The Enemy of My Enemy? Pt. 2/Chapter 17
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Patricia Mariner was trying to relax. She took a stress pill while she sat in a plush chair that matched the posh décor and furnishings of the room she was in. It was a beautiful room in a beautiful mansion that boasted Olde Victorian craftsmanship.
The virtual anchorwomyn on the television was reporting a story that Patricia was all too familiar with.
“…Once again, our Top Story, as we bring you continuing coverage of the upcoming execution of Frances Stanley. He is scheduled for phase-one electrocution tomorrow for his involvement in The Great Mistake. His death will be carried out over a period of two weeks.
Investigations following The Mistake nearly six years ago, have yielded records that show Gaines Corporation’s marketing department was preparing to launch an ad campaign to promote a new line of android related software. The software was scheduled to have been released only a few months after The Mistake occurred, but the programs themselves were never found.
Gaines Corporation was not affected during The Great Mistake. Inquiries of surviving employees have confirmed that Mr. Stanley was the top researcher employed there.
Frances Stanley disappeared during the chaos and was presumed dead. But new evidence recovered by Prime Citizen Daniella Ortenni has also helped link Stanley to Gaines Corporation and suggests that he may have been the person responsible for the greatest disaster to befall our world, six years ago. Again, we would like to express our gratitude to Mz. Ortenni for her brave efforts in bringing this criminal to justice and for the daring rescue of Councilwomyn Mariner’s son, Phillip Gaines Jr., whose father was exonerated when, he too, fell victim to Frances Stanley’s madness…”
“How could you do it, Frances?” Patricia asked to the wind.
“He didn’t,” she heard her own voice reply from the back of the room. Slowly she turned to face the direction of its origin. Coldness came over her as she gazed upon a youthful and exaggerated Valkyrie image of herself staring back at her. Was it the pill or psychosis? She didn’t know.
“Wha-What are you?” she shivered at the hallucination.
“Someone you should trust,” came another voice as the towering Valkyrie was joined by a young Viking as tall as she was… a vision from her own Saxon roots that has come to take her to Asgard to wait on the tables of gods and fallen heroes. She smiled at the amusing thought.
Kylan wondered how Daniella had failed to notice Portia’s resemblance to Patricia. But the older womyn had long light-brown hair that was already highlighting with signs of grey. Her eyes were light green instead of Portia’s hazel-grey.
Patricia Mariner was aging gracefully with tiny wrinkles forming in the right places that gave her a gentle and nurturing quality. It was sobering to see how Portia would look if she could age, but they both still had a face that would make most of the former super-models look homely. “We really need to talk to you,” Kye said kindly. “We need your help.”
“Where did you come from?” Patricia asked… still believing this wasn’t really happening.
“I overrode your home security system,” Portia said as she walked towards her human counterpart.
“You-You’re an android?” Patricia gasped as reality loomed before her and she sank further into her chair.
“I have something you should see. It will explain everything,” and with those words Portia tuned her relays to the television’s current frequency. Patricia was unable to move as fear gripped her but her maternal instincts quickly focused on the images that now appeared on the screen. Images that began with her son in a place that heralded danger and with a man that she had come to loathe.
“Are you his Auntie Portia?” Patricia asked even though the android wasn’t visible in the footage. Portia nodded her acknowledgment. “I thought that you were just another figment of Little Phillip’s imagination. He said that you were my big sister, but I was an only child.”
“Please watch,” Portia said as she paused the footage before she began to play it again. “If you have any questions then you deserve some answers, but first you need to learn the truth.”
The truth was difficult to watch and even harder to accept. Patricia witnessed the events that Kye had also watched the night before. But for her, there were different stakes involved and different pain revealed.
She saw her son and the love he shared with his Uncle Franky. She saw them both being used by the womyn she thought of as a friend and a savior. She saw that same womyn threaten her child and try to destroy the one who actually tried to rescue him. She felt a rage that could only have been equaled by Kylan’s. It was a rage that was even felt by an artificial being. A being that was created in her own image and was risking its own self to come to her for help… and to help her.
