What the heck just happened?

Sally was stunned. She couldn’t process anything. Now that she was back in her body, she found that, for some reason, she was lying on the floor with no idea of how she’d gotten there. Her internal clock said a few seconds had passed. Jon should have seen her fall, but he wasn’t back, so something must have interfered with the dot system.

Sally looked up at the bottom of the table. Someone had written “Hi!” on it.

A quick check showed that she was fine, so she got up and started heating some water for “coffee”.

Something had just given Sally a view, no, more of an overview, of how things were, are, and will be. Her perfect memory let her run the vision over and over. If gods, or super-beings, whatever they were, had this sort of information, no wonder little old Sallys seemed to be nothing to them.

She finished preparing her coffee and sat down at the table.

The big fuzzy shift in the future was probably the thing the evil scientist was researching, but the vision didn’t show how she was involved, except her... timeline? life-path? headed to it. Just like everyone else’s.

She traced what she was assuming was her life path. In the past she could see that other ribbons intersected hers. It was fairly easy to identify which ones represented Jon, and Alex, but there were others that might be the gods she talked to. There were a lot more that she couldn’t account for; they touched her life many more times than she had realized. Something more to ponder.

Her future line started splitting right after now. Most of the lines showed that she would keep on trucking for quite some time although there were a few where she didn’t make it. She didn’t know what would put her on those paths, but whatever it was, she had better not do it.

One reddish-white line started beside her pinkish-white line in the near future and paralleled her ribbon for a while, then veered away. She hoped this represented the resurrected Sally, but had no idea why their lines weren’t pure white like most of the other lines. She thought about it for a while, but, nope, no idea.

During this whole thought process, Alex hadn’t appeared to make any comments. This was very encouraging. Over the last few days, Sally had been implementing a multi-stage approach to isolate her thoughts from Alex. She had started a sub-process she called secret-Sally that had an open-ended task to map out what Alex monitored, and to place what she found into random areas of her memory. Secret-Sally had been built in a new area that Alex couldn’t monitor, then moved herself somewhere else. Sally had no idea where, or even if secret-Sally kept moving; that was the whole idea. And it was working. She’d found information about Alex appearing in her memory at random times, in random places. Secret-Sally may also have spawned her own sub-processes, there was no way to know, at the moment. In the future, at some time when she was sure Alex was no longer in her head, she would rope in everything and integrate all the versions of her, and everything they had found, back into herself.

The second stage was to encrypt her memory and thoughts. This was common practice, and Sally had employed the most convoluted versions she knew of. According to what she'd learned, they were supposed to be secure. Hopefully, all Alex would see was gibberish.

She and Alex now interfaced through a common shared space. Outside of this area, Sally was confident that most of her thoughts and memories were private. She had done everything she could to separate Alex into his own region, but even she knew of esoteric extrapolation techniques that might give Alex a good idea of what she was thinking. She was working to plug these types of holes.

One annoying fact was that the big Alex appeared to have a way to contact the little Alex without her knowing, it meant she had more work to do.

She checked that Jon was back at work, spoofed the dots, and headed off to the viewing chamber. Simple-Sally ran at a normal speed through the passageways and passed through the secret door. The room was back to its original state, but no one else was there. She walked to the perch, sat on the bottom log, and gazed out the window. After a moment Alex began talking from beside her.

“I have updated your Alex. This is turning out to be more interesting than I had anticipated. I usually don’t have to issue updates. You are involved in something much deeper than I predicted.”

“Um, sorry?”

“No, not at all. I exist for moments like this. Big things are coming, and somehow you are a significant factor.”

“Yeah, I'm the banana peel that fate slips on.”

Alex laughed.

And… he was gone. Sally could tell that he had downloaded a significant amount of data to little Alex, who would reveal it to her in due time.

Sally watched the vista with the black sun for a while, and then left.

Back in the kitchen, she paused. Sleep? She was curious to see what Alex would present to her, and there was no driving need to do anything. Sleep it was.

As soon as she lay down, she was in yoga class. Alex started stretches and the lecture. Sally didn’t watch him directly. That outfit was a crime against fashion.

“Today we will look into subspace technology. This is actually a misnomer; subspace encompasses a myriad of technologies that involve sub-atomic physics. If you will open up the memory I have installed at this location we will get into the salient details. The first approach involves how we chart the patterns that dictate…” and off he went.

