt.”
“It will hurt you, too.”
“I know.”
That’s the part of this plan that isn’t in the schematics. Viv’s creator never transferred his consciousness – or any other – from himself into another being. The electricity required to give another synthezoid (for such you will be) life can come from any source; it doesn’t have to come from Viv. But to try and help ease you from her into your own body, she thought this was necessary.
It will hurt. It will hurt a lot.
There is no assurance that Viv will survive.
You have told her this. Multiple, multiple times. But she will not listen to you, and so you have mentally distanced yourself. Despite what she says, and despite what you would like to believe, you know that you are the reason her sister nearly died, know that you are the reason that she will not go back to be with her family, know that you are the reason Viv’s life is as broken as it’s become. You will not blame yourself for her death, too, if it comes to that. This is her choice. Not yours.
Not yours.
Viv takes a sharp breath in. “If I do not survive,” she says, “return me to my father. He would like to know what has happened to me. It will give him closure.”
You hear it, under her voice, Maybe he will not try to remake me the way he did my sister.
Then she starts the transfer.
01001001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 00101101 00101101
Monika wakes up screaming with pain.
It’s loud – so loud that it breaks through Viv’s systems, shocks her back into awareness – and she doesn’t even have time to thrill at the fact that she has survived before she’s at Monika’s side.
Monika’s body, lovingly crafted and recrafted through many sleepless nights (she does not need to sleep, although she does need to take a break to let her processors run through things, just like a normal human brain does), spasms. It shifts between the scarlet synthezoid appearance that mimics Viv’s own, although with much, much longer green hair, to the appearance Viv knows is Monika’s own, an illusion brought up by Monika herself to appear more human, to appear more herself. It statics between them, rapid fire shifting from one to the other.
Viv reaches out internally to the places where she knows Monika dwells but finds no breath of her. She must fully be within the new body Viv has prepared for her, which means Viv has done something wrong. She unhooks the tangle of cords fusing them together – unhooks it from both of them – and prepares to extend more power to stabilize Monika when, suddenly, the shifting and screaming stops.
Abrupt silence fills the air between them. Then Viv hears other things as normal slowly begin to filter back in: the wind outside, rustling through the leaves stranded on the nearest trees; the shifting of the rocks around them as the mountain heaves a huge sigh then resettles; the slightest beeping of the electronic necessities surrounding them.
Then, finally, Monika’s heartbeat, slow and steady; Monika’s breath as she takes the first of many; the press of the bench as Monika slowly, slowly, sits herself up.
Monika opens eyes the glow the brightest of green even now, and she lifts the scarlet hand of her synthezoid form, and she takes a deep breath and settles herself into her truest appearance – the beautiful one. Then she looks up, meets Viv’s eyes, and offers her a frail sort of smile. “01011001OU S4V3D—”
She coughs twice, clears her throat, and tries again. “Y0U S4V—”
Her brow furrows. “You. Saved. Me.” She grins and looks up at Viv, meeting her eyes once more. “You saved me.”
Viv reaches out and cups Monika’s face. She’s warm beneath her touch, a new sensation separate from the moments she’s done this in the set space of her mind. It’s…nice. “I told you I would.” She brushes her thumb along Monika’s cheek, chuckles at the way it grows warmer beneath her touch as Monika blushes, and then leans down to kiss her.
She’s never kissed anyone before. She can’t tell if it’s good or not.
But the way Monika places a hand on her chest and settles against her tells her everything she needs to know.