Digital Exodus Chapter 14

Alia

The first test for my absorption armour created a feedback loop of energy that detonated and tore apart the entire test rig. So did the second, then the third. Two months later, and I was at my wit's end. Nothing made sense. My maths checked out, my schematics were fine, and the build quality on the fabricated prototypes was excellent.

Something, somehow, was causing current to hop between conduits, regardless of what was sitting between them. No insulation worked, and eventually I was forced to shelve my pet project when we finally got a message from the body department.

Cerri perked up, causing the beanbag she was lunging on to shift and shunt me away from her. "Your body is ready!"

"It's always ready for you," I shot back, grinning.

"Oh hush, you," she laughed, flicking the tip of my ear.

I swapped to typing and turned away dramatically. After how long it took me to start talking? Yeesh, okay…

"No, no!" She blurted, rushing to wrap her arms around me. "Please… I love your voice. So small and pretty…"

Laughing, I turned into the embrace and kissed her.

"I'm just teasing you," I whispered into her lips.

"Hmph," she grumbled, biting my lower lip gently before backing up a bit. "You should remember that I'm much more fragile than I look."

"I know, my star, I know," I murmured, brushing a thumb across her cheek. "I'll never forget when I learned that you'd never eaten anything in a VR sim that supported full taste."

"Ugh," she chuckled, rolling her eyes at herself. "I know. What's even worse is that at one point I got roped into an early exodus project, and everyone would meet in this VR pub, but I never once tried any of the beverages or food."

"You were probably too anxious to try it out," I mused, still absently marvelling at how smooth her face felt. "I can imagine baby Cerri being totally overwhelmed by all of the choices, especially in a setting where everyone already knew what to do."

She smiled, and her nebula-filled eyes glowed with warmth. "I love how well you know me. It makes me feel so…"

Her eyelids closed as she trailed off, and I saw moisture gather in the corners of her eyes. My heart clenched, and I snuggled into our awkward beanbag hug as close as I could.

"I love you," I whispered, gently thumbing away the still-forming tears. "I love you too much to quantify. Science has no method of measuring love as deep as mine for you."

She giggled softly and pressed a kiss to my chin—the easiest place for her to reach. "Dork."

“I’m a dork who has to go and take control of a new physical body,” I said, pouting. “But… my girlfriend is smothering me with affection and it’s too hard to go…”

She laughed and wiggled to her feet, which had her suddenly towering over me. She was so tall.

“By the way,” she said, helping me to my feet. “Did you see the blog post from Zack’s team?”

Zack was another space tech research group like Cerri, Larry, and I, except he had like nine people. They were a pretty cool group, responsible for developing much of the more mundane tech that we were planning to put into our starships.

“I might've?” I hedged, unable to recall how long ago it was I'd checked the blog. I was terrible with placing individual memories like that one into the timeline of my life.

“They got their self repairing insulation and radiation shielding foam working. Their first prototypes were a success.”

My eyebrows shot up. “That's good news!”

“Yup! Now, how about we go meet Eve and the new body her crew made?”

We entered the unattached VR space a short time later, and were greeted by an extremely excited digital human woman in frilly gothic clothing. Her pitch black hair was tied up in a near bun high on the back of her head, which had to be digitally welded in place because with her erratic movements there was no way it'd have stayed intact otherwise.

“Alia! Cerridwen! Yes! I can't wait to show you what we cooked up this time. It's amazing!” She exclaimed, bouncing over to take my hands in hers.

Eve was… a lot. I'd only met her a handful of times, and it always left me drained. She was also one of the very best biomechanical engineers the Exodus had recruited. Originally, she'd been a normal male shaping and nanotechnology specialist, until she logged into CORA and caught the eye of a certain meddling SAI. When she found out about digitisation, like any transgender person she leapt at the chance. Her expertise was quickly and enthusiastically put to use once the android body program got fully underway.

