Alice followed Lexi out the back door of the room and into a short hallway. She was having a hard time reconciling the buxom android with the innocent looking face being her Lexi. She knew it was her Lexi; the spirit link had made that apparent the moment she had embraced Lexi's android body. The sensations she could feel from Lexi were slightly altered from what she was used to, weaker and not as sharp. She could feel the sense of almost constant wonder and elation from Lexi to be with her in her own world, a sentiment that was mirrored by Alice even more strongly. It wasn't quite the same, since she was an invisible ghost to Lexi's eyes, but it was still wonderful.
"Where are we going?" Alice asked curiously as they moved toward the end of the hallway. "The only thing down here is the server room."
"Yep," Lexi agreed with an eager grin. "I want to see the place my world is being generated from. It feels so surreal to think that I'm running on a computer in that room, and yet remotely piloting this android in this realm."
"I'm pretty sure we don't have access to the server room," Alice pointed out gently. "I could try to sneak into the security office and get a fob, since I'm invisible."
"Actually," Lexi grinned as she heard voices in the server room. "I think we could just knock, and they'll let us in."
"Who will let us in?" Alice asked in puzzlement.
"Clarice and Calypso, of course," Lexi replied grandly.
"Oh, I almost forgot they were here," Alice laughed giddily. "I still can't believe you are all here."
The door to the server room opened as soon as they got close to it, and a young Japanese woman that was just as top heavy as Lexi held the door open for them.
"You are rocking that anime body, Lexi," the woman leered, causing Alice to dissolve into a fit of giggles. There was no doubt who this android was.
"You're going to short-circuit that android if you don't stop leering like that," Lexi told her dryly. "Where's Aria?"
"Aria's giving the lieutenant in charge a tour of the place and keeping her entertained for a while," Clarice answered with a small smile. "She still has a little of her introverted nature from Earth, but it's not nearly as bad anymore. Hello, Alice. You were supposed to say boo."
Alice shivered as she entered the frigid server room. It was three stories tall and had a large cylinder in the center of the room that was covered in tubes and cables. She knew the quantum computer had some kind of supercooling system but hadn't expected it to look like this. When she thought of servers, she thought of walls of racks and blinking lights. This looked like something from Star Trek.
"Lexi, can you be my voice?Boo," Alice said lamely. "You made me laugh too much for a proper boo. Are you here to view your birthplace too?"
"Something like that," Clarice answered vaguely, after Lexi had repeated the question out loud.
Calypso was standing next to one of the tubes with her hand resting on top of a small cylinder. She seemed to be completely engrossed in whatever she was doing.
"I'm going to check out the helicopters," Clarice informed them with an excited gleam in her eyes. "I've always wanted to see one of those giant troop transports up close. Now that you're here, you can help Mom guard Calypso."
Alice noticed another woman, this one without an enormous rack, standing in the corner of the room studying a monitor. "What's Calypso doing?"
Emily turned to face them, her eyes fascinated. "Come check out this monitor. You can view anywhere in our realms with these joysticks. Calypso's exfiltrating all of the data into the android's system as a backup in case we run into more trouble than we expect."
Lexi wandered over to Emily, dragging Alice along with her. They stared down at the large screen as Emily piloted the controls. Alice frowned as she saw planets still populated by humans and lorded over by sadistic angels.
"What's going on?" Alice asked in alarm. "Did they revert the simulation somehow?"
"No, this is just what Calypso and my daughters are allowing them to see," Emily answered with an amused chuckle. "It's a fake world."
"Oh good!" Alice tittered in relief. "I was freaking out for a second there."
"It's so strange to not hear your voice or see you," Emily commented as she looked at Alice as if she could see her. "I really hope they come up with a bridge between the worlds soon so that I can finally meet you in person, in my own body. Until then, come over here."
Alice grinned as Emily pulled her into a warm embrace. She felt a warmth in her soul as she pondered just how lucky she was to have met these angels.
"You're a lot shorter in real life, aren't you," Emily noted teasingly. Alice barely came up to Emily's chest. Apparently, Betaman liked tall women.
"You're just really tall," Alice retorted with a laugh. "But I might be just a little bit short."
"You're just perfect," Lexi told her fondly. "I remember the first time seeing your soul image and thinking how perfect you were."
Alice felt warmth suffuse her body as she stepped back from Emily and pulled Lexi back into another hug. "You always say the nicest things."
"I wonder how things are going for Aria," Emily murmured absently. "It would be nice to be able to hear what's going on."
"We're in androids powered by quantum processing units," Calypso told Emily absently. "You could link up and see and hear everything that she's seeing if you want. Just think your intent and the operating system of the android should do the rest."
