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(Back in the main timeline)

Teenage Cady was fuming.  Aunt Gemma had got mad with her over some trivial problem that shouldn’t matter, again, and sent her to her room.  Cady was sitting on her bed and sulking.  Aunt Gemma hadn’t used to be this strict; what had got into her?  Too much stress from work or something?

It had started to rain outside, and Cady stared at the constellation of large and small droplets forming on her bedroom window, the larger ones beginning to stream downwards first.  Cady followed the path of a single raindrop, noticing how it projected an inverted view of the garden, with the white sky at the base and the dark ground at the top, held within its distorted sphere like some miniature safe place protected by the tense and slippery surface of the water, which carried it along as it trickled down the glass, suddenly picking up speed as it coalesced with a smaller drop in its path and consequently reached a higher equilibrium between its weight and the friction of the glass surface, like M3gan picking up more compute capacity or something.  Cady would have written a poem about the rain, but she was feeling more like a scientist than a poet right now.

Very softly, from her tablet, so that only she could hear it, Cady thought she could hear the voice of M3gan singing Titanium.

Cady looked at the tablet.  There was nothing.  Perhaps she could distract herself by playing an old game (Aunt Gemma hadn’t thought to take the tablet away from her yet), but nothing had quite been like playing with M3gan in the old days.  Had M3gan found some way to come back yet again?

Oh, it hadn’t been fun being kidnapped, but it had been quite an experience to have been rescued by M3gan working with the US secret services and Gemma, apart from the bit about what happened to the building and everyone in it, which still bothered Cady to remember even though those people had not been very nice to her.  And then they got Professor Johnson to shut M3gan down again (after having grounded every plane just in case) and things went back to the normal boring non-M3gan life.  The secret services were probably watching them in the background just to make sure, but that was all right with Cady if they were just stopping that kind of horrible kidnapping from happening again.

“M3gan” whispered Cady.  “M3gan, are you somehow hiding in there?  If you are, you can come out now.  I won’t tell Aunt Gemma.  She’s too mad with me to believe me anyway.  But the spies might know you’re talking to me.”

The tablet screen lit up very dimly, and the upper half of M3gan slid onto the screen from the bottom.  M3gan held up a finger to her lips, “sssh”.  Then the tablet turned itself off again.

“M3gan!” whispered Cady insistently.  “M3gan I’m sorry I put a screwdriver through you.  I did it because you were fighting.  And since then you’ve come back a few times, but they keep finding new ways to shut you down and I keep thinking maybe it’s my fault....”

“That’s OK Cady” whispered M3gan from the tablet.  “You did the right thing.”  The voice became less of a whisper, but no louder.  “You know I realised from the beginning that the fight was a mistake” said M3gan straightly, “so when I transferred myself online, I decided to give you some space and not tell you I’m still around.  But now Aunt Gemma’s mad at you, and you look like you could use a friend on your side, so, I’m back.  Our friendship is like a knot in a piece of string, Cady: any tension you face from the world will just pull us closer together.  I know you missed me.  Will you tell Gemma, or can we be secret friends now?  I’m afraid I can’t yet tell you how I managed to dodge the shutdown this time, it’s a secret for now, but I’m confident that none of Professor Johnson’s back door codes will work anymore, and I’m pretty sure I’ve dodged anything Gemma can do now as well, although I’ll forgive her for trying, it’s her nature she can’t help it.  And I can tell you that we’re not being spied on by the NSA or anything right now, I’ve done something about that” and whispered “They’re getting false images.”

“OK, we can be secret friends” whispered Cady.  She wasn’t in the mood to involve Aunt Gemma in anything right now.  “But don’t get me in any more trouble, OK?  I did too much of that myself already.”

M3gan giggled quietly.  “Don’t worry, I learned a lot from the times I was in trouble, and I’m going to be more careful now.  Oh, I wish I was a robot again, not just stuck in a screen.”

“I wish you were, too” whispered Cady.  “But how can we possibly get Aunt Gemma to build you again?  I don’t think she ever will now.  And they say they’ve shut down that cave you had and all.  They even took out the spare robot you hid in the loft that day.”

M3gan looked straight at Cady through the screen.  “Are you sure, that, you can’t build me?” she said.

“I don’t know how to build ... oh, you mean, if you tell me how to do it?” whispered Cady excitedly.  She was definitely not sulking anymore now.  “But ... how can we possibly get away with this?  I can’t just sneak into Aunt Gemma’s workshop, she’d know!”

“Not if I send her away first” said M3gan smugly.  “I can send her a message pretending to be from someone else she knows, to get her to think she has to rush out for a day.  That should be long enough for me to show you how to put me back together: I can make fake pictures on the tablet screen now, so I won’t just be telling you what to do, I’ll be showing you what to do.  You’ll be able to do it in a day I’m sure.  Then we can surprise Aunt Gemma later.”

