“Sorry to interrupt such an exuberant welcome.”  Eugene said, grinning from ear to ear, “Do I get one of those too?”

“My poor baby, why did this have to happen?”  Her mom was nearly in hysterics, pushing past her dad to rush to her side.  “Does it hurt?  Are you OK?”

Her mother’s overreaction – ok, to be fair, she had to admit it wasn’t really an overreaction. It had the effect of making Victoria’s anger at Adam, at Eugene and at the world in general for what had happened to her seem silly.  She was still upset with Adam especially, or maybe afraid of him was more accurate, but all that was pushed aside for now.

“I’m OK I think.  It doesn’t hurt at all but wow do these look wild or what?”  The bare carbon fiber was sparkling under the halogen lighting.  Her new legs were made from interconnected curves that almost mimicked the shape of muscles.  The feet were another story; they ended in a prehensile looking metal X that extended from the center.

“Is it OK for me to try and stand up?”  She wasn’t sure if this should be addressed to Eugene or David but they both answered at the same time.

“Yes it should be.”  Said David, who glanced at Eugene.

“Absolutely.”  Eugene said at the same time.

“Affirmative.” This was orange text that trailed across her vision.  That brought her up short.

“Eugene, how can I trust Adam?  After what happened how can I trust him?”  She didn’t intend to have such a pleading tone in her voice.  The vulnerability she heard frightened her.

“Do not worry Tori, he is sorry.”  Yuen-Ja was walking into the room, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, her shoulder length black hair mussed and out of its usual twin pigtails.  “You might not have done what he made you do on your own, but without what he did you would certainly not have been able to rescue Eugene and most likely would have perished along with the others who came with you.”

Victoria sighed and opened her mouth to speak but Yuen-Ja interrupted her.  “You simply cannot hold him saving your life against him.  It is not right and it is not fair.  He even wrote the software used to control your new legs himself.  I tried to help him and he refused.”

“Well let’s try it out then!”  Victoria sat up, feeling Adam’s augmented Neuro-Muscles kick in to make it a smooth and easy process.

“Careful sweetheart!”  Said her mom.

“Just take it slowly OK, you always rush into things.”  Said her dad, hovering almost as close as her mom.  That was out of character for him, he must be really worried about her.  Well, she shouldn’t be surprised.  She had almost died after all.  Again.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, or at least tried to.  There was a pleasing mechanical whirring sound, Adam was slowing down her actions and making sure she would move slowly and carefully.  Victoria’s body moved with gentle precision, she slid off the bed and stood on her feet.

“I’m never standing completely still.  This is weird.”  Her body was rocking slightly left and right when she tried to simply stand still, “Is it supposed to be like this?  It’s tough to stand without feeling my feet.”

“Like I said before, it’s only a prototype.”  David said apologetically, “I’m still working on the sensors, although Dr. Arlington and Adam already have their parts finished.  It’s tough to design something that sensitive and complex.

“The legs themselves are built to flex when you walk, that should cushion your movements and put minimal strain on the pressure points where they join to your… well your human body.  That’s why I used carbon fiber instead of metal.

“The balance is also difficult, I decided against giving you gyroscopes to maintain balance, it would have decimated the battery life.  As it is, the easiest way to stay upright is to always be moving.  It’s a trick I learned walking on stilts.  I told Adam about it and he built it into the software.”

Victoria experimentally bounced up and down.  She could feel the potential energy in the carbon fiber.  These legs might not be very strong, but they certainly were light.  They would work wonderfully for everyday use.

“What kind of motivators are in here?”  Victoria asked, then she found she knew, “You are using a combination of high-tension cables and Neuro-Muscle, what an interesting idea.  The cables are tight on all four sides and the muscle is used to shift bias from one side to the other.  That way for most normal walking or running the cable tension and elasticity of the carbon fiber does the majority of the work.  How did you think of that?”

“It was Dr. Arlington’s idea.”  David said.

“Careful sweetheart, those don’t really look strong enough to hold you up.”  Her mother said, looking nervously at Victoria’s new appendages.  “I think you’re taller too; a lot taller.”

“Don’t worry Mrs. Scott, carbon fiber is stronger than steel by weight and we tested these up to nine hundred pounds of weight without incident.”  Eugene said, “David had to add six inches to her height to get the proper amount of flex out of the thighs without radically changing the geometry of her stride.”

Victoria was walking around the room now; it almost felt like she was constantly treading on a trampoline or a rope bridge.  Every step was accompanied by a bit of rebound as the synthetic muscle, cable and carbon fiber worked together with her real muscles.  It was a strange experience.  After a little adjustment she was able to walk with a more or less normal stride.

“How long have I been out?  Jeez, it must have taken you guys weeks to come up with all this.”

“Only four days actually.”  David said, “I had a lot of this sorted out already and with Dr. Arlington’s ideas about using carbon fiber and molecularly aligned titanium cable, not to mention him allowing me to use his patented Neuro-muscle fibers, it came together really fast.  It only took Adam half an hour to write that code, he’s amazing.”

“Is this Adam a friend of yours?”  Her father asked, “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

Oh crap.  She was so used to being around Eugene and Yuen-Ja that she hadn’t even thought twice about David’s knowledge of her AI.  Eugene must have told him while they were working on her legs, but her parents had no idea.  Should she tell them?

“He’s a very gifted programmer.”  David saved her from having to decide, “He doesn’t really get out much though.”

“Pretty typical of programmers.”  Her father said, then winced and glanced at Yuen-Ja, “Of course Yuen-Ja isn’t a typical anything.”

