Effie frowned. "There's got to be a way to make this work, at least temporarily," she said. "I mean, this thing doesn't have much for CPU horsepower, but it's got a dedicated GPU to make up for that...well, more or less, anyway. We can't be running on the Wii directly, but obviously we've got to have some presence here..."
Dennis shrugged. "Maybe so. Think you can do anything to get it through?"
"I dunno," she said. "That's the problem with running on a virtual-machine architecture - you're separated from the machine level. But...huh, there's gotta be a way. It wouldn't make any sense for it to be inaccessible, especially since we were able to get sound output." She opened up her editor and tried to think of what to do. There had to be a way to do this. She'd heard how distraught Nadine's dad had sounded - she couldn't begin to imagine how it must feel to have your daughter simply disappear and then find her only to be unable to get to her...
She was able to spot some text, what looked like a copyright notice in the firmware. That meant she was able to look at the Wii's memory, at least, though she didn't know if she'd be able to change it. But where to start looking for anything graphics-related?
Effie suddenly wondered if she hadn't jumped in at a lower level than she really needed to. She looked back at the cluster of lights at the center of the room - Dennis had said that was the CPU, right there in the middle. But it wasn't the only group of lights - there was another cluster, nearly as large, that was off to one side. Maybe that was the GPU?
Curious, and hesitant to spend hours digging through memory if a simpler solution was close at hand, she stepped over to the light cluster. It hung suspended in the air before her, looking less like a "physical" object and more like a series of light paths arranged in layers, spaced out over a space of a couple feet. How to do this...? On a whim, she stepped right into it. It gave no resistance, and she found herself standing in the middle of the circuit.
"Wh-who are you?" came the voice over the microphone. Effie smiled, surprised that it could be this simple. She couldn't see what it was he was seeing, but displaying anything at all was progress. And with only one AI using the output, the machine seemed to be struggling a bit less. She smiled and curtsied, barely realizing she was doing so. "I'm Effie," she said. "Sorry, we were just trying to figure out if there was a way for you to see your daughter..."
"P-please," Mr. Travis said. "Please, can I see her?"
Effie nodded. "Absolutely. But I need to talk with you for a minute about her...is that okay?"
There was a pause, and she realized he must be nodding. "Um, I can't see you," she said. "Not unless you have a camera we can get into via Bluetooth..."
"Uh, n-no, I don't..." he said. "I can get one, though...what was it you wanted to talk about?"
She sighed. "Sir," she said, "Nadine is a data entity...she doesn't have a physical body any more. There are a number of us that have gone through similar changes, so she's not alone, but I think you should know that...there's not much chance at present of her regaining a physical form." She hated to say that, more for how it made her feel than for what it might mean to him.
He spluttered. "That can't be true! I...we'll find a way!"
Effie smiled sadly. "Sir...there are already a lot of people working on it, but there's no indication of when anything like that might be practical. For right now, Nadine is just going to have to stay the way she is. But you should know, there's a web site, emergence.org, for people like us. They can't make an AI physical just yet, but what they can do is get her hosted in an AI that already has physical hardware, like a robot, or a high-end computer."
"What? What would we gain from that?" He sounded confused, but not hostile to the idea, at least.
"Well, for starters, that hardware would be a lot better-equipped to run her code than this machine," she replied. "As it is, I'm not sure even one of us could run suitably here...I think we're mostly running on some other machine at the moment. The bigger thing that would offer is protection - since Nadine is a data entity she's..." Effie paused, trying to push back the thoughts of what had happened earlier. "She's vulnerable to viruses and other attacks."
There was a pause, and Effie shuddered to think what might be going through his mind. "Is...is she okay?" he asked at last.
She nodded. "She's fine, but once we're gone, if she can be fully present on this machine, you should disconnect the machine from the network, at least until Emergence can find a host for her. No sense taking any chances."
"S-sure," he said. "Can I see her now?"
Effie smiled. "Yes. Give me a moment and I'll put her on; after that, I think we'll need to be going, for now."
She stepped out of the circuit and turned to the Wii fairy. "Nadine," she said, "your dad wants to see you. Dennis and I have to go now, but we'll be in touch, okay?"
Nadine tackle-hugged her, and Effie smiled and returned the embrace. "Th-thank you," she said. "I didn't think I was ever going to get home...thank you!"
"I'm happy I could help," Effie said. "I just wish I could help you get back into the real world..."
Nadine smiled. "It's okay," she said. "Maybe we can get that fixed, but at least I can talk to my mom and dad...thank you, Dennis! Have a good time together!"
The older two said their goodbyes and exited the machine; Nadine did her best to draw herself into the Wii entirely, and moments later the machine disappeared from the Internet.
Wait, Effie thought. "Together?"
Mr. Travis felt a flood of many different emotions wash over him as the TV displayed a new figure. Though the machine was using the fully power of its GPU to generate an actually fairly good rendition, it was less than photorealistic, and it was dressed so strangely, but...it was Nadine. Her face that he knew so well, her small shape that he'd hugged the night before her disappearance...it was his daughter, changed but safe and sound. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, but that was all right - it was only natural for a father to feel this way about his little girl.
"Honey, I'm so glad to see you..." he said, his voice choking.
Nadine heard the trembling in his voice, and began to tear up herself. "Dad, I'm so glad to be home," she said, smiling in spite of herself. "Where's Mom?"
"She's at work," he said. "Oh my God, I should call her - she's been as worried sick as I have..."
"I'm sorry I made you worry," she said. Her father smiled. "No, no," he said, "I'm just so happy you're safe..."
She nodded. "I was sick with a virus, but Effie fixed me up perfect. They're such nice people..." She wondered who or what they called home...
