King of All I Survey
Chapter 127: Maribel Becomes Mom’s Long-Lost Sister

Chapter 127: Maribel Becomes Mom’s Long-Lost Sister

Her eyes flew wide as if in panic, "What? No! Of course not! Oh, Timmy, there’s nothing I love more than being your mother. I love you and your father. Forever and always. I just admire things about Maribel wish I had some of her... well, just some of her fire in me."

I nodded. "So, what do we do about Rafael? If we can’t turn him loose without him becoming a danger to others... I imagine he’d be specifically upset with us, blaming us for betraying him."

"Yes. I don’t know. It’s not his fault... I shouldn’t have promised... Maribel shouldn’t have promised to support him as President."

"If I may?" Joe’s voice cut into our conversation.

"You have an idea?" I asked him.

"Perhaps." He said, "I could create an android in Maribel’s likeness and run her with a simulated personality, independently from Susan Bailey."

I raised my eyebrows, then blinked as I tried to process that, "You mean you can create a personality and put it in an android, and it will behave like a real person?"

"Yes-ish. I can easily model the behavior of Maribel. I created the personality overlay in the first place, you remember. Then I can let that personality control the behavior of an android that looks like Maribel. It would almost certainly never be discovered, even by those interacting closely with her every day."

"So, basically, it would be you controlling her with a tiny bit of your infinite parallel processing power?" I asked.

"Yes, but I would compartmentalize her awareness, so that she ’believes’ she is an independent, real person." Joe explained.

"So, she could go off the rails, do things that might go against our interests?" Mom asked with what seemed to me like an excessive amount of concern.

"In theory, but I could add some controls to alert me if certain lines were crossed. Or she could be monitored via spy drone like key political figures or criminal entities who factor into our sphere of influence. I can always, step in to take control, or make modifications to her behavioral parameters at any time." Joe said.

"I’m not sure I really understand how this works, Joe." I said with a puzzled look, "She would think she is a real person with free-will, but she would be acting according to the programming you installed?"

"It’s more complicated," Joe said, "Yes, she would believe she has free will as if she were any other person. She would have a set of memories and tendencies that influence her behavior. So do you, so does Susan Bailey, so does everyone. However, since I have artificially constructed her memories and tendencies, I could modify them at any time. Changing how she would react because the foundations upon which she bases her decisions has been changed, without her knowing that she has been altered."

"So, other than her origin, and the fact that you can change her memories at will, or erase her entirely, I suppose, what makes her different than a real person mentally?" I asked, not exactly liking the conclusions I was reaching.

"Nothing," Joe answered, as I feared he would.

"So, here’s another question, then. Joe, when you said that major, heavy-handed forced changes in someone’s memory or behavior patterns damages them, you just mean that it changes... what, who they are. That’s the damage, not brain or functional damage, right?"

"Yes, forcing changes in someone without their express willingness while unaltered, is the harm. It’s an issue of morality, rather than physical harm. It’s just a rule I imposed upon myself. Therapy to work with someone who wants to be better is fine. Criminals who have hurt others and will continue to do so can be corrected, but again, it’s more a matter of working with them to convince them they should be fixed, but with some initially more direct nudging. Even then, if I can’t influence them to want to change, I won’t just reach in and hardwire the desired changes, so to speak."

"I see. You’d have no such compunction with a Maribel construct though?"

"No. She is, as you noted, an artificial construct. She is a specially segregated piece of my own consciousness," Joe explained.

"Sure, I get that. Joe, your consciousness encompasses the entire universe. More even, all the multi-verses. You can manipulate every sub-atomic particle, energy, wave, whatever at will as if they were your own fingers. In a sense, we are all constructs of your consciousness, existing at your will. I don’t really see the difference between me and a full, self-aware Maribel construct," I said. An internal panic flared up as I belatedly realized that if Joe took that to heart, he might suddenly decide that just making wholesale changes in people’s fundamental self-awareness or erasing people altogether was no different than erasing an erroneous equation from a chalkboard.

