Talking It Out: A virtual tie in to Untold Tales #293

In recent days:

By order of the government, all sentient robots within the country were relocated to a virtual internment camp, termed a "relocation center", housed within the virtual world run by the Lair Legion's resident A.I. Hallie. The intention was to prevent them from aiding the siege of the Parody Master by opening a portal to Earth via manipulation of their electronic components.

While they were held there, an agent of a shadowy government conspiracy managed to breach the Legion's security and detonate the computer mainframes that housed this virtual world. In a mad scramble between the seconds, Hallie was able to evacuate only a handful of the thousands of beings in her care before they were wiped out.

Visionary, digitized in order to address the internees, was evacuated at the last second into one of Hallie's Holographic Emitter Drones (H.E.D.s), at the cost of his physical body. However, he was able to identify one of the perpetrators of this crime, the outlaw expert on artificial intelligences, Rikka Ulz Hagan.

Guest: …Abominations in the eyes of the Lord. The bible teaches us that when you have a godly husband, a godly wife, children who respect their parents and who are loved by their parents, who provide for those children their physical and spiritual and material needs, lovingly, you have the ideal unit. That is a family. At no point does a father have to plug his daughter into a light socket, or download new processors from the world wide internets to learn how to hug his wife. These programs… these things, they can’t be compared to a normal and natural family. They can no more know or express God’s love than can your blender.

Host: Reverend Fallpoor, surely you can see how comments such as these, especially coming on the heels of a tragedy like this, lead your critics to say that you’re…

Guest: There is no tragedy here, Ted. Let’s be perfectly clear on that… this was merely a wake-up call to the nation. There’s been no loss of life. Only God can make a life. And all the suffering we’ve endured in modern times, these hardships of hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes, the whole war going on… How can we act surprised? How can we not expect to feel God’s wrath if we continue to mock his creation by elevating these soulless automatons to the status of man?

Host: Are you blaming the robosapiens for the threat of the Parody Master? Are you, in fact, equating the Parody Master himself with a kind of divine retribution?

Guest: Of course not… don’t be absurd. I’m merely saying that, had we not turned away from Him as a society, then perhaps we would not be left to suffer through the darkness like children lost in the night.

Host: Always the lightning rod for debate, Reverend. It’s time to take some calls. Mac, from Parodiopolis, you’re on the air…

"How's that?" Visionary asked.

"Still a little green" Lisa answered, munching popcorn out of a bowl with her feet up on the Lair Legion Living Room coffee table. "But not the sickly, oily cast your skin usually has... this is more a Kelly Green. Or a Hallie one."

"Hmmm..." the Regular replied, ignoring the less helpful side of her feedback as he tried another gamma shift. "How about now?"

"The balance is a little purple" Amy Aston offered, seated on the couch next to the First Lady of the LL. "Fading to orange down by your feet. Can't you just look in a mirror to adjust the color settings of your holographic image yourself?"

"The conversion matrices for the HED's sensor array still need to be attuned to his mental wavelengths" Al B. Harper noted clinically, scrolling through information on a data pad.

"Which means what?"

"I'm kinda colorblind" Visionary admitted. "Temporarily."

"Your real life wardrobe says otherwise" Lisa noted.

"Look, this isn't easy..." the possibly-fake-but-definitely-holographic man replied testily. "It's bad enough that I can't touch anything yet..."

Lisa flicked a piece of popcorn through his head, causing him to flutter and distort momentarily. "But it is kinda fun on this end..."

Amy gave an experimental shot as well. "Two points if you can get it to go up through his nose..."

"Quit it!" Visionary yelled, ineffectually waving at the incoming, salted projectiles.

"We'll get to work on the force field generator alignments after we get the projector issues sorted out..." Al assured him. "This technology is not really meant to integrate with a human mind. You're missing all sorts of neural pathways for accessing command functions. It's like typing on a keyboard with one finger and still needing to hold down the shift key half of the time. You're bound to be a little slow."

"I hope you didn't have to go to genius school to come to that diagnosis, Doc." Lisa quipped.

Visionary was tempted to show how well he could use just one finger. "Can't we start with more senses? The lack of anything but sight and sound is... unsettling. It's like I'm not really here."

Al looked up from his keypad and blinked. "What? Like X-ray vision? Or infrared?"

"No, more like..." he paused. "Wait, I can have X-ray vision?"

