Here is the latest installment. Poor Jon finds another poor soul joining his little harem of eager beauties while his new found ability grows.
I hope you enjoy. Please vote and comment and as always suggestions are welcome.
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[This takes place during the time Nick made his first journey to Japan and meets Akira]
[The term technomancy refers to an imaginary or fictional category of magical abilities that affect technology, or to magical powers that are gained through the use of technology.]
[In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits (sometimes referred to simply as "familiars") were supernatural entities believed to assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic.]
Revelations:
I had four pairs of eyes on me. The twins, Veronika and Elizabeth were gawking at the sight of the disappearing drone. I was thinking of how to explain this whole thing in a clear concise manner before the barrage of questions began.
"Before any of you say a word, I need a drink," I said and they all agreed.
We stepped inside and I opened the mini fridge and took out a bottle of soda and the girls helped themselves. I sat near the fire and they formed a line opposite of me and patiently waited for me to collect my thoughts. I decided to bring everyone up to speed from the beginning and leave little or nothing out.
"Okay you know I work for Nick," I said to the Twins and Veronika and they nodded. "I work for Nick Shaw, have you ever heard of him?" I asked Elizabeth and she shook her head. "Alright, have you ever heard of Numenor Technology?" Again she shook her head. "Okay, I will start from the very beginning then. There were four guys who were going to school together, the Bastion if I remember correctly. Anyway in their freshman year they decided to form a partnership and design a new and better computer. A pipe dream huh, well they actually did it. Somehow they managed to develop a stable crystal mainframe. I can see you aren't getting this so let me show you."
I brought up a hologram of a standard silicon chip and then floating next to that one of Nick's crystal chips.
"See this one is a regular chip and the one with the blue sparkly thing is one of Nick's."
"Okay, I see the difference but I still don't understand the difference," Elizabeth said.
"We all have to start somewhere. Just to give you an idea of how much better they are. A standard silicon chip will have a processing speed around four gigabytes one of Nick's has over ten terabytes. It takes over a thousand gigs to make a terabyte," I said letting the numbers sink in.
"Wait, you are telling me this new chip is thousands of times faster?"
"Yep, so fast in fact they can support digital constructs or avatars. In other words they have artificial intelligence on board."
"You mean like HAL from that movie?"
"Yep, but unlike HAL they have built in morality subroutines that would keep them from doing anything remotely dangerous to humans. Any questions Liz?"
"So far so good," she said with a smile. "Please continue."
"They went from nobodies to multi-billionaires overnight. Selling to governments and fortune one hundred corporations they hit the jackpot. They are growing so fast they offered me a position in the company after I bought a watch from them. It has its own avatar and can access the web, store massive amounts of files, project holograms as well as acts as a phone."
"So that's how you did those pictures in the air," Liz asked and I nodded. "It can do it even when it's turned off?"
"Huh, what do you mean off?" I asked and looked down to see that she was right.
The face of the watch was dark and suddenly I wondered what had happened to Umbra. I hit the power button and the device stuttered to life reluctantly.
"Umbra, are you okay?"
"MASTER! Where are you Master?"
"Umbra, show yourself now!"
She did but she appeared on the ground in a fetal position hugging herself. I dropped down to one knee next to her and reached for her.
"NO... don't touch me! Oh Master it's you I am sorry."
"What the hell is wrong with you Umbra? What can I do to help?"
"TOO MUCH... I can't get it out of my mind... too many dimensions!"
"Oh shit," I cursed. "Umbra I am giving you a direct command. Are you listening?"
"Yes Master... direct command... I understand..."
"I want you to delete every memory after we located the chair's secret, do you understand? I want you to permanently delete all those files now."
"Mummy... chair... secret... yes I understand. Command authorization Jon Masters file purge initiated... reboot required... please standby."
She disappeared and I hoped she didn't delete too much. We waited for a long moment before the watched restarted and Umbra appeared standing in front of me looking around confused.
"Master? I seem to have lost many hours of time. Ah you authorized memory deletion... did something bad happen?"
"Yes and don't worry everything is okay now," I reassured her.
"Good, you seem well and oh hello," she said seeing the girls staring at her. "Master, they are staring at me."
"They've never seen a gorgeous hologram before," I told her.
"You think I'm gorgeous, how sweet," Umbra blushed. "Master thinks I'm gorgeous..."
"Um Umbra a little help here," I said bringing her out of her reverie.
"Sorry Master," she said lowering her head. "How can I be of service?"
"I was explaining Numenor Technology to them. The probe showed up and well..."
"Ah yes, where shall I begin?"
"How about in simple terms explain your function and origin."
"Very well, my name is Umbrakhor or Umbra as Master Jon likes to call me. I am a digital construct or avatar based off of a quantum crystalline mainframe..."
"What is a quantum... what is that?" Veronika asked.
"Sorry Lady Veronika, traditional computers are limited to a linear search pattern for all of their processes."
She displayed a line of ones and zeroes and they went from red to blue one after the other.
"Quantum computers like myself are not limited to that we can search in three dimensions."
Umbra displayed a 3D cube and filled it with red ones and zeroes. Then like a lightning strike a blue line of numbers appeared from top left to bottom right.
"This allows for much quicker computing power. Our crystal acts more like the human brain than anything else. We create pathways to desired information and can access it instantly."
"You mean like memories?" Carol asked.
"Exactly, but unlike humans we never forget. We do not shuffle files around as we have a much larger capacity than any other computer. We can do trillions of calculations a second and learn just like our human Masters."
"Don't you feel trapped serving someone?" Liz asked.
"I don't understand the question," Umbra asked blinking her eyes a few times. "Are you asking if I feel resentment for being a slave?" Liz nodded and she continued. "Do you regret being the child of your parents or being female? I am what I am and proud to serve so notable a person as Jon Masters."
"What is so notable about Jon," Colleen asked curious now.
"He is the General Manager for Numenor Technology; there are few people above him in the company that makes him quite notable."
