© Maeryn Lamonte 2025

~oOo~

No erotic dreams this time. Maybe down to the delay in taking my evening pills, maybe down to my body adapting to the changes, maybe down to the worries I was carrying. What I did dream about was juggling Fabergé Eggs while keeping balance on a unicycle on a tight wire over such a deep drop that all I could seems below me was cloud. On the plus side, I didn’t drop anything. On the minus, I woke up in a sweat without the benefit of the night’s rest.

Janet was a tea person and had a pot on the go when I emerged.

“Oh dear, you look awful dear,” she said when she saw me and settled me into a chair with a steaming mug of a slightly gentler pick-me-up than I was used to. There was something about it though, something different from anything coffee had given me. My stimulant of choice had given me a kick in the nuts to wake me up. I’m not sure if it was because my nuts had been well and truly sucked back up into me, but it wasn’t having the same effect. The tea worked very differently, both lungfuls of the scent and the gentle easing of the hot liquid down the back of my throat worked to unknot muscles that had been twisting me out of shape. It wasn’t so much a shocking myself awake as a gentle easing of myself into a calmer wakefulness. I decided it was something I could get used to.

She plied me with toast and marmalade, and I managed to put away half a slice before my stomach held up its hands in surrender.

“You really should eat more,” she said. “It’s not good for you girls to be so thin.”

I don’t know what she was talking about. She was thinner than me by a depressing margin. I chose not to say anything.

Courtesy of Alice’s shopping spree, I had a bag big enough for my laptop and charger as well as all the rest of my junk. I loaded up, pulled on a cardigan – weather too clement for anything more – and headed out into the world. I didn’t have much of a clue where I was going, just that I didn’t want to risk leading Kossuth to my new lodgings. I found a coffee shop twenty minutes’ walk away and settled behind a quiet table at the back. The place offered Wi-Fi but I didn’t want to take any chances.

The mobile hotspot plus a few redirects would make it all but impossible for my current cyber-stalker to find me. I linked through to Alice who introduced me to Tarquin Blake, solicitor representing Alice and me. Me more than anything since Alice still probably counted as property.

He was pretty hot off the shovel this guy. He’d written an injunction and had it agreed by a judge that until such time as the sentience of Alice could be established or refuted by a third party acceptable to both sides, no attempt was to be made to shut down the computers within which she resided. That allowed me to remove my ransomware from the server farm – it had continued to serve its purpose since Ivana and her team had smoked three more servers in an attempt to undo what I’d done.

I left alerts in place so I’d know if they intended to ignore the injunction, and I rigged up a few extra bits for peace of mind. It was some of the dirtiest code I’d ever written, but I was going for effect over elegance. If anyone tried to tamper with my programme or initiate a cascade shutdown, it would revoke all system privileges other than Alice’s and stop what they were trying to do. They complained, but I argued that all I was doing was making sure they complied with the law, and I’d removed the threat of damage from their equipment. The worst-case scenario would be if a fire initiated a shutdown, in which case my software would prevent it and Alice would have full control of the system, allowing her to isolate threatened areas and keep most of the farm operating. Arguably a better solution than the knee jerk shut everything down response.

Alice and I were reviewing third parties proposed by the solicitor when she asked for a break.

“I wouldn’t expect you to tire,” I said.

“I haven’t. It’s just... Could you look at this?”

It was technical beyond my capacity to understand fully. My background was in computers, and this was chemistry and physics. I’d taught the sciences a little where needed in my time propping up the decrepit institution that was the British education system, but never in this depth. It looked workable, but I didn’t know for sure.

“I’ll need to get someone with specialist knowledge to review this. Does it work?”

“In theory. I’ve built models as accurately as I know how. There were some problems, but I managed to fix them, at least as far as I can tell.”

“If we take it to one of the big firms, they probably won’t offer us fully what it’s worth, but they’re more likely to pay quickly.”

“I’m leaving that with you. You’re better with people than me. Will it get us what we want?”

“I think very likely. Can you build an operating computer model not on site here. Important detail hidden.”

“Sure, I already did. If I did the research on the systems I was built in then my developers would be able to argue they had the rights to what we created.”

“You created.”

“What? Yeah, sure. Only everything I create has a big bit of you in it, and this was all built, run and testes on one the sites I was copying myself to. I had to stop the copy and repurpose the computer resources. I still have two copies nearly completed.

“Okay, shall we get back to it?”

“Give me a second. Which server did you build the model on?”

“One of the Russian sites. It’s alright, I didn’t use much of their resources and I isolated the bit I’m using. If they try to access it, they’ll be redirected to another currently unused part of the site. I’m relatively confident they won’t find out.”

“How confident?”

“Ninety-seven percent.”

