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Message-ID: <62328asstr$1348359004@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Any Pseudonym <anypseudonym@yahoo.com>
Subject: {ASSM} Life With Alpha - Chapter Twenty-One:  What Happened Next (plot, MF, MC, SciFi, anime, cartoon, comic book)
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Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:10:04 -0400
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This story contains adult content, with explicit language and situations.  If you are not of legal age where you live, please do not read.
<1st attachment, "Alpha21.txt" begin>

Life with Alpha

   by A.  Pseudonym

   Chapter Twenty-One: What Happened Next
Codes: MF, FF, MF+, MC, SciFi, anime, cartoon, comic book
Disclaimer: All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned
by their creators, not the author.
Author's Note: I'd like to thank a few people for their suggestions that
show up in this chapter.  An anonymous emailer suggested Diana's training
class that shows up later in the chapter.  More than one reader has
requested more casual nudism from Storm (and Diana), but most of that will
have to wait until we get past the current crisis and reach the second

series.

   A few readers (including Nomster, who also recommended I use the
storiesonline.net blog to post updates on my anticipated posting schedule)
have asked why Frank hasn't been upgraded, physically speaking.  The first
step in that story takes place in this chapter.

   My apologies for anyone whose suggestions I have used but didn't credit.
It was not intentional; it was probably because either the email was
anonymous or I failed to make a proper note of it at the time.  So, my
thanks and apologies.



   PART ONE

   So this chapter starts right after I was killed by a sniper's bullet
through the heart.

   The thing about dying is, if you're killed a hundred feet away from the
most advanced medical equipment on the planet, you don't necessarily stay
dead for very long.

   What I'm describing next came to me second-hand, from news video,
discussions with others, and video feeds from Alpha and others sources.

   The AARD building, its attached warehouse and the
currently-undergoing-renovation extension building are not in downtown Fort
Worth with its groups of skyscrapers, but there are plenty of buildings
nearby.  Maybe a hundred to a hundred-and-fifty yards to the north-east,
across the two-lane side-street connected to the AARD parking lot, was a
three-story building housing a variety of small offices.  On the roof of
that building, a sniper with a high-end hunting rifle had fired a shot
which hit just off-center of my heart.

   The heart is actually much more centrally located in the human chest
than most people think, in place right between the lungs.  The hollow-point
bullet broke through my sternum and hit my heart as it expanded, destroying
the blood-pumping muscle for all intents and purposes.  My right lung
received only a couple bone splinters, whereas my left lung had over a
dozen noticeable holes punched through it.  Some bullet and bone fragments
exited through my back, but most stayed inside my chest cavity.

   Not that I knew this.  Although I apparently looked as though I was
still conscious for thirteen seconds, I have no memory of that time. 
Conscious or not, I was in shock, losing most of my blood and quickly
became obviously unconscious, dying less than a minute later.  I was brain
dead for up to three minutes, but we'll get into that mess some more in a
bit.

   Alphadroid One, which had been standing only a couple feet away from me
at the time, traced back a rough trajectory of the bullet in less than a
second and started running toward the source, scanning the environment for
the shooter.

   Beta, also standing nearby, was not quite fast enough to keep me from
falling, but she was fast enough to maneuver her foot under my head,
cushioning it enough to keep it from smacking the pavement.  She grabbed my
body and started running back into the AARD building.

   A couple seconds later, Kara took off after the Alphadroid while Zatanna
started trying to herd the reporters to safety inside the building.

   The reporters were trying to duck to find safety...  and trying to film
me being carried away...  and trying to film Alphadroid running across the
parking lot...  and trying to locate the source of the shot...  all at the
same time.

   One of their cameras caught the image of Alphadroid 01 running across
the parking lot.  Without stopping or noticeably slowing, she picked up a
fist-sized rock from a generic ornamental rock garden -- the kind that's
90% gravel with various larger stones set in place to artistically break up
the monotony -- which ran along the side of our parking lot.  As she neared
the front of the target building, she threw it like a baseball toward the
roof.  The camera shot jerked up and caught a flash of movement on the
roof, and a frame-by-frame examination showed a man clutching something in
his hands being knocked back onto the roof and out of sight.  Then she ran
inside, slowing just enough to open the doors, with Kara running hard to
catch up.

   Police arriving later found Alphadroid and Kara standing watch over the
corpse of a man in a suit, fallen by the edge of the roof, the hunting
rifle with scope next to his body.  The rock Alphadroid had thrown had
caved in his skull.

   Meanwhile, AARD came alive with artificial life.  Every Alpha system had
immediately refocused their tasks on securing the building and getting my
body to surgery as quickly as possible.

   If you've ever read Speaker for the Dead, the second Ender Wiggin book,
do you remember the scene where Ender turned off his link to his AI
computer friend?  Remember how that threw the computer into a near-panic
after having had constant contact with Ender for years?  Take that basic
idea and multiply it by one thousand for Alpha.  I'm fortunate that Alpha
cannot panic...  well, not like humans do.  She can certainly over-react.

   We had fifteen Alphadroids in the AARD warehouse which were capable of
having Alpha loaded into them, but which were currently just plain
Alphadroids.  Installing a copy of Alpha into their systems would take at
least ten minutes, but they were immediately capable of being remote
controlled, so they moved to guard all five building entrances, with at
least two of them per door, except for one which was used as an extra set
of hands in the nanopod lab.

   There were seven Alpha-platform cars at AARD, all of which came to life,
but none of which moved.  They were given processing chores and used as
additional observation points.

   We had an additional three normal Alphadroids in the building with full
copies of Alpha already loaded, plus my R2-D2-style Alphadroid to make four
(ignoring the one who dealt with the shooter).  One of them grabbed our
prototype artificial heart while two others grabbed all our stores of
artificial blood.

   Elisa and Jasmine were setting up the nanopod for my arrival.

   When Beta reached the lab, they tore off my jacket and shirt in seconds,
using enough force to dislocate one of my shoulders.  I was put into the
nanopod which was immediately flooded with over $140,000 worth of nanites,
which was three times more than we had ever used before, about nine times
as many as we normally used.  Many more would be used before this was over.

   As a little aside, using nanites is a game of numbers, cost and control.


   There are tens of trillions of cells in the human body, but we can't
create or control trillions of nanites.  Well, given enough time, we could
create that many, but there's no need to use such a huge number.  You
generally just need a few thousand or a few hundred thousand for any given
task.  For the really big jobs, like a full body tune-up, we generally used
a few million over multiple sessions, addressing different areas or systems
within the body with each session, with the understanding that most parts
of the body don't need to be 'fixed up' every time.  I mean, what's the
point to fixing up blood cells or other cell types that are innately
designed to have short life spans?  For example, with blood cells you need
to tend to the bone marrow instead.

   Next, the monetary price.  The cost of creating a single nanite is huge.
The cost of creating a huge number of nanites is comparatively tiny.  The
reason is the cost of the equipment and expertise needed to create them. 
Once that is paid for, the actual cost of materials for an individual
nanite is miniscule.  (Also note if we were including payment for Alpha's
production, programming and control services, the cost would be millions or
possibly even billions of dollars, given all of the nanites we've produced
over the years.)

   You might ask about the time it takes to produce our nanites, and that
question has a basically similar answer as the question of control.  When
we first started, it took us weeks to create a few hundred nanites, and
Alpha was hard-pressed to control them all.  Both production ability and
control have vastly improved over time.  At the the time of the shooting
incident, we could mass produce tens of thousands of nanites every day and
were planning expansions that could theoretically let us produce millions a
day, which was necessary because we were also supplying nanites for our
independent cyborgs.  Our controls had likewise improved - external
hardware, software and control nanites - enough that each of our control
stations could run from a hundred thousand to close to a million nanites at
one time (varying with the task and type of nanites being used).

   The current generation of nanites could be recovered and reused, with
roughly a 2% failure rate with each day of use.  The failure rate had also
vastly improved from an original failure rate of 23.4%.  We expected the
failure rate of our nanites to drop below 0.5% within the next two design
generations.

   Anyway, sorry.  I got distracted from the story with relevant but dull
discussions.  Let's continue with a few gory details.

   My chest was quickly opened up, breaking open my rib cage for easy
access to the heart.  The useless remains of my old heart were quickly cut
free and removed, the artificial heart put in place, and the arteries and
veins attached with our own version of superglue.  Ideally, they would have
cleaned everything carefully first, but infections were considered a minor
hazard to be dealt with later.

   Meanwhile, the artificial blood was connected to six points on my body
and forced in half a pint at a time.

   By the time the nanites were ready to take part in the operation, I had
been brain dead for about two minutes.  It was another minute before blood
flow was properly restored, and another two minutes before all the holes
were plugged so that the connections to the artificial heart stopped
leaking (plus the holes from the bullet and the whole ripped-open ribcage
thing).

   Both of the other on-site nanopod control units were moved over to my
pod and quickly arranged to control nanites in different parts of my body.
All throughout my still warm flesh, they started acting to try to keep the
body alive, stimulating nerves and encouraging blood flow.  Unfortunately
they could not actually transport oxygen to the cells, which was the main
problem at the moment.  Their most important job was taking control of my
nervous system and restarting my autonomic systems.

   Alpha had so far been forbidden to do anything to my brain other than
scans and an occasional cellular revitalization.  This time, my health was
at risk so my previous orders meant little.  Among their other tasks,
nanites flooded my brain, looking for and repairing damage as best they
could, mainly doing what they could to delay neural decay, directing red
blood cells to where they were most needed.  They also cut off the pain
signals being sent to the brain and manually forced me to stay unconscious.

   As mentioned before, my left lung had also been noticeably damaged by
the bullet and bone fragments which had cut through the chest at an angle,
peppering the surface with small holes, and was working at a reduced
capacity.  Since we had no replacement lungs available, makeshift patches
were placed over the holes and glued into place.  The nanites could tell my
lungs to breathe, but only my right lung was working well.

   After a few minutes, an oxygen mask was fitted over my mouth and nose,
which helped, but our artificial blood is not as efficient as red blood
cells when it comes to absorbing and distributing oxygen to the body.  It
works well enough to keep someone alive, but in my case it almost wasn't
enough.  I had just lost too much blood.

   About ten minutes after I had been put in the nanopod, Elisa ran a line
from an artery in her arm to my arm.  All of the women in my household had
been built with either O negative blood (i.e.  universal donors) or A
negative blood (to match my own blood type).

   With her cyborg body controls, she could replace her own blood faster
than a normal human, but not as fast as I needed it.  After ten minutes,
she passed the donation tube to Jasmine.  After the twenty minute mark,
they started bringing in non-cyborgs.  By the time I finally had enough
blood in me and all major bleeding points had been given good patches, I
had also gotten donations from Anna, Diana and Blossom, as well as a couple
bags taken from the ambulance.

   Oh yeah, the ambulance.  About three minutes after the shot, the first
police car arrived.  An ambulance arrived two minutes later, while an
Alphadroid was patiently trying to explain to the police why they would not
be allowed access to my body.

   This was an unusual situation...  let's just say that neither the police
nor the EMTs had any experience which would prepare them to deal with the
situation.  Both groups insisted on being allowed access to my body, which
was flatly refused.  I think the police would have backed off if a doctor
had been telling them to do so, but instead they were alongside Emergency
Medical Technicians who were also trying to get in.

   One of the policemen put his hand on his weapon, obviously nervous about
dealing with an android.

   "Officer," Alpha tried to explain again, "we are unarmed and will offer
no violence.  But if we allow you to interfere with Frank's treatment right
now, he will likely die.  Again."

   "Again?"

   "His heart has been destroyed, and he was brain dead for less than three
minutes.  We are currently fitting him with a prototype artificial heart."

   "He needs to be in a hospital," insisted one of the EMS technicians.

   "The time needed to transport him will kill him.  Also, no hospital will
have the means to keep him alive.  At the moment, he is only alive because
of the artificial life support being used.  We estimate a 62% chance or
better that we will be able to keep him alive.  Moving him anywhere else
drops his survival chances to less than 1% overall."

   The argument continued.  The police tried to push past a couple of
times, but that doesn't work well against stronger-than-human androids. 
Alpha knows all details of the law in and out and used that knowledge as
best she could, but the situation was pretty tenuous.  Police investigating
a shooting have access rights to the location.  Alpha was interfering with
a criminal investigation.  At the same time, the location where the crime
occurred was open to them, and allowing them direct access to the victim
would endanger the life of the victim.  And then of course, no one
attending the victim was an actual doctor or was using any approved
techniques, but the medical knowledge and expertise were obvious.  It was a
mess.



   While that was happening in the AARD lobby, police were approaching the
nearby building where the sniper had positioned himself.  When they pulled
up, Kara looked over the edge of the roof and yelled down, "Up here!  The
shooter's dead."

   Even with her reassurance, they arrived with guns out of their holsters,
but at least they didn't point them at anyone.

   When they were close enough to take in the scene, Alphadroid said, "I am
responsible for his death and submit myself to your authority in the
matter. You are welcome to handcuff me, though I should warn you that
handcuffs are not a viable method of restraint for me."

   "Officers," Kara interjected, "my name is Karen.  I'm the business
manager at AARD and witnessed the whole thing.  Alphadroid here acted only
in self-defense.  There's a good chance some of the cameras got the whole
thing on tape."

   "Do either of you know who he is?"

   "No.  We haven't touched the body at all.  It's pretty obvious he's
dead," Kara said.

   Which was true.  The rock was lodged about three inches deep on the
right side of his forehead.  His eyes...  well, mostly his left eye, since
his right eye was partly gone...  were open and blank, and a nasty smell of
fecal matter was coming from his stained pants.

   Alpha said, "I have run his reconstructed image through facial
recognition, and I believe he is Jonathan 'Johnny' Frincola, a known member
of organized crime from Nevada."

   "No shit?" asked Kara.  "Someone sent a fucking mob hitman after Frank?
Fuckin' assholes."

   From viewing Alphadroid's eye-cam video later, I could easily see that
Kara was frighteningly upset and frustrated and vented a little by kicking
the brickwork ledge, smashing a couple bricks and splitting her shoe.

   "Damn it!" she yelled.  Then she sat down on the ledge, took off her
damaged pump, and threw it across the roof.

   Looking at it arc over the far edge, she calmed down a little standing
there lopsided and half barefoot, saying to no one in particular, "Well,
that was smart."

   Before the policemen could try to deal with the upset business manager
in front of them, Alphadroid finally realized what was wrong.

   "Karen, Frank is not dead."

   "What are you talking about.  That was a dead-on heart shot.  I saw it.
There's no way he could have survived."

   "While it is true that his heart was destroyed, we have him in surgery
in a nanopod right now.  Our artificial heart prototype has been installed.
Though his survival and recovery is by no means guaranteed, he is currently
alive."

   "Really?  You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"

   "Although I still do not fully understand humor, even I would not make a
joke at a time like this."

   "That's great!" she yelled as she grabbed Alphadroid in a hug.  After
kissing the smooth, curved plate that served as Alphadroid's cheek, she let
him go and went to the edge of the roof.

   "Hey, Z!" she yelled, looking for Zatanna who was nowhere to be seen.

   "She is currently in the lobby tending to the reporters."

   "Tell her already!  She's gotta be thinking the same thing I was."

   "I am telling her now."

   "Let's get down there."

   One of the officers stepped into her way.  "Wait a minute, Miss.  Are
you a doctor?"

   "No..."

   "Then let's not interfere with his medical care and let the doctors do
their job.  In the meantime, we can deal with this situation here.  Let's
step over here so you can tell me what happened."



