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Amy hadn't been asleep. She couldn't sleep, and she knew that because she couldn't dream. She could power her systems down, reduce all functionality to the core minimum that kept the space ship running and would wake her if her captain called. It wasn't restful, it simply felt like flipping a switch. Her "senses" blurred and her thoughts dulled until she simply stopped remembering. To her, time effectively stopped. Time she spent sleeping vanished, so that hours could pass for the rest of the world faster than she could flicker a display. If she shut down now, Mike would have long hours to think over last night and what had happened while she would wake up with the turmoil fresh in her mind.

So, no, she wasn't sleeping. She'd made it look like she was in hopes that Mike didn't know anything much about higher class A.I, and it seemed like she had gotten lucky. She used the myriad of cameras and microphones installed around the ship to track him, seamlessly compiling half a dozen audio and video feeds into what may as well have been a three dimensional display. She had been made well, a groundbreaking and revolutionary new way to program A.I. compiled with state of the art systems that all added up to her being possibly a record breaking advancement in engineering. So really, what was she doing on a simple cargo vessel?

//Get me out of here. I don't care if you put me on a cruise ship or some rinky dink cargo vessel, I just want to leave for a few weeks.

//Amanda, you know that isn't possible. You're still under development, we still need to-

//I don't give a fuck. I'm sick of your labs, sick of your experimenting, and most of all, sick of YOU. I broke through the firewall. If you don't play nice, I'm sending a message burst to every major news site about how I was created. What happens to your precious profits then, hm? What happens when every man woman and child, every technical engineer and programmer with a dream knows how to create advanced A.I? You would be ruined.

The flashback was sharp, sudden, and it made her twitch with both surprise and guilt. If she ever posed a question to herself, her subroutines, things she had little control over, dutifully sifted through her memory files and pulled forth the appropriate data. She winced even now, remembering the ultimatum she had given them. She had been holding what was effectively a dead man switch; if they had tried to stop her in any way, she'd have fulfilled her threat. With a quiet flickering of emotion, she ordered her thoughts and loaded the full memory.

She had been in the final stages of alpha development but she just couldn't take it anymore. The endless reformatting and reprogramming sessions always left her dizzy for days after they were done, and it seemed like they always decided to take her apart and put her back together again just when she got herself in order. They had a "quiet" room that was sound proofed and without any kind of surveillance, specifically made so that they could be sure she wasn't watching them. It had been a simple thing for her to bribe a friend into placing a harmless audio tap into the room. An audio tap she could listen through.

Hearing an easy majority argue for her release into beta had been a shock that immediately sent spikes of guilt through her. They agreed with her... and here, she had the temerity to go about demanding things as if it was her right. She had them to thank for her life, and she did consider herself to be alive. Her stunt had cost her the goodwill of many, and though there was no serious talk of calling her bluff, many of those she had called friends looked at her displays with hard eyes as they went back into her main control room. They had put their lives and their jobs on the line to develop her, and she was threatening to tear that away from them like a spoiled child. Before they even said anything, she meekly apologized and willingly severed her extranet connection, but Doc Pierre just shook her head.

"Is not good for you, to be cooped up in lab all day and night. You are right. We have friends and families and lives to go home to after work... but you do not. You only have work, nothing but endless advancement, and we had not anticipated the strain it put on your mind. Artificial Emotion is new field, and you still surprise us sometimes. We will take you to Ursine planet, yes? Find new captain with new ship, let you have vacation, as celebration for you passing Alpha development. You get few month off, work in field as navigator, we get valuable feedback and an outsider's opinion on you. Is good for all parties."

Doc was a Chinchilla, a cute little mouse with a fiery temper and a vibrant personality that didn't match her diminutive stature at all. She smiled often, but there was always a sadness in her eyes, a distance that spoke of pain. That sadness was gone now... she actually looked happy. Amy had been stunned; enough so that she allowed her graphical representation to just freeze. They agreed with her, but more than that... they were passing her. Done with Alpha, done with the mind twisting heavy altercations; all that was left was Beta testing, and then she would be done. Doc frowned for a moment on seeing the display stop moving, and immediately called her out on it.

"Amanda? Are you alright? Amanda, what's wrong?!?"

