Ava and Aphrodite: The First Human in 8000 Years (Featured)

Chapter 3: Back To Mars

An hour passed, the journey for his signal to travel to Mars was longer than usual because the planet was on the other side of the sun, it seemed Ava woke up on a table in the middle of an operating room. Small, white, and brightly lit, it'd been privately reserved for his original body.

Sylvie was lying next to him, unconscious. She was still downloading data from the AI copy of her that was planted in Ava's brain when he transported to Europa.

Ava examined Sylvie's body, she didn't look like how he expected her to, he'd been given a mental image during the mission briefing, but it seemed like she'd decided to put on a vanity shell at the moment, unlike  his standard black body shell and matt grey arms and legs, she'd adopted a lighter colour, an ornate shining purple body and legs patterned with complex indentations of flowers, and elegant black arms that masked any joints she had with a thin layer of organic matter. She was also wearing unorthodox coloured hair, short and white was the standard, but she'd put on a mid-length black wig. The arms alone must have been expensive, but the purple patterned body probably cost a fortune. An assumption on his part, he'd never gone shopping.

Go-bot's data was also being transferred, however this time on to a regular terminal, they'd decided not to bother giving him a body at HQ, it seemed. Made sense, he had no reason to walk around.

"Ava, it seems you're awake." It was the Major's voice just coming from a speaker in the corner of the room, "how did the transfer go? No corruption or anything?"

"No, I'm fine. Major, aren't you going to recover your AI from my memory?"

"There's no need, the partial AI copy put in there was just to make sure you and Sylvie stayed on track, I've no need to download its memories back. Sylvie on the other hand has been unconscious during your whole mission, so it'd be gracious of you to return the actions of her AI to her original body's memories, just so that she's aware of the help she gave you."

"And corroborate the records of what I did."

"That too." A pause, "I'm looking through your records. Seems like you suffered a mild existentialist crisis near the end of the mission."

"Yes. Well, the original me is on Europa, gutted of any cognition, dead. It feels a tad wrong..."

"I understand Ava, but that's just how it is. Due to the nature of my job I have to back myself up every day and transfer to a new body for security reasons. I've terminated myself tens of thousands of times."

"I see. Doesn't it bother Sylvie and the Block-3s?"

"Well in Sylvie's case the original is back here, the person you were talking to during the mission, was the copy, an AI sent with you for help. That's not as bad, it's being transferred to her brain right now anyway."

It's the same thing, isn't it? They'll be erasing the copy's AI from my mind... I know it was an AI but it was still cognitive. "I guess she wouldn't be very useful if she was communicating from Mars in real time."

"We've dealt with latency times before, but here to Jupiter is a whole hour. That's too much."

The Major was being surprisingly talkative. Weren't they going to let him out of the operating room? No, they were waiting for Sylvie to wake up too. Thankfully it didn't take long for her upload to finish. She sat up and rubbed her temples,

"Uhn...?" she grumbled, "Is it morning?" her eyes started to widen. It was fascinating, Ava could actively see Sylvie piece together the AI memories and clarify them as real memories rather than dreams she had while sleeping.

"Whoa. So that's what the procedure feels like?" she was talking to herself,

"Can you please wake up Sylvie?" The Major's voice was stern again,

"Huh? Oh! Sorry Major! I'm ready to compile a report for you."

"No, save that for tomorrow. For now I'd like for you to familiarise Ava with HQ, it's his first time in the real world after all."

"Okie dokie ma'am!"

No sound from the speaker, but it was apparent that the Major was tired of Sylvie's shit. "Ava, full disclosure, I haven't let you out yet because we're extracting the classified files from your body, and doing an absolute thorough check to make sure there are no remnants of the files in your memory. You understand how classified this information is, I'm sure."

"Yeah. I understand," Ava really couldn't help being curious though, "But I guess knowing that it's a super weapon is enough eh?"

"It's more than that Ava!" Sylvie interrupted, "It's a weapon that can literally destroy our entire race!" she seemed proud about knowing this, probably because a Block-3 being allowed to take part in such a classified mission made her feel important.

Some time passed, eventually Ava was cleared.

The front door of the operating room opened up automatically.

"Both of you are off duty for the rest of the day." Said the Major,

"What about Go-bot?" asked Sylvie, "It'd be nice to take him with us."

"Go-bot's body was left on Europa. We transferred his thoughts and memories across to that terminal next to you. Enough questions, it's getting late."

"Yes ma'am."

Ava looked at "Go-bot". The little guy was now nothing more than an AI installed in a terminal but the Major hadn't bothered checking his files.

Why?

Ava frowned. He was worried he was going to get caught, but somehow, he'd gotten away with it, the Copy AI of himself he planted in Go-bot had gone undetected.