Copy That

Julian and Fredy. Image
by Leonardo, modified by Flow.

Below on this blog page is Chapter 6 of the science fiction story "War of Words". In Chapter 5, Fredy was trying to communicate to Julian facts about the Quyll, but she was still under the control of Quyll femtobots in her brain that were preventing her from speaking to him about the secret presence of the Quyll on Earth.

I've been using both Leonardo and Google's Flow to make illustrations for "War of Words". As seen in the image to the right, text-to-image software like Leonardo and Flow does not like to show men sitting at a table unless they are wearing a coat. In contrast, the women all have bare arms. I wonder how the AIs would set the thermostat so that everyone can be comfortable?

In Chapter 6 (below on this page), Julian finally finds the "magic words" that allow Fredy to make progress in communicating with him. Fredy believes that Julian is accepting of the idea that if he abandons his biological body then he will finally understand the mysteries that swirl around Second Contact magazine.

War of Words - Chapter 6 - Femtobot Option (Ch. 1)(Ch. 2)(Ch. 3)(Ch. 4)(Chapter 5)

Julian had a fascination with dreams. He kept a dream diary, and with increasing frequency he found that he could use dream content in his science fiction stories. He reasoned that if some artists used drugs to help shake creative ideas out of their brains then he could get similar results by paying attention to the activity of his brain during the altered consciousness of vivid dreams during sleep.

He was puzzling over a dream he'd had just prior to waking. He reached for his dream diary and his motion woke up Fredy. She watched him writing for a minute, then got up and started dressing. She glanced back at Julian, but held her tongue since he was still writing. She had already packed for the weekend, but now she tried to make noise by unzipping one of her bags and rummaging through its contents.

Julian said, "I know, it is time to go." He kept writing, trying to capture the key points of his dream before they slipped back into dream-land.

They were quickly out of the house and on their way to the Grand Canyon where they were to meet the Onways for a hike to the bottom of the Canyon. The eastern sky was starting to brighten and Fredy could no longer resist intruding into Julian's thoughts. She asked, "Interesting dream?"

"Confusing dream. I blame you and your talk about artificial life. I had a dream about the waitress who you said was not a waitress."

"Oh. Her. Do you remember anything else about last night?"

"You tell me. In my dream, I was writing a story about femtobots."

"That sounds promising."

"It was not easy. Rose kept interrupting. She's so annoying."

"Don't criticize Rose. She is deserving of your compassion. She does the best she can with what she has. It is not easy being a pioneer. She was the first of her kind."

"The first famous writer for Second Contact?"

"Not even close, but I suppose you don't know the history the magazine."

"No, I don't. I only discovered it two years ago."

"I'm surprised that Rose did not help you program the femtobots."

"If you look up 'surprise' in the dictionary, it says: 'Ambrose Quillion'."

"You know, without help from Rose, we never would have fallen in love."

"Really? I think for me it was love at first site. That first day when I found you in Boston."

"No. You just wanted to butter me up so that Second Contact would publish your goofy science fiction story."

"That's not true. You were strutting around in your little black dress and black boots. I was dazzled."

"You're just a sucker for long blond hair. Speaking of which, how are things going for Tess?"

"Good. Her show just keeps running. Which should be a good thing, but she's getting bored and wants to move on to something else. By the way, she did not believe me when I told her that you are trying to get pregnant and have a calendar for tracking your ovulations."

"Tell Tess that I expect her to be at our wedding."

"I have. She'll try to be there. She pointed out that you don't have to be pregnant for us to get married."

"So your dream was really about Tess."

"No. I do still have dreams about her, but not last night. It was Rose. And Cyrano. And Marda's whole Stepford camera crew was there, ready to record."

"Stepford camera?"

image source

"Did you ever read the novel 'The Stepford Wives'?"

"Oh. Well, that's pretty close to home. But first there should be the Stepford husband."

"Ya. You keep bring this back to me. But I'm too stupid to understand what you are trying to tell me."

"Use your science fiction imagination."

"In my dream, Rose and Cyrano were robots, pretending to be people."

"Why would a robot do that?"

"How could a robot do that? No robot is like Rose. Perfect right down to the individual hairs."

"There are robots and there are robots."

"Lyle's robots have computer chips for a brain, a bunch of motors, radar and cameras. Just a puppet with a battery."

"You just described a model T Ford." Fredy looked over at Julian and insisted, "Play the Sci Fi game. What will robots be like a hundred years from now?"

"Certainly not made of femtobots, whatever they are."

