🚀 go-pugleaf

    The M.E.C.H.A.  jet streaked for home, passing over towns and
houses, over farms and fields and highways, making the fast
Springfield-to-Barry County run that it so often made.  Since the jet
practically flew itself, especially on autopilot, there was no real need
to do more than glance occasionally at the instrument panel.  Instead,
Mike looked out the windows at the landmarks below, so familiar now from
constant repeated flights.
    At the rate they were going, it wouldn't take much more than ten
minutes to get from Springfield to TMHQ.  And that was flying subsonic.
At the jet's maximum speed, the sixty-mile hop could have been made in
just a minute or two, but there was no need for that kind of speed over
such a short hop.  It was inefficient, and besides, sonic booms were bad
for the team reputation.
    Mike was alone on the flight deck, except for his thoughts.  But his
thoughts were company enough.  He hadn't known what had happened down
there between Summer and Eris until Phobos had told him.  At the time,
he'd been busy suiting up in CVR armor and preparing a Cyclone to take
him into battle.  By the time he'd heard, it was all over, and the only
thing he could do was take the jet down to pick Phobos and Summer up and
rush them back to headquarters.
    Rationally, Mike knew, he shouldn't blame himself for what had
happened, but Mike also knew that where Summer was concerned, he was an
irrational kind of guy.  He cared deeply for his sister, and would be
shattered if anything happened to her.  Had _been_ shattered, when
something _had_ happened to her, and then overjoyed when she'd returned,
and now nearly shattered _again_ since hearing about this new incident.
It didn't help that even Phobos, who had _been_ there, didn't know
exactly what had happened, and Summer wasn't saying anything about it.
Mike really, really hoped that everything wasn't about to go down the
tubes again.
    Mike refocused his eyes and turned back to the instrument panel.
"You know," he said aloud, "I'm thinking more and more that I'm just in
the wrong line of work." But in his heart he knew that wasn't really
true.

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                          A SUMMER TO REMEMBER

                               Conclusion

         A Story of High Technology and High Time This Was Over

                                (Amen!)

                               Written by
                       - Christopher E.  Meadows -
                         - Eric Alfred Burns -
                            - Mason Kramer -


    Summer floated within cyberspace again--this time, her own
cyberspace.  While her body was sleeping in its bed, she had sent her
mind back into itself, into here, for this was where she had some
unfinished business.
    All around her were pieces, personality fragments, leftovers from
Eris and from those whom Eris had taken.  Summer spent long minutes in
rapt contemplation of them as they floated all around her.  This was
what it all came down to.  Here were bits of Jenny, and Chet, and who
knew how many others.
    And it was up to Summer to put them all back together.
    Jenny first.  Jenny was the one Summer _knew_, the one Summer could
trust.  The one she'd put together originally to begin with, the one
who'd put _her_ back together in a similar situation.  It might be a bit
tricky, but Summer was up to it...she hoped.  There was nothing for it
but to roll up her metaphorical sleeves and get to work....