“Frances. Why did he make you look like me,” Patricia asked while fearing the answer.
“Because he loved you so much that he didn’t want to get in the way of your life,” Portia said sadly. “He devoted his life to me, because he couldn’t devote it to you. He didn’t really consider that I would become someone else, my own person, and that we would grow so close as one…”
“Why didn’t he ever tell me how he felt?” Patricia asked herself.
“Would it have made a difference?” she heard her voice say through Portia.
“No,” Patricia said, but she stood up quickly as displaced anger sought its own answers from the terrible revelations she was facing. Kye noticed she was shorter and slimmer than Portia. “How do I know that this isn’t a lie and that you didn’t fabricate those images so that you could try to take advantage of me!” Although she already knew the answer from the reminder that she was about to receive.
“Because it happened just like I told you it did, Mom,” Phillip Jr. stood in the doorway with tears in his eyes and the young man appeared to be completely coherent. Aura was standing beside him holding his hand and stroking empathetically.
“How did that Monique get here!” Patricia uttered more out of disbelief than anger when she recognized the M-67 as the model of his former nanny.
“Hello, Aunt Portia,” Phil said with a bittersweet smile, “I’m glad to see that you made it out of there okay.” Tears had flowed from bloodshot eyes but he remained composed.
“Oh Phillip, Honey, I’m sorry that I had to come to you like this,” she spoke as if she felt Stan’s pain. “But Frances had told me what had really happened and how your father died. He never forgave himself for helping Big Phil make the Stripper program...”
Patricia watched the exchange in joyful disbelief of the change in her son. “I should be apologizing to you,” Phil Jr. said with a new-found sanity. “I led you and Uncle Frank into that trap…”
Kylan interrupted, “There is only one person to blame for that.”
“How?” Patricia whispered, not really hearing Kylan.
“I thought that womyn was my nanny and she exploited that,” Phil said shamefully. “When I saw this android,” he took Aura’s hand in both of his, “I was forced to confront the truth.” He swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean to, but I killed my father. Or you might say that I helped him kill himself.”
“That’s a lie!” Patricia burst.
“No, Mom. You were hardly ever around so Dad put me in that boy’s boarding school. The only real caretaker I had was my nanny and Dad programmed her so well that I ended up developing real feelings for her.”
Phil looked forgivingly at his mother, “I’m not blaming you, Mom. Dad didn’t let you see me too often. What you don’t know is that he was the one who developed the software that caused The Great Mistake.”
“But he was the only one in his company that died because of it!” she was still unwilling to accept that her son had any involvement.
“He died because I’m the one who installed his own program into my nanny!” Phil said harshly. “He didn’t mean for it to kill anyone, but it did.” He became subdued. “It wasn’t that Stripper program; it was something he added to it… I didn’t know. I just wanted to be closer to my nanny. I was falling for her, Mom.”
Then he admitted something even more unbelievable. “It didn’t bother me too much when Uncle Frank got a gynoid that looked so much like you. I was just glad that someone else who I loved also cared so much about you. Then I saw how happy Uncle Frank was with Portia and I wanted my nanny to start loving me like a man instead of a boy… When she killed Dad I never forgave myself.”
“I thought so,” Portia said abruptly. “That’s why I used that Monique and the nanny program that Frank had saved to come to you. I used her to comfort you and give you the forgiveness and the answers that you couldn’t give yourself. I did it so that you could start healing. I’m happy that it worked better than I had hoped, but I’m so sorry that you are having to face these things all over again.”
She looked at Phillip tenderly. “It wasn’t your fault, Sweetheart, and you know that if your father had lived he may have been executed like they are about to do to my poor Frances.” She turned to Patricia, the look of heartbreak once more found her face, “Please help him,” she begged.