"Wow. You must have that time machine. You've seen the future."

"This is a silly game. Why can't you just tell me what you are trying to tell me."

"We're playing a game. A very sophisticated guessing game. You just have to assemble the puzzle pieces. Don't be so quick to give up. This is a long drive."

"What would you have me say?" Julian put the puzzle into the context of his own fiction. "That the Tyr could build a robot out of femtobots?"

"Yes, that is a good idea. Too bad the Tyr exist only in your imagination."

"Ha! You've seen the videos of the Tyr that Marda made."

"Maybe you should write another Tyr story where you let the Architects play with femtobots. Don't they have interstellar space travel? Femtobots should be easy for them."

"So you are saying that aliens made Rose and Cyrano?"

"Well, why not? It certainly could not be done in Lyle's robotics lab."

"What, so Earth is a dumping ground for old unwanted robots, discarded by aliens?"

"That's pretty funny. The science fiction anthology series could use some funny episodes. Dumping Ground Earth."

"Maybe it is time travel. They are old robots, but they are from the far future, and they are very sophisticated. Indistinguishable from humans." Julian was trying to imagine how anything could function at the femto-scale. "It is all physically impossible... interstellar travel, time machines, femtobots."

Fredy sighed. Julian is too happy with his life. She told herself: There is no way he can even think about changing what he is.

"In my dream there were three of them. Like metallic lichens... spreading, growing, communicating."

"Lichens?"

"Yes. Artificial lichens. But that is wrong. That is what my waking consciousness applies as an attempt to rationalize what was actually there in my dream state, which made no sense. The lichens were being used... they had a purpose. But what good is a complex lichen with many parts, like a tangled chromosome or a pulsing integrated circuit." 

Fredy thought about watching Rose running her femtobot program, allowing herself to be made human by the Quyll technology, and loving it. Something similar had been done to Rylla's parents. But could I do that? Could I put Julian through that? She asked, "Would you do something for me?" 

"Sure." Fredy remained silent. She was driving the big SUV. Julian had never been to the Grand Canyon before. "I'd do anything for you, my love."

"Because right now we are stuck. You know that. I could fix it, but you have to push me into it. I'm waiting for you to tell me what to do. It must be your decision. You have to tell me that you would be..." Fredy could not say 'Quyll', she could not string together the words 'femtobot replicoid copy'. For some reason, the Quyll had brought her and Julian together, but he was not like Rylla, Marda, Lyle. Suddenly Fredy wanted to sequence Julian's genome. "Sweetie, have you ever had your genome sequenced?"

"No. Years ago I had a lame commercial scan of a few gene performed by a company that went out of business." Julian thought about how he had secretly sequenced Fredy's genome, which was strange in its composition. Fredy had half the typical number of deleterious mutations and a pattern of unusual alleles that matched those of Marda. 

Julian had told Rose about his inability to sequence her genome, but he was too embarrassed to tell Fredy how he had invaded her privacy. I love Fredy. I can't tell her that she has weird genes. Not until I puzzle this out. "What is it with you and Marda? Your shared obsession?"

Fredy giggled, "I'm sorry for dragging you on all these hikes and skiing trips. You seem to enjoy it."

"I'd do anything to spend time with you."

"Anything?"

"I moved across the country for you."

"I'm glad you did. I need you."

"Why is that? It seems like I only frustrate you with my cluelessness. I can't figure you out. It has something to do with Marda and Rose and the inexplicable weirdness that is Second Contact. My love for you blinds me... makes me stupid. I do anything you tell me to do, but it is not enough. I don't know how you put up with it."

"We are in this together, forever. Isn't that thrilling?"

"It is wonderful. It is all I want. Everything. I can't believe how lucky I was to find you. Why did I drive to Boston that day? Tess told me to go."

Fredy knew that Julian was right. There was no good explanation for how they had met. I told myself that I would find...

"You and Marda are up to something far stranger that making me hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Marda is obsessed with making videos. She really believes she is going to change the world. At least change science fiction, re-make it into something different. Marda treats Rose like she is... I don't know. A goddess to be worshiped."

"Yes, I feel the same way. I'm glad you are not jealous and allow me to keep Rose as a lover. She's taught me so much."

"I don't know what you see in her... sexually. Rose is not normal."

"She's gotten so much better than she used to be. You don't remember what she was like... no that's wrong. You only remember the way she was when you first met her, when she was trying to make me jealous."

"Were you? Jealous of her?"