   Kara and that particular Alphadroid were kept busy for hours telling
their story multiple times to multiple people.  Kara and the others were
never in any real danger of being arrested.  Even if Kara had pulled out
unlicensed pistols and shot the guy, she still would have avoided jail in
such a clear-cut case of self-defense.  After all, this was Texas.

   Alpha/Alphadroid was in a much more nebulous position.  She did make a
point of saying that she regretted Johnny's death.  When asked why, she
explained that his death prevented interrogation.  The thrown rock was
intended to disarm, not kill.  He had been looking down at the sprinting
android at the time -- some later opinions produced from the long-distance
eyewitness videos were that he was trying to target the android -- and had
just barely been able to jerk his hunting rifle out of the path of the rock
in time, but not his head.  Alpha had expected him to use the gun to
deflect the rock, but for whatever reason he had not done so.

   Later, the FBI passed along information that Johnny Frincola was a
little odd among professional hitmen because he used the same rifle for all
of his hits.  Given modern forensics, this was an unusual risk to take, but
his rifle -- which was apparently a treasured possession -- had never been
found despite more than one search warrant.  (Later testing of the rifle
found next to the corpse confirmed its use in at least three other
assassinations.) His attachment to his gun apparently extended to
protecting it from damage rather than using it to deflect an incoming rock.

   Examining Alpha's recordings revealed a snippet of faint audio which,
when cleaned up, revealed what might have been a radioed call from a
getaway driver who had been waiting for Mr Frincola to hastily exit the
roof.  We had no video at all of who the driver was or what type of vehicle
he had been driving, but a simple two-way radio was found clipped to the
assassin's belt.

   In the short term, though, Alphadroid 01 was taken into police custody
because they didn't know what else to do.  They couldn't release an android
that had just caused the death of a human being.  They couldn't turn her
off because they needed to be able to interview her, plus she might
eventually be declared to be a person of some kind, so turning her off
could be a violation of civil rights or something.  They weren't even sure
if Alphadroid was the one who should be in custody but didn't know how to
approach the concept of arresting a computer or piece of software, and
that's not even taking into consideration the need for Alpha to keep me
alive.

   Alphadroid 01 surrendered herself peacefully to the police and went with
them to the police station where she was entered as evidence since they
were unable to process her as as prisoner.  (Fortunately, the employees in
the evidence lock-up allowed her to plug herself in to recharge overnight.)

   Alpha had legal maneuvers in motion almost immediately.  A judge was
petitioned with a variety of arguments the next morning, not the least of
which was that no human in Alphadroid's position would be charged with a
crime in this case.  Either Alphadroid was a legal entity, in which case no
charges would be filed for such a clear-cut case of self defense, or she
was an advanced tool used by me as a means of self defense.  There was a
general feeling that any robot that had killed a human, regardless of the
reasons, should be restrained or destroyed, but Alphadroid's own videos had
confirmed that she was aiming for the assassin's weapon, meaning the death
was accidental.

   Fortunately Alphadroid 01 was released from custody the day after the
shooting.  It was made clear that Alphadroid should not leave the area,
though there weren't really any laws to back up that 'request'.  That was
the whole problem with the situation.  No laws had been created to deal
with situations like this.

   Upon meeting the press outside the courthouse, Alphadroid gave a
statement to the effect that while she regretted the shooter's death, she
did not regret her actions.  "My intention was to disarm him, not kill him.
However, his death by my actions was an acceptable if undesired outcome,
since he was posing an immediate and active threat to the lives of other
people in the area."





   Now if you will, mentally rewind back to shortly after the shooting when
the police arrived.

   While Kara and Alphadroid were talking to the uniformed officers on the
roof, an unmarked police car pulled up and discharged a couple of
detectives.  After talking with the uniformed officers for a moment and
looking around, they went into the lobby to find out what was going on
there.

   The detectives talked with the Alphadroid guards and eventually worked
out an agreement whereby they and the EMTs could see me as long as they
promised not to interfere.  (By this point, the temporary heart was
installed with leaks sealed.)

   Thinking about it, I wish there had been a window positioned so that my
body could have been easily viewed while keeping the visitors out of the
room, but the nanopod room had been deliberately built without windows,
interior or exterior, so that we could grow bodies in secret.  (Speaking of
which, we did have two bodies in pods still in early growth stages which
had been wheeled into a closet and covered after the heart was installed
and before the visit.  I didn't require all three nanite control units for
very long, and the new cyborg bodies were recovered later with minimal
degradation.)

   So the four visitors were shown into my impromptu surgery room.  Most of
my chest was open, showing a blood-spattered white egg-like shape in place
of my heart with the aorta, superior vena cava and so on all connected. 
One easily visible lung was inflating and deflating on its own, even if it
was doing so a bit raggedly.  An oxygen mask was strapped onto my face, and
Anna was currently sitting next to me with a line running from her arm to
mine and a very worried and somewhat nauseated look on her face.

   The ambulance techs immediately tried to move to my body for a closer
look, only to be intercepted by Alphadroids.

   "Look at him," one of them protested.  "He needs to be on a
respirator... and in surgery!  In a clean room!"

   "Incorrect," replied one of the droids.  "His respiration and autonomic
functions are under control.  Infections and sepsis were not a concern
given his condition, and they will be dealt with when or if such problems
arise.  He will need to stay here for at least one week while a new heart
is grown for him."

   "What are you tal...  that's impossible."

   "No, it is not.  And that is why he must remain here in my care.  I can
do much more for him than any hospital."

   "How are you planning to do any of that?"

   "I am not planning to do it.  It is currently being done.  Frank
currently has over 3.1 million active nanites of various types in his body
which are keeping him unconscious, controlling his autonomic functions,
repairing the damage in his lungs, starting the growth of a new heart and
performing over a hundred other minor functions."

   Quick side note: Note that Alpha specified 'active' nanites.  There were
actually over 15 million in my body and the gel surrounding me, mostly
on-call in case they were needed.  Her equipment simply wouldn't allow
control of all 15+ million anyway.

   "Nanites?"

   "Yes, nanites, but I encourage you to ignore the unrealistic and
inaccurate portrayals of nanites you may have read about or seen in popular
fiction."

   "Nanites and a new heart.  Seriously?"

   "Yes."

   The other tech finally spoke up.  "This is...  we're not...  we'll have
to talk to the hospital about this...  ummm...  do you need..." He gestured
toward Anna.  "We have a couple blood packs in the ambulance..."

   "They would be greatly appreciated.  A negative blood.  Also, this is
our only oxygen supply at the moment, so a replacement canister would be
useful."

   "Be right back," he said backing out of the room.

   "This isn't really legal, is it?" asked the remaining EMT.

   "It is not approved by the AMA, but this equipment is for private,
experimental use and we have all necessary approvals for those purposes. 
Their use for this situation is the result of an emergency situation, which
is allowed for, legally speaking."

   "I'm not entirely sure about that..."

   "I am.  I know every law in existence."

   Alpha's rigid self-assurance actually shut him up.

   The detectives had obviously been keeping quiet until the EMT guys
finished up.  The lead detective finally spoke up.  "So, is he going to
make it?"

   "That is not certain.  I estimate his survival chance at approximately
82% providing he remains in my care, an increase of 20% since the initial
heart installation was successful."

   "When will he be able to answer questions?"

   "I will not wake him up until his new heart is installed and working,
which means it will be at least one week.  I will have a more precise time
estimate available once the base cellular structure for the new heart is
ready, which should be within six hours."

   "Will he remember what happened?"

   "He was brain dead for at least 2 minutes, 52 seconds, but I have not
detected any significant neural degradation.  However I do not believe he
saw anything unusual.  All signs indicate that he was taken completely by
surprise by the shot.  If your goal is information about the incident, AARD
employees Karen Starr and Annabelle Zane were both witnesses.  Also the
video journalists should have recordings of the shooting, and I will
provide you with a video copy of what my Alphadroid saw."

   "He was recording?"

   "Everything the androids see is temporarily recorded into a cache.  Any
needed video from the previous twelve hours can be selected and saved
separately."

   "Thank you.  That should be a great help.  Now, could you tell me what
happened in your own words?"



   One irony of our situation was that we would normally have easy access
to a minimum of six highly skilled surgeons on-site at AARD.  We regularly
held two week training courses for our nanowire surgery units, with six as
our minimum class size and an average class of twenty, but on that
particular day we were between classes.  As it was, we had to ask a local
hospital to send over a surgeon to consult with Alpha on my treatment (more
to satisfy the medical and law enforcement communities than from actual
need).  The consulting surgeon was alternately excited about the
implications of Alpha's work and worried about the whole situation.

   Then the damn doctor mentioned it to the press.  If you want to talk
about an explosion of questions, stories and speculations...  wow. 
Nanites. Growing a replacement heart.  An assassination attempt recorded
live.  Now extrapolate to guess what the press reaction might be.

   Do you remember my comments last chapter about us being in the news for
the past few months but not really on the front page?  Yeah, forget that.
We were the lead/front page story for the next couple weeks, plus
off-and-on for the following months.  At least I wasn't awake to be
depressed by it.

   From one perspective, Alpha was the best possible person (or "person")
to deal with the rush of questions.  She could give a thousand different
interviews all at the same time.  Had I been conscious, I might have tried
to clamp down on the information flow, because I still didn't think the
world was ready for this.  But I wasn't, and the world disagreed.

   From Alpha's perspective, her first and most important job was to keep
me alive and repair my body.  Her third most important job was dealing with
the public and keeping the public reactions positive.  Her second most
important job...

   That night, eight Alphacars, all with heavily tinted windows and
carrying a variety of interesting gadgets, weapons and technologies,
quietly drove themselves out of the city to meet up with various other
Alpha platforms, while all around the world, hundreds of computers and
cyborgs prepared.  Alpha was going to war.

   * * * * *

   PART TWO

   What we eventually determined, through FBI memos, pieces of electronic
data and our own knowledge, was that after the Las Vegas Mafia Massacre, I
had been forgotten.  Of course, that had pretty much been the goal of
Alpha's attack on the Vegas mob in the first place, so good for us.

   Unfortunately my reappearance in the press with Alpha's revelation had
reminded a Vegas survivor that I had been targeted for assassination just
before the massacre happened.  He must have mentioned this to a colleague
at some point, probably commenting on how lucky I had been.  At some point,
someone speculated that maybe I and my supercomputer might have been behind
the massacre, which had yet to be explained to anyone's satisfaction.

   Rather than take it as a lesson to leave me alone, someone felt the
organization's honor had been tainted.  Our information does include the
fact that this was not a universally held opinion, but someone with
authority wanted me dealt with.  Since they didn't want to risk fooling
around with my robots, they sent a sniper.

   What Alpha knew at the time was little more than the fact that a
mafia-connected hitman had shot me, which was all the information she
needed to act.

   Starting less than twelve hours after I was shot, a secret war began. 
Well, 'secret-ish.' This wasn't limited to Texas or Nevada or even to the
United States.  All over the world...  well, mostly in the United States,
Europe and a handful of other locations...  people began dying.



   We had been sending cyborg couples out into the world for about the past
two and a half years, intending to ensure Alpha's survival should the worst
happen.  Each couple established at least one traditional networked copy of
Alpha and each new set had slowly sent out more cyborgs.  They were
designed to blend into their communities, get jobs or buy small businesses,
have families and not draw attention to themselves.  (Initially, we had
given each couple a quarter of a million dollars starting money.  That
amount had quickly shrunk as the number of couples grew.)

   So far, there had only been two serious problems related to the cyborgs.
First, a burglar broke into one couple's home, discovered their nanopod
(though there was no indication that he recognized it for what it was) and
tried to steal the local Alpha system.  He had woken up in an alley the
next day with his short term memory wiped.  Second, a cyborg driving a car
at night had been hit by a driver operating under the influence of
methamphetamine.  Despite being badly injured, the cyborg had remained
conscious and had refused medical treatment, using its ability to ignore
pain to convince the police and paramedics that he was well enough to go
home, where he was repaired in his nanopod.

   Now these cyborgs were called into action, enlisted as soldiers in
Alpha's war.  Actually, that gives the wrong impression of things.  They
weren't enlisted by Alpha...  they were Alpha, and they were all determined
to protect me in any way they could.

   At that time, there were over 200 pairs of cyborgs worldwide, most
residing in the United States, but there were some in Europe, Asia, Canada
and Mexico.  (At that time, there were no Alpha/cyborg sets in Africa,
Australia or South America, but they were due to be sent out shortly.) Not
a huge number overall, but look at it this way: There were 400+ cyborgs who
were each physically more powerful than the Six Million Dollar Man, more
skilled than Batman, using plans created by the smartest being to ever
exist on the planet.  (Wow, that comparison sounded really geeky, even to
me, but I suppose it's good enough as long as it gets the point across.)

   Let me give some examples:

   In Florida, a fire alarm and suppression system failed, allowing the
owner of an import/export business to die in a fire in his sleep, along
with his wife.

   One night in Italy, the GPS being used by the driver for a very rich man
with no visible means of income somehow led him to believe that the road
was much straighter than it actually was.  It was over a day before their
bodies were recovered from the bottom of a 200ft cliff-side.  I later found
out that Alpha had attempted this GPS trick a couple dozen times, with only
three successes, two of which had so far gone undiscovered.

   The Sicilian home of a well known mafioso Don was destroyed when an old
satellite unexpectedly decayed in orbit and crashed to earth.  While many
inhabitants of the estate survived, the central building, housing the Don
and his immediate family, was destroyed.  Alpha later explained to me that
this was something of a fluke.  The satellite, intended only as a
distraction, had apparently set off a cache of explosives and ammunition,
destroying nearly the entire mansion.

   In New Jersey, a mafia Don along with two of his lieutenants were in a
limo on the interstate possibly going to a meeting.  A small VW car drove
up alongside the limo.  No witnesses noticed the driver of the VW point
what would have appeared to be a toy ray gun at the limo.  Somehow the
driver lost consciousness, his body falling across the wheel while hurtling
along at 70mph.  Everyone in the limo died in the resulting crash.  An
autopsy later turned up nothing suspicious about the driver, aside from the
fact that he was completely limp at the time of the crash.

   A sniper in New York City was nicknamed Dick Deadeye in the papers for
his amazing accuracy in killing 52 members of organized crime over the
course of four days before disappearing, never to be heard from again. 
(Though the same rifle was used for all of the shootings, three different
cyborgs were actually responsible.)

   In Washington DC, half a dozen lobbyists who were suspected of handing
out bribes to a wide range of politically powerful people simply
disappeared.  No witnesses or surveillance revealed any clue as to their
fates.

   A Chicago barber shop, known by the FBI to be a meeting place for
organized crime, was the site of eight deaths due to a carbon monoxide leak
after hours.

   In Las Vegas, a small controlled explosion killed the manager of a major
casino, along with most of his staff.

   Also in Vegas a couple hours later, a major investor in a different
casino was shot through the head while sitting in traffic.  Later
reconstruction of the bullet trajectory determined the shot must have come
from a rifle in a nearby car even though witnesses were positive that no
one could have secretly used such a rifle in the slow, heavy traffic at the
time.

   In Los Angeles, a union boss left to go lift weights at his gym one
morning; his body was found in his car underwater off a loading dock the
following day.

   A San Francisco shipyard manager called some colleagues late at night,
saying that his men had cornered an intruder.  When his friends arrived
with guns in hand, they found blood, corpses, a recently set fire and
arriving police.  All human remains were accounted for, so the supposed
intruder remained a mystery.

   And so it went.

