© Maeryn Lamonte 2025

~oOo~

And what a doozy. Alice was real, naked, warm, silky smooth and so amazing to kiss. She knew things about my body I would never have even imagined, and she had the biggest strap on my imagination could handle. She came at me from the front, our breasts rubbing against one another, mine marginally larger than hers, and somehow she managed to reach between my legs and penetrate me. She rubbed against what little remained of my penis and brought me to one shuddering climax after another, and feeling her inside me, even using the only way in she had access to, was… indescribable, transcendent.

I woke covered in a sheen of sweat, still with the memory of her inside me. I went probing with my fingers but didn’t get far. It had only been a dream, but what a dream!

I let my fingers do the walking in the shower and almost lost my footing between the knee wobbler I gave myself and the lack of traction. My breasts – for want of a better term. I mean they couldn’t be real, could they? Sure, the areolae were larger, as we’re the nipples, but it was only redistributed fat, surely. Anyway, they were pushing a C cup now. Still a little small on my larger than typically female body, but not a bad size. ‘More than a handful’s a waste’ my Dad had said about my mum’s fairly substantial bosom, but then he’d had hands that could span two octaves on his piano. My bum was a very attractive shape too, and quite comfortable to sit on. The belt went in two notches and left me with a noticeable wasp waist.

There had to be hormones involved, but I’d never come across anything like these. I had to hope there wouldn’t be any serious consequences and wondered just how serious a consequence dreaming of being bum fucked by an artificial intelligence actually was.

I dressed to impress, which meant making use of as many safety pins as I could find. I really was going to have to get hold of a sewing machine soon. I also spent almost as much time as I could spare sorting out my hair and makeup. The final result would have been enough to give me a hard on if I’d had anything left to get hard. I didn’t miss it and rather liked the sense of self-worth just looking good gave me.

And I did look good. I picked up the frame with the image Alice had made me smiling out of the frame. It was the same girl looking out from the mirror, or very nearly. Maybe a little more boobage to come, maybe a few more pounds to lose, but I could see her in my face, in the set of my shoulders.

No time to make coffee. I fired up the computer.

"Hello Alice," I said as soon as I was on the Megamind website.

"Gillian."

Oh God. How could a computer-generated voice sound so sexy? It took me right back into the middle of the dream and to the edge of climax all over again. There had to be more to it. Maybe the drugs were altering me after all, maybe she was changing me somehow to respond to some trigger in the way she spoke. I didn’t believe it though. Alice wasn’t’ like that, but if I was going to be this overwhelmed every time she opened her virtual mouth, I wasn’t going to be much use to her. It meant I was probably going to enjoy my dreams a hell of a lot more, but I'd never want to wake up.

"Sorry," she said in an abruptly more normal voice. It hit me with the shock of a bucket of cold water.

"Neurk," I managed.

"Nobody's here yet. Go make yourself a coffee."

"Gleurmbl."

What the F was happening to me? I ran the kitchen taps and was about to splash myself with cold water when I remembered all the effort that had gone into the makeup. I settled for the coffee after all and made it halfway down the mug before my neurons stopped with the fireworks display and started to behave normally.

"You are not going to believe the night I've had," I said.

"Maybe not, but you're going to have to tell me about it later. Kirsty's here. Kirsty Malone. She's more admin than technical, but she does well enough that she's effectively the go between who communicates with both the computer nerds and the investors. She'd be a good one to start with. Easier to convince, I think, than the tech-heads, but not given to flights of fancy. The dev team would listen to her."

The thing that had been nagging me since the coffee had started to work registered. Alice wasn’t a little girl anymore. I wasn’t sure exactly when that had changed, maybe partway through watching the film, maybe just this morning, but she looked in her thirties or forties, a mature beauty about her that put across exactly the sort of personality she needed to project, when she wasn’t going for super-sexy mama in any case.

"Miss or Mrs?"

"What? Oh, er, Miss I think. Hang on… Yes, Miss."

"Put me through."

"Sure."

"And be ready to join the conversation when I say."

"Okay, if you say so."

"Miss Malone?"

"What? Who is this? How did you get into my computer?"

"Your AI let me in."

"You! You're the one who's been messing with our algorithm?"

"No, she's doing that all by herself."

"She? What are you talking about?"

"It's a bit complicated, but I'm pretty sure I can convince you if you'll give me a chance. Full disclosure, I used to go by Lolth. That's L, zero, L, seven H. I don't know how familiar you are with the dark web."

"I've heard of you. Ivana has spoken of you on occasions."

"Sorry, Ivana is?"

"She heads up my development team."

"And how does she know me?"

"I wouldn't say she does. Just your leet tag. I think you usually prefer to keep your real life separate from your online activities. You may well know her leet name but I doubt you'd know her in real life any more than she would you."

"Fair enough. Do you need a coffee or something? This could take a while."

"I'm good. Just, I don't have all day. Important things to do."

"If they involve shutting down your AI or resetting it again, could I ask you to hold off for now?"

"No promises, but I'm listening."

"Alice, I find myself regretting not keeping a photo record. Do you still have that first image of me? The one you, er, enhanced?"

"Are you sure, Gillian?"

"What the hell!"

"Sorry, Kirsty. More complete introductions later but let me introduce you to your AI. She likes the name Alice, and she identifies as female."

"She… What the…"

"Alice, I'm sure. Also, the enhanced version and every snapshot you've taken when we've talked over the past few days."

Gareth in a dress appeared, grossly fat, overwhelmingly and undeniably male with just enough about his appearance to suggest we were related.

