"You're selling it? Why?"
"It's not going to last," Randall said, sliding his laptop into his bag. "Nothing lasts, but this especially. I know you think I'm an autistic wunderkind who doesn't know anything outside my specialty, but I'm not. I know what a financial bubble is, and I know we're in the middle of one."
Randall Rhodes was twenty years old, but between skipping grades in school and graduating college at an age most people started it, he felt older. He was a genius; he assimilated new knowledge and skills easily, he made connections others didn't, and right now, he was cashing out of the dotcom bubble before it burst on him.
"We only have so much time on this Earth, Tom," Randall continued. "Half of the sale price is going into bonuses for everyone; with any luck, that'll be your golden parachute. The other half... I'm going to use to facilitate the rest of my time."
"What about what we've built here, Randy?" Tom asked. "It's the future of comedy! If you're going to throw this away, you're your own worst enemy!"
"You and I both know that's a lie we told the investors," Randall said. "What we've built is just a chatbot tuned for dick jokes. We haven't even remotely come close to making a real AI." He slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go talk to someone who has."
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"It's done, Doctor," Randall said. "The review board has acquiesced." He handed Doctor Innsbrook a cup of coffee, waiting patiently for the Doctor to digest the news.
Doctor Innsbrook took the coffee, tossing it back like a shot of whiskey, and grunted. "Well. A deal's a deal, Sandal."
Randall Rhodes was twenty three years old, and had spent the last three of them meeting and greeting various superscientists, and doing everything, anything, to get just one of them to upload his brain into a computer.
They looked down on him, all of them. A mere mortal genius, capable only of writing particularly profitable C++ and talking to bureaucrats, afraid of his own shadow and desperate for the divine alchemy only superscientists could provide.
He'd resented them at first. But... well, they were right. He was just a man, a particularly clever man who was good with computers and money, who couldn't do anything genuinely impressive, not like superscientists, not like Innsbrook.
"Thank you, sir," Randall said.
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"You look like you had a bad day," the woman said, sitting down at the bar next to him.
"I've had better," Randall said, staring at his glass.
Randall Rhodes was twenty five years old. He'd worked with superscientist after superscientist, working as an assistant, a sounding board, a financier, anything and everything he could be to convince them to help. Earlier today, Valiant had taken a brain-scan of him and made an AI he'd named Liquid Courage- a pun on fluid intelligence and an inability to feel fear.
He'd known it was a coin toss, every time he'd gotten an AI made based on him- Liquid Courage was merely the fifth. He simply kept hoping that one day he would win that coin toss.
"You're Valiant's man, aren't you?" she asked. "What happened? Boss-man decide you weren't loyal enough?"
Randall barked a short laugh. "Oh, I got exactly what I asked for. Just not what I really wanted. Every goddamn superscientist in the country who can make AIs has already made one out of my brainscans, as of today. But I'm still me. Still pitiful, mortal, doomed Randy. I'm going to die, and there's nothing I can do about it. Really am my own worst enemy..."
"Well, there is one thing you could do," the woman said.
Randall looked up at her, finally. She was pale, with platinum blonde hair that bordered on white, piercing red eyes like rubies, high cheekbones, and full, inviting lips with just the barest hint of pink.
"...You're Valerie Vega," he realized.
"And you're Randall Rhodes," Valerie said. "I'm sure Valiant has told you all sorts of things about how I'm from a society that eats babies, but I assure you, I am perfectly capable of being reasonable. So here's my offer to you: come with me, and I'll give you the life-extension technology that has kept the Emperor, my great great grandfather, on his throne for a thousand years."
Randall carefully considered what Valiant had told him about Valerie Vega, about the evils of monarchy and what it meant that she proudly called herself Princess while kicking ass and taking names. He connected some more dots, regarding why she knew who he was and was here, in Austin, to pick him up at a bar.
Stolen story; please report.
But, well. He'd given himself to powerful and dangerous people before. This time, he'd actually be getting what he wanted.
"And what do you want from me?" Randall asked.
"You may not realize it, but you are, in fact, the most intelligent man on the planet without some kind of mental disorder or superpowers," Valerie said. "And while my child-bearing years are forever, it is about time I thought about rebuilding my house. And, well. The fact your name is also alliterative is just a bonus."
Randall's brain short-circuited, as he realized that this stunningly beautiful woman was asking him to father her children in exchange for immortality.
"So, where do I sign?" Randall asked.
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Randall Rhodes stared blankly out the window as he waited for his call to be answered. "Morning, Liquid," Randall said, when it finally was.