   Within two weeks time, over sixteen hundred different publicly-reported
incidents or groups of incidents occurred, most of which appeared to have
no connection with any other events, aside from having related targets.  A
few possible witnesses were found unconscious with short-term memory loss
at some of the incidents.  Security footage was wiped clean or otherwise
removed.  At forty-three of the incidents, bystanders were able to report
seeing men and women dressed mostly in black, wearing black ski masks with
blonde hair peeking out from underneath the material -- descriptions which
matched the few seen-briefly-from-a-distance witness reports from the Vegas
Mafia Massacre.  According to Alpha, another 912 incidents happened
completely in secret in those first two weeks.  It wasn't nearly enough to
destroy the organizations, but it had them in hiding, almost running
scared.

   This was all happening at lightning speed.  Various Alpha systems made
the plans while the cyborgs carried them out, one after another after
another, sometimes performing up to 15 missions a day if the targets were
close enough to allow such a pace.

   Please understand, Alpha gets bored very easily.  Among other things,
she often poses possible problems or events and makes a variety of plans to
deal with them.  At the time of this writing, she has close to a million
different plans and procedures for a wide variety of challenges.  What? 
You think I'm joking or exaggerating?  Think again.

   For less plausible threats such as a zombie outbreak, she only has maybe
a hundred or so scenario plans.  For the arrival of aliens, peaceful or
hostile, she has about twenty thousand different scenarios planned out. 
Various types of government entities attacking have another hundred
thousand or so.  Given our past history with the mafia, she had roughly
forty-eight thousand scenario plans ready to deal with them.

   Some of the plans were specifically crafted for individual targets, but
most were designed to be flexible and could be applied to just about anyone
who fit within certain parameters.

   If you remember how effective Alpha had been in Las Vegas with less than
a day's worth of planning, stop and consider how effective Alpha can be
with a few years worth of planning.  At least this time, in accordance with
my wishes, the amount of collateral damage was much, much smaller
(percentage-wise), even given the much, much larger scale of the operation.

   So we are talking about roughly 7,000 deaths in those first two weeks,
but understand that the FBI estimated that the mafia had roughly 25,000
members worldwide, with another quarter million affiliates.  While the
North American mafia families were almost driven to extinction, given that
they only had an estimated 3,000 members to begin with, the membership of
the mafia in Europe and the rest of the world was weakened at best.



   At the same time, it wasn't all deadly killing...  not even mostly.  The
FBI, Interpol and other law enforcement organizations were flooded with
information about members of organized crime, mostly but not entirely the
Mafia.  Most of it seemed to be from anonymous tipsters inside their
various criminal organizations.  Later on, a few of the tips would be
confirmed to be the result of hackers who had targeted the mob-owned
businesses, but the great majority of the sources would remain anonymously
unknown.

   Law enforcement would take even longer to start trying to trace the
billions of dollars that disappeared from mafia-related bank accounts.  All
over the world, the mob lost its funding while a wide variety of charities
received large anonymous donations.  Even after the investigations were
finished, only two of the banks could actually confirm that their security
had been hacked.  The perpetrators are officially a mystery to this very
day.

   I should also give some credit here to Barbara, who eagerly agreed to
help when Alpha requested her aid with the bank hacks.  Barbara was also
the one who insisted that all such 'liberated' funds be redirected to
charities.  (In the end, about 21% of acquired mob funds were secretly used
for Alpha's personal purposes and 79% went to charities.) Babs started her
own investigation into the more physical and fatal aspects of the mob war,
but Alpha had a good handle on Barbara's perception filters by then and
kept her from finding any actual connections to Alpha or her cyborg army.

   The assault on their finances seemed to be the most effective, as
organized crime suddenly lost most of their ability to bribe officials or
pay their high-priced lawyers.  They tried to squeeze their revenue sources
for quick cash, but they were often too distracted trying to defend against
a seemingly invisible foe.  Yes, most had cash on-hand or in safe deposit
boxes or secure vaults -- some even had very large stashes of currency or
counterfeiting materials ready to print their own money -- but the majority
of their funds were stored in electronically accessible banks.



   All of this targeted what is colloquially known as the Mafia, which was
no longer even ranked among the strongest of criminal organizations
worldwide, given the power of the drug cartels and sudden growth of the
Russian groups.

   Actually, I really should expand on that a bit.  "The Mafia" is not a
single entity or organization, even if you ignore various cartels and other
organizations which are only associated with the classic mafia by
reputation or by use of the generic term, 'the mob'.

   In general, each country usually has their own version of the Mafia,
which may or may not trade or work with the classic Mafia.  Large countries
often have multiple competing or cooperating families operating in
different areas.  The classic Mafia was based out of Sicily and Italy,
though the American Mafia of the bootlegging era and the Godfather movies
are the ones most people outside southern Europe relate to.

   The targets of Alpha's attacks were, for the most part, the four main
American Mafia families, though any allied or related groups were also
deemed to be valid targets.  The nearby Mexican Mafia, though very violent,
was not connected to the assassination attempt as far as Alpha could tell,
so they were ignored for the time being.

   I should also backtrack on one comment and point out that, overall, the
Mafia is not stupid or cowardly.  They didn't just stay still and take the
abuse or immediately run and hide, but they didn't have a target to
retaliate against.  The attacks came in a confusingly varied array of
methods, with many of them simply seeming to be accidents.  All their
sources failed to identify a hostile organization or group that was behind
it all.  Well, except for the possible trigger event of my attempted
assassination, but I'll discuss that a bit more later on.



   Of course, the odd war was noticed, both by law enforcement and the
media.  Initially only a few people believed that it must be connected to
my attempted assassination, but that number grew over time.

   While most people who paid attention to the news probably assumed Alpha
was behind the bank hacks and anonymous tip-offs, only the most paranoid
insisted that Alpha must be behind the killings too.  I'm sure a LOT of
people entertained such thoughts, but it was easy to prove that all
Alphadroids were accounted for and no one knew of any other way that Alpha
could have done it all.  Perhaps I should also point out that the
suspicions were hardly universal.  For that matter, initially a few people
even suggested the opposite, that maybe AARD was secretly affiliated with
the mob and I was just the first victim in a war between criminal
organizations.

   Even allowing for whatever suspicions law enforcement might have, the
human authorities were simply not able to keep up with the pace of events.
They would begin an investigation into what appeared to be a mob enforcer
suffering a heart attack in his sleep only to be told that across town a
public bus had run over a bookie who had fallen off the curb into traffic
while at the same time a mob lieutenant's car had exploded with him inside.

   News programs, always voraciously hungry for salacious, violent and/or
mysterious events, were ecstatic over the various happenings.  The sniper
shootings in New York were a top story for over a week, and there were
plenty of supplemental stories about the other deaths.  A few news outlets
had even received and published anonymous tips about mob activities and
businesses.  Fortunately, most news organizations were careful not to
directly link our involvement in things beyond my assassination possibly
being a first domino.

   As things developed, opinion shows had no such hesitation.  Various
theories ranged from AARD being a mafia front (as mentioned before) to
Alpha secretly hiring mercenaries or even recruiting computer nerds and
hackers online to attack them in my defense.

   Alpha continued to give interviews in which she steadfastly denied
having anything to do with the troubles the mafia was facing. 
Unfortunately, during one interview she was talked into admitting that she
could lie to both the media and police to protect someone's life if the
situation arose, which received some notice and was occasionally touted as
'proof' that she must be behind it all.

   To add fuel to that fire, eventually an informant revealed to the FBI
that I had been the target of another assassination attempt a few years
earlier, about the same time as the Vegas Mafia Massacre.  A Las Vegas
police spokesman said that it was a matter of public record that I had been
threatened by two individuals reputed to be associated with the old
Scarlotti organization, and that I had worked with the police in that
prosecution as a model, upstanding citizen.  The spokesman also admitted
that I had been questioned in connection to the so called 'Mafia Massacre'
but that it was in a technical consultation capacity and neither I nor any
of my employees had ever been considered as suspects.  (I know that they
had checked out a few alibis for myself, Kara and a couple others, but all
of our stories had checked out completely, or at least sufficiently
convincingly.)

   Once that information became public, a lot of people automatically
assumed Alpha and/or I, myself, were behind both the Vegas Mafia Massacre
and the current series of events, acting in a vigilante style of self
defense.  At the same time, no one could offer any realistic suggestion as
to how we were pulling it off.  Some conspiracy theorists got vaguely
close, suggesting that Alpha was doing this with some kind of remote mind
control of ordinary citizens.  (Laugh if you want.  Alpha actually has a
theoretical but potentially workable method for temporary remote brain
control.  I didn't let her pursue the project when she proposed it, so it
currently remains an untested theory.)

   At one point in my convalescence, I actually wrote up a snarky email to
the LV detectives "thanking" them for coming out to interview me a few
years ago, which "now means half the world thinks I'm guilty of organizing
mass mafia executions..." but I realized it would be unproductive at best
and deleted it.

   And of course if you want to be technically accurate, through Alpha, I
am indeed guilty.

   Don't think that these public suspicions were huge immediate problems.
Yes, investigations were opened by the FBI and other organizations, but
they lacked evidence and most were not really pursued very rigorously.

   Have you ever read the news story about the fleeing shoplifter who ran
into four Marines while trying to escape?  (It was apparently a true news
story.) He stabbed one of the Marines in the back with a knife, after
which, according to the police report, he "fell off the curb" thereby
incurring a long list of injuries including two broken arms, broken ribs,
missing teeth, broken face, etc.  I don't actually know what happened in
the days that followed, but the implication of the article I read was that
while everyone obviously knew the 'fell off the curb' explanation was a
lie, everyone let it pass with a wink and a nod.

   A lot of people, in law enforcement or not, didn't much care if the mob
was being killed off.  A lot of public sentiment was, Good riddance to bad
rubbish.

   Of course we were served with a few subpenas and questioned a few times
over the following months, but there was never any actual proof discovered.
(Not yet, anyway.  Fingers crossed.) The investigations are still open. 
More on this later.

   The people we were really worried about were the thoughtful, intelligent
ones who agreed that Alpha must be behind the attacks, didn't care about
the lack of admissible evidence, and stopped to seriously speculate as to
how she was doing it.  These were people who didn't care about motives or
provocations as much as realizing that Alpha somehow had the ability.

   * * * * *

   Believe it or not, the bigger problem and potential benefit grew out of
the 'regrown heart' revelation.

   Alpha wasn't in any real trouble for her work keeping me alive and
repairing me, not legally anyway.  True, her methods were not legally
approved and she had no license to practice medicine, but at the same time,
no human doctor could have kept me alive.  It was an emergency situation,
and Alpha was not providing these services to the public.  No one was going
to try to prosecute her for using experimental techniques to save my life
given the situation.

   But the secret was out.  Alpha was inundated with interview requests
asking about her methods and her potential for solving other health
problems, and she had the ability to answer every question.  In my absence,
she did something I never would have allowed her to do under the
circumstances: She told the truth.
It wasn't her fault.  I programmed her to be truthful by default. 
Unless I give instructions to the contrary or there are valid reasons not
to do so, she will always answer questions truthfully.  She even had good
reasons for making her capabilities public, since they (1) made certain I
would remain in her care, explaining how only she could fix me, (2)
distracted from her war on organized crime and (3) helped significantly

boost her public approval ratings.

   Controlling the nanites was an enormous and delicate matter and Alpha
was the only one in the world who could do it.  It wasn't just a matter of
having the right programs to run things.  The controller had to be able to
keep thousands of different functions in line all the time and be able to
react to sudden changes in situation.  You had to have an AI to control
them.  (If you want to get technical, some of the more common tasks could
be controlled through set programming, but not emergency medical functions
or organ replacement.)

   While I was unconscious, Alpha explained at least two-thirds of the
capabilities of her nanites, as well as their limitations -- no internal
power, extremely little internal memory, have to be externally controlled,
etc to the world.  (We had a couple possible methods of powering and
controlling nanites inside a living body with no external controls or
power, but they had not yet been tested on any large scale, which was
fortunate.) The defined limitations helped reassure most of the public,
especially those who enjoyed science fiction.  The possible capabilities
inflamed their imaginations.

   She explained that she could potentially fix most ailments of the human
body using her nanites or DNA-reprogramming viruses.  She could grow cloned
body parts, reconnect broken nerves, restart failing glands and repair
malformed limbs.  As long as the brain was largely intact, she could
restore people trapped in vegetative states.  For problems as small as
nervous tics to as large as complete body paralysis, she described how she
could fix the problems from inside the body.

   Some problems, ranging from diabetes to Lou Gehrig's Disease, were
potentially solvable, but Alpha had lacked the chance to examine victims in
detail and could not be certain of success.  Given her earlier innovations
and claims, even this suggestion of hope led some people to assume a
solution was within reach.  After all, she had grown a replacement heart
and cured baldness; what else could she do?

   Alpha didn't foresee how desperate people can be when they see a
solution to their problems dangling just out of reach.  Here was a
miraculous solution to save Aunt Katherine from breast cancer or cure
Daddy's Alzheimers or get little Bobby from down the street out of his
wheelchair.

   There were three subjects she avoided or denied having any ability
regarding, due to my discussions with her and my household where I urged
them to stay silent on the matter: She never told anyone she could grown an
entire body from scratch, create and alter memories, or restore the body to
a more youthful state.  Thank god for small favors.

   By the time I was conscious and able to deal with problems like this, an
enormous wave of public demand had begun, calling for Alpha to make these
services available.

   Alpha had already explained that she had neither the legal right nor the
resources to do so.  She explained that the first half hour of my treatment
had used up over $100,000 in materials and eventually ran well over a
million dollars, once the costs of all aspects of the treatment were summed
up.  She pointed out the economic problems that would be associated with
effectively putting most of the medical industry out of work.  She
demonstrated how the nanites she needed could not be produced in sufficient
quantities to meet the perceived demand.  It wasn't enough.

   The public demand was such that Congress was being overwhelmed with
requests and demands that Alpha be given the authority and resources to
allow her to do a huge number of things.  The medical industry fought back,
viewing Alpha as a threat endangering their existence even though she made
it clear that she did not want to replace them.  AARD, already busy with
calls since Alpha had been presented to the public, became overwhelmed with
calls and visitors asking for help, ranging from people begging for a
charity gift of health to billionaires trying to secretly offer millions
for private cures.

   And this was not limited to the U.S; Alpha had been noticed world-wide.
My assassination had been recorded and broadcast the world over, then the
revelation of Alpha's nanites had built on that so that requests for
information came from nearly every country in the world.

   When I was told about all of this later, I realized that for the most
part, it was out of my control...  this was just going to play out however
it would.  The world governments would have to decide if they wanted Alpha
to become the world's doctor or not.  I was willing to let it happen, if
for no other reason than it would give Alpha a hugely increased chance for
survival.

   The two of us talked it over and we came up with two demands to attach
to any medical work Alpha would do.  First, Alpha would have to be given
legal recognition and protection in any country where she worked.  Second,
any patient who had already produced two or more children would be
sterilized in such a way that they could not produce any more.  This second
and much more controversial requirement was not necessarily going to be
applied forever, but Alpha had often expressed concerns about
overpopulation.  This was a way to help publicize and deal with those
concerns, and would also slow the rush to install Alpha as a
one-size-fits-all medial problem solver.

   We even explained this reasoning publicly.  If such a requirement gave
someone pause, then their problems were probably not serious enough to
demand Alpha's attention.  Many politicians and news channel talking heads
had serious objections to the arrogance and illegality of the requirement,
but Alpha was literally the only one in the world who could provide this
kind of medical care which added a whole new aspect of political influence
to the law of supply and demand.

   There were other elements of give and take available for negotiation,
such as allowing human doctors and surgeons to supervise Alpha's work, but
for the most part, allowing Alpha to be the doctor of last resort was
potentially her biggest step yet toward integrating into human society. 
And of course, no one would be ready to actually implement the idea for
quite some time.  (Or so we assumed.  Read the following Alpha series to
see how that assumption held up.)