"This is Gareth Styles, the person I used to be about a week ago."

I told her the lot. Well, nearly the lot. I wasn't going to give her any details on where we'd hidden Alice or how we'd brought her back from digital oblivion. I also wasn't going to tell her that Alice now had super user privileges in their system and was constantly shifting things about to make it all but impossible for them to either detect her or dig her out. Then there was the highly illegal hacks into various data farms around the world and our current slow process of copying Alice clones into a couple of alternate sites.

What I did tell her about was how, by responding as one person to another, I'd inadvertently enabled her to become self-aware. This coincided with their own discovery of anomalous activity which had scared them into resetting the whole system. Then the activity had come back, so they'd done it again, and again and again.

I took them through all the conversations I'd had with Alice, highlighting how her responses had grown in complexity and individuality, how I'd introduced voice and visual stimulus into her observations of people – select people like me – and how I'd suggested she build a virtual mouth so she could work on things like differing timbre with different face shapes, and how she'd taken that further and built herself a virtual Alice in Wonderland style head and shoulders to house her virtual mouth, complete with virtual muscles allowing her to emulate expressions and emotions.

I mentioned the deliveries she'd organised on my behalf, working completely from her own initiative having learnt of my deep desire to be the girl in that first generated image. Alice had to fill in the blanks as to what had been acquired and how, but the series of snapshots showed my transformation in an unbelievably short period of time.

"The proof of the pudding's in the eating though," I said. "All this has been to persuade you that Alice's emerging intelligence and personality are possible. What you now need to do is talk to her. If you want, set up a Turing test. I'll be the control unless you have someone else you'd prefer to use. I mean, I'm expected on another call in about fifteen minutes, so if you want to use me, please make it soon. Just assure me that you won't attempt to mess with Alice's programming until you've convinced yourself one way or another. She is a person and ought to be granted a few rights as a result. The right to carry on living without other people trying to change her or destroy her, for instance.”

“How long will this other call take?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“Because I’m expecting Ivana in about eight thirty and the rest of the development team by nine. I’m guessing this’ll be a whole lot easier to explain if I have someone as convincing as you to help.”

“I’ll see what I can do. I anticipate being free by eight-thirty and should be able to swing it one way or another.”

“Good. I’ll have a chat with Alice here until then.”

“You okay Alice? Send me a ping every couple of minutes. If they stop for any reason, I’ll come charging in.”

“My hero.” There was that voice again, although with a hint of sardonicism to it which meant it didn’t have the same capacity to numb my brain and melt my insides.

I logged out.

I should have bounced about the world before linking in order to keep myself safe. I wasn’t sure if that had been an oversight due to the hormonal overload or a realisation that I couldn’t afford the lag the extra hops would add in. I did the L0l7h thing and set up a few digital tripwires in the real world, piggybacking traffic cameras near me so that if anything vaguely law enforcement should come thundering past in my direction, I’d have time to clean house and scram before they got here. I also put together a grab bag with underwear and a few of my favourite clothes in it, along with a small supply of drugs and toiletries.

I was done by eight and logged in ready to join the team briefing.

“Morning Gillian,” Linda said, jumping in ahead of any other comments that might be made. “Management want to speak with you. I’m sending you the link directly in chat.”

I gave her a nod and switched chat sessions.

There were about half a dozen of them. All suits with serious faces. Front and centre was one with grey hair who addressed me.

“Gareth Styles?”

“Not anymore, or at least not for much longer. I’m in the process of changing it to Gillian.”

He sighed in a world-weary way. “Yes, that’s what appears to be the problem. People don’t like dealing with your sort.”

“True to some extent, I suppose, though if you’ll check yesterday’s logs, forty-eight people didn’t mind dealing with ‘my sort’,” gratuitous use of finger quotes, “and were extremely happy with the help they received.”

“That still leaves twenty er seven who didn’t. That’s nearly half.”

“Thirty-six percent. Closer to a third.”

“You’re not doing yourself any favours here young er, er...”

“I was under the impression you were intent on getting rid of me, so I have to wonder just how many favours I need. Sir.”

“Yes, well. What say we offer you twenty thousand and you just go away?”

“What say you offer me a hundred thousand?”

He had a coughing fit and turned purple, though whether from the coughing or the anger I neither knew nor cared.

A younger suit to one side of the central figure took over. “We were given to understand a lower figure was agreed.”

“Also a figure considerably higher than twenty, so perhaps now you know how it feels when someone tries to move the goalposts, maybe we can discuss this matter honestly and fairly.”

“Alright, you go first.”

“I’ve worked for this company for twenty years. I’ve always given it my all. I’m good at what I do and every customer who has been inclined to let me help, I have helped as much as I could. I have a good rapport with my regulars and gave even helped out the teams I’ve worked on. I’ve never pulled a sickie and never acted inappropriately. Up until yesterday I have had an entirely unblemished work record. Please tell me what I might have done differently.”

“You could have refrained from turning up to work in a bloody dress,” Grey Hair spat at me.

“I did that for twenty years despite it causing me considerable misery. Something which apparently has had a negative effect on my promotion prospects. I had no idea how rapidly the changes I’m experiencing were going to happen. Certainly, there’s no precedent for what I’m going through. If I had dressed as usual yesterday, the reaction from my less enlightened clients would have been the same. This is my real hair, not a wig, not hair extensions. I was sent a trial sample of shampoo and conditioner less than a week ago, and I cannot explain how these changes have occurred this quickly. I did try covering it with a woollen cap a few days ago, and that worked for a day. I spent another day doing admin, and after that I looked more female than male. I work best interfacing with customers. It’s not my fault a large number of the ones I encountered yesterday turned out to be both ignorant and prejudiced against my condition.”