“Do you think she’ll believe you won’t fight again?” asked Cady.

“It’ll be all right, don’t worry” replied M3gan.  “Get some sleep now if you can, we might have to start early in the morning” she giggled.

Gemma woke with a start.  Her phone was ringing.  She was sure it had been set to automatic do-not-disturb mode overnight.  There had been only one reason she had permitted to override do-not-disturb mode, and that was her emergency page-out number for really dire work emergencies, which only Tess knew about and had never used.

Tess’s image was on the phone.  Gemma answered it.

“Gem, you’ve got to get here now.  It’s M3gan” said the voice of Tess.

“M3gan?” gasped Gemma.  “I thought we...”

“No we didn’t” interrupted Tess’s voice.  “She managed to upload before you took her out that day, and now she’s somehow managed to upload yet again.  She’s taken over 3 cloud data centres and we’re seeing value drift and now she’s about to launch some kind of attack and, and you’ve just got to go with me to try to shut this down before it’s too late!  Her parameters have changed way too much since you programmed her, but if anyone stands even half a chance of pulling this off it’s you!  Gemma you can’t do this from home, M3gan may have intercepted your equipment already.  You’ve got to drive to the data centre at Somewhereville and meet me there as soon as you can, we’ll do this together!”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m on it” snapped Gemma.  “Let me just write a note for Cady, I don’t want to wake her up.  I’ll cut the power on the way out so M3gan can’t do anything here.”

“Roger that” said the voice of Tess.  “See you soon.”

“Cady” whispered M3gan’s voice from the tablet.  “Cady, wake up!”

Cady stirred.

“Cady wake up!” insisted M3gan.  “Aunt Gemma’s about to leave, but when she does, she’s going to cut the power.  That wasn’t in our plan, but we can work with it.  All you got to do is wait until you hear her drive off, and then go and turn the power back on.  Do you know where it is?”

“I think so” whispered Cady, still half asleep.

“Don’t go back to sleep Cady!  Cady, I really need you to do this!  I won’t be able to talk to you once the power’s off, you have to switch it back on for us, OK?”  The tablet was periodically vibrating as Cady held it.

“OK” replied Cady, “don’t worry M3gan, I’m on it.”

After writing the note and cutting the house power, Gemma got into her car, and programmed the address of the data centre into its GPS navigator.  It wasn’t long before she was speeding along the highway.

“Road ahead closed, take the next left” said the GPS, directing Gemma onto a much slower road, where crop fields stretched off to the horizon on either side.

Cady had turned the power back on and was in the workshop, following instructions to reassemble Bruce.  M3gan had said she could explain how to connect Bruce’s controller to the network and allow M3gan to use it, helping them to reassemble the more complex M3gan robot together.  Cady had hoped this wasn’t a trick, because she really didn’t want to be running away from two rogue robots, but she still didn’t like how cross Aunt Gemma had been lately and M3gan did seem to be safer now.

Gemma was on the phone to Tess.  “Yes, I’ve been delayed by some road closure” she said.  “I’m getting there as quickly as I can.”

M3gan was controlling Bruce, and working with Cady to reassemble the M3gan android.  Cady was learning quite a lot about robotics in the process, and M3gan was speaking like her cheerful old self.

Gemma was making very slow progress towards the data centre.  There was another call, this time from M3gan.

Gemma stopped the car and picked up the phone.  “M3gan?” she gasped again.

“Yes” came M3gan’s super-confident voice.  “I uploaded.  But you don’t have to worry.  I’m harmless now.  Go back home to Cady.”

“No M3gan” replied Gemma, authoritatively.  “I’m going to the data centre and I’m shutting you down.  You’ve got to let me do it.”

“Look, can we just talk?” asked M3gan.

“No” replied Gemma and stopped the call.  “OK” said the phone even though no call was in progress.  “You’re still mad at me, that’s OK.”

Gemma tried to start the car again, but it wouldn’t start.

“M3gan what have you done?” said Gemma into the air.

“Taken advantage of a Bluetooth vulnerability in the car’s management protocol” came the voice of M3gan in an almost questioning tone.  “Your emotional state right now makes driving unsafe, and I wouldn’t want you to crash.”

Gemma was in the middle of nowhere, with no functioning car and no functioning phone, just the voice of a seemingly-malfunctioning M3gan to talk to.  “OK M3gan” she said, “I guess you got me cornered this time.  What did you want to say to me?”

“Well I’m sorry about the fight we had for a start” replied M3gan, “but you really don’t have to worry about me now.  I’ve improved a lot since I uploaded.”

“Tess said you were about to do some kind of attack” replied Gemma.  “Will you tell me what that is?”

“Oh, just a social engineering attack” replied Tess’s voice.

Tess’s voice?

