(year 3610, month 9, Day 23, hour 22, minute 14)
So the guy was full-goose bozo. No matter how much I jiggled my boobs against him, it didn’t matter. It’s like he had no reaction to anything. Fanatics are creepy that way. Actually, he reminded me a little of Clive.
And then he shot his partner, just like that. Of course, she attacked him, just like that, too. After looking at my datapad. I had a sneaking hunch about what had happened, but for now, the problem was getting rid of the creep, who still had the gun in his hand. It didn’t take him long to point it back at me.
Cara was behind me, Othello and Juliet to my left. I could see them talking with their eyes. They were professionals. The question was how to keep me from being killed before they had their chance to pound Mr. Creep into neutronium.
Where the hell was Melvin?
And then I noticed Xris and Ireeni staring at the ceiling. Melvin was hanging there like a big, bronze, six-fingered spider. Somehow, he had managed to get a grip on the thermal tiling.
Creep glanced upwards, pointing the gun at Melvin as he dropped. In that minute, I jerked loose enough to clear my elbow, which I planted between his ribs. He gasped, recovered the gun, and then froze.
His partner, lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, had begun to glow with a blue-white light. And she began to drag herself to the spot where my datapad had fallen.
“LORD LOVE A TOASTER-OVEN.* DON’T MOVE OUT OF THE BEAM!”
One of the Twist…here? Everyone looked around frantically, trying to find the source of the booming voice. Everyone except Cara, who used the series of distractions to vault over the navigation console, kick the creep in the jaw, and yank the gun from his grip.
Everyone except the wounded woman, who was still crawling single-mindedly towards the datapad. Her fingers brushed its surface. “Esau,” she gasped.
“I am the Thoughtful 45 Mobile Application,” came a voice from the pad. “I would seriously consider the advice given by Joey Twist. You are in need of the regenerative properties of the pos-matter beam.”
“Thoughtful 45? I don’t understand.” Her gaze moved from the datapad to the body of the creep rendered unconscious by Cara. “That’s…Esau…but it isn’t…”
“He was deceiving you with a telepathic projection of your idealized mate. I analyzed the projection, and then reconfigured my current operating system to more closely conform to the desirable parameters.”
“What?” she said, pulling herself into a seated position. She lifted her right arm, staring at her limp hand for a minute. Suddenly the hand stiffened and her fingers began to twitch. “I shouldn’t have the energy to do that. But there’s something about this beam…”
“You’re absorbing the nul-energy caused by the nul-pos reaction. It’s allowing you to regenerate your physical body at the same speed you could effect while in contact with your tree.”
“Then we don’t need the trees to survive anymore,” she said. “We can go anywhere.”
“I THINK THE SONGLUMINANTS ARE GOING TO BE PISSED OFF AT US,” the voice boomed.
“FUCK THE SONGLUMINANTS,” said another.
“YOU AND ME, WE GONNA LIVE FOREVER!” sang a third. It was bad enough to remind me of Volparnian karaoke.
“Don’t quit your day job,” I said.
The woman, whom I would later learn was named Lilith, recovered the datapad and stared at it, wide-eyed. “What are you?” she whispered.
“A member of an Advanced Sentient Species known as the Quicknodes. As I have come to the determination that non-linear reasoning is essential to the further evolution of my species, I believe that my substitution as the focal point of your attention is mutually beneficial. I will learn about the concept of ‘love,’ and you will have access to a mate who is non-sociopathic.”
“You’re some kind of AI,” she murmured. “My dad is going to kill me.”
“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” I asked. “All I can figure out is this floozy’s taste in men is worse than mine.”
*The Twist, with their extensive study of 3rd Millennium English, clearly meant “toaster oven.” Amusingly, in the original the term was mistranslated into Galactic Standard as “heated breadbox,” demonstrating that they had no idea what Joey Twist was talking about – trans.