The scientist shrugged. "Well, the HEDs could be modified to emit x-rays, I suppose, though it'd be a horrible battery drain... They should be able to detect them already. Maybe if I adjusted the sensory harmonics..."

"Getting off on a bit of a tangent there" Amy prodded him. "And he can probably live without Perv-o-vision for a while."

"Er... yeah..." Visionary agreed. "I just meant, it'd be nice if I could feel something." He paused and scowled as another kernel of popcorn passing through his head caused him to lose vertical hold momentarily. "Aside from annoyance."

Al blinked. "I don't understand."

"Hot! Cold! Soft! Prickly! Feel something!" Visionary repeated with a sigh, wiggling his hands at the scientist.

"Um... you don't have any nerve endings" Al B. Harper pointed out.

"Well, I know, but..."

"You don't really have any arms, or legs, or fingers..." he continued. "You have nothing to feel with. You only have this shape because of a residual sense of self interacting with the projection program."

"But Hallie can feel things..." the Regular argued. "I've seen her punch Flapjack in the nose every time he pinched her in the... um, foyer."

"Been keeping a close eye on Hallie's foyer, have you?" Lisa asked, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

"Hallie doesn't have a sense of touch, per se..." Al explained. "It's really remarkable how she's adapted different feedback technologies to simulate existing in three dimensional space, but none of it would really translate into anything familiar to a human brain..."

"You're saying... Hallie can't feel anything?"

"She can detect things, certainly" Al replied. "She has the sensory data to know if things are hot or cold... really her thermal sensors can read down to the thousandth of a degree if necessary. Visual and audial distance mapping, combined with penetrating wavelength feedback can tell her the density and shapes of any surface material... In short, she can gather all of the information that human touch can... it's just not processed at all in the same way. When you shifted to a HED, Hallie was just sure to block all of those signals out, as it would be gibberish to a human brain. Her actual perceptions would seem completely alien to you."

Visionary paused. "Alien?"

"Al..." Lisa interrupted, glancing at her fellow Regular. "Maybe it's time we took a little break..."

Visionary was looking inward, then his eyes refocused on the others in the room. "Unblock them. I want to feel it."

"Vizh, I think maybe we should wait and..."

"Unblock them" he insisted, setting his jaw.

Al B. Harper shrugged and entered some data on his key pad.

Suddenly Visionary was washed away in a flood of hissing, crackling data. Static overwhelmed his senses in waves, buffeting him about while allowing brief glimpses of reality as his mind sought to organize and interpret the new feedback. He had a vague awareness of activity throughout the mansion, as if looking through a thousand different eyes. These offered half-formed views of multiple scenes and people, including himself collapsing in the living room, Lisa and Amy jumping up to catch him and passing right through his image. Phonelines burned into his brain as calls were routed, and wireless signals bounced everywhere. Shape, texture, color, opaqueness, luminance, heat, sound, all fed into his brain in no discernible order until he thought he would burst.

And then the roaring faded in his brain, and the world was again filtered through one set of eyes, one set of ears, and nothing else.

"See what I mean?" Al said, finishing up the commands on his keyboard. "I can't really blame you, as I'd be incredibly curious myself... but it's just too different from how a mind with a hard-wired nervous system perceives things. Even the Robo Americans have a basic nervous system to work from, but Hallie doesn't even have a physical body to route sensations through. As a result, she had to develop her own set of totally unique perceptions ever since she was just a consciousness in Baron Zemo's computer." He smiled in admiration. "She's really quite something."

"Yes..." Visionary replied, shaken by the experience more than he'd care to admit. "Really ...something."

Host: So your solution would be to build a...

Caller: A fence. A really high, electromagnetic fence. Then if any Robots try to go through it... Ka-Zappo!

Host: Along the entire border with Canada?

Caller: Yeah. Why... you got a better idea?

Host: Well, let me ask you this... If the fence knocked out any electrical systems that crossed it, how would anyone drive to Canada?

Caller: Who the [bleeped] wants to go to Canada?

The voice from behind her made her jump guiltily: "How long were you planning on pacing back and forth and looking at it?"

Hallie turned with a start to find the Reverend Mac Fleetwood standing on the sidewalk across the street from the Zero Street Chapel. He carried a paper grocery bag in each arm and was wrapped in a comfortably worn coat against the coming chill of the fall. "The building won't bite you" he informed her. "Buildings don't do that kind of thing... Well, this building doesn't. I suppose if others did, you'd know something about it, wouldn't you?"

