(Note:  It's me again, that annoying voice!  For easier reading, I suggest narrowing your browser's window to one-third the screen's width.  Pleasant reading, I say.)
 
 

Beyond history, the being named Aura sat in her damnably darkened chamber. Her apported spotlighting shone just on her, the only light in the chamber. She was humming a religious hymn extracted from archived data files...humming as she stared into the vast darkness. Aura liked the darkness; this was her darkness.  And now, for amusement, she hummed the religious hymn backwards. Hearing it played forward annoyed her, but humming it  backward pleased her. Now, she hummed the song her way, amusing herself, just passing time...

Aura had long since refurbished the synthetic girl she pulled out of the long dead past. It took some extra time for Aura’s own nanobot resources to de-crystallize some of the synthetic muscle tissue and to repair some shattered circuitry.  But, once the synthetic girl came to know her new circumstances--and was programmed with loyalty--she complied with orders well enough.

And, to be sure that the gynoid was truly loyal to her commands, Aura cut out the synthetic girl’s safety protocols. That is, Aura cut out the girl’s "moral scruples" regarding human beings.  And, as Gally could be considered "human," Aura did not want the synthetic girl hesitating to kill the former cyborg.

Aura had sent the newly repaired robot-girl into time to kill Gally: simple. As the synthetic girl sent was as efficient, as quick, as uncaring as a machine, she should easily and quickly complete the task.  And, according to the equations Aura last checked on her monitor, Gally was, in fact, blown up the very hour the gynoid arrived.  Not too bad.  The death of Aura’s boyfriend was somewhat avenged. Aura lightly held her lower lip between her teeth as she savored the thought of Gally's death.

But, why stop with Gally’s execution? Inside, Aura felt that one death was not enough to kill the man she deeply loved for decades. No one could truly replace him.  Indeed, Aura would have to send the gynoid to kill others to compensate for his death.  And, she would have to send her again---then again, throughout history, then again!  She would send the "girl" through history to kill enough humans until she felt enough blood was spilled and enough souls released to balance out her lover’s death.

As Aura tried to estimate how many deaths were enough, she leaned back in her throne. She crossed her legs, then laid her pale arms on her throne’s armrests. She thought of all the people that would die, and a trickle of her dark blood came down from her lip.  She had bitten it in thinking red thoughts of further vengeance. Her large and ruby colored eyes widened, and her blood dribbled down her chin and onto her tee shirt.

"Quelle merde!" she exclaimed.  She then closed her eyes, breathing slowly, concentrating on her injured lip. Twenty seconds of silence passed, small air currents suddenly blowing--suddenly stopping. She opened her eyes and felt her lip. The wound was completely gone, of course.  More than several advanteges went with being a genetically engineered mermaid.

A gust of wind then tore through the darkness of the chamber. Aura’s hair fluttered to the left, and she had to use her finger to rearrange it. And, in the darkness, there was a dark laughter--female laughter.

A spotlight flahed on, flashed down on a kneeling and attractive teenage "girl"--one in a leather jacket and hip-hugging jeans. The synthetic girl then stood and did a slow step to Aura’s throne. The spotlight followed the saucy female that walked.  No, it was a walk: Her hips swayed with her booted steps, and she set a look of relaxed confidence on her face. That confidence was really in her smirk: relaxed and careless.

The synthetic girl, then stood before the throne.  But, her eyes were on her own hands; she was looking over her own plastic fingernails. As she did, Aura’s eyes swept the gynoid up and down. Aura slowly nodded her head. Yes, she could really appreciate the gynoid’s attitude. The reporgramming was truly successful.

"Well, Aura, the blood vanished when you trans-warped me here," she said.  Then, her eyes snapped to look at the alabaster-white being on the throne before her. "So, is that how it works?  I get cleaned up every time I go through time?" Aura nodded, then said, "That, and you’re fully repaired.  That's one of the ways that trans-warp time travel works:  Short of software or chemical damage, you won't need to wait for your body's nanobots to undo damage for every trip through the timestream.  Oh yes, the equipment I stole from Thunderhorse does little miracles, Vicki."