    It took a long time for Summer even to get the data sorted out.
There were personality fragments and bits of code from what seemed like
half a dozen separate entities, all mixed up together with strands of
the virus that had started the whole problem in the first place.
Separating everything into discrete piles was like doing half a dozen
jigsaw puzzles at once, in the dark, working by feel instead of sight.
    When she had finally finished sorting, Summer turned her attention
to the Jenny pile.  She reached out, took the pieces of code, and fit
them together again--rebuilding, replacing, working by instinct and
memory.  Finally, all the parts were assembled, and there were no pieces
left over.
    There were, however, pieces missing.  In addition to the parts of
herself that Jenny had returned to Summer, other pieces were worn,
garbled, or simply gone.  It was understandable, given what Eris had
been and done.  Summer spared a moment to hope that the others, at
least, were more complete than this, then turned her mind to a solution
in Jenny's case.
    There was a solution, of course...Jenny's backups.  She had said she
did not want to be _run_ from them, and Summer wouldn't dream of doing
that...however, there was no reason she couldn't use pieces from the
backups to patch the holes in the original.  Using the expertise she'd
developed for surfing the RoboMACs' comnet, Summer activated a cellular
modem link, patching her mind into the HQ's main computer system while
her body continued to slumber.  It only took a few moments to move
Jenny's backup into her personal storage space so she could go to work.
    It soon became apparent to Summer that there were some things she
couldn't patch.  Parts of Jenny were subtly different than the
backups...to fix them completely would have meant excising large chunks
of code, and by that point there would be far more backup than original
Jenny.  Jenny wouldn't want that.  Besides, people changed all the time
anyway, didn't they?  Maybe it wouldn't be so much....  So Summer
patched the holes as best she could, and hoped against hope that Jenny
wouldn't be too different when she revived.  If she revived.
    At last, Summer had done all she could from the backup, and she put
it away.  The part that remained couldn't be taken from Jenny's backup.
It was too large, too integral...and besides, Summer had it within her.
All that remained was to replace it.
    Summer floated in front of Jenny's immobile icon for the longest
time, looking at it.  "You looked just like this before I made you to
begin with," Summer murmured.  "You had just as much functionality,
too...you were Mason's little toy, made to occupy perhaps a tenth of
that computer system they had in that mansion of theirs.  And then I
came along, and thought, 'Hey, wouldn't it be neat if she could really
think?' and gave you life without even realizing what I'd done.  And by
the time I knew and accepted it, it was almost too late.
    "And here we are again, back at the same crossroads.  And I'm going
to take that same old path again, but this time I know where it leads
because I've been there before.  At least...I think I know.  I only hope
it really does lead back there again.
    "I've learned a lot through all of this.  I've learned just how much
I treasured those memories, those experiences, the lives we shared.  No
matter what happens, Jenny, I'm always going to remember you the way you
were...even if you don't turn out that way again.  I'm not going to take
anything for granted anymore...not you, not life itself.  Time is
fleeting, and we have to make the best of what we have before it's gone.
I'm going to try to live every minute of it.  I may not succeed, but
then, it's the attempt itself that's important."
    Summer took a deep breath and readied herself.  "Okay, Jenny.  Ready
or not, here I come.  Gonna put you back together, and maybe build you
better than before.  No way am I ever gonna let this happen again." She
moved forward, and merged into Jenny's icon.
    It was the same as it had been before.  From here, she could clearly
see what was missing, and replace it from herself again.  And...she
could do more, too.  Using her new understanding of the virus that had
caused all this trouble in the first place, she reinforced Jenny's code
to block the backdoors and cracks.  Jenny would not be vulnerable again.
    At last, everything was done.  Jenny was whole again...or so Summer
hoped.  But there was only one way to know for sure.  Summer pulled
herself back out, watched, and waited.  If Jenny was to live again, it
would be now or never.

    Jenny blinked.  It felt right, so she blinked again.  As she blinked
a third time, becoming accustomed to the whole blinking concept, she
began to notice things.  Firstly, she wasn't dead.  Like the man said,
"I think, therefore I am."  Right.  Got it.  The next thing that came to
mind was to wonder why.  And, for that matter, where she was--no, wait,
that was the third thing.  Had to keep them separate.
    "Jenny?"  The voice was familiar--and rightly so.  It belonged
to...
    "Mom?"  (Hey, I can speak, too!  That's neat.  But still,
where...oh, wait.  Open your eyes, you closed them again.  Hmm,
cyberspace.  Summer's?  That's what it feels like...and there she is.)
    "Jenny!  You recognize me!"  (She looks happy--no, strike and
replace, make that overjoyed.)
    "Of course I do, Mom!  Who else would you be?"  (Who else _would_
she be?  Lita?  Eris?  Eris, who's Eris?  Wait a minute...it's coming
back...) "Mom?  What happened to me?"
    "Well, I got killed, and you sacrificed yourself to bring me back to
life--"
    "I remember that part.  You--you didn't run me from backup, did
you?"  (No, she wouldn't have...and she didn't, I can read it in her
icon.  Then how, why...?)
    "No...I put you back together.  But it was kinda tricky...I hope I
did it right.  You...still feel like you?"
    (Do I still feel like me?  Hmm...)  "I feel...different,
somehow...but I still feel like me, too.  Hard to say, but...well, I'm
here, so it's okay."
    "Good!  Are you all right?"
    "Define 'all right,' Mom."
    Summer grinned.  "You're all right.  C'mon, we've got some work to
do.  I'll explain while we're doing it."

