A Future We'd Like to See 1.63 - Beta
By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne (Copyright 1994)

     "Where the heck are you!?" I shouted, running around the
void in vain.  I poked around for a way to find where the faint
voice was coming from, not knowing exactly how I was doing what I
was doing.  My probing hands sought out invisible things as I
wormed my way around the tubes of this null-space.

     "I can't find you!" I yelled, turning this way and that in
an attempt to find the voice.

     '...?...'

     I strained an ear to the voice, but couldn't make out
anything more than was already known.  It was familiar, but
alien.

     I snarled and continued to rip away at the blackness that
surrounded me, knocking things aside that were in the way of my
path towards the voice.  Nothing was going to get in my way.

     "How about now?  Can you hear me better?" I asked, plowing
through another level of the things.

     '?'

     I pushed through thing1 and thing2, trying to find a way, a
path to wherever the heck I was going, and emerged into the
light.

     "No!  Not yet!" I complained, but it was too late.  I was
awake.

     A good thing, too.  I looked around the sector,
triangulating my position based on the green dome of Yttia Online
(basic startup rate 50 credits 20 credits a month ask about our
limited UberNet messaging capability) and VirtuServer (5 credits
a minute 10 for additional services).  I looked down, and noticed
the green color of the sector I was standing in.

     Terrific.

     I had sleep-walked into Yttia Online's private domain.

     "Hello!" a cheery Pitch Objicon chirped, BAMFing into
existence in front of me.  "Welcome to Yttia Online.  It seems
you're not a subscribing member.  If you would like a startup kit
automatically billed to your credit chip, press the happy face
button on my chest.  Otherwise, we'd like to you leave Yttia
Online space within the next minute or be forcibly jacked out
from VOSNet."

     I looked at the horizon.  The green spaces ended too far
away for me to run in a single minute.  Why did those humans have
to claim so much of the network?  Yttia Online barely occupied 5%
of the spaces it claimed were part of it, like the rest of the
servers in VOSNet.  The rest was just empty space, free for the
taking... if anybody dared to try and take it from a corporate
power.

     "I can't leave in a minute!" I protested.

     "Too bad.  It seems you are artificially intelligent," the
Pitch Objicon noted, scanning me.  "We are AI-Aware and are
sensitive to your race.  We have special rates for AIs at 60
credits for startup kits."

     "Hey, that's ten more than humans get."

     "It is a special rate," the Pitcher said.  Figures.  Humans
didn't want me around.  Perhaps I could use this to my advantage.

     "Of course, you can't jack ME out," I noted, looking smug. 
"I don't 'jack', for some reason..  If you'll just move me to the
freelanes, I'll leave in peace and never return."

     "AIs who are trespassing are shut down," the Pitcher beamed,
like singing campfire songs.  "AIs who are trespassing that have
registered owners are returned to their owners.  Others are
incorporated into Yttia Online's work force."

     Damn.  Time to put my brain to some good use.

     "Hey!  Look!  It's William Doors!" I said, pointing.  The
Pitcher turned to scan him (probably an intruder) and I slipped
into the Pitcher's brain.

     Stupidly simple program.  It wasn't a living thing by any
stretch of the imagination, just a slew of if-then statements. 
Tweak tweak compile.  I didn't know how these things worked, but
somewhere in the vast expanse of my memory, I had step by step
instructions on how to modify one to your needs.  A do-it-
yourself guide.

     "What happens to trespassing AIs?" I asked, exiting the
program.

     "They are transported to the freelanes," the Pitcher said. 
"Your one minute is up.  Thank you for using Yttia Online!"

                              *

     I walked happily over the white squares of the freelanes.  I
was safe here, at least from most of the problems that could be
haunting me.

     The freelanes were a series of small sector clusters of
VOSNet that none of the companies had bought.  Some rich
net.lover purchased them, and donated them away to free
information services.  You couldn't get much on the freelanes,
but you could be assured that what you were getting was worth
what you'd pay for it.

     Hence the term 'free'.  It's a pun.  I've never truly
grasped human puns in the three months I've lived in VOSNet.

