Hiro cringed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, just...please, d-don't k-kill me..." He felt a sudden pang of fear and pain, thinking of Hitomi waiting at home, probably still buried in her book, thinking he was...he was over his...delinquency. If he didn't come home, and she found out the last thing he had been doing was plotting to raid an ATM...what would she think?
Cecilia frowned. "What? I'm not trying to kill you!" Had she even done anything? Just bounced the packets for that access attempt, right?
"You...you threw me down and tried to hack me...it's..." He sighed. Looking back over the network logs, the data for the attack...it was his own. This was just like yesterday, what the entity in the arcade had done - yet again, he was compromised by his own attacks...only this time he didn't even do it consciously! Why did his body have to do this?
The gynoid sighed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be too rough. I was only trying to keep you from running...look, I just want to talk to you about yesterday in the arcade. And today, here, obviously. I definitely didn't launch any network attack."
"No," he muttered, "I...I did..."
She looked at him curiously. "I bounced back an access attempt...did that really cause that much of a problem?" She hadn't really considered the possibility that anybody could be harmed by simple network traffic. A successful access attempt, sure, but plain old back-and-forth? Wasn't that a huge oversight?
Hiro nodded. "Happened yesterday too...anything bounced back at me...gets through my systems without so much as a warning." Why did this body have to be such a stupid, terrible compromise? Why did his body have to launch an attack without his permission?
Cecilia winced. If she could do that much to a cyborg kid with a simple bounce-back...he needed some help. The way network traffic was growing with the number of digital life-forms out there, it would be like having an immune deficiency and yet making a habit of rifling through dumpsters, or something...she glanced over at Hawkins, who still had the wolf-boy pinned to the wall. "I'm fine," he said. "Dealt with worse than this kid the other day."
Julian seethed. "Kid?" "Kid?" He'd show this spook who was a kid! He attempted a couple of kicks, but the shady figure bent aside and they failed to connect. If only his arms weren't pinned...!
"Okay," Cecilia said. "So first things first, what the hey is going on here?"
The wolf-boy saw his chance. "It was him!" he yelped. "It was all his idea! He was gonna break into the ATM and empty it out! I was trying to stop him..."
Hawkins frowned and shook his head. "Why don't I believe you? Let's hear version two."
Hiro sighed. He could make the opposite claim, try to get off scot-free, but they didn't seem like the types to be taken in by the lies of some high-school kid - and anyway, apparently they already suspected him of doing something yesterday.
"...we were planning to hit the ATM," he said. "It was Julian's idea, but...I was gonna do it. It was a last thing...I wanted out, and he wasn't going to go along with that, and I tried to leave and he attacked..."
Hawkins gave a critical stare at the wolf-boy. "Sounds a little more believable," he said. "Certainly moreso than the 'pure innocence' story."
Cecilia nodded. "Okay. Now about yesterday...tell me what happened at the arcade. Were you responsible for the power outage?"
Hiro gulped...he didn't want to be sharing any of this, but he'd already confessed to planning to rob an ATM...in for a penny, in for a pound...
"Yesterday I was at the arcade," he said. "There was a digital entity there I was talking with, we had a disagreement, they bounced some of my code back at me...things started to go haywire, and I had to get out of there. I felt you there..."
"Yeah," the gynoid said. "I was there, just checking things out. I did talk to a couple digital fairies. I tried to contact you a few times, but I didn't send any code to you."
Hiro frowned. "Guess that was them, then...you must have been the pings that came later...I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, everything was going kind of crazy. About the power...I sort of used it to, uh, cauterize my network adapter. It, uh, didn't seem to take for long."
Cecilia gaped. He did what? How could you do that? That was like...like bursting your eardrums to shut out the noise! "Th-that...don't do that," she said. "There's better ways to deal with problems like that. As for...as for this..."
Hawkins sighed. "We didn't actually interrupt them in the act," he said. "They're the only witnesses, and both give conflicting testimonies, and the only confession we have was arguably under duress. I don't know that we'd be justified in detaining them, except to make sure the squabble is broken up."
He loosened up his hold on Julian, who still looked pissed but, for the moment, didn't make any kind of a move. "However," the masked man said, "this may very well result in closer scrutiny from local law enforcement. I would think twice before considering any activities they would be interested in preventing." He leaned in close to the wolf-boy's face as he spoke, though his voice never wavered from its calm, detached tone.