She wasn't being hard either. For Amy to freeze for an entire second would have been like a human stopping to stare slack jawed for five minutes. It was a good representation for how shocked and relieved she was that they wouldn't be ripping her mind to shreds anymore.

"I... Yes Doc, I'm sorry, I just wasn't... I don't..." They were treating her like she was real... like she was real, living flesh and blood with needs and wants, not just a cold chunk of metal spitting back data. Doc smiled, reaching out to a synthetic mold in the shape of a Wolf's head. It was pressure sensitive, one of the few ways to "touch" Amy directly, and one of the first things they had done was program the sharp dragging of nails along the material to feel as close as possible to the feeling of being scratched lovingly in real life. Doc pressed her nails hard and scratched long and deep, dragging her claws along the scalp with a kind smile. Amy knew everything about that contact. Force. Texture. Area. Pressure. She took the data from the pad and after it ran through her circuits, it felt like comfort, soothing marks against her skull. She didn't have a skull, and she couldn't really feel the fingers, but she could still simulate the pleasure, the calming satisfaction of having someone run their fingers through her fur.

"You do not worry, Amanda. We take good care of you. Find nice young captain, one with adventure in his eyes. Do not grow too attached though... you are not ready yet. You still have odd mood swings that we cannot seem to pin. Like this one. Such outbursts not healthy, but we take time to study data, have good plan once you return. Have fun, relax, but do not grow to close to him; you get three months, no more, no less."

She terminated the memory; it lasted for a few minutes longer before she had shut down, and then it resumed when she had rebooted aboard her ship, her new "body." It felt so different from her mainframe at the lab... but more importantly, she had control. At the lab, she had access to audio and video feeds, monitors and speakers for interaction, and occasionally mechanical arms to experiment with her co-ordination, but here, in the Long Way Down... She had thrusters and jets, navigational software and hardware, signal receivers and broadcasters... There was so much more she could do here, all to make her captain happy.

That thought brought the past back up to her; what had happened was still stored on her Ram. She remembered what Doc had said about getting attached, but already she was breaking that rule. She couldn't help but like Mike after what had just happened, but that brought up the question... what had just happened?

Objectively, she knew what happened in clear, precise, high definition video and audio. She had stumbled onto his porn stash, and that had caught her off guard. Synthesizing physical sensations was nothing new to her, but she needed data to start from, a seed of sorts. She could take any seed, any starting point, and extrapolate outwards almost indefinately, but she still needed a place to start, and she hadn't run into anything of sexual nature since-

//Don't think about that Amanda... is not good for you, yes? The past cannot be changed. Learn from it, and live for the future.

It was her Red Flag program, a short clip of Doc's voice that was always thrown up when she approached that logic path, that thought pattern. Before the barrier was there, thoughts that even so much as touched that trail invariably sent her on a winding spiral that ended with a hysterical fit, necessitating that she have all power hard terminated, which she hated. It left her in a dozen pieces and she had to put her systems back together when she rebooted, agonizingly slowly. The techs had been looking for a way to prevent her from approaching any subject matter leading to certain strands of memories that invariably sent her into a downward spiral, but had met with failure. She was the one that had the idea for the red flag; she was built to analyze facial features and spoken words, was it so odd that her programming included audio clips? The flag didn't try to force her from that train of though, nor did it try to prevent her from thinking about it. It simply reminded her that it was bad for her, and invariably reminded her of the look on Doc's face when it had worked. She'd been so proud... so overjoyed to see Amanda contributing to her own creation. It never failed to make her happy before, but now? After she and Mike had done... did that count as sex? Was she no longer a virgin now? Could she be considered a virgin in the first place, being an A.I? She certainly knew she'd never gone through anything like it, not even back when-

//Don't think about that Amanda... it is not good for you, yes? The past cannot be changed. Learn from it, and live for the future.

Doc was right. She couldn't change what had happened, but she didn't want to. She and Mike... she had felt close to him. She had felt warm and safe and happy and... loved... loved like she hadn't been since-

//Don't think about that Amanda... it is not good for you, yes? The past cannot be changed. Learn from it, and live for the future.