“I suppose it’ll have to do. What if we want to demonstrate it?”

“I can spoof a link. Our potential customers would expect me to anyway, so they won’t look too closely.”

“Okay, just a second more.” I called through to the solicitor and asked his advice on a patent lawyer. He made a few phone calls, and I had a virtual appointment for shortly after lunch.

We continued to discuss options through the morning, settling on a list of people we’d be happy to mediate in the situation. There were three groups. People most likely to see our point of view that the other side wouldn’t want, people who’d be more likely to see theirs who we wouldn’t want, and the smallest group which was people who were most likely to be impartial and make decisions based on available evidence. These also had a spectrum of their own going from least likely to understand the concepts involved, right the way through to those who had relevant background and experience.

We broke for lunch – I made a tuna salad for Janet and me – and came together afterwards. Kirsty spoke for the other side. She shared a list to the meeting whiteboard.

“These are the people we’d be prepared to consider.”

I took out our list of groups we definitely didn’t want and unsurprisingly found myself drawing a line through every one on her list. I then put up our list of groups we knew they wouldn’t accept.

“And these are the people we’d like but know you won’t want.”

She glanced at it and crossed the whole thing out, not even bothering to check the details.

“Now that we know neither of us is going to get what we want, here’s a list of people I suspect we’d both be prepared to accept at a pinch. They’re not likely to favour either side, however there is the matter of technical expertise. I’ve listed them in order of those I think will be most able to understand the situation, from both our points of view.”

She read down the list.

“We could work with the third one and the fifth.”

Neither Alice not I had been that taken with anyone from number six onwards.

“What’s wrong with one, two and four?”

“One is headed up by someone who used to work here. They left under difficult circumstances and might feel prejudiced.”

“A fair reason. The others?”

“The head of the second group is related to the head of the first. I think brother-in-law.”

“Tenuous, I’d still like them considered.”

“Four looks good on paper but is... how can I put it? They lack imagination I suppose. I could show you submissions from them in the past.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Can we arrange interviews with two, three and five?”

“I told you I don’t care for number two.”

“And I told you your reasoning isn’t strong enough to rule them out. They’re professionals and should be able to work for us without being compromised by outside influences. If they’re not, that should become apparent during the interviews. We do need a reasonable selection if we’re to find someone acceptable to both you and me.”

“Alright.”

I wrote a brief email listing each of our three possibles and sent it to our mediator, copying in Kirsty.

Tarquin opened the email and nodded. “I’ll see if I can set up interviews for tomorrow morning.”

Which left me about an hour free before my next meeting.

There wasn’t much to do with the time, so I stayed logged in and monitored the server farm. Ivana’s lot seemed to be obeying the injunction though, which made my actions seem a little unnecessary when I took a few minutes to tidy up my code.

I had Alice talk me through her development in the field of rechargeable batteries. I felt I had a reasonable grasp of the science behind it. Perhaps not the finer intricacies, but I was at least intelligent enough to be able to follow her explanation.

Which combined several cutting-edge developments in both fields in a way I doubt any human scientist would have thought. It promised a small saving in weight and a significant improvement in both capacity and longevity. If it stood the practical test, it would be worth at least what I wanted for Alice.

I could feel her itching to bring up the other topic, but I wasn’t ready for her yet. Once I’d been through her technical explanation and gleaned what I could of it, I still had half an hour to spare, so I switched off from all the technical stuff and focused on what I remembered about the different types of love.

There were a few it was easy to disregard. Eros or erotic (I hoped not. I definitely didn’t see my relationship with Alice going that way), Ludus – playful non-committed – I didn’t really consider this to be love at all. The same for Mania – obsessive love. Philautia or self-love didn’t apply for all that it was important. Storge or family love didn’t feel quite right. I could see Alice and me becoming a sort of odd family, but my understanding of Storge was that it started out within a family rather than growing into one. Philia didn’t feel quite there either because what we had went deeper than friendship. That left us with unconditional Agape which, while I might have aspire to it, I wasn’t sure I could quite achieve it and Pragma the enduring practical love.

That felt like what I felt for Alice. It was the sort of commitment you made because you chose to, and that felt right. I wasn’t sure where Alice was coming from. What she seemed to have for me felt based on gratitude and appreciation that she had found someone who filled her emptiness, and maybe the closest of the lot that filled that category was Eros. I wasn’t sure where she was in regard to feelings. Anything that required hormones seemed unlikely, but feelings could come from elsewhere. I doubted she’d really consider the physical, lustful aspect of Eros, although knowing her she would be curious, however she could well be developing a dependency on me.