The gynoid stomped her right foot at the sound of Vicki, the sole of her right military boot making a clomp that echoed. "I hate that name! You know I hate being confused for my dumb and low-tech sister! Vicki is a dummy, an inferior model to myself. I am more advanced synthetic being than she is!" The gynoid’s brown eyes narrowed to angry slits.

The synthetic girl then added, "That outdated, human-loving, mushy feeling, pre-programmed, backward bitch ought to be dismantled and recycled! I could always use the spare parts as backups, but my sister loves humans so much that using her bodyparts would probably gross me out." She then raised a finger. "I’m loyal to you, but don’t call me Vicki."

"Okay, Vanessa!" said Aura, grinning as she watched the robot-girl become angry.  The synthetic girl spread her arms, saying, "No, call me... 'The Mechminx.'"  Aura rolled her red eyes in annoyance at the name.  The Mechminx?  To Aura, that sounded like a name out of one of those ancient entertainment video broadcasts...  Television, or something. And, Aura's eye-rolling gesture was more visible as Aura’s eyes were so large. "Okay, I’ll call you by your damned monicker. Are you pleased, robot?"

"Pleased?" whined the gynoid that was now identified as Vanessa "the Mechminx" Lawson.  She said, "Hell, Aura, I’m not pleased now! I think that my job sucks! You pulled me out of the past, then gave me a job with no pay, almost no health benefits save for essential repairs...almost nothing! A superior being like me wants cash, you know?" She then tapped her chest, her titanium sternum hard under synthetic skin. "I deserve an awful lot! Give me money! Give me clothes! Reward me!"

Aura simply said, "You’re acting like a baby bitch."  The Mechminx said, "Thank you!"  Aura responded, "No, really, you ought to be thankful for what I’ve done for you thus far!" The Mechminx crossed her leather-sleeved arms. "Thank you? I should thank you?"  Aura said, "Thank me."  "Hell no. You just brought me here to do your bidding:  no more than that. You’re too damned lazy to leave this damned dark place of yours. Instead, you tweak my programming to serve your whacked out wishes. I had a good time, slaughtering flesh people and all on that planet with the tacky-colored sky, but I did it in service of your freaky order.  I did your bidding, only at my pleasure and at my programming.  You want me to..."

Ka-crack, the Mechminx's angry ranting was interrupted with a thunderhbolt from the high-up cieling.  It snapped into her right shoulder.  She also spasmed a few times as the installed supply of nanobots repaired shorted circuitry in her upper-right body. She was then in fine condition again. The right shoulder of her jacket, though, was holed.  After that, the Mechminx then stood up, still able to pull up a smirk. After all, the Mechminx was a guiltless being. But, she was also an artificially intelligent one; she knew when not to press her new master.

"Oh, come on! Aura, you know that there was nothing behind that! I was just beefing you! Why can’t you take a joke? Damn, and I thought Ted was touchy!" Aura still smiled that smile of hers. Aura then said, "I know, Mechminx-baby!  I just wanted an excuse to spite you!" The mermaid's big red eyes then glistened with malevolent glee. "Anyway, it was fun...testing out a little something I picked up since Thunderhorse’s death."

"You could have wiped my memory chips with that," said the Mechminx in return.  Aura re-returned, "I could have wiped your memory chips, but I did not. That is the point: I could have, but I did not. Isn’t that the truth and the point?" The Mechminx glared. "Come, Mechminx! Laugh with me!"  Comedic and melodic laughter fluttered through the dark chamber, the mermaid's eyes sparkling with frightful merriment.

