Loose Ends

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Roland checked his account balance one last time and smiled. That was it. That was the end of his life of crime. And now to end his life of mundanity.

He finished typing his credentials on the order form. His own Blackbird. His own shot at being the space hero. His own chance to fly away. It’d have a few minor customisations. Most of the weaponry was removed, in exchange for more living space and he selected the improved comm’s, enhanced engines and personal collection options. He felt a giddy thrill of elation as he clicked send. Another month, and he’d be soaring through the belt and beyond.

While waiting for the order confirmation to come back, he set about cleaning house. He destroyed the records of his criminal life, wiping the disk with random data. Then, he set about actual cleaning.

His one little dip in the dark side was over. And nobody knew. Nobody would ever know. Good.

He sat himself down at his desk once more, clicking refresh on his mailbox. He leapt on the automated reply coming from back from Roughrider orders, clicking it open with glee.

“Dear Customer

We regret to inform you that we will not be proceeding with your order. Blackbird series spacecraft are sold only to reputable individuals.

Sincerely
Atalante Sales“

“WHAT?”


Jet Jaguar stood on the roof of the Llana building, watching Roland through the surveillance equipment still installed. She smirked as she watched him spring back from his desk. She’d read the message before he had.

“Looks like he knows,” she radioed. “And this new comm’s a blast,”

Better reception, better range, integrated RFID reader, more features and support for synthetic vox. Best of all, it just felt clean and fresh, a renewal inside the body. Low-cost maintenance and access to the latest equipment was a Good Thing about being a troubleshooter.

“Copy,” Ford’s voice answered. She chased it with a yawn. “Still waiting for the bounty to come through,”

“Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes,”

Jet took a long, deep breath, centering her mind. It was time for a quick spot of revenge. Nothing harmful, just a little bit of fun at Roland’s expense. Just letting him know how wrong what he did was, and making sure he felt it. The patrol weren’t likely to do much.... Jet guessed he would get Convention service on the dirty end of one of the terraforming projects and the proceeds of crime provisions. Roland was unlikely to see the inside of a jail cell. More’s the pity, but she had to admit, he was no Quattro.

In a way, he was worse. The petty criminal who figured that he’d just commit the one petty crime.... She felt a bitter rush of anger that made her feel a little frustrated that the blades locked onto her arms were only training versions. But it would’ve be disrespectful to her real blades to use them for a stunt like this.

“So,” Ford continued the previous conversation “Male or Female?”

“Honestly?” Jet responded. “Both,”

“Hey... no copouts. It’s one or the other. Gun to your head, you have to choose a puppet body to represent ‘you’, which do you chose? Embarrassed to call yourself a female ?” Ford teased.

“No!” Jet snapped back. “Not exactly. We’ve gone ove...”

She stopped dead as a new message slipped into her inbox. An automated script scanned the contents and brought it immediately to Jet’s attention. It flashed up into her mind, overlayed onto her built in HUD.

“What?” Ford asked.

“Bounty on Roland just got posted,” Jet answered, flatly.

“You’re not getting away that easy. We’ll continue this later.”

Jet just sighed. Well, it did give her an idea of what to say to him. This was just a little fun, nothing wrong with saying something badass for shits and giggles. Let some of the pressure off.

“Crap,” Ford said, quietly “Did you see how cheap this shit is?”

“Yup,” said Jet. “Well, he is just small-time as far as the patrol are concerned,”

“Yeah,” Ford gave a frustrated sigh. “But for all the work we did, I was hoping for enough for at least a week in a luxury suite in a Sydney hotel.” A pause “Or to get a new truck,”

“Just have to make do with a week in....” Jet pondered for a moment. Where hadn’t she been? “...Crystal Tokyo,”

“We’ll figure it out when I’ve got the money in my account this time, I don’t think I can take the disappointment again.” She drawled out the last part. It dripped in sarcasm.

“Right so. Well, no time like the present I suppose,”

Jet switched her attention back to the view of Roland’s apartment for a moment. He was panicking now, grabbing at clothes and stuffing them into his suitcase. The laser voice link was filled with cursing. Roland was smart enough to act quick, to know to run as soon as possible. A quick check let her know that the local PD were already on their way.