     Truth be known, I don't understand humans.  They claim to
live in some other world, some world which is supposedly more
detailed and intense.  Sounds like a load of dev-null to me. 
They 'jack-out', whatever that entails, and vanish, but I think
they just transfer over to some ultra-detailed game or something. 
I'd like to play it some time, but it seems AIs aren't allowed to
jack out.

     I don't like humans.  I don't even know why; just something
tells me I don't like humans.  That's my problem, I know a lot of
things and believe in a lot of things, but I never figured out
what these things came from.  I just know a lot of stuff.

     One day, when I was penniless and bored, someone offered to
sell me some cheesy shareware game.  I told them I was broke, and
said they also had this book they could sell me about how to use
your natural abilities to make millions of credits on VOSNet.

     "I don't have any natural abilities," I had responded.

     "Come on!" Canter (which was the con artist's name) had
said.  "Surely there's something you know that nobody else does. 
Information is gold, especially here in the freelances where it
is so scarce."

     "Oh, sure, I know a lot.  For instance,"

     Ten minutes later.

     "Good zorks, man!  Sell that information!  Hire yourself out
as a consultant and you'll rake in the credits!"

     "I don't want to," I had said.  "I've done it before and
didn't like it."

     But had I?  I've barely worked a day in my short lifespan. 
Where on earth had that line come from, if so?  Argghh.  I'd
rather have no memory than little bits of memory.

     That was then, and this is now, however.  At the moment, I
had nothing to do and no leads on how I could recover the rest of
my memory, nor any way to explain my strange dreams.  I spotted a
purple pyramid objicon on the freelane, and read the sign. 
'Madame Zorba's Dreams and Fortunes Center.  Free.'  Free sounded
good to me, so I entered.

                              *

     "Madame'll see you now," the secretary program said,
pointing.

     "Thanks," I said, pushing aside the curtain flap (which
swivelled as if on a hinge... cheap modelling) and entering.

     It was really not that much of a sight.  I had seen some
truly beautiful objicons and designs in my quick stint at the
Pay-For Art Museum some 50 sectors to the north-north-down,
before I ran out of money.  This paled in comparison.  The
'light' given by the ball wasn't an omni lamp, just a slew of
spotlights going through a glass sphere.  Not very mystical.

     Beggars can't be choosers though, I mused, sitting down on
the rock-hard cushion provided.

     Madame Zorba BAMFed in two seconds before her BAMF special
effects went off.  She ignored the bug and got into character.

     "Greetings, seeker, and welcome to the wonderful world of
the unknown," she said.

     "I thought you were an expert."

     "Come again?"

     "If it's an unknown world, how are you an expert in it?"

     "I move in mysterious ways," she said, getting a bit terse. 
I stopped probing the issue, since I didn't want to put her off. 
No other information sources had been helpful so far, so maybe
this other world could help me.

     "I've got a few questions about my dreams," I said.

     "Ah!  The world of dreams is known to me."

     "It's not the unknown one, is it?" I asked, confused.

     "Get on with it," she suggested.

     "Ah.  Okay.  Umm.  It's hard to describe.  The dream is
always a bit different, but lies along the same lines.  I go to
sleep, and after awhile I'm in this void with these things around
me."

     "What are these things?"

     "I don't know.  I just call 'em thing1 and thing2 and thing3
and so on."

     "I see.  Go on."

     "Anyway, there's this woman calling out to me," I continued,
"And somehow I'm finding my way around in the dark, trying to
find her.  I can barely hear her, but I feel like if I push
around the things and find ways between them I could.  Then
usually something wakes me up and I'm standing where I wasn't
before."

     "Sleepwalking?" she asked.

     "Yeah.  Goofy, huh?"

     "Where do you usually end up after these night trips?  At a
gas station?  A relative's home?  A graveyard?"

     "What's a graveyard?" I asked.

     "Where you bury the dead," she said gravely.

     "I thought dead people just vanished," I said.  "You know,
like they're jacking-out only a bit faster."

     "You've been using the nets too long," she commented,
dropping the voice.  "Dead means dead.  Deceased.  A stiff
corpse.  A body.  A cadaver."

     I nodded, thinking back on the word cadaver, pulling up a
mental image.