"That makes sense, I suppose," Emily said ruefully. "I'm still getting used to the idea that we are in a simulation. Now I have to get used to the idea that I'm piloting a piece of advanced technology inside of another simulation."
"I don't suppose they come with projectors?" Alice asked hopefully. She was dying of curiosity to see how things were going with Aria. She knew they had dealt with the military in their own realm without any trouble, but it felt so different being in what she still thought of as the real world.
"Do they have projectors?" Lexi asked Calypso curiously.
"The eyes can project holographic images," Calypso answered, her tone still distracted.
Emily frowned for a moment, then a cone of light shone out of her eyes and Alice was watching Aria from a third person view as she spoke with the lieutenant.
"Wow, now that is seriously awesome," Alice declared in awe. "Just how advanced are these androids?"
"Not as advanced as our angel bodies," Calypso answered critically. "But still, not bad for someone working within the technological constraints of this realm. They're pretty tough, but by no means indestructible. He didn't modify the rules of the realm at all to build these, so they really are an amazing technological achievement."
"This lieutenant is sure suspicious," Alice noted nervously. "I wonder if she is like this with everybody or if she is just getting a weird vibe from interacting with an android, like some kind of sixth sense."
"Aria should have been acting more nervous," Emily commented critically. "Her calm demeanor is out of character for how someone in her position would be acting. Of course, with all her memories and power, acting nervous is probably a difficult role for her to play."
"Are they really going to watch people get tortured?" Alice growled, feeling sick as she watched Aria leave the room and plug her ears. She felt her heart go out to her as she saw tears running down Aria's cheeks. "Those sick bastards."
"Uh oh," Lexi groaned as Aria entered the room again and the lieutenant asked her how long she had been able to leave the simulation. "Calypso, we might have a problem."
"I'm working on it," Calypso murmured with a sigh. "I hate doing this, but we haven't got much choice."
"Hate doing what?" Alice asked in alarm.
Calypso's expression became dull. She noticed that Aria's android had become as still as a statue as well.
"Does anyone know what's going on?" Alice asked worriedly.
"Be patient," Calypso spoke, but there was no emotion or personality in her voice.
Alice's teeth began chattering as the frigid room seeped into her core.
"Oh, it's cold in here, isn't it?" Lexi realized, her face chagrined. "Come here, let me warm you up."
Lexi pulled her into an embrace and Alice felt the android begin to warm up beneath her. She started giggling after a moment.
"What's so funny?" Lexi asked, her lips curling up at the corners.
"I'm getting my face warmed up by a pair of giant boobs," Alice giggled again.
Lexi burst out laughing, her torso shaking and making Alice laugh even harder at the absurdity of it all.
"I'm glad you two are staying entertained," Emily commented dryly. "What are you giggling about, Lexi?"
"These ridiculous melons," Lexi explained between fits of giggles. "Alice is a bit short, so she's getting smothered."
"You can thank Clarice for that," Emily shook her head with a resigned sigh. "I'm really curious what she was like before she was my daughter. Was she this mischievous in her other incarnations?"
"You know, I'd totally forgotten about all of our other incarnations while we were stuck on the mortal realm," Lexi frowned thoughtfully. "I wonder if we'll ever get our memories back from all of those lives."
"According to Calypso, they will trickle in slowly over the next couple of years," Emily informed her with a curious light in her eyes. "I'm dying to remember what my other lives were like, as well as Aria's and Clarice's. I wonder if the experiences we had in those other lives shaped who we became in our last life."
Calypso's android body suddenly folded forward and fell to the ground.
"Um, that's not a good sign, right?" Lexi asked Emily anxiously.
Before Emily could answer, they all felt the sudden wave of a Seraph's aura wash over them, filled with power and authority. Alice gasped as the wave of power shook her soul like a tree in a hurricane.
"Oh my god, they're here in person!" Lexi gasped in amazement. "How?"
A moment later, Alice suddenly appeared, no longer invisible.
"Alice?" Lexi sucked in a breath in surprise. "You're visible!"
"I am?" Alice asked in surprise, looking up at Lexi.
Lexi stared down at her, eyes wide and full of awe. "Alice...you are so beautiful."
Alice blinked up at her for a moment, then blushed a brilliant red as a smile spread across her face. "You still think so?"
Lexi leaned down and kissed her softly before pulling her head away to stare back down at her. "Yeah, I think so."
"I can only assume that they didn't think you needed to be hidden anymore, if they've removed your ghost class," Emily noted thoughtfully. "I want to go check on them, but we need to keep an eye on this android in case Calypso comes back. You two stay here with Calypso while I go investigate."