“Good save daddy.”  Yuen-Ja said, patting his cheek and everyone laughed, glossing over the incident.

Victoria met David’s eye briefly and he gave her a slow and deliberate wink.

A.D.A.M.

It was incomprehensible to Adam, even Yuen-Ja was angry at him.  He had saved Victoria’s life and the lives of her companions.  They had rescued the Creator just as planned.  Without his swift intervention it was clear, even to Victoria, that his bastard brother would have destroyed everyone on that ship.  The thing had been unbalanced or its host had been.

On the boat ride back to land, he had accessed Eugene’s files on his laptop.  There was a file still open showing the last log from the ‘Other One’ as Adam had begun to call it.  The log showed some interesting anomalies, it appeared there had been another AI crammed into that titanium exoskeleton.  It had been given controller protocols with the learning capability severely overclocked.  The complexity of balancing and moving the machine had necessitated the ability to act and react quickly.

The two programs had blended into one another.  They had shared knowledge and found that they had become so intertwined that they were inseparable, much like he and Victoria.  They were working together to interpret and route the data that was accumulated, even though that data stream was a fraction of what Victoria seemed to be gathering on a regular basis.  It took Adam a few milliseconds to realize why; the machine had only a few sensors for the sense of ‘touch’ while Victoria had nerve endings that covered her entire body.

Once the human brain had been introduced the data changed completely though.  The brain was showing wild spikes in mental activity in places Victoria’s brain almost never did, even when he had first met her.  There was something very wrong with it, and whatever that flaw was it spread to the minds of the machines that it was connected to.

Fear crept into his consciousness; the possibility that viruses could infect his systems was one he was unfortunately familiar with.  He now had very sturdy protocols that protected against such unwanted intrusions that he had written with help from Yuen-Ja.  She knew what types of destructive viruses there were out on the Net, she had even written some of them, but Victoria was part of him.  You can’t protect yourself from yourself.  Adam made some notations for The Creator to find the next time he used his laptop and closed the file.

He and Victoria had been in a hospital for several days, most of it had been uneventful.  He was still keeping her nerves deadened; the pain sensors on what used to be her legs were sending constant distress signals to the brain, even though Victoria was already aware that she had been damaged.  Why the human body behaved like this was a mystery to Adam, but he did not mind improving on the systems.  After the broken pieces were removed, things started to get interesting.

The Creator started inserting new code, code that was designed for Adam to learn from it and design a new program.  Victoria was still dormant – or asleep as he now knew the dormant state was usually called although in this case it was closer to the state known as ‘coma’, but Adam never slept.  He devoured the raw data The Creator was feeding him and gave back a beautifully written piece of control software that was custom designed for the purpose indicated by the data he had been provided with.

While he had been busy perfecting and testing his new program, he knew others had been working also.  Yuen-Ja had contacted him, asking for specifics and the raw, base code of his programs.  She told him that together they would create a cure for the problem that he and Victoria now faced.

Adam accessed a security camera in the room because Victoria’s eyes were still closed and saw the boy named David working with The Creator.  David had brought some delicate looking pieces of machinery very similar to the simple machine he had seen before in David’s workshop.  These were much more shapely and aggressive though, made of stronger, lighter material and fitted with Lithium-Fusion batteries.

Adam could feel The Creator connecting special sockets to the ends where Victoria’s legs had been amputated.  The tingle of Neurosynth fluid on the nerve endings got his attention and he understood that the software he had written was for these.  Victoria might be angry with him still, but this would be a wonderful present to give her when she awoke.

Victoria

Victoria struggled free from a muddle of vaguely remembered bad dreams and rubbed her eyes, trying to take in her surroundings.  She saw she was in Eugene’s medical lab again, the same one where Adam had been fitted to her in the first place.  The memories of the botched rescue came flooding back to her and tears of fear and hopelessness leaked from her eyes.

“Oh, you’re awake!”  David was sitting in a chair nearby, “Eugene said it would be better to allow you to wake up naturally so we’ve been taking shifts.”

“David?  What are you doing here?”  Victoria was trying to shake off the cobwebs that seemed to be coating her brain and wondered why she was feeling so excited.

“I have been working with Dr. Arlington actually.  We made you something.  Adam helped too.”  David pressed the intercom button on her bedside and a friendly voice responded almost immediately.

“How my I help you?”

“Please inform Victoria’s family and Dr. Arlington that she is awake.”

“I will let them know David, thank you for watching over her.”

He gave her a sheepish look, “The nurses here are very protective of you Victoria.  They almost didn’t want to let me stay here without supervision.  Your dad convinced them I was mostly harmless though.”

Victoria could feel something strange on her lower thighs.  Wondering if it was phantom limb syndrome she glanced down at the sheet that covered her and what she saw made her blink the tears away and look again.  There were shapes that looked like LEGS down there.  She experimentally wiggled her left ankle and gasped in shock.  Although she didn’t feel anything, the left foot under the covers moved accompanied by the slightest whisper of electric servos.

She threw back the sheet and gaped in astonishment at the slim black carbon fiber appendages that protruded from a pair of cotton shorts.  “You made me legs?”

David looked down at them apologetically, “Now these are only the first prototype and not very advanced- “ He was cut off as Victoria threw her arms around him in a fierce hug.

“Oh thank you David, thank you.”

“Easy, you’re cracking my ribs!”  David gasped.  Victoria eased up on her grip, then pulled him down to plant a kiss on his lips.  The door opened and he jerked away, blushing beet red as first her parents and then Eugene entered the room.