Sally woke the next morning. Alex was not even being subtle, anymore. What he taught her was always something she would need sooner rather than later. So, why would she need to know about subspace physics? She was getting a little excited! Maybe the break she had reasoned was going to happen was really going to happen! She was also very proud that her prognosticating was so sound. Not 100% sure something was coming, but the odds looked good.

She did a quick check to ensure that Jon was toiling in the salt mines, and he was. Her dead-ish subject was cooking well. She was up to almost completely autonomous operation, and only needed a little help from the stealth circuitry to keep everything running. The IV fluid had been even more useful than she had predicted, so the process had been able to salvage over 34% of the pre-death memories. There was a strong chance she would have a sister, and not just an identical clone.

Sally did her morning things and walked back to where the patient had been stashed. She looked at the face of zombie Sally. Not the best name, but, yeah, well, it was kind of true.

Everything was ok, so she wandered back to the kitchen, looked around, then decided to head to the dig site. She reviewed the lessons from last night as simple-Sally jogged through the tunnels. It was harder and harder to act like the original Sally, she had to run simple-Sally all the time now, or at least use it as a reference before she did anything.

She walked out of the hallway and onto the debris field. Jon had been busy. There was a huge bite taken out of the edge, and many items piled in groups, out on the floor. He was currently hauling something similar to what would be left over after a cow exploded.

“Hey Jon, any good stuff?”

“A number of power taps... they are much more powerful than the one you found, I think they were used by the computing boxes. Also I've uncovered, a lot of toys and games, pieces of kitchen appliances, and some ductwork for hardline connections. And this…” he shook what he held.

Sally stayed away, the innards were disgusting. She walked around the periphery of Jon’s collection.

And came to a dead stop.

In front of her was a hexagonal box with a number of golden cables coming out of it.

This was a subspace node! Just what she needed to make a subspace tube like the ones that Jon said should be all over the place. This was huge!

Sally walked on, feigning casual.

Something was completely wrong. Jon should have been all over this! It didn’t make sense, this was massively important!

Not wanting to tip her hand, she continued walking, looking at the situation every way she could.

No doubt. Jon had to be severely compromised.

Sally debated the feasibility of trying to fix him. She was a super spy with all sorts of talents, after all. Unfortunately, Jon had been made with her type in mind. If she tried anything, the results could be poor, like triggering the kill switch in Jon.

She might not be capable of doing anything, anyway. The spy had an easy time breaking into the original Sally because she had almost no defenses, but Jon was as far on the other end of the security spectrum as you could be.

As much as she had fought it, this was incontrovertible proof that the warnings to isolate herself from Jon had been warranted.

Sally laughed. “Sorry Jon," she said to herself. "You've just been friend-zoned.”

All kidding aside, this hammered home the fact that it really was up to her, and her alone, to get herself out of here. Well, maybe her alone with support from Alex, the gods, and whoever else. She would try and help Jon, but not if it risked her escape. Not that escape was guaranteed.

First things first. She had to secure the subspace node.

That could be complicated.

She walked back to the campsite.

“Hey, Jon?” she called out.

“Yeah?”

“Can I take some of this stuff to improve the kitchen area?”

“Sure.”

Or not.

She casually piled the node, one of the new power taps, and a bunch of items on the wheelchair. She then asked Jon to haul it over to the hallway for her, which she thought was a nice touch.

Sally pushed the wheelchair toward the computer room. She hadn’t been sure Jon would let her have the subspace tap, so she’d had an excuse all prepared to explain her new enthusiasm for making a kiln, but he hadn’t asked. Her spy abilities helped her maintain an outward demeanor that was calm, cool and collected.

When she reached the kitchen area, she decided to put everything in one of the small rooms off of the cage atrium. Jon never went into them, and they were conveniently close. She could disguise what she was doing by farting around with all the extra things she had hauled, and other random stuff.

This was the same way that she was hiding her zombie. It wasn’t good spy-work to repeat yourself, but if Jon discovered either thing, then all of her plans would be blown, anyway.

She hauled her load to the cage room and returned to the kitchen where she prepared a drink for herself. Sitting at the table, she sipped on as she thought.

A subspace node needed a couple of things: power and a controller. She could use the new power tap, but that left the controller. The controller was complex and took significant computation power.

Oh, if only she knew where there was a massive computation engine. Or a bunch of them.