She pushed it to one side before calling up some apropos music from her onboard collection; a bit of Kanno seemed appropriate for this sort of stunt. There were better ways into his apartment, but none were quite as fun as this. Try inject fun into the job.

Jet stepped up to the ledge of the roof. The metal buckled just a little.

“Roger,” Ford responded. “I’ll send him the message, then get to the rendezvous point,”

That was part two of the plan. Jet would beat the grass, Ford would catch a willing, and very scared, snake. Jet’d taken pointers. She locked her helmet visor down. A cool breeze blew across the tower, angling in towards the building walls. That’d make this just a little bit tricky.

“Message sent,”

Jet checked the feed. Roland was hunched over the computer. He glanced out the window, then back to his suitcase.... jettisoned half of what he’d packed, then filled it with other things.

“And received,” Jet said with an amused snort. “He’s taking the bait. Time to reel him in.”

Jet stepped off the ledge, pitching herself forward through free space. She watched herself fall on the surveillance system she’d set up, while at the same time experiencing rush of plummeting groundward. Her wings locked into place as she pushed herself into a dive.

The same child that saw her weeks earlier would be punished again by her mother for lying about seeing a woman fall from the building.

With a kick from her engines, she pitched herself over, aiming to land on the balcony feet-first. A few moments before landing, she braked just enough to ensure that she wouldn’t just smash straight through the flimsy steel structure, but still land with the the appropriate ominous bang.


Roland was about to throw up as he read the message. It was the first he’d gotten from her in nearly two weeks. Ever since that GJ raid on Nehalennia, she’d been silent. It didn't take a genius to figure out why. And now, they’d followed her trail right to his doorstep. He was fucked. He was the redshirt on the away team and Spock had just detected an unknown lifeform advancing on their position.

“Alright,” he gulped. “Alright,”

Better a life on the run than life imprisonment. The courier would be downstairs soon enough.

‘We keep good hackers safe,’ the message promised. They promised a whole new body. A whole new identity. So long as whatever he became kept working for them.

He stuffed his suitcase, figured stuffing it for a vacation would be stupid, pulled everything out, then tried to figure out what of his life he wanted to save. He had maybe a minute or two to get down to the courier and get the hell out of there.

Something slammed into the balcony outside, hard enough to sound like a bomb going off. He almost felt the shock run across the floor and up through his body. He stumbled for a moment, before turning to face the glass balcony doors.

Run! his body screamed.

He stood and gaped as it ripped the lock off the doorway. The glass shattered and collapsed around its feet.

It was just a little taller than he was, silhouetted against the evening sun. Broad shouldered and feminine, wings wider than its arms and blades that shone in the sunlight.

“Who....who are you?” he blurted out, stumbling back.

He bumped into his own bed and tumbled over, landing heavily on his tailbone. It sent a shock right up his spine. He scrambled backwards on all fours, knocking over his suitcase and spilling it’s contents.

“I’m here for you,” it said. An arm extended, a metallic finger pointing. “We’ve been looking for the dick responsible, and now that we’ve found him...”

He choked, his mind whirling, trying to put a name to the body. There were at least three candidates... and any one of them looked bad for him getting out of there with his arms still attached to his body. They could twist his limbs off as easy as twisting the legs from a well cooked chicken.

“What?”

The figure stepped forward into his room, using a slow, long funerary thread that thumped on the floor. It had some sort of high heels, flashed of bare metal glinting. Liquid reflections flowed across the surface of it’s armour. A helmet shaped something like an anteater with a taper towards the front. Deep blue, pale white.....

“I can break your neck with a finger...” it said, jabbing with it's index finger to demonstrate how. “Or pull your arms off and watch you bleed out on the floor. I can pop your guts like a pimple. I can throw you hard enough off that balcony that you hit the tower wall. And that’s if I’m being nice,”

And trying not to just giggle at it.

He raised his hand... “Now... now I …. now I know my rights. You have to arrest me.”

Rorschach quote time.

“Men get arrested. Dogs get put down.”

“Hey! Hey!” he pleaded in between gasps. Something was biting deep into his chest. “I just... all I did was.... I didn’t do nothing to deserve to die!” For fuck’s sake man...”