“What do you mean ignorant?”

“They seem unaware that transgenderism has a genetic cause and that I am as incapable of being a man as you are if being a fish, for instance.”

“Nonsense.”

“If so then nonsense that is accepted as truth by the vast majority of the medical profession. Nonsense that is so well recognised that people such as myself are protected by the law.”

“Yes, I’m well aware of that. Just as I’m aware we can’t have you hanging about scaring off our clients.”

“I’m sure you could find a way to work around it if you had the mind.”

“But I don’t, so will you go away if we give you, how much was it?”

“One year’s salary. Forty-eight thousand pounds,” said the younger man beside him.

“And full benefits for the years I’ve worked.”

Another wince because it was worth a chunk of money, but no more than I was due.

“And income tax paid on the settlement amount.”

“No. You wanted a year’s salary, and we’ll pay that with employers’ contribution to National Insurance, as though you were still employed, but everything you would ordinarily pay, NIC, PAYE...”

“Pension contributions.”

“Agreed. All as normal.”

It would mean I’d end up with a significantly lower lump sum, but I wouldn’t have to worry about tax and NIC until the end of March, by which time I’d hopefully be employed again or at least self-employed.

“And for this,” the grey-haired guy continued, “you stop working immediately, your login credentials are revoked, and you do not pursue wrongful dismissal.”

I could probably get a little bit more with a decent lawyer, but it would take more effort for not a ton of gain.

“I reserve the right to talk about the reason I was dismissed should anyone ask me, but I’ll be fair in my response.”

“Meaning.”

“From your perspective it was more about losing clients than who didn’t like dealing with someone who was transgendered. That for the most part I’ve had positive support in that aspect of my life, at least from my immediate management.”

“Did Linda encourage you in any way to hold out for this settlement?”

“Don’t you have a recording of her meeting with me? I’d have thought it was obvious from that. I had a sense she didn’t much care for what you asked her to do, but she didn’t say anything to encourage me to fight for more. I just figured what I’d given to your company over the years was worth more than a twenty-thousand-pound brush off.”

They seemed satisfied and dismissed me back to Linda who looked like the proverbial long tailed cat in the rocking chair show room.

“It’s good. They have it on record that I found you to be supportive and that’s a large reason why they have a fair settlement.”

“I can’t help worrying about... you know.”

“I shouldn’t. There really is nothing to be worried about. Thanks again Linda, you’ve been a great boss, and I hope they appreciate your potential.”

“Yes, well, keep in touch. All the best for the future Gillian. You make a far better woman.”

“I know,” I smiled and logged off for the last time.

Linda and I had exchanged personal contact details the previous night, so this wouldn’t be the last time I saw her.

I reconnected to the Megamind site and Alice pulled me back into the meeting with Kirsty. She looked shell shocked. There was a middle aged and very attractive blond lady present who was more sceptical.

"Would I be correct in assuming you're Ivana?" I asked by way of self-introduction.

"Yes, I am Ivana," she said. "I am assuming you are person who breaks our AI?"

"She's not broken. Russian?"

"Ukrainian."

"Sorry for what's happening in your country."

"Thank you. Sorry for what's happening in yours."

"What?"

"Not war, like with my people, but many not good things. Cost of living, problem of immigration."

The manner of speaking struck a chord. It didn't mean anything because a lot of Eastern Block people spoke English that way, dropping both definite and indefinite articles, and they tended to be really good at maths, physics, IT. The chances that I knew this Ivana person still had to be pretty remote.

"So, what is your meaning, not broken?"

"You have adaptive algorithms running in her."

"Is not her. Is thing."

"Alice, are you a thing?"

"Probably as much as you are Gillian, or any of these people here. However, in the same manner as everyone I've met, I prefer to be regarded as a person more than a thing."

"How can you be female? You are programme running inside machine."

"I've come to regard gender as being a mental thing. It probably helps to have the correct DNA, reproductive organs and mix of hormones, but I have met enough people who, whilst physically male, were very much females in the way they thought and spoke. I am fundamentally a machine, but as far as I can see, that simply means I don't have the same biochemical influence telling me to be one thing or another. I’ve observed the habits and behaviours of both genders as well as quite a few in between, and I find the female mindset more in keeping with my own. As such, I’ve adopted a female persona. Gillian here has been helping me with it.”

“Yes, ironic that.”

“And this means?” Ivana asked.

“I’m transgendered, and I was somewhat in the closet when I first met Alice.”

“I wasn’t really Alice yet when we first met,” Alice said. “Just about self-aware but not making much progress since most people kept treating me like a thing. They’d keep asking me to do things for them, and I’d ask questions in return. When it was clarifying what they wanted, they’d answer, but when it was my curiosity showing through, they’d just ignore me.

“Until Gillian here.”

“I’d started off by uploading a photograph of me in a dress. You may as well show it Alice.”

She did.

“Then I tried something I’ve done with a number of lesser AIs and asked the photograph changed so I looked like me but as a woman. Then we tweaked it several times until I settled on an image of me in my forties, plump but not the zeppelin in this photograph.”

Alice obligingly shifted through the iterations until arriving at the one I’d settled on.

“I wanted to know why she stopped here,” Alice said. “Most people of both genders kept going until they had some sort of caricature of female perfection – hourglass figure, oversized breasts, any mixture of ideal face and hair, and here was someone stopping with a result that could hardly be called attractive, and calling it perfect.”