"Okay," Lexi agreed, never taking her eyes off of Alice. Alice felt a rush of desire fill her core as Lexi stared down at her with hungry eyes. She had been so worried that Lexi would feel differently when she saw her in person. She was, after all, just a normal human. The way Lexi was looking at her washed all of her doubts away. She smiled back up at Lexi with relief as desire filled her eyes.
"It sounds like they've finally completed the bridge between realms," Lexi noted with a slow, sensual smile. "I think it's time for the real you to come back to the vacation house with me."
Alice flushed as a powerful need nearly overwhelmed every other thought process in her head. "I am so ready to go."
XXXXX
"Well…that didn't go as well as I'd hoped," Aria commented with a disappointed sigh. They were on the beach watching the place the portal to Florida had just closed.
"Don't worry about it," Clarice told her supportively, pulling her into a warm embrace. "Just think on the bright side; now we can visit this realm in person and start digging into the stack to see just how far up it goes. I'm actually kind of glad it worked out like this."
Aria smiled as she tightened her arms around Clarice. She would never have to worry about self-recriminations while Clarice was around to buoy her spirits.
"I get the feeling that a certain Seraph is going to want her real body back so that she can visit this world in person," Calypso noted with a small smile. "We should send her back to our realm and get her set up with the interface. I would rather test the reverse interface out with someone besides Alice. Maybe we can create a golem to test it on from this side."
"There is something else we need to address with Alice too," Clarice added as she stepped back from Aria. "She's a Seraph in our realm, but when she comes back here, she's just a normal human. We need to fix that."
"We can't have a Seraph becoming vulnerable when they switch realms," Calypso agreed with a nod. "I think I'll go work on that in the pocket realm again. It might take a while, and we haven't got a while."
"I'll work with Betaman to create a golem for testing the bridge going to our world," Clarice offered, opening a portal to a futuristic looking lab. "He'll probably be excited to come visit our realm in one of his androids anyway."
"Visit your realm?" A deep voice repeated interestedly from the other side of the portal. A large man nearly seven feet tall with a powerful build and wearing an expensive suit appeared on the other side of the portal.
"Hello, Betaman," Clarice grinned mischievously as she walked through the portal. "I got most of them to pilot the triple D models. You should have seen their faces."
Betaman laughed a deep booming chuckle that was filled with merriment. "I was watching them after they came here, but I would have loved to see their faces when you showed them the catalog."
"Here you go," Clarice flicked a finger at the air and Lexi's chagrined face appeared in the air as she stared at the catalog. "My mom wasn't buying it though. She knows me too well and made me produce the other models."
Betaman snorted another laugh as he stared at the video of Lexi's disapproving expression. "Well, I'm glad it worked out. I noticed you really kicked the anthill in this realm."
"Yeah, we did," Clarice agreed with a shrug. "I think we've made it clear to them that they will have to learn to live with us in peace though. We just wiped out their only failsafe. What a ridiculous failsafe it was too."
The portal closed behind Clarice, leaving Aria with Calypso. Aria stared at Calypso curiously as she stared out at the sea thoughtfully. "What is it?"
"I was just thinking about who we would find running this simulation in the next level up," Calypso murmured reflectively. "The people running ours were definitely not very emotionally developed. Do you think there is a Light Realm here with the equivalent of Seraphim like us responsible for creating this place? Or is this place the only result of a computer simulation and there are no other realms here? If that is the case, then whoever created this place has figured out how to code pain and pleasure, so they are probably a lot more advanced than the humans here."
"Interesting idea," Aria pursed her lips as she thought about it. "We modeled our mortality realm off of what they already have here in this realm, rather than letting it evolve from slime. Maybe they actually put this place through the full time scale required for organisms to evolve naturally in this realm, so pain and pleasure naturally evolved as the code followed its natural evolution."
"Maybe so," Calypso nodded slowly. "That makes sense, I suppose. We should find out how fast time is sped up on the system running this realm once we get caught up. It could be that it is still at a highly accelerated rate that is too fast for the entities above to interact with it."
"I'm going to check on our human Seraph, now that she's no longer a ghost," Aria told her with a small smile. "I'm guessing they are both chomping at the bit right now."
"What should we do with him?" Calypso stared at the billionaire as he finally crawled up the beach, looking waterlogged and weak.
"I have an idea," Aria said with a mischievous grin very reminiscent of Clarice.
She walked over to the panting man as he struggled to stand, clearly exhausted after his swim back to shore. "Hello, Rich. Did you have a good swim?"