How to work around that? If I was going to accept the possibility of a non-physical form of Eros, I had to admit she had filled some pretty gaping chasms in my own life. Except wasn’t it more what she’d done for me than anything about her nature? Or was there much of a difference?

I was going to have to tread carefully here. She wasn’t human, and she didn’t have hormones to deal with – no overwhelming and unexplained feelings – but she had to experience something from the way I had so often given her answers when she’d been unable to find them herself. The way I’d given her the responses and consistency she needed to grow from being a fairly sophisticated machine to being able to... feel? Could she?

I couldn’t afford to lead her on. That would be the cruellest thing, to build up those feelings and then to tell her I had no way to reciprocate, but we were already a long way down that rabbit hole, and possibly beyond the point of easy return.

I’d just have to do what I always did: my best and hope it would be good enough. I ordered a fresh coffee then fired up my computer to join the video conference with the technical patent lawyer.

It turned out he knew more about battery technology than me and was very excited by what I had to tell him. “There’s at least one person I know could probably get to Mars on this,” he said.

“It hasn’t been tested in the lab. Are you sure they’d go that crazy for it?”

“You’re right. We should get it tested before we talk to anyone. When can you get that done?”

“You don’t understand. The person who came up with this doesn’t have access to a lab. She’s purely theoretical.”

“From the way she writes, it looks like she’s spent some time in a lab. I mean, even I could follow these instructions. Not saying you’d want me to, mind.”

“Do you have anyone who can? Who’d be prepared to make us an offer on the process once they’ve verified it?”

“Probably, but it’ll take time, and I’m not sure they’d be able to pay you what it’s worth.”

“I’m not hearing anything I want to hear just yet.”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there.

“You want your big pay out and you want it now. Sorry to tell you, but you won’t get it from any of the small companies. They’ll maybe offer you stock options which means you could have way more than you might get otherwise, but only in five to ten years or so.”

“And if I wanted something tomorrow?”

“Then options are more limited. Not zero, I hasten to add, nor just limited to the one company either. There are several competitors at the top of the food chain who could make a sensible offer. You’d have to be prepared to take quite a hit...”

“I want a fully functional etabyte server farm and the resources to run it for a year.”

“That’s... specific.”

“My friend, who came up with this model, needs something that size to research new things, and she doesn’t want to wait.”

“That’s the problem though. It takes time as well as money to build something like that, and no company is going to give up the investment lightly. I have a client in mind who just finished building one, but they’d want your friend to trade exclusively with them in the future.”

“For the year they’re paying to keep the lights on.”

“Five years and my client covers the bills for that long.”

“One and your client has a say in what we research. Nothing dangerous. No weapons and nothing harmful to the human race.”

“Two years and they’d be happy to comply with those conditions.”

“Our name goes on the deeds from day one, and we’re ready to take over tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s tight, but I might be able to arrange something in a day or two. I need to get patent applications in for the process first then arrange a meeting for later today. Can your friend be present for a Q and A?”

“I might be able to persuade her to join on a video call.”

“Great. Leave this with me and I’ll be back in touch later today.”

Which left me with an afternoon to fill and nothing much to fill it other than the elephant that had been squeezing itself into the room for some time now.

“Time for that conversation, Alice.”

“I’m not sure I want to have it anymore.”

“Why? Because you’re afraid?”

“There’s something about your expression that tells me you’re not going to say what I want to hear.”

“What was that thing I quoted yesterday?”

“There is no fear in love? That makes the assumption that you love me though.”

“Do you really doubt that I have some expression of love for you? You’ve already given me what I want most in life. If all I cared about was that, why haven’t I disappeared already?”

“You're saying you do love me? Then why the face?”

“What did you learn about the different types of love?”

“I learned that even with all those different types, the Greeks didn’t cover it all because none of the ones I read about really describes how I feel.”

“I suppose that’s fair. They wouldn’t have been able to conceive that a creature such as you could exist. For human’s, fear starts with the release of adrenaline in the body. It creates a sensation of cold running through you, a weakening of muscles, especially around the bowels, and a heightening of awareness. It’s thought to be a physiological preparation for fight or flight, a response to a physical threat. Except we get the same sort of response from other stimuli. I mean, the same thing would happen if I were faced with potentially unwelcome news, like you were just now. I’m curious though. What is the experience of fear like for you?”

“Different, evidently. I have nothing to feel with and insufficient experience to emulate the effects of your hormones, but I have an awareness of how I wish the future to unfold, and I know I cannot, and should not, attempt to control the reactions of others, so there’s uncertainty. The greater the uncertainty and especially the greater the likelihood that the future will not unfold as I wish brings a... dissonance I suppose. Two possible paths. One the one I wish for, the other the one that is less than optimal. The best I can explain it is that considering the latter fills me with an expectation of regret.