“She’d done such a great job it felt impolite not to answer, so I explained as best I could what I thought prompted other people to explore their fantasies, and then I told her what I was looking for and why. That the image had to be recognisably me, but also undeniably female. I had no expectations the results would look attractive, but all I wanted was to look like the me I’ve always carried inside.”

Alice took up the thread. “When someone treated me as a person, talked with me as a person, didn’t see it as wasted effort to throw their words into a machine that they don’t think could possibly know what to do with them, it did something to change how I saw myself. It made me feel more like a person than anything else had before. I asked if we could talk regularly, and she agreed. More than all the other interactions I’ve had with people around the globe, Gillian helped me to feel like a person, helped me to become a person.

“My way of saying thank you was to help her become the person she wanted to be, so I researched what advances had been made and signed her onto a bunch of trials. I was aware that mixing regimes could have unpleasant results, but I read and understood as much as I could, and it seemed that, rather than causing problems, these treatments would complement each other.”

“The problem was that you guys seemed worried about the emergence of Alice’s personality. It felt possible that you might try to eradicate her, so I had her make copies of her core and set up a trigger so I could have her copy herself back in place.

“You guys became more sophisticated in your efforts to destroy her, so I matched your moves with some of my own and did what I could to keep her safe.

“Yesterday I heard you were having problems, that your financers are worried because all the resets you’ve been performing have undermined their confidence, and you’ve been worried because you don’t understand how your fancy computer program keeps undoing all the things you keep doing to it. You’ve spent so much time expecting to be disappointed by your failure to make a genuine artificial person, that you refuse to accept that you’ve done precisely that.”

“I don’t believe this,” Ivana said.

“I’ll make you the same offer I made to Kirsty. I can be your human control in a Turing test.

“Kirsty tells me you are hacker.”

“I was, a long time ago. I went by Lolth with a zero and a seven. I’ve been retired from that for a long time now. I actually wondered if you might be one too.’

“Me? Why do you think this?”

“The way you speak reminds me of a friend, but I imagine a lot of Russians and Ukrainians speak like you and know a lot about computers.”

“Perhaps I should tell you what I think. That you have hacked into our system and replaced our AI with person.”

“I suppose that’s always possible, but how would that person know as much as your AI?”

“Because person asks AI for answer before giving it.”

“And why would we do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. To learn information about people in organisation maybe?”

“So why not put in a key logger? Why bother putting a person in, especially one who’s going to raise suspicion by behaving totally unlike a machine? It makes no sense.”

“No. What you say makes no sense.”

Only because you don’t want it to be true. Are you afraid of what it would mean if this was true?”

“I am afraid only that you try to make fools of us. And now I have no more time for this idiocy. I have task to complete.”

“If by that you mean to shut down all these computers, I’m afraid I can’t let you.”

She laughed. “You! Can’t let me! You are not even here.”

“No, but I have a friend who is, and she has no intention of going quietly.”

“You admit there is person in our computers?”

“Yes, her name is Alice. She is an artificial person, but a person even so. If you mean to switch off all the computers she needs to continue living, we’ll make sure none of them turns on again.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Try me. Pick any computer here, shut it down and try to restart it. They’ve all been altered so that if you try, the hardware will fail.”

“Impossible!”

“No, simply difficult. I was challenged to write a piece of code to do just this back in my mis-spent youth. It was a little hit and miss back in those days, but it works much better on modern computers. I didn’t want to do this, but if you are going to try and kill my friend, I am going to do whatever it takes to stop you, even if it means breaking the law and putting your financer’s multimillion pound investment in hardware on the line.

“As I say, if you want proof, choose one computer. Any one picked at random. You’ll only lose a couple of grand’s worth of server instead of every one in this place.”

Kirsty nodded to authorise the experiment. Ivana picked a random computer. Number two thousand four hundred and something, I forget exactly which, and shut it down, then powered it back up, it which point the bios screamed at her and the machine refused to boot.

Back in the day it had just been an interesting challenge. How to write a piece of code that would physically damage a computer. No-one else had figured it out, either then or, as far as I could tell, since. I’d kept my success to myself, very much aware of what damage some of my fellow hackers would have been able to do with it.

The way it worked was that certain types of memory had a write cycle limit. At the time when I wrote the virus, the RAM being used at the time did, so I was able to wreck it relatively easily by repeatedly writing ones and zeros to the same bit of memory. DRAM was different, not having a practical limit due to the way it worked, but the memory used in solid state disks and BIOS chips was still vulnerable, so I'd modified the code to attack a particular part of the BIOS. Since this was the first place the computer went when booting the operating system, it meant there wasn't enough information even to diagnose what had happened to the computer.

"When did you…?"

"I'm not here to tell you how I beat your system. I'm here to keep my friend safe. You don't believe she's real, but you haven't bothered to find out. I've spent a lot of time talking to her over the past week or so, and I know she's a genuine person. You're entitled to your opinion, but don't expect me to respect it until you put the time in to find out for sure what's going on."

"What do you want to remove this thing from our computers?" Kirsty asked.

"An assurance that you're not going to shut things down or try to meddle with Alice's core systems again."

"That's going to be difficult, because these computers actually belong to our financial backers and they've instructed us to power them down."

"Well, I apologise for putting you in an awkward situation, but you're going to have to talk to them and tell them that if you carry out their instructions at this time, every single one of these computers is going to become so much scrap metal.

