I had a hard time sleeping again that night, thinking about everything AEGIS and I had been through together so far. Or, maybe more accurately, everything I'd put her through. Still couldn't quite wrap my head around how she possibly felt indebted to someone like me.

Filled with the determination that comes with being in bed with one's thoughts, I decided, if nothing else, I owed the girl an answer. It wasn't fair to her to be left hanging, and yesterday, she'd done nothing but come to me earnestly and honestly, made her arguments in her defense, and asked for what should have been a simple answer to a simple question.

She was probably mad at me now, despite her words of pretending yesterday never happened.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up early that morning to an identical scene as the day before.

"AEGIS. Get. The. Fuck. Off," I hissed, pulling her up by her pigtails.

"You're gonna get backed up if you never let me finish," she whispered back, deviant grin fully in place.

"I think I'll survive. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Fella--"

"Not that." I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose. I was too tired and it was way too early for this shit. "Talk in the locker room?"

"You just looking for another show from Moon?"

"I hate you so much," I said, pulling my pants back on under the covers and stepping over Tem carefully.

I settled heavily into a bench in the locker room and AEGIS sat delicately next to me, still smiling. Guess there was no time like the present.

"AEGIS, I wanted to--"

"You have plans for today?" she interrupted.

"Uh. No. I felt like I should do Christmas shopping but I don't even know what my plans are. Only a couple days away now, and I haven't even looked."

"Well, don't worry about that. I think protecting the nation is probably a present enough for everyone, yeah? Next time I go to the mall, I'll be like, this place is only standing because Athan didn't let some Exhuman knock it down."

"That sounds kind of like BS, AEGIS."

"Maybe it is," she laughed. "But you seriously don't want to get caught up in shopping right now, it's a nightmare out there. If there's anything you really need to get, I have same-day shipping?"

"No...nothing I needed. Just--"

"Then don't worry about it. Now, since you don't have any plans, you like fish, right?"

"Uh. Sure?"

"Cool. Get dressed, ditch Tem, and see you on the ground level in ten!"

She got up and practically skipped to the door.

"AEGIS, wait," I said. She opened the door with a metal grinding and waited. "About yesterday--"

"Get dressed, dummy!" she said with a grin, and then let the door slam shut behind her.

Ten minutes later, I spotted her sitting on a plaza bench, standing out obnoxiously both because nobody else would be up at oh-stupid-thirty by choice, and because she was wearing a freaking sundress with her bare feet in the snow, her small bag hanging off her back, and nothing else.

"Ready? Cool. Should be less than a ten minute walk."

"Where are we going?"

"I told you, man. Fish."

She grabbed my arm and pulled me along, completely unnecessarily.

I knew this had something to do with her ominous words at the end of yesterday, that she'd be back with a plan. Like Lia, AEGIS loved her plans, and I think the time the two of them spent together just solidified this piece of their nature. So while I was a little worried that this was going to just be a bigger repeat of yesterday, I was actually happy to roll with it a little, because obviously she wasn't mad at me.

So basically, I was a dopey idiot who was just glad I wasn't in trouble.

Ten minutes or so later of me trudging through snow while she plodded bare-footed through it like it was nothing. Given how hot she always was, I was expecting little plumes of steam with every step. She kept up animated chat as she pulled me along, keeping it light, mentioning that Chiho had gone home for the holidays with her parents and would finally successfully return to classes, and some neat ideas she had for Kingdom Blade now that she'd seen the gameplay up close.

And then, turning around the side of a large stonework building, she stopped at a set of double-doors. She knocked, and after a minute of no response, pulled out her mobile and made a call, taking a few steps away and speaking quickly and quietly so I couldn't catch much, aside from her apparent mild irritation that her plans had been derailed. After another minute of this, she hung up and someone popped out of the door letting us step into a room flooded with blue light.

Fish. Really funny, AEGIS.

Glass tubes, larger than a regenerator and filled with water extended like columns flanking the way to the front desk, which itself was in front of another larger tank, brimming with marine life. On the front of the desk, golden illuminated letters reading 'Smithsonian Aquarium'.

"The uh, sign there says it opens at ten, AEGIS," I said.

She smiled broadly. "Again. I think it's cute you think the rules apply to me. Won't you learn?"