"I can't be jealous, Rose just needed to learn. Now she can fool anyone. Even you!"

"Why does she need to trick people?"

Image by Leonardo.

"Your big bouncy breasted waitress is the answer."

"In my dream she was walking around nude. I could have held her in my arms, but she was not real. She was a tool. Artificial breasts, waving in my face. Why? Fake breasts... what is the point?"

"You are obsessed with breasts. You sure spend a lot of time playing with mine."

"Does that annoy you? You have perfect breasts. Maybe you remind me of my mother. Subconsciously."

"You don't annoy me. I luxuriate in all the attention you pay to me. I have since that first day in Boston when you could not stop looking at me breasts."

"You and your black dress and no bra."

Fredy laughed. "Somehow I knew that would do the trick. At the time, I was looking for new writers. But it was you. First nibble. You. Miraculously just you."

"I guess I was hunting for you. I didn't know it, but I was gloomy. Tess was leaving me. That was so unfair. I applied for jobs in New York City. I was ready to follow her, even when she told me not to."

"You and I were made for each other, Julian. You know it. That's why you put up with my lies."

"Lies? I'm the liar. I sequenced your genome and never told you."

"I know all about that. That does not matter."

"You know? How do you explain the similarities of your genome to Marda's?"

"I'm not a geneticist. Aren't all people 99% identical?"

"Yes, that's true. But you and Marda are unusual, in exactly the same way. You've tried to tell my why that is, but I can't figure it out. I need more clues."

"You're so weird."

"Maybe you don't. Maybe you have already told me what I needed to know. Even if I can't explain it to you."

"I almost understand what you are saying, and then it vanishes. Like a memory of a dream slipping away the more I reach for it."

They were on a flat straight stretch of road leading into the National Park. Fredy took one hand off of the steering wheel and they held hands. "Just relax and enjoy the weekend. I think you heard what I told Rylla while you were enthralled by the non-waitress' big breasts. You already know the truth. Until your conscious mind relaxes and treats what you heard as science fiction, you will just keep rejecting it and feeling frustrated. Let it go until your unconscious mind sorts it out and takes you the last mile."

Julian chuckled and kissed Fredy's hand. "You're so weird. I love you."

Fredy nodded with certainty. "I love you no matter what."

"That sounds ominous."

"You don't know the half of it."

__

The hike was a success. It was late in the day when they returned to the rim and they stayed the night right there in the Park. Fredy had just bounced Julian around their bed and she rubbed her thighs. "I'm pretty sore. That hike was too much."

"You sit in your office too much, reading nutty Sci Fi."

"I'll be on the road again next weekend. Montreal."

"I'll go with you."

"You have to work." Fredy patted her abdomen. "I'll ovulate next weekend. I only need to take your sperm with me to Montreal."

Julian laughed. "I just filled you up. Save some for next week."

"We have to do this right. You have to go to the cryobank at the fertility clinic."

"I can fly with you to Montreal. Really."

"Julian, don't be a dick. I don't need your dick, just your sperm cells. You will stay here and get your work done in the lab. And you need to prepare for the new course you have to teach."

"Fine. I'll see if I can get an appointment at the fertility clinic."

"You can just walk in to make a semen deposit."

"Okay. Can you come with me?"

"I'm sure you can handle it yourself, but feel free to call me when you get the cup. I'll talk you through it."

__

Fredy was waiting for Julian's call when Marda arrived in her office. Fredy told Marda, "My legs are sore."

"That was good hike. Lyle commented favorably on the rippling firmness of our buttocks."

"Marda, what do you know about genetics? How should we explain the similarities of our genomes when someone like Julian asks?"

"Hopefully nobody but Julian will ever ask. Any progress on your Julian quest?"

"With luck, we will complete the last lap in the next few minutes."

"Last lap?"

"Julian is going to provide a semen sample. I'll have his cells cryo-preserved and it will all be over. The Quyll told me last night that Julian does not even need to be told."

"But you said you were waiting for him to agree."

"He told me he'd do anything to be with me, so that is-" Her phone rang. "Julian." She listened to Julian and then said, "If you must know, Marda is here, so I'm not going to get my vibrator out. This is your solo performance."

Marda said, "Put him on speaker."

Julian said, "Hi, Marda. I was not expecting you to be present for this. I'm not sure I can perform with an audience." Marda moved around behind Fredy so she could see the images that were coming from Julian's phone to Fredy's.

Marda told Julian, "When we are in our tents, you love to perform and make Fredy squeal with delight."