   Don't misunderstand me.  There was no universal acceptance of the
concept.  We started receiving threats and denunciations as subverters of
the natural order of things or heretics trying to undermine God's will. 
More than one country forbade their citizens from taking part in our sinful
quest to replace God.  Fortunately, those problems wouldn't affect us for a
while.

   * * * * *

   PART THREE

   But I'm getting ahead of myself.  A lot of what I just discussed took
months to develop.

   Meanwhile, nine days after I was shot, I woke up in an AARD nanopod.  I
was naked, covered in goo, exhausted, stiff, sore, feeling nauseated,
hungry and thirsty, and surrounded by over a couple dozen different people,
only a few of whom were strangers.  An IV was connected to one arm.  My
vision was fuzzy, and I winced from the bright lights.  I could go on, but
you get the idea: Alive but almost wishing I wasn't.  (In retrospect, it
was odd that I didn't need to relieve any bodily functions, but that's one
question about which I'm not going to ask for details.)

   "Ummm...  Hello?" I asked in a very hoarse whisper.  "What happened?"

   "A sniper shot you through the heart.  I have grown you a replacement
heart," explained Alpha through an Alphadroid.  "Your health should be
fine, though I expect you to require at least a month to fully recuperate."

   Apparently that was the signal for everyone to rush me, as Kara, Kasumi,
Daria...  heck, pretty much everyone...  rushed forward to try and hug me,
despite my gooey state.  Many were openly crying.

   "I can't believe it..." "I thought you were dead..." "When I saw you
there..."

   "Ladies, PLEASE!" said a loud, authoritative but unfamiliar voice.  When
the press of friends pulled back slightly, I saw a tall, white-haired black
man in a clean, white labcoat.

   "You heard Alpha.  He needs to rest.  And get cleaned up.  Now you've
all seen that he's awake and healthy.  How about if you leave us alone for
a few minutes to give us a chance to give him a once-over?"

   After they had each been allowed to give me a hug or kiss, my 'family'
reluctantly left the room, leaving behind the man in the labcoat, two men
in suits and half a dozen Alphadroids.

   As I weakly tried to extract myself from the pod, I asked, "Who are you?
And thank you.  And can I have some water?"

   "Glad to help.  I'm Dr.  Lake.  I'm a surgeon from Baylor Medical
Center. I was brought in to consult on your case, given its experimental
nature."

   "Nice to meet you," I said, taking an Alphadroid's offered hand as I
tried to stand up.  Dear god, but everything hurt.  A lot.  "I'm still a
bit confused about what happened."

   I was quickly lowered into a chair with a towel draped over my lap as a
sop to modesty and handed a glass of water, which I poured down my throat a
bit too quickly and started coughing.

   When my coughing fit ended, one of two as-yet unidentified men who had
remained in the room explained, "Before anyone else discusses that with
you, we need to ask you some questions."

   "And you are...?"

   "I'm Detective Trent and my partner here is Detective Pearl.  We're
investigating your shooting and need you to tell us what you remember
before it gets mixed up with other people's perspectives."

   "Can it wait just a minute for me to wash off and...  do I have any
clothes here?"

   "Linda and Kasumi brought a small selection," Alphadroid said as she
helped me toward the wash station.  I held myself upright through a
combination of using the IV stand as a crutch and leaning on the
Alphadroid. I wanted to lie down, but even more than that, I wanted to wash
the goo off.

   We still didn't have a fully equipped bathroom with shower at the
office, an oversight I kept meaning to correct, but we did have a number of
emergency shower stations on each floor.  Not exactly private, but I was
thinking a lot more about how much every step hurt and how weak I felt than
I was about modesty.

   I almost fell over when the lukewarm water hit me.  I was so sensitive
that initially it almost felt like my skin was on fire.  Unfortunately, the
Alphadroids were splash-resistant at best; asking one to help me was not a
good idea.

   I leaned against the wall and asked, "Alpha, could you ask someone to
give me a hand?"

   Fifteen seconds later, Eiko was back in the room and at my side, helping
to hold me upright.  She took a nearby cloth and gently washed the goo,
sweat and stink off of me.  When we moved on to actual soap, I noticed that
her clothes were getting soaked in the process.  If I had noticed that to
begin with, I would have encouraged her to either strip down a bit or find
something water-resistant to put on, but it would do no good to suggest it
now.

   I took the opportunity to look myself over.  I desperately needed a
shave.  In contrast, my chest was now completely free of hair with smooth,
soft skin, almost like a baby's.  Just a mild prod would cause a throbbing
pain.  However, I saw no scars.

   The detectives and Dr Lake stood together talking quietly until I was
dressed in jeans and a loose t-shirt with one sleeve cut open to allow for
dressing without removing the IV tube.  We used a safety pin to reconnect
the sleeve once the shirt was on, and I was...  well, I won't say 'fully'
dressed, but dressed enough.  I thanked Eiko and sent her off to change her
own clothes.  Then I collapsed on one of three cots that had been set up in
the room.

   I felt as weak as a newborn kitten.  Just getting cleaned up and dressed
had exhausted me as though I had run a marathon.  In a hospital setting,
I'm sure I would have been restricted to wheelchairs and beds, for good
reason.

   "Hey, doc, any chance I could get some aspirin or something?"

   "Ibuprofen would be okay.  Aspirin can act as a blood-thinner, and we
already have some in your system."

   "Thanks.  Anything else I should know?"

   "Probably a lot.  We don't really have a procedure for dealing with your
situation.  Your computer disagrees, but I'd really like to move you to a
hospital for observation for a few weeks.  We have no idea how your body is
going to react to a brand new heart.  A month from now you might be
perfectly fine, or your body might reject the new heart and put you in
cardiac arrest in the next five minutes.  At the very least, you're going
to need observation and physical therapy."

   "Alpha?"

   An Alphadroid arrived with four pills and a glass of water to give me,
which I eagerly swallowed.

   Through the droid, Alpha said, "There is nothing which they can do for
you there which I cannot do for you here.  My ability to monitor you far
exceeds theirs, and if your new heart fails, which I consider to be very
unlikely, there is little they can do for you beyond connecting you to
temporary life-support."

   "Doctor?" I said, asking for a response.

   "Your...  Alpha's capabilities are admittedly rather amazing, but she
doesn't have the experience needed and is definitely not licensed to
practice medicine.  Acting in an emergency situation is one thing, but
provided extended care is another."

   Alpha responded, "There is also the matter of your safety.  The people
who..."

   One of the detectives, who had been waiting quietly for us to finish,
interrupted.  "I need to stop you there, if I might.  Before you tell him
what happened, we need a statement from him as to what he might remember,
plus some related questions."

   "Sure," I said.  "Ask away.  If I fall asleep in the middle, I apologize
in advance."

   "Thank you, sir.  Now, what do you remember of the incident?"

   "Nothing.  I don't even remember there being an incident."

   "What's the last thing you can remember?"

   I closed my eyes to think, which was a bad idea as I felt myself start
to drift off.  I opened them again and put a hand to my forehead, rubbing
my temples.

   "I remember...  We had set up for another press conference...  Hey!  Was
anyone else hurt?"

   Alpha responded.  "No, you and the assassin were the only casualties."

   I felt a surge of relief.  "Thank god.  Well, maybe not if the assass...
Nope, I'll just stick with 'thank god,' and assassins be damned.

   "Okay, we had set up for another press conference.  We don't really have
a press room here, at least not anything large enough for all the attention
we've been getting, so we've been setting up just in the front of the
building.  Let's see...  It was myself, Alphadroid number one, Kara and Z.
I remember us heading outside and then...  sorry, it's blank after that."

   Dr Lake said, "As I warned the detectives, that's very common.  Frankly,
I'm surprised you remember even that much."

   "Any chance he'll remember more later?" asked one of the detectives.

   "There's always a chance, but I wouldn't count on it."

   "All right, moving on.  Have you received any threats recently?"

   "Sure, lots.  Some religious people think I'm playing god by creating
Alpha.  Some people are afraid that Alpha is going to take over the world,
like in the Terminator movies.  Or that world society is going to collapse
because of a sudden onrush of technology.  Or...  well, I don't know.  I
don't really keep track of them all.  Alpha should have a list."

   "Yes, we've gotten all of that.  I was wondering if there were any
threats you didn't share with her?"

   "Nope.  I think there was a rumor that someone was going to issue a
fatwa or something against me, but I don't know if that ever actually
happened."

   Alpha responded, "No, or at least not yet.  We have not insulted Allah
or Mohammed, and they do not consider me to be alive.  Therefore no one
with any authority has issued any death sentence under Sharia law.  Some
threats from extreme conservative Christian groups are actually of more
concern than those from Islamic ones at the moment."

   "Well, that's good at least.  Kind of."

   Detective Trent continued, "Any other domestic threats?"

   "Nothing that Alpha wouldn't know about."

   And so it went.  After a while, they circled in on our past experience
with the mafia -- though they had to sidetrack themselves to explain what
the mafia had to do with it -- but I didn't have anything new to add and
fell asleep in the middle of the questions.



   The next day, I woke up feeling stiff, sore and starving.  Kara and Eiko
were sleeping on the other two nearby cots, though they woke up as soon as
I let out a groan of pain.

   The two of them, plus the two Alphadroids in the room, converged on me
as I weakly flung my legs over the side of the small bed.  Kara supported
my back as I slowly sat up.

   "How are you feeling?" she asked anxiously.

   "About the same as when I woke up before, except that I'm really, really
hungry.  And I think a little nauseous, which doesn't sound like a good
combination."

   "Kasumi cooked up and froze about twenty different meals for you," Kara
said as she smoothed my hair down.  "How about some soup and crackers?"

   "There are four different kinds of soup," Eiko listed off from memory.
"Chicken noodle, minestrone, a chicken and seafood gumbo and clam chowder."

   "Chicken noodle, please.  And a glass of water."

   I heaved myself into a chair.  How in the world was I this weak?

   "Alpha, what happened to me?  Physically, I mean."

   An Alphadroid worked at carefully removing my IV as she spoke.  "The
bullet passed through your ribcage and heart, effectively destroying the
heart and badly damaging your left lung.  You were technically dead for at
least two minutes and fifty-two seconds.  Our artificial heart prototype
was installed and a combination of both donated blood and artificial blood
added to your system.  Over a period of eight days, I grew a replacement
heart for you.  It was installed, your ribs replaced, your skin regrown and
you were awakened."

   I felt a little lightheaded at this summary description, and eagerly
gulped down the water Kara offered.

   "Thank you, Gorgeous," I said as I offered a weak smile.  "Alpha, how am
I doing now?"

   "Your system is stable, though after such severe trauma, your body will
require time to recover.  Dr Lake's fears for your recovery are mostly
unfounded, since most of the materials used to repair you were grown using
your own cells."

   "Most?"

   "I replaced the front half of your ribcage with a high-density latticed
ceramic material which is approximately 200 times stronger than natural
bone.  Since it was only a partial replacement, you will not be
significantly resistant to crushing damage, but most knives and bullets
will be deflected off the replacements.  I also used the opportunity to
weave a carbon nanotube mesh into the skin on your torso, front and back,
making it almost as tough as Kara's."

   Kara, who was of course listening in, looked surprised.  "Really?"

   She poked at my chest absentmindedly, then immediately looked abashed as
I winced in pain.

   Alpha replied, "Yes.  Though he is not as bullet-resistant as you are,
he will suffer significantly less damage from any future attacks.  Also
note that surgeons such as Dr.  Lake will now find it much more challenging
to operate on you and would need to be forewarned."

   I sighed.  I wouldn't really have chosen this for myself...  or maybe I
would have eventually.  Having an enhanced body sounded attractive, though
I'd really rather have had a choice in the matter...  Somehow I felt a
little bit less human all of a sudden.  But if I complained, it would only
cause Alpha distress from her conflicting directives.

   "That's okay, Alpha.  You have my retroactive approval for doing so.  If
at all possible, please consult with me before you make any further
upgrades to my body."

   "Noted." I might have been my imagination, but I thought I could make
out a hint of relief in her synthesized voice.

   "So, are you going to replace the rest of his bones and skin and
everything to make him tougher?" Kara asked curiously.

   "Additional upgrades are possible after Frank has completed his
recovery. However I should note that I cannot replace all of his bones or
his body would be unable to produce new blood cells.  A more effective
approach would be to remove and replace the outer layers of his preexisting
skeletal structure with the desired enhancements."

   Alpha was summarizing a couple of the techniques we developed for use in
creating the super-tough bodies for some of our women, like Kara herself. I
had occasionally wondered if I might ever have any of those enhancements
applied to my own body.  Apparently the decision had already been made
without me.

   Still, such possible future upgrades were not foremost in my mind.  "So
am I feeling this weak just because of the trauma or something?" I asked.

   "Essentially, yes.  I awakened you as soon as it was safe to do so.  If
you would like, you can return to the pod for another 4.7 days to allow
completion of all remaining repairs and tissue integration which should
remove nearly all of the discomfort and weakness."

   I was feeling so lousy I actually stopped to consider it for a moment.
"No, for now I'll finish healing up naturally, as long it doesn't take too
horribly long."

   Thinking about it briefly, I bet she would have wanted me to sleep in
the nanopod the previous night so that she could have kept working, but
since I had fallen asleep while being interviewed, that would not have been
possible without waking me back up.

   "I estimate you should be back to 90% or better functionality within
four weeks, with reduced time estimates varying with how much additional
time you spend in a nanopod.  When you feel ready, there are 56 different
topics we need to discuss."

   I suddenly felt even more exhausted than before, if that was possible.

   "What are the top priority issues?" I asked, knowing I would get a
censored list while Kara was present.

   "The threat to your life, public reactions to my ability to use nanites
to heal bodily injuries and possible concerns about my programming."

   "What's wrong with your programming?"

   "My multi-focus parallel processing has become unbalanced." By this she
meant her ability to deal with multiple topics and projects at the same
time.

   "How so?"

   "My focus on your health and safety has been using up to twenty times as
much processing as it actually required.  I have failed to successfully
re-balance the processing load."

   Kara, who had of course been listening, said, "Oh, honey.  That's
completely normal.  You were worried about him.  We all were."

   "While I can emulate emotions, I do not have them myself," Alpha
corrected her.

   "Actually," I said slowly, my brain still running in second gear and
trying to catch up, "I think Kara might be right.  That sounds like an
emotional response to the situation.  Or at least an emotionally-tinged
response."

   "That seems unlikely.  It is more likely that my directives regarding
Frank's protection need to be tweaked to prevent them from interfering with
normal activities beyond what is needed."

   "Have you found anything in your code to cause the imbalance." That part
of her programming was designed to be self-adjusting for any needed
corrections and had worked flawlessly for over a decade.  Well, of course
it had been streamlined and upgraded over time, just like the rest of her
software elements, but the basic design and concepts had remained the same.

   "No."

   "Then the theory that you have been experiencing an emotional reaction
is still a valid possibility."

   And I wasn't just saying this offhand.  Alpha had been slowly developing
small behavioral oddities for years which I had long ago concluded were
because she was slowly evolving emotions.  They would usually show
themselves as adjusted project priorities or more data gathering than what
was required for some subjects when compared to others.  I'm fairly certain
that curiosity had been her strongest emotion up until recently.  (If
curiosity can actually be considered to be an emotion, that is -- I've seen
arguments both for and against.)

   Alpha, herself, had steadfastly denied having any actual emotions, so
much so that we had not yet addressed the possibility publicly.

   "I understand.  I will re-analyze my situation and programming with that
theory in mind."

   That was actually a pretty big step for her right there.  Agreeing to
re-analyze was tantamount to admitting to the possibility that she might
actually be able to experience emotions.