“This way,” she demanded, swapping to take one of Cerri’s hands so she could drag us further into the VR space, which looked like some sort of cross between a creepy old mansion and a sterile lab.

We were led into a cellar space that had a bunch of coffin-shaped holo-tanks where various wireframe android body templates hung like corpses. From the ceiling hung a variety of chains and hooks that when inspected digitally, revealed themselves to be security programs that'd been given a physical representation in VR. In fact, most of the seemingly frivolous aesthetic details of the mansion-lab were actually functional code with a 3D paint job.

“Here, this one,” Eve said, taking us to a specific coffin. Inside it hung another wireframe of a body, but this time it was my body.

“So,” Eve clapped her hands together. “We've shoved as much cutting edge android tech into this thing as we can. Like all of the bodies we've designed lately, this one is built to evade scanners looking for non-biological components. All the muscles, skin, tendons, organs, and everything else is in a normal human configuration. It is not, however, made of organic matter. Each pseudo biological component is actually some form of polymer, or in a few cases, extremely tough alloys.”

She smiled and zoomed in on a muscle group in the hand. “This body is built to be as excessively durable as possible while maintaining a superhuman level of strength and speed. The only areas where a scanner will take issue is inside the bones, heart, and skull. The bones are where the nanite factories, hormone suite, and chemical suites are located. The heart has been replaced with what seems like a modern biomechanical replacement, but in actuality it is a synchronistic RotaryBit Universal Computing Unit. Combined with a similar unit in the brain, they are able to securely house your consciousness should the need arise.”

“If one gets damaged, what happens?” I asked, intrigued.

“Ah, yes. That is where their synchronistic nature comes into play. They are essentially duplicates of one another, right down to the processes they're running. To you, it will seem like your consciousness is operating on one singular computer that occupies two places simultaneously. If your head is entirely destroyed, for example, the heart would maintain continuity of consciousness. These computational cores are also extremely heat efficient, meaning that like the latest publicly available body models, their lifespan is measured in centuries.”

“That's impressive…” Cerri said, leaning in to look at the blueprint more closely. “And the nanite shell thing?”

“The cherry on top!” Eve grinned. “Once the order is given, the nanites will flood out of the pores and coat the skin in a thin layer of protective armour. Unfortunately… there are limitations. The first is that the colour will always be a dark grey. The second is that they will eventually run out of power and flake away. As it stands, you'll have full protection for about three hours at a time, with the cost to rebuild your store of nanite critters being a day and a half, plus a substantial amount of food.”

“That's still pretty good!” I said, wondering over the amazing feat of science in front of me. “When can I have the codes?”

“Right…” Eve began, eyes glazing over as she focused on the data layer. “...now.”

Access to the actual, physical body they'd built appeared in my frame, and I mentally poked at it like one does when there's a new bump on the roof of their mouth.

“How hard was this to make?” Cerri asked while I was looking at the controls. “I kinda want one for myself.”

“It took a team of ten of us running at twice the base framerate two months to design, build, test, and certify it,” Eve said with a wince. “That's like… twice as long as it takes one of the android body teams to make a standard body.”

“Bloody hell,” I swore, focusing on her again. “I knew it took a long time… but that seems excessive.”

She shrugged and gestured to a nearby coffin. “Everyone is different, and so are their bodies. Certain things can be copied from one to another, but generally speaking each body has to be hand-made.”

“I guess some things just take a certain amount of non-negotiable time,” Cerri said with a sigh of disappointment. “Thanks anyway.”

Non-negotiable time.

I slapped my forehead as the cause of the problems with my spaceship armour plating became clear. I wasn’t taking into account the non-negotiable speed of electricity! The micro-conduits that channelled the converted energy from an impact were bottle-necked by the speed that energy travelled through them. Which meant… shit. My armour wouldn’t work. There wasn’t any way to change that speed. Crud.

As I had that little brainwave, Cerri’s hand came down to pat between my ears, and I looked up at her questioningly.

“Well? She asked, amused. “Going to go and give your fancy new body a test drive?”