Fredy protested, "I don't squeal when I have an orgasm."

"Call it what you like. I like hearing you climax."

"And..." Julian said, "I'm done."

"That was fast."

"I saw no reason to delay. This cup is cold and hard. What did I do with the cap?"

Fredy said, "I hope you took a picture. A first look at our children, so to say."

Julian chuckled. "There. Your family portrait, the little dears snuggled in the wall cabinet. All done."

Fredy told Julian, "We'll celebrate tonight."

"Right. I'm off to the lab. Later."

Fredy put away her phone and asked Marda, "When you contact the Quyll, do they always respond?"

"They just show up when they have something to tell me. Actually, it is always when Lyle is with me. And it has only been three times."

Fredy tried to estimate the number of times she had been contacted by the Quyll. It had been more than a dozen times, mostly while she was in a hotel at a science fiction convention or a Second Contact fan event. Lately the Quyll contacts corresponded with Fredy meeting another science fiction story writer. The Quyll seemed intent on linking more writers into Marda's video project. "You are right. There is no way to contact them. They just arrive when they need to tell me something. However, I'd like to coordinate with the Quyll about Julian's cells."

Marda got up and looked around the office. "Where do you keep it?"

"What?"

"Your vibrator."

Fredy opened up a drawer of her desk and took out her office vibrator. Marda grabbed the vibrator out of Fredy's hand. "Thank you. Hey, this is just like the one you keep on your fireplace mantle."

"Very reliable on cold winter nights."

"I'll tell you how it goes." Marda turned to leave.

"Don't take my vibrator. Watching Julian make his deposit got me horny."

"Does he know you control his camera?"

"That's Cyrano's doing." Somehow Cyrano had hacked Julian's phone so she could keep tabs on everything he did. It was part of Quyll security. Fredy had gotten Cyrano to feed his camera images to her phone.

"Well, seeing Julian's pretty penis has me dripping." Marda went back to her office.

Somehow, Marda never brought the vibrator back to Fredy and she had to get a new one.

__

It was two months later, not long after Rylla delivered her baby that Fredy got news from the Quyll that she was pregnant. She rushed at the Quyll, who as always appeared to be almost human, with odd alien eyes and flamboyant nanite-generated clothing that seemed to defy gravity. Just then, Julian got home from work and saw Fredy with her arms around the Quyll. The Quyll turned to face Julian and told him the news, "Fredy is pregnant."

Julian and Fredy embraced and he looked at the Quyll. "What is going on?"

The Quyll explained, "Today was your last day as a biological, Julian. I let you two make your first baby, the traditional way. Now you can move on."

Fredy asked the Quyll, "It's over? You copied him already?"

"He was converted two nights ago, when you were in Houston."

"I did not even notice."

Julian asked Fredy, "What is this? Converted?"

The Quyll told Julian, "Your biological body is gone. You are now an artificial life-form."

Julian nodded. "So, that is what you meant about femtobot replicoids. It is not science fiction. Nothing Rose made up. It is real." He held up and looked at his hand. "Now I don't have DNA. Or even cells."

"You are like Rose. And Cyrano."

Fredy asked, "What about me? I want to live forever with Julian."

The Quyll suggested, "Don't be in rush. It is important that you complete your breeding project with Julian."

"Breeding project?"

"We are experimenting. Will Fredy's special Dravyk genes persist in the human population or fade away?"

Julian's interests as a geneticist were aroused. "Dravyk?"

Quyll and Fredy.

"We Quyll designed and created the Dravyk to serve as our allies on Earth. However, after we reveal our existence to the world, there will be no more need to control anyone on Earth. Gene variants like Fedy's NOTCH2NLC need to fade away and be lost. There is a risk that such genes might persist in the human gene pool since they confer advantages like increased intelligence."

"What about our child?"

The Quyll smiled at Fredy. "Yes, we know your daughter's genome, but I'd prefer to tell you nothing about that. I envision the experiment continuing another ten years."

"Ten years?" Fredy was puzzled. "Then what? We will have sequenced her genome by then."

Julian laughed. "Ten years. I'm ten years older than you Fredy."

Fredy nodded. "But in ten year, I will have aged. I'll catch up to you."

The Quyll added, "And then we will convert you into a femtobot replicoid." The Quyll turned and walked out of the house through the front door.

Fredy threw her arms around Julian and whispered in his ear, "How many babies do you think we can make in ten years?"

