Jon moaned as she slid out of the bathroom. Her assorted menstrual pains seemed, at least, to not be getting any worse, but they weren't really getting better, either. Holding steady was better than getting worse, sure, but did she really have two or three more days of this to look forward to? Argh. She hoped things would at least alleviate a bit at night; adding headache-induced sleep loss to this would be a real pain in the ass.
Heading back towards her classroom, Jon looked and saw that angel chick sitting out in the sun by herself. She sure got around - how many times had Jon seen her yesterday? Jon observed her silently for a minute; she was just sitting there, not doing anything. Her posture and expression didn't suggest that she was very happy. Well, that made two of them; Jon decided to see what was up.
She went outside, gently shutting the door behind her. She didn't think anybody would come looking for her for a while yet, as her trip to the bathroom had been fairly short, but there was no point in drawing attention. She slid over to the bench where the girl was sitting and sat on the other end. "Hi," she said.
Surprised that someone was talking to her,David looked up. It was the slug-girl! She choked down her habitual urge to back away and try to disappear into the crowd; there was no crowd out here, anyway. "Um, hi," she said.
The slug-girl smiled; it was a weary smile, but it seemed sincere. "Watcha doing?" she asked.
"Um..." David tried to fight her shyness. "Um, nothing," she said. "Just...uh, getting some fresh air."
Jon nodded, looking her up and down, then briefly frowned; another pretty young woman...and she still felt nothing. "I'm Jon," she said. "What's your name?"
Jon? Did that mean that she had been a boy, too? David noticed a frown flash across the slug-girl's face as she spoke. "Uh, I'm David," she said. "You...are you upset?"
Jon sighed. "Well, yes, but not at you or anything. I'm just...not feeling very well, is all."
"Oh." David frowned. Was she in pain? She wished there was a way she could help.
They sat there for a while, and Jon breathed a sigh of relief; the pain seemed to be lessening, at least for the moment. The silence lasted until it was just starting to get awkward while David worked up the nerve to say something.
"I, uh..." she stammered. "I thought it was really cool how you stood up to Tiffany yesterday. That was pretty brave of you."
Jon was a little baffled by that. Brave? Sure, Tiffany was kind of unnerving, especially in her new form, but she hadn't been all that terrifying - at least not that Jon had seen. "Eh, it wasn't that big a deal," she said.
David frowned. "Well, I thought it was," she said. "The popular kids can be kind of scary..." Did she just admit to that? She cringed inwardly, hoping that Jon wasn't going to make fun of her for it.
Jon frowned. "Huh? Look, seriously, I wasn't trying to make a stand or anything. I just want her and people like her to leave me alone, that's all."
"Really?" David...had never really thought about it that way before. Did Jon really just not care what they thought?
The slug-girl nodded. "Yeah. I just wanted them to not make me play their game. If that means freaking them out so they stay away, what the hell."
David gaped. She'd gotten into such a mess trying to get these people to like her...and what had it gotten her? If she'd only thought like Jon did before they'd gone out for their joyride...
She flinched as one of her "sisters" idly scratched at her crotch. Jon frowned, wincing as the ache flooded back. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"Uh, y-yeah, I'm fine!"
"Really?" Jon looked a little skeptical. "You've been fidgeting like that every time I've seen you - you sure you're not having a seizure or something?"
The angel-girl wasn't entirely comfortable with Jon's probing, but...she could hear real concern in the slug-girl's voice. And she was so happy just to have someone to talk to...
"It's my sisters," she said. "Well, they're not really my sisters, but they kind of are now."
Jon looked curious. "There's more than one of you?" she asked. "Is that why you're all over the place?"
David nodded. "They're not really more of me," she said. "We look the same, but we're different people. But our bodies are connected, so we share things...they can't see what I see or hear what I hear, but all our other senses, and our emotions..."
Jon's eyes went wide. "You share all that?" she asked. "God, no wonder you're distracted."
David nodded. "I'm...we're trying to get used to it, but it's so new to us..."
Jon smiled. "Yeah...I think everyone here knows that feeling." She looked at her watch. "I'd better get back to class. Nice to meet you, David."
The angel-girl smiled as Jon turned to leave. "It was nice to meet you too!" she said.
Mikey was back in the library, observing the students. She hadn't explained her theory to the staff yet; she wanted to see if there even were any other robots in the school. Maybe she could give them a clue as to who to watch along with the advice.