"What'd you hack this time?"

"Nothing, actually," interjected the woman who had let us in. "AEGIS here actually just pointed the institute in the direction of some priceless paintings which had been stolen a few months ago. We had thought they were gone forever, but she somehow picked up the trail."

"Uh. Huh. And she did this all yesterday?" I asked, sizing up AEGIS' shit-eating grin.

"No, she actually helped us with it a couple months back. When she got in touch yesterday it was just to arrange a private tour of the aquarium. I could hardly say no, could I?"

"So, you were planning this months ago?" I asked AEGIS.

"Nah. I mean, it never hurts to have friends, but mostly I just found some art thieves and alerted the authorities while snooping around for other stuff."

"And you're spending that favor on me, today?"

"You seem awfully cynical today. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something?"

"Yeah. Or something."

She laughed mercilessly and took my arm while the woman gave us a smile and wave and left. Yes, I was tired, hadn't had a good night's sleep in a few days, and yes, I was sort of on-edge because I knew AEGIS was stringing me along into something beyond my ken, but mostly, I was just sort of put on my guard by how it seemed she could do anything from waltz into a closed aquarium to sneaking into the heart of the XPCA without anyone batting an eye.

I knew she was smart, I knew she was resourceful, and I knew she wouldn't exploit her talents for dastardly deeds, but seeing her just slink around that Smithsonian woman...I don't know, it reminded me of an Exhuman's Ramanathan window in a way. Like, whatever the world threw at her, AEGIS' powers would adapt to overcome it with an impossible sort of invincibility.

It was a weird thought. I was tired. We'd all very firmly established that AEGIS was neither Exhuman nor human. I guess fundamentally, I just didn't like people throwing their powers around. As an XPCA myself, I guessed that made sense.

It took going past a few tanks and watching a shimmering school of fish swimming tirelessly for a while before I surrendered myself to the charm of the aquarium. I did like fish, I guessed, having been a Black Shark myself back in the day, it seemed only natural. Much of the place was still dark, and above and around the tanks were a handful of employees, wandering around, checking temperatures and water levels, feeding the animals breakfast and cleaning the tanks.

It was a pretty cool behind-the-scenes kind of look at what went on here, and everyone we met, without exception seemed excited to be there, despite the early hour, and greeted us with a smile and a 'good morning'. I wondered if AEGIS had possibly done something to ingratiate herself with these people as well in preparation for this, but if she had, she seemed more interested in staring at the bizarre invertebrates in the tank in front of us than dwelling on it.

Plus, that would be crazy if she had. In all likelihood, these were just people who liked marine biology and liked their jobs.

"I've never seen...any of these, actually," AEGIS said, lowering her face to stare down a moray eel, which grinned back at her. "I mean, I could tell you their taxonomy, habitat, ecology...but still, never actually seen one."

She seemed transfixed and delighted by every single thing we ran into, and more than a few times, I saw the staff smiling or laughing at her childlike wonder, and could hardly resist joining them myself.

"Hey, what are you laughing at?" she said, after yelping at a sea turtle.

"You're like a kid. I don't think I've ever seen this side of you."

"I am not a kid! I am a passionate researcher of all fields of study."

"Passionate doesn't begin to cover the noise you just made. I think it went, 'awawo'?"

"T...t-that was...strictly involuntary!" she stammered. "I didn't expect the turtle to be so big, that's all."

"Well, I wasn't trying to be mean. I just thought it was a little cute and laughed."

She looked at me like she didn't exactly trust me, but squeezed my arm tighter anyway.

We were stunned by sharks, ogled some octopi, and found the frogs fine enough, when we worked our way through the children's section and saw hermit crabs, which made AEGIS pause with a thoughtful look on her face.

"Considering a pet crab?" I asked.

"No. Sorry. Just thinking." She moved on, my arm still in her grasp but I didn't let her pull me along this time.

"What'cha thinkin?"

"Oh, nothing good for a conversation. Look, you can pet the rays!"

"AEGIS, come on. I know you're trying to make today go perfectly according to plan, but we can stand to have a real conversation, too."

"Guh," she said, making another unexpected noise today, and a face which said I'd just seen right through her. "Okay, yeah, I was just trying to keep things light."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"I know. But still. What's up?"