    Summer and Jenny merged again, as they always did when they ran the
net together.  Working together, they experienced a kind of synergy that
enhanced their abilities...and it felt good to be back in synch after
being apart for so long.  They turned their attention to the next pile
of code awaiting them.
    This was a tricker task--neither of them had more than a cursory
idea how to rebuild this intelligence--but both Summer and Jenny
relished a challenge.  Working in concert, swapping guesses and ideas
and analyses at high speeds, they were soon able to puzzle out the basic
frame, much the way they might have looked for corner and edge pieces
first of all in a jigsaw puzzle.  After that, piece by piece, the code
began to come together, until...
    Chet's icon resolved into clarity.  He appeared to be a youngish man
in his mid-twenties, with chestnut-brown hair and brown eyes, wearing
jeans and a blue vinyl windbreaker with a "KCHP Radio!" logo on it.
Chet blinked and looked around.  "What happened?"  <internal diagnostics
running>
    "You were, um, kinda grabbed and digested by this virus," Summer
said.  "Remember?  You helped me fight back, in my hallucination?"
    <found: 2E+42 bad sectors, 17E+17 lost strings.  fix this problem?
(Y/N)>  "Vaguely...give me a minute."
    Chet gave over all his processing power to diagnostics for the next
several seconds, sorting himself out.  Something had happened, he didn't
know what, to give him a very bad jolt.  Nothing he wasn't used to,
though...he'd been scrambled by MACE or Guardian mindblasts several
times, and this was relatively mild by comparison to the headaches
_those_ had given him.  Not to mention the countless hangovers he'd had
while he was still corporeally human.
    "Okay...some of my memories are foggy or gone, but nothing I can't
live without," Chet said a few moments later.  "Like I'm really going to
_miss_ knowing what the temperature was in my left pinky manipulator for
the last ten thousand hours...Now, what happened again?"
    "First...um...could you tell me exactly who you are, and what you're
doing in my head?" Summer asked.  "I've never seen you before in my
life, and then you showed up when I was hallucinating and helped me
fight off the virus...."
    Chet shrugged.  "Beats me.  Last I recall, I had collapsed on the
side of some island near the MACEr spacebridge, suffering from memory
overload.  After that...*pif*.  Then I'm hallucinating with you, and
then everything went black."
    Summer blinked.  "MACEr spacebridge?  Uhm...uh-oh."
    Chet raised an eyebrow.  "Uh-oh?"
    Summer and Jenny looked at each other.  "Mom?  You don't suppose...."
Jenny began.
    Summer turned to Chet.  "Uhm...I can't explain at the moment, so
you're gonna have to trust me for now, okay?"
    Chet looked around, then shrugged.  "Might as well, I guess...it's
not like I have any pressing engagements or anything.  Uh...if I might
ask, where are we?  I've never seen a cyberspace so..._big_ before."
    Summer chuckled.  "That's...going to take some time to explain, I
think."
    "Uh...huh."  Chet shrugged again.  "Well, I guess I'm your guest for
the time being, then.  Sure beats where I was."
    "Um, right...."  Summer shrugged.  "Well, we've got what looks like
one last person to rebuild.  Wonder who is it...hope it's Lita.  Jenny,
let's go."
    "You got it, Mom!"  Summer and Jenny synchronized, worked together,
once again performing the dance of information, sorting, sifting,
patching, rebuilding.  As they worked, it soon became apparent to the
two of them that whoever this last personality was, it wasn't Lita, but
there was no way to tell who it _was_ until they put it back together.
    While they worked, Chet took a cursory look around this strange new
cyberspace he found himself in.  He was right, it was enormous.  So
huge, in fact, that he couldn't see where it ended.  There were uplink
ports to another net, but they were locked off at the moment and it
didn't seem worth the risk of offending his hostesses by prying.
Instead, he settled down to watch the reconstruction.
    Finally, the last data fragment snapped into place, and the icon
shimmered and assumed definition as the intelligence driving it returned
to life.  The cloud of data coalesced into...a figure in a stylized
black suit of power armor.
    "You!" Summer and Jenny gasped.
    "You!" PenumbralPerson (TM) gasped.  He looked around.
"Oh...poopie."
    "How the hell did you get in here?!" Summer demanded.  "And...wait a
minute, who's the one Adam fought just yesterday?"
    "I...um...." PenumbralPerson (TM) began.  "Um...I think I'll just be
going now...nice to meet you!"
    "Not so fast," Jenny growled.  "I think it's time we had some
answers."  She fired a blast of light from her arms, slamming into
PenumbralPerson (TM) and shattering the PenumbralPowerarmor (TM)
surrounding him.
    ...him?
    Summer and Jenny both gasped as the figure within the armor was
revealed to be none other than a cute reddish-pink (or
pinkish-red)-haired teenaged girl who looked incredibly familiar.  She
looked very scared, and possibly about to cry.  "Please don't hurt me!
I...um...didn't mean to!"
    "...Nene?" Summer gasped.

