Final Draft of Post #43 (Yes, mostly repeating myself here. Still could probably improve it a bit.)
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Shattered glass is still raining down, I’ve dragged Olga under the table, and the restaurant’s other customers took cover too. I hear screaming and crying through the ringing in my ears. Pretty sure it’s not mine -- I banged my knee on the way to the floor, that’s it for injuries.
I look to Olga. No blood, nothing bending the wrong way, she’s quiet so at least she’s not panicking and drawing attention. I look again – ok, she’s panicking. Frozen in terror, eyes wide – that’s not helpful. I have my laser pistol and a stunner. Olga’s unarmed.
Recon. Two tables over, someone’s been hit. He’s cursing, not screaming. His buddy there’s trying first aid. Probably military, keep looking. Someone moaning over in the corner – oh s**t, she looks bad. Dave took a hit like that in Little Imim on Feri. Even Melissa couldn’t help that time. “Space Unicorn, Mike,” I remember Melissa saying long ago, but am unsure why I remember now. What’s next?
Hostiles? Maybe outside, but everyone in here’s taking cover, not seeking targets.
Police? “Police are stretched too thin here on Efate. Don’t expect prompt response,” I remember from the briefing this morning at the Scout Base -- that and a warning about random terrorism. I wanted a “sociopolitical research” story for the week, guess this is it. “Space Unicorn,” I also remember, but not from this morning. Melissa used to hum that children’s ditty when she was stressed.
Olga’s stressed too – stunned, in fact. “I’ve got to get us out of here!” I think. “Get me out of here!” Melissa’s voice echoes in memory. But not yet – it’s not safe to run until the scene’s cleared... unless it gets worse.
Outside, footsteps crunching on broken glass – well, it just got worse. I draw my laser pistol, and watch, and wait for an opening. “Space Unicorn,” I sing under my breath, “soaring through the stars, delivering the rainbows, all around the world --”
Olga flinches. “Somebody’s got to deliver the f**king rainbows,” she mutters with a gleam in her eye. Olga never curses.
“Mike,” Melissa whispers from Olga’s lips, “thanks. Don’t move. Bad guy just outside the window behind you.”
A grinding slipped step on the broken glass outside, a part of a curse, automatic gunfire from there, a submachine gun flying in through the shattered window onto the chair I’m hiding behind. The gun bounces, then settles.
“Take it,” Melissa demands. “I need your gun.”
“What the --?” I stammer, handing her the laser pistol. She always was incredibly lucky.
She aims past me, and shouts. “You! Stand Up! Hands up!” A pause and more crunching broken glass outside; she mutters something under her breath, gestures for me to move to my left, then fires the laser at the low wall behind where I was. Smoke, flames, then a pained shout from beyond the wall. A man’s cursing, and fast but uneven crunching steps – she got him in the leg, I bet – fade quickly into the distance.
“Mike,” she says, “let’s get out of here. Where’s the car?”
“Mel -- ” I start; she interrupts as I point to the back of the restaurant.
“Mike, I’m still Olga until further notice. It’s clear, let’s go.”
“How can you know --” I start to ask.
“Don’t ask. Go.” We go.
The authorities aren’t even imposing a traffic ground stop, at least they haven’t yet. We’d tossed the guns into the back of my car and flew off without police interference. I look around for traffic, then down at the city to guess the altitude – close enough, it’ll do -- then set the autopilot for the starport gate. Melissa has her sunglasses back on, and she’s let her hair down.
“’Olga,’” I ask Melissa, “what’s going on here?”
“It’s ok,” she replies, “car’s not recording – you can use my name now.
She taps her head. “I’m not supposed to be in here. Olga was a technician Guest personality, and those are supposed to be installs on empty wetware. She wasn’t that – she was an overlay instead, a curated remap of my own mind.”
“At least they didn’t do a mindwipe on you!” I exclaim.