It seemed to stare at him. He stared at the blades on its arms

“Do I look like a man to you?” it said, gruffly. There was a rough edge to its voice, hoarse like a singer after a long concert. “You deliberately created a security vulnerability in a software module, then gave the details of this to the Boskone, who used it two attack two friends of mine....

“Hey... I didn’t...”

“You knew! We’ve been reading your emails. We’ve been watching you coming and going. We’ve been listening in. We know all your secrets. “

Rolands mind went into tailspin. He could sense the grin behind the visor; a coyote’s grin, he thought.

“I only...”

“Bullshit! You only made the whole damn thing possible, and you think that just because you were some small little cog in the machine, or that you were finished being evil, or that you didn’t plan to actually use it yourself.... that that somehow absolves you of the responsibility of your actions. Roland, you’re a spy. You’re an enemy spy. You’re a traitor. And you know what happens to traitors and spies.”

He’d heard the stories.

“I don’t want to die,” he whimpered. “I swear... I just.... I didn’t... I …. I …” he hiccuped. “I ju...” he coughed.

“I tell you what,” the armoured woman said with malicious kindness “I like a bit of sport. I’ll give you a minute to run. To try get downstairs. To try get to your car.... “

“Huh...” Roland gaped.

“Fifty-nine,” said the figure.

“I...”

“Fifty-eight,” she said, making a deliberate show of the tarnished steel fixed to her arms.

Roland’s legs outran his mind. He scrambled up to his feet, stumbling over the spilled clothes, kicking his suitcase out of the way. He tumbled through the door, hitting the opposite wall, before he made a break for the lift at the end of the corridor.

“Fifty-seven,” the cyber called after him.

He stabbed at the call button, waiting for what felt like forever and a day for the doors to finally rumble open. He punched the button for the lobby, before holding down two buttons he knew would activate the lift’s maintenance feature and take him straight down.

As a muzak Girl from Ipanema played over the speakers, he finally caught up with how badly screwed over his life had just become. And he was too terrified to start crying.


Ford pulled the rebuilt pickup up outside the lobby, and waited. She had Deep Purple on the stereo, and the repaired engine was grumbling away. All was well.

Jet was laughing.

It gave her a warm feeling throughout her body to hear Jet laugh like that. It was deep and hearty, sharp and chirpy, and well worth the bother of convincing her to come out here. It was the first time she’d heard it in what felt like a long time. If she thought about it, it might’ve been at least as far back as before SerenityCon.

“He’s gone for the lift,” the cyber finally managed to get out. “About a minute he’ll be down to you. Poor fucker. I’d almost feel sorry for him getting a scare like that.”

“I’ll look at the video tonight.” she said. “And what was with that ‘Do I look like a man to you’? Finally decide to join us?”

“Just thought it’d something be cool to say.” Jet answered. “And just because I don’t consider myself a man, doesn’t mean I consider myself a woman.”

“Oh, do enlighten us.”

“Well, I quite obviously amn’t male. I don’t feel female. I feel like a flight capable, armoured cyborg, and for us cybers...” she spoke haughtily, as much as she could manage. “.....gender is little more than an appearance, a decision made for personal preference, a fashion statement, or to avoid scaring the shit out of the catgirls by stomping in like Robocop.”

Ford sighed loudly, loud enough to be heard aloud across the comm-net. “I still think you’re afraid of admitting it. Otherwise, you’d have been more vehement about getting a male puppet.”

The growl she got back made her smile.

“I'd also like to be recognised as Jet Jaguar.”

It was a branding thing.

“And you’ll feel better if you play into it a bit more, trust me,”

“We’ll see,” Jet sounded exasperated. “But in the future, such things really won’t matter.I can have a copy of my mind in this body, a copy in a male, a copy in a female, a copy in any sort of body or form, and each copy can be independent, but still synchronising with each other at regular intervals over something like bittorrent.... so they’re all individuals, and all still Jet, and I become the sum of all their experiences. If one drops out or dies, the whole still remains as a collective of Jet.”

It sounded pre-prepared. Ford wondered just what website she’d stolen it from.

“And I’ll bet you’ll just use the male and female version to try out a whole new method of masturbation.”

There was a snort over the link “DYO!”