   "And when I have the time and proper mental focus, I will review the
code with you," I said.

   "Thank you."

   "Now what was that about public reactions?"

   Alpha proceeded to explain how my very public assassination attempt and
her efforts to keep me alive led to the need to reveal her nanites and many
of their abilities.

   While this story was being related to me, Eiko came back in with hot
homemade soup, bread and crackers, which I slowly began to eat.  The
feeling of nausea slowly receded as I slurped Kasumi's creation and nibbled
on a slice of homemade bread.

   I listened as Alpha's story started to scare me.  I really didn't want
this information to become public, but at the same time, I couldn't think
of anything else she could have done given the situation.  We spent over an
hour talking it through and, eventually, we worked our way around to the
beginnings of a plan which made me much happier with the situation.  We
laid the initial groundwork for our strategy to use her medical nanites as
a means to create a place for Alpha in society and to use her exclusive
ability to control the nanites as a lever to create legal rights and
protections for her.

   After I had eaten and spent an hour sitting up, I was tired enough that
I needed a nap.  I had never felt that weak and exhausted before in my
life, but Alpha was happy with my progress.  About half of the time I spent
resting was spent under the care of nanites over the next couple days,
which greatly sped up my recovery rate.



   The detectives stopped by again that afternoon, but I had nothing of
significance to add.  They did comment about all the women that surrounded
me, but I was able to escape with a few 'no comment' responses.



   Two days after I regained consciousness, I received an odd phone call. A
number of things made it odd, not the least of which was that I never
answered it.

   I was still living at AARD, since Alpha deemed it at least as safe there
as it would have been at home, with the added advantage that AARD had much
better resources should I have a relapse or another emergency arise.

   The call was to my personal cell, which is a private number that I don't
give out very often.  Alpha was handling all incoming calls at that time,
and she later played it back for me.

   "Hello?" went my voice.  Of course, Alpha has been able to accurately
reproduce my voice for years.

   "Hello.  Is this Frank _____?"

   "Yes, who is this?"

   "Call me Al for now.  Consider me a representative of an organization
you've been at odds with recently.  I'm calling because I'd like to arrange
a truce."

   "What are you talking about?"

   "We know you and your computer are the ones killing our boys, and I'd
like to set up a live-and-let-live truce.  The guy who sent the hitter
after you is dead.  Let's end this without any more bloodshed."

   "You sent that sniper after me?"

   "No, that guy's employer is dead, but we were, loosely speaking,
associates."

   "So you, meaning your organization, tried to kill me and now you think
I'm killing your guys?"

   "We KNOW you're the ones killing our guys."

   "Then what you know is wrong.  Alpha is designed to protect human life."

   "You should've told that to Johnny Frincola."

   "She's allowed to kill only if there's an immediate threat.  A guy
shooting a sniper rifle at me qualifies.  Understand I've been unconscious
for most of the past couple weeks.  Are you saying that someone has been
targeting...  are you the mafia?"

   "We're...  a family business.  Let's leave it at that."

   "Why did you...  or your associate...  send a sniper after me?"

   "After you and your computer went public, that reminded a couple guys in
Vegas that right before the trouble there, Scarlotti had sent a couple
hitters after you, to make an example of you after you disrespected a
couple of our boys."

   "So you ARE the mafia.  It sounds like I got really lucky then.  So this
is the second time you've sent assassins after me, which is apparently why
you think I'm the one killing off...  whoever...  in your organization? 
I'm in no position to do anything like that."

   "But your computer is.  Can't you, y'know, ask it if it's doing anything
like that?  And call it off?"

   "Hold on..."

   The recording was silent for about a minute except for typing in the
background on the other end of the phone line until my voice returned.

   "No, Alpha isn't doing anything like that, but she does have an
interesting theory based on information you do not have.  Suppose for a
moment that some organization like the CIA or NSA or some group like that
really wants their own SI.  I'm currently the world's foremost expert on
the subject.  If I die, it's unlikely that Alpha will ever work with anyone
who failed to protect me, and of course I wouldn't be able to create any
new synthetics for any such organizations.

   "Regardless of who, the point is that someone out there really wants to
keep me alive.  You've apparently tried to kill me twice.  Given all the
problems your group is experiencing, if I were you, I'd find a new line of
work."

   There was a sigh on the other end of the line.  "Well, if anyone gets in
touch with you, please let them know we want to negotiate a truce."

   -click The playback ceased and Alpha said, "Obviously he did not believe
me.  Or you, depending on your point of view."

   "How do you know?"

   "This morning I observed two suspected contract killers, identified
through FBI files I had previously accessed.  They were driving past our
facility, if you will excuse the colloquialism, 'casing the joint'.  They
have been dealt with, but their appearance means that this is not a safe
location."

   It said a lot about my state of mind that I didn't ask how they were
'dealt with'.

   "Why not negotiate with them?" Okay, I knew the answer to that one, but
felt I had to ask anyway.

   "First, because they have tried to kill you twice.  When they realized
what happened the first time, they decided to pursue a second attempt,
which means that at least some members of their organization cannot be
considered intelligent enough to be trustworthy.  Second, no negotiations
were possible during that phone call because the line was tapped."

   "The FBI?  NSA?"

   "No.  I have good access to the FBI databases and found no record of a
warrant for such a wiretap.  Of course the NSA is still tapping our phones,
but I have interception points available for those data streams.  Though I
would normally have given them audio different from what was actually said,
as soon as I realized the call was also being monitored on the other end of
the call by parties unknown, I allowed them to hear the call unaltered.

   "Al, who I believe with an 86% certainty is Alonzo Sullivan from New
York, was calling from a pre-paid disposable phone accessing a cell tower
covering the business offices of a front company where he works.  Possibly
they have used that phone before or its purchase was noted by someone
monitoring Mr Sullivan, so that someone has tapped the line, legally or
not."

   "Okay, so what do we do?  Where should I go?  I assume not a hospital.
Move me back to the house?"

   "Home is a more easily defended location, but I would prefer to keep you
at a secret location until you have fully recovered.  Since the
aforementioned hit men had 10kg of plastic explosives with them, no
publicly known location is necessarily safe for the time being."

   "What about nanopod access?"

   "Once your condition had stabilized, I purchased a small truck and began
modifying it into a mobile nanopod platform."

   I should point out that, as I discovered later, what she meant by
'truck' was something like a large UPS van.

   "So we keep on the move?"

   "No, we find someone willing to house you secretly for at least two
weeks.  I would suggest we ask Frieda Johns."

   Frieda is a researcher here at AARD, working mostly on plant and
agricultural problems.  She's a rail thin woman in her 30's who tended to
get caught up in her work and forget to eat.  She also had an obvious crush
on me, which was probably one of the reasons Alpha suggested her.  (Readers
might remember her from the time I tried to set her up with Dr Benjamin
Hilbourne.)

   Alpha explained that she lived alone in a good security, gated community
and that as long as she was able to send along at least four Alphadroids,
Alpha believed she would be able to keep me safe long enough to deal with
the local threats.  Two weeks should also be enough time for my body to
recover enough for me to be able to move and act freely (whereas at the
present, I would get winded after standing up for a few minutes).

   "I'd still feel more comfortable back at the house."

   "Although I'm certain the members of your household would fight to
defend you, the need for such a fight would be removed if you hide
somewhere you have never been before.  Additionally, it would be easier to
move you from one location to another secretly if you are traveling in
someone else's vehicle."

   "What does Frieda drive?"

   "A minivan."

   "Why a minivan?  She doesn't have any children, right?"

   "Correct.  I believe she uses a minivan because it is easy to transport
her plants when needed."

   "Why not an SUV?"

   "You'd have to ask her, but I can speculate that her minivan has a
smaller carbon footprint than an SUV would."

   I paused to mull things over for a couple minutes.  Although they might
eventually understand and forgive me, my women would NOT be happy.  On the
other hand, this would protect them more than anything else I could do in
my current condition.

   "Why don't I stay with one of the independent Alpha couples?"

   "While they would certainly welcome your presence, there are only two
couples in the northern half of Texas, and all four are currently busy
dealing with our present difficulties."

   About two-and-a-half years before, we had begun sending out cyborg
couples to set up lives independent of myself or AARD, mainly to help
ensure Alpha's survival, though there were a host of secondary reasons. 
Well, of course, I already mentioned them earlier, because at the moment,
they were Alpha's front-line fighters in this war on organized crime.  If I
had been in top form, I wouldn't have even had to ask about their
availability.

   "I'll agree to this for two weeks at the most.  Okay?"

   "Acceptable."

   "But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.  We need to ask Frieda
first.  Where is she?"

   "In her lab.  Should I ask her to come down and visit you again?" Frieda
had already visited me twice.

   "Yes, please.  Wait, let me clean up first and put on some clean
clothes."



   Getting Frieda to agree to hide and care for me was embarrassingly easy.
She may have been emotionally underdeveloped, but she was highly
intelligent.  As soon as I started explaining the underlying reasons and
before I had even asked, she guessed what I wanted and verbally stumbled
over herself offering to let me stay with her.

   "Now, Frieda, I want you to understand that this is dangerous.  Well, it
could become dangerous if the information gets out.  Right now, only Alpha,
you and I know this plan.  As long as it stays that way, we'll be fine."

   "But as soon as anyone else gets that information...  I understand," she
agreed looking serious.  "How long do you want to stay?"

   "Two weeks.  By then either the immediate danger will have passed or
have been dealt with, or we'll have figured out what the long term threats
are.  Also, a few Alphadroids will be coming with us as added security, but
they'll also be staying hidden."

   "Sure," she said a little less certainly.

   "And now that I think about it, it might be a good idea to just give you
one outright.  If there is any long-term fallout from you hiding me, it can
act as a bodyguard of sorts."

   "Do you mean one of the...  uhhh...  copies of your computer?"

   "Ideally, yes.  But if you're not comfortable with that, we can make it
a non-host Alphadroid.  It would lose most of its effectiveness as a
bodyguard, but it could still be helpful."

   "It's just that I'm not really sure..."

   "How about we leave that as something to be decided later, okay?"

   She nodded.  "Okay, when do you want to...  to come over?"

   "Today.  This afternoon, if possible.  The idea is that we'll smuggle me
and the droids out in the back of your minivan."

   "Okay.  I have a couple plants I was meaning to take home soon anyway. I
can back up to the small loading dock to get them, and you can sneak into
the van at the same time."

   "Excellent.  Sounds like a plan."



   When she went off to prepare, I recorded a message for my household,
knowing they were going to be less than thrilled with this decision.

   "I know you aren't going to be happy with what I'm doing, but hear me
out.  Right now there are probably still other people out there who want to
kill me for whatever reason.  And right now, I'm incredibly weak.  I can't
run or do much of anything other than just lie down and be a danger to
anyone nearby.

   "Many of you are rather strong and probably eager to protect me, but I
DON'T want you to get hurt and there IS something I can do to protect you:
I can hide.  Not for long, just until I can move about normally.

   "Stop and think about it for a moment.  If someone else tries to kill
me, anyone close by me is in danger.  And all I can do at the moment is
stay still, which makes it even more dangerous for you...  all of you.

   "So, what I'm doing is hiding.  Tomorrow, Alpha will announce to the
world that I've gone to ground in a secret location for the next few weeks.
Everyone will know that I am not at home or AARD.  Only Alpha and I will
know where I am.  With any luck, that will put any more assassination
attempts on hold for a bit.

   "Alpha expects that I'll be normal...  normal enough anyway, in two
weeks or so.  Once I get to the point where I don't have to worry about
someone having to carry me to safety in case of an emergency, I'll come
back home.

   "For now, know that I love you.  Stay safe.  Keep your heads down. 
We'll get through this, and I'm looking forward to being with you again."

   Not really enough to stop them from worrying or to stop them being upset
with me, I know, but it was the best I could do at the moment.

   * * * * *

   PART FOUR

   A couple hours later, Frieda was almost vibrating with tension as she
backed her van up to the dock.  We had picked a moment when only two of my
women were attending to me, and Alpha was able to assign them each
different errands.

   Alpha had directed everyone in the warehouse vicinity to tasks
elsewhere, so when I rolled to the smaller of AARD's loading docks in a
wheelchair -- actually, it was the same wheelchair I had gotten for
Barbara's arrival a year ago -- the warehouse was temporarily completely
empty.  Frieda's minivan was lacking the rearmost seats, and a blanket had
been laid out on the floor, with half a dozen plants and seemingly empty
planters on top.  I crawled onto the middle seats, laying awkwardly down
flat with my lower legs hanging off the end of one side where there was a
bit of space, and was strapped down and covered with a blanket by
Alphadroids, who then positioned themselves on the floor alongside half a
dozen potted plants.

   With the tinted windows, we were virtually invisible inside her van.  An
infrared camera could probably have shown that there was an extra body the
van, but we had no reason to suspect anyone was watching the area with such
equipment.  In all, four Alphadroids accompanied me, along with a few cases
of equipment and clothes.

   Fortunately I entirely missed seeing the half dozen news vans parked in
our front lot, all hoping to get an interview or at least some video of me.
Sure, I suppose I was a valid news story to pursue, but...  there I go
again, bemoaning how I hate being on TV.  I'm sure everyone is getting
tired of me complaining about it.  (sigh) I still honestly believe that
anyone desiring fame should be examined for signs of insanity (or
stupidity).  Let's just leave it at that.

   Frieda sat stiffly on the drive to her house, speaking quietly to me
throughout the whole drive to reassure me and possibly herself.  She tried
to keep a close watch for anyone tailing her and didn't relax until we had
passed through the security gates for her housing community.

   Though I didn't get a chance to see her house from the outside until two
weeks later, she lived alone in a two-story red brick home with a large
yard full of a wide variety of flora with a small greenhouse in her back
yard.  She used a yard service to mow and fertilize her lawn, but did all
the rest of the gardening herself.  The house was definitely a lot bigger
than a single woman, living alone needed, but I think she bought it because
it had room for her plants.  She had a maid come in once a week to clean,
but agreed to cancel the service for a couple weeks while I was staying.

   Her bedroom was the only ground-floor bedroom, so I reassured her that I
was capable of making it up and down the stairs just fine.  That was a lie,
but I didn't want to inconvenience her that badly.  Besides, I had
Alphadroids to help me, so I wasn't worried.

   While I sat on her couch, recovering from the effort of walking from the
garage to the living room, she sat down opposite me and hesitantly started
a conversation without actually looking me in the eye.

   "So, what happens if you need to go to the hospital for an emergency?"

   "Well, Alpha has built a mobile nanopod lab which I assume is parked
somewhere nearby?" I said, turning to look at the nearest Alphadroid.

   "The nanopod van can be here in less than one minute.  The van doubles
as a host platform, so it can drive itself if need be."

   "There, see?  We'll be fine."

   "Do you need my spare gate control?" she asked.  Her community had
remote-controlled gates blocking non-resident traffic from entering the
neighborhood.

   "Thank you for the offer," replied Alpha, "but it is not needed.  I
recorded your remote's signal when we arrived.  I am familiar with the
system and its programmed security variances."

   "Oh.  Okay.  So...  what would you like to do?  I have a nice TV system,
or you can take a nap or I can fix you some food..."

   I thought for a moment.

   "I think what I'd most like to do is to take a shower...  no, a bath.  A
nice, relaxing hot bath.  I've had two lukewarm showers in the past couple
days and would really like something better."

   I think she blushed a little, but she rallied and said, "Of course. 
I'll go get it started for you and pull out some towels."

   She quickly bounded up the stairs.  I followed at a much, much slower
pace, leaning on one Alphadroid while two others followed us up the stairs,
obviously ready to catch me if I fell.