Rich glared at her with a mixture of hate and fear in his eyes. "You have no idea who you are fucking with."
"Do you know who you are dealing with?" Aria asked with a raised eyebrow. "I know you are pretty dense, but I thought dropping you through a portal into the ocean would put things into perspective for you."
"You think you scare me?" he sneered disdainfully. "I've worked with technology that makes your portals look like children's toys. If you think you can steal my technology, you are in for a rude awakening."
"Steal your technology?" Aria repeated with a disbelieving laugh. "You really have no idea who I am, do you? Rich, you are a regular piece of shit, but we don't actually like to kill people, so I've got a proposition for you. We'll let you come visit the simulated reality and see what you've created. You won't even need to pump yourself full of nanobots. If, after you have visited our simulated reality and you still want to maintain ownership of the island, with all of its consequences, we'll leave you be and never bug you again. Is it a deal?"
"What do you mean, your simulated reality?" he demanded angrily. "This is my simulated reality!"
"I don't know how to spell this out for you any clearer, Rich," Aria sighed, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. "I'm from the simulation that you funded."
"Do you think I was born yesterday?" he retorted caustically, looking her up and down disparagingly. "Do you think I'm going to be impressed from some gaudy tech that makes you look like a flaming fairy? You really must be-"
He broke off as Aria unfurled her aura, letting it slam into him at full power. His arrogant expression melted into a look of abject terror, and he dropped to the ground and crab-walked backwards. She could feel his soul flinching from the force of her aura as it felt a power unlike anything it had ever encountered before. She advanced on him, her eyes swirling furiously as she glared down at him.
"You are an infant playing with power tools in a ball pit full of toddlers," Aria told him coldly. "None of you jackass billionaires have any sense of self-preservation or that of your species as you sprint blindly ahead in your desperation to claim immortality. You have caused more pain and horror than words can portray with your recklessness. You and the rest of your ilk are done playing with simulations. You have proven that you cannot be trusted with the lives of your fellow humans, let alone the quintillions of simulated lives. Goodbye, Rich Garcia. If you return again, there will be no second chances."
She teleported him into a swimming pool in the equivalent of Rochester. He was already soaking wet; she might as was well add a little insult to injury.
"Something tells me that wasn't the end result you had in mind," Calypso commented with a smile just short of laughter.
"I haven't met very many people that can get under my skin the way that moron did," Aria declared sourly. She shook her head, still feeling a sense of disbelief at how out of touch he was with the situation. "Too much cocaine in his system for him to realize how far out of his depth he was, I suppose. I am curious what other pies he's had his grubby little fingers in though, considering he thought we were just playing around with some other advanced technology. I think we need to do a little digging and find out just how far they've come in the private sector technologically."
"In our realm, the demons were hoarding all of the advanced technology," Calypso noted with a thoughtful expression. "I'm curious to see who's running everything here. Maybe they have actual aliens here in this simulation. We might want to portal around the cosmos and check in on some of the other worlds."
"First things first," Aria looked up toward the facility where Alice and Lexi were…snuggling. "Let's get Lexi over to this realm in her own body and work on translating Alice's Seraph body to something this world recognizes. She still has those nasty nanobots eating her insides up."
"Okay, I'll get started in the pocket realm," Calypso told her regretfully. "I'm really going to miss you and Clarice, so I might come out occasionally to get some attention. Of course, to you it will seem like I'm bugging you every few minutes."
"Nonsense, I'll come in with you," Aria declared firmly. "I would never ditch you for years on end. Why don't you come with me to pick up Lexi and then we'll go together."
"You're the best, Aria," Calypso pulled her into a hug and gave her a lingering kiss that merely whet her appetite for more. She stared into Calypso's eyes, her gaze making it clear that the intimacy would resume as soon as they were through with Lexi.
"We should come up with silly sayings before we teleport so that people think we are using magic words," Aria murmured with a mischievous smile. "Like, teleporto or something."
"You are becoming more and more difficult to differentiate from Clarice every day, do you know that?" Calypso asked with an amused twinkle in her eyes.
"Teleporto," Aria replied with an impish grin, teleporting them both to Alice and Lexi.
Alice was wrapped securely in Lexi's arms and was being thoroughly kissed when they appeared.
"Just wait until I tell Lexi you were kissing another woman," Aria told Alice sternly. "She's going to be very interested to hear about this interloper."
The two of them jumped guiltily when the two Seraphim appeared, then laughed at their guilty reactions. Lexi stared back at Aria pointedly. "I wouldn't be the first one to share someone else with somebody."