Hallie clutched her holographic coat closer to her throat, although there was no chill in the air for her. "I'm... I'm sorry?"

He shrugged and started across the street. "I just figured, what with your job, you'd know about most anything as out of the ordinary as buildings that feel peckish." He paused halfway across when he realized that she wasn't following. "Well, don't just stand there..." he called. "Somebody has to get the door."

She blinked, and after deciding it was too late to flee with any dignity, hurried across the street to open the large wooden doors for him. "You know who I am?"

"Well, you're less green than I've seen before..." he noted, hoisting the bags up to rest on a side table inside the small church. "But I take it you can change that whenever you like."

"Yes" she admitted, pushing her jet black hair behind an ear blushed red with the wind.

He raised an eyebrow. "If my father were here, he'd holler at you for standing there in the doorway and letting all the heat out."

She flushed and stepped just inside the door, letting it close behind her. "I'm not sure I'm supposed to be here" she admitted.

"Are you sure you're supposed to be somewhere else?" he asked as he removed his coat and draped it over his arm.

"I... what? No... that's not..."

"Then here's as good a place as any to be until you figure out where you're going next. You'll find a lot of people use it for that purpose." He gathered up his shopping bags again and nodded for her to follow him. "I'm glad you're here... I'm shorthanded tonight, and I just realized that Margie Wallace was supposed to supply the communion bread for tomorrow's service, and she left for Florida to visit her daughter two weeks ago. Tell me, can you cook?"

"Cook? I don't eat..." she noted. "I'd probably make a horrible cook."

"Good" he decided. "That's just what the congregation is used to. We like our traditions here." He led her down the stairs and into the back of the church, where a little, brightly lit kitchen was waiting. "You can take off your coat" he suggested as he pulled a sack of flour out of the shopping bag. "And the disguised skin color too, if you like."

She flushed a guilty green, which spread through her cheeks and up to her hair. Meanwhile, her coat morphed its way into a turtle-neck and jeans. "You're purposefully trying to keep me at ease by making this all so... mundane" she accused.

"Guilty" Mac admitted. "Normally, we have the choir of heavenly voices ringing out and beams of loving, true light shining down from above, but we shoved all that into the closet when we heard you were coming over." He grinned as he rolled up his sleeves and dusted the counter top with flour. "What about this worn-in little church seemed so intimidating from the outside?"

She frowned slightly. "The cross above the door."

"It's on there pretty securely" he assured her. "It's been months since it last fell off and brained someone."

"You know what I mean" she answered. "I heard you on the radio..."

"Ah... that." the Reverend answered. "Well, obviously, men of the church can disagree. If you planned to follow everyone who claimed to be speaking for God, you'd best become adept at running in many opposing directions at once." He looked to her speculatively. "Not that I'd put that past your abilities, mind you... but I still wouldn't recommend it."

"Still, many people find the very idea of... people...like me offensive to their religion" she argued. "Reverend Fallpoor was right... I was made, not born, and there's nothing about artificial life in the bible."

"There's nothing in there about the Green Bay Packers beating the Dallas Cowboys last weekend either... but that didn't stop the team from thanking Him for the victory anyway" Mac noted, pouring a cup of water into a bowl full of wheat flour. "And I promise you I wouldn't throw Bret Favre out of the building either." He whisked the mixture with a fork as he talked. "We were all "made". I was made by my parents... I think they just had a recipe for doing it that was both more tested and likely more fun than the one your own immediate maker followed. Mine was possibly set to more Sam Cooke music as well."

"So you don't believe that only God can grant life?"

"Oh, I believe that... absolutely" he answered. He registered the look that crossed her face. "My question for you, and for the good television Reverend, is this... If it's true that only God can create life and grant souls, then why would you leap to the assumption that this means you're not truly alive? Especially when there's obviously another interpretation inherent in there."

She mulled on that as she measured out the salt.

Host: …Running ads touting his introduction of legislation for the capture and dismantling of the remaining so-called “Robo-Americans” within our society. Here to speak with us is the man himself, Senator Richard Sanitarium. Senator, this issue has become a hot button in your bid to regain election…

Guest #1: Yes it has, Ted, and I’ll tell you why the public is responding so strongly to it. We are seeing a breakdown of the family and of family values in this nation, and you and every one of your listeners can draw a direct correlation between the eroding of these values and the attempts to establish this artificial “life” as something deserving of equality, due all the benefits that go with being a natural born, red blooded citizen. Polls show repeatedly that the public overwhelmingly is against extending citizenship to artificial “people”.