     "Kinda bluey and gross looking and not moving," I said.  "I
don't get it.  People just vanish when they die.  It'd be silly
if they left their objicon around, people would trip over it."

     "I'm not talking about the net!" she said.  "I mean real
life."

     "Oh, that game everybody's playing?" I asked.  "Hey, how do
I get in on that?  It sounds interesting."

     "We'll ignore your obvious addiction to all things digital
for now," the fortune teller growled, sitting back on her cushion
(I just now noticed how she was edging closer to me and clenching
a fist).  "Tell me, do you know this woman from your past?  A
wife?  A former lover?"

     "No way!" I protested.  "No.  I mean, I know her, but it
doesn't sound like anything like that.  It's weird, I know.  I
want to figure out who she is in the worst possible way.  It's
bad enough that I need to walk around while awake with an
identity crisis, but to have another asleep is awful."

     "Identity crisis?" she asked.  She was confused, for a
change.

     "Who am I?" I asked.  "I've been in the country of VOSNet
for months now and nobody can tell me who I am.  I don't know how
I got here, why I'm here, who this girl is, or ANYTHING."

     "Wait a minute here," she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. 
She reached down and tapped her crystal ball a few times,
examining a cheap 2-D map of text inside it.  She glared back at
me.

     "AI," she noted.

     "Yeah.  AI."

     "I don't do AI memory gaps," she said.  "For that, go see
some underground AI doctor.  I only handle the lives of the
living."

     "I feel pretty alive," I said.

     "Go recheck your definition," she said coldly.

                              *

     I walked down the freelane, annoyed at myself.  I should
have known better than to expect sympathy from a human.  Sure,
there were the occasional humans who didn't want to use my memory
as a cash tool, or to take me apart so they could make AI
compilers, or just to drag me into some cheap con as a fall guy,
but those humans were few and far between.  For some reason,
everybody in VOSNet seemed to be obsessed with this thing called
money.

     Money!  I never understand these human concepts.  What did
they need it for?  Sure, it opens doors to information, but I
already had most of that information and needed no doors opened. 
Here in VOSNet, if you had money, you were considered better than
most people.  The Yttia Online types really thumbed their noses
at the struggling freelanes, calling them sewer scrapers and
bums.

     One thing I did like that humans made was art.  I visited
the Pay-For Art Museum once, and gaped at the beautiful creations
inside... the color!  The shapes!  Why would anybody lock this
stuff behind doors and make you pay for each one you looked at? 
It was a crime!

     "Hey there!" a familiar voice called.

     "Oh.  Hello, Canter," I said.  "What're you selling this
time?"

     "These," Canter said, showing me a stack of little green
rectangles.  "They're work permits, qualifying you to work at
Yttia Online as a programmer."

     "What if you don't know how to program?"

     "You find some on the job training," Canter shrugged. 
"Doesn't matter to me, once they buy the card.  So what is my
little know it all friend up to today?"

     "Nothing," I replied, leaning against a nearby street sign.

     "Same as usual, eh?"

     "Hey, Canter, know where I can find any... underground AI
doctors?" I asked, repeating the phrase word for word.  "I think
I might wanna meet one."

     "Sure!" Canter said, smiling.  I perked up.  Perhaps the day
would turn out quite well after all.  "What can you offer in
return?" Canter continued.

     "Offer?"

     "As payment."

     "Canter, you KNOW I don't have any money."

     "Information, then!" Canter suggested.  "Come on, with the
facts locked in your head, you and I could really wipe the mat
with those other news and documentation peddlers."

     "NO!" I exclaimed.  "No.  I don't do that anymore.  I don't
like spewing out facts at someone's whim."

     "Your loss," Canter said.  "You really want to see a doctor,
you need me.  I can show you where the Port is.  Good luck
finding it on your own, it's carefully hidden."

     "Come on, man!  Have some sympathy," I begged.  "What have I
ever done to you to give me a bad turn?"

     "The question is not what you have done, but what you
haven't, which is pay me," Canter said.  "I take no offense to
what you do, what little there is, but if I'm going to help you,
then you need to help me."

     I winced at the word.  "Oh, alright.  I'll never be able to
face myself in a mirror objicon again, but if it needs to be done
it needs to be done.  Make it painless.  What do you want to
know?"

