Chapter 27: First Steps

Location: Solar System; Earth; Former City of Brisbane; Magicon Facility

There is nothing I can do besides waiting. It’s been an hour already, and I start to get worried. Pacing the length of the room, my imagination hits me with all the bad possible outcomes. What if she doesn’t wake up? Even worse, what if she gets destroyed in the process?

Waiting is the worst. There’s also the fact that a small army of robots is waiting outside the vault door for me. How can I escape them? Are they even there still? Argh, doing nothing kills me.

But what can I do? Glancing at the two balls – Utility magic cores, I grumble. I wish I could just swallow one of them and be done with it. But no, they require a short operation to be inserted into my body. And who can do that? Right, Maja once she has her body under control.

This is so frustrating!

I walk back and forth for another 30 minutes without changes. How long can this take? Come on, Maja, don’t leave me alone in here. You’ve got this!

Still nothing… Wait, did her finger just move? I stop my pacing and rush over to the body lying inside the capsule. There, I didn’t imagine it, her fingers are starting to twitch. Excitement fills me. Finally!

Suddenly, her full body starts to jerk and I take a hasty step back before I get hit by a flailing limb. That’s also the moment when one fact comes to my mind again. She’s still naked!

I don’t have replacement clothes with me… Who would’ve thought that I'd need them? What I have are the clothes I wear over my half-destroyed shipsuit… That must do. I take the tablet, select the shipsuit app, and quickly change the color from mostly see-through to completely purple. Now my whole body is covered by a purple colored skin-tight suit. Well, everything besides the part of my leg that got destroyed. Looks like it’s a short pants day. I snort.

Next, I take off my actual clothes. It's not much, just some jeans that also stop at the knee on one side, and a pink shirt. But it is better than running around naked. Unfortunately, Maja has to do without shoes, but there is nothing I can do about that.

While readying the clothes, I keep a close eye on Maja and sigh in relief when she stops jerking around. Now she’s lying still again, but her eyelids are fluttering. Any minute now!

Two minutes later, her eyes snap open, and look around wildly. Finally, her gaze settles on me, and recognition settles in. “Hi Maja, everything alright?” I ask her and she opens her mouth to answer.

What comes out is incomprehensible, but she keeps trying. “Strph… stpd… aaargh, stupid shit! Why is it so hard? Ah finally!” Having managed to speak, she tries to get up, which leads to something equally funny and disturbing. Her whole upper body moves up rapidly but doesn’t stop when she’s sitting up. Instead, it keeps moving and only stops once she’s almost folded in half.

I can’t stop myself from laughing anymore. She’s just like a baby in an adult body. Well, a baby that is insanely intelligent and learns everything super fast, as she manages to sit up correctly while I’m laughing.

“Hey Sara, nice to finally meet you in person.” She’s already able to do facial expressions and smiles at me. Her learning speed is insane! It’s like the body was just made for her.

I grin at her, her naked body again brings a small blush to my face. “Sooo, are you ready to get up? I also got some clothes for you to put on once you have the whole body under control.”

She returns my grin and shrugs. “The clothing situation is indeed a bit unfortunate, but I can manage for now… It’s not that there is anyone looking at me weirdly in here.”

I raise my eyebrow. “What about me?”

Her answer is fast and even a bit snarky. “You don’t count! We’re bonded, what’s a bit of nudity there? Now, let me get up so I can put on the clothes to keep you from blushing.”

“Hey, I’m not blushing, your eyes are malfunctioning!” While I’m saying that, Maja slowly moves her legs over the edge of the capsule and then tries to get up. Once her feet touch the ground, she starts putting her weight onto them and immediately falls over. She crashes face-first to the ground. I bark a laugh. Hah, payback is a bitch!

Fortunately, Maja can learn from her mistakes and after a few more tries, she’s standing right before me. I blink, she’s a little bit taller than me. Not fair! Deep blue eyes look into my green ones and we both stand there for a minute. Then I can’t hold myself back and jump forward to hug her. She returns the hug, first a bit awkward, but then she changes the position of her hands to mirror me, and it works. We’re now officially hugging each other.

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After a while we disengage, and I throw her the pink shirt to put on. With a bit of struggle, she manages to pull it over her head and she’s now the proud wearer of a pink shirt and nothing else. We both share a look and I quickly throw her the half-leg jeans as well. That’s when I notice another fact. Her chest is bigger than mine too. The shirt is now very form-fitting.

At least this doesn’t bother me, as I’m more than happy with what I have. The issue is, that all the other clothes on the yacht probably won’t fit as well, as the previous owner of them was about my size. Hmm, I guess, that leaves the General’s stuff?

Not that this is important now. Maja has finished putting on her pants and is now about to take her first steps! She starts slowly, clearly aware of her fall onto her face before. Slowly but steadily, she lifts her left foot, keeps her balance, moves the foot forward a bit, and puts it back down. She did it! I cheer loudly and Maja too does smile.