Patricia Mariner was still in shock. Too much was happening too fast. New realities were finding a difficult task undoing the years of bias that misinformation had rooted. And to help an android was unthinkable. But when she looked at her son and the pain in Portia’s face she knew that she could not deny what had happened.
“I know how it feels to lose a husband,” she said at last, but nearly inaudibly. “He was overseas on a business trip when he died in the plagues. I can’t believe that I’m saying this to a robot, but I can’t put you through that… especially not after what you’ve done for my son. And everything Frank has done.”
She looked confused, “I didn’t know him too well. The man I knew was uncultured and reckless, but he wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t capable of what the other wymyn are accusing him of. Lately I’ve been thinking that we’re starting to go too far. And I never dreamed Daniella was capable of what she did.”
“We can worry about HER later,” Kylan said emphatically but kindly. “Right now Frank needs us and we may have less time than we think if the others have already reached Replico.”
“Mitzie says that they’ve secured the area,” Portia informed Kye as she used several Girls to relay into the shielded complex.
“Replico?” Phillip’s interest was sparked. “I still have access there. They were using the designs for my Mars exploration project and still needed my help developing it. My mind wasn’t all there but my skills were.”
“Did you know what they were using it for?” Portia asked firmly after her own battles with the synthetic creatures.
“No, Aunt Portia,” Phil said with disappointment, “but after I saw what this ‘Daniella’ womyn had done with my prototype, I can guess.”
“It’s not like that,” they were surprised to hear Patricia speak. Apparently she knew about the robots. “The First-World Wymyn’s Council wanted to develop it as an anti-terrorism and intelligence gathering device, but some of them wanted to take it a step further. Most of the men in the Third World nations were not killed during The Mistake, but when the plagues hit, those entire populations were equally affected. The men remained in charge and continue to brutalize women in those nations just as they always have. We wanted to set up sanctuaries for those women to come to where we could offer them protection. Some of the Wymyn decided that that wasn’t good enough.”
“Since when has this country started to get involved in world affairs again?” Kye was now the one who couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Patricia was dead serious. “Since wymyn started doing a better job running things! Japan wasn’t hit by the plagues and the wymyn there were able to take it back from China. They were the first to contact us and ask for our help. When we saw that we could fight back and win against the men’s oppression, we decided to free our sisters and stop you men from making anything like this ever happen again.”
“It wasn’t all of us,” Phil interrupted. “Now we all have to live with the consequences of a few peoples actions. I’ll have to live with Dad’s for the rest of my life. And the world will have to live with ours. Let’s do it right.” Patricia was astounded by her son’s change since his mind was once again free.
“That’s what I’m intending to do,” Portia came forward and she exuded command. “Kye, please go with Patricia and save Frances.”
“Don’t you want to join us!” Kylan bellowed in disbelief.
“More than anything I’ve ever wanted Kylan, Honey,” she actually formed a tear of blue lens cleaning fluid to show her sincerity. “It’s not just about what I want anymore; it’s grown beyond us but we are ones that can set it right. So I have to do what I can BECAUSE I can. Otherwise rescuing My Sweetheart may all be for nothing. Mitzie says that they badly need my help. Please tell Frances that I love him dearly.” And she ran out the door before Kylan could respond. Phillip and Aura ran after her before Patricia could stop her son.
“I wouldn’t think of robbing you of that chance,” Kye said to himself, “because I love you too, Portia.”
“Aren’t you going with them!” Patricia urged Kylan.
“I’m doing what we came here to do,” Kye said while choking on his words. “We’re going to get Frank. He needs us. And Portia needs him.”
“We can’t just walk into the prison and demand that they release him!” Patricia said, “There are procedures…”
“WE can’t, but YOU can,” Kye answered definitively. “You owe him at least an attempt. If you don’t then I will do EVERYTHING in my power to free him without you. Everything.”
It helped Kylan that Patricia looked so much like Portia because his patience was wearing thin as the clock ticked precious moments away. She agreed at last, “Let’s go. My car’s in the garage. By the way, what’s your name again? Can you drive?”
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