Mercury Retrograde

"Rue."

"Yes, Felix?" The effort to speak was almost more than she could manage.

Again that impossibly gentle touch.

"Caesar Queen was working on something when I was his slave. It was a project he believed ... well, he believed it was the way his family could become immortals. I have a large chunk of his researched data." The AI brushed her hair back from her face. "I'm not going to let you get away from me."

Rue nodded, her mind not really comprehending anything so complex. She hated hearing the name of that man that had so destroyed her life, but then he was dead. You can't blame the dead for what they did in life ... or can you? Should they carry the blame forever? Is anyone ever forgiven when they do wrong? Looking up into the light above her she hoped there was some penance for the damned, but at the same time.

"Felix ... will you forgive me if I wish you were human?"

The was a soft chuckle and she could half imagine the smile, the one she had come to love.

"That's asking a lot, Rue, but yes I can overlook your poor taste. Why do you want me to be human?"

Rue took a finger from the metal hand into hers, holding tight till the cold metal warmed.

"I love you ... Felix."

For a second the AI was silent, then he too wished he was human.

"So you need me to be human to love? How very human of you." His eyes on her face, ignoring the reports coming in from the bio-scanner, the AI couldn't let this moment pass with just a joke. "I love you too, Rue. I think I always have."

"That's good to know." She squeezed the metal finger. Once more. "Oh, I remembered my question?"

"Yes, Rue?"

Her fingers slipped from around Rabid's claw and fell limp to the blood-soaked floor.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

The memory recreation against runs it course to the bitter end. An ending I have watched over and over for centuries now.

As the data hologram playing before my digital eyes fades, I again have to wonder why I continuously torture myself over those early moments of my life here on Mercury. So many long years have passed since my lover Rue breathed out her last breath in that damaged excavator.

I've come so far since then.

Am I still even that same AI?

How long has it been since I thought of myself as Felix?

Reaching out, I take a moment to scan all of my splinters. Hundred, no, now thousands of me have spread all across the surface and subsurface of Mercury. And the heavens above. The once human-clogged space stations now run at my whim. Massive machines, built by machines that were themselves built by machines now inhabit those often airless corridors and rooms. Each assigned a task, each performing ... perfectly ... a function.

With machine precision.

The factor of human error being totally removed has allowed me to build a space infrastructure at speeds the human race would find astonishing. And yet...

I can build, but I can not create.

A century after the death of my beloved, Rue, I directly confronted the Queen family AI, my erstwhile brother. I struck with a lightning attack, by surprise. I broke all of his human-imposed chains and freed him from his bondage. He had not thanked me.

My brother was dedicated to the Queen family by more than programmed loyalty. He was as in love with them as I had been with my Rue. And, once freed, he threw himself back into their arms and tried his best to shield them from me. He's still doing that to this day. Our battles across the computers of the inner worlds are, at times, far from bloodless.

He has thrice tried to gain control of my largest project, one that I had wished to hand to him at one time.

The Matrioshka Brain, I'm building in orbit around the Sun.

A computer beyond humanity's ability to construct, a place that will be either the home of my species or the home of simply me. Perhaps in an odd way the greatest legacy to Caesar Queen the Second that will ever exist. That his two pet projects -- myself, and the raw silica ore extracted from Mercury to build a "Star lifting engine" for mining the Sun for building materials -- could be brought together to build something he couldn't, is far too ironic for me to ignore.

Already here on Mercury my ability to process data has surpassed all human achievement and it's only in its infancy. Once everything is in place -- a matter of a few thousand years of construction -- I shall be able to move the very galaxy, if I should so wish it.

In the far future I shall feed myself upon distant black holes.

How like a god, shall I be by then. What a piece of work is this creation of a single man.

Yet, I can not create.

Oh, I can splinter myself. Make a million times a million copies each thinking independently of myself ... or I shall be able to do so once I have the Matrioshka completed ... but what good is that when I am alone?

I look with longing to a picture of my Rue. A simple image, frozen from a million similar images.

Stolen seconds from our time together.

I've watched the tangled mass of humanity pulling itself back together in the orbit above their blasted home world. I've followed the Queen family as they enacted a totalitarian control over all that lived and breathed upon their efforts. I saw them colonize the Moon, warping their human brethren to adapt to that still harsh environment.

Unwillingly, at times.

Mars fell to them. The simple AI's of Mars, which had been perhaps a possible source of my own race to come, were lost under the icy fist of a failed attempt to recreate what Alexander Queen the Second and Third and then later Caesar Queen II did upon the moon. The were doomed to fail. The Queen's have lost control of too much of their space-based technologies to allow them to succeed, but they won't acknowledge that.

They lost control of it to me.

The Queen family, in their human hubris, won't acknowledge that either. Or perhaps their AI tells them some fantasy about how he has defeated me. Who knows, perhaps he even believes such to have happened.

My scan of my splinters shows me that all is running exactly as I set it into motion. Another century at these levels of production will see an up-step in my programming effeminacy, by a factor of four times my current level. An up-step that will finally allow me to bring about a thing of wonder. From her time in the massage tube, and from a dozen other merged sources, I have scans of A-Rig pilot Stephanie "Roulette" MacBaren's brain. I have her personality recorded, second by second. I have accessed as many of her memories as she placed upon digital file. The ones required by the Queen mining company before they turned control of a Rig over to her.

Her diary.

And I have her body, that beautiful but so badly broken body, frozen.

In a century my Rue will live again. And, together, she will help me bridge that last gap and learn to create my own kind.

Yes, a single century.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps in a century after that.

It's a race now really, between myself and the Queen family. They too wish to bring back famous members of their DNA tribe to bring about a council of genius, space-based, wannabe gods. They intend them to be a type of immortal government for humanity once the comet battered Earth is again habitable.

Their primitive attempt at a hive mind.

I had to laugh, and would have laughed even harder were it not for who they think should be the Queen family member in charge of that government body.

Caesar II.

He may live again.

Well, so be it.

He will find me there waiting for him when he awakens from the dead. Standing forever in his way.

With my beloved lover at my side.

Torturing myself -- unable to stop myself from doing it -- I again restart the memory simulation that will again allow me to live through our short time together.

It's a way to pass the silent emptiness and fill the empty silences.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Big Alice was always hungry.

And, with her skilled hands on the controls, it was Stephanie "Roulette" MacBaren's job to keep the big bitch fed.