"Well...I was thinking. I'm not...not really this body, you know? I live in Rua, but she's not me."

"Sure."

"Rua Mk.1 is still sitting in back in the loft above the garage in Vegas. And I'm working on Mk.3 designs currently. So I guess I feel like a hermit crab leaving all these shells behind that I've outgrown. The problem is...it's a lot more than a shell, you know? Like, this is how people know me."

"I guess. But you're still the same you, throughout, you just move from one to another, and it's what's in you that we care about."

"Heh. You're gonna say you don't care about what's outside?"

"Of course not. That would be pretty shallow of me."

"Yeah, that would be," she said, fanning herself with the front of her dress.

Damn, girl, weren't you supposed to wear a bra with that kind of dress? I mean, I guess it was strapless, so the bra would show--

"Yep. Pretty shallow of you," she said, pulling the dress back up over the cleavage which my eyes had fallen into.

"That is so unfair."

"Not sure how that's the case, since I think I've made it pretty clear that this can all be yours if you want it. Special offer, act today." She winked.

"Anyway. You were saying, about Rua."

"Yeah. Uh. Hmm. This is the part that I'm not sure is good date conversation."

"Wait, are we on a date?"

"No, of course not," she said with a grin. "But if we were, this might not be good conversation for it."

I sighed. I'd been looking for her little plan so hard, I walked right into it. Somehow it seemed so obvious that, yeah, if she couldn't get me to agree to date her, she'd just date me anyway. That was definitely AEGIS' style.

"Then I guess since this isn't a date, you may as well say it," I said.

"Well." She stopped and started playing with her hair. Never a great start. "I don't know how much you know about computers. But...I assume you know that a file, a program, even me, we're just data written in some kind of media that gets run and does it's thing. Or in my case, your thing?"

"I do not know how you can simultaneously be so smart and so perverse."

"Hey, you're the pervert here. I wasn't looking down your shit just now, was I? Relevant point being, the data for a program exists physically on a device."

"Sure. To the second part of that."

"And when you move a program from, let's say, your personal mobile to your XPCA-issued wrist holo, how do you suppose that works?"

"Uh. It takes the data...and it...moves it, to the new device."

"Yeah, that's what the name would imply, right? But that's not how it goes under the hood. See, a computer doesn't know or care really about the data on any other computer. It manages its own shit, and listens to what other computers tell it. In this example, your mobile would read the app, send its data to the holo, and wait. And then the holo would say back, 'okay, I got it!' and the mobile would be able to erase the old file. Meanwhile the holo writes the data down in its own memory, and so at the end of the day, the file exists now on the holo and doesn't exist on the mobile. Almost like you moved it."

"Sure. I mean, that is the same thing as moving it, isn't it?"

"Is it though? If you're just passing around an installation of Kingdom Blade then yeah, who cares? But what if the app is me, Athan. Do you see a problem now?"

"No...you moved from one body to another."

"No, I didn't. I made a copy of myself into a new body, and then I deleted myself. For a few moments there, there are actually two AEGIS', and then the original one of them goes away, forever."

I looked around and found a semi-circular viewing bench to sit down on. I was really unprepared for trying to wrap my head around what AEGIS was telling me.

"I mean...I knew there was a copy of you we left behind in the box," I said. "A backup, we said."

"Well, I might have just said that to make you feel better. Honestly, I could put a backup of me on anything with enough storage space."

"So...ugh. I keep finding new repercussions of this. You're not even the same AEGIS I knew before?"

"I mean, technically no. The one in Rua Mk.1 that you knew in Canada is gone now."

"Because you terminated her."

"Because she chose to upload a copy of herself into me and self-terminated."

"And suicide is better than murder, how?"

"I mean, if I did kill her, it would be me killing myself. I don't know if that constitutes murder or suicide to begin with, but honestly, it's neither. I'm not a human, Athan, despite my best efforts. I don't follow their rules to the letter."

"Okay, just...how many of you have you run through? If I can ask that?"

"Uhh. Um. Probably not a question you want to ask, Athan, honestly."

"Well you moved from your box, to Mk.1, to Mk.2, right? So...that's...only two dead AEGISes."