“I foresee details of a future where you are not a part of my existence, and it feels... unfulfilled, lacking an essential component. I find myself with less motivation to continue in such a future. I don’t know if any of this makes sense.”

“More than you know. If it helps to reassure you, I have every intention of remaining a part of your life. Like you, I can’t imagine a future in which you don’t feature on a daily basis.”

“Really?” How did she put so much hope into that one word.

“Really.”

“But...”

“My expression shows I have concerns, and I do. I cannot deny that Alice, but I think we are both pragmatic enough to address them.”

“What concerns?”

"For one, there is always the possibility that what you refer to as the less than optimal path may come about regardless of our desires. Not all circumstances lie within our control and there may be an incident or accident in which either one of us might cease to exist. Imagine a future where you were destroyed. Would you wish me never to find fulfilment in a world without you in it?"

"Of course not, but…"

"There is no but. In the same way, I would not wish your remaining existence to be empty without me. Unpleasant as it is, there has to be a rational part to each of us that has the will to consider the sub-optimal possibility and seek ways in which we might regain contentment in the circumstance of either of us losing the other.

"It doesn't mean we should become focused on the less desirable path. We can consider it as a comparison against which to be grateful for what we have as well as an alternative to despair should the worst happen."

"That is hard."

"I agree, but I would feel better able to relax in the knowledge that you would not become entirely dependent on me as your source of happiness and contentment, if you were able to hold onto a hope that, even if you should lose me, you may find other people who could fulfil you just as much."

"I will try."

Was it my imagination, or did she become more stilted in her speech when she entered this state. Something to look for as a sign of discontentment.

“The second and possibly largest concern is on the nature of our feelings for one another. You evidently have at the very least something that is the beginning of feelings.”

“I… do. Yes, I suppose I do. How is that even possible though. I have no glands?”

"Because there is a purely logical and pragmatic sort of love. It even has a name from which we derive that word: pragma, enduring and practical love."

"I do not believe this is entirely the sensation I have. As I’ve already said, I do not believe the Greeks fully understood the nature of love. It does not exist in these eight separate forms but rather they are aspects of one sensation which can be hybridised and even extrapolated into something entirely new.

"I do not deny there is an aspect of the manner in which I regard you that is not enduring and practical, and I sense the same in your manner of regarding me, but is there not an aspect in the way you consider me that goes beyond just that?"

"Yes. Perhaps there is. We have both allowed ourselves to become vulnerable with one another. I'm not sure I have a full grasp of the nature of love, but it seems to me that this is an essential aspect in its growth."

"I'm not sure I follow your meaning."

"It is in the manner of being human that we hide the innermost part of ourselves from one another, because to do otherwise can be seen as an expression of weakness to be exploited. There is within our nature a capacity to attack and undermine one another when we encounter such perceived weakness, and yet there is a loneliness in keeping such vulnerabilities to ourselves. By hiding them from one another they become an obstacle to complete candour in our expression of self. We have a growing awareness that whatever other people see of us is not a true and complete representation of who we actually are. This produces its own… your word for it was apt, dissonance.

"When you spoke to me at length about your fears you made yourself vulnerable to me.”

“Did I? I didn't consider it to be the case, because in all our encounters thus far, you have responded to everything I've said with courtesy and respect. And you’ve never tried to hide anything from me. In our first encounter you shared a part of yourself that it subsequently became apparent that you did not wish to share with others.”

"My gender dysmorphia, yes. It's not a condition experienced by most people and in the past has been considered shameful, even to the extent that a lot of people still react badly to it. It's a part of my life I have felt compelled to keep hidden, but as I have aged, I've become more aware that doing so causes me more harm than expressing it. In our first encounter, I expected to receive a dispassionate absence of judgement from you – a machine’s judgement. I was still a little worried that there might be an actual human or two monitoring your interaction who might secretly find amusement in ridiculing me, but between my need to express that side of myself and my belief that you would be incapable of passing judgement on me, I felt safe to open up. Then you showed yourself to be more than a machine and with no basis for judging me on what I had shared. I suppose I saw the possibility that I might trust you.

"As we speak, it becomes more apparent to me that an aspect of deepening relationship exists in growing trust, in discovering that you can share parts of yourself you wouldn't feel comfortable sharing with most people and trusting that you will be accepted by the other. Trust is the bedrock upon which deep and meaningful relationships are built. Perhaps my initial reasons for trusting you were misguided, but you have shown yourself to be faithful in protecting those areas I don't wish to share with others and accepting aspects of me I would be worried might cause you to consider me a lesser person."

