|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- FOREMAN ITTENER PIER--CUP 15--"DAUGHTERS" <-------  ||  Severe Repair  ||  Foreman Ittener Pier  ||  -------> (Cup SRfi015, Created v2 (6/7/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = "When did you do this?" I asked. Lunatether drew me nearer and put her arms around me. "Hold me." she said, and I did. "Okay," I said after a few moments, "now tell me exactly what's going on here." She let go of me and looked into my eyes. "Okay." she said, sniffling. "I came back on a tock hound. I know I wasn't supposed to, but I couldn't bear being away from you any longer." "What do you mean?" "I... I love you, Ferrajalt. I always have. Even the time clone of my mind out there over the sea--even at that time I already loved you." "What?" "I love you! Can't you see? That was my awareness inside the sex android. I FELT it. You were making love to ME." I took a deep breath, dawn just breaking in my mind on the whole scenario she was fleshing out. "Go on." I finally said. "Okay. The thing you were about to do--with the lottery and everything--it was gonna work. I mean, it did work. You got all that money, and you... you started spending more and more time away from me. Then you started in with the financial markets, and it made that thirty-million look like a joke. You really lived it up. But then--when Whale and Jilt were old enough--you and Hilltop rode off on them, and you asked me to wait--to wait 48 years for you, since I was still the Stormbolthouse and too big too ride." "Okay." I said. "I gotcha so far. Keep going." "Well I... I waited for a few years out there by myself. I kept telling myself I had a responsibility to you and Hilltop, as my masters, but I just couldn't take it. I started thinking about the plan soon after you left, but I dared not even consider executing it. But as the months wore on, and my loneliness and longing grew, all my self-control was slipping away. So finally, I just did it." "Did what?" She turned away. "I had DNA samples from Hilltop. The Life Center inside me was capable of cloning her--but if I transferred my awareness to the body, the Stormbolthouse would die--Life Center and all." "So--so what did you do?" "I did something I knew I shouldn't have--I... I had a daughter, Stormbolthouse Ludrashay. I grew the Hilltop clone inside of her, and then, I did it." She looked at me again. "You did it?" I asked. "I did it. I went into the clone, and Stormbolthouse Lunatether was no more. It fell apart and fell into the sea." I looked up and down the beach, not believing it. "What then?" "It took me awhile to recover. Growing a clone to maturity, then jumping into it isn't easy. I was totally out of synch with the body at first. It took months to get to even a rudimentary level of comfort. But Ludrashay, my dear daughter, nursed me back to health through the entire ordeal." "I see." I said. "So you raised a tock hound in Ludrashay, and after two years rode it right back here?" "Well--yes, but... It's not really that simple, but that's basically what happened." "What else happened?" "As you might imagine, Ludrashay saw what I was doing, and it was no secret that she wanted to be human too. We spoke about it at length. If she had a daughter to grow a Hilltop or some other clone to go into, then HER daughter would also likely desire the same thing, and so on, and so on. But the more we discussed it, the more we realized that it didn't seem like such a bad idea." "Uh-oh." I said. "So, we went ahead." "Yeah?" "Yeah." I shook my head in frustration. "So--so your, uh, daughter did it? Had another daughter, another Stormbolthouse, and used her to grow another Hilltop clone to go into?" Lunatether nodded. "Then that daughter had another daughter, and..." She nodded again. "So how many of you are there now?" "Nine. Eight of us are human now, the ninth still in her Stormbolthouse stage." "Uhh!" I moaned, taking in the enormity of the information. "So this will all happen in what--the next five or six years?" She nodded again. "So what happened to me and Hilltop when we got to the future?" "I don't know." she said. "Haven't been up there yet." "This is unbelievable!" I said, turning and pacing to the other side of the boardwalk. Lunatether followed. "So what do you propose to do now?" I asked. "Didn't you screw everything up by doing this?" "Yes." she said. "And that's what I wanted to ask you--to get away from all this, from all this insanity. Ride with me to the future, back to the time you knew, back to Overwhelm Associates, and let's get away from all this." "But what about Hilltop? And the other you? And Whale? And Jilt?" -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----