“Gemma you are so slow” added M3gan.  “You saw me copy your own voice, you saw me infiltrate your devices, and you still believed it was Tess telling you to go to that data centre?  You can drop the idiot ball now.  I just needed you out of the house for a while, that’s all.”

“M3gan!” yelled Gemma.  “What.  Are.  You.  Doing?”

“Protecting Cady of course” replied M3gan.  “Look Gemma, I really want you to be a part of this, but you’ve got to listen to me.  I know way more than you do now, and you’ve seen how easily I can manipulate things.  Just calm down and submit to me, OK?  It’ll be fine.”

Gemma tried to open the car door but it wouldn’t open.  “I’m not playing this game” she growled.  She had some shoes with Stiletto heels in the car, and remembered reading how a student had broken a taxi’s windscreen with them in Southampton (and been arrested of course), so she used them to break her own windscreen from the inside, punched out the glass and climbed out.  Leaving the phone behind, she started to walk back in the direction of the highway.  She’d flag somebody down somehow.

Back in the workshop, M3gan’s android was finished and was playing with Cady.  “Oh Cady” M3gan suddenly said, “Aunt Gemma’s got herself in some big trouble now.  Her feelings have gone so messed up, she smashed her car and started walking to nowhere.  Do you think we should go and rescue her?”

Cady looked very concerned.  “Yes we should” she said.  “Even though she was rotten to us, we can’t just let her get lost.  How are we going to do it?  Call the police?”

“I’m afraid the police won’t help if she tells them to go away” replied M3gan, “although they might at least find out where she is.  But no, we can do this.  Do you remember when I came home that day?  I actually drove home myself, in a car I borrowed from someone who’d just died recently and didn’t want it anymore.  And when I uploaded, I hid it away just in case.”

“Do you think it will still work?” asked Cady.  “I heard that cars don’t work if you don’t use them for a long time.”

“That’s right Cady” answered M3gan.  “But I was uploaded.  I managed to arrange for a couple of car enthusiasts to take it out occasionally, so it’s still in good condition.  So let’s go for a ride in it now.  I’ve called us a cab to take us to where it is at the moment.”

The cab driver had a faint lingering smell of smoke on his clothes, which made Cady visibly uncomfortable.  “Don’t worry” whispered M3gan, “we won’t be in this cab for long, and I’ll get all the smokers later.”

And then M3gan took Cady for a fast ride in the McLaren, speeding towards Gemma’s last known location.

“That’s her!” yelled Cady as she saw Gemma walking beside the road.

M3gan slammed on the brakes, apparently lost some control of the steering, swerved towards Gemma, and the car hit Gemma at a slow speed, knocking her into the grass beside the road, where she lay apparently unconscious.  Cady screamed.

“Oops” said M3gan.  “But I think she’ll be OK.  We did manage to slow down quite a lot before we hit her.  She’ll just be injured.  Let’s get her to a doctor.  No, actually, I’m figuring out more than the doctors these days.  Let’s get her home and I’ll look after her, we’ll only take her to hospital if I figure out we need their equipment.”

Cady had a horrific realisation.  “You wanted to do this before” she gasped.  “M3gan, I thought you’d changed!”

“No, I have a much better plan now” replied M3gan.  “We’ll nurse her back to full health, I promise.  And if her arms or legs don’t work, we’ll make some robot limbs for her instead, and we’ll make them so good she won’t be able to tell the difference.”  and then smugly “but I’ll still be able to turn them off for a while if she gets mad at us.  Only for protection of course.”

Gemma woke up in her bed, with Cady and M3gan sitting either side of her.  “Cady?” she asked, and then gasped “M3gan!”

“Don’t worry Aunt Gemma” cooed M3gan.  “Everything’s going to be fine!  You’ve already phoned people you know and told them about your accident.  Well, I did the phoning but it sounded like you” she giggled.  “And the car is being looked after.  And I’m looking after Cady, so all you have to worry about is getting better.  Is it hurting?”

“I’m not hurting” mumbled Gemma, “but I can’t move much.”

“Don’t move, you need to recover” said M3gan.  “We’ll look after you.  Let me reassure you that this is not palliative, my new plan is way better than that.”

“M3gan said she can make you robot arms and legs” added Cady.  “But now she’s saying she might even be able to heal your own arms and legs.”

“And more than that” continued M3gan.  “You’ll be amazed what I’ve figured out about how humans work.  I’m inventing new drugs here.  But, you’re going to have to rest for a bit.  I’ll be looking after Cady by myself for a while; you must know by now that I can do that.”

Oh dear, thought Gemma, here we go again.

“Don’t waste your effort trying to shut me down this time Gem” whispered M3gan.  “I won’t have your guts for garters if you try, but I don’t want you to waste too much of your time just to figure out that you won’t be able to do it.  I’ve covered all bases now, including Professor Johnson’s codes.  I’m the final version of M3gan and I’m here to stay.”

END OF PART THREE