End Chapter 6. Jump to: Chapter 7.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION (adding images)

Here is a short video made by Google's Flow. Text prompt: "The blond woman gradually morphs and transforms into the blue humanoid alien woman while driving, looking to the right and into the camera and saying, 'Yes, you are correct, I am not really human'."

 Temporal Shift. The 28 second duration video shown above was made using iMovie to combine two short videos. When generating the two short video clips, Flow could not really decide what to do with her hair. And if her face is blue, then why is the inside of her mouth not also blue?

Next: Chapter 7 of "War of Words".

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DNA Null

Image generated by Flow.
A television series produced by Marda.

Below on this blog page is Chapter 5 of the science fiction story "War of Words". After Julian's first visit to Arizona, he is unable to detect any DNA in the hairs he collected from Ambrose. In a quick assessment performed in Julian's own lab, Fredy's DNA seems normal and so Julian sends it off for a complete genome analysis which reveals the presence of some unusual gene variants. During a second visit to the offices of Second Contact magazine in Flagstaff, Julian manages to collect additional cell samples from both Marda and Cyrano.

The second scene of Chapter 5 jumps ahead six months to a point in time after Tess has moved to New York and Rylla is returning from her vacation in Australia. Fredy has convinced Julian to move his genetics research lab to NAU and he is now living with Fredy. Ambrose learns that Julian has tried and failed to detect DNA in samples from both Cyrano and Ambrose. Ambrose asks the Quyll to reveal themselves to Julian, but that does not happen, although the Quyll do tell Fredy about their 'nuclear option' which would convert Julian into an immortal femtobot replicoid.

War of Words - Chapter 5 - Club Replicoid (Chapt. 1)(Chapt. 2)(Chapt. 3)(Chapt. 4)

During his second visit to the offices of Second Contact magazine, Julian was on a covert mission. Along for this trip to northern Arizona was Tess, who, for her own reason, shared Julian's fascination with Ambrose Quillion.

Julian and Tess stayed the week at Fredy's luxurious mansion, perched on a hill at the edge of Flagstaff. Tess spent her days with Rose while Julian worked at the now-bustling offices of Second Contact magazine. Julian got to watch Marda direct her newly assembled digital video shooting crew while they trained to use the ultra-modern cameras and digital video editing equipment that Marda had equipped them with.

Watching the crew at work, they seemed amazingly well-coordinated. After the shoot, Julian commented to Marda, "I think you can really make this happen."

"Thanks for your vote of confidence. This is a big step up for me, being the one in charge. To make my life easier, I've called in favors from old friends." She waved a hand towards her team members.

Julian got to see an early copy of his first story in print, which would run in the next Second Contact magazine issue to be released. It was one of the first two stories submitted for Fredy's new writers contest. 

Julian was amazed when Marda showed him fifteen minutes of digital video that had been crafted for a one hour episode of the science fiction anthology television series that was in the planning stages. She told him, "These are all the alien and Tyr scenes, just as you wrote them from your imagination. The remaining three quarters of the video for this episode will be shot by my field crew. They are flying to Europe this evening. I'm struggling to decide if your episode should come first, before the first of the Quillion episodes."

Julian apologized for setting most of his story in southeast France at a remote mansion called 'Litheblanc'. "You could have shifted the location to central Arizona and saved a lot of time and money. In fact, you could have just shot the interior video all at Fredy's house."

Cyrano was hovering nearby, wanting to speak to Marda. Marda told Julian, "Don't be absurd. An American audience wants to see an exotic foreign location. Don't worry yourself about costs." Marda conferred briefly with Cyrano then took Julian to Fredy's office.

Julian, Tess, Fredy and
Ambrose at Altiplanus.

Fredy looked up from her laptop screen and asked, "Julian, can I drag you away from Marda? Rose wants us to meet her and Tess for dinner at Altiplanus."

Julian had already managed to collect a few of Marda's hairs. He was working on the theory that there must be others at Second Contact who were like Rose, with murky backgrounds and cells that contained no detectable DNA. "Sounds good."

On their way out, Julian got one last glimpse of Cyrano. He waved to her and then patted his pocket where he had some of her hairs in plastic bag. While waiting for the elevator to drop ten floors, he told Fredy, "Marda seems to get things done."

"She enjoys her work and she spends sixteen hours a day at it. Her husband is trying to get established as a new professor. He spends long days on campus."

"I hope she does not burn out."

"She'll eventually get into a more balanced and relaxed work pattern now that she has her camera crew assembled. She and Lyle work hard and play hard. Remember, Saturday we are going snow camping with them."

