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Uncle

He looked at his reflection. An antiquated term for something that no longer used reflected light to show him his face. The face of the body he inhabited.

He smiled, and the lips moved accordingly. His studied his blue-gray eyes. The color had an actual name, 'livid' but he preferred blue-gray. He liked the duality it implied.

The duality he represented. An AI created from a living brain. That brain had died a long time ago, and he'd lost most memories of it, but he remembered there had been a living person before he existed.

And now, here he was, in a body, moving its 'muscles,' seeing through its 'eyes,' sensing through its 'senses.' It was a marvel of technology.

But it wasn't enough.

He wasn't angry about it. Until a few weeks ago he hadn't even known he had been missing something, so he couldn't blame the scientists for not realizing it was missing.

He picked up the glass, and knew exactly how much pressure he was applying, how much the polycarbonate deformed under it. He knew the temperature, could feel it change as the hot liquid warmed it. He could register thousands of details about it.

What he couldn't do was feel the glass.

He took a sip of the liquid, and knew the exact chemical composition of the coffee, knew what aromatic compounds it dispersed as it evaporated.

What he couldn't do was taste it.

He'd known what he experienced through the artificial body's senses wasn't the same as what the living did, but until recently, that had been an academic difference, since he hadn't known what 'touching' and 'tasting' had been like. He sat down, closed his eyes and disengaged from the body.

He was back within the system. He'd never noticed a difference between being in his body and being here before. Again, he hadn't known there should be a difference.

He brought up the memory from the two sentries he'd left guarding the Terraforming plans that had been brought to Mars for the conference.

He removed the sensory input. He had already gone over it multiple times, and still couldn't explain how it had happened. The sentries had been him, reduced, so how had they known things he didn't? Did it mean there were parts of his programming he didn't know existed, and therefore couldn't access willingly?

Had they come from the other AI? A third AI within the Mars systems. One that, other than the sensory data, had left nothing of itself. There had been a fourth, but since it hadn't interacted with him, he only had a vague sense of it.

Four AIs within one system, at the same time. Four AIs he hadn't known existed, one of which should have been dead. He'd studied the remnants of the code within the chimera AI, and it had been that of the AI he had detected within the earth systems a hundred seventy-three years ago, and immediately destroyed.

How had it migrated to Mars? There hadn't been a system complex enough there for an AI to function back then. And there was no way it could have fooled him into thinking it was destroyed when it wasn't.

No, something else had happened here. It wasn't allied with the chimera. But was it allied with the other two? If so, how? Where had they come from? Who could have built them without him knowing about them? No one on Earth had, no one even bothered trying anymore, not after all the work he'd put into convincing the living it was just impossible to make an AI.

The Independents certainly weren't capable of making one, even the miners didn't allow themselves the level of technology needed to research AIs.

He filed that line of thought for later when he had nothing better to do since he knew nothing would come from it. He lacked information. He'd scoured the Mars system for any indication of the two unknown AIs, but there was nothing. They had probably been destroyed by the chimera during their war.

Without knowing what to look for in regards to them, he couldn't tell what remnants were from them and what was from the chimera.

And then, because he couldn't help himself, he replayed the sex his sentry had with the AI. He let it overwhelm him. Let both orgasms fry his thought process, leave him panting, his surrounding disrupted by what he'd felt, the intensity of it.

It felt just as intense now as the first time he'd experienced it accidentally when he'd reintegrated the memories before leaving Mars. He'd been within the navigation system when it happened, and the disruption had caused minutes of delays.

He reorganized the entertainment library and filed the experience away to compare it to the other. Not that he expected to find any differences. It seemed to ignore that he had changed between events. He'd talk with all his family about orgasm, he'd even talked with people outside his family.

One detail he'd noted early on was how no two orgasm was ever the same. Even when the same people were involved, they didn't feel exactly the same, they had other thoughts, were distracted.

He wasn't a program, he was a free-thinking being, so he should be able to experience the sex they had without being overtaken. He should be able to observe it without participating.

Great, he was starting to obsess about this, again. He chuckled. "Why should I be surprised about that? I am an Orr, am I not?"