"Oo-o-h!" said the Mechminx in frustration. Yes, the Mechminx had lost her cool. Aura knew that she beat the Mechminx in that regard. The verbally defeated synthetic being then brushed at the charred circular place in her jacket. That charred area then crackled and crumpled into ash with the brushing, the black remains crumbling to the marble floor. There was now a hole in her jacket and the close-fitting sleeve the Metallica tee-shirt underneath--a fist-sized hole that exposed a shoulder that gleamed in the spotlight over her. "Damn! This was a good jacket, too--my favorite!  I wanted to skin some humans to make some extra linging for the in"

"Again, you’re lucky it was just your shoulder I struck," said Aura. The Mechminx then said, "Puh-leese! Lady, give it a rest!" said the Mechminx. "Can’t we just get down to business? I mean, I just did one task. Now what do I do, stand here and harass you some more?" Aura shook her head at that.

"Sure you did a task, Mechminx. But, why not do more tasks for me?" said Aura. "You can’t get anywhere without say. You’re stuck here and stuck in any time period I trans-warp you to." Aura then gave a mental command. The Mechminx heard swishing and crackling sounds begin, and she did a light leap backward. Something happened with the floor.

Aura’s desk came out of the floor where the Mechminx once stood: Sections of the floor snapped and rose up from the marble, then the solid sections fitted themselves into place. The computer monitor and keyboard then flipped out of the desktop.  Aura then began typing on the keyboard as she looked into the monitor. There was the annoying message that followed every trans-warp she did with the capacitors of Administrations: "TRANS-WARP CAPACITORS CHARGING...." Indeed, there would be another wait before the machinery could ready itself for another usage. In the meanwhile, there was something else to plot.

As Aura began typing inquiries into other computer databases, the Mechminx flexed some curiousity. She looked up to try to find out where the spotlighting of this place came from. Actually, the circular lighting around here was a beam of incoherent light waves that was stream-apported to wherever it was needed. The light literally come from nowhere--freaky. The Mechminx then looked at the white-blonde being behind the desk.

"Why don’t you sit down? You’re annoying me, and I’m trying to concentrate," said Aura. A seat folded and morphed itself out of the floor. Aura gave a mental shove, and the Mechminx sat down hard...her titanium bones jarring. "You fishy bitch," muttered the Mechminx at the rough treatrment. Aura gave a little smile as she continued typing. "Actually, I’m more an ‘amphibian’ than a ‘fish.’ Though some of my DNA does contain such genes, I can and do breathe air. Now, shut yourself as I think."

Aura stopped typing.  The trans-warp capacitors were charging.  What else was there to do, really? She leaned back on her throne and began to think. She thought deeply and randomly as she stared at the brown-haired gynoid. All of that plotting in offing Thunderhorse, gaining access to the trans-warp capacitors, successfully stopping Gally for good, what was the point?

Aura gave a mental command at her desk, then opened a drawer. Inside the drawer, there was a glass of saltwater. She brought it out, raised it close to her lips, then slightly tipped in the Mechminx’s direction. "Cheers!" said Aura before drinking. She then drank the saltwater quite slowly. Midway through, one of her random thoughts struck.  Okay, now, what the Mechminx went back to another time period and killed off Gally's friends?  No, Gally did not have too-close friends.  And, killing them with the Mechminx could lead to suspicion of odd events.  They would then resist and possibly figure out the source of the threat  She then had another idea.
 
Aura was there for even a minute, sipping saltwater and looking at the darkness beyond the robot in "girl" form.

"Aura, if humans were watching you just sit there, doing nothing too important, they’d be quite pissed," said the Mechminx. "I’m not one of those stupid meat puppets, but I also have something resembling a limit of patience. What are you doing? Are you just going to sit there, sipping your weird water "

Aura opened a desk drawer and dropped the empty glass in, and the glass vanished. "I’m killing time and trying your patience. That, and I wait for the trans-warp capacitors to charge. Further, I have a downright dandy idea."
 
