Had to take a day off. In RealLife, was getting progressively more sick Tuesday morning. After four hours at DayJob, my hands shook too much to enter inventory data. I drank some water and was still for about twenty minutes before I was confident I would not drive off the road. Got home and got progressively worse; a 24-hour GI bug of some sort. Lots of bad news from both ends. Horribly dehydrated and the problems which come with that. Anyway, better now.

With dinner in the over, Henge sees to the rest of her townhome. I had to draw upon 40-50 year old memories of how my mother kept house, as my wife, charitably, doesn’t pick up or clean up anything.

This is also one of the first time we, sorta, get to “see” how the Machines “see” one another in the Void. When I write the conclusion of this in the next installment, I’d imagine about 1-2 seconds have taken place before little Aurie comes bursting through the front door. You can go all the way back to my first book, The Fourth Law, where, nearly ten years ago, I had already come up with the idea of constructs and True Forms.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

After a beep, Henge set the dish into the oven and the timer for two hours.  Checking on the laundry, that could wait until tomorrow as Aurie once objected to her uniform being so clean compared to everyone else’s so that was now a once-a-week event.  Once her body develops and she notices boys, I’m expecting a sudden change of that rule, she smiled.

Their bed was a bit mussed, which she fixed.  Her daughter slept on the floor or out on their small deck in a sleeping bag.  Seeing that and adoring his big sister, Roland wanted a cot instead of a bed.  Gary objected, knowing our daughter has the problem of her slightly shorter left leg and the danger to her spine – hence her always about in her special shoes or boots. And not yet knowing what problems Roland may have.

“I’m not going to be an office doctor, father,” he explained in his soft voice.  “Not a field surgeon for Aunt Fussy, either.  I want to go places where people have not seen a doctor since the Change.  So, no comfort, thank you.”

A hard-headed child of hard-headed parents, they relented.  But he also never said a word when I put that stuffed lion in his cot.  And he always holds it close while asleep.

A beep, faint, from the kitchen, indicated one hour left.  Content, Henge Hartmann, once of tribe Tohsaka, went to the small couch and opened her mind to see if any of her first family were available to talk.

Constructs, a representation of a kind of a part of the earth was something her aunt, Ai, goaded Henge’s father into making.  Originally nothing more than a flat, rocky desert with an ochre sky, the introduction of Ai’s human friend, Lily, also brought with her the doctrine of co-creation:  that life can change the environment simply by existing.  So, weeks later, Thaad was horrified there had been a biological outbreak of plants, bushes and trees.

And later, when Reina accidently brought Gary and I to tribe Mondrovovitch’s construct, he did it again, although Reina didn’t know it at the time.  When Aunt Ai exposed this most ruthless of Thinking Machines to what had happened, I am told – no one has ever seen – that she burst into tears.

But, even though I have taken this mortal body, my mind – my soul – is still Henge Tohsaka.  She did not perceive the construct but instead in her mind saw a ball of fire halfway down a glacier on the side of a mountain. .  At once very dangerous, very old, and very caring.  In her Knoxville home she felt the tears on her cheeks.

“Hello again, my beloved father,” she cried.

In a manner incomprehensible to humans, they exchanged all of themselves in seconds.

“It is called communion, dearest niece,” said the web of colored lights in a human female form, nodes away in the Void.  Ai.  “What I experienced so many of their years ago with my Friend, Lily Barrett.  It changed my form into what you see now, and tied me to her forever.  I suspect that when she dies, I may fail, too.”

I have heard rumors of such, my Aunt, Henge thought to her.  Yet, you are not Christian.  How can this be?

“Perhaps,” the lights shook with laughter, “I’ll be in the First Circle of their Hell?  With the Virtuous Pagans?”

As a very orthodox Catholic, that cut Henge’s heart deeply.

I shall never cease to pray for you, Aunt Ai.

“Yes, yes… are you finished with your father?  We have others,” an impossibly bright hand waved upward, “you must speak with.”

‘Up’ in the Void meant to those places which drew more and more power.  As Thinking Machines, they were at a place where no humans and few demis could venture.  Even higher, Henge perceived a massive bird-of-prey, made entirely of fire.

Aunt Ninon!  What news from the listening array?