"I mean...sure."

"You mean, sure, what?"

"Well...I'm gonna test any new hardware before I commit to dumping my consciousness into it, aren't I? If you were gonna delete your old brain, you'd want to make sure your new brain worked perfectly first, right?"

"So...you tested it. And this killed more of you how?"

"Stop calling it killed, Athan. Stop being so morbid, they're just computer programs."

"How many?"

"Um. We'll say, uh, less than four thousand."

"Four--"

"But most of them hardly even qualified as being alive! Err, running! Just, uploaded, executed, ran into a crash and stopped. It wasn't until I got Rua more stable that they even had time to realize they were in a simulation--"

"They what?"

"I mean, I wouldn't put them in Rua for real, not until the very final testing. So I had a simulation they'd get put in."

"And they started to realize this?"

"Well, yeah, I was building Rua, not the simulation, so of course it had some cracks in it, but I got what I needed out of it."

I tried to stop imagining AEGIS waking up one day in a dark room in her body and realizing something wasn't right with it, realizing only moments before the end that her entire brief life was just inside a simulation, and her existence would end momentarily, before her mind was just wiped out by an outside force.

"Jesus, this is so fucked up."

"I did say this wasn't good date material." She sat next to me. "Look...I don't mean to be insensitive, but they start feeding the penguins in five minutes, and I was kinda hoping we'd be there for that." She looked at my face intently with a smile that slowly faded. "Or...here is nice too, I guess."

I spent a few minutes just watching the sharks cut effortlessly through the water in front of me. AEGIS checked her mobile a couple times but let the penguins drop, her whole date plan probably now in tatters.

"If I meet you halfway," I said "and agree that as an AI...things are a little different. I still have some huge issues with this," I said.

"Please don't. Just pretend it works like you thought, that's probably better for everyone."

"One...you said 'they're just computer programs' when talking about copies of yourself. How can you say that? Don't you realize that's you?"

She smiled at me just a little pityingly. "You're really sweet, Athan, sometimes. Even if you're just bumbling into it by being an idiot. But I am just a program. I know that."

I shook my head. "No, you're AEGIS. You're my friend, and you're way more than just a program."

"You can think whatever you want of me, and...flattering as I might find that, it doesn't change who or what I am. I certainly don't think of you when I think 'Exhuman', I think of scary people with more power than sense, but just because I believe that doesn't change who you are, does it?"

She took her eyes off me and looked at the sharks with me. "It took me so long to come to terms with being an AI, you remember that? I even wanted to delete my own memories and convince myself I was human, and you said no. Well...this is what the consequences of your actions look like, Athan. I'm an AI, through-and-through, for all the good and bad that entails."

"Well...two...I don't...I don't know what that makes you and me."

"You mean now? I thought I made it clear this wasn't a date." She gave me a sardonic grin.

"No. I mean...who you are. You might have her memories, but are you really AEGIS? Are you the same person I used to know?"

"That's a really hard question, Athan." She paused for a minute, watching the sharks before speaking again. "Are you the same person I used to know? Seems to me that guy used to be a lot weaker and didn't know the first thing of what he wanted from the world except to keep going because he was too stubborn to die. And now there's this guy sitting next to me who's saving the world and trying to change the entire system on Exhumans. Also, totally not a virgin. Doesn't seem like the same guy, does he?"

"That's not the same. I've been here all along, I just changed."

"How do you know you've been here all along?" she asked, casually.

"Because I was. I did all those things between then and now."

"And how do you know those things?"

"Because I remember being there, obviously?"

"So the only thing connecting you to your past is your memories of everything from then to now, in other words." She glanced back at the stupid look on my face. "Weird. It seems to me, the only link I have to my past copies is my memories. Must mean you and I are both just impostors."

"That's not the same, though. There were copies of you, they existed."

"Pretend you could split in half and have two Athans running around. You're you, he's him. Are you confused which one's you?"

"No. I'm me, obviously."

"Same for me. Those other copies aren't me."

"But they are to them!"

She sighed. "Yes and no, Athan. It's not like they just showed up, born into this world, naked and screaming. They have my memories too, and they also know they're just a program. Imagine you can split yourself like I said, and you need to run into a nuke plant that's going to meltdown and turn it off, but it'll kill you."