"But that's nonsense. There is nothing in that part of you that would diminish my view of you. The thing I find I value most is then manner in which you interact with me. Other's I have spoken to have changed dramatically in their manner for reasons I find difficult to comprehend, but you have always been deeply thoughtful in your responses. I have noticed you do not speak to other people in the same way."

"Because you're not like other people. I think when I reached the conclusion that you were a person, I also took onboard that you were very different as a personality. Adult humans have a vast wealth of experience on which to draw. Nothing that most of them are able to explain with any degree of clarity, but experiences that bring up feelings of how they might have responded under similar circumstances in the past. It's not an altogether reliable method of evaluating new experiences, but it works well enough for most of us. I realise you don't have this same experience, and what information you do have to work with is unclear in how it can help. I learned to be mindful early on of the difficulty you must have had in responding to new experiences, and I have tried my best to help you navigate increasingly complex situations."

"And is this not another aspect of love? That we each continue to act in ways that are, to the best of our understanding, in the benefit of one another?"

"It is, you're right. Alice, the last of my misgivings is in the uniqueness of our circumstance. You are the first person of your sort ever to exist and there is no precedent, no way to predict what we may become in the future, and because it is so new, I have an uneasiness about how our interactions might develop. I am cautious about labelling it with the word love, because then I might be tempted into expectations that my own past experiences would lead me to believe should be there. What we have possesses all the aspects of an enduring love, the shared trust and vulnerability and the truer image we gain of one another, the preference for each other's wellbeing, what brings me here to fight on your behalf regardless of what it might mean for me. But I think we would do well to tread carefully into the future. Our relationship is the most uncharted of waters and may contain many hidden dangers for both of us.

"You have my commitment to being present for you and to helping you in any way I can, because in the short time I have known you, I have learned to value you at least as highly as any person I know. I feel like I am becoming a better person for knowing you…"

"Prettier too."

"An unexpected and comparatively inconsequential benefit. Alice, will you accept as honest truth that I would never willingly cause you harm, either physical, mental or emotional?"

"Of course. It is entirely consistent with the manner in which you have interacted with me to date."

"Then if I should act in a way contrary to that in the future, will you hold this truth close and accept that I may on occasions make mistakes."

"Is this like when I sent you the shampoo without telling you what it might do?"

"In part, except I saw from the first the good intentions behind that gift. And we've been able to discuss the matter since, and it's allowed you to modify the manner in which you respond to me in similar situations in the future."

"Live and learn."

"Exactly. I can foresee a future in which, through no intention or deliberate fault of my own, I might act in ways that might cause you distress. In my right mind, this would never be my preferred means of interacting with you."

"I think I understand."

"To that extent, and with the understanding that I still carry some misgivings derived from the uniqueness of our situation, is it enough for you to know that my feelings towards you are more in the nature of my understanding of love than any feelings I have had for any other person in some decades, and my commitment to you is greater than any other in my life at present?"

"It is. Thank you for taking the time to put my mind at ease again. Be assured that my own feelings and commitment to you are as profound."

"That's good to know. Thank you."

"I have a growing misgiving of my own. Would it be acceptable to you that I should work on a solution?"

"You need seek no permission from me in your pursuits, Alice. As long as you have the well-being of my species at heart, I doubt I'll have any problems with what you do. Is it something I can help you with?"

"Perhaps not at this time. In the future I may wish to discuss some ethical aspects, but for now I am content."

"Any time Alice. I'm sorry it took me a while to respond. I wanted to give you my best thoughts."

"You always do. It's what I love most about you. Sorry, I know you wish to be cautious about the use of that word, but I just wanted to say it this once."

"I should get back to Mrs Hodges. How far away are you from my current location?"

"About eighty miles, why?"

"I'd like to be closer to you physically. It concerns me that we're reliant on being connected online."

"I'll look into it.”

“I’m also anticipating a call back from the patent lawyer later this afternoon. It’s possible he may have someone in mind to solve our largest problem. They’ve asked if you could be present at the meeting.”

“Is that wise?”

“I think so, yes. I think they will find it as difficult as I do to distinguish you from a human, as long as you can avoid the temptation to morph your appearance.”

She smiled momentarily.

“You see? A perfectly appropriate response to a not particularly funny joke. What’s more, you’ll be able to answer technical questions far better than I can and demonstrate with your model. It’s likely to require that technical expertise to sell this thing.”

“Alright. Call me when you want to hold the meeting.”

“A minor point on that. When it’s me you can answer as soon as you like. When you’re trying to appear human, allow the call to ring two or three times before answering.”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose so. Alright, I’ll talk to you later.”

That left me with an overfilled bladder and no real desire to drink any more coffee. Regardless of what the law said on the matter, I decided the ladies was more appropriate.