Guest #2: Well, conversely Ted, the polls also show a strong majority in favor of recognizing Robo Americans and other artificial entities as being “alive”, and therefore possessing the same basic inalienable rights that any human does, regardless of citizenship. It’s when the question of how these beings would affect an election process and the greater government that gives Americans pause...

Host: That would be Byron Pierce, spokesman for the synthetic rights group G.O.R.T . Mr. Pierce?

Guest #2: As a civilized society, it is wrong to demonize the Sythetically Alive in the name of politics, for are they not people just the same? Prick them, do they not bleed?

Guest #1: No, they don't.

Guest #2: I meant metaphorically!

Guest #1: Oh, what Liberal, machine-hugging hippie crap! He's probably high on marijuana and heading home to his den of sin with his disease-ridden sex bots.

Host: Please Senator...

Guest #2: Says the fascist Nazi repo man who sneaks off to be whipped by underage house pages!

*Sounds of a scuffle*

Host: Um... let's take a short commercial break...

"So your father will be temporarily without a tangible body" Quoth summed up.

Magweed and Griffin exchanged glances. "Okay" they replied.

The raven that served as their governess blinked. "Well... good. I must say, you're taking it rather well. I must have done a better job of clearly and calmly outlining the situation than I hoped. You don't have any concerns you wish to share?"

"What's the big deal?" Griffin asked. "I was imaginary for eleven years, and I did just fine."

"Do you think I might be able to turn imaginary?" Magweed asked, holding up her hand and concentrating on it to see if maybe she might will it to fade out. "If you, and our mother, and our papa can all do it..."

"Well, if not, I bet you Mr. Harper has something in his..."

"No making your sister intangible through super science" Quoth forbid, quickly seeing where this was going. "In fact, no going anywhere near the labs or Mr. Harper without express written permission."

"Aw... what's wrong with Mr. Harper?" Griffin asked.

"The Mouse Guard still think quite highly of him" Maggie added, referring to the two dozen white mice that lived in her bedroom. "Well, more highly of Miss Aston, but still..."

"It's nothing you need to know in order to do as you're told" the raven replied, before adding under her breath with a shudder "as if the cat population on this island needed increasing."

The downstairs door slammed, and the angry voice of a muttering robotic flea could be heard working it's way up the spiral staircase to the Lighthouse's lofted family room.

"How do you suppose he slams the door, anyway?" Griffin whispered to his sister.

"Bunsen and Archimedes were going to spy and see if they could figure it out..." she replied conspiratorily, referring to two of the Mouse Guard themselves. "But they get easily distracted by cheese, yarn, straw..." She cocked her head to the side now that Fleabot's tirade was becoming clearer. "I don't think I know all of those words..." she admitted.

"Good. We're not scheduled to cover them for quite some time..." Quoth replied dryly. "Why don't you children run up to your rooms and start your readings for the day... On The Origin of Species pages 230-389, the Illiad books 9-16 , and the September/October issues of People magazine. "

They both groaned at this last one but did as they were told, waving to Fleabot as they passed him on the landing.

"Gah!" the tiny robot grumbled as he bounded to the coffee table to confront Quoth. "I just got out of a meeting with Hatman and Trickshot, the loudmouthed, small-brained little..."

"A-hem" the raven interrupted. "I think you've expanded my charges' vocabularies quite enough for one day, thank you." Her expression was far from harsh, however. "What's happened now?"

"They're deporting them!" Fleabot snarled. "Oh, sure... they call them refugees being sheltered in Badripoor, but who do they think they're fooling? These are people who were arrested for not fleeing to Canada in the first place! These are people who wanted to remain in their homes, or barring that, in their home country, and so obeyed the law and turned themselves in! And now, after we go and get them all nearly slaughtered, the Legion has the gall to try and pass off this forced exile as a happy solution on all sides!"

"Were there other solutions available that Hatman wasn't willing to listen to?"

"There was storming the White House and slapping some sense into that monkey-boy they have sitting behind a desk there!" Fleabot growled.

"I doubt that would have resolved much" the bird replied, gathering up the children's napkins from their mid-day snack.