“I know what that means. I finally looked that meme up... sweetling.” she purred, rolling her tongue around that last word.

“Hah!” Jet barked.

“And really,” Ford continued after a few moments thought, “I think that copying might cheapen the individual. The more common a resource is, the less it’s worth. By being unique, I’m invaluable, and I must be careful to guard and protect myself, while a collective of Jets wouldn’t worth the hardware they’re built on. It’d be a long, slow, nihilistic despair. Nothing would be risky, so nothing would matter. Your whole life would be reduced to a computer game where nothing and no-one would ever be worth a damn again, because it would all be so easy to replace.”

There was no answer. Got her! Jet was busy searching for a response. Ford glanced at the lobby, then checked the time on her watch. There were still a few moments to wait. She lowered the driver’s window and unlocked the tailgate. The truck had been rigged for prisoner transport, with the rear bay being stripped, and covered over by a pressurised cap. The only thing back there was a pair of handcuffs.

She stared at the elevator doors, willing them to open. The thought occurred to her that Roland might’ve had the sense to switch to the stairs, but she doubted it. He’d been in terror getting into the thing.

She began drumming her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. This was taking way too long.

The doors opened a moment later, and Roland came tumbling out. He tore across the floor at a dead run, startling a few of the mundanes present. He burst out the front airlock door, stumbling down the steps.

“Target sighted,” she radioed.

“Copy,” Jet responded. “On my way down now,”

Ford pressed on the horn; one single long peal.

“Roland Foster!” she yelled. “I’m your ride,”

Roland was looking at her truck like a shipwrecked sailor looked at a liferaft. He was wide eyed with fear, crashing into the drivers door hard enough to rattle it, and rock the truck

“Thanks.” he wheezed. “Oh thank God.” he puffed. “They’re trying...” he hiccuped. “They’re trying to kill me,”

It was a new experience for him.

“In the back” Ford directed, with a gesture from her thumb. “Into the bay,”

Roland stumbled around the truck, pawing at the fresh paintwork. He fumbled at the latch, jerking at it. Above him, a turbine scream filled the air. He looked up, to see that awful silhouette pitching itself off of the building, diving ten stories down.

“It’s here!” he yelled, banging on the tailgate. “She’s coming for me.”

“Pull the lock,” Ford growled.

The tailgate fell open and Roland jumped up into the bay. He didn’t even have to be told to close the tail, pulling it shut behind him. Ford allowed herself a mischievous little smirk as she pushed the button to engage the locks.

Roland pulled himself forward, hands and feet thumping on the metal floor pan. He pressed himself up against the rear bulkhead of the cab, banging on the dividing window with the palm of his hand.

“Drive! Drive!” he begged.

Ford looked back at him, wearing a thin smile.

“What the fuck? You’re supposed to pick me up right?”

Ford nodded, and turned back around, fetching something from the glove compartment. The she sat, waiting.

“Move it!” Roland screamed. Ford looked sourly back at him.

“Still waiting on someone,” she said.

Jet landed hard on the road in front of the truck, making a hollow thump on the thick road surface. The cyber drew herself up to her full height, blades gleaming on her arms.

“Oh God,” Roland whimpered. She started to stride towards the truck with a terminal purpose. Her feet tak-tak-tak’d across the hard surface.

Roland pushed himself back into the centre of the truck, on the verge of throwing up. “I don’t want to die,” he whimpered. “I don’t want to die.”

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m sorry... I’m so sorry.

The cyber strode up to the passenger door and pulled it open with a very deliberate tug. It squeaked a little as it opened, allowing the noise of the outside world in. A small crowd of curious onlookers had gathered to watch the commotion.

Roland’s mind just deadlocked as she saw her calmly sit onto the reat bench seat, stretching her legs where the passenger seat had once been, then closed the door behind her. The faceless helmet turned around to acknowledge his presence, before turning back towards the front of the truck.

“What...?”

His mouth goldfished.

“Conspiracy, Violation of personal dignity, cybercrime, you've been a bad boy Roland,” she waggled her finger at him, before pressing something against the divider.

“Wha~,” the programmer slurred. “You're not the Patrol. Who the hell are you?”

“The name's Ford Sierra, bounty hunter.” She indicated towards the cyber with a nod of her head.