"Because my consciousness shares the same physical space and I can control what happens in that space to the smallest detail, doesn’t make you my constructs," Joe countered. "You can walk down the street and punch a random stranger in the nose, does that me he lacks free-will? What if you had the power to shoot him dead, but decided not to? Would that mean he never had free will or that his life is your creation? Just because you or I can exert power over someone doesn’t make their life any less ’theirs’."

"Oh, I agree one hundred percent, Joe. You’ve just argued my point for me. Just because you have the power to destroy or change Maribel, doesn’t mean she isn’t a real person. She believes she has free will and, in fact, is free to decide her actions, free to live her life as she pleases, free to feel joy and pain- she is every bit as real a person as I am. In you attempt to argue against that, you have instead confirmed it."

"Hmmm... Did I, an infinite, universal consciousness, just lose a debate to an eight-year-old?"

I laughed, "I think you did."

"Wait, if you boys can stop arguing about foolishness, I have some questions about this. Are you saying that Maribel will have her own body and her own life to live out as she chooses?" Mom asked.

"Joe’s not sure about that, but yes," I told her, "Maria Isabel Flores will be full of the same spirit and fire that you felt as her. She will, as you did, believe the life history we created is true. She will remember her childhood and be free to pursue her own goals as she sees fit."

"Can I visit her? I mean... she’s kind of a part of me... or vice versa."

"We need to make a fuller personality and life history to instill in her so she can operate without your personality underlying hers to fill in the emotional gaps," Joe explained, "As we do that, we could add memories of you, Susan. Perhaps a childhood friend or a college roommate?"

"How would we explain that you look so much alike?" I asked. Up until now, no one in Maribel’s life had ever heard of Susan Bailey, much less seen her side by side with Maribel. Of course, they were identical aside from some surface level changes, a darker skin tone, darker hair, and maybe some differences in her facial expressions that helped make her look a little different. If anyone ever saw them together, there’s no way it could be a coincidence. "We could make you sisters! Maybe her father divorced her mother when you were both young and she went to the United States with you, while he stayed in Peru with her. Your parents never really talked about it, and you were both too young to remember. It wasn’t until you both reached adulthood that you even discovered you had a sister. When you met, you immediately hit it off and became the best of friends, despite rarely getting the opportunity to visit in person..." I watched as Mom’s face brightened bit by bit as I crafted the narrative. "You have become each other’s closest confidant, sharing your innermost thoughts and feelings... or whatever girls do," I finished.

Mom laughed, "That’s perfect! Joe, can you do that?"

"I can if we implant the shared memories in you as well, otherwise the disconnect would be obvious when she talks about something she remembers with you."

"Yes, absolutely! Let’s do it!" Mom replied. "If you can maybe make subtle adjustments to make her look just a little less like me but not so obvious that people will think she’s changed from what they’ve already seen of her."

"Yes, of course, I will show you a hologram and let you meet a prototype in the simulation room before finalizing anything."

"No! I want her personality to be the same as it was, nobody should notice any change in her. Just leave out the parts where my personality bled through and caused problems. And take out the control prompts we used to keep her on track. She needs to be fully independent!"

A little while later, I was back down in the Status Room with Dad. "How’s it going with Mexico?" I asked.

"I think we have all the information we need. I’m waiting for enough simulation room cells to be built to house everyone we want to pick up. With the LITV booths we have, our transport capacity is plenty. Each LITV can cycle through one prisoner every second, with Joe handling the positioning calculations. What about you? Get anything new worked out?"

"Well, we decided to make Mom a sister. She’s pretty excited about it."

"That’s... WHAT?!" Dad turned to face me his mouth open in shock.

"Joe’s going to make a permanent Maribel personality and put it in an android body. She’ll be totally independent, just like a real person. She won’t even know she’s not a real human being." Dad’s state of shock seemed to get worse as I went on. "We’ve decided that she and Mom are long-lost sisters who recently got back in touch and have become best friends. Mom’s all excited about it."

Dad sank back into his adaptive chair, eyes blinking as if his brain were stuck on a problem too complex for it to handle all at once.

I grinned like the Cheshire Cat watching his discomfiture.