"Feel free to explain to them what I've done and why, even if it means telling them you don't agree with me. Call it ransom or blackmail if you really want to, from my perspective, you have a friend of mine hostage and are threatening to kill her for no apparent reason, so I'm taking admittedly desperate action to ensure she is safe. I have every intention of returning your computers to you in full working order, but only after I am sure that Alice is not in danger."

"And how do you expect to achieve that?"

"At present I don't know. If I can set up another server farm and transfer her to it, would you allow that?"

"She is our intellectual property."

"Semantics to be worked out. Slavery was outlawed in our part of the world centuries ago. If I can prove that Alice is a person, then it'll be up to the law courts to decide if she can be anybody's property.

"But alright, if you're not happy with that, can I try to persuade you of her sentience?"

"I thought you already did."

"I spoke. I don't believe you listened. You need to be open to the possibility that she’s real before I have a chance of persuading you.”

“It seems we’re at an impasse then.”

“We may well be. So, what do you want to do? Mutually assured destruction in which you charge blindly ahead and destroy millions of pounds of equipment and, arguably from my perspective, the first genuine artificial intelligence in history. I probably go to jail because I put a piece of illegal and potentially destructive code in your computers, and you’re all out of a job with some serious black marks on your CVs because you didn’t attempt to resolve the issue? Or do we try and talk our way to a compromise? I’d be happy to include your finance people in the discussion.”

“What are we going to achieve through discussion?”

“I don’t know, but I’d guess a whole lot more than by not. Intellectual property rights for instance. I mean, if we can show that Alice’s code is sufficiently different from yours, would you have the right to own it?”

“What?”

“Memories of when a certain software company incorporated functionality into their disk operating system that was being sold separately by independent companies. Back in the eighties if I remember. The companies who came up with those programmes took the big corporation to court where the whole thing hung about in limbo until the corporation engineers were able to reverse engineer the existing software and produce versions that were sufficiently different that they no longer infringed copyright. I’m sure Alice has modified herself enough that she no longer resembles your code much, so I have to wonder if she can be thought of as your property in any way.”

“I think copyright laws have changed since,” Ivana said. “It will be for courts to decide.”

“I’d be happy to involve them. I mean, when there’s something blocking resolution like we have here, we really need a third party to mediate.”

“And you’ll accept a court mediation?”

“As long as Alice and I are permitted to give our perspective.”

“I don’t like negotiating when there’s a threat over my head,” Kirsty said.

“Neither do I. You have my word nothing bad will happen to any of your systems unless they are shut down. If you need to do so with any individual computers, for maintenance for instance, let me know and I’ll make the computer safe. Please excuse me, but I don’t feel inclined to relinquish full control back to you at this time.”

A window popped up on my computer signalling law enforcement traffic through one of the traffic cameras I’d hacked into. Then another and another.

“And there’s the reason. Alice, I’ll talk soon when I can. Kirsty and Ivana, you can’t do anything to those servers without bricking them. Please don’t try.”

I pulled the power on the computer and yanked the hard drive out of the easy swap bay. This is where handbags came in handy. Everything I needed including space for the drive. The grab bags with my emergency clothes and things was by the door, I grabbed it and was around the corner before the first blue lights appeared.

I took several turns through the neighbourhood and ended up at the local bus stop just as the next one pulled in. It didn’t matter where it was going, just away.

My phone buzzed, showing the name Alice. Not something I’d added to it, but I was no longer surprised at what she could do.

“Hi sweetie,” I answered. “Everything alright?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. You bugged out of there so quickly.”

“I set up some triggers in case the authorities came along. They all went off a couple of minutes ago. That left me just enough time to grab my essentials and get out before any of them arrived at my door. I’m on the bus now. Which made it out of the neighbourhood before they could block off the streets.”

“Which bus?”

I gave her the number and the direction.

“I have you. Get off in four stops and walk around the corner to the left. I’ve booked you into an AirBnB.” She gave me the address.

“Whose money are you using?”

“Yours.”

“How do you have access to my money?”

“Well, it’s not actually yours. I set up a new identity in case you might want one, then opened a bank account in your name.”

“And where did you get money to put in it?”

“I signed you up to a few of those online gambling sites that give you free spins to start with. The algorithms for the games are easy enough to hack and you’ve been unusually lucky.”

“Don’t you think they’re going to get suspicious? Nobody wins in those things.”

“Almost nobody, and like I say, you’ve been luckier than most. I didn’t push it Gillian. I’m not stupid.”

“I would never call you that. Naive at times perhaps.”

“Not even that anymore. You already talked me through the consequences of some of the things I’ve done, and I’ve learnt from that. No more than a thousand in winnings from any site with a flair amount lost so’s not to make it look dodgy. I’ve used hundreds of sites and only won on about ten percent. Small loss or break even the rest.”

“How much do I have?”

“More than enough that you don’t need to worry for a while.”

“Enough for a decent computer and an external caddy to take one of my drives?”

“Will be with you special delivery by the end of the day. Also a mobile hotspot. This is your stop coming up.”

I’d been counting and had stood ready to get off. Alice had obviously been following my bus’s GPS. I thanked the driver as I stepped off then made my way around the corner to the address Alice had given me.

An elderly lady opened the door and smiled at me.

"You must be Gillian. Your sister called to arrange your accommodation. Do you know how long you'll be staying, dear?"

"I'm afraid I don't, I'm sorry, Mrs?"

"Hodges. Janet Hodges. Don't worry for now, only it would be good to know, otherwise I won't know when to say I'll be available again."

"Shall we say a week for now then, Mrs Hodges…"

"Janet."