“They call me Jet,” it said in a cheery tone.

Roland blinked once, then twice, then stared at the card pressed against the window. By Authority of The Inspectors Office of Marsbase Sara; Licensed to apprehend fugitives for reward; Ford Sierra.

“Now that we're introduced, I’d really appreciate it if you handcuffed yourself there,” she smirked at him.

This, this was her favourite part of the job. Always. Roland found the handcuffs left hanging for his benefit. Manufactured from billet-steel.

“But... but... but...” he coughed. “This is cruel and unusual punishment, they’ll have to release me!”

Yes. Definitely.

The cyber’s head turned to face.

“You’re still alive. And we got you into the truck and to the cops without a struggle that might’ve hurt you, or a passerby. If you want cruel and unusual,” she said, sounding mild rather than obviously menacing, “...there’re plenty of Zwilniks who know how to reward traitors and failures.”

Somehow, that just made it worse.

Roland slumped against the side of the truck bed, energy draining from his body. That was it... his life was gone. Pissed against the wall and trickled down the drain. He couldn’t even go back to the safety of his old position. There was nothing left to do but sit quietly through the sick inevitability of it all.

The truck pulled away while the cyber in the front seat cued up the jazzy OP of a mid-nineties animé series. They passed the local PD going in the other direction and started to drive through the city. He watched in sullen silence as Jet finally took her helmet off, revealing a human face and scarlet red hair that bordered on pink.

Ford seemed to be her opposite. Tanned skin, dark hair, and a far sharper look in her eyes, despite them being hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses. It made him wonder how they met. He decided that it just didn’t matter. He just sat and sulked and decided he’d be better off feeling sorry for himself, rather than picturing the inside of Azkhaban prison.

“So, what’s your answer?” Ford said to Jet, solely to fill the silence.

Jet blinked, then looked out the window at the dome beyond, and the sky beyond that.

“The things that matter to me, the things that really are worth a damn, are important because I choose them to be important. So long as they’re still important to me, I’m still myself, no matter what the hardware and wetware are. If they ever stop mattering, then I’ve stopped being myself,”

Ford glanced over at her partner, before returning her attention to the road.

“What website you pull that off?”

“Didn’t...” said Jet, wearing a self-satisfied smirk.

“Shows,” snarked Ford. Jet scowled. Then smiled. Then laughed lightly. “And Jet, “ Ford continued, “That wasn’t the answer I wanted. Which body?”

Jet glanced back at the prisoner in the cargo bay, grinned just a little bit, and sent her answer by text message.. It chirped up onto the console in front of Ford.

“And that,” Jet put a point on it with a mischievous smirk “Would be something for you, and only you. Only you get to see that side of me,” Jet’s voice dropped to a low, almost lusty burr. “That makes it rare, and that makes it invaluable, right?”

Ford smiled softly at her, “Yes, it does.” The pair looked back at the prisoner in the back. “Maybe we should continue this at home,” Ford suggested.

“Good idea.”

They left Helium behind, driving out towards the space port.

“Where are you taking me?” Roland finally managed to ask.

“Sara,” Ford said. “We’ll turn you over there,”

The HPD wouldn’t appreciate her gazumping a fugitive just as the warrant went live, before they even had a chance to try make the arrest. It wasn’t illegal, but it was frowned upon. It wasn’t going to do her reputation with the HPD any good. Oh well. After that last incident, it wasn’t like it could get worse.

The truck creaked as it passed out of the main airlock. Jet began to fidget, shaking the truck just a little bit. Ford was busy handling the traffic control, guiding the truck around taxiways. A pink-hued Blackbird from the AEUG shot in for a landing, sending a shot of anger through Roland’s body.

That should’ve been him.

“That’s why I did it,” he said to himself.

“What?” said Ford, glancing back at him through the mirror.

“The Blackbird... a..” He stopped, trying not to break down. He could feel the tears trickling down his cheeks. “A chance to get up there, to have my own big adventure..” He stopped again, his face changing to a mask of fury, “While you Mary Sues are out there dicking around and having fun, I’m stuck being the poor bastard who has to support it and make it happen, and I was sick of it,”

Jet snapped around with a hiss, the chair creaking under her weight. Ford’s foot went for the brake pedal, just in case. Roland jumped back away from the bulkhead, for the briefest moment certain that Jet was about to tear through to him.

