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Romana had gotten out of control. Her father, and everyone else, fully
understood where she was coming from—she was lonely, and she needed
companionship—but she was playing with fire. They blamed the progression
and simplification of technology. A lot of what Ramses did involved temporal
manipulation, which most researchers and users didn’t have access to, but a
lot of the rest had become ubiquitous. Their advanced substrates were quite
common these days, except for the bit about being able to teleport, and their
attached pocket dimensions. The computing power and the detail of simulations;
the whole galaxy had it, or at least it was available to them.
Downloading what began as a programmed intelligence into a mobile body was
nothing new, but it had certainly become easier over the centuries. And that
was what a lot of the development focused on now. All everyday problems had
been solved, so the primary changed involved removing friction from the
processes. You used to have to know how to program a dayfruit with the right
ingredients. Now you just told it what you want, and it grew. It even did it
faster than the original species could be produced. It used to be that if
you wanted to give a digitized consciousness a body, you had to have the
education and experience for it, and to account for all sorts of variables.
Now you pushed a button. All Romana had to do was push a button, and Boyd
3.0 was just there.
But Boyd was not perfect. She wanted him to be just like them, which meant
he had to skip a year at the end of every day. That was time tech, and not
in the central archives, so she had to come up with a workaround. According
to her, every day at midnight central, his brain went dormant, and didn’t
come back online until midnight 365 days later. This was the only way she
could do it. If she had asked, Ramses would not have helped her, so she
probably made the smart call in that regard. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a
problem, though. If his mind could be switched off like that, he could be
switched back on. Where were the safeguards? What if someone else showed up
during their interim year? What if Boyd got tired of skipping time, and
turned himself back on in the middle of a cycle? Did he even want to skip at
all, or did he want to leave this planet, and go find his way elsewhere?
Romana still hadn’t thought this through.
“I have thought it through,” Romana insisted. “You are just not
listening.”
“No, you’re not listening,” Ramses argued louder when Mateo tried to.
“Sorry, Matt, but I’m gonna have to take this one. She’s old enough to make
her own choices, and suffer the consequences beyond a scolding from her
parents.” He looked back at her. “This is dangerous stuff. There was a
reason I was quarantining him, and I know you knew that. This was reckless,
childish, and stupid, and there will be consequences.”
“Oh, you’re just mad because you’ve become irrelevant,” Romana contended.
“Now suddenly the great Ramses Abdulrashid isn’t the only one on the
team who can create life. I’m sorry science caught up to your genius, but it
was inevitable. Get over it.”
“No.” Ramses was generally a chill guy. He usually only had anxiety over his
own insecurities, but he was livid today. “You may not have used my personal
lab, but you used equipment that I fabricated.” He stopped her before she
could interrupt, “don’t bring AI into this. Of course I didn’t program them
character-by-character. They are still mine, and you abused my trust in you
by doing this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and your parents, but there may
be something seriously wrong with you, so you’re going in hock.”
“You can’t do that.” She laughed it off. No one else was laughing. “No, he
can’t do that. I’m an equal member of this team!” No one said a word. “Dad!
Moms! Stop him! Stop him!” They didn’t. The time bullet hit her, and sent
her straight into lock-up.
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