“Congratulations Maja,” I say before remembering her comment about me not counting. “You now have the physical capabilities of a two-year-old.” I grin at her, and she grimaces.

“No fair, try acclimating to a new body in five minutes yourself.” Dang it, she got me there. Not that I let her notice that fact. I simply keep my grin and nod. With that, I spent the next few hours helping Maja familiarize herself with her body. During that time, we notice that the magic, that I pumped into the body earlier, slowly gets used up when the body is in motion. Maja estimates that the charge will last for about a week before I have to fill up the battery again.

I wonder how Serena was planning to keep herself charged after she transferred herself into the artificial body. Hmm, considering the magical security bots, the building must still have some power stored away somewhere. Maybe that was her plan? But that seems shortsighted… I wonder if there’s a way to filter magic out of the air around us. There has to be, right? I mean us Mages too somehow regenerate our power…

I wish I grew up somewhere where Mages aren’t restricted… but then I also wouldn’t have met my friends. It’s frustrating! On top of that we are still stuck in the room here.

I see two possibilities. Either we risk opening the door and hope the robots are gone or we use the capsule as a makeshift operation table and implant the Utility core next to my Space core. If I can learn even the simplest telekinesis spell, we can open the door only a little bit and float out the tablet to check the surroundings. Maja as an AI should still be able to connect wirelessly.

Wait, I’m not connected to her anymore! How do I use my Space magic once we leave the planet? In panic, I call out to Maja, which makes her stumble a bit. “Maja you are out of my head!”

“Yeah, obviously,“ she replies while scowling at me. “What’s the matter?”

“The connection. My magic, I need you to navigate! How could we forget that?” Well, the reason why is obvious… We were both completely enthralled by the possibility of having a body for Maja, but still…

Maja’s scowl is replaced by wide eyes and another small stumble. “Oh.” That’s all she says for a while before sitting down on the floor completely still.

“What are you doing? You are not deactivating the body again, right? I mean worst case I still have S-57… Even if that’s a massive leap backward.” I nervously sit down next to her. It doesn’t feel right to take her freedom away in favor of my magic.

“No that’s not it, I’m currently moving all of my code from the AI chip to the integrated computer system.” She is silent for another moment. “It just takes almost all my concentration, but it’s fascinating. The whole system is a bit more powerful than the chip you wore before despite being way older. There are also a few weird connections considering the power supply… I guess that’s the magical part? This whole body is a work of art.”

That calms me down, she’s not shutting down the body. But why is she clearing out the chip? Is she creating a new AI for the chip and me? Five minutes later, her body begins to move again and she lifts her hand behind her ear and removes the chip, then hands it over to me.

“Alright, I hope this works. Can you put the chip back into the slot in your head?”

Huh, did she really create a new AI in five minutes? I take the chip, but before I slot it in, I have to ask. “I can, but what did you do? Is that a new AI?”

She laughs. “No, while I’m powerful, I’m not that powerful to create a whole AI so fast. Instead, I created a subprogram, that lets me connect wirelessly to the chip and if it works, also includes the interface to connect to your magic. In theory, that should enable me to do everything with your magic as if I were still present on the chip just from a distance.”

Wow, that would be insane if that works. I quickly put the chip back into my slot and wait. Maja goes still for a moment before there is a slight crackle in my ear. Then suddenly.

“Can you hear me?” I jump up in jubilation.

“It works! Now what about the magic?”

She replies by speaking with her physical body again. “Give me a second, I have to tweak the wireless signal a bit to make it secure and hidden. It’s not an issue here, but it might be later when we reenter civilization… There we go. Now, let’s test the magic.”

As her words leave her mouth, there is the weird feeling again when my magic moves without my input. In the years with S-57, I learned to ignore it as something normal. Now though, It’s as weird as in the beginning. My AI is literally sitting next to me and interfaces with my magic!

“I can feel the magic moving! You can stop, it’s a bit weird doing it outside of a wormhole jump.” A second later my magic stills again and Maja stands up.

“The range should be pretty good too,” Maja says while starting to walk around again. “The wireless antennas inside the body are way better than what I had when I was still on the chip. I don’t even need to use the tablet as a stepping stone to access the computer. Its wireless signal runs on another frequency, that my old antenna didn’t cover…”

I stand up too. “That’s great. Now that you are more or less comfortable in the body… Do you trust yourself to put the magic core inside me?” It does sound strange to ask something like this… It’s still a bit overwhelming… a simple ball of metal that can unlock another class of magic for me.

Maja shakes her head. “I don’t think doing it in here is a good idea… One mistake and you could die. Also, I’m still a bit shaky. I think it’s better if we wait till we’re back at the ship.”

I shrug. I’ve waited my whole life, not even knowing that it’s possible. What are a few more hours? “Okay, then let’s get out of here. I hope the robots are gone.”