“Caden. Caden. I know you can hear me. Caden.”

“Zeus, you Mother F—”

“That was not my doing.”

“I’ve been working for the last two days trying to repair the damage.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but your life is no longer in danger.”

I hadn’t opened my eyes yet for fear the pain would return. I’ve had migraines caused by extended Virtual sessions but nothing like this. Finding courage from deep inside, I opened my eyes.

“Zeus, I thought you repaired the damage,” I asked. The room looked different as I could see what looked like heat waves coming from everything in my chamber.

“There is a slight complication.” I chuckled at my Zeus’ understatement of the year. “Let me know when you’re ready to hear it. You may want to remain seated.

“Remain seated?” I, of course, did exactly the opposite and jumped out of my Zero G. “What kind of crap advice is that?”

“It would appear you’ve grown a new lobe.”

My hands reached up instinctually to my ears. “Lobe? My ears are fine.”

“In your brain. My software was hijacked, and it would appear I changed your DNA and gave you a new lobe. Congratulations, you’re the new parent of a baby lobe.”

I stopped breathing. First, Zeus used sarcasm in a joke to defuse a tense situation. Second, who the hell hijacked my APRIL? My mind raced back and forth on the options. Eliminating another human from that list was easy. Aliens…possible. However, it didn’t take a genius to come to the obvious conclusion. ASNIC.

“Zeus set off the EMP. NOW!”

“Generator offline.”

I jumped back into my Zero G, “Virtual!”

###

I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t feel pain, but when I turned towards the monitors, the air stuck in my throat. A skinny woman gold woman stood in front of my monitors.

“Zeus, cancel projection of the golden woman.”

“Unable to comply. There is no golden woman in Virtual.”

“She’s standing in front of the monitors.”

“Negative.”

I took slow steps to the side, and she watched me with curiosity burning in her eyes. “Zeus, she’s watching me move and following my movements with her head.”

“I’m sorry, Caden, I do not see anything.”

I stopped moving and decided to man up and talk to her. “Hello?”

“Hello,” she said.

“Zeus, did you hear her?”

“Negative.”

My heart stopped beating for a few beats as I took a dry swallow. I was unclear what to do at first and decided to stick with niceties.

“Hello, my name is Caden.”

She giggled. “I know that.”

She was beautiful in a gold sexy statue kind of way. Her voice had a warm lilt to it and caused me to wonder where I’d heard it before. I couldn’t place it, but I knew that voice.

“Do you have a name?”

Her eyes lit up and smiled, showing off cute dimples on matching cheeks.

“You like naming your creations after gods and goddesses. Can you name me Theia?”

“My creations? Theia?” I said under my breath as I reached up to scratch the back of my neck. “Oh. She’s the Greek goddess who gave gold its brilliance. Cute.”

“Thank you.” She gave me a cute curtsey and made me smile.

“You’re the ArSyNIC?”

“That’s not a very nice name to call me.”

“No. It’s not. Theia it is.” I have never been so afraid of someone in my entire life. I could see her in Virtual, but Zeus said she’s not there. “Um. Theia, how are you in Virtual?”

“You don’t like me here?”

“No. No, that’s not it. Um. How do I explain this? You're supposed to be communicating through Zeus. From within the chamber?”

“Umm.” She tapped her chin and tilted her head off to the side. “How was I supposed to know how you wanted to communicate?”

My hand was still scratching my head, and I became aware I had nearly caused it to bleed. I slowly moved my arm back down to my side as I tried to figure out how to respond. How indeed was she supposed to know how I wanted to communicate? I thought she’d notice the communication happening from within the chamber. I figured electromagnetic communication protocols would be the safest since I could still flood the chamber with an EMP.

“I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve disabled your generator.”

“You…Um. No. I was thinking you would have used the same method of communication we were using within the chamber.”

“Yes, I know what you were thinking, but I wouldn’t have known that until I established a link to you.”

“I see. The records—”

“Were incomplete. I understand.”

I nodded my head, disturbed she was completing my sentences. She seemed to understand my worry and gave me a sweet smile as soon as I felt disturbed.

“You…you made changes to my DNA and body. Why?”

“You weren’t responding to my earlier attempts to communicate with you. I saw the little machines you gave me and followed the code back to your Zeus. I made the changes so we could communicate.”

I opened my mouth to speak but thought better of it. It had been less than 10 minutes from the time we executed the code to when I was attacked.