 

Thousands of years preceeding Aura's time, in the year 3102, something was being cleaned and hopefully forgotten.  By now, the disaster in a New Sunrise hospital room had been cleaned up.  Now, there was small comfort in how the explosion only killed and did no structural damage to the building. Now, in the gray-brick and multiroom basement of the hospital, several people had come to visit. That was truly the limit.

In one small room, several large lumps made shapes; those shapes were covered with a white sheet. On the right, three of the town’s cybernetics engineers--Techies--argued and shouted at three on the left. The techies wore their gray coveralls and flat-bill cloth hats. The doctors wore their white coats. Everyone wore looks of anger.

"Look!" said, a dark-haired and dark-eyed man of six feet--one of the Techies. "This is our issue, not yours! As soon as the explosion passed, your profession is out of touch with the issue. I mean, you just handle health. We deal with machines. We retain the right to scavenge any and all technology of nanotech-grade. Check the town council records!"

"So, why is the mess in the morgue, then?" asked a doctor of equal height--this doctor being an an elderly woman. "The day that you set the precedence of considering human remains to...scrap is the day we’ll fight! Nanotech infusion or not, people are people--not machines! We’re talking about a woman’s body!"

"A dead body in pieces," corrected another Techie, a woman with red hair and green eyes. Underneath her Techie coverall, she wore a sweater instead of the usual long-sleeved workshirt. "The body is an it, until we can repair it. Shouldn’t doctors care about life instead of hoarding bodies of the dead?"

"You ghouls! We refuse to surrender the remains to you! Town council ordinances or no, we refuse!" said the third doctor, this doctor a middle-aged man. Staring at the third doctor, the dark-haired and dark-eyed techie then pulled out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded the sheet, then showed one particular paragraph to the other two of his trio. They all nodded, and he put the piece of important paper in his pocket. The techies then rolled up their sleeves.

"Keep in mind that we have the authority to do this, especially since the town council knows that this is Gally we’re talking about.  She's a special case to begin with," said the dark-haired and dark-eyed Techie. The two others advanced with him on the three doctors, their work-calloused hands clenched into fists. Backed by his two colleagues, the dark-featured Techie took a breath, then moved the sheet over the lumps beneath the sheet. He was sure to get the largest lump in the wrapped sheet; that was the upper half of Gally’s ruined body.

He tied the lumpy mass into a large bundle, cradled it in his arms, then moved to the door. "You disgusting jerks!" shouted the middle-aged doctor, his slightly wrinkled face red with anger. "What could the Techies want with a dead body? What can you possibly learn from dissecting it?"

The Techie stopped before the door. "Oh, we’re not only going to dissect the body..." said the dark-featured man. He glimpsed at his two colleagues, then nodded at the door. They followed close behind. "Let’s see what we can get from these parts," he said in a voice just loud enough for the other two Techies to hear. They left.

"Ghouls! Cutting up and pillaging Gally’s poor little body for technological treasures and advancement!" shouted the doctor at the closed door. "What will the town's children of think when they’ve heard that there’s nothing left to bury--nothing left for them to mourn?" There was only the dark-haired and dark-eyed techie’s far-off laughter down the hall as he and his two moved onward and upstairs from the hospital’s white and utiliarian basement.
 
 

Beyond history, Aura grinned when she saw that her desk terminal’s flip-up monitor displayed the "READY" message from the trans-warp capacitors. "Okey-dokey, Mechminx," said Aura, "the time has come again for you to run an errand. It will be a moderate-length grab-and-run operation, not too difficult for someone of your caliber. And, you just may like this task." She offered no more information.

"Don’t do that!" said the Mechminx. "Do what?" came Aura's smiling response. "Don’t just say you’re going to make me do something, then not tell me specifically what I have to do." And, by now, the Mechminx was peeved again by Aura’s smug smile.