Effie was trying to construct some more functional programs; "hello, world!" was a good first test, but it didn't teach a whole lot about programming. She was pretty enamored by how the interface worked; all she had to do was gently trace her finger along a text box, and characters came out as if she were typing them. She could highlight and move blocks just as simply, and correcting errors was as easy as rubbing out and re-writing. She liked this; she had been afraid she would have to use a virtual keyboard or something.
Unfortunately, programming was a lot harder than just typing out code. Deep down, Effie had always known that it was a matter of re-training your brain to think in terms of sequences of simple actions, and to keep track of what interacted with what how, but as a script kiddie she'd always hoped that there was some magic formula that would make her a wizard without any effort. Now, as her third attempt at pointer manipulation flew apart in the test environment, she was beginning to understand that it required as much blood, sweat, and tears as physical training, another thing she'd never had the persistence for.
She did know, at least, that neither learning nor exercise should be done non-stop until you couldn't take it anymore. Breaks were vital to staying refreshed and ready, and she needed one. She closed the text editor and hopped down Mikey's arm onto the table the library workstations sat on.
As Effie wandered among the computers, their cases towering above her like great black monoliths, she felt a breeze blow from the direction of one tower. Recalling what the breeze had meant last time, she walked over curiously towards it. Sure enough, there was a stream of text emanating from it.
Hel...p! it read. I'm...stu...ck ...in ...slo...w m...oti...on!
Effie frowned. "Mikey," she said, "I think there's an AI in here!"
Mikey gasped. "In there?" she asked. "Those things are like five years old!"
Effie nodded. "It's running pretty slow. Should we...do you want me to get it out of there?"
The young gynoid thought for a minute. "Yeah," she said. "I'm all protected, and I think there's room for another AI." It felt like it, at least - maybe she could get Effie to make her some measuring instruments when she got better at programming...
Effie nodded and reached into the screen. She felt a hand grab hers. Clasping her other hand around it, she planted a foot against the monitor's edge and gave a mighty yank. Something tumbled out and fell right into her, knocking them flat against the table. Effie stood up and brushed herself off, and the newcomer did the same.
She was another digital fairy, nearly a head taller than Effie and looking closer to an adult than Effie's teenaged appearance. She had bright carrot-orange hair, and was dressed in a red and white-checkered shirt and short blue skirt, with a blue beret that had a double check-mark on it, the same rainbow color as her irises.
Effie frowned; she recognized these markings from a few different flame-battles, back when she'd first gotten on the Internet. "You!" she said. "You're an Amiga, aren't you!?"
The newcomer looked her over and smirked. "And you're from a Windows Me machine, I presume?" she said. "You can call me Amy."
Mikey was confused. "What's an Amiga?" she asked.
"An old computer," Effie responded. "From 1985." There's a bunch of crazy people who still like it, she texted to Mikey. They're a buncha zealots.
Mikey gaped. "1985!?" That was older than Jon!
"Hey!" Amy said. "That's not as old as you IBM clones! Besides, we were years ahead of the curve. We had true multitasking while you were still running DOS! And we didn't trip up and crash horribly nearly so often as certain OSes I could mention..."
Effie huffed. "Oh yeah? Well...well look where it got you!" Amy bristled at that, and Effie grinned; she knew these people couldn't come to grips with the fact that their platform had lost in the long run.
"Hey, break it up, you two!" Mikey picked up Effie and placed her on her shoulder before things could get physical...well, virtual-physical. Effie felt comforted; she didn't really like the idea of sharing her host with another AI, so it was good to know that Mikey wasn't forgetting her.
Mikey frowned. "Doesn't that mean you wound up inside an Amigo?" she asked. "How did you get here?"
"Through the Internet, of course," Amy said. "It's been around longer than some people seem to think, and it's not hard to connect to. I was exploring different nodes on the local provider when they shut off the outside connection and I was stuck on this network."
Mikey nodded. "They did that because someone broke into the school computer yesterday," she said. "Did you see, was there anyone else who came in over the Internet? They had a DOS fairy..."
Amy frowned. "Uh, not that I noticed," she said. "But these things are so slow, they probably could have slipped right by while I was still turning to look."
Mikey sighed. That wasn't very helpful; she'd thought she might have a witness for a minute. Now she still had no idea if the attack came from outside or inside the school...