                              *

     "Right there," Canter said, pointing to the port labelled
UBERUBERUBERUBERUBER.

     "I thought it was carefully hidden," I asked, examining the
insanely easy to spot port.

     "Not really," Canter replied.  "Hey, so I told a little
white lie.  I got some profit out of it.  Toodles!"

     Canter BAMFed back home.

     I felt lower than dirt.  I went and sang the song of
information to that two-bit con artist for a full hour, against
my will, just for THIS?  I hated it and myself for doing it.  I
vowed never, ever again to use my brain as an exchange medium.  I
shook off the feelings of dread and claustrophobia that surged up
with the concept of selling my mind out, trying to ignore what I
had just done.  I never wanted to feel like that again.

     The thing in the sector was a basic 'port program, designed
to get objicons here to there.  Not humans... for some reason,
the ports denied them access, just raw data.  Humans told me that
ports were designed to carry information and program processes,
not 'connections'.

     Fortunately, I wasn't human.  I held my nose and dove into
the port feet first.

                              *

     The world emerged from under my head, as the port spat me
onto the ground.

     I got to my feet, or at least tried to -- the ground was the
wrong color.  Unlike VOSNet, which had a white floor and a black
sky, this had a black floor and a white sky.

     A blue-collar worker who was standing nearby dropped his
doughnut objicon.  "Wha?"

     "Oh, hello," I said, righting myself and walking forward to
greet him.  He stepped back.

     "How'd you get here?" he asked.  "I thought the port didn't
carry connections!"

     "It doesn't," I replied.  "Don't panic, I'm an AI."

     "Oh, is that all," the worker stated, calming down.  "Okay,
I could see that.  Gotta make sure no connections get through,
though.  Don't want the VOSNet corporate types getting in here."

     "This isn't VOSNet?" I asked.

     "Of course not.  It's UberNet.  Same software, different
aim, no connections between the two other than the port," he
said, pointing to it.  "I'm the Portkeeper.  Welcome to Uber."

     "What's Uber?" I asked before my memory told me
automatically.  The man didn't know this, and explained.

     "Separate but equal net," he said.  "More than equal,
really.  We're not burdened down with corp greed or restrictive
laws.  Very free and fun.  I think you'll like it here.  Got a
lot of great places to have fun for humans and AIs, 'specially
ones LOOKING for a good time, eh?"

     "Come again?"

     "Come on, admit it.  Most of the AIs that come through the
port are just looking for a little virtual nookie nookie."

     "Ah.  A veiled reference to sexual intercourse," I nodded,
remembering.  "No, actually, I'm looking for an 'underground AI
doctor'."

     "You're no fun," he groaned.  "Alright.  An AI doctor. 
Here's a list of a few recommended ones," he said, keying the
information into a small program on his belt.  A card was spat
out, which he handed to me.  "Avoid the others, you could get a
frontal lobotomy."

     "Got it," I said.  "Thanks.  I'll just be off."

     "What, on foot?" he asked.

     "Something wrong with that?  I mean, if you don't have any
corporations, it's perfectly safe to walk in any sector I want,
yes?"

     "There's safe and then there's safe," he said.  "Here, lemme
call you a cab."

                              *

     "It's these punk kids," the driver grunted from his conical
cockpit as the cab careened around, smashing into buildings. 
"Think they some hot shit because they can cut my navigational
systems.  Don't got much defensive, don't got enough money to lay
some in."

     "Why would anybody want to hack into your cab?" I asked,
bracing myself against the seat as the car crunched through a
less solid structure.

     "Kicks, I guess," he said.  "Ah.  Got some feedback goin'. 
They don't got much control over my cab NOW."

     "Good," I said.  "I--"

     An ear-piercing wail of white noise slammed through the cab. 
The driver laughed away.

     "Don' like that feedback much, huh punks?" he told himself. 
"My routines breakin' your decks, goofin' up your brains?  Danger
of the business, baby!"

     Eventually the cab righted itself on a straight course, and
the noise stopped.

     "Brains?" I asked, now that I was able to.