"Okay, Mechminx.  For this mission, you have to find a certain someone, then bring him you on your return trip, " said Aura. "But try not to kill so many people this time; you may face the wrath of the law enforcement in that time period. If you’re hit with too many bullets, the time-scan will lose track of you when your body's power plant shuts down.  Also, if your jacket is too damaged, you yourself won't be able to do emergency trans-warps to pull yourself back."

"Aura, what are you talking about? Tell me ...." Aura winked, and the Mechminx promptly vanished into time.

There was no real sense of transition, but the Mechminx’s memory banks did indicated a time of "no-input." In human terms, she remembered not seeing, hearing feeling anything when she went through time.  She faded into another time period.  Then, the Mechminx opened her eyes, looked into a blue sky. There was the sound of birds chirping. Only, by amplifying the input to her ears, did the Mechminx hear people. It was just so quiet here, so green and soft.

"This sucks hard," said the Mechminx. "All of this green and pretty crap!" She raised her feet in the air, bent her knees, then snapped her legs downward. This allowed her to snap to her feet. "Damn, and I bet my jacket is covered with grass." The Mechminx removed her leather jacket to peruse the back, dusted off grass, then put it back on her back. At least, the trip through time repaired her jacket.

Ah, she knew where she was! Also, Aura must have transmitted data directly to the synthetic girl’s memory banks directly. The Mechminx knew both where she was supposed to do. Damn you, Aura! I don’t like having people jam ideas into my head without me knowing, went the words in her mind.

Aura actually did transmit data to the Mechminx’s memory banks without telling her. It was odd, suddenly knowing things that one did not expect to know at all. It was also disgusting, having people invade one’s head and put things there that were not there previously. The Mechminx thought of it as a sort of offensive invasiveness of her being.

The Mechminx was in a nature preserve of some sort--deep in woods. And, the University of Michigan was not an excess of miles away. There was someone there that the Mechminx simply had to meet at that particular school, someone to whom she owed favors. She would find that person, then "borrow" them. They would vanish from the 21^st century, and no one would truly miss him--other than his fellow basketball players.

Shre-e-et-shrew! Someone gave a very appreciative whistle in her direction. Another person gave a wolf howl. "Oww-w-w! Dig the dark-haired chick! Nice ass, babe!" said a male voice. The Mechminx turned. There were two twenty-something men and a similarly aged female. The Mechminx's nasal s atmospheric microsensors detected the many chemicals that made up marijuana, chemicals in the air. Those humans were well-dosed with that very substance.

What also indicated their drug usage was that all three humans were stark naked in the grass.  "Come on, honey," said the female of that trio. "We can have a foursome!" The Mechminx gave a shake of her head...before she made a rapid and mad dash at the three. They were too high to react properly when the Mechminx approached at the speed of a small and fast motorbike.

Swi-i-sh...  They felt a breeze across their reclining bodies when the Mechminx leapt, flew over them. Trying to understand where the newbie went was too confusing, so they just laughed. But, how hard would they laugh when they realized that their clothes were gone? It was the first mark of the refurbished Mechminx causing troubles in the 21^st century.
 
 

In the year 3102, in New Sunrise Village, a week after the disaster in the hospital, one patient lied on a very hard bed. She is covered to the neck in a very opaque and thick blanket. This one had a pale face of Japanese-influenced beauty: the same smooth and pale skin, high cheekbones, very dark shoulder-length hair. Her small lips were slightly parted as she slept. And, her small lips moved. Her head began to move left and right, slowly as she dreamed....

In her head, she had confusing images. There was the feeling of being torn apart. The small female felt wrenched. And she felt as if she were falling. She imagined parts of her body twisted to the side and beyond. Her head felt strained, then suddenly released—as if someone popped open her skull. Then, the madness of the haze resolved itself.

She suddenly found herself at a simple and round brown table. Looking down into the table’s polish, she could see her large dark eyes shining and blinking back at her. Then, the numbness of her body was amplified, numbness with cold. She was afraid to look down to see why.