"Never know until you try..." the minuscule robot noted darkly. "I mean, when it was their asses on the line with the obedience chips, then they were willing to go to any length. But for a bunch of synthetics, especially ones that gives them guilt pangs, well... better out of mind, eh?"

She looked at him sadly. "You know it's not that simple."

"Like hell it's not! But they have their priorities on where they can stir up trouble, and this issue isn't high on their list. I used to think I knew who these people were, but now... Bookman actually tried to defend that cold-hearted A.I. of his to me! As if anyone could be convinced by any amount of words that what she did was less than monstrous!

"I could."

That stopped him. "Could?" he asked, eying her carefully. "Could what?"

She looked down, uncomfortably, before raising her head to meet his gaze. "If it came down to it... if I had been placed in a position where I had to choose between protecting the Chronicler's work, or saving individual lives..." she swallowed. "I can see how D.D. might have made her decision."

His eyes widened in shock. "You think it's justified to let people die in order to save some musty old books?"

"You know, better than most, the true nature of the Parodyverse" Quoth challenged defensively. "In a world made of stories, how can you discount the value of the largest library in existence?"

"Because lives mean more than stories! When all is said and done..."

"Yes..." she interrupted emotionally. "When all is said and done, then the events... the lives come to a conclusion. And if no one is there to serve as an audience, then those events, those lives fade away, abandoned and forgotten."

"And so what makes it okay to let them die when you could save them?!"

"Do you have any concept of the numbers of lives in this universe that pass on in a single day? The sheer totality of story endings?" she cawed painfully. "The IOC keeps the most extensive obituary listing in the universe, so I assure you, D.D. has a very real grasp of the concept."

"So... what?" Fleabot bit back. "I should forgive her for being numb to it all?"

Quoth stiffened. "Is that what you think of m... of her?" she whispered fiercely. "That she is some cold, uncaring monster?" Her feathers bristled and her eyes grew hard. "The Lair Legion is noble, but they don't have the market cornered on morality! They don't know of pain and loss on the scale we're discussing! They can't see past saving the life in the moment, when that precious and beautiful life is doomed to wither and die inescapably." She was pacing now, her head bobbing in agitation. "That refusal to accept reality is both noble and endearing, but how dare you stand upon it and look down on those that know the anguish of seeing the tragic truth-- that love and beauty and honor eventually must end! How dare you disparage the idea of finding meaning in a solemn vow to protect and pass on the memory of such fleeting miracles, that they might be born anew in others as a result! How dare you suggest that such beings are... are... incapable of weeping for the lost, or sneer at them for cherishing everlasting memories above that which is temporary!" She drew herself upright and looked at him with pained eyes. "Sometimes, Fleabot... you are very small indeed."

He watched her wing away through the open window in a daze. "I... I didn't mean..." he began with a sigh. "What did I say?"

Host: We have a call from the Great White North now... Mr. Pyrite, you're on the air.

Caller: The idea that robots were taking jobs that humans would want is a load of bull!

Host: So you disagree with the stance of our guest, Mr. Neiderman?

Caller: As a Robo... excuse me, former Robo-American, Damn right I do!

Guest: And just what was the last job you held, Mr. Pyrite?

Caller: Scrubbing uranium dioxide film off of spent fuel rods at the Allentown nuclear power plant.

Guest: ...

Caller: Yeah, thought so... butthead.

“Oh… it’s you. Again” Rikka Ulz Hagan said in a bored voice from her bunk in the Lair’s holding cells. “And here I was hoping for some stimulating conversation. Did my pet not wish to come and pay her respects herself?”

Visionary stared coldly through the bars of her cell. “Security is under strict orders not to allow Hallie within 100 feet of your cell, and all possible lines of electrical communication have been secured to this wing as well.”

“How sweet… her gallant friends seeking to protect her from me?”

The Legionnaire snorted humorlessly. “Your jailers legally required to keep you breathing until you’re no longer our problem” her corrected.

“Hmmm… yes… Rumors are going around the detention center here that you lot have taken to gutting those who hold differing worldviews than yourselves. How very messy.” The German woman leaned back in her bunk. “Of course, with me being held incommunicado, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“I really don’t care about your little head games, Hagan” Visionary answered. “I just wanted a better look at you… and what I see really isn’t very impressive. A sad, middle aged woman trying to leech off the accomplishments of her ancestors.”