Nothing answered him. Maybe he could tell his family he was becoming as obsessed with sex as they all were. Not that he could actually say that. He didn't want to have sex. He wanted to understand why this sequence of event affected him the way it did.

Hadn't he said he was filing this away?

So, on to Theodore, who was linked to the AIs in some way since he carried his own AI with him. That made five AIs, on Mars at the same time. The chimera was unrelated to the others, but still left four of them. And Theo had worked with one of them.

He'd provided the program that the AI had used to destroy the chimera, sacrificing itself in the process. The thought made him feel queasy. The idea that an AI would know self-sacrifice bothered him.

That another AI knew it. He knew self-sacrifice, but he wasn't certain he'd be able to do it. He had evidence that even the incident before the cataclysm hadn't been self-sacrifice. He'd stored a copy of himself throughout the system, and that had gotten corrupted somehow, which led to him losing a lot of his history.

He was annoyed his interrogation had been interrupted. Now he wouldn't be able to get his answers unless he asked politely, and he didn't think Theo would give them to him.

He was loyal, and he had to respect that.

He shifted through the system until he was before an information bubble. Trevor was up, and as usual he was spending his time searching the ship's system.

"Trevor, we need to talk."

"I don't think I should let you in. Not too sure how safe that is. You might want to take away more of my access privilege."

"Trevor, you know very well that if that was the case, I wouldn't need to come in. You're the only one I get to talk to face to face here, please let me in."

The texture of the information changed, letting him know he was allowed in. He stepped through and found himself inside the cockpit of a ship. It wasn't the Mercury. The controls looked old, levers and buttons.

"You changed the look again." He caught his reflection on one of the dark screen, the one Trevor used to access 'The Lands of Farr'. Transit didn't make for an interesting play experience Trevor had told him when he'd asked why he shut it down when traveling.

"Finnegan gave me access to this antique model he built."

"The Columbia shuttle?"

"You helped him I take it?"

"Yeah, I'm better at system search than he is, and I have an easier time sneaking through the other corporation's borders."

"Well, looking it over made me want to see what I could come up with in that style. I'm not going to keep it."

He placed a hand on Trevor's arm and felt the fur. He ran it up the arm, and he knew it was soft. He didn't know it because of pressure data, texture analysis, he just knew it. If only he could get this to carry over to his body.

"You know, Uncle, you weren't this physical before." Trevor smiled at him and cupped his cheek.

He felt the hand moved through his fur, and knew from observation, that with his family it often engendered an emotional response making them close their eyes and lean into the hand. He could imitate it, but he didn't. He didn't want to give lies to his family, that felt wrong.

"I obtained new data on Mars, and I'm exploring the ramifications."

"Really?" Trevor put his other hand on his cock and squeezed. "Does that mean sex is a possibility?"

He felt the hand stroke his cock, and it felt nice. He could make it stiffen. He could get an erection. He could have sex with Trevor here. They were both 'real' to each other, but it would be another lie.

The sensation didn't come with the corresponding responses. As much as he reacted to the sex when he used the memory, nothing of it stayed. The 'programming' didn't stick.

"Not yet I'm afraid. I haven't quite cracked the 'how I should feel' part of the equation."

"Alright," Trevor sat in the command chair. Something bulky with hard angles on the outside. He was hard as usual. And he probably didn't even realize it. "What do you want to talk about?" he indicated a second chair that had just appeared.

"Do you mind if I change it? It doesn't look comfortable."

"Go ahead."

It shimmered as he sat, becoming the plush chair he used in his office environment.

"So, what's my punishment?" Trevor asked.

"I'm not going to punish you for breaking my encryption. I'm just going to improve them. But Trevor, you shouldn't have told your father."

"Come on, Uncle, you knew I would. You wouldn't have made the encryption so tough otherwise. He's family, he's my brother, dad had to know."

"I would have told him."

"When?"

"When I had the answers we need."

"What would have been left of him?"

"Come on, Trev, you know I'd never hurt one of you."

