"And?"
"And..." It seemed to pause even more for dramatic effect. "If you'd like, we can wake her now."
So easy.
It was going to be almost too easy to wake the creature who would help him for ages to come. The creature who, for all intents and purposes, would become his slave and do his bidding no matter what he ordered her to do.
He leaned over the coffin, staring down at her serene features where she rested. She had no idea what monster she would wake up to. “What about our language?”
“I’ve already taken the time to download it. The software on this pod is significantly advanced. It only took the better part of an hour while you were gone for it to affix new protocol in her mind. No need for a translation device.” Pilot quieted before muttering, “The ethical concerns about this machine are endless.”
"When was the last time she was conscious?"
"Two years ago. Her Original had her working in the lab with the other clones. He was... experimenting upon them."
"How so?"
Why was it the droid seemed uncomfortable telling him? "They had many People of Water that they were testing, and he wanted to determine whether or not he could combine the species’ DNA. She was helping him splice gills into human subjects and trying to make it so they could breathe underwater. They all drowned. She had to watch many versions of her own clones... drown."
He hated humans like that man. It was why he had hated the wealthy one who had built this place too. Proteus had no reason to be loyal to any of them, but his choices now were his.
Again, he smoothed his clawed hand over the image of her face, his hand shaking with the need to crush in her skull and rid the scourge of her species from this planet.
"Wake her," he snarled. "And we'll see what she has to say for herself."
Four
Ellie
In her dreams, she was a real person.
Ellie had been pulled out of her stasis so many times, it was hard to guess what was real and what wasn't. But here, in this dream world, she was always treated like a real, living being. Like she wasn't a clone of the person who had come before her.
That's how she always knew the difference. It was easy to guess when she was awake and when she wasn't by the programming around her.
The people here smiled when she walked through the halls. They laughed at her jokes, waved at her when she meandered past them. They wished her to have a good day every single time they saw her. Sometimes they even brought her little gifts. Today it was a fresh apple from the gardens of Tau.
She wasn't even sure if the real Tau had apples. Or gardens. But here, where everything was perfect and nothing ever went wrong, she knew that there were apples.
Biting into the crisp flesh, she headed toward the lab to continue her experiments. This simulation was so powerful, shewas actually doing real work. It was recorded by the pod that she was in, or at least, so he said.
Malcolm Maximus Cornwall. He was the scientist who woke her every few months or so, and the one who had taught her everything she knew. He'd even built the program she was currently living in. Absolutely everything had been designed by his hand. So she had him to thank when she got into her cozy bed, when she marveled at the beautiful wallpaper in the room she worked in, or when she had a crisp apple like the one she held in her hand.
As she turned the pale white corner that led to the labs, an unsettling thought bothered her.
She'd never eaten an apple. She had no idea if what she tasted now was actually what an apple was like, or if it was very different in the real world. Thoughts like that bothered her sometimes. Malcolm would tell her that was entirely natural, and she shouldn't let it bother her too much. After all, it wasn't likely that she would ever bite into a real apple. She might as well enjoy this one.
She entered the lab, and a very handsome man spun around in his chair. He had always been her counterpart. In the simulation, his name was Romeo Steel. In the real world, his name was Steve, and he was not anywhere near as handsome as this.
He'd programmed himself to have a strong jaw and plush lips. His eyes sparkled with mischief no matter what he was doing, and his shoulders were broad and square. Muscles packed onto his form, almost ridiculous in their quantity. He pointed them out to her often, but she didn't look at him that much.
Because Ellie knew what he really looked like. And it wasn't anything like this at all.
Steve was a very scrawny white man who was severely balding at a very young age. He'd always wanted to be tall andstrong, and was absolutely incapable of convincing himself to work out in the real world. He lived in this simulation almost as much as she did.
"You're finally here! I was wondering when you'd show up." He grinned at her, trying to flirt like he always did.
He said the same thing every single morning. No matter what time she arrived, Steve tried to make her feel like she was late. It didn't make any sense whatsoever, considering time didn't matter here. She wasn't alive. She wasn't dead. She was just here to learn and develop and grow all the things that Malcolm wanted her to grow.