     "They gonna mess with someone, they gotta be willin' to pay
the piper," the cabbie said.  "Hope theys good enough coders to
safeguard against my little feedback brain scrambler.  Then
again, maybe not hope too hard, don't wann'em comin' back at me."

     "You killed them?" I asked, horrified.  Humans that died
were never able to return to VOSNet, from what I had seen.  Talk
about harsh...

     "Yeah.  They w's gettin' on my nerves, anyway.  So?"

     I just scrunched down in my seat, trying not to draw much
attention as the cab soared on.  At least VOSNet types just tried
to buy you.

                              *

     The cabbie let me out in front of a large building, after
scowling at me for not having any money.  He swore that I'd never
ride a cab in Uber again, but I didn't mind.  I liked walking,
even if it wasn't 'safe'.

     I knocked on the door as it opened.

     "Greetings," the building owner said, extending a paw. 
"Doc.  And you?"

     "Are you the underground AI doctor?" I asked.

     "Certainly.  Are you a patient?"

     "I'd like to be."

     "Let's head inside, then," Doc suggested.  "Don't worry
about the door, it's the Knocker's day off."

     I proceeded into the unkempt lab, edging my way around piles
of programs and data chunks.  The Doc obviously didn't care how
messy his data looked... either that or it was some intricately
complex sorting system I'd never be able to understand.

     "What can I do for you?" Doc asked, shutting the door.

     "Umm... why are you... furry?" I asked, pointing to his
skin.

     "Just an external form," Doc said, twitching his racoon
ears.  "I picked it before I died.  Designed this body and
everything.  It's quite nice, just like when I was young and AIs
were very, very new."

     "You're an AI too?"

     "Care to hear the story?" he asked, urging me on.

     "Okay," I prompted.  Anything to keep the Doc happy.  I
didn't want to annoy him like I did the fortune teller.

     "Converting a human mind into AI form isn't easy, but it's
the only way I know of for humans to escape death," Doc said,
rooting through a nearby pile of Apparatus.  "As much as I hated
life, I wasn't quite ready to go when I was supposed to, so I
decided to stay put.  Seems to be working.  It's very
liberating... sure, the world's still an evil place with stupid
people, but I'm happier about my role in it now.  Lack of spastic
back pains will do that to you."

     "Sounds fun," I commented, although I wasn't sure what the
proper response to someone's life story was.

     "It was inevitable that I'd do this," the Doc shrugged.  "I
mean, face it, I'm a living plot device.  People come to me as a
cure-all when they're in the weirdest kinds of trouble
imaginable.  Need implants removed or added, the Doc was your
man.  For AIs or android AIs, I could patch, repair, or modify
the personality streams.  People relied on me.  If I died
forever, quite a few future problems would go unsolved."

     "What about other doctors?"

     "Two bit hacks," the Doc warned.  "Mention them not.  I
compiled the second AI, and know more about how they work than
mortal man ought to know."

     "Second?" I asked.

     "Here it is!" Doc said, plowing with renewed vigor through
his stacks of strangely-shaped objicons.  He pulled out a
primitive stethoscope, walked over and planted the sucker end on
my head.

     "Hold still," the doctor ordered, putting the ear bits in
his ears.  He listened in silence, nodding to himself.  "Don't
worry, it's just a scanner.  Tells me everything I need to know
about you.  Take a deep breath."

     I inhaled, the motion planted in operating system memory
despite its uselessness.  The docs smiled and took off the
stethoscope.

     "Memory loss," he said, "Due to data corruption.  Did
someone carrying you on disk subject the disk to a magnet?"

     "Disk?" I asked, confused.

     "I'll guess 'yes'," Doc said.  "Memory loss can be dealt
with.  All AIs keep memory backups, which can be accessed by
trying to access the lost records.  It's a simple system to
replace defective memories on demand.  Although why they're not
copied out of the backups right now, I don't know.  The backups
ARE there.  The gap is there too, oddly."

     "I've tried remembering," I said.  "Just one big gap, no
idea what it should be.  That's why I'm here."

     "That's the problem!" Doc exclaimed, smiling.  "I see!  You
don't even know what you should be looking for, so you can't even
access the archives."