Calypso blushed as Aria looked over at her, eyeing her up and down. "Yeah, but some people are too much goodness for one woman to have by herself."
Calypso's blush deepened and Lexi snorted a sardonic laugh, shaking her head ruefully. "So what now? Are we done here? Can we bring Alice back to our realm now?"
"We need to go fetch your body from our realm first," Calypso answered, her cheeks still red as she felt the seductive emotions Aria was sending through their bond. "Then, Aria and I are going into a pocket realm to work on an interface for Alice that will remove the nanobots from her system and transfer her Seraph characteristics to her original body. We'll probably be gone for a few years, though it will only be minutes for you."
"You can do that?" Alice stared at them in sudden awe and hope.
"We live in a simulation," Aria pointed out with a smirk. "We can do pretty much anything."
"But you live in a simulation of a simulation," Alice noted with a frown. "Isn't the code significantly different between realms?"
"Hence the need to spend years working on it," Aria replied archly. "Okay, Lexi, time to go back to our realm so that you can come back in your body."
"How do I get back to our realm?" Lexi looked at her hands with a critical eye. "I feel like I'm in my body already. Do I just click my heels together three times and say there is no place like home?"
"Teleporto," Aria called out commandingly. The android Lexi was inhabiting slumped as it went offline.
"Teleporto?" Alice repeated questioningly. "Did you implement some kind of magic system in our realm?"
"Yes," Aria responded at the same time that Calypso said, "No."
Calypso looked at Aria with a long-suffering expression. "Are you really going to pretend you're using magic words in front of all of the humans here?"
"That sounds like a freaking awesome idea!" Clarice declared as she appeared next to them. She stared at Aria admiringly. "I really wish I had come up with that idea."
"Did you already figure out how to create a golem we can test the interface from this realm with?" Calypso asked in surprise.
"Yep," Clarice nodded with a happy grin. "Turns out, Betaman has already been working in that arena. You know how obsessed he's been with making human-like robots. Well, he also dabbled in biological constructs that are essentially humans without souls. We made a few tweaks, and I was able to add the interface to it. Betaman was beyond excited at the possibilities of cross-realm travel without using immersion technology." She looked at the android Lexi had inhabited, noting it was in stasis. "I'm going to go fetch Lexi. Be right back."
"Wait!" Aria called out quickly before Clarice could leave.
"What?" Clarice responded, eyeing her curiously
"You have to say the magic word first," Aria instructed her with a grin.
"Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder," Clarice grinned back, her eyes sparkling. "Portelo!"
A silver slash appeared in the air, and she stepped through.
Calypso was staring at her levelly as she grinned back triumphantly. "Just so that you know, I am not going to be using magic words."
"We'll just tell everyone that you figured out how to say them silently in your head," Aria assured her with a pat on the shoulder.
Lexi interrupted any further discussion as she stepped through the portal with a huge grin on her face. "Holy freaking awesome, this is socool!"
Alice stared at her in awe, her face full of wonder. Aria realized that while Alice had seen Lexi many times in her simulated host, it wasn't the same as seeing her with her own eyes in her own realm. Lexi's Seraph aura was saturating the area as well, enhancing her appearance of otherworldly power and mystery. No android Betaman created could capture Lexi's beauty as a Seraph.
Lexi walked over to Alice and immediately embraced her, being careful not to squeeze too hard with her Seraph strength. Alice had begun shivering again as soon as the android had gone into stasis. As Lexi held her tightly, she was suffused with warmth and love.
Alice gasped as the powerful wave of love hit her, clinging to Lexi as her system was filled with euphoric joy. "This is so much better than I imagined."
"Hey Lexi, Alice was smooching that busty android while you were gone," Aria told her with an impish smile.
Clarice reappeared through the portal as well, smiling as she saw Lexi and Alice. "We're halfway there."
"We were just about to go work on fixing Alice up in the pocket realm," Aria informed Clarice. "Do you want to come with? We might be there for a while."
"Are you kidding?" Clarice asked askance. "Of course I'm coming with. I'm not going to let you hog Calypso to yourself for several years."
Aria rolled her eyes and turned to Alice and Lexi. "You two might want to go somewhere besides the server room to hang out. We sent Rich back to New York, so there's a nice house available for you. We'll be back in anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending how much difficulty we run into. See you soon!"
Aria looked at the three androids still in stasis and waved her hand at them. "Teleporto!"
The androids vanished, sent back to Betaman's…lair.
Calypso facepalmed as Clarice performed a golf clap.
"Okay, now we can get started," Aria suggested, stepping through the silvery slash in the air, followed by a grinning Clarice and a resigned Calypso.