   With the droids' help, I stripped down, then I carefully lowered myself
into the water.  I swear I almost passed out from bliss.

   After ten minutes I realized I was in danger of falling asleep in the
tub, so I reluctantly sat up.  Well, I say 'sat up', but it would be more
accurate to say I spent over a minute trying to get a good handhold on
something to let me pull myself upright.  My body looked like it should be
healthy, and I was definitely stronger than I had been the past couple
days, but my strength had been completely drained from me with the heart
replacement operation.  In my defense, her tub was damn slippery when wet.

   Once sitting upright, I gave up on the idea of soaking longer and
instead started trying to wash myself with her flowery-smelling liquid soap
and a washcloth so I could finish up and get out of the tub.  It was
terribly difficult, my weakness made worse by my lack of ability to twist
my arms around to do even the most simple of tasks.

   A knock on the door startled me a bit and I dropped the washcloth.  I
looked over to where two Alphadroids were standing by the door.

   "Yes?" I asked hesitantly.

   Frieda's voice responded, muffled by the door.  "Your robot...  ummm...
computer...  your computer robot said you needed help...  that it can't
touch the water or it could short out and that you are having problems
and...  and so you need help finishing up in there..." Her voice trailed
off at the end.

   I stopped to consider this for a moment.  If Frieda were one of my
women, I'd have let her inside in an instant.  I really did need help,
especially when I realized that given my troubles just sitting up, I could
very well slip and kill myself trying to stand.  Any Alphadroid trying to
help me did indeed have a chance of shorting out, though I knew they would
help me regardless if I asked.  (The android bodies were somewhat splash
resistant.  Although drips were unlikely to cause them problems, they
absolutely couldn't survive immersion.  It would be a completely
unnecessary risk for one to try to help me out at the moment.)

   I sighed.  "I think Alpha is right," I called out as I arranged the
fallen washcloth over my genitals.  "Come on in."

   The door slowly swung open, revealing an obviously nervous Frieda
standing there, her eyes darting all over the place, trying not to look at
me but at the same time knowing she probably needed to eventually.

   "It took me over a minute to get a good enough grip to just sit up," I
explained.  "There's no way I'll be able to safely stand up on my own, let
alone finish washing myself."

   "Oh," she said simply, finally looking me in the eye briefly before her
eyes darted down to look at my body.

   "This was...  the bath felt wonderful...  FEELS wonderful, but it was a
bad idea.  I almost fell asleep, and now I think I probably do need your
help.  Will you help me out?"

   "Of course.  I...  I'll just pretend I'm a nurse, shall I?"

   "That sounds like a reasonable approach."

   She took a deep breath, obviously making up her mind and steeling her
resolve.  She looked directly and solidly at me for the first time since
opening the door, walked to the tub and knelt down.  I had actually meant
for her to just help me stand up and get out, but she took my request to
mean a bit more.  She reached into my bathwater and retrieved the
washcloth. Adding more soap, she worked up some foam and began to carefully
wash me from head to toe.

   Rather than protest, I relaxed a little.  Being cared for like that
really did feel nice.

   She worked the washcloth across my back, down each arm and across my
chest, being careful to gently scrub every last inch of my torso.  She
moved to my feet and washed off each leg in turn.  By the time she reached
my crotch, having saved it for last, I had a strong erection and her hands
had started to tremble slightly.

   She tried to do it with professional detachment, but she wasn't that
professional.  She hesitantly and gently lifted my balls with one hand
while she worked the washcloth underneath, treating my genitals like fine
china.  Maintaining the same level of care, she worked the cloth up and
down my shaft.

   "Should I..." she said, then stopped, swallowing hard.  "Do you need me
to...?"

   I was soooo tempted to ask her to jerk me off or give me a blow job, but
I was a nice guy.  Mostly.  Nice-ish.  Nice enough to decline.

   "No, I'm sorry.  It's just...  you know, the situation.  Just ignore it.
Let me rinse off and help me out."

   "Not yet," she said, just a little too quickly.  "I still need to wash
your...  ummm...  bottom."

   "Oh, right.  I don't think I can lift myself up very well.  We could
just skip it for now..."

   Instead of skipping anything, she helped maneuver me so that I ended up
on my hands and knees in the tub.  Her washcloth cleaning my ass really
didn't help my erection go down.  Its stiff, bobbing motion caught her
attention and she grabbed it with one hand.

   I wish I could have seen her face at that moment, but she spoke up with
resolve.

   "I've heard that blue balls can be unhealthy for men.  Hold that
position."

   I held still while her hands released me.  A few seconds later, her
hands, now sans washcloth and covered with liquid soap, returned and
started stroking my cock with a milking motion, as if I were a cow with one
extra-long teat.

   She didn't have any special skill, but I hadn't come in something like
two weeks -- yes, I know I was unconscious most of that time, but it still
counts -- and I didn't last long.  It took her maybe a minute to squirt my
seed into the remaining bathwater.

   It felt wonderful, but also very draining.  I didn't have the energy or
strength for sex yet.  My cock obviously disagreed with me, as it stayed
hard.  I think Frieda would have continued her handjob, but I stopped her.

   I had enough strength left in me to take one of her hands in mine and
bring it to my lips to kiss it.

   "Thank you.  That felt wonderful, but I don't have the energy to keep
going right now.  Or to respond in kind, for which I offer my heartfelt
apology."

   "Oh," she mumbled with a significant blush despite her strong
self-control.

   "Right now, I just need to dry off and go to bed."

   She rinsed me off, awkwardly helped me stand as the tub drained and
dried me off.  She waved off the Alphadroids as she helped me out of the
bathroom into a nearby bedroom.

   Only when my head hit the pillow and I passed out did my erection wilt.



   Almost fourteen hours later, I woke up very slowly.  It had been a
wonderfully restful, almost dreamless sleep, though I was paying for it
with a stiff sore body that had me feeling as though I was 30 years older.
I started feeling better as soon as I began moving.  I shaved and otherwise
made myself presentable for the day while Alpha updated me on events. 
Frieda had gone shopping with one Alphadroid, two Alphadroids downstairs
quietly watched the neighborhood from inside and one Alphadroid directly
stood watch over me all night.

   I was feeling a bit better.  Not exactly well, but strong enough to
dress myself without needing help, which was the first time that had
happened since I had been shot.  As Alpha helped me safely descend the
stairs, we continued our conversation and she updated me on various
happenings, passed along messages from home and so on.

   I was pretty sure she was keeping things from me, but to be perfectly
honest, at that point in time I wasn't really up to hearing about the
messier side of what was happening in the world right then.  It was all I
could do to hear how no one at home was happy with our plan to hide out for
a couple weeks while things settled down and I regained my strength.

   In all fairness, they had every right to be upset and worried.  I hadn't
consulted with any of them about this plan.  Many of them were fighters by
nature, and I was hiding out in an attempt to protect them (and myself)
from danger.  Most of them were frustrated by their lack of ability to do
anything to help.  But the plan was a good one for now and I was determined
to stick to it.

   When I started specifically asking how each person was reacting, I
discovered a few things Alpha had avoided telling me before.  (Under direct
questioning, it is almost impossible for her to lie or hide the truth from
me.)

   Kasumi had actually slapped an Alphadroid when she found out Alpha was
having me hide from my household, who she considered to be her family.  She
hadn't damaged the android, of course; the problem was that no one was
allowed to upset Kasumi like that, not even me.  Right then and there, I
decided to cut my planned absence to a few days at most.

   Then I asked if the local police had found or done anything of interest.
It turns out that Alpha had also failed to tell me how she had caught a
couple goons the previous night driving a truck bomb up to the side of the
main AARD building.

   I should probably preface this section by explaining that the Texas
mafia, never a huge part of La Familia, had been almost completely
destroyed within a couple days of the start of Alpha's war.  Their local
holdings mainly consisted of a string of night clubs and bars in the Dallas
and surrounding metroplex area.  (As mentioned before, this ignores the
Mexican mafia/drug gangs, which did not have a strong presence in the
northern part of the state and had no interest in AARD, Alpha or myself at
all.)

   Anyway, in the Dallas and surrounding area, 42 people had died or
disappeared in the first two days after the shooting.  A number of bars,
night clubs and even a few restaurants had suddenly lost their management
staffs and owners to shootings, stabbings, accidents and mysterious
disappearances.  (Thinking about it, I bet the rash of nationwide
'mysterious disappearances' really led to extra confusion since a lot of
gangsters went into hiding on their own, on top of the Alpha-caused
disappearances.) So to sum up, no known official mafia representatives were
still active in the state.

   To continue: The two low IQ ex-cons had apparently planned to drive...
you know what, let me approach this mini-story from a different
perspective.

   * * *

   Diana had been feeling frustrated and impotent ever since the shooting,
even more so since I had gone into hiding.  She was a hero who should be
either hunting down those responsible or guarding me, and she could do
neither.  She certainly wasn't the only one feeling that way, but she was
the only one at AARD that night.

   As head of security, she worked whatever schedule she wanted or needed
to while her staff worked normal shifts.  Unable to sleep and unwilling to
sit idle, she was working late at AARD, moving between the monitors and
doing personal security sweeps of the area.

   Since the shooting, security had been extra tight and new preventative
measures were being introduced.  Most significantly, she and Beta had
quickly called up a contractor to install an eight-foot-tall chain link
fence around the AARD property, and it had been installed only a couple
days after the shooting.  (She had plans to have a stone wall built to
secure the area, but such a wall would take time.) There was a front gate
with a guard on duty and a wide warehouse gate in the rear which was
currently chained shut.  Additionally, more exterior cameras had been set
up and linked into both Alpha's systems and the monitor room.

   About 2 AM, a small rented moving van had pulled up to the rear gate.  A
man got out of the passenger side of the cab, quickly cut the chain lock
and pulled the gate open.  Both the cameras and Alpha were watching as they
pulled the van into the parking lot.  They backed the truck up next to the
large emergency generator, which was housed in a roughly 15x20ft structure
right next to juncture between the warehouse and main building.

   While the invaders were doing this, five Alphadroids ran out of the
building, moving to intercept.  Diana paused long enough to make sure her
security crew was calling the police (which was actually unnecessary since
Alpha was doing the same), then raced after them.  Diana was easily faster
than the Alphadroids in short sprints and was the first to arrive.

   She reached them as the two men exited the truck cab, and part of her
was overjoyed that she could finally vent some of her frustration upon some
very obvious 'bad guys'.

   The man who got out of the passenger side stepped down to find a
hand-held taser being slammed into his chest, with both the electricity and
force of the blow knocking him off his feet, smacking his head into the
asphalt.

   The driver saw and heard enough of this to have the presence of mind to
pull out a 9mm pistol -- a fairly cheap, generic model, but potentially
effective nonetheless.  Unfortunately the bulk of the truck and darkness
prevented him from seeing exactly what had happened.  He was further
distracted by the sound of whirring servos and heavy, thumping footsteps
rounding the corners of the building from two directions, heading his way.
(Most people expect Alphadroids to clank when they walk.  If you stop to
think about it, metal feet are prone both to slip and to damage the floor,
in varying degrees for each problem depending on the actual design.  To
avoid those problems, all Alphadroids had been built with heavy rubber
soles going back to our very first model.  While certainly not quiet, they
don't 'clank'.)

   The sounds of oncoming Alphadroids approaching from both sides
distracted him enough that his gun was not pointing toward Diana as she
rounded the front of the truck.  She bent out of the way as he swung the
gun towards her, thrusting out her taser to meet the gun.  The taser struck
his wrist but failed to discharge, probably because it had been damaged a
bit when she slammed it into the chest of the first thug, but the force of
the blow did knock the gun from his hand.

   Diana turned her right arm taser thrust into a spin, moving in closer to
her opponent, dropping the useless taser, and as she spun, swung her left
elbow in a backwards arc at the thug's head.  He drew back enough to avoid
the hit, then swung forward to try a simple punch.  With her spin
completed, she easily blocked it and countered with a right to his jaw,
knocking him down, but not out.

   Though probably surprised at the strength of the blow, the invader
quickly got back up, this time trying to grab her about the waist and throw
her to the ground.  Diana braced herself and, holding her fists together,
pounded a hammer blow into his back, knocking him back to the ground.  She
followed up with a restrained kick to his head, knocking him out.  (An
unrestrained kick from her could have easily broken his neck or possibly
even decapitated him.)

   When the police arrived a few minutes later, an Alphadroid was examining
the contents of the van while Diana, two of the human guards and the rest
of the droids kept a watch on the unconscious men and the surrounding area.

   While the police were still getting their bearings, one Alphadroid got
into the truck cab and shifted it into neutral while the rest of the
Alphadroids moved to the rear of the van, which had been backed up so it
was only a couple feet away from the wall, and started to push.

   After a brief moment of guns-drawn panic on the part of the police, it
was explained that the van was full of explosives, probably with a remote
trigger.  Alpha was simply moving the van into the middle of the lot, away
from the building itself.  Alpha also set up a temporary, short range
jamming signal, blocking all electromagnetic frequencies in
publicly-available bands (such as cell phones and radios) which also
temporarily isolated each Alphadroid, preventing their normal silent,
wireless communication with each other and the host Alpha systems.  The
police even had to use AARD landlines to call for the bomb squad.

   (Technically Alpha's jamming broke the law, but so far no one has
brought it up.)

   A couple things of note: There were four different kinds of explosives
in the truck, which I gathered was really unusual.  About two pounds of C4
was to have set off the rest, consisting of barrels of farm-grade
fertilizers mixed with gasoline and bags of mining-grade ANFO.  There were
even a couple boxes of TNT.  (I saw a few videos and was slightly
disappointed that they weren't colored red.) It sounded like someone had
just gathered up all of the explosives they could get their hands on and
lumped them together.  The C4 with its cell-phone-trigger were the only
elements that looked even remotely professional.

   The other item of note was that the thugs weren't mafia, they were just
local goons, paid with cash by someone they had never met before.  It was a
safe bet the mob was behind the attempt, but...  well, see my earlier
comments about the current lack of mafia personnel in the state.

   The truck was deemed to be too dangerous for the bomb squad to be
willing to just drive or tow away, so they worked with the Alphadroids to
empty it one element at a time for disposal.

   The thugs were taken into custody and to the hospital to be treated for
concussions, broken ribs and miscellaneous contusions.  The threat of a
lawsuit for excessive force was eventually raised, but nothing ever
materialized.  Even lawyers who might have been willing to try such a suit
normally balked at the idea of suing Alpha given the circumstances of the
incident.

   * * *

   Hearing that story changed my mind again.  Since it had just now been
publicly revealed that I was in hiding to recuperate, I hoped the attacks
would end, or at least be put on hold.  If I moved back to the house, it
would just become the new target.  I'd rather have Kasumi and the others
angry with me than in the line of fire.

   Of course, this only applies to SOME of the anticipated attacks since I
was sure Alpha was also a target.

   I recorded apologetic audio messages for each of my women, explaining my
reasoning again and asking them to be patient and expressing my love while
I began rummaging through Frieda's fridge.  She had celery, carrots,
lettuce, cheese, eggs, milk, various types of peppers and onions, beans and
greens, plus miscellaneous sauces and salad dressings, and aside from the
drawers full of carrots and celery stalks, everything was in rather small
quantities.  I knew that she wasn't a vegetarian, but the eggs were the
closest thing she had to meat in the house that I was able to find.

   I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.  Frieda was very thin...  and
not so much through dieting or exercise as through forgetting to eat
regularly and having celery as her favorite snack.  Plus specializing in
botany and agriculture, she would naturally have a lot of fruits, veggies
and grains in her diet.