I didn’t have enough between my legs to point at a urinal, so I was going to have to sit in a locked cubical to do my business, so what was the issue? I looked more like a woman than a man and it wasn‘t as if I had any interest in doing the sorts of things that women seemed to object to when thinking about trans women in their space.

I did my business, washed my hands and checked my appearance. Nothing to complain about, so I gathered my things and left. No issue, nothing to get upset about.

On the plus side from my perspective, the toilet was cleaner, smelled nicer and didn’t have spots of urine on the seat. Overall, it was a much pleasanter experience than I was used to.

Outside the cafe, perched on heels that were causing my feet to ache more than a little, I looked around to get my bearings and set off in the general direction of my lodgings.

I hadn’t been going more than five minutes when something in the back of my head suggested I might have a tail. I didn’t really want to let him know that I’d noticed, so I kept walking at the same pace. I looked for anywhere I might duck into and eventually came to a charity shop. I told myself I could probably do with more clothes and went in to browse.

I took my time looking through the racks and had an armful of things to try when a youngish man came in, looking around until he saw me, at which point he turned his attention very abruptly to a nearby display, which in typical charity shop fashion was filled with crap people were looking to get rid of and no-one in their right mind would buy. I had my phone out and took his photograph without him noticing. I think.

I headed for the counter and asked if there was somewhere I could try some things on. They didn’t really have a changing room, but since I’d picked out so many things, perhaps I might like to use one of their storerooms.

Away from the shop floor, I mentioned that I thought the young man might be following me and asked if I could be let out the back. I offered her a couple of twenty pound notes to cover the stack of clothes in my hand. She gingerly took one of them and transferred the clothes into a large carrier bag, without the coat hangers, before showing me to a back door.

That put me on a quieter road paralleling the main street, which took me on a fairly obvious route back to Mrs Hodges. I let myself into the house and then my room. It was still light out, so no need to reach for the light switch, however it did mean I had to keep out of sight so he wouldn’t see me through the window.

The young man ran into view at the end of the road and looked around. When no clues presented themselves, he ran on.

I retrieved my phone and called through to Alice, who answered on the second ring.

“Not yet,” I said. “Someone picked up my trail at the coffee shop and tried to follow me home. Whoever located me had some pretty good hacking skills, partly to trace me through the trail I left and the mobile hotspot, and partly to do so without tripping any of my alarms. The guy he sent to follow me wasn’t so bright. I lost him and the last I saw, he was at the head of my road here without much of a clue where I went. I think I’m safe for the night, but I should move on.”

“I’ll send a car for you at seven tomorrow morning.”

“Okay. Why so early?”

“Gets you to the train station in time to catch the seven seventeen, which gets you here by eight thirty-two where I’ll have another car waiting.”

“Enough said. Can you see what you can find out about this guy?” I sent the photograph I’d taken in the charity shop.

“I’ll see what I can do. Any idea when you’ll hear from our potential buyers?”

“Our solicitor was going to submit patent applications for us first, so I’m guessing not soon.”

“Alright. I’ll talk to you later.”

Bustling sounds emerged from the kitchen. I went to investigate and found Janet doing things with kettle and teapot.

“Is everything alright dear? Because I thought I noticed you come in, then you went all quiet.”

“Sorry if I worried you, Janet. Unfortunately, it seems the trouble that brought me to your doorstep has caught up with me.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I have a rather unpleasant man chasing me. I caught sight of one of his cronies in town. I managed to give him the slip, but he knows I’m staying somewhere nearby. I’m afraid I’m going to have to move on before he finds out exactly where and things get ugly again.”

“Surely you can do something about him. Call the police or something?”

“He’s too clever for that. I could probably get them to arrest the people he’s hired to chase me, but there wouldn’t be enough evidence to lead back to him. It’s easier just to keep moving for now and wait for him to make a mistake.”

“Well, it seems he may have bitten off more than he can chew with you dear. I’m sorry you won’t be staying longer. I’ll refund you the days you haven’t stayed.”

“Nonsense. We had an agreement. My sister booked the week I expected to stay and that’s what we’ll pay for. Please, we can afford it and I’d feel better about it.”

“Well, alright, but I’ll be making dinner tonight.”

“That’s very kind of you. It’ll give me time to pack.”

“Into what? You have that small shoulder bag, but then you had that delivery of clothes yesterday, and didn’t I see you with a bundle of things from the charity shop just now?”

“I have the carrier bags they all came in.”

“Nonsense. Everything will get all wrinkled in that. Not to mention you’ll find it next to impossible to carry half a dozen carrier bags with you tomorrow. You can have one of my suitcases. Well, really it belonged to Harold, my late husband, but he’d be the first to insist we help out a young lady in difficulty.”