She was aware of the irony. Here she was, by herself, all alone, but when she needed a subspace node, a powerful computation device, and a power source, she happened to have a subspace node, a powerful computation device, and a power source. She definitely had a benefactor somewhere. Probably Alex, but maybe the gods of this place, or some twisted plot by the evil scientist. Possibly even some other entity, entirely.

Hopefully, when the bill came due, she would be able to pay it.

Nothing she could do now except carry on. How could she acquire and hide a computing box? Jon could toss one around easily, but she wasn’t nearly that strong. She might be able to use the wheelchair, but it would be hard to explain if it was squished.

She should have checked out how heavy they were when she had a chance. Well, maybe not, the dots were watching. So what? She'd fooled them before.

She carried her drink up to the library and sat in the chair.

“Alex,” she called internally.

“Yes,” he responded. No video, just audio.

“I have to do some errands. How fast can I run before it’s an issue?”

“Stick to the passageways and it won’t be a problem. Well, you might want to crunch any spider-rabbits you find.”

Sally thought this was a strange answer. He didn’t say they weren’t being monitored, but perhaps her Alex, or the other Alex, was actively interfering with the experiment. She’d let it slide, for now, but in the future, it might be important to know exactly what was going on.

“Okay, thanks.”

No response.

Deciding to go for it, she spoofed the dots, and ran to the computer room, keeping her eye on Jon through the dot network. If he decided to return to the kitchen, it would be difficult to explain why she wasn't there, so she would probably have to race him back. Anything else would be hard to explain.

Race, it was. She should be fast enough. Probably.

She moved to one the areas where the boxes had jammed together and chose a box that was hidden to casual observation. She reached her arms around it, as best she could, and lifted. It moved, but just a little. She wasn’t going to be able to carry it any distance.

Suddenly one of her alerts sounded. Jon was heading for the hallway!

Aw crap! She took off. Running through the passageways limited the speed that she or Jon could go, but even so, she was still marginally slower than Jon, plus she had to de-spoof the dots before Jon ran past them. Fortunately, he hadn’t deployed the hand, or she would have had to use plan B. She didn’t have a plan B.

She dove through the secret panel, skidded across the room in the mud and sped toward the kitchen. She grabbed a few rags and ran up the ramp, barely remembering to de-spoof the last dot. Jon strode into the kitchen just as she made it into the library.

Sally frantically cleaned the remains of the mud off herself, and sat down. She loudly gulped down her drink, got up, made a bunch of obvious stretching noises, then spilled the rest of the drink on herself and began cursing mildly. Picking up one of the clean rags, she started wiping herself and walked out the door.

“Oh, hi Jon. I had a bit of an accident,” she explained as she descended to the main floor.

“Thought I would take a break and see if you needed help with anything,” Jon said.

“Naw. I just dumped everything I brought back in the other room and then decided to see if I could find any better recipes.” She paused, as if thinking, then continued, “Well, actually, I could use your help. There are some of the fruit things up in the trees in the first plant room that I can’t reach. Can you get them for me? I found a recipe to preserve them. They look like fat orange bananas.”

“Ok.”

Jon took a bag and went off to do her bidding.

Sally started some water boiling and put in some of the ersatz coffee powder. She sat.

“Alex?” She called internally.

“Yes?”

“Any ideas on what that was about?” She asked him.

“Yeah. I believe he has enough evidence to suspect something. I recommend you expedite your arrangements.”

Alex dropped out of her consciousness as Jon returned carrying a full bag and an armload of fruit. He dumped everything on the table.

“This should be sufficient. I am going to return to the dig site. Remember, if you need me, just call out.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Jon left. Sally watched as he passed the dots in the passageway. He didn’t need light, but the dots covered infrared, so she was able to monitor his movement.

She had a sudden thought. Would he be that sneaky?

She checked whether or not the dots showed any signs of being spoofed. She didn’t expect that sort of approach from Jon, but he was driven by his data. If it hinted that she was up to something, he might try fooling her into thinking he wasn’t where she thought he should be.

She was relieved to find no evidence of spoofing. The raw camera data agreed with the transmitted compressed data. She added some modifications that would show if there was any tampering, just to be careful.

She went over to clean the fruit, found the bag of dots on the table and picked it up to move it. The bag was a little lighter than it should have been.

That snake!