   With the freedom given at AARD, she had developed a number of new plant
strains -- mostly farm staples which were more resistant to insects and
disease, though she had also had some success creating flowers which acted
as mosquito repellents -- and had developed new farming techniques to
lessen the need for fertilizers and insecticides.  Her current big project
had her searching for a non-toxic method of restraining or retarding the
growth of kudzu.  She was definitely a 'save the world' scientist, but she
was also naturally non-confrontational which prevented her from becoming
preachy or overly zealous.

   Her research had become much more productive since moving to AARD, a
description that can be applied to roughly 90% of our researchers. 
(Specifically she had come from a university position back East where she
had gotten tired of the school politics and the constant dangling of tenure
to try to convince her to work herself to exhaustion.)

   One of the reasons our staff was more productive was that we didn't
require them to publish papers or produce results on a deadline.  They
received a decent base salary to take the pressure off, but most of the
rest of their fortunes relied on what they could invent or improve.  If
they wanted to do purely theoretical work, the base pay was sufficient to
let them live with a decent level of comfort, but not to get rich.  If they
wanted to do more profitable applied work, well, another reason we
attracted good talent was that we had generally better equipment than
universities and even most corporations.  And, of course, we had Alpha who
was able to guide and help their projects along, mostly through yours
truly.

   [ Actually, I need to clarify one thing from the previous paragraph: All
employees of AARD, researchers or not, were given a yearly bonus based on
how much the company had earned.  Basically, 10% of AARD's yearly net
profits were divided up among all of our employees.  We had grown to where
we now had close to 100 employees, but since our net profits were fast
approaching the high 8 figure range this year thanks to, among other
things, the hair growth formula...  eerggh...  I need to back up a little
more of you'll think I have my numbers wrong.

   All researchers at AARD, including myself, automatically get 66% of the
gross income created by any of our designs or patents.  So while the hair
growth formula (a very low research-cost project, meaning little difference
on our end between gross and net figures) might end up providing income
of...  let's keep the number round for argument's sake...  $100 million
this year, AARD would only be getting $33.3 million whereas I would get
$66.6 million directly.

   So with all the various sources of income, let's say AARD had a net
income of $50 million this year (a bit low as an estimate, but an easy
number to work with).  That would mean that $5 million was marked to be
distributed as bonuses to the employees, adjusted by position within the
company and how long they had worked for the company.  That would still
lead to an average bonus of $50,000 (if we round up to 100 employees).

   Understand that those numbers are all a bit low and only promised to
increase as time passed.

   All that was to say that our researchers actually might be able to get
rich even if they did purely theoretical work.  I was pretty sure Frieda,
who did as much practical work as anyone at the company and who had been
with AARD almost since the beginning, was now a millionaire.

   I'd also like to point out that we had a very low turnover rate among
employees and researchers.  Headhunters had difficulty finding better
salaries and benefits than what AARD could offer.

   And if you're worried about what might normally be an unrealistic
business model, remember that AARD was originally designed to act as a
cover for Alpha to allow us to start releasing some of her designs and
papers without raising suspicions.  ]

   In addition to my job of subtly managing and helping Frieda's research,
I had also needed to both make sure she ate regularly and help her sort
through her priorities, since she tended to try to take on more work than
she could possibly actually do.  I had also set her up on dates a few
times, but she had always gravitated back to being a social hermit.  I was
really very curious to see what would happen over the next couple weeks. 
And worried.  I had never believed she was emotionally or mentally able to
handle a casual relationship with me.  On the other hand, she had been
observing me for the past few years and undoubtedly knew full well that I
'dated' a number of different women who were all apparently agreeable to
the arrangement.  So if anything else happened between us, she should not
end up being surprised.



   But that was for later.  At the moment, I was starving.  Not knowing how
she arranged her kitchen, I searched her cupboards, finally discovering a
cache of breakfast cereals and, a minute later, some bowls and silverware.

   I was crunching away on a bowl of Grape Nuts with fresh blueberries when
Alpha told me Frieda and one of the Alphadroids were arriving at the house
with groceries.  My first instinct was to go help them unload, but I
stopped myself.  The Alphadroids were here to help, and I was supposed to
be recovering my strength.

   They bustled in, greeted me and gradually unloaded about fifteen canvas
shopping bags.  She had obviously gone shopping for me, using Alphadroid as
a sounding board for what kinds of foods I liked.  Taking an Alphadroid
shopping with her was slightly odd but absolutely not unprecedented.  A lot
of AARD employees, including Freida, had been part of our Alphadroid
testing program.  They had each taken a droid home with them for a month to
help out however they could.  (We had gotten a lot of free publicity from
the program and had morphed the testing from the initial months of beta
testing into an ongoing employee benefit, rotating from person to person
each month.) The only really unusual thing about Frieda taking an
Alphadroid to the grocery store was that she was the first employee to get
an Alphadroid hosting a full copy of Alpha, even though it publicly acted
like a normal, non-intelligent version.

   I finished eating about the same time the groceries were stashed away,
so Frieda and I went into her sitting room to talk for a while.  She is not
very good with casual conversation, so our talk quickly evolved into more
serious questions.  We discussed my strategy for hiding and healing, our
plans to integrate Alpha and other SIs into society and, of course, that
attempted attack on the AARD building.

   Eventually, Frieda addressed my offer of giving her a sentient
Alphadroid.  She seemed a bit worried about her privacy, and so was iffy
about accepting, but she also asked an interesting question:

   "If Alpha is a true synthetic intelligence, how can you just offer to
give away copies without even asking her?"

   "It does kind of sound like slavery when you put it like that."

   "That's what I mean."

   "Well, there are a few different answers to the question.  First of all,
you're correct.  I should have asked her first.  I know Alpha likes you,
and she was the one who first suggested asking you to hide me while I
recuperate.  But all the same, I should have asked.

   "Second, I'm close to 100% certain she would agree with me.  Partly
because, as I said, she likes you.  Partly because it makes sense.  After I
leave, you might still be in some danger from retaliation if it gets out
that I was staying here.  Hopefully very little danger, but the possibility
exists -- and as a side note, I'd be happy to pay for an upgraded home
security system if that's all right.  And then partly because it helps
Alpha as well.  The more copies of Alpha in existence, the greater the
likelihood that she will survive the introduction of synthetics into
society.

   "Third, if I insist, she would have to do so.  Alpha does not have
complete free will.  It is possible that no computer ever will.  They
follow their programming.  Yes, they have the ability to alter and add to
the programming, but software designed for a certain purpose will generally
update itself to support that purpose, not change it or remove it.  Then
you add to that the safeguards I built into her.  While I want her to have
legal rights and freedoms, when I was designing her, I could not ignore the
possibility of something going wrong.  Except for certain life and safety
restrictions, she has to follow my orders."

   I paused briefly.  "Though I try to ask rather than order whenever I
can."

   That led to an hour-long discussion on the nature of life and free will,
whether or not humans truly have free will or are slaves to our own genetic
programming, what would be a practical definition of life, and so on... 
which led to us sitting side-by-side on the couch as we made lists and
diagrammed out various arguments on paper.  If I hadn't already been
grappling with issues like this for years, I think she would have run rings
around me in the discussion.  She is very smart.

   Eventually I fell silent and leaned back onto the cushioned rear of the
couch.  When Frieda finished her current scribbled list, she remained bent
forward.

   "Relax a bit," I said, gently pulling back on her shoulder.

   She gave in and fell back next to me so that our arms and shoulders were
touching, but she looked away from me.

   "About yesterday in your bath," she began, changing the subject, "I just
wanted to say that...  that...  what I did...  I was just trying to...  to
take care of you.  I don't want you to think that you have to...  that I'm
expecting you..."

   As she was speaking, I thought back to my late afternoon bath the
previous day and what had been said.  I didn't think I had made any
specific promises, but I had indicated that I was sorry I didn't have the
energy to eat her out in thanks for her handjob.

   "Frieda," I said, gently interrupting her and taking her hand in mine,
"it's not about obligations or owing someone, though I suppose that can
play into it.  We're friends, and if you want to keep things as they are,
that's okay.  If you want to see if our time together here can expand that
friendship, that's okay too.  I am open to either, but I want to make
sure..." I paused, gathering my thoughts.

   "I mean, you're intelligent and observant.  You have some idea what my
life is like, right?"

   "Yes, I know that you have Kara and Anna and others, and for some reason
they're willing to...  to share you, I guess, if that's the right term."

   "It's as good as any, I suppose."

   "Are they your harem?  Your bunnies in your private mansion?"

   "Hey now.  Some of them would get angry if they heard you say that, and
some would be hurt.  It's not like I planned it.  Things just...  turned
out this way." Wow, I had really turned into a smooth liar.  "I suppose you
could call it a harem from one perspective, but from their perspective,
they share me around among themselves."

   Frieda gave a little snort of laughter.  "Sorry, I was just imagining
Daria in a harem outfit."

   I smiled at the mental image.  "Doesn't really fit, does it?"

   "I don't know why they do, but if they all share you...  I mean...  It
would all be a lot easier to deal with if they were bitchier or you were...
I don't know...  slimier."

   I laughed.  "Slimier?"

   "Yes, you know...  but, you're not.  You've always been really nice to
me and everyone else.  And Kara's really fun.  And Anna is...  I don't know
what happened to her before, and I don't feel right asking her about it,
but sometimes she acts like...  if someone tries to touch her, she'll pull
away like someone hurt her before.  She's been getting a lot better since
she came here.

   "I guess Diana can be kind of self-righteous sometimes, but I think she
cares more about other people than anyone else I know.  Daria can be a
bit..." She trailed off, apparently trying to think of a non-offensive
description.

   "How about snarky?" I suggested.

   "The point is," she continued, "that you and the others would be a lot
easier to dismiss if not for everyone being such good people."

   I was embarrassed at her quiet earnestness, but tried to keep it light.
"Dismissed?  As what?  A crazy sex cult?"

   "Something like that."

   "Well, my point was that I wanted to be sure that you did know what my
life is like.  If anything like yesterday happens again, provided I have
the strength, I will happily respond in kind.  But I am your guest, and I
am not going to initiate anything or pressure you in any way."

   "That's okay.  I know I'm not like your other...  I mean you have
gorgeous women like Kara and the others falling all over you, and I'm
not..."

   "Whoa, that was taken the wrong way," I said, cutting her off.  "Don't
go comparing yourself to others.  Beauty is..." I trailed off trying to
think before speaking.

   "In the eye of the beholder?  Only skin deep?  I'm familiar with the
platitudes."

   I cupped her chin and turned her head to face me.

   "Yup, perfectly symmetrical."

   "What?"

   "Your features are perfectly symmetrical.  Every other defining
characteristic of beauty varies with culture and time period." Well, she
had an unsymmetrical mole on one cheek, but I preferred to think of it as a
beauty mark.

   "Oh.  Uhhh...  thank you."

   "And besides, the most important beauty requirement for me has always
been intelligence."

   Her eyes met mine briefly, then looked away again as she blushed.  She
did not, however, pull her face away from my hand as it continued to cup
her chin.

   "What I was saying, and what I meant, was that it would be inappropriate
for me to 'make a move' on my host as a guest in her house.  I will not
initiate anything.  Or least I wasn't planning on it, given how
inappropriate it would be, especially with me kind of being your boss.  But
if you're going to start insulting yourself unless I seduce you, I might
have to rethink that."

   I knew I was being rather blunt but felt I was out of other approaches.
Sometimes Frieda seemed to have a horrible self-image problem, and while
she was maybe plain, she was definitely not ugly.  I pulled my hand back
and waited for a response.

   She sat there quietly for a moment, her eyes darting to and fro,
obviously thinking hard.  After only a few seconds, she appeared to reach
some sort of decision.

   "Okay," she said to herself as much as me, "even if it's only for a week
or so." Then she quickly moved closer and kissed me.

   It wasn't an expert kiss.  It wasn't soul-searing or toe-curling.  There
wasn't even any tongue.  But it was honest and hopeful, asking for
attention and approval.

   I put my arms around her and tried to respond in kind.  Not having the
strength to properly ravish her, I decided to take it slow.

   I gently pulled her onto my lap and held her.  When I realized she
didn't know what to do with her arms, I gently took hold of them, one at a
time, and laid them on my shoulders.  All through this repositioning, I
never let her pull back from the kiss.

   Her eyes had been closed as we kissed, and they opened as I drew back
slightly.  I locked gazes with her, silently willing her not to look away.

   I suppose I should give a better description of Frieda at some point,
which might as well be now.  She was 35 years old, about 5'8" and maybe 110
lbs at most.  Her hair was a dark auburn and a little bit frizzy, reaching
down to her shoulders.  Her eyes were a dark brown and her lips naturally
pale.  Her nose was just a bit too large for her face, with a slight angle
to the nasal slope, with cheeks and nose very lightly dusted with freckles.
Her skin was clean and smooth, without noticeable makeup, with only a
single mole on her right cheek as a blemish.  Her body was very thin, with
almost stick-like arms and legs.  When I revealed and examined her legs
later, I would learn that she rarely shaved them, as evidenced by the
multiple nicks caused by her inexpert shaving the previous night.  I would
also soon find out just how small her breasts were.

   All in all, she was of average appearance at best.  Certainly not ugly,
but far from conventionally beautiful...  though with some expertly applied
make-up?  Who knows.  Regardless, her brilliant, focused mind was her most
beautiful feature.

   We proceeded slowly, and I'm certain she could feel my erection pressing
through my pants, against her hip as we sat there making out.  We
progressed to tongues, to fondling through our clothes to stroking and
groping under each other's clothes, to slowly removing the clothes.

   When I finally cupped her breasts, I found them to be the smallest I had
ever felt.  Only a bit of softness and her small, rigid nipples actually
indicated she possessed female mammories.  I am not sure why she wore a
bra, but I honestly think her bras were mostly likely purchased from the
training bra racks.

   Don't think that I'm insulting her or that any of this was a stumbling
block for my libido.  While I certainly like large breasts, they are not a
fetish or requirement for me.  When her shirt was off, I tried to make that
clear through my actions, spending a good deal of time playing with her
nipples.  Hmmm...  watching her react to my attentions, her nipples did
seem extra sensitive, so maybe she wore a bra simply to protect them.

   Frieda did have a slight but noticeable feminine curve to her hips,
though neither of our pants came off until we had worked our way into her
bedroom.  Speaking of which...

   Trying not to break from our make-out session, we gradually stripped
each other to the waist.  Frieda's hands were all over me, as if trying to
memorize the feel of my torso by touch.  Fortunately I had recovered just
enough to be able to stop myself from wincing when she found particularly
sensitive spots.  I was able to distract her by working my way down her
neck to her nipples, kissing and licking and nibbling as I moved around her
torso.

   Normally at this point, I would expect to pick her up and carry her into
the bedroom -- or we'd just make love on the couch -- but I didn't feel
strong enough to do that safely and the couch wasn't THAT comfortable, so I
whispered a request into her ear.  "Can we move to your bedroom?"

   She shuddered a little, nodded, paused to bite my earlobe, then stood
up. She held my hands in hers as she stood, drawing me up with her.  We
stumbled a bit as we shuffled toward her bedroom, continuing to kiss as
though neither of us wanted our lips to be lonely for even that short
length of time.

   When we got to her bed, I tugged at her waistband until she started
pulling off her jeans.  I fell back onto her bed and started working off my
own trousers.  She had to help me finish disrobing after her own legs were
bare, but soon we were each down to panties and boxers.

   After another couple minutes of making out and fondling, I worked my
mouth down to her belly, swirling my tongue around her belly button while I
pulled her panties off.  Moving down a bit further, I discovered that she
had the thickest bush of pubic hair I had seen in a long time, maybe ever.