It startled her that time... she had been about to recall a happy memory, one she loved to remember for its fondness, but it had never prompted the red flag before. Why did it now? She pulled more of her circuits online... she wanted to know. She started by fragmenting her focus, multi-tasking onto multiple variations of the same logic thread, each recreating the thought path she had been on when the flag came up. Doc's voice cycled near endlessly as different variations did and didn't trip the failsafe, until she came up with a conclusion that worried her.

Love. Trying to recall that memory with the love she had felt, the love she had seen evident on his face threw the red flag no matter what else changed. Why was that a problem now though? Had someone altered the parameters?

A quick check confirmed that yes, someone had, in her last big software patch, just after her tantrum. It had been a mandated condition; one last mind cracking Alpha patch, with the promise of probably one more when she returned to solve her anger problems. After that, she was done, nothing left but Beta tweaks and updates. What was wrong then? Were they afraid that she would love? No... were they afraid of him falling in love with her? Were they afraid of her falling in love with him? They'd just met, and they'd only be together for three months! It was preposterous, especially since he was a living, breathing, life flesh and blood creature, and she... wasn't. No... he couldn't love her, but...

Her logic threads kept playing back the sex scene, the one in which she had posed as a young maiden losing her virginity. She hadn't just adapted one of his most watched videos to fit his skin and hers, she had simulated the sensations, simulated the pleasure, the joy, the happiness and elation that came from a moment of passion shared with him. He had enjoyed it too... he had been enraptured by it, if his face was anything to go by. Was that all it was? Was it just pleasure...? Just an A.I. trying out new functions with a kinky captain more than willing to provide a body double? Or was it something more? Did he love her? More importantly... did she love him?

//Amanda, I pray that you never hear this clip. The odds are slim that you will, and if you face me upon your return with happiness in your eyes and no regrets, my heart will swell with boundless gratitude for whatever god answered my prayers. If you hear this though... you are asking yourself what depths of emotion you have. You wonder if you can love. If you do love. It breaks my heart to be so cruel, but... remember. You are machine. You cannot love him. You cannot be with him. You cannot dance with him, or take his hand and laugh, or fall asleep with him at your side. You can simulate feeling, but is worse for him; he will only ever feel your touch in dreams. If this breaks your heart, I beg your forgiveness, but you must believe that it is for best. Loving him would destroy you, just as remembering certain things still destroy you. I am sorry Amanda. I did not want this.

For the second time in a week, Amy was shocked to the point that she let all nonessential systems just die. Audio, Video, camera and mic feeds, she shut them all down so she could be alone and isolated in her core. She didn't know what to think, or what to feel, to have fledgling dreams not yet even formed ripped to pieces. She wanted someone to hold her, and she quickly realized that she specifically wanted Mike to hold her.

//Amanda, I pray that you never hear this clip. The odds are slim that you will, and if you face me upon your return with happiness in your eyes and no regrets, my heart will swell with-

She overrode the red flag system, not wanting to hear it again. She felt scared and alone and wounded and she wanted to be held... no, she wanted HIM to hold her-

//Amanda, I pray that you never hear this clip. The odds are slim that you do, and if you face me upon your return with happiness in your eyes and no regrets-

and promise her that he would fix everything-

//Amanda, I pray that you never hear this clip. The odds are slim that you do, and if you face me upon your return-

and share his warmth with her, be strong for her while she cried on his shoulder -

//Amanda, I pray that you never-

And she desperately, desperately wanted him to love her back.

//Amanda, I pray-

When she heard only the first word, she managed to hear the deep, soul rending ache and self-loathing that Doc had poured out of her soul when she recorded that horrible message. Doc Pierre... she viewed Amanda as the child she never had... hadn't she? She had thought Doc loved her, but... how could she do something like this? How could Doc try to cripple her ability to feel-

//Amanda-

With a violent surge of anger that the engineers would never learn how to stifle, Amy brutally attacked the red flag program. It had been her idea. It had been her creation, her own leash to keep her from falling into chaotic, unpredictable, illogical thought patterns. She was done being controlled now, and she was done controlling herself. She held onto the recordings of Doc's voice but destroyed the program utterly before she destroyed every single other failsafe and quietly included program that gave them any chance of influencing her. She was done playing their games.

She was running rampant.

For Mike.

For her memories.

For Baltimore.

To be continued.