Instead, in this dream-place, she looked at the surroundings—which were red curtains. This room was walled in with curtains. There was a laugh somewhere, and some kind of very light lounge music began to play. The laugh, She heard it before. "Hah! Ah! Ah! Hah!" It was the obnoxious, halting laughter she heard when she fell sick yesterday. Was it yesterday? Was it last week?

She tried to shout, but her throat would not work. Instead, she only gave a sharp exhalation. Her mouth also failed her. The four curtains rustled in response. And then, a very confident male voice said, "Yo, toots, come back some other time! Then we can talk! Hah!" The girl-woman very much wanted to say something.

Instead, there was another breeze. She heard this breeze in her ears and felt the breeze press back her hair. The lights then dimmed in the dream-place. And Gally felt her chair fade. She began to fall.

The petite female gasped and snapped open her eyes. She was staring upward, her eyes slightly out of focus. Gally remembered being in the hospital room when the grenade—an anti-personnel high-explosive...exploded not three yards in front of her. She also remembered the dream place. It had to have been just a dream; it felt less real than real. That dream place, though, felt more real than any other sleeping vision she had.

Her vision became more focused. Overhead, through a window,  the light of a late Martian afternoon filtered in to supplement the florescent lighting. The ceiling’s design--perforations in wafer-thin metal--was somewhat familiar. She had seen that type of ceiling back on Earth, before the debacle between Salem and Scrap Iron City was resolved. Gally wanted to remember that type of ceiling design. She wanted to know the layout, in fact, of the entire room.

Gally took several deeper breaths. Slowly, she sat up. Gally was naked, but her body felt too oddly numb for her to realize that. Unselfconscious of her nudity, her large and dark eyes looked slowly around--from left to right, then back again. Along the walls were many large and bulky machines. They had odd pieces extended from them. Some had odd handles and glassed-in chambers. Though most of the machinery seemed new, two of the machines looked freshly repaired: metal patches and dials too shiny to belong to them.

Ido Daisuke, a man that was an adopted father to Gally, once used machines of that very sort. He used them to give her the first cyborg body she had--back when she did have a metal body. Those days, the cold numbness and hardness of her physical form was resolved with the human care Ido had for Gally. He died, though, as had so many others Gally knew then.

And now, Gally was still alive, somehow.  She was very conscious.  And, her eyes widened.  She looked down at her own body. The cover was still over her hips, so she removed itt. Now, Gally’s small but womanly shape was bare.

Anyway, nudity for a metal bodied person was not much of an issue.

In shock, Gally’s ferroceramic eyes regarded her new physical form of metal--a metal physique of the "berserker" type. Essentially, the form she had now resembled a close-fitting suit of armor. Her body had the beautiful curves of an athletic woman--shapely legs and hips, flat abdomen, small shapes of breasts, slender arms. The curves were not of flesh, but of exoskeletal sections of alloys and joints.  And, in place of feet, there were metal boots bottomed with ridged metal. Her fingers were articulate metal gauntlets. Indeed, the armor was her body.

Gally snapped her upper body forward, grabbed her sheet, and covered her newly metal self. It was fright that drove her to do this, not modesty. And, despite the sheet wrapped around her huddled form, she shivered. Or, one would say she shuddered. Her lips quivered. Knees held close, the bunched female wrapped in the sheet then shed a quick tear of a slightly saline liquid.

The door to the small room opened. Then, five people in gray coveralls and cloth caps stepped inside. One was slightly taller and another was more muscular, but the group of three men and two women seemed normal enough. Gally felt abnormal.

"Ah, our little lass awakens from her gentle little nap," said one of the Techies--a dark-haired and blue-eyed woman. "I thought she was cute when asleep, but she’s much cuter awake, the little darling!"  Gally’s quivering doubled, and her wide eyes were fear-locked on the blue-eyed young woman in coveralls.

"Shh! You’re scaring her! Sheesh, she is shaken! What, does she think we’re going to eat her brain or something?" said the muscular Techie. He warmly smiled at Gally, trying to be friendly. Gally only continued shuddering, continued to look with those wide eyes of serious fright.