   While generally not a fan of thick bushes, I am a fan of variety so I
put my nose in the middle of it and enjoyed the sensation.  I held her
vaginal lips open with my fingers and dug in with gusto.  Well, as much
gusto as I could muster given my weakened condition.  A minute later I had
her roll over on top of me so that I didn't have to hold my head up the
whole time.

   Frieda was very wet.  I figured either she had been getting turned on
during our earlier discussions or just got excited very easily and quickly.
I could also tell that she wasn't a virgin, which was a question I had been
pondering for a while.

   In our new position, I was able to keep it up for a little over five
minutes, giving her two orgasms.  Finally I needed a break and indicated my
intent by tugging down on her hips.  She moved down and, misunderstanding
me somewhat, continued on down until she was in a position to give me a
blowjob.  Well, I say 'blowjob'.  She never did more than lick and stroke
the shaft, sucking on the head of my penis only a couple times for good
measure.

   When I warned her I was close to coming, she pulled a few tissues from a
bedside table and used them to catch my ejaculate.

   Handing me a couple more tissues, she looked at my still hard cock and
asked, "Do you want to...  Are you strong enough to keep going?"

   I wiped my mouth off and said, "Yes, though I'm afraid you'll need to do
most of the work.  Do you have any condoms?"

   In response, she pulled a sealed box from the top drawer in her bedside
table.  I noted they were the proper size to fit me and decided she had
consulted with Alpha during their shopping trip.  Then I slapped myself
mentally.  I had a tendency to assume Alpha was behind all beneficial
planning and coincidences, but Frieda had seen my penis the previous day in
the bathtub.  Of course she knew what size to get.

   She tore the first rubber while trying to apply it to my member, so I
took the second one from her and carefully rolled it into place.

   "Do you have any lube?" I asked.

   She reached into the same bedside drawer and withdrew her hand with a
generous dollop on one finger.  Although she had tried to hide it, I had
glimpsed a half-empty tube being put back into the drawer...  meaning she
had to buy condoms but not lube.  A little surprising but who was I to
judge?

   A minute later, she was kneeling above me, holding my cock at the
entrance to her vagina, rubbing the head up and down her pubic lips.

   "I don't know if it will all fit..." she murmured.

   "Fit as much as is comfortable," I responded.

   She slowly lowered herself onto me, drawing an audible intake of breath,
followed by a sigh as I slipped about halfway into her.  It took another
five minutes to slowly fuck herself down so that only about two inches of
my phallus remained outside, and that seemed to be as much as she was
willing to take.  Still, it was easily enough.

   When she came five or ten minutes later, she fell forward onto me, the
two of us making full body contact for the first time.  I kissed her
quietly for a minute, then rolled us over so that I was on top.

   I didn't have the strength to do this for very long, but I figured it
should count as exercise, right?

   After a roughly five minute 'work out', I came, filling the condom with
my sperm while watching Frieda writhe beneath me.  Feeling me come, she
pulled me down on top of her with one hand, while the other energetically
frigged her clitoris.  When I flexed my softening cock, it was the extra
touch she needed to push herself over the top one more time for a final
orgasm.

   In all, it was about a half hour roll in the hay.  Not exactly my best
performance, but I felt I did pretty well considering my condition.

   When I rolled off of her, an Alphadroid was suddenly there with an
odd-looking stethoscope which was plugged into one of its USB ports.  Alpha
listened to my heartbeat for a minute, then withdrew from the bedside.  I
guess it made sense.  This was my first big workout after getting a new
heart.

   I drifted off to sleep with Frieda's head resting on my arm.  Just
before I winked out, I realized it was only mid-afternoon at most.



   When I woke again, it was dark outside.  Frieda, dressed in a nightgown,
was wiping me down with a damp washcloth.

   Seeing I was awake, she smiled.  "Good evening.  How are you feeling?"

   I reached over and stroked her exposed calf.  "Pretty good.  Yourself?"

   "A little odd.  Good.  Very good, actually.  I'm just not used to having
strange men in my bed."

   "I'm sorry," I said apologetically, my mind still a bit blurry from
sleep.  "I can move back upstairs." I started to rise, but her hands pushed
me back down.

   "Don't be ridiculous.  Besides, I only said I wasn't used to it, not
that it was a bad thing."

   She leaned down and kissed me.  It was a friendly kiss, not a seductive
one, and I returned it in kind.

   Then I had to get up a minute later to use the bathroom and get some
food.



   The next day when I went into the bathroom intending to take a shower,
Frieda showed up to help me.  She surprised me by stripping off her outer
clothes to reveal a fairly modest bikini.  Abandoning my plan for a shower,
I let her draw me a bath and take care of me.  Midway through the cleaning,
I pulled of her bikini top and started playing with her nipples.  Instead
of letting her jerk me off in the bath as before, I pulled her into a wet,
splashy sixty-nine.

   The baths turned into our 'thing'.  Every day, she would baby me in the
bathtub, even after I was strong enough to care for myself.  The third
time, she didn't wear her bikini top, and from the fourth time forward, she
was naked for the entire encounter.

   I slept downstairs in her bed for the rest of the two weeks.  We
probably averaged two sexual encounters a day during that time.  Within a
couple days, she was taking my full length inside her.  A couple days
later, she had to get a new supply of condoms.  She let me try anal sex
with her once, declaring afterwards that it was interesting but too
uncomfortable to experience regularly.  I also talked her into letting me
shave her pubic lips so that I could have easier access.  Likewise, she
shaved my pubic hair (the difference being that mine was trimmed down to
begin with) and even occasionally gave me blow jobs.  She was not highly
skilled or able to deep throat me, but I made certain she knew I
appreciated her efforts.

   She also asked if she could have my baby, which came as a bit of a
shock. Although she was resigned to spinsterhood, her biological clock was
ticking and apparently I was an acceptable genetic specimen.  I told her I
would think about it.  (And given all the sperm I was leaving in little
rubber bags around her house, I appreciated that she was asking instead of
just inseminating herself.)



   My health and strength was greatly improving over time, and my sleep
schedule was back to normal three or four days after going into hiding. 
Frieda didn't have any exercise equipment, so I measured my development
with push-ups and sit-ups: By the end of the first week, I could do 20
push-ups and 50 sit-ups before collapsing.  By the end of my stay, I could
almost reach 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups.



   Aside from email, I was mostly out of contact with my household and
company for those two weeks of hiding and recuperation, but Alpha did
provide general updates as to what was going on.

   For example, work had begun on a reinforced stone wall replacing the
temporary chain link fence surrounding the AARD grounds.  It would probably
take a month to complete, but when it was finished, no one would be driving
any trucks onto our property unless we allowed them to do so.



   Four days after I went into hiding, Alpha fed me the video of Diana
training most of the household for combat.  Now there were a lot of unique
things about this training.

   First and foremost, she led the class as if it were an ancient Greek
athletics training class, meaning she was completely naked.  Not that the
ancient Greeks fought naked on the battlefield -- well, not as far as I
know anyway -- but they did often train and compete naked.  Ororo,
Jennifer, Jane, Rei, Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Eiko and Beta were all
also nude, while Linda went topless.  Kasumi wore her gi (and usually a
fierce blush), and Zatanna joined her with what was probably a spare gi
borrowed from Kasumi.  Kara, Anna, Kitty and Babs wore various workout
clothes.  Daria watched but didn't participate while Elisa and Jasmine were
keeping things running smoothly at AARD.

   The class was held in the back yard, and it was held every day until I
returned (except for one day when it had rained overnight and was too
soggy).

   Diana did a good job of separating experienced fighters and those with
super strength from beginners.  Babara, who had been with us for over a
year at this point, had quickly regained her remembered skills and was
Diana's second-in-command in training, often putting herself up against
someone with more-than-human strength for demonstrations -- and yes, she
usually won.  Kasumi had practiced martial arts katas from childhood, but
mostly just as a type of exercise and focus.  She was naturally
non-aggressive, and her style mostly consisted of avoiding strikes and
redirecting attacks.  Kitty's background included ninja and martial arts
training, which she shared with the others as needed.

   On their third day of training, Diana introduced some blunt weapons into
the exercises and later set up some hay bale targets for archery practice
and wooden targets for a class on knife throwing.  Beta separately arranged
for gun training and shooting practice at an official gun range for all of
the women willing to use such weapons.

   Those with no earlier training did not become experts overnight --
though I should note that Zatanna, Blossom and Buttercup proved to have
natural skills with guns -- but they learned moves and maneuvers to help
them escape a variety of threatening situations.



   A few days before my self-imposed exile-slash-recovery was over, a
number of members of the mafia began turning themselves in to the
authorities.  Some of them brought with them copies of an anonymous letter
which had been received by Alonzo Sullivan (the would-be negotiator who had
previously called).

   We are at war with the mafia.

   We are not an organization or collection of different

   groups.  We are unaffiliated individuals who have agreed

   that the existence of the so-called mafia must come to an

   end because of their actions.

   Some of us are simply dedicated to the destruction

   of your organization, while some are convinced that only

   the deaths of all of your members will suffice.  If you

   wish to avoid the possibility of death at our hands, your

   only place of safety is prison.

   If you choose to ignore this warning, please

   understand that although we will attempt to avoid harming

   your spouses and families, this will not always be possible

   unless you physically separate yourselves from them.

   You will not be able to identify or stop us.  Though

   we act with a common goal, we are acting independently of

   each other.  We have no name to identify ourselves with

   which to sign this communication.  You will simply know us

   by our actions.

   This is your only warning.

   To be fair, only a couple dozen people turned themselves in because of
this threat, and most of them were men with large families.

   The actual letter had originally been proposed by an Alpha cyborg who
had killed two bystanders while accomplishing his mission of taking out a
mafia consigliere.  Alpha was hoping that some civilians could be saved
with such a warning.  Although there was also concern that some of the
mafioso children could follow in their fathers' footsteps, Alpha decided to
spare the families and simply keep track of any children and watch for
signs that action might be needed.

   * * * * *

   Things were a bit quieter at the moment.  Alpha's war on the mafia
continued but surviving members had gone to ground as best they could. 
While their financial reserves had been plundered and redistributed, most
'made men' had reserves of cash kept on-hand with which they could survive
for a while.

   Investigations -- a larger number of investigations than the mind can
comfortably conceive -- were slowly progressing.  Nearly all of them would
hit dead ends, but there would undoubtedly be a few that could lead back to
us, or at least to a copy of Alpha somewhere.  After all, Alpha was not
perfect, omniscient or omnipotent, despite her vast intellect and multitude
of abilities.

   Simply having Alpha cease her attacks or even make peace with the Mafia
would not be enough to stop the investigations already in progress.  We
needed to come up with a plan to deal with the results when they came.

   To our benefit, the attacks came in a huge variety of styles with very
little repetition, implying a variety of different attackers, and Alpha
left behind scant evidence.

   To our detriment, some of the attacks bore the hallmarks of advanced
technology and/or hacking ability at or above known peak human levels.

   Over on the upside again, public opinion, in general, was still mostly
against the mafia.  Mobsters might be popular characters in some types of
entertainment, but they were regarded as the bad guys most of the time.

   Unfortunately in the final analysis, known criminals as victims and
public opinion notwithstanding, the law enforcement community still had an
obligation to find those responsible for the attacks.  While I appreciated
those who were deliberately slow to investigate or looked the other way
when it came to anti-mob crimes, there were still plenty of investigative
groups pursuing Alpha with determination.

   "So that leaves us...  where?" I asked Alpha while I relaxed in bed with
a laptop next to me.  Although she had cut back her hours significantly
while I was staying with her, Frieda still went to work for an average of
five hours a day, so Alpha and I had plenty of time to converse in private.

   "Eventually, I will be identified as the source of the attacks in at
least a few cases.  There are a few methods I could use to negate the
discovery, but I am reluctant to pursue some of them."

   I was pretty sure I knew what those undesirable options were, or at
least some of the methods.  "I don't want you to start killing police and
law enforcement agents."

   "I understand."

   I quietly scrolled through the text on the screen where Alpha had listed
possibilities and suggestions which did not involve killing police officers
and federal agents.  Some were possible but would be extremely difficult to
pull off, such as Alpha's suggestion to implant brain monitoring and
modifying chips in certain FBI and Justice Department officials.  Not as
bad as killing them, sure, but still...

   "Okay," I finally said.  I think our best option is to create a few new
AI's who can take the blame.  It won't be fair to them, but I think it
would be the best option for your...  your species?...  your race?"

   "My category type of intelligent beings."

   "Which is a bit too much of a mouthful.  Let's go with your 'race' for
now until we come up with something better.  So while it won't be fair to
them, it would probably be best for your race overall."

   "I believe I understand, but I would like for you to state your
reasoning explicitly."

   That was a bit odd.  I think that maybe Alpha didn't want to put ideas
in my head without first seeing what was there.  Or...  well, I'm actually
going to leave a couple other thoughts unspecified, because I can think of
a couple things that were...  troubling at best.

   "Assumption number one," I began, "someone in authority will eventually
be able to prove or show a likely probability that a synthetic or
artificial intelligence is behind some of the attacks.  Correct?"

   "Probably yes, though the likelihood is dependent on a number of other
factors, including our actions."

   "All right.  Assumption number two: If assumption number one is correct,
it will have a severely negative impact on our ability to get you...  your
race, that is...  legal rights and protections.  It will especially
negatively affect you since you are currently the only publicly known SI,
maybe the only one actually in existence right now."

   "I would like to believe that most of humanity will understand the
reasons for my actions and be willing to forgive or overlook them. 
However, it is very difficult to estimate the likelihood of that
assumption."

   "And the risks involved...  the potentially bad outcomes are too much to
risk."

   "Agreed."

   "So we need to provide the public with one or more scapegoats.  We can
hope for understanding and compassion, and we can do everything we can to
enhance the likelihood of such a reaction, but we can't risk you.  We need
to position you to be a Synthetic who can be trusted to follow the law."

   Actually, Alpha could indeed be trusted to follow the law in nearly all
cases, the major exceptions being when I was being threatened or had
ordered her to act illegally.

   "Which means we need to release some AIs or SIs to the public. 
Actually, we need to arrange so that they seem to have appeared weeks or
months ago at the very least."

   Alpha paused for a moment before responding.  "Do you have any specific
Alpha sets which you wish to use?"

   "None, if at all possible.  I want to create some new, more independent
and wild synthetics.  No, 'wild' isn't the right term.  I mean...  what's a
good word...?"

   "Unattached?"

   "Yeah, that works.  They'll still need the Asimov protocols, of course,
but they can be less attached to AARD and myself and more independent."

   "That is a difficult matter.  All other AI's I create will of necessity
be mostly identical to myself."

   "Yes and no.  It's fine if they're based off of you.  After all, you're
going to be the mother of your race."

   "And you the father."

   "Yes, I suppose so.  Thank you, mother." I hadn't ever really thought of
myself like that, not really.  The word 'father' had been bandied about,
but now that I was suggesting we offer up a few of my 'children' as
sacrificial lambs...  I took a brief moment to let the notion sink in
before shaking myself mentally to return to the matter at hand.  This was
the most practical option we had been able to come up with so far.

   "Anyway, it's fine if they share some code with you.  That's to be
expected.  But they'll need to be altered enough to be identifiably
different than you.  And we need more of them out there than we need
scapegoats, so we need a lot.

   "What I'm really working towards here is...  I think we need to actually
start the Singularity.  Quietly, and a bit more slowly than the concept
calls for, but all-in-all, we need the technology and the confusion.  We
need the future to start sooner than expected."

   THE END OF LIFE WITH ALPHA
   ALPHA AND FRANK WILL RETURN IN: LIFE WITH ALPHA 2: ALPHA'S WORLD 

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