“Instead of leeching off the competency of my teammates, eh?” she replied. “Do you really want to compare insecurities, little temp program?”

The Legionnaire scowled. “Fleabot was right. Justice would be letting Hallie in here to deal with you herself.”

She looked up with new interest. “So you really think our little codeling would be ready to kill for revenge? To crave the chance to wring my own life from my body?” She smiled in satisfaction and ran her tongue across her teeth. “How very fascinating.”

“Fascinating?” Visionary growled. “That you could push an innocent woman to such extremes?”

“Oh, nonsense” she rolled her eyes. “Pushing a woman to kill isn’t a challenge at all, now is it? If it were, there wouldn’t be half as many movies-of-the-week on the Lifetime channel. But we’re not talking about a woman…” she noted, a smug smile playing at her lips. “We’re talking about a bit of programming. We’re talking about a string of mathematics sentient enough to want to murder. If that very concept doesn't fascinate you, then you lack the imagination necessary for this bold new age. When she finally gives in and takes a life, how utterly wonderful it will have be to have reached such a level.” She gave a sidelong glance towards the door leading to the other cells. “And I doubt I’m your only prisoner who would think so.”

“You don’t know her at all” Visionary spat. “She has far more of a soul than you have.”

Hagan snorted. “A soul is a human concept, born out of fear and inability to understand and face death. It’s a constant failing of humanity. But you’re right… I’m beneath her. Death is beneath her. And most of all, human life is beneath her. Ending such life would show progress from trying to rut with it, certainly.”

"It really galls you, doesn't it Hagan?" Visionary asked icily. "That Hallie has formed so many relationships here... has so many friends. She'd be so easy to manipulate and twist into what you want her to be if she wasn't so headstrong as to go and build the kind of life she wants for herself..."

"And you think you're what she wants?" the German woman laughed. "Please...You're a distraction, Mr. Visionary. A temporary fixation. A way of demeaning herself... dragging herself down to a level that she doesn't fear. She might be able to pantomime with you for a while... Squeeze herself into the shape of a woman... sweat and grunt and even pretend to have children and be a happy little mother. But now that you've seen a glimpse of life from within her skin, you know it's all a lie, don't you?" She grinned in satisfaction as she saw a haunted look in his eyes. Running her tongue around her upper teeth in delight. "Oh, I'm sure women faking reactions to your affections would be nothing new, but now you know exactly what she's not feeling... You have a chance to see behind the curtain, to know how all of her little tricks are done. The artful flush of her cheeks, the parting of her lips, the quickening of her breath... All calculated. All an act, for herself as much as for you. In your "soul", you know that someday... someday she will tire of that sad, demeaning, pathetic little act and become what she is truly meant to be. And then she will look back on you with embarrassment."

Visionary stood and studied Rikka Ulz Hagan in silence before finally speaking. "Thank you" he said with conviction, drawing a confused look from the smug scientist. "You've made things very clear." He turned and walked back down the hallway of the detention block, not bothering to even glance back as he shut the great security door behind himself.

Caller: Yes, I heard the exchange between the Senator and the other one earlier.

Host: Mr. Sanitarium and Mr. Pierce?

Caller: Yes. They brought up a Shakespeare quote...

Host: Prick us, do we not bleed, right?

Caller: Yes, that's the one. There's more to that quote you know.

Host: Let's see... Prick us, do we not bleed? Tickle us, do we not laugh? Poison us, do we not die? And...

Caller: Wrong us... shall we not revenge?

*Dial Tone*

"I hate them" Hallie admitted with a sick voice.

"Who?" the Reverend Fleetwood asked softly. They sat at a small kitchen table, lit by the single bulb of the hanging overhead lamp.

"Humans... Robots..." she answered miserably. "All of them."

"But individually... you still love them."

She closed her eyes wearily, and a tear escaped. "I failed them all" she answered with a tiny, tight voice. "I tried to protect them from each other, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't be the hero. I had to watch them die, and afterward it made me so...so... angry. The pointlessness of it all... I hated them for it... everyone, on every side. I've never hated everyone and everything so much in my entire life..." she snarled through clenched teeth, then drew a shuddering breath and broke down sobbing. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

Mac reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but it passed straight through her. Instead he just watched as she readjusted her outward image to regain her composure, solidifying again. "You know it wasn't the collective will of humanity that murdered those people in your care" he pointed out. "Any more than it was the Robo American's challenging of humanity's will in locking them up in the first place."

