All art is by Aisaku.

Dida

Part 11 - Leda

She looked the same age as I remembered. I felt hesitant to enter through the doorway, but she continued to beckon me onward.

I shook my head. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m here for you. I just want to talk.”

I pressed my lips together. Kary probably sent her. I couldn’t compute it. He/she set up that dream and nearly eradicated Dida and myself. At the same time, there was that crystal which must have done something.

Still, she seemed sincere in her answer. And her face felt so familiar. But I needed to be on guard.

The lobby was just as I remembered it. She gestured to a set of soft, brown couches facing one another. I approached the nearest one cautiously and traced my hand around it before easing my way down.

The woman who looked like my mother did the same. She sat in her couch slightly higher than me. I whispered to Dida, “Could you analyze the…I guess…augmented-reality projection in front of me?”

Dida whispered back quickly, “I tried when you first saw her but there’s nothing. It might be somehow blocked.”

That made sense with the rigorous security system. I glanced around the lobby. We were the only ones. Even the guard station was vacant. The elevator block was still well-lit by the waning natural light.

She cleared her throat. “Looking for something?”

I turned back with watchful eyes. “Just looking.”

Her outfit seemed like something I could recall from one of my earliest memories of my mother. She played with my feet. She taught me a Greek song and whispered in my ear that she would always love me.

I tightened my hands around the material of the couch. “Why did you say ‘welcome home’ to me? This isn’t my home.”

“Why do you think I said it?” She crossed her legs as mother often did when she wished to look more elegant.

“I can’t fathom why. Kary and I were both born north of here. Dad owns…or used to own the family house. Now it belongs to someone named ‘Gina Salk-Osry’…if that name is even real.”

She leaned her head slightly and watched me. I felt unnerved. My mother was much warmer than the woman or image now seated before me, even though she looked to be very much her twin.

“Do you think that name is real?”

“No.”

“What else do you think isn’t real?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m merely asking if you think that there are other things that aren’t real.”

I supported my head with my hands and whispered, “Dida…anything new?”

While I tried to whisper quietly, she still heard me and asked a flat, “Excuse me?”

Dida turned around in the space, as though trying to listen. “Nothing. Sorry, sir.”

I looked up. “I meant…Yeah, how about you?”

She gave no other reaction than a curious gaze.

“In a way, you’re right. But in another way, I’m quite real. You could say I’m more real than anything else around you.”

I felt stunned for a moment to be offered something other than an open question.

“So you’re not real?”

“As I said, that depends on how you define ‘real’.”

I narrowed it. “Are you human?”

“I’d definitely have to say no. I’m an AI program.”

I felt emboldened. I leaned forward. “Okay then, who sent you and why are you here?”

“Who sent me would be irrelevant to you since you’ve never met, and you know nothing about them. However, Kary Glossian is involved in your awareness of me.”

I grit my teeth. Where was my brother? I was at his company and he sent an augmented-reality program of our mother to toy with me.

“And the other part…?”

“I am here to save two lives which would otherwise be lost.”

“What do you mean? Whose lives?”

“Dida and Aide Glossian.”

The light began to dim outside the windows like a cloud was passing overhead.

“We’re in danger?”

“Yes.”

I glanced around. “From who?”

“Each other.”

“W-what?”

The projection of Leda stood. “You are in danger from one another.”

It hit me a moment later that she was interacting with the couch in a way which augmented reality projections shouldn’t be able to interact with their environments. As she touched the material, it pressed beneath her as though she had a physical form.

I leaned back and called her on it. “You can’t be a projection.” I gestured to her hand.

She smiled. “I’m a projection in, not a projection out.”

“In?”

“I’m interfacing directly with your data core.”

I held my finger to my lip. So, she was talking through Dida, as expected. Exactly how the gatekeeper and all those pringers were able to talk to me. Yet, I felt a little woozy again when she said that. I braced my head against the couch.

“That still doesn’t explain…”

She bowed her head. “Of course. To clarify…this is not a physical space.”

I darted my eyes around and inspected the lobby. I glanced from one way to the other rapidly, trying to detect the tearing of a simulated landscape. Theories spiraled in my mind. Knock-out gas in the taxi. A tranquilizer dart as I started to feel strange when I arrived.

Jerking my head this way and that, I couldn’t detect any overt signs. Everything looked as it should’ve from a genuine environment. I wondered if she was playing a game.

Dida shuffled through something in her own space. I gave a sniff. The lobby smelled like nothing and nowhere.

“Okay. So…you’re real and this lobby isn’t?”

“As I said, whether I’m real depends on your perspective. But everything else outside the lobby is not a physical space either.”

That made sense so far if I was in a construct.

“Alright then, I am in a synthetic place. Who made it?”

The projection of Leda brought her hands up. “You did.”

I stomped my foot against the floor. “That’s a lie!....So, you’re saying this is just a dream?”

“A dream would imply you could wake and the same, eventually, with a nightmare. This is a non-physical space constructed by you.”

I looked away from her. I quietly verbalized to Dida, “Are you listening? Can you check this out?”

Leda cleared her throat. “Who are you talking to?”

Drat. If she was projected through Dida then she would know about any sound I made the same as Dida would.

Dida sat down in her virtual space. A buzz went through my ear. I winced.

The tone spiked and the sound vanished. I looked immediately to the projection of Leda. “What was that?”

“That was part of your treatment, just like I am.”

“Who is treating me?”

“The team at Sporelectronics.”

I stood with my fists clenched and yelled at the walls, “HEY! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!” The sound echoed.

Dida seemed to stand in the place inside my head. I could hear my words echo through her as well. I felt woozy again.

Leda stood and glided next to me. “You can contact them through me, if you wish. We want to make sure you are properly repaired.”

That sounded so cold, especially coming from someone who looked like my mother.

“And how do you expect to ‘repair’ me?”

“I can relay the full technical details but there has been a breakdown of the normal relationship between you and your host.”

Was she trying to communicate with Dida? Was I supposed to pass that along to her?

I whispered it to her despite the fact I knew the projection would be aware of my words. Dida didn’t respond, just an echo.

Leda did respond though. She put her question to me again. “Who do you think you’re speaking to?”

I felt warm behind the ears. I huffed, “Why Dida, of course! You should know about Dida if you’re working on us there.”

Leda bowed her head. Her words came so slowly but inexorably that they felt like a cliff falling away from me.

“Yes…but you’re not talking to Dida. You are Dida.”