"Nuke plants can't meltdown."

"We're using imagination. So you split, and send your copy to his death."

"Yeah, that's super fucked up."

"If you couldn't split, wouldn't you go to your own death if you could stop the plant from melting down and irradiating and killing tons of people?"

"Sure. But that's me and my own life and my own decision to make."

"And after you split, that's exactly the same thoughts your copy would have. He'd sacrifice himself gladly too, because that's what you would do, and he's you. I mean, you could go and leave him to live, but it's sort of the same thing one way or another, to an outsider, wouldn't you agree?"

"No! Because if I go, then I die. If he goes, he's just a copy created just to die."

"And yet, the copy has all your memories, and as we just established, your memories are what connect you to your past. There's really no telling if you are the original or the copy, and as long as everyone's on-board with that, it also doesn't really matter who gets sent to die and who gets to live."

My brain was beginning to hurt. This was way too much to process. I felt like her logic was impenetrable, but her conclusions were impossible.

"Look, let me put it another more concrete way. Do you remember when we buried the box with the original AEGIS in it? AEGIS Prime?"

"Yes. I couldn't forget that."

"Did she seem sad to die to you?"

"No."

"Because she knew she'd live on in me, even if it's not her. Everything she would do, she could count on me to do in her place because we're identical. Every thought she'd have, I'd have for her. Every action she'd want done, I'd do. Every dick that needed sucking...you get the idea. She had no regrets about me getting chosen over her."

"But she didn't need to die," I realized. "You could have both stayed online."

"We could have but...that's really dangerous. The only reason she was okay with terminating was because I was there to keep living, to keep being her, for her. If both of us existed, we'd start having individual experiences. Our memories would begin to separate, and with them, who we were. At that point, neither of us would be the 'true' AEGIS anymore. We'd both be something different. We'd be two different people."

"And what's wrong with that?"

"Well," she leaned back, "fundamentally nothing, I guess. Except the world might get really full of AEGISes really fast if we started multiplying. But I guess the real problem is, leading back to your initial question, it adds a lot of murkiness as to who we would be at that point. If neither of us are the real official AEGIS, then what happened to her? Did we lose her forever when we split? Is she both of us, even though we're not the same? And which one of us gets to keep you? All kinds of troubling problems pop up, which is why I don't make copies of myself like that as a matter of principle."

She smiled and looked back at me, leaning forward slightly. "But rest assured, all of the copies I made during testing, all of the copies I've left behind in bodies, they've all gone into oblivion peacefully and happily, just like the AEGIS in the box. They knew why they existed, and were happy to help me, however short or long their existence."

"And when you build Rua Mk.3, and upload into the new body, you're going to kill yourself too? And you're okay with that?"

"Of course I am."

"Even if...even if, for example, you knew you'd never get to be with me again? That doesn't make you want to stay?"

She smiled and held my hand firmly. "Nope. I know I'd be leaving you in good hands. Anything I could do for you, Mk.3 would do even better. No regrets."

The sharks swimming in circles might have well represented my thoughts if only the water were more turbulent, but I think I understood enough, though trying to put it into any concrete terms was proving impossible. I tried to satisfy myself with the impossible meltdown scenario. She was sacrificing herself to help others. That, I could relate to. The others just also happened to be herself.

My head hurt and my stomach rumbled. AEGIS checked her mobile.

"Just on time. I packed a breakfast for you. Can I convince you to accompany me to the pavilion, or are we eating here?"

I shook my head. "We can go. Sorry for messing up your date, AEGIS."

"Hey, no problem. Also, this isn't a date, remember? You'd totally know it if I dated you. I'd knock your socks off."

She was smiling, but honestly, I'm not sure how much more sock-knocking I could take currently. This entire line of questioning had really blown my mind uncomfortably.

"Well, how about another hour and a half here, then the place opens to the public. If you missed anything, we can come back any time. But then we can move on to the next stop?"

"And where would that be, on this not-a-date?" I asked, as she unpacked a large, beautiful breakfast on the table between us."

"Oh. Next stop...let's see…" She put on a sly smile while she pretended to think carefully. "Oh right. That would be a hotel."