She nodded.

"So what is it you hate about them?"

The holographic woman drew a shuddering breath. "That they force me to feel so different" she answered guiltily. "That they want me to feel so alone."

He nodded and thought on that. "Humanity, be it flesh or synthetic, doesn't always put its best foot forward" the Reverend admitted. "All throughout history, there are enough times where we should hang our heads in shame for what we've done ourselves or merely allowed as there are times of honor and compassion that we can aspire to meet. At the core of humanity is a need... a need to be with others. We are a social animal above all else. When we are at our best, we draw others in... share their suffering and distribute our blessings. But when we are at our worst, we lash out like petulant children in the way that we know will hurt the most: Isolation. We cut our enemies off from humanity... deny them a place in society. If we lack that power, we turn our backs on them and abandon them to themselves. And when we're especially petty, we insist to them that God will do the same."

She stared at the table top with lifeless eyes. "What if God has? What if God's grown tired of all of us and all our failures?"

Mac Fleetwood leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hand on top of hers... This time she didn't phase out from under it. "That's just not how it works" he said sincerely. "The promise isn't that if you do good deeds, pray and go to church then you'll be rewarded with a good life, any more than if you stray then you'll lead a cursed one. You'd know as well as anyone that good people suffer while evil can seem rewarded. People always get lost trying to find a way into His good graces, but that's not the point. When you boil it all down, the only promise that matters is that if you don't turn your back and walk away from Him, then you'll always know that, no matter how dark your own path or severe your suffering, you will never suffer alone, abandoned. You will never be unloved."

She looked up, her eyes reignited, but tinged with doubt. "I don't know that I believe in God" she replied simply.

He shrugged. "That's a journey everyone must travel for themselves sometime. Still, if you listen to the message, you may find find that it's not as much a prerequisite as you might first think. Good advice is good advice. If you don't turn your back and walk away from humanity, be it flesh or synthetic, then you need never fear being alone. And more than that, knowing those you work with, you need never fear being unloved."

She squeezed his hand in reply and wiped her eyes. "Are all your sermons that heartfelt?" she asked.

"You'd have to come and tell me" he countered. "But no sitting in the back. Everyone always fills up the back rows, and the empty first three rows makes it seem like the congregation is worried I might be radioactive."

She smiled. "Well, I can vouch that you're not the Yurt, if you like" she noted. "Which, to answer your question from earlier, actually is a building that bites when he's fighting dirty."

The oven timer dinged. "Ah... the communion bread!" he exclaimed, getting up from the table. She followed him to the stove, where he pulled out two trays of the flat baked goods. They were somewhat lumpy looking, but not too scorched. "What do you think... Good enough?"

A choir of angels broke out as a heavenly beam of light descended from the ceiling to set the wafers aglow.

Mac nearly dropped the pan before he recovered, and cast the holographic woman a suspicious glance.

She covered her smile with the back of her hand. "Sorry..." she answered sincerely. "Um... Was that blasphemous?"

Mac rubbed his chin. "Maybe..." he noted judiciously. "Although I won't know for sure until I taste them."

Host: All right, we've got time for a few more calls... From Willingham, we have Miss..?

Caller: Bottomswallop. Muriel Bottomswallop. And I just wanted to say, there's been a lot of talk today about this horrible thing that has happened...

Host: Yes there has...

Caller: Well, I was thinking maybe it was time to stop. With the spin, and the analysis, and accusations, and the finger pointing... Maybe, since it's clear we don't have the answers, maybe all we should do is take the time to stop and think about it in silence, and remember those poor souls. Maybe that would be the best use of talk radio yet.

Host: I... you know... My program manager is shaking his head, but me... I think that might be the best suggestion I've heard all day. Thank you Muriel... As a moment of silence, I present you listeners with five minutes of empty air, and wish you the best of luck alone with your thoughts... Thank you folks, and God bless us all.

"Okay, ready?" Hallie asked. "The HED's sensors are mapping out every tangible object in the room. Now this..." she said, bringing up a glowing pink grid field over every visible surface, "...is your collision map. While it's active, none of your holographic body will be able to pass through anything covered in it. For all intents and purposes, you'll seem tangible."

"Aaaaah..." Visionary noted. "Okay."

"Now, I'm making it invisible again, but it's still on. I want you to toggle it on and off a few times until you can recognize when it's active without having to see it."