                   * 223DON'TTRYITAUTHORSONLY *

    "...Nene?" Robotech_Master gasped, looking up from the keyboard.
    "Yes?" the five Technical Support Nenei trying to read over his
shoulder chorused.
    "Um, sorry," Robotech_Master's muse Miriam Marie <NLI> said.
    "So _that's_ where my sixth Nene went," Robotech_Master realized,
the light of comprehension slowly dawning.  "Miriam, what's going on
here?!"
    "BOOM!" something off in the distance said.
    "What was that?!" gasped a frightened Nene.
    "Nothing, just another Swede exploding, pay it no mind," R_M said.
    "Eww, gross!" said the Nene.
    "Miriam?" Robotech_Master asked.
    "Um...well, you needed an extra to wear the suit, and Nene said
she'd always wanted to try being a supervillain, and you _said_ it was
only going to be a cameo appearance anyway...she wasn't ever supposed to
be seen outside of the suit...."  Miriam trailed off.
    "Yeah, but then you _inspired_ me!  You know how things change
then."  R_M rolled his eyes.  "What am I gonna do?  You know I don't
like using trademarked character names outside of brief parodic cameo
appearances...."
    "BOOM!" said another Swede.
    One of the Nenei held up a small hand-held gadget, a box-shaped
device with a pair of antennae on it.  "Wow!  My PKE (Pointless
Kharacter Exposition) meter is going off the chart!"
    "Oh, shut up and pass the chocolate," said another Nene.
    "Well, you could retcon her," Miriam suggested.  "Just make her a
similar character with a different appearance and moniker."
    Chris blinked.  "You know, that works.  I hadn't thought of that.
Have to retcon away her body's complete invulnerability, too...."  He
turned back to the keyboard and clattered away, then stopped again.
"And...hey!  That's your last name!"
    "Huh?" Miriam huhed.
    "Moniker!  Miriam Marie Moniker!  I think it works!  Do you like
it?"
    Miriam rolled her eyes.  "Maybe I should go back to being an edit
vampire."
    "Great!  I knew you'd like it."  Robotech_Master continued typing,
and finished the scene.
    "BOOM!" said three more Swedes.
    R_M turned from the keyboard to face the five Technical Support
Nenei.  "Hmmmmm...you know, with her gone, there's only five of you."
    Miriam turned.  "Chris, don't do it!"
    "Now, I just need to figure out which one of you is Crea--"
    At that moment, a half-crazed ex-Reviewer with a ten ton mallet
dashed in and pounded Robotech_Master to within an inch of his life.
"NO MORE BLOODY PENTADS!!!"
    And then the rest of the Swedes exploded, and the planet blew up.
    "...Okay...." R_M groaned.  "...I...get the...point...already...."

                        [Continued in Part Two]
--
Chris Meadows aka  | Author, Team M.E.C.H.A., Crapshoot & Co.
Robotech_Master    | on the Superguy Listserv (bit.listserv.superguy)
robotech@jurai.net | With a World Wide Web homepage located at
robotech@eyrie.org | http://www.eyrie.org/~robotech/index.html