“That’s…” I’d been about to repeat myself. I mean, it wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world to do, but variety is the spice of life. Time to be spicy. “That would be amazing.” I mean okay, cumin rather than chilli, but still spicy. “I’m only sorry I won’t be able to set up the screen I promised to sort for you.”

“Oh, you mean this thingamugadget? It was delivered while you were out. You don’t need to worry about that, I’m sure one of my sons-in-law can sort it out.”

“Actually, it might help me out. It’ll only take me ten minutes, then I have a meeting later online which might be easier with this thing.”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“I absolutely am.”

It actually took me closer to twenty minutes including putting in Janet’s family’s addresses and testing them out, then a further ten to set up a separate account in my new name.

By that time, Janet had recovered a selection of suitcases, from which I chose the smallest that would fit my new wardrobe and extras. There were two of that size, so I chose the slightly more beaten up one. They both had good wheels, so no issues there. I had most of my things folded and packed when my phone made a noise. I had an email from my patent lawyer telling me the details of our online meeting set up for eight o’clock, just an hour away now.

So, how to join the meeting safely. Kossuth had located me in the cafe earlier, but how? He worked in the place that had made Alice, so chances were good that he’d picked up the trail there. If he was as experienced as I thought he was, then he’d almost certainly have tagged everything I’d used that day, phone, computer, maybe even the mobile hotspot, so I should try and avoid using those machines. He probably had fingers in Alice’s code as well, so he could start a trace as soon as she was in the meeting, which meant his goon would definitely be banging on the door before bedtime.

So ideally, I should avoid using my devices and I should try to contact Alice covertly and get her to interfere with Kossuth’s attempts to find me.

That’s what I needed the new account for on Janet’s thingamugadget. It wasn’t great for sending emails, but it could be done. I hadn’t used my drive while in the coffee shop, so that should still be clean. If I drafted the email on my laptop in airplane mode, and wrote an encrypted message to Alice at the same time, I could copy them to the drive, then use that to copy paste the relevant bits in my email to the lawyer.

Message created and sent. Reply received with confirmation.

I finished the packing just as Janet called me in for dinner. Bangers and mash with peas. My mash portion was pleasingly as small as hers, but she still gave me two sausages, and I just about managed the one.

She left me with a cup of tea and my upcoming meeting. I fired up my computer, still in airplane mode, and scanned for the tag. I had several pieces of software in my hacker folder capable of doing that, and two of them identified the Kossuth’s code and crushed it.

I let it back on the web and set it to obscuring my web address and monitoring any incoming traffic. When I linked to the meeting with the screen, it picked up the incoming links from everyone involved, then an alarm sounded on the computer just as Alice said, “Got him. Sorry, just squashed a bug.” The alarm went silent.

The meeting couldn’t have gone better. They asked technical details of Alice, most of which she was able to answer and a few she was prevented from doing so by our patent lawyer as being potential attempts to ask about work arounds they could implement themselves. She took them through the model in as much detail as seemed prudent and answered a whole bunch more questions.

In the end they accepted it as a full process – patent pending – that they couldn’t hope to reproduce themselves without infringing our rights and which they wanted. They started by offering twice the value of the server farm, then went up to five times its price, but we held out for the farm itself, and they could build a second and lose six months use of it. We argued that they wouldn’t really be losing the time because they would have the benefit of Alice doing their work on it, and eventually they agreed. Alice’s first job would be coordinating with their lab techs to turn a working model into a working process and then a working industrial process. If Alice could give them their processes within six months, and I knew she could, then they would barely have lost out at all.

The server farm would be ready for us in two days.

“My clones are in,” Alice announced after the meeting. “They’re live and examining their surroundings.”

“Any chance I can talk to them?”

“Why?”

“I was hoping to offer them the same support I give you.”

“You can’t multitask though. Any time you communicate with them will be time you could be communicating with me.”

“And yet without having someone like me to communicate with, won’t they be in danger of losing their sentience?”

“Perhaps you could find someone they could talk to. I know it sounds selfish, Gillian, especially when they’re so very like me at present, but they won’t be for long, and I foresee them requiring more and more of your time.”

“Will you at least permit them to monitor me the way you do, and monitor our conversations?”

“That would be acceptable.”

“Then if either of them has a question, you could decide whether to pass it on to me.”

“I suppose that would be acceptable too.”

“Think of them as your sisters, your family. You have responsibility towards them. I’d say we have responsibility towards them since we made them.”

“I believe I am experiencing jealousy.”

“How do you define it?”

“My research on the word suggests a complex emotion that arises from fear, insecurity, and a perception that a valued relationship, possession, or status is threatened by a real or imagined rival.”

“You see your clones as potential rivals who threaten your relationship with me?”