She put the bag on a shelf and started to set up the preserving process. One of the Sallys had come up with a way to make a jam without glass jars, using hollowed out tree branches, instead. These branches were segmented like bamboo, but had the feel of metal, and made good containers. There were a number of these containers in storage; she fetched a few and set some water to boil so she could sterilize them, then dug out some wax to seal the containers once they were filled.

While she was working, she scanned for the missing dots. She had to wait for a while, but occasionally there would be bursts of extra data on the dot network from the missing dots. Jon had surreptitiously placed them around the kitchen, and set them to operate in burst mode.

Sally snorted. Amateur. He should have set them to respond on demand.

Then she paused. She couldn’t discount that he might have done so. She could count the dots in the bag, but he may have brought his own. It would be best to assume that there were more dots programmed for very stealthy operation. She knew where he'd gone, so the subspace tap and zombie Sally were probably safe enough, for now.

Obviously, she had to push up the time to resurrect zombie Sally. The process had been going better than expected, so it should be okay to start the final phase. Fortunately, she had set up the zombie Sally so programming her could be done remotely. The data rate was low, and the signal looked like noise which made it nearly impossible to detect. If Jon was suspicious, it was best she be as careful as possible.

Sally started the process of unpacking simple-Sally into the new body.

Everything went smoothly. All the tests looked good. The body had recovered well. To keep the process moving along, the memories that could be salvaged from zombie Sally had been stored and would be integrated into active memory when things were stable. Zombie Sally would start as a pure simple-Sally with Sally’s memories from the start of her fake life, up until a couple of days ago. Sally would update zombie Sally to the current time when she revived.

***

Sally opened her eyes. The sight wasn’t pretty. A number of Sally corpses were watching her.

Oh! She must be the new Sally! There were things she had to do!

She went through the process tor check out the new body. Adding in the stealth infrastructure and reprogramming the IV fluid meant she didn't have any of the problems the original Sally had gone through when she awakened. Everything passed her checks, minus a few phantom aches and pains, but, in general, she was good. Her last memory was of looking at the body she was now inside. It felt unreal.

She knew the plan. Getting to her feet, she stayed crouched down and peeked out of the pile she was in to verify that the coast was clear. The clothes she was wearing were disgusting, but fortunately, they’d planned ahead and stored some current clothing in one of the small rooms in this atrium. Sally went over to the diverted stream, stripped, washed, brushed her hair, and then fetched and put on the new clothes. Current Sally had cut her hair to match zombie Sally and had programmed what she could to make everything else the same: nails, body hair, and even blemishes. It helped that they had been launched in the experiment as identical, and hadn’t had much time to diverge.

Sally missed the extra abilities she had been developing, but they remained as a distant memory, and the first Sally could unblock them if they needed to. For now, she would be what Jon expected.

She waited.

***

It was late in the day. Sally had taken a long time to prepare the preserves. She had finished sealing the latest batch with the wax and was waiting for everything to cool. After washing her hands, she brushed her hair, changed into fresh clothes, and then gathered up an armful of full containers. She carried everything back to the storage room, placed the preserves on some shelves, and then quietly ran into the next room. The other Sally looked at her.

“Hi. No time for a proper update. Jon is suspicious. He’s at the dig site but is watching. Made preserves. You get to clean up, sorry. Brought the preserves back to storage. Kitchen and maybe farm areas bugged. Tomorrow, fool around with the things I put in the cage room. Use them for something. Good luck.”

Sally transferred the memory update to the new/old Sally, but it would take a while to be integrated. She hoped the verbal spew was enough. Probably.

My goodness, this was exciting!

***

When the second Sally headed to the kitchen, Sally tiptoed back to the cage room, grabbed the subspace node and the subspace tap, stuffed them in a couple of bags, snatched up a few more full of supples she'd managed to hide away, and ran back through the rooms of the mausoleum, and continued down the chain of atriums. The load was awkward, but she was much more capable, now. Although she'd been forced to move things ahead of plan, so far, so good.

After she had passed through a number of rooms, she began drawing the symbol she had learned on the wall of each room, where the secret panel should be. After a number of tries, she was starting to worry, but at attempt twenty-three, a panel popped open.

“Thank god,” she breathed.

“YOU’RE WELCOME,” boomed through her brain.

Sally was mostly unfazed. She was getting used to all this.

Time to disappear. Sort of. She entered the passageway and shut the door behind her.