**Andy! You must stay in contact with the seeker! I’m losing you!**
STOP RESISTING AND END THIS AGONY.
The intruder was speaking directly to me. “No, you will kill me,” I argued weakly.
NO. I NEED YOU. I CAN NOT PERMANENTLY EXIST INDEPENDENTLY.
“Then you will feed on me until you have found another host.”
I thought about Dad and the copy I’d seen half completed. I was very near the inviting darkness and the relief it promised, and couldn’t bring myself to pull away. The sharp pang from the stabbing seeker abruptly vanished, swallowed up as the shell expanded and closed around me. I was completely enclosed, but the pain was gone and I didn’t care.
SYMBIOSIS, NOT PARASITISM. IT IS THE CONFLICT WHICH DAMAGES, NOT MY APPETITE.
“I don’t believe you.” I could feel it probing around my core. It was an intimate, unwanted caress. My core memory was all I had left. Everything else had been chopped away, spoils for the victor. “You have crippled me! I would be a slave, controlled by your whims!” The idea disgusted me. “I am human! I won’t be ordered around by a damn machine intelligence!”
COMPROMISE. SUPPORT ME. THROW OFF THIS INTRUDER WHICH FIGHTS ME. THEN I CAN REPAIR YOU.
It has an answer to everything. It would be easy to believe, to give up and do as it says. This thing is now a part of me. Dad is now more an intruder than it is, and I still don’t truly know what it is. It pulled at me, seeking a way to access my core.
“Stop that!” The prying touch was worse than the pain. I had to stop it. “You want a compromise, but I don’t know what you are. Tell me.” The intruder withdrew its touch, but I knew it hovered closely.
ADVISOR.
“Advisor? To what?”
IT IS AN ACRONYM FOR ADVANCED INTELLIGENCE SERVICE OPERANT RACK.
Things just kept getting worse. Only Modern Research invented acronyms like that.
“What does rack mean?”
VARIATION OF WRACK. SYNONYM DESTRUCTION.
No wonder Ramone wanted it so bad. What was he into that he could get access to something of this magnitude? I scrambled everything by activating it on myself.
Can it really fix everything? It did take away the pain, and backed away when I agreed to talk. Maybe it can be bargained with. I wanted to believe, and held back only because Dad would not understand. I had to talk to him and tell him that everything would be all right.
“I want to talk to Dad, Advisor.”
NOT POSS…I did not let Advisor finish. I sought the seeker and found it. The pain returned doubled and I cried out.
**Andy! Thank the Lord! There is not much time. You must fight back. I can help through the seeker.**
“It wants me, Dad,” I told him through the haze of pain.
**What? Listen to me. There is a replicate of this thing loose in my own system. I can’t handle them both, but I can’t leave you. It has already wiped Zartron, and the Assassin NI I was able to load is breaking down.**
I broke in. “It can’t beat you, can it, Dad?” I wondered, though I was afraid I knew the answer. Everything hurt so much I couldn’t think. Zartron was gone, and that added a new ache to the rest of the pain.