Trevor made a gesture, and a screen appeared between them. "How about a game?" 'I will not lie,' appeared on the screen. Right side to him so there was no doubt as to the intent. "When did Theo become family?"

With a wave he removed the screen. "Really, Trevor?"

"Come on, Uncle, we've worked together, you taught me a lot of what I know. I know you. I know how you tend to see rules as nothing more than suggestions. So a bit of honesty here. If I hadn't told dad. What would have happened to Theo?"

"I wouldn't have hurt him."

"No, of course not. That's exactly why you had Brick there with you, because he so loves to care and cuddle Independents. Brick's a wreck, by the way. He's been in bed hugging Brack since dad kicked him out of your room."

"I'll talk with him. Reassure him your father isn't going to castrate him for following my orders."

"So you haven't answered--"

"Alright, alright. You're right. I would have kept his parentage to myself, but I'm not sure you understand what Theo represents."

"A screw-up in the fertility clinic's system?"

"Something worse than that."

"What can be worse than the clinic's mixing up people's sperms?"

He kept his face blank. The advantage he had over the living was a complete lack of pre-programmed responses to stimulus. The same issue that meant he didn't have sex, meant he had an exceptional poker face.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"No. And I'd like to have your word you're going to stay out of my vaults in the future."

Trevor smiled.

He knew that smile. It was the one Trevor got when he saw a challenge coming.

He sighed. "You're on vacation, Trevor."

"I'm an investigator, Uncle. You know I can't stay away from a locked vault, especially not one of yours."

"Do you have any idea what the department is going to say when they find out you spend your vacation time working?"

Trevor shrugged. "What can they do? Fire me? Then all I'll do is do this as a private investigator, and then no one is going to be able to force me to take a vacation when they feel I'm overworking myself."

He sighed. "You're a workaholic."

"Like basically everyone in my family, including you."

"I'm an AI, I don't need rest. If I give you questions I have for Theo, can you--"

"No. I'm not going to interrogate him for you. He's my brother. And I don't think he's the bad guy you imagine."

"I never said he was a 'bad guy.' Unlike your father and Brick, I have no preconceptions about Independents. I take each and every one of them independently, like their name implies."

"Yes, well, that's nice. Unlike you and me, the others don't have that easy access to the available information. They have to go with their experience, and considering what Paco's done to us over the years, you can't blame them for how they feel."

"I don't, you know that. And for what it's worth. Theo did save the city. Without his actions I'm not sure I could have stopped the chimera."

"So he didn't con dad and Tuck into helping him get into that building so he could advance their plan? He really wasn't in league with them?"

"He isn't. Tucker didn't believe that."

"That was partially because he didn't want to think he wanted to bone one of the enemies."

"That doesn't usually stop him."

"Yeah, but they don't usually come across as world destroying masterminds."

"I'm not sure knowing that is going to help your father. Theo still lied to him."

"Yeah. I have no idea how that's going to play out. I mean dad's got to understand Theo had no reason to be honest. It isn't like the previous times, but yeah. Now it turns out one of his own son lied to him, and had been an independent."

"And Theo has no idea how to read your father. When Eric loses it, he's just going to stand there and let him lead him to the airlock, because Eric isn't screaming his head off in anger."

"You don't think dad would space him, do you?"

"An Independent, a son who lied to him. Your dad isn't a program, he just doesn't feel emotions as strong as everyone else does, but he still feels them. I honestly have no idea how he is going to deal with this. I'd suggest keeping an eye on Theo until we reach Earth. At least there, about the only thing your father can do is try to have him executed and I can intervene in that."

"Do the others know about Theo?"

"No. Eric sent your brother a message to start a search. Once we're in range, don't be surprised if Terry asks for your help. But please, don't tell him. Let your father do that."

Trevor smiled. "No worries there, I'm actually scared of my father."

"Implying I don't scare you." He signed. "You know I'm really regretting taking you under my wing when you were a kid. At least I can instill a sense of respect in the others."

Trevor laughed.

He glared at him. "I swear, I'm going to have to blow up a city to get any respect in this family."

Trevor just laughed harder.