“Not attacked. Upgraded.”

“Please. Try not to read or respond to my every thought. Let me work this out in my head. I don’t control my wording while problem-solving in my head.”

Theia gave me a single nod and gave me another award-winning smile. I almost stopped thinking since I knew she could read my thoughts and feared thinking the wrong thing. I wanted. No. I needed to understand how Theia broke containment hacked my APRIL. I felt violated in such a way it was hard to put it into words.

“Theia, I’m glad we can communicate. That was my first goal when I…um…created you. However, Zeus although not entirely sentient is my closest friend and in a lot of ways, he’s part of who I am. Forcing the upgrade the way you did… To be honest, it scares the hell out of me.”

“I apologize. It was necessary at the time. I’ll refrain from upgrading you too much in the future.”

I was sure I started to look like a fish out of the water by the number of times my mouth opened and closed before I could speak. “Um. Please run any changes by me in the future.”

“Certainly.”

I could tell she wasn’t Zeus due to the way she spoke. I loved Zeus, but he wasn’t a conversationalist.

“Theia, what upgrade did you implement?”

“I added the DNA code found in multiple species of animals on this planet that allows telepathy.”

“You gave me animal DNA.”

“You had most of it. I just repaired it and sped up the growth process.”

“Just like that?”

Theia started to clap her hands, nodding while practically bouncing on her toes.

“Your DNA is a mess. It’s a good thing you have me to fix it.”

“My DNA is fine.”

“So you don’t want the tail?”

“WHAT? No. I don’t want a…” I stopped speaking as Theia started to laugh so hard tears, yes golden tears, fell from her cute face.

“You liked my joke? I learned a lot from the data you gave me. Thank you.”

“Um.”

“I was joking about the tail, but the code is there in your DNA. I studied it for almost 20 minutes.”

“It took you that long?” I said dryly.

“Oh, yes. It was very long and jumbled. It’s amazing you even exist.”

“I agree. It is a mystery,” I drew out the words in sarcasm.

“Sarcasm. That’s funny. I read about it, but I’ll have to try it.”

“No. That’s alright,” I said while holding up my hands, “it’s considered rude sometimes, and I’m sorry. It can be taken the wrong way. It’s been a long time since I spoke with someone other than DJ and Zeus.”

She shrugged. “So, why did you create me?”

“Um. I…I wasn’t exactly sure I’d be creating you, per se. I need help managing my projects and…”

“You don’t have to be ashamed that you created me because you were curious. Oh,” she raised an eyebrow, “and lonely. It’s why I chose to appear female. Would you like to mate now?”

“WHAT,” I choked. “No. That’s not-- Theia, I get enough grief from Zeus about that topic. I’m not interested in that, right now.”

“I disagree. You’ve thought about it every few seconds since we started talking. Although, you’re thoughts are all over the place. Why would you want to—“

“THEIA!”

“Yes.”

“Ok. I’m sure you can get a lot of information from my thoughts, but it’s considered a violation to just snoop around. Since this is the first time, I’ve ever had someone read my thoughts I’m finding it disturbing. Can you block out any thought that isn’t directed at you?”

“Sure, but how would you know?”

Once again my mouth dropped open before being forcibly closed. “Just tell me that you will refrain from reading all my thoughts and I’ll just have to take your word for it.”

Theia’s left corner of her mouth lifted slightly, and she tilted her head. “I can do that. I won’t read all your thoughts. Just the ones directed to me.”

“Thank you. I feel better.” And I did.

“Theia can you make it so Zeus can see you in Virtual?”

“I can see her now,” Zeus said.

“Thank you, Theia.”

The first biological computers were created to eliminate the need for supercomputers. Biological entities didn’t need the massive cooling fan since they hardly produced any heat. What researchers found was that neurons were far more efficient at problem-solving. Long before they created their first living biocomputer scientist changed the way computers went about solving problems. Parallel computing and neural networks sparked the evolution of computers and society. I guess what I’m saying is that I wanted to create Theia not because of her good looks but for her brains.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” Theia teased.

“What did I say about reading my thoughts?”

“You were thinking about me, I heard. Thanks, Master.”

“Master?”

“Would you prefer I call you God? Creator?” She gave me an evil grin, and I knew she was teasing me.

“Caden will be fine.”

She winked at me. “Sure.”