Hawkins released the wolf, who stuck around for only a couple moments before turning tail and dashing away. "Typical," he said. "Think we know who was the instigator." He turned to Hiro. "I wouldn't hang around with him, if I were you."
The cyborg sighed and hung his head. "All I want...I just want out of this."
The shadowy man nodded. "Good. If there's further trouble...don't try to take him on if you can avoid it. Get help. A mad dog can be dangerous, even one that doesn't know as much about fighting as he thinks." He stretched and cracked his knuckles; between this and Friday, it had been a good while since he'd had anywhere close to this much physical action on the job. "Is the arm bad?"
Hiro checked the status - residual pain from the fight, pain from the bite punctures, but nothing serious. They were already clotting, though it would be a while before everything was properly healed.
"About this code thing," Cecilia said. "That's a pretty serious vulnerability. You ought to visit emergence.org and see if they have any ideas on addressing it; they study cyborgs too, it's not just for machine-only life."
Hiro cringed at the thought. "I'm...not very popular on the Internet," he said.
The gynoid shrugged. "Nonetheless," she said, "this is something that needs to be addressed. If it's caused you this much trouble twice in the space of a day..."
The teenaged cyborg sighed. She was probably right...but they didn't like him, because...
She took a step closer to him. "One thing," she said. "It's just hearsay, but the digital fairies I talked to were of the opinion that you or someone like you was...trying to use them for forced labor. I know I don't have to tell you that they're people and that would be wrong, right?"
Hiro hesitated, then nodded. He hadn't been abusing the one...whatshisname, he'd only been requiring some service in exchange for the hosting! But it was evident she wanted a "yes;" he couldn't have missed the hint, or the subtext. She knew, and she wanted him to know she knew.
"Good," she said. "I just want people to know. Some day, the Internet won't be a last, untamed frontier anymore. Some day there'll be a proper police force protecting everybody from people like that..."
"Don't mind her, she's off in a reverie again," Hawkins said. "Think that's all for now. Don't let us keep you if you want to get home..."
Hiro did want to. He wanted to see Hitomi safe and sound and know that she knew he was all right, to know that he was really done with this...he just wanted to be home. He turned and headed back, none too slowly.
Robert gasped as she beheld...her cellmate. The prostitute. She had paid? How? Why? She couldn't have! The woman didn't even know her, let alone have any reason to want to help her! She stared, gape-mouthed.
The woman shrugged. "I know, I know," she said. "But hell, you were this close to snapping or something. 'smuch as I get tired of lectures from your kind, I don't really want to see you go crazy like that. It's pretty damn obvious you're just not built for even piddly little county jail."
The devil-woman stood there, completely lost for words. "'Course, if you break bail I'll be wanting that money back," the prostitute continued. "That's most of a week's pay, I can't just give that away. Still, you're out, for now."
"Th-thankyou," Robert whispered. The woman shrugged. "Eh, the less said about it the better. But if you want my advice, go find a bar, have a drink, find a nice guy, get yourself laid. You need it, it'd do you a world of good. Who knows," she said, winking, "you might even like it."
Robert flushed. She wanted to...to berate this woman for tempting her, but...she burst into tears. "Thank you," she sobbed. How could someone like her be in a position to be charitable towards a man of God? Yet she couldn't not feel grateful...
"Ah, get outta here," her cellmate said. She complied, listening to the heavy clop her hooves made on the tile as she walked towards the processing desk, mind reeling.
Jenny sprang up to the woman and hugged her, and her new grandmother smiled and hugged her back, kneeling down next to her. Jenny looked up at her; she looked a bit like Mom, but her hair was much lighter, yellow but kind of whitish, though not as white as Jenny's. It was much longer than Muriel's, done up into a braid that went halfway down her back. She wore glasses, but while she looked smart, she didn't seem at all quiet.
"You must be Jenny!" her grandma smiled. "You were right," she said to Muriel, "she's lovely. I've never seen hair like yours, Jenny. It's very pretty."
Jenny felt a little embarassed to be getting all the attention. "Th-thanks," she said. "You're pretty too..."
"Oh, thank you," her grandma said. "Here, why don't you come inside."
"I, um, I...made a card f'r you..." Jenny said, handing it to her. The woman took it and looked it over, smiling. "Thank you," she said. "I love you too."
The little girl beamed, an inner glow almost radiating from her face. She followed the older woman inside, looking around the house. "'s so big!" she said. "Is there a lotta kids here?"