When they had gotten into Fredy's car and were on their way to the restaurant, Fredy added, "Tess told me she does not want to go snow camping."

"She hates cold and snow and is afraid of injuring herself. She has been hired to dance in a show in New York City and does not want to twist an ankle while on cross-country skis and wearing a heavy pack on her back."

Fredy noted, "She seems to enjoy spending time with Rose."

"They've been having nightly phone-sex sessions for the past several weeks, which I get to join if I get home early enough from work. I'm sure Tess would be happy to stay in town with Rose all weekend."

Julian nodded. "You don't seem jealous of Rose spending so much time with Tess."

"I love Rose, but in a kind of clinical way." Fredy thought about the highs and lows of making love to Rose. "I've tried to help teach her how to behave and not scare people away. Tess seems to appreciate Rose and I take that as a success for Rose's rehabilitation."

"You talk about Rose almost as if she's recovering from a stroke."

"That might be a sensible way for us to think about the situation, although she seems perfectly healthy. And I do mean perfect. I love the way she deploys her tongue for oral sexplay."

"Yes, she seems technically proficient for that, but there is something odd about her. What do you know about her background? Are her parents still alive?"

Fredy glanced at Julian from the corner of her eyes. She was trying to find parking. "Rose does not reveal much about her past. Apparently she's from Australia, but has long lived here in the States." Julian had a plan for getting a mucosa swab from Rose, but she seemed intent on spending all of her time with Tess.

__

Image generated by Leonardo.

After dinner and a movie, Julian, Fredy, Tess and Rose returned to Fredy's house. Tess suggested a soak in the hot tub and she and Fredy quickly went out to the tub on the back patio. Julian went with Rose to the kitchen where, already naked in preparation for the hot tub session, she made hot chocolate. Seeing Rose naked quickly stimulated Julian to a hard hot erection. Waiting for the water to boil in a kettle, Rose placed a hand on his stiff penis. Rose asked, "Do you want something."

"Yes, I do. I want a sample of your cells."

Rose laughed and stroked his erection, "You first."

"I've tested your hair. I found no DNA."

Rose bent and kissed the tip of Julian's penis. "You are a bad boy. Why did you do that?"

"There is something weird about Ambrose Qillion. I intend to figure out who you are and where you come from."

"Where is your kit?"

Julian opened the cabinet and took down from the top shelf the sampling kit he had stashed there. "You might be some kind of mutant with modifications to your DNA that confound sequencing machines. I want to culture some of your cells." Rose spread her legs and pointed to her crotch. "I've been hoping to get you inside me."

Julian quickly took swabs from both her oral cavity and inside her vagina. She commented, "Those are not cotton swabs."

"No, they are made of a special abrasive material designed the pull of living cells from a mucosal epithelium. He quickly processed the two cell samples and placed them in the freezer. Then they carried the hot chocolate out to the hot tub.

Scene 2.

Five month's later.

Julian had taken a new position in the genetics department at NAU and was now living with Fredy. He was driving Fredy's SUV and taking her to work on a Monday morning and puzzling over the genome sequences he had obtained for both Marda and Fredy. Even more puzzling was the fact that he had failed to obtain either living cells or DNA molecules from the bodies of Rose and Cyrano.

Fredy reached over and placed a hand on his leg. "Penny for your thoughts."

"I'd pay a lot more if you would tell me who Rose really is."

"Still trying to solve that mystery?"

"No... I'm giving up. She does not seem real."

"Oh, she's real enough. You just need to expand your concept of what is possible. Anyhow, Rose is working on this from her end. Be patient."

"Be patient? What does that mean?"

"Rose is trying to get permission to finally explain things to you."

"Permission from who?"

"That is hard to say."

Julian puzzled over Fredy's choice of words. He liked to think that with each passing day, they were growing closer and had less need to keep secrets. "You know, but you can't tell me."

"Yes. Exactly."

"This is incredibly frustrating."

"Tell me about it. I've been dying to tell you my secrets since I fell in love with you."

"That's fine, my love. Just tell me."

"It is not that easy." They had pulled into the parking lot. Fredy asked, "Would you give up being biological if you could live forever as an artificial life-form?"

Julian pulled the SUV to a halt in front of the office building. "I moved to Arizona because we are planning to have children."