“Gobshite,” she hissed, turning back towards the front of the truck.

Ford breathed a sigh of relief. Dear Sweet Dan Ackroyd in a Dodge that had scared the ever loving hell out of her.


Roland was arrested by the Space Patrol at the Marsbase Sara office. He was led away, softly crying to himself. Ford got paid.

“It’s not a lot, but it’s better than not.”

Something about that rang hollow in the garage. A heavy gear was awaiting repair. There were some messages. The pair got about their business in a strange, sombre quiet. There was an elephant sitting right there in the living room with them. It wasn't just sitting, it was pissing on the furniture, demanding to be acknowledged.

It wasn’t until nearly an hour had gone by that Ford finally broke the silence.

“Jet, we need to talk.”

Jet only needed to get one look at her expression to know what it was about. Jet’s first instinct was to just dismiss it somehow. I’m tired, I have to get to Grunthal for training. Ford was giving her a grave look

“You scared the hell out of me in the truck, Jet.”

Fords voice was cold and hard steel. It was a knife to Jet, cutting right through the fog in her mind. It was an attack. It was everything she feared. Ford knew. Ford was going to talk. A flash of anger boiled up from deep within, burning up through her body before she quenched it hard. Jet gave her an almost betrayed look...

“It was no big deal,”, she said quietly, trying to turn around.

“Yes,” said Ford, standing her ground. “It was. I think it was the same thing I overheard on the Nova. I think it’s the same thing I’ve been seeing for the last two years, that’s been slowly eating away inside.”

Jet stepped back. “It’s nothing, really.” she said.

“Jet..”

“It’s nothing!”

Ford pushed forward. “Jet, we can either sit down and deal with this right here, just between the two of us, or I can let AC or one of your Gruppe leaders know about it.... or the Space Patrol find out when you finally lose your shit on some dipshit Zwilnik... It’s your choice Jet.”

Jet’s mouth swung open, her mind stuck in spinlock for a second. She had that deer-in-headlights look on her face. Ford had her poker face on, daring Jet to call her bluff. The cyber was breathing through her nose, deep and heavy, almost angry. It was bristling through her body.

“No one can ever know,” she said, almost hissing the words.

Jet would never forgive her if she told anyone. Jet knew Ford knew that. She knew damn well her partner would do it anyway because it was the right thing to do.

“If we can work this out between us, nobody needs to,” Ford assured her, calmly.

“And if we can’t?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Jet slowly began to cool off. It was the perfect trap, she had to admit. She looked at Ford, trying to look her in the eye. Ford’s gaze was steady, her jaw set grimly. There was a slight smile on her face, a gentle curl up at the edges of her lips.

“What do I do?” Jet asked, softly.

“Well, maybe take some leave first....” Jet scowled. “... no arguments. Whatever you’ve got coming, take it. Take a freaking holiday, and then after that, well,” she smiled back. It was a smile of obvious relief. “...What do you want to do?”

That was the hardest question anybody’d ever asked her.


Alita’s office was, like many of the rooms in the older parts of Grunthal, uncomfortably small and cluttered with equipment. There were books on martial arts, a spectacular collection of Bruce Lee films and a cute Gally doll Daisuke’d bought for her last Christmas. A few scrap-iron nick-naks had been put together either by herself and Daisuke. Dai himself was the only person sitting.

There was just enough space inside for the Gruppe leaders to have a discussion in person. Jet wasn’t really paying attention, she was mired in her own thoughts.

“So,” Daisuke began. “Preliminary analysis suggest that it is a digital copy system, but it has nowhere near the storage capacity needed to copy a whole personality. It appears to copy the most recent memory, then start moving back through older and older ones until it runs out,”

“Is it...repeatable?” Yoko asked him. She was staring right through him.

“With a few years hard research, maybe. But the storage requirements are so big for a full mind. It looks like full-person backups and forks just aren’t possible yet,” He sighed a little. It was hard to tell if he was disappointed, or relieved.

And that right there could be the game changer in the future. Everyone knew it.

