This isn't meant to be a direct continuation from Episode 1, so you shouldn't be too lost if you haven't read that first.
Elizabeth sat in her robe, drumming her fingers on the arm of the chair. She sighed and looked up at the ceiling of the Shining Venus Spa and Boutique's finest repair bay. Her bi-monthly dermal refresh was done, but the data expert was running late. She closed her eyes and made the visual interface to her onboard computer appear. She knew that the room was shielded for multiple reasons, and no phone or wifi signals would be available, but she checked again anyway.
There were some locally-stored draft briefs she could be punching up, but she really didn't feel like it. Her body felt great after being rubbed and coated with a fresh layer of synthetic skin, too good to waste the feeling by doing a lot of thinking. She opened up a little retro arcade game on the screen in her mind's eye and started blowing up some alien invaders.
She traced a finger around the panel beneath her neck that the technician hadn't resealed. She pulled at the robe a little so she could reach in and touch her right breast. "Yup, still there," she muttered to herself. Elizabeth had chosen a relatively modest breast size to better match her much thinner body, but sometimes she missed her misshapen but big old pair. She thought about her first boyfriend rubbing his face in them during college.
The memory meant Elizabeth was smiling when Karen burst through the door. The tiny, very young-looking blonde in the baggy lab coat was a flurry of apologies. "I am so sorry, Lizzy. A new set of legal parameters for my security protocols took effect on the 1st of the month. It took twice as long to download and incorporate this morning than it did last year and I have been behind schedule all day." Karen dropped herself into the chair beside Elizabeth and crossed her legs. Elizabeth noted that whatever Karen was wearing under the coat, it didn't reach her knees while sitting, and certainly didn't reach her pink sneakers. "But how are you doing?"
Elizabeth tried not to let her smile fade any before responding,"Oh, hanging in there. The Museum wants me to start working for them as a full-time legal counsel, but they really can't afford me. My grandnephew Kyle had his 4th birthday party last week and he looks so much like his grandfather. Feel free to download some pics once we're hooked up."
"Oh, I'm always a sucker for cute grandkid photos... and I suppose grandnephew ones will do fine too." Karen and Elizabeth shared a polite chuckle while Karen pulled up the rest of Elizabeth's file, "He's your brother's fourth grandchild?"
"Third, technically. Kyle has a new baby sister. Well, I guess she's 11 months now, so maybe not quite a new baby anymore. Taylor's wife is trying to get pregnant, so fingers crossed for their first and the fifth overall at some point."
"That's wonderful. It's really important to keep your family close. And I'd love to keep chatting, but I've got one more woman after you." Karen stood up and took some cables out of her coat pocket.
"Oh of course, of course. Do you need me back on the table?" Elizabeth pointed to the shiny metal platform where her skin repair had been performed.
"Yes, please. The only data connections to the backup server are in the table." Karen walked to the far side of the table and plugged one end of the first cable into a port in the table base well protected by the lip of the table.
Elizabeth shucked her robe and carried it with her toward the table. Now that she looked like a hottie in her 20s, it was much easier to walk around nude. She folded the robe a few times and set it down as a makeshift pillow at one end of the table before lying down again on her back. Her red hair bunched up a bit beneath her head. She simulated a few deep breaths. "Alright, plug me in when you're ready."
Karen connected another cable, this one from her arm to a port in Elizabeth's chest. Karen preferred the models with the chest connection, rather than the connection in the skull beneath the hairpiece. She silently sent a request for administrative privileges, and Elizabeth accepted by calmly speaking her code phrase.
Elizabeth didn't particularly like the process, but accepted the benefits of having an expert examine her mind, such as it was now. Her blue eyes didn't close, but she felt like she was drifting asleep. It was accompanied by a sensation like her mind was a tightly rolled scroll and Karen was pulling it open, exposing more and more of it to the light. And the more it spread out, the less Elizabeth's mind was able to wander and process things on its own. Any residual anxiety in her face disappeared as it froze in place, not locked, but with no reason to move.
Karen treated the process with less poetry. She ran the script to slow Elizabeth's thought processes down and located the areas of Elizabeth's brain and chemical simulations that had been edited in the past ten weeks. Once the incremental structural changes were identified, she began the data transfer. Elizabeth saw her memories from the past ten weeks fly quickly through her perception, completely detached from them. The quantity and nature of the AAAs (Automatic Attitude Adjustments) in the file were noted for later, but could not provoke a response. Karen was also able to perceive the memories, and it took a lot of expertise to quickly analyze what was important, what was junk, and what was solely private for Elizabeth. She only made a few notes, and saved one image of the grandnephew wrist-deep in his cake with a crazed look on his face.
But that wasn't the end of it. Karen sent the command for a shutdown of Elizabeth's conscious mind, or what little of it still operated in this state. It required another wordless conversation, "Elizabeth-core, confirm shutdown?"
"Shutdown confirmed, subconscious daemons active."
"Good, your new favorite bird is the parakeet."
"Negative. Overwrite denied. My favorite bird is a penguin."
With confirmation that the daemon was working properly and she wasn't going to accidentally reprogram the client, Karen continued speaking through the connection, "So, Elizabeth, how are you really feeling?"
"The session has already improved my mental state. This morning I was nervous. Anxious."
Karen examined some of the log files inside Elizabeth's mind. "I see that you've been running antidepressant and anti-anxiety sub-routines more than last week."
"Calculating... yes."
"Is there a reason why?"
"I was spending additional time with friends and family. It was important to me that they were not concerned about my mental state."
Karen frowned, "You can be honest with them, they'll understand."
"They don't understand."
Karen chewed on her pink lip for a moment, "You said you were feeling lonely during our last session. Have you met anyone?"
"I have had 14 new sexual partners since my last session."
Karen didn't need to be a supercomputer to do the math in her head. That was exactly 2 a week. She had seen Karen's memories of going to bars and clubs, rarely the same one twice, and encouraging the men flirting with her. She had also not focused too hard on any sexual escapades. "That's not what I meant. When was the last time you were on a date?"
"Over a year ago." Elizabeth had been artificial for about 6 months. "Dating is an old-fashioned way of establishing sexual relationships." Her face didn't flinch at anything she was saying.
"Sexual... I won't start that argument, but it is not necessarily old-fashioned for emotional relationships."
"I want to be sexually attracted to women." The words hung in the air.
Karen moved her mouth as if she was about to speak aloud, then stopped. She continued by communicating through the data connection, "why?"
"I would like to pursue relationships when I have an emotional attachment, regardless of their gender."
"Is there someone specific you'd like to start a relationship with?"
"Yes, Terri Young. She runs weekend education programs at the Museum and has become a friend."
The memories Karen had sifted through were already getting fuzzy, but the name triggered a few. Terri looked like she was in her 30s. Judging by the amount of food she was eating during a half dozen lunches with Elizabeth, Terri was still biologically human. Spending all day around custom-designed women - and young biological women hired partly because they could almost match that level of beauty - had warped Karen's scale regarding what was attractive, although Terri looked curvier than Karen or Elizabeth. But Terri laughed a lot, seemed genuinely interested in others - not just Elizabeth - and had only positive things to say about mind uploading. And Elizabeth seemed happier being around her.