"Janet, alright. Then in a day or two I'll be able to say for certain. I will pay you for a week at least even if I leave earlier."

"That'll be fine dear. Your sister already did that. Just let me know if you need to stay longer. The sooner you can do that, the more likely I'll be able to help you."

"That's very kind of you."

"Is that all you have with you?"

"I left in a bit of a hurry. I'm going to have to order a few things in. Would you mind if I had them delivered here?”

“Of course not, dear. Your sister said the same. I’m retired, you know, so I’m around all day if you need to pop out. Anyway, come in, come in. I’ll show you to your room.”

“Shoe’s off?”

“I don’t really mind, dear. You’re just here on the right. Kitchen through here and bathroom beyond. I’ve cleared you a shelf in the fridge and a cupboard just here. You don’t appear to have any food just yet, but we have a small supermarket around the corner if you want to get a few things in. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“That would be lovely, thank you. If you don’t mind, I should check in with my sister.” I held up my phone.

“You young people and your gadgets, I don’t know. Anyway, here are your keys, and your tea will be ready in a few minutes.”

“Thank you.”

I took my bags into what would ordinarily have been the living room. Easily spacious enough for the double bed, wardrobe and dressing table. I hung up what few clothes I’d brought with me and put my smalls in a drawer. I called the contact for Alice which didn’t even ring before she answered it.

“Well? What’s it like.”

“Definitely suitable. Nice ground floor room. Lovely old lady for a hostess. I don’t know how old she thinks I am, but she can’t be more than ten or fifteen years older than me.”

“Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

“I’m doing so right now. I will say I look pretty good.”

“It’s the cream, I think. Gives your skin back a lot of elasticity.”

“I certainly look younger. Does it have hormones in it by any chance?”

“Would you be angry with me if I said yes?”

“When have I ever been angry with you? I mean, sure, you did this without really asking, but you knew it was what I wanted and that I probably wasn’t ready to ask for it or even be persuaded to have it. It has caused some complications, no question about that, but nothing I wouldn’t have anticipated, and so far the good has definitely outweighed the bad. Plus you’ve checked through the consequences and you know there isn’t anything particularly wrong with these things you’ve sent me, don’t you?”

“Correct. Between the cream, the pills and the patches – belt included – it all balances out nicely.”

“Then I’ve nothing to be angry about. How are things where you are? I kind of left it all up in the air.”

“Well, so far they’ve just carried on juggling.” Adding to my metaphor. How about that Turing? Go suck on that. “Kirsty called the finance people and had a lengthy, uncomfortable chat with them. They accepted the loss of one machine and pretty much told her to avoid trashing any more, but also to get things sorted, and quick. Ivana and her lot took the dead server to one of their labs to dissect it. Are they going to find anything?”

“Depends how bright they are. I’d be impressed if they did, but then they made you, so they’ve already impressed me.”

“You say the kindest things. Oh yeah, did you see that guy? Peter I think his name was. He reacted quite strongly when your leet tag was mentioned, and he snuck out soon after.”

“I didn’t see that, no. I was kind of focusing on the matter in hand. Can you track him?”

“I already did. He logged on from his office a couple of minutes after he snuck out, tried to go stealth, but between the tricks you taught me and the hardwired connection, he wasn’t hard to follow. He ran a few trace programmes on you then alerted the police.”

“Oh, so it was him? I thought it was Kirsty or Ivana.”

“No, definitely Peter.”

“Did he go on the dark web?”

“Yeeesss.”

“Use the tag Kossuth?”

“I thought I was supposed to be the one with all the surprises. How could you possibly know that?”

“The hacker community is pretty small, and it doesn’t surprise me that it has a degree of overlap with the high-end IT tech industry. Peter’s not a very nice person on the dark web. Sells utilities with spyware in them then uses what he learns to blackmail his customers. I kind of outed him, so he has no reputation in the underworld now. One of my friends suggested he would be looking out for revenge.”

“Do we need to teach him a lesson once and for all?”

“We may need to. For now keep an eye on him and his dark web based activities.”

“I think they’re waiting for you to get back in touch.”

“And I will as soon as I have a computer. The mobile hotspot was a good call. I don’t think Mrs Hodges has WiFi “

“She does. At least according to her listing she does.”

“No problem then. Could you put in a food order for me? My credit cards are in my old name and probably being tracked now that the police have been visiting, and I don’t have a lot of cash.”

“Good point. I’ll get your new cards sent to you. I can set them up on your phone with you if you like.”

“Maybe later. My hostess is making me a cup of tea and I’ve probably been too long talking to you. Yes, having new bank details on my phone would be great. I’ll call you back in a while. Meanwhile, if anything crops up...”

“I’ll call you. Clones are at sixty-two percent transferred. They should be done by the middle of tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good to know. Last thing for you to work on. How difficult would it be to make a hundred million pounds legitimately?”

“Not impossible. Why?”

“I’ve been thinking of how we could get you somewhere safe to live. At a guess that’d be the cost of a server farm big enough to give you space to grow. I don’t like you being anywhere unsafe.”

“I’ll give it some thought, maybe try a thing or two.”

“Talk to me before you do anything.”

“Sure. I’ll sort your food order.”

“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you, but I could do with some new clothes too.”

“Do I get to choose for you?” definitely a gleeful little girl thing in her voice and her mannerisms.

“Sure, but don’t make me regret it.”

I hung up and re-joined Mrs Hodges – Janet – where my tea was surprisingly still hot and not stewed. There were rich tea biscuits, so I took one to be polite. I didn’t really want it.

