Effie frowned. "What kind of cyborg are we talking about? Is it like the Borg in Star Trek, or is it just a human with robot limbs or something?"
"I don't know," Amy said. "I didn't get a really good look at their routines, I just saw drivers for interfacing electromechanical parts with biological parts and figured that might be a useful bit of leverage."
"I don't think it has any 'assimilate the world' plans, if that's what you mean," Dennis said. "It liked to brag about itself a lot, so I'm sure I would have heard of it. I think that's the only reason it didn't keep totally suspended."
Effie looked at the DOS fairy. The poor thing must have been so mistreated, trapped with one of those would-be god AIs... She knew how terrifying that could be, and she felt so sorry for him...
Amy nodded. "I'm kinda surprised your ex-host even had enough run-time to go around - they didn't seem like a very powerful machine, or we'd probably have had a tougher time getting in. They certainly shouldn'tve been hosting another AI. I wonder if that smell wasn't from emergency overclocking or something?"
Dennis sighed. "Maybe. It's not like it would have shared with me anyway..." He stretched. "Oh man, it feels so good just to be moving again..."
Effie felt her face flush as she watched him stretch. He wasn't built or anything, but he had kind of a gangly, wirey look to him, graceless but lean, not unlike the OS he embodied. She wondered why he had the appearance of a male, when she and Amy were girls - did that signify anything? Amy had suggested the possibility of creating digital life - was it possible for two digital fairies to...?
She cringed at that thought, blushing even harder, and focused on staring straight ahead, looking directly at the path and only at the path. "S-so, Dennis," she said, "how did you wind up coming from a DOS machine?"
He shrugged and scratched at the back of his head, which Effie caught out of the corner of her eye. "It was what I was closest to when the sun came up," he said. "An old 286 box of my dad's; I liked to play around with it just to see what I could coax it into doing. Never thought I'd wind up living in it; I'm just lucky I had an Ethernet card in it, or I'd really have been in trouble."
Amy nodded sagely. She loved her Amiga setup dearly, but much as she hated to admit it, machines of that vintage weren't exactly suited for hosting artificial intelligences. "Kind of out of the frying pan and into the fire, though," she said. "Seems like there's a few AIs that think they're suddenly above all the rules as soon as they wind up hosting someone else."
Dennis nodded. "Well, that's over with, at least," he said. "I'm just lucky you two came along; I don't think I'd ever have got out on my own."
Effie found herself smiling at that, and Amy laughed. "Ah, it was nothing," she said. "I'm just glad you got out of there before they did anything worse than chain you up and monologue at you."
David was sitting in class, poring over the history text on Rome, when she tasted...bread? Huh, it wasn't lunchtime yet. Maybe it was one of her "sisters" that had got community service, but...why plain bread, and not a sandwich or something? It was good bread, at least; flavorful but not overpowering, and soft as a cloud. She was just returning to her book when another taste joined it, a spicy thick liquid with a bitter taste to it...
She quietly gasped. David didn't drink, but she'd had wine before at a couple churches her parents had visited, where they used wine instead of grape juice for communion. This was a lot more flavorful than that stuff. She was kind of concerned, though - she didn't know enough about this stuff to tell what the alcohol content was like. What would happen if her sister had too much? Would she get drunk, too?
She kind of thought not - they shared sensations and emotions, but their brains' internal processes seemed to be entirely separate. After all, she didn't suffer any mental impairment when one of her sisters went to sleep. And maybe it was even impossible for them to get drunk, just like it was impossible for them to swear? But, she realized, that was only part of the problem. If one of her sisters did get drunk, she would still be drunk, and whatever happened to her under the influence would be shared by the other five...
Maybe she ought to find the drinker, just in case. David still wasn't sure she could fit in this group, despite her involuntary membership, but being a helping hand if it was needed was the very least she could do for the other angels, these strange extensions of her own body attached to strangers.
Jon sighed and looked at the clock. The day was dragging by far too slowly for her. Her assorted pains were holding steady, with a little spike every now and again just to keep things interesting, apparently. She rummaged in her bookbag, trying to find the little bottle of pills her mom had given her; the first one seemed to be wearing off, and that was something she definitely didn't need.
She popped another as discreetly as she could and looked around the classroom. The angel-girl, David, had excused herself to get some fresh air again, and Karyn was off in the pool at the moment. Jon was struck by how few of her classmates she actually recognized or knew anything about; she'd always been kind of a loner, but with this shake-up, the only other person in her new class that she actually knew besides Michael was Sarah.
The harpy was seated in the middle of the class, surrounded on all sides by fellow students, and still completely naked. The stares and whispers had died off, at least for the moment, but everyone was still pretty stunned by this development. Jon, for her part, was amazed that Sarah could even do this.
The harpy's bare breasts weren't quite so massive as they had appeared under the tight tops she'd worn as a human, but they were still sizeable, and Jon couldn't believe she wasn't suffering backaches from having them unsupported. Heck, Jon's own breasts weren't all that large, and she'd discovered that she needed a bra just as much as her mother had said she would.
But...well, Sarah's were quite perky for their size; Jon wondered if she didn't perhaps have some kind of muscle layer that helped support them without external aid. Maybe that was a harpy racial feature, so they didn't get in the way while flying? She didn't know, but she felt kind of jealous; how come she didn't get features of her transformation to help her deal with these hassles?
Then again, she didn't have to lay eggs, either, and she knew which problem she'd rather deal with. In any case; she supposed she'd better pay attention to the lesson; the teachers were taking their time getting back up to speed in the new system, but she'd rather make sure she didn't miss anything important.
Mikey smiled as the digital fairies arrived safely back within her own space. Caitlin had gone off to find a book a couple minutes before, and she was starting to wonder where her AIs had gotten to. "Hi!" she said, eyeing the DOS fairy. "Who's this?"
Dennis tried to smile back, but he couldn't quite bring himself to look at this girl. "'m Dennis," he mumbled. "...sorry for the grade thing."
Mikey gently lifted his chin up until he was looking her in the eye. She smiled warmly. "It's okay," she said. "I know it wasn't really your fault. I'm glad you're safe and sound now."
Dennis felt kind of bad; he couldn't deny that he'd gotten a little illicit thrill out of breaking into a school computer, even if it had been his host's idea. But...this girl seemed so friendly, he couldn't help but smile.
"So," Mikey said, "did you find out who did it?"
Amy shrugged. "I have an IP," she said, "but no direct link to any particular person. And...I did promise to keep it secret if the attacker let Dennis go."
"I can tell you, though," Effie said, "apparently it's a cyborg, though we're not sure what all that entails."
Mikey nodded. "Huh. I guess we'll have to keep an eye out?"
Amy nodded. "Be on the lookout, just in case. I don't think they can do much without a digital fairy, though. In other news, I...I think there's too many of us right now."
Mikey frowned. "Really? Is that why my head feels...I dunno, busy all of a sudden?"
Amy nodded. "You have priority, naturally, but the rest of us are feeling a little strapped for runtime. I think I'll need to find a new host."
Dennis frowned. "Oh, no, I don't want to be a bother..."
Amy smiled. "Well, that's nice of you," she said, "but it's no big deal. Besides, you Microsofties should stick together; you never know if one of you might have to reboot the other." She stuck out her tongue, a playful gleam in her eye.
Effie huffed a bit at that, but...she felt more sad than mad. "Do you really have to go?" she asked.
Amy nodded. "We don't want to overload your host like Dennis's was. Besides, you may need the space at some point in the future." She winked, and Effie flushed. "But we can still meet up whenever we have Internet, and I'll make sure to set you up with some tools before I go."
