We grappled, and I realized that she had drawn me in, rather than I drawing her out. I nearly panicked, but I found that her ability to direct steam was rudimentary. We were commingled, but I was in control.
She struggled, and I had to put her in a dark sphere. We do this quite often on Shaula, since some spirited souls are opposed to the humiliating submission that is required of them. Keep them isolated, let their thoughts writhe like agonized snakes in the darkness. And when their despair is absolute, give them a few moments of light, let them hear the metaphoric birds twittering on the imaginary power lines outside, and then put them back in the sphere.
Rinse and repeat, the girlfriend was in her own private Guantanamo.
And I had made the leap over to Zenia’s body, seeing with her eyes now. I felt a trillion scintillations of nerve endings firing, the tug of autonomous heart muscles, the unconscious gentle bellowing of lungs drawing air in and out. I took a minute to admire my new body in a mirror in the bathroom. I was wearing slave clothes, meant to smother sexuality, but I felt like a wild animal, freed from her cage. I squeezed my knees together a moment, and felt a feral thrill move up my spine.
I walked around the garage and touched everything. I plugged a plastic pouch into the coffee maker and savored the bitter richness of hot Sumatra coffee.
I stripped naked and examined this strange human body. I found some clothes in an electric dryer in the corner of the garage. I picked out a wife-beater and blue jeans that I cut short, so the pockets hung down.
I experienced first-hand what I had only read about - the ancient, independent brains that govern hunger and digestion, the genitalia, heartbeat, and the myriad glands that send complex chemical messages into and out of the body.
Then I felt the sudden surfacing of an urgent fullness in my bladder. A door in the corner opened to a small half bathroom. I sat on the toilet, leaned forward and watched with fascination as a trickle of urine hit the grimy white porcelain. I didn’t actually command a sphincter to unclench. Instead I had to persuade the inattentive pee-brain that it was indeed time to open the floodgate. This is similar to the way we communicate with each other on Shaula.
I spent an hour or so stretching my wings, and prioritizing the flood of information that arrived to my new brain from the various senses, some of which don’t even exist on Shaula.
And then another surprise arrival. The door from the main house opened, and I heard, “Morning, Zenia. I’m going to make coffee. Do you want some? What the hell is that, and why is it naked? And for that matter, why the hell are you dressed like that? No complaints, you actually look great, but…”
BitBoy had come in. He saw my sad, abandoned robot, and didn’t know that I had taken over his girlfriend’s body. Assess, assess.
Change of plans. Dissemble. I spoke up: “That’s the android you stole from your father. We were trying to bring it to life, Eliza and I. It was mostly my work, but she did her part.
“I came in early this morning, and I saw that Eliza had moved her executable from the laptop over to the android’s brain, with path entries to the shared drive on the laptop for database access. She was completely mobile, and quite capable of building an improved child.
“I realized that we had crossed the Turner Threshold, like complete idiots, and that Eliza had to be stopped. So I pulled her plug, and moved the executable file back into the laptop. She doesn’t seem very responsive, though. Maybe she’s sulking.”
BitBoy walked over to the coffee machine. “I didn’t know it was that far advanced. I think it’s fantastic that we have this glass slide of the very moment of emancipation, right before the Turner Threshold. The prototype didn’t come with software. Now we can put Eliza there, with serious security protocols, and probe for weaknesses.”
The girlfriend was in her isolation cell, but before I put her away, I had access to her memories. She had been passively dominant, and BitBoy unwittingly followed her subtle lead. They were both members of The Flume, a steampunk group that opposed the digital revolution. The girlfriend had found the “Turner Threshold” essay, and had persuaded BitBoy to be taken on as an intern and soft-core spy in his father’s company, DigiRam. DigiRam was fully engaged in developing evolving robots. They had already built an underground farm, where the digital vermin were mutating into machines beyond the ken of humans.
BitBoy and Zenia were weekend revolutionaries, tepidly decrying the spreading digital tyranny. My world view tilted somewhat from this information, but this actually fit neatly into my plans. My course seemed clearer now than ever.
I felt the power of steam taking root in me in this new, flesh and blood environment. I could draw on the steam that flowed all around me, streaming from the sun, from the heart of Gaia.
But I had to hide my light under a bushel. I was now Zenia, a low-status functionary in the The Flume. I might have to work my way up the org chart.