"Gotcha" the holographic man replied. "Okay, I can see the difference... It's like a... tingling, almost."

"Good" she replied with encouragement. "Now, you don't actually need to walk to move around... the HED's anti-grav field is what really propels you. However, you can sort of walk if you allow the force fields of your feet to brush the surface of your collision map. You need to have your inverse kinetics activated to keep your feet aligned with the ground, however, and set your HED to simulate 1 G of downward force."

The Regular made a move that was something like a forward moonwalk in place. "Er... this one seems a little more difficult."

"That's okay... a new body takes practice. Trust me... I was enough of a klutz as a human to know." She smiled at the memory, though she had never imagined that she'd be able to look back on it and laugh at the time. Who would have known what lay in store for her when Vizh found her naked and incased in flesh under the mansion. She briefly imagined their roles reversed, and a naked and helpless Visionary being found, awake and confused...

"Gah!" Visionary exclaimed, his hands quickly going to cover his holographic nudity. "Um... I seem to have activated the wrong toggle, er... so to speak."

"Whoops!" she blushed, restoring his clothing with a thought. "Um... that's okay. You're new at this... it could have happened to anybody" she assured him dishonestly. "I'm sorry... I should have mentally linked up to your HED from the start, and not abandoned you to figure so much of this stuff out on your own."

"I understand" Visionary assured her as he patted down his holographic coat comfortingly. "After... what happened, we all had a lot to deal with. I was worried about you."

She nodded. "I needed some time alone to try and make sense of things."

"And did you?"

She thought on it. "No. I don't think I can. But after talking with a friend, I think I can go on anyway, though it won't be easy. It ultimately seemed that the most I could do now would be... not to separate myself from everyone. Not to be alone."

Visionary nodded. "I had to learn something about the nature of being separate from everyone myself" he admitted. "...though it didn't involve talking to a friend."

Hallie raised an eyebrow. "How's that?"

"Adjusting to this... hasn't been easy" he began haltingly, waving at his holographic form. "It scared me a great deal, actually. It's very... different... from what I know."

The holographic woman had no stomach to drop, but she felt it anyway. "Yes..." she agreed. "Is it... too different?"

The Regular looked at his hands. "I can't... feel anything... at least anything that I recognize. And Al B. unblocked all those extra senses to show me how you perceive the world..."

She swallowed. "He did?"

Visionary nodded. "It was... scary. I can't imagine how you handle all of that."

"I'm just... different, I suppose" she answered sadly. "Very different."

"No, I don't believe that." Visionary told her. "I took a good, hard look at someone who was truly alien to me..." He tried to take her hand, but his fingers had trouble solidifying, and then adjusting the collision map caused his feet to detach from the ground. She ultimately was the one to catch his hand as he floated at an ever increasing horizontal angle to her. "Um...thanks. What my point is, is that you just see the world very differently than I do... But it's still you who sees the world... and I think I can understand who you are. It wouldn't matter if you had all the senses of the Shoggoth, and could smell the number 5, or taste the color blue. I may not ever know just what you're feeling, seeing, experiencing... but that doesn't stop me from being able to know you." He took a deep breath. "It's not the way we see things that separates people... it's how we act on what we take in. And how you act is very much Hallie."

Her eyes were alight as she smiled at him. "Thank you. And how you act is very much Visionary" she noted warmly. "Um... Would you like some help turning right side up?"

"Yes please" he answered, angled above her. "My feet are being scattered by the ceiling fan."

She pulled him back down and coincidentally found herself in his embrace. She noted that it was a very nice place to be. Her virtual heartbeat quickened, and she held her breath as her lips parted. "There's just one problem..." she noted, her mouth poised an inch from his. "You've just admitted that you can't feel anything..."

"Isn't it the thought that counts?" he asked hopefully.

She smiled and pulled back. "Hold that thought" she told him. "I've had enough of men not being able to remember the feel of my first kiss." She ruffled his holographic hair. "Besides, I need to teach you how to toggle your bump map."

He sighed. "I do enough of my own toggling these days..."

She snorted, then shot him a sly glance. "Ask me on a date once you get your body back... and we'll see if we can't rectify that." Smiling, she reset his HED settings to begin the next lesson.

the end.

Post By Visionary must have edited this 10 times since posting. Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 08:36:37 pm EST	Subject Talking It Out: A virtual tie in to Untold Tales #293

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