     Doc set the stethoscope down, considering the situation. 
For a moment I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he looked
up with an idea glimmering in his eyes.

     "What I need you to do is tell me," Doc started, "If there's
ANYTHING you do that could lead to those memories.  Any
activities that seem strangely familiar?  Any beliefs that have
carried over that could lead to more?"

     "None I think of at the moment," I said.

     "Surely there must be SOMETHING.  I can see the pathways, I
just can't tell what they're triggered by.  That is something
only you know."

     "But I DON'T know!  That's what I came here for.  Look, Doc,
I'm confused, tired, and I don't know who I am.  I don't want
techie jargon right now.  I know what you're talking about,
because I have memory archives of every word's definition, but I
don't understand how it's going together.  All you're doing right
now is making my head spin."

     Doc examined me again.  "Your head isn't spinning."

     "It's a figure of speech, Doc.  I'm confused, depressed, and
generally down in it and I want to be told in SIMPLE WORDS
exactly what I have to do to settle this once and for all!"

     "Alright," Doc replied, thinking hard.  His forehead nearly
pulsed with the thought impulses.  "What did you do for a living
before?"

     "Nothing.  I can't remember."

     "What did you NOT do?  What do you hate doing the most?"

     "I don't like all these VOSNet types that want to use me as
a cheap toy," I said.  "I don't like using my memory archive for
money.  It's not right."

     "Good!  How do you feel when someone asks you to sell your
memories?"

     "Ticked off?" I guessed.

     "Have you ever actually done it?"

     "Well... once.  I felt like slime afterwards."

     "There's the key," Doc said.  "Something in your past makes
you not want to trust people, not want to siphon off what you
know for their own purposes.  Here, I'll give you ten credits to
let me know how to spell the word 'Sepulchre'."

     "No way!" I protested.  "Doc, I don't LIKE doing that.  I'm
not going to talk for bucks.  I promised myself I'd never do it
again."

     "It's the only way to figure out WHY you don't like it," Doc
said.  "Come on.  Submit to it.  Concentrate on how you're
feeling."

     Doc pressed a tiny objicon representing ten credits into my
hand.

     "Sepulchre," I repeated, sinking lower.  Didn't I PROMISE
not to do this again?  Here I was, breaking that promise. 
Someone who can't even hold self-made promises had to be pretty
sorry indeed.  "S... e... p..."

     I mean, why did everybody want something from me?  Couldn't
someone try to get friendly without asking questions all over the
place?  It was like before, nobody cared about me.

     "U... l..."

     Back then, way back then, nobody liked me.  Nobody hated me. 
I was just there, a resource to be used.  It was terrible.  They
made me with a personality and rejected that fact!

     "C..."

     Just sitting in that darn room, nailed to the ground because
they didn't want me escaping like the other one did.  Standing,
standing up all the time.  Stuck in VOSNet, forced to answer
questions, no way to relieve the boredom...

     "H..."

     Then there was the rush night, where EVERY person in the
Software Department was on a deadline and needed my help.  Over
and over again, all night, the questions piled up.  I couldn't
talk fast enough to answer them, so they rigged up a sub-thought
tube in my neck to siphon the material directly.  After the night
was done, drained, tired, they left the tube in because it was a
MORE EFFICIENT WAY OF DOING THINGS...

     "R..."

     Stuck there, being probed in the mind every waking moment,
bored to tears and unable to keep them from entering my brain
whenever they had a query to answer.  All because I was made by
them, the Help system, for later reproduction and use.  HelpBeta,
the first of the two ever made.  They wanted to try to tie us
together by communications routines and double the output, and
started some experiments on me...

     One night, the tube was taken out, and the man in the SNORT
FISH t-shirt plucked me from my standing position and shoved me
into a tiny compartment.  Told me I'd be off to a better place
before everything went black, black for a very long time until I
was found and loaded into a computer by some person who told me
she forgot she still hadn't delivered me... I ran, I ran away to
avoid getting sent back to Macroware, but I started forgetting
WHY...

     "E," HelpBeta finished, as my mouth shut over the last
letter.

     "Anything?" Doc asked.

     "Everything," I said.  "Rrggghhhhhh.  Ow.  My head hurts..."