Her grandmother smiled wistfully. "Nope," she said. "Just grandpa and me, and your mom when she comes home. And now you!"
"Where is dad, anyway?" Muriel asked.
"Out in the garden," her mother answered. "Getting the last of the sweet corn...no sense letting it go to waste."
While her mom and her grandma discussed something, Jenny looked around. The living room seemed enormous to her, but something caught her eye at the far end. She wandered over; it was a gun hung above the mantelpiece, a long rifle that she didn't know the name of, but that seemed familiar somehow.
"That was your grandpa's," her mom said, walking up next to her. "From back when he was in the Army."
"It's nice," Jenny mused. She couldn't explain why she felt that way, she just did.
The transformed pastor stepped into the trees at the edge of the cemetary. Here, now, in the early evening light, with the sun disappearing behind the treetops and the air cooling down...she was beginning to feel comfortable. Well, except for the part where the cool air was caressing her skin, causing her nipples to stiffen slightly under the loaned shirt...
She walked over to where she remembered Father Maxwell being, still unsteady on her changed legs, still confounded by the gentle sway and quake of her many breasts...from the genuinely sizable top pair to the slightly smallish bottom pair, how large they felt to her!
She spent a moment or two looking for the exact tree, until a face in front of her that she hadn't noticed spoke. "Robert, you've returned..." the senior pastor said. "I am glad to see you...well."
Robert paused for a moment, trying to figure out where to start, and settled for collapsing into tears at the base of the tree. When she'd recovered slightly, she told her mentor everything that had happened. "I...I need to know!" she said. "Is...is it that I'm supposed to prove my inner manhood by remaining steadfast? Or...what? Why has God allowed this punishment to come upon me? I am not a demon!"
The tree-man sighed, a creak running through his trunk. "Robert," he said. "You yourself are proof...that having such a form...does not make you a servant of the Enemy...yet you persist in believing that...these changes are wrought by God...as punishment?"
"But it has to be!" the devil-woman said. "What other reason would He have in allowing this to befall us? He has used His light to mark the evildoers, but I...but...I..." She trailed off. How could she explain this? She had thought she was meant for a mission of infiltration, but if the Lord had only given her a disguise, why was she so tested by her new body?
"God's reasons are His own," the senior pastor said. "He must have cause...for the fate of everyone who...is changed, but I do not think...it is so simplistic...as that. What sin could you or I...have committed to justify...our being stripped of...our very vessels?"
"But this must be a test for me!" Robert said. "But I don't know....is it that I am tested in my resolve? Or am I tested in submission? How am I to know? If I'm wrong..."
"God does not pose trick questions...brother," the tree-man answered. Robert felt a brief warmth at being called that. "If you cannot determine...His will for certain...then live merely as you...know you ought to."
"But I can't live as this!" she protested. "These feelings, I cannot hold them off indefinitely, or escape to a form un-plagued by them...how am I to keep from falling into sin?"
The tree-man smiled. "If it is only...sin that you are...worried about, there is...Paul's claim that it...is better to marry than...to fall into sin."
Robert gaped. "Y-you can't mean...!"
"I mean nothing but that...if you fear you cannot...keep control, it may be...better to put yourself...in an environment where...there is no wrong in...losing it. Yet even if you...disagree, remember that...though we are not to...sin in order to be forgiven...there are far more terrible...things in this world than...premarital intercourse."
"But I'm a man!" Robert said. "I can't just...just...!" She winced as some of the feelings came creeping back.
"You feel this may be...a test of submission," Father Maxwell said. "Yet you hold onto...the very thing that has been...taken away as...part of it."
"But it's only a test!" Robert said. "I'm not meant to remain this way! If God had not meant for me to be a man, why would He have me born as one? I can't just go getting into...into...on the theory it might help! If anything, I ought to be renewing my vow!"
"He must have His reasons," the tree-pastor said. "And you know how I feel...about vows of celibacy. The Lord did not mean for...human desires to be suppressed...especially on His account. Controlled, certainly...but not suppressed."
"B-but...if I don't know what He wants, and I don't know what will happen." the devil-woman said, "...what...what do I do?"
The was a pause, and she got the impression the tree-man would have shrugged if he had arms. "I don't know," he said. "What I do is...to live the new life...that is set before me...in this body, as I know I ought, and...be prepared to change back...if and when the...Lord sees fit. I suggest it as a consideration..."