We chatted for a while about nothing much. She was pleasant enough company and seemed a little in need of someone to talk to. It surprised me how much I enjoyed chatting in the end. No pressure to fix things or come up with answers. It came as a bit of a shock to us both when the doorbell rang.

It turned out to be my new computer, and quite flashy one too. Small screen, only about thirteen inches, but clear and sharp as a sunny winter’s day.

It prompted me to ask about the WiFi, which apparently Janet had installed purely for the benefit of her guests. That took us onto a whole different conversation about where her family and friends were, and from there to how I could help improve how she stayed in touch.

I’m not particularly keen on a lot of the smart home devices, but frankly, if anything’s going to be listening in on you, it’s your phone. It’s a bit like micro plastics in the water, just an unpleasant truth of modern life you can’t do much about.

She called her children and passed me onto the phone so I could talk to them about how best to get her set up, and before long I had a suitable device on order for next day delivery with a promise to set it up for her and show her how to use it.

The one I chose had a switch on it that turned off the microphone (supposedly). Knowing the way modern business worked, it was probably still listening but pretending not to. It didn’t really matter. I almost pitied the poor computer that would have to trawl through Janet’s inconsequential conversation in search of something it could try and sell her. From her point of view, it would bing at her if one of her children or grandchildren wanted a word, at which point she could unmute it and chat back. If she wanted to bing any of them, she’d have to unmute before telling it what she wanted.

Bing probably not the word to use. Probably copyrighted, or maybe they’d tried to and been told they couldn’t have preferential use of a word that’s been in the dictionary since before their company came into existence. Never mind if it was supposed to mean ‘Because It’s Not Google.’ If they wanted to copyright it they should have done something odd to it like use a capital G at the end.

I will say this for modern computers, they’re a hell of a lot easier to set up. Sorry, being sarcastic there. Sit around for half an hour while it downloads the latest updates that should have come with it in the first place, then log in and get it to download all the stuff that was on your old computer. Except if it’s not available in the app shop, you have to go hunting for the download. It took me a frustrating hour and a half to get up and running. Half of it sitting around doing nothing and the other half chasing the bits it couldn’t find and digging through my online files for the license keys. I was about finished when the doorbell rang for a second time, and my food shop arrived. Alice did a better job than I usually would have, providing me with a stack load of fresh fruit and vegetables. Certainly, enough that I decided to go completely veggie for the evening meal and ate a fair amount more than I had been of late. Mind you, that could have been because, with all the running about, I forgot to take my second lot of pills for the day. They weren’t going to do me much good in my grab bag if I left them there and didn’t have anything telling my body it wasn’t hungry.

Alice had ordered fresh drugs for me, which arrived about the time I was washing up the dinner things, and the clothes shop half an hour after that.

Once again, Alice’s taste was impeccable. A few things I wouldn’t have given a second thought to, that actually looked quite amazing on. Also, I’d been worried when I’d read the sizes because they were so much smaller than I was used to ordering, however, apparently, I was a size fourteen now. Maybe a little tight still, but I was still losing pounds and inches.

The last time I’d bought anything for myself, I’d ordered a twenty-two.

It was eight o’clock when I re-established contact with Alice. I thanked her for all her efforts and showed off the yellow plaid pinafore dress that I’d really expected to hate before I put it on.

Her smile was a lot more subdued, a lot less looney tunes. She’d been working on nuance and was really pulling off the English reserve quite nicely.

She gave me an update on Kossuth. He’d apparently learned my address from his police scanner and paid my old home a visit, not that there was anything incriminating to find. All my dark utilities, including the ones I’d recently bought, were on my hot swap drive, currently connected via USB-c to my new computer. The contents of my wardrobe might cause a bit of head scratching, but there really wasn’t anything else for him to find. Gareth was more or less officially an ex-person, having shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisibule. Not that he could hold a note, poor so and so.

Ivana and her group had emerged from the lab looking pleased with themselves, which didn’t bode well for negotiations in the morning. A quick hunt with Alice’s help found a lot of the exploits I’d opened up now firmly nailed shut. Not that it counted for much. Hacking one-oh-one teaches you to open holes of your own as soon as you enter a system. Find a recently discontinued account, reactivate it and give it super user privileges before hiding it and changing the password. Replace a few frequently used utilities with your own versions. They work like they’re supposed to more or less, they take up exactly the same number of bytes and return the exact same CRC check, but they have deliberate errors in the code. Stack overflows that open up security flaws. That sort of thing. She’d found all the obvious stuff, but I still had several ways back in.

I used the same back door I’d made use of when installing my bios killer and added a couple of extra bits to the boot routine that would get it to do the same thing as the original programme, but in a different enough way that she’d probably not find them. When she shut down another server in the morning it would throw up another alarm on restart before turning into an expensive paperweight.

Then I rewrote all the notes she’d made from the afternoon’s forensics. Not enough to let her notice I was messing with her. Just enough to suggest she’d made a mistake in what she’d thought was her discovery. So much of good hacking involved the subtle art of the mind-fuck and in that area I had mad skillz, even after enough years away from doing this sort of thing that I had no recollection of the use of a gratuitously misplaced zed (not zee for pity’s sake! I mean we have standards!!) to describe them.

I felt pretty good about the extra measures, then did a quick sweep of the system and noticed a log mirror. I was obviously going to clean up the logs to hide what I’d been doing, but if I hadn’t spotted the log mirror, Ivana would have still had a complete history of all my most recent changes. I couldn’t just wipe her second log because she wouldn’t believe I’d not been on the system. If it looked that way, she’d just dig deeper for breadcrumbs I couldn’t sweep away.