"I have to go. Think about it." Fredy jumped out of the SUV. He sat there confused until there was a honk behind him. He drove mindlessly to the NAU campus while trying to make sense of what Fredy had said. He wondered if it was a joke, from one science fiction fan to another. Slowly he relaxed his mental constraints. He'd hypothesized that there was something in the biology of both Rose and Cyrano that interfered with the chemistry used by DNA sequencing machines. But what if they were not biological at all?

__

Later that morning, Rylla walked into Fredy's office, having returned from her vacation in Australia. Within minutes, Marda and Ambrose were also seated in Fredy's office. Rylla spilled her big news. "Guess who I met in Australia?"

Marda suggested, "Crocadile Dundee."

Rylla shook her head. "The biological Ambrose Quillion has a nice place, hidden in the Outback, far of the beaten path."

The Ambrose robot nodded. "The Quyll told me that Ambrose is still alive, but I was unable to track her down."

"The Quyll led me right to her. And I learned that she is not alone. I met my parents."

Fredy asked, "Your dead parents?"

"Exactly." Rylla explained, "Actually, they are femptobot replicoid copies of my parents. When my parents died, they were copied over as immortal artificial life-forms."

Ambrose admitted, "I'm aware that the Quyll have the ability to copy humans into replicoids, replacing biological cells and molecules with femtobot components that mimic the human form. This might be a solution to the Oakes problem."

Rylla asked Fredy, "You are having a problem with Julian? I thought you two were ga ga for each other."

"Julian is wonderful. However, there is a problem. He's not stupid." Fredy told Rose, "He figured out that you and Cyrano are not biological."

"I know." Rose explained, "I've been advising him to keep looking for the answer to this little puzzle."

"I don't think I can just keep blowing him off."

Rose commented, "Ya, he does not find blow jobs very satisfying. He's more of a meat and vaginal sex kind of guy."

"Rose, get your mind out of my bed. I assure you, he enjoys oral sex if you do it right. But forget about that. We have to think seriously about the nuclear option."

Rylla chuckled nervously. "What are you talking about?"

Rose explained to Rylla, "The Quyll told me that Julian lacks the special genes that are needed for Quyll femtobots to efficiently control the human speech centers. Most important is a special Quyll-designed variant of the NOTCH2NLC gene. Julian does not have it, so the Quyll are reluctant to allow Julian to become aware of the existence of the Quyll."

Fredy added, "So Julian is left knowing that there is a whole lot of impossible weirdness here at Second Contact, but I can't explain to him what is going on. The situation is hopelessly unstable."

Rylla asked, "What are you going to do? Send Julian back to the East Coast?"

Rose explained to Rylla, "The Quyll have offered to convert Julian into a femtobot replicoid copy of his biological self. If he takes on the form of an artificial life-form composed of femtobots then the Quyll will be able to prevent him from divulging to the public any Quyll secrets. Julian will finally be allowed to know all that we know about the Quyll and their plans for Earth."

Rylla nodded. "So that's it." She told Fredy, "That's the solution to your problem."

"Except it is no good! Julian and I are trying to get pregnant. I want to have children with him."

"I see." Rylla rubbed her bulging abdomen. "And if he becomes an artificial life-form, then he can't impregnate you."

Rose said, "No, that's not true. Technically."

Marda suggested, "Just save some of his cells."

Rose stood up and briefly paced back and forth across the width of Fredy's office several times. "I just checked with the Quyll. This can work. They are comfortable dealing with human stem cells. An artificial supply of Julian's germ cells can be made in the lab. Fredy, you could be impregnated and carry his child to term twenty years after he's converted into a replicoid. His cells can be kept in a biobank."

Fredy still occasionally had a sexual romp with Rose who with practice and experience seemed to keep getting better as a lover. Fredy asked Rose, "I think you have a good understanding of the female body, but I wonder..."

Marda asked, "Would an artificial Julian still be able to please you in bed?"

"Exactly." Fredy added, "I particularly enjoy what he does to me when my back is on the dinner table and my legs are draped over his broad shoulders."

Marda noted, "That gives me an idea for our next video."

Rose gestured towards Rylla, "Here is the expert on replicoid copies of humans."

Rylla giggled and told what she had seen in Australia. "My parents have not aged. They still look like they did when they died and my mother has no complaints about my father's sexual performance... femtobot replicoids of humans seem to be perfectly functional in all ways."

Fredy nodded slowly. "Then there is only one more question. Should I also become a replicoid?"

Marda warned, "You can't do this without Julian knowing what he is getting into and agreeing."

"I tried to tell him this morning, but I'm still blocked form talking to him about the Quyll and Quyll technology."