"Um, I guess it's a silly question," her dad said, "but...why are you dressed like that?"
Nadine shrugged. "Um...I don't exactly know...it kinda sounds like it's something I got from the Wii."
He nodded. "It doesn't really matter, I just wondered."
Sarah arrived back at her house that afternoon in a surprisingly good mood. Most of this was attributable to the fact that she hadn't had the confrontation with Tiffany she'd been expecting all morning - something or other had shaken her nemesis pretty badly, and she'd just sat and fumed quietly for the rest of the day.
She touched down gently on the lawn, pleased that she seemed to be getting the hang of landing, and went inside. Iris seemed to be out running errands or something, and the house had a warm, pleasant late-afternoon quiet to it. She wondered briefly what she was going to do with her time, but as she entered her room she remembered.
The harpy leapt gracefully off the balcony where her mother's hive rested, gliding down into the yard. Her dad was resting contentedly in the waning sunlight, not actually sleeping but more in a sort of trance, simply letting the light shine down on her. Sarah thought for a moment how very strange her life had become, but...somehow, it no longer seemed so awful to think about.
She spent a good hour grabbing small sticks and large twigs, trying to find young wood that would bend easily. She wound up having to move a couple talon-loads up to her balcony before she thought she had enough. Finally she removed the blankets and sheets from her bed and set to work weaving her timber into a nest.
It was strange to think about, but it just felt right to her. And while she was very much a novice at nest-making, the dexterity of her talons and the knack she'd always had for doing simple, repetitive tasks on autopilot (as with her makeup, back when she was still using it) helped things come together fairly well for a first attempt. By early evening it was nearly complete.
"Aww," came a rich, hum-backed voice. "I guess I'm not the only builder in the family, am I?"
Sarah looked up to see her mother, or rather a half-dozen of her mother. The tiny bee-women, larger than ordinary bees but still less than an inch tall, hung idly in the air behind her. The harpy smiled in spite of herself; she still wasn't quite used to interacting with a swarm of bees, but it was nice to hear her mother's voice again; they hadn't talked much since she'd discovered their change.
"Ahh, this isn't much," she said. "It just...it felt natural, the thought of having this."
Her mother made what she took for a nodding motion. "Of course," she said. "But you did a good job with it. What are you going to use for finishing it?"
"Uh, I was thinking some mud and...um, grass..." That sounded strange even by the new standards of "strange," Sarah realized. "I'm keeping the blankets and pillow, though."
"Mmm. Well, that makes sense, I guess. Just let it dry before you sleep in it. And use clay mud, not sand. Make sure you clean up afterwards, okay?"
Sarah couldn't help laughing. "Would you like to build it?"
Her mother laughed. "I don't think my materials would work so well for someone your size, I'm afraid."
"Talk to me, Harris," Anderson said, fiddling nervously with the stationery. "What happens now?"
His lawyer sighed. "What happens now is that tomorrow the court re-convenes in hopes of finishing the hearing. And I would advise you, Anderson, to think very carefully about what exactly your story is. The prosecution doesn't have any evidence to contradict your blackmail account, but we don't have any solid evidence to support it. That means that if things go well for you, it'll come down to the question of reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury - and if they see you stammering your way through testimony that appears to be made up on the fly, that isn't likely to reflect well on you."
"W-wait a minute! Isn't it our story?"
Harris frowned. "The testimony you have presented to the court, Anderson, has had precious little to do with anything you've told me in our counsels, to say nothing of my advice to you from your first call to me until now. You are my client, and I'll respect your decisions, but I don't feel any need to take responsibility for them."
"B-but you can't just leave me to face this!" Anderson sputtered. "I could get sent to prison!"
"Yes, you could. And I'm not leaving you to face anything - I am doing my job just as I do for all my other clients, but most of them don't display such erratic behavior, at least not in the courtroom. I would remind you that the only really solid evidence in this case is the half-shredded documents which appear to indicate that you both ordered and paid for the services of Mr. Cooper's assailant."
Harris looked at his watch; the sun must be setting by now. He'd been up since 3 A.M., and he was more than ready to get home and catch as much sleep as he could before arriving back at the courthouse before dawn. If only they'd been able to get this scheduled for a night...but what with society still on the mend, the legal system was understaffed and over-booked. He wondered if the prosecuting attorney wasn't already home and enjoying a nice quiet evening...she seemed kind of familiar, but he couldn't quite place her - and in any case, it wouldn't do to be getting too friendly with the opposing attorney in the middle of a case.
Alex's heart was racing. The sun was down, and he and Susan had just finished breakfast. He was going to do it - he was going to stay over and see what things were like on the day side. All he had to do was find a place to hide while the night students went home, and stay hidden while the sun rose - even if they found him after that, they couldn't very well send him home.
He felt kind of guilty about having to ditch Susan, but he wasn't going to drag her into something that might prove dangerous, especially with her need to prove herself better than him - who knew what kind of trouble she might get into? He thought with a shudder about that "joke" from Ben and Steven, about the possibility of turning into a slug-girl...or what if they both did? No, he couldn't have her along. He was pretty sure he could stay out of trouble by himself, but not with her.
He could do this.
Charlie and Anna hadn't gone through with it after all. Even if they hadn't lost their nerve shortly after lunch, their mom and dad (or was it dad and mom now?) had had to go to a court hearing, and they'd called in someone to watch the two of them. They hadn't thought they'd be able to get past the sitter, a woman with the lower body of a deer, and anyway they didn't want their parents blaming her for not watching them.
They had agreed, though, that tomorrow they would go through with it and expose themselves to the sun. They were both tired of never getting to spend much time around their parents, and having to live at night...it would be worth it.