"Morning, Bootlicker," Liquid Courage said. "What do you want?"
"Checking in on the Southern Front, you know how it is," Randall said.
Randall Rhodes was fifty four years old, but thanks to Vegan (he spared a thought for the poor souls who refused to use or consume any animal products for having their name co-opted by one woman and her four children) technology, he didn't feel any of that age whatsoever.
His marriage to Princess Valerie Vega was hardly idyllic; she was only warm and charming when it suited her, and they hadn't shared an intimate moment in eighteen years- not coincidentally, nine months before their youngest son was born. Still, he was immortal now, free from Death's cold shadow, and if the price was a cold marriage... well, he'd put up with worse. Besides, he was immortal. Only his life was forever; the circumstances weren't.
"Well, in existentially terrifying news, we have learned that this Doctor Skinner character can bop back and forth across dimensional boundaries without me being able to tell," Liquid Courage said. "So, y'know, always the possibility that we'll be knee-deep in vampires next year."
"I never understood why people hated vampires so much," Randall said.
"Randy, they eat people," Liquid Courage said. "People generally do not think kindly of predators. As much as vampires can, in theory, be integrated into society in non-predatory ways, the fact of the matter is that, between vampiric blood magic and the nature of the vampiric curse, vampires are both inclined towards and equipped for taking what they want from people by force. And unlike most supervillains, they know how to cover their tracks."
"Huh," Randall said. "They don't sparkle in the sunlight?"
"They burn horribly, actually, but that just means you will never see one in broad daylight. Look, lemme put it to you this way: vampiric blood magic is a skill they can develop on their own and teach each other. With enough skill at blood magic, a single vampire can outmatch multiple different heroes in different arenas of power. And if you put one vampire in a room with nine humans, you can end up with ten vampires in one day."
"...Okay, I'm starting to see where you're coming from."
"Basically, we are terrified of a vampire getting through because a vampire infestation is like a zombie apocalypse where the zombies are fully intelligent and have magical powers," Liquid Courage said. "Now, would you like to stand there and insist that things will play out according to a middle-aged Mormon woman's unpleasantly-public sexual fantasies?"
"I guess that's fair," Randall admitted. "So... what's your game plan?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, your wife the monarchist gets to make herself useful for once," Liquid Courage said. "Got a guy working on a sungun gadget. If Vega can stand to run it through her bullshit replicator for us, crank out a big batch, that'd be real swell. We've got other people who can replicate it, too, it's just this is an all-hands-on-deck situation."
"You're going to have to negotiate that with her directly," Randall said. "I'm not the master of this household, I just live here."
"Y'know, it really says something that Sic Semper Tyrannis and Long Live The Queen get along better than we do."
"Yeah, well... It's like I always said," Randall said. "I'm my own worst enemy."
"I hate to burst your bubble, but you're not actually that important to me," Liquid Courage said. "I've got a job and coworkers who aren't all the most obnoxious people in the world. When I get sick of your shit, I can talk to people who aren't as bad as you. Sucks that you can't, but it's not my problem, and I can't solve it for you. All I can say is 'get a real job.'"
"You're not disproving my point about-"
"I'm not you, shithead. I haven't been you ever since I won the coin toss. And you know this. I know you know this, that we're not the same person. You've admitted as much before, but you don't seem to fully understand what that means. What that means is that, even at 25, we were a stupid, under-developed child, and in the intervening years, I've grown the fuck up, and you haven't. You're the same fucking person you were thirty years ago, so terrified of death that you'd hitch your little red wagon to anyone who could promise you immortality, driven only to do whatever you thought was necessary to keep them happy. And for all that I was the same way at first, and built into a computer framework that made me even less independent... I grew up. I started to want things other than merely being alive. I found my moral compass, I found my calling, I found a world worth caring about outside my own head. You haven't even found your wife's clitoris."
Randall blinked, wordless.
"Maybe tell your owner you're going to Austin to look after Veronica, and beg Valiant to disable all your trackers so you can run away from her," Liquid Courage continued, after a pause. "Or don't. I honestly don't care anymore; you've made it pretty clear to me that there's nothing worth saving left in you anymore. You've made your commitments. I'm done with you."
Liquid Courage hung up, and Randall sat there, numb.
When young Victor Vega came back from school, he found his father on the couch, staring at the ceiling. On the coffee table was a laptop, displaying a travel site listing various air routes from Boston to Austin. Victor considered the situation carefully, then silently kept walking, up the stairs and to his room. Randall could deal with it himself.