“Their basic plan was to create artificial memories using an unwilling test subject, copy them, and transplant them into one of us. The system is capable of that right now. We even tested it,” he flushed a little nervously. “It felt weird. The details will be in my typed-up report.”

Alita looked at him, surprise on her face. “You tested it on yourself?” You idiot, her tone added.

He smiled at her, “It would have been bad karma to test it on someone else. And we needed the data,”

“Let me know before you do something that stupid, so I can slap you out of it,” Alita glared at him. She was cute when she glared.

He folded his arms “Can not have you armoured amazons taking all the risks, us mechatronicians have to do our fair share”

“Perhaps,” she said, hiding a laugh.

Jet waited a few moments before speaking. “What if you streamed the data to the new brain, like a youtube video, only using the hardware storage as sort of a buffer?”

“We thought about it,” Daisuke said, “That is how I do it with the AR’s. But it is different for the human brain. The resulting copy would not be very coherent.,” And it was obvious he was repeating an explanation he’d been given, “It would be like streaming a video file when the structure of the file on the source disk is constantly changing.” Not forgetting that they were talking about copying people, not just files. “But really, it is just a matter of having the storage capacity before this technology becomes commonplace.”

Alita looked at everyone in the room. “I don’t understand why it bothers everyone. Even though they start from the same base, from the first millisecond, from the first thought they’ve become a different person. It’s like having a child.”

The AR’s were her daughters, more than her sisters in that respect. While it was new for the humans, and former humans, Alita and the AR’s had already solved that philosophical question to their own satisfaction.

Jet pondered on what she’d been joking about a day earlier, and wondered what would happen if both parent and child consciousness could be re-synchronised? What would the result be?

Weird, probably.

Dai continued. “We have thought about it, and we have decided not to release details of this system publicly. The technology will be kept proprietary among trusted members of the confederation. It is too much of a Genesis Device.”

As much as Jet could see the benefits having this sort of technology available would bring, as much as she hated the concept of technology being hidden away just because it might be possible to use it for evil, she couldn’t get over the fact that the first time it’d been used, had been the ultimate in evil perversion of its potential. It had been used to torture. It had come within weeks of being used for murder. It had been used to violate a person’s self in the deepest possible manner.

“Keeping it quiet will not stop somebody else from inventing it, we know that, but this gives us time to analyse the technology, understand it, hopefully find a way to detect, reverse or mitigate it and maybe realise some of the benefits it promises.”

He sighed, brushing a few dark strands of hair off his face. For just a moment, he allowed everyone to see just how tired he really was.

The thought occured to Jet; imagine what would’ve happened if the first use of the internet had been for crime, what would’ve happened then? It was a crying shame that it was invented by some zwilnik madgirl, and not somebody else.

“I’ll agree with that,” she said with a curt nod. “It’s just too dangerous, and that’s coming from me. While it’s something I don’t feel I have to right to decide personally, my recommendation to GJ was to classify this to hell. ”

“I hope that’s the last we hear of it,” said Yoko with a snort.

“It probably will not,” Daisuke chose pessimism. “It is a matter of time,”

She shrugged. “I still choose to live in hope,”

A short silence followed.

“Now. Vanko and Jana?” Alita kept the agenda moving.

Jet was still mulling it over in her mind. One moment looking for a way to make it work, another saying she recommended the details be locked away and hidden.

“Vanko has made a full recovery,” Yoko said, “But he’s always been adaptable. Once he was over the shock of it, it was water off a ducks back. If he keeps up like this, he should be ready for Letzt Kampf Prufung as we expected,”

“And Jana, Jet?”

Jet snapped out of it.

“She’s getting better,” Jet said. “It’s tough for her because you know how she is. But she’s been working with Acht a lot. I think they plan to enter Jeanne’s Dance together this year. She’s got a good grasp on her self again, and she and Acht work well together,”

Jet took a deep breath. Fuck it, no time like the present.

“I’ve got some leave coming up. A couple of months or so saved up over the last two years. I need a break myself, so I was thinking of taking it.”

Everyone seemed to stare at her. That’s how Jet felt. She began to crank up the explanation she’d spent all night preparing, one involving the elastic and plastic ranges of metal deformation, lines in the sand, and her own psychology.

“If you need it,” Alita said, simply.