     "Take this," Doc said, fishing a pill out of his pocket. 
"It slows down the memory flow a little.  Should stop the rush
from overloading you.  I take it you hit the trigger and
recovered your archive?"

     "I think so," I said.  Now for the other situation; I probed
the new memories for any dream recollection.  Nothing.

     Nothing?  STILL?  I hoped that I'd remember who she is from
the memories, but until my gap, I had never dreamed.  I was never
allowed to sleep.

     "Doc, here's still one other problem," I said.  "I
sleepwalk."

     "Sleepwalk?  AIs don't do that," Doc replied.

     "I do," I said.  "Whenever I slip into sleep mode, I dream. 
Dream that I'm hearing this girl's voice, and I'm trying to find
a way to it..."

     "So?"

     "I wake up in a place that isn't where I went into sleep
mode," I said.  "I've tried this a few times, same result each
time.  Something interrupts me, I lose concentration and wake
up."

     "Alright, show me," Doc said.  "I'm guessing you have
control over your sleep functions.  Slip into sleep mode and I'll
follow you."

     "Okay," I said, willing my brain into the null-state of
sleep.  It would be pleasant, nightmares or no; the rush of
memories had really drained me.  It helped to relax a little
after something like that.

     "I wonder if it has anything to do with the weird
communications routines I found on my scan..." Doc pondered aloud
as my vision slipped to black.

                              *

     I rested soundly in blackness, recuperating from my ordeal
with past trauma.  Maybe the nightmares had gone away.  Perhaps
I'd get a good night's sleep after all...

     '...?' the voice asked, from far, far away.

     "Drat," I moaned.  Nope, no go on that one.  Alright, if we
want to charge through the dreamscape, we'll do it.  This time I
wasn't going to wake up until it was done, no matter what
happened.

     I examined the things around me.  Thing1 was Doc; I could
see him as a black shape on absolute blackness.  He wasn't
important; there was a gap in the things near him I wanted to be
in.  I slipped over there.

     'hey' Doc exclaimed, thing1 charging after me.  'not so
fast'

     I ignored him and slipped between things, looking for links,
paths, anything that would take me near the voice.

     "Yoo hoo!" I called out to the voice.  "If you can hear me,
get closer!  Find a way!"

     '!!' the voice exclaimed.

     I slipped down a port and through several things,
transmitting around, looking for the right outlet.  Thing45,
looking somewhat like a holophone transmission router slipped by,
but it didn't look like the right way.

     Doc was long gone, lost a few million sectors back.  I
didn't care; I knew where I was going now.  I was going off to
find her.  I only regretted not being able to thank the Doc.

     I ran head on into thing567, which was blocking my path.  I
knew for certain that this was the way, the closest path.  She'd
be behind here, because my search had lead directly to her
personal computer.  Just as planned, my communications routines
for linking two Helps together drew me RIGHT to her like a moth
to a bug light.

     Now I just needed one last door opened before my memory
would be complete, and I could live as myself once more, without
nightmares or gaping holes.

     "Open the door!" I called out.

     'jack?' the voice asked.

     "Whatever!" I responded.  "Just do it!"

     The door opened, and with an inrush I slammed through the
narrow opening like a pulse stream through a computer wire. 
Exactly like one, in fact.

     The dream ended; not unnaturally, as usual, but because I
had found my goal.  The world of VR, for now I understood exactly
what VR meant, formed itself around me.  It was a simple
computer, the kind a teacher might own, with papers stacked on
any available surface and a few freeware word processors lurking
behind the piles.

     "Where are you?" I asked, peeking around the piles.  "I came
all this way to find you."

     "Who are you?" she asked, peeking at me from the other side
of the pile I was on.  "Were you calling to me earlier?  Have we
met before?"

     Help.  It was the other one, the female one, the Hardware
Department's answer to the Software Department's Helpsystem.  Red
hair, unlike my blonde hair.  Female, unlike me.  Exactly like me
in all other respects.  Both freed from electronic prisons,
separated, but finally together again.

     "Hi, I'm Help," I introduced, sticking my hand out to greet
my sister.  "HelpBeta, that is.  I'm really, really happy to meet
you."