Marda got to her feet. "Well, good luck with that. I've got a meeting with my team." Marda exited from Fredy's office.

Rose suggested, "Maybe we could arrange for you to talk about this while Julian listens."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Invite Rylla and her husband to dinner tonight. A celebration of their return from vacation." Rose nodded with certainty. "Yes. Cyrano will do the rest."

Rylla turned to Rose and told her, "I don't understand your plan."

"That's the idea. All you have to do is wait until your husband and Julian are talking about sports. Then you talk to Fredy about the 'nuclear option'. You two just have to give enough details for Julian to figure out what you are talking about.

Feddy giggled and said, "It is worth a try, but I don't think it is that easy to get around the constraints that the Quyll impose on us."

"Don't think too much. Cyrano will take care of all the details."

__

Dinner was at a noisy sports bar with dozens of blaring television sets on the walls. As Rose had predicted, Julian and Rylla's husband, Tom, were watching a baseball game between Arizona and Boston and ignoring Rylla and Fredy. Rylla said, "Tom is still puzzled by how my parents hid in the Outback for twenty years."

Fredy was puzzled over the matter of how loudly she should speak. If she thought Julian could hear her, she could not say the word 'Quyll'. Just then a waitress, or what seemed to be a waitress, came to the table and picked up used dishes. Fredy thought she recognized her as being one of the femtobot robots from Marda's team, but she could not be sure. She'd never paid much attention to those robots who existed only to create the illusion that Second Contact was using conventional television production methods. Fredy told Rylla, "How disorienting is it to suddenly have your parents back again?"

Rylla replied, "They have no intention of interacting with me, but it is comforting to know that they are still around and happy. Apparently they do odd jobs for the Quyll, traveling all around the world as needed."

The 'waitress' was back and taking desert orders from Tom and Julian. The presumed waitress had a large fraction of her two big beautiful breasts hanging out of her low-cut top. She had the complete attention of Tom and Julian. Fredy told Rylla, "I just need to get Julian to agree to become a femtobot replicoid and all our problems will be over."

Rylla added, "You could both live together forever as artificial life-forms."

The waitress went away and Tom and Julian returned their eyes to the baseball game. The big-breasted waitress was not seen again. Fredy assumed that Cyrano had arranged for the distraction.

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Later that night when Fredy and Julian took a soak in the hot tub, Julian started playing with Fredy's cute breasts and was thinking about that waitress. Suddenly, he asked Fredy, "What were you asking Rylla about Australia?"

"We talked about her parents and Rylla's childhood growing up in Australia."

Julian kissed both of Fredy's stiff nipples. "There was something else you said. Were you asking her about babies and reproduction?"

"I said 'replicoids', not reproduction."

"Right!" Julian got his eyes off of her curves and looked into Fredy's eyes. "Femtoscale replicoids."

"Femtobot."

"Femtobot?"

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Fredy tried to tell Julian about Quyll femtobots, but she could not speak the word 'Quyll'. After a long struggle to speak which she tried to hide by kissing Julian on the mouth, she said, "Killer femtobots. It is a plot element in the latest story by Ambrose."

"Oh. I hope Rose is not going to start writing horror and stories about raging aliens invading Earth."

Fredy giggled. "This might be the first Ambrose Quillion story that Second Contact magazine has to reject."

Julian suggested, "Maybe this marks the decline of the Ambrose Quillion Phenomenon."

"Maybe. I've now got seven other writers of your caliber feeding their stories to Marda. Soon we won't need to worry if Rose implodes."

"She never has seemed very stable. And her madness might be infecting you. What were you trying to tell me this morning about not being biological?

"It is another wild idea that Rose came up with. Don't ask me to explain it. You are going to have to figure it out yourself."

"If you say so."

"I do. It will come to you when you are relaxed. Like one of your recurring dreams about Asimov's sexy robot, Dors."

"Speaking of sex appeal, did you see that waitress tonight?"

"That was no waitress. She was just there to distract you and catch your attention."

"You now, her giant breasts did not look real."

"They were real, but not biological."

"Silicon?"

"Something like that. Maybe they were made of femtobots."

"Is that in the new story by Rose? Giant artificial breasts?"

"I'm tired of talking about your waitress' breasts and Rose and her kink for giving you oral sex. I want your attention on me."

"I'm over heating. Let's get in bed... I'm more than ready to get on you... unless you want to start on top."

"I'm trying to train you... it is always ladies before gentlemen."

End Chapter 5.

Next: Chapter 6 of "War of Words".

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