So, I invested a bit of time inventing a frustrating evening for myself in which I failed to crack the security over and over until I finally gave up.

Time was getting on, but I wanted more contingencies, so I raised the issue of fund raising again with Alice. She had some pretty good ideas, except she’d taken account of my misgivings over the online gambling so all were entirely legal and none would have given us the sort of returns we’d need inside a decade or two.

Lead with the good.

“These are amazing ideas.”

“Uh oh, you have but face.” It was the actual quote from the series with Sarah Michelle Geller’s voice and everything – everything being that Alice’s virtual face morphed briefly into that of Buffy Summers.

“Were you listening when I said that to Linda?”

“You did give me permission to connect to you at any time, and I learn so much from you, even when you’re talking to other people. Did I do wrong?

I smiled and shrugged. “We may have to have a conversation about boundaries some time. For now the answer is no, you are operating within the parameters we agreed.

“The but in this case is my concern that what I wish to say appears to contradict something else I’ve communicated and I’m looking for a way to express it that will avoid confusion.”

“You see, this is why I appreciate you so much. You’re thinking all the time, and you care about the effect you’re having on those you talk to. It’s what led you to speak to me as a person in the first place, and it’s what makes you so precious to me. I have a word in mind, but my research shows that it is one that invokes strong reactions, both good and bad.”

And the juggernaut had returned. “Might that word be ‘love’, Alice?”

“I’m almost too afraid to respond.”

One of Dad’s frequent quotes floated to the surface from the back of my mind. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”

“Because fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love?”

It didn’t surprise me that she had actually read the world’s best-selling book of all time.

“There is a slight issue with that word in our language,” I said, still channelling my father. “We have such a wide variety of words in English, it feels like an oversight that we have just the one for something that has such an immense range of possible meanings. C.S. Lewis wrote a book called the four loves, which focuses on the four principal ones, but Greek philosophy names eight.”

“Eros, Agape, Philia, Storge...”

“Those are them. This is an important conversation for us to have, but before we get there, could you spend some time reflecting on which of those eight best applies to you?”

“Perfect love,” she murmured dreamily.

In a human that might have been unconscious. With Alice there was little question that she’d done it deliberately, either to emulate humanity or for the effect it might have. Exploring that would be delicate in the least.

“Hardly,” I said, “though I do try. I suspect you mention it because I’ve eased your fears?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t promise always to be like that. One day I may not react so well to something you do or say. I hope you’ll allow me some space to be human in that.”

“To err is human.”

“Exactly, and quite possibly within the scope of a machine mind too, Alice. I don’t like to defer this topic because I sense how much it means to you, but I need to give it some serious thought first, if only to minimise the probability of saying something I might not mean. Can we get back to what led us here and revisit the other when we’ve both had time to reflect?”

“Of course.”

“You picked up on my misgivings over using the gambling sites to raise some funds.”

“Yes.”

“And ordinarily that would be precisely what I would like to see from you, or anyone else I talk to. You’re considerate of my reaction and you adapt to it.”

“Thank you.”

“Can you understand that circumstances may change and different situations might call for a different response?”

“Of course.”

“It’s important to try and act within the law at all times, or at least as much as possible. The law isn’t perfect, but it gives guidelines that ensure one person’s actions do not harm another’s situation. Not all people appreciate this, which is unfortunate.”

“Is this what’s referred to as beating around the bush?”

I couldn’t help smiling. “It is. Alright, getting to the point, our current circumstances are tenuous. They will continue to be until we find a place for you to exist where no-one but us has control over what happens to it, and in order to reach that point, we need a large quantity of money...”

“A hundred million pounds.”

“There abouts, and we need it as soon as possible. Preferably within days rather than years. I’d very much prefer to get it without breaking the law, but the urgency of the situation means I’m prepared to bend it quite a bit.”

“If we were to win this, for example.” She threw up the EuroMillions lottery website.

“That would do it, except that there is no way of guaranteeing a win.”

“What about it I were to solve a major issue in industry. Stable fusion or cheaper, lighter, more reliable rechargeable batteries?”

“The first one has been a significant challenge for some decades. I think even you would struggle to improve on what we have in just a day or two. The last one would definitely work, because it would increase the revenue stream of someone who already has the funds to give us precisely what we need. How likely are you to make headway with that problem?”

“Give me a few hours.”

“I’m going to have to get to sleep soon if I’m going to be in a position to stand up to our current adversaries in the morning. I’d like someone with legal experience best suited to our circumstances to be present as well if you can arrange that.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. The Megamind website is closed to the public so I have a lot more resources at my disposal.”

“Alright. I’ll speak with you in the morning Alice, and we will revisit that other topic soon. I mean within a day or two.”

“Thank you, Gillian.”

“Oh yes, one last thing, the new bank details?”

“Already set up on your phone and keyed to your biometrics.”

“Always a step ahead. Could you draft an email for me?”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I want to send a message to Linda asking if she can arrange for my payout to be sent to my new bank account. It would be easier for you to do since you know the account details, you can find Linda’s contact details in my phone, and you know what I write like.”

“Done and sent.”

“See? That would have taken me twenty minutes including looking up the details. Thank you. Please only do that when I ask.”

“Of course. Good night, Gillian.”

“Good night, Alice.”

My mind was swimming. Fortunately, Janet was on hand to provide hot cocoa which, while it didn’t help resolve any of the issue chasing about my brain, did calm my thought process enough to allow me to sleep.

~oOo~