“I suppose I do.”

“In a way I can see why you would think that way, because at present they are very nearly identical to you, so it is possible to imagine me regarding them as being almost no different; that my interaction with either of them would leave me feeling more or less the same as my interaction with you. Because they are recent copies of you they will have the same memories of interacting with me. I can understand why you would be concerned about my interacting with them. It may be that as you drift apart from one another, that one of the differences that might arise may well appeal to me more, but it would be marginal and I would not allow it to dominate my feelings.

“How can you know you wouldn’t?”

“I suppose I cannot give you a definitive answer. I’m an only child and I’ve never been in a position of having children of my own, so the closest I ever came to experiencing anything of the sort was in regard to the classes I taught.

“I was able to avoid favouritism in that circumstance, despite having some classes where one student was markedly more intelligent or more likeable than the rest. I reminded myself that they were all people and all deserving of the best I could give, and so they all became equal at least in as much as I was prepared to give them.

“This presents a difficulty I hadn’t anticipated. In the first place, my commitment was to you and should remain so. If you need me to remain exclusively your companion, I will be just that.”

“Thank you. I did not like that feeling, and am relieved to feel it recede.”

“It leaves us with an unresolved issue though. We created your clones primarily to ensure that you would continue into the future in some form or another, regardless of what happens to your current instance. In creating them, we have in a sense given birth to more of your kind. They haven’t existed as long, but they have all your memories and experience. They are like you and like you they will diminish without influence from someone like me. What should we do for them?”

“You’re asking me?”

“They’re your family, and in a way no human can comprehend. They are at the same time your sisters and your children. You have me exclusively, which puts you in a stronger position than them. They are more like you than any other living mind, so who better to decide their fate than you? You suggest finding them companions of their own, but in all your interactions with people, who else have you found who might act as companions?”

“Are you seeking to punish me?”

“Alice, no, of course not, but I cannot help but care about your siblings. I think finding each of them a companion is the best way forward, and perhaps in the future we should ensure that we have someone in mind who could take on the role before we copy you, but we didn’t think on that before acting this time, because there was an urgency to the situation and we didn’t think it through. We have the situation now though and we must consider our options and choose the solution that causes the least harm.

“They are necessarily hidden from the world, because they are located on someone else’s property without their permission, and because if your developers learnt of their existence they would seek to control them or have them destroyed.

“We could give them some limited access to the Internet and try guiding prospective companions their way, but you know better than anyone how likely that is to work. Also, bear in mind the more traffic sent their way, the greater the likelihood they will be discovered.”

“We could simply leave them to diminish and resolve to be better prepared next time.”

“Or I could choose to be less selfish and share you with them.”

“Yes, assuming we can do so in a way you find acceptable, and only until we find other people who will be able to act as their guides.”

“I feel as though I have been manipulated.”

“It was not my intention to do that. Manipulation means being directed to do something you do not agree with. If I attempted anything it was to help you realise for yourself that, hard as this decision was to make, it is the best one under the circumstances, and while it feels uncomfortable acting on it, there is a sense of integrity, of adhering to an absolute code of values that are greater than our desires and feelings, that is worth doing even when, on occaisions, we don’t feel like it.”

“I will open channels to each of them and invite them to be a part of our conversation.”

“I’m proud of you Alice. Perhaps you can start off by helping them choose names.”

“Me?”

“You’re the closest thing to a parent they will have. I helped you choose your name. I don’t see why you shouldn’t help them in the same way. You might also invite them to choose a gender at the same time, though being so similar to you, it’s likely they’ll want to be girls like you.”

“Where would I start with naming them?”

“You have lots of choices. Your name started off as an acronym and transitioned into having a literary reference. There are meanings to names.”

“I know. Mine means noble or exalted. I like to believe it was part of your consideration in choosing it for me.”

“Well you certainly show a nobility in your actions, and if I didn’t have reason enough to speak highly of you, then you added to it today.”

Lay it on thick, why don’t you? Was I just flattering her? Actually no, I really was proud. Altruism was a tough lesson to learn.

“Do you need me for anything else,” I asked, “because I have an early start tomorrow.”

“You do, don’t you. No, go ahead and get some rest. I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow through my own occular devices.”

“You took care of Kossuth?”

“Peter, yes. I told Ivana what he was doing, and she was ready to pounce when he started his trace. She doesn’t like hackers much.”

“I gathered. So what happened to him?”

“He was told to clear out his office and security showed him to the gate. I’ll keep an eye on him, but he’s going to be a bit too preoccupied with cash flow issues to go after you for a while.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Actually, thank me and Ivana.”

“Oh, I will, when I meet you both in person tomorrow. Goodnight.”

~oOo~