“Yeah…” she trails off. “I know I couldn’t have screwed up that badly and still get revived – but hold on a bit. What’s the current date, and where are we?”
“1107 Imperial, day 143 – we’re in Startown on Efate,” I answer.
“They loaded this backup into me three weeks ago, the hyperjump from Boughene Station would have burned at least a week of that. Let’s see… ow,” she pauses with a pained look. “What?” she asks of no-one in particular.
I ask if she’s ok. She shakes her head, stares off into the distance, then closes her eyes and puts her head in her hands.
“They overlaid a new recording over one that was already installed. My memory’s going to be a clusterhug until it sorts itself out. But there shouldn’t have been a recording installed!”
“Let me get this straight. This is your backup body, right?” I ask.
“Yes. Shouldn’t have had my identity recording installed until I was revived.”
“OK. But it did. Then they installed the recording from three weeks ago on top of it. Maybe they tried to install a full synthetic version of Olga first, and that failed because ‘you’ were already in there.”
“Makes sense,” she says, comprehension starting to dawn on her face. “So they reloaded the most recent backup, and then did an overlay to turn ‘me’ into ‘Olga’ instead.”
“Yeah. I’d guess they were told to install “Olga” and they did what they needed to do to make that happen without doing cybernetic mods,” I remark. “They weren’t trying to screw you over personally. But she’s supposed to be a technician. How…?”
“I already have most of the necessary skills – astrogation, engineering, gunnery, and so on – myself. I’m just not as good at them as she thought she was…”
“You’re good enough, from what I recall,” I tell her. “It’s good to have you back.”
“Glad to be back – and thank you for getting me out from under the overlay. Before we get to the gate, a couple of things: One, I’m still Olga again. Two, please – please – don’t think too much about how you knew what you needed to do to make that happen.”
“They’ll debrief me about this when we check in,” I point out. “Not you, though – you’re a guest clone as far as they know, and nobody cares.”
“Sounds right,” Melissa remarks. “Though it’d be simpler if you had been the one firing your pistol – Olga wouldn’t have. You just made a lucky guess.”
“Got it,” I acknowledge.
“This mission here went off pretty well,” she continues, “maybe one fatality if the medics didn’t get to that one woman in the corner. That, and you rescued a Scout Service Postal Inspector – namely, me.”
I hesitated for a moment, and shook my head. “Yes, we rescued you. But in the process, we killed Olga.”
“Wait,” she replies with a bit of side-eye. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”
I swallow. I’m probably dead now, one way or another, I realize, but there’s nothing to be done for it. “Well, you just told me not to think about it too much, but I did. I think you fed me that children’s tune to break the personality overlay. I think you’re psionic, like the Zhodani operatives who’re mind-warping so-called ‘random’ lunatics like the goon who shot up our cafe. And I know I’m not supposed to know it. So, are you going to kill me, wipe my mind, or what?”
Her side-eye shifts to a look of resignation; she sighs. “I knew I wasn’t going to get away with this so easily. Mike, I’m on your side – the Imperium’s side. The Zhodani Consulate is ruled by their psionic overlords; we Scouts have a few psionics of our own. We have to.”
“Let’s see,” I start, “I’m not dead yet, and I think I still have free will. Privacy? As if…!
I continue, “I suppose I have to take your word for it. But Olga’s still dead.”
“Look, Mike – I didn’t even know I was within her… me… whatever. In a real sense, I never met her. I wish I had. She seems like she was a good person, though, and her erasure was a loss. I’m sorry.”
I relax; this is the Melissa I knew, not the one I had feared she was. “Yes. A very good person.”
“I don’t know if it’ll help you or make it harder,” she responds, “but I’m going to have to pretend to be her for a while yet.”
“Nothing to be done for it. I’ll help you stay in character, and deal with it.”
A beep from the dashboard tells me we’re approaching the starport gate. As we glide to a stop for the guards, I hopefully announce, “Here goes nothing…”