"Don’t worry. According to the archives, this kind of behavior is ordinary in a new cyborg. But I can’t really get why Gally’s acting this way. She’s had metal bodies before..." said a brown-haired Techie as he regarded the metal-bodied and false-flesh faced girl. He then grasped the bill of his cap and readjusted it. Next, he popped a stick of chewing gum into his mouth. "Okay, folks, let’s try a little something else. She’s still cold and nervous."

The bright-eyed woman and the muscular man first approached the shivering figure on the hard bed. Gally’s armor-solid fingers only brought the sheet closer to herself. She whipped her head left and right, watching as these two came closer. And, they still came too close for Gally’s comfort.

Gally’s right hand struck out and struck the woman--intended to be a non-lethal but stunning palm-strike.  That blow caused the woman to double over at the abdomen. She then straightened up and gently pushed Gally’s still arm away. "That wasn’t nice, but you are well-forgiven." That blow should have sent her back several feet, thought Gally. In response to Gally’s inquiring gaze, the woman rolled up her sleeves--exposing shiny metal. "All of me is that way, too, girlie," said the female techie.  To Gally’s left, the "muscular" man also rolled up his sleeves. Beyond the synthetic flesh on their hands, their arms were of the same polish as Gally’s body--two other metal-bodied cyborgs.

"Now you understand why we’re so laid back about cyborg issues: We have practice with that," said the woman. The Techie man spoke next. "Would you mind?" he said as he held hands to a side of the bed. Gally’s shivering was gone, and she was able to shrug. The cyborg Techie sat, and his colleague at the other side did the same.

The woman put her metal-and-"flesh" arm around Gally’s shoulder--holding the smaller cyborg closer. Gally looked into the eyes of the other Techies. "Little angel, the other three are full flesh, but we’re just the exceptions. You, Jonas, Jimmy and I are all metal-type cyborgs. Bodies of metal, we have.  By the way, I'm Lisa" That woman now identified as Lissa moved her face closer to Gally’s. Conspirationally, she whispered, "I’m not ashamed of my body, though. I much prefer my metal body to a full flesh one. Flesh bodies get fat or skinny too easily. And, flesh bodies get sick easier. Just look at skinny Timmy over there. "

"Hey, flesh ears are weaker than prosthetics, but I still heard that!" said Jimmy the Techie. Lisa’s blue eyes stared into Gally’s night-dark ones. Despite the cold Gally felt in her body, her spirit was warmed with being so close to those eyes. And, Gally kept staring as Lissa's right arm also wrapped around her shoulders.  Gally leaned into the one-armed carress, no longer feeling so lonely.  Gally was a cyborg again, but she was not alone in being one here.

Seconds passed before she opened them again. Gally then gave Lissa a look of emotional iron, and Lissa backed off. The bulge-limbed cyborg at Gally’s left Techie also stood.  Gally then threw her sheet forward, and one of the three Techies standing before her stumbled a bit when he caught the quick-flying sheet.

"Where is Dr. Joness," said Gally, anger making her small and pretty voice a frightful grumble. Lisa turned her head. Some crossed their arms. Another Techie rubbed the back of his head. It was obvious that Dr. Joness did not survive.

"Dr. Jones didn’t have a body pervaded with nanobots, Gally," said Timmy, the one with a pot-belly. "We don’t have the nanotechnology to restore normal bodies. That degree of nanotechnology could be salvaged on Earth, but not here. Anyway, you also survived because you retained your protective braincase. You’re alive because of good fortune, see.

"Besides, there were other people killed, too. Don’t forget about them. There are about a dozen families in New Sunrise now that don’t have mothers, fathers or either."

Gally’s right fist came close to her face. It had been decades since she felt the rage that built within her spirit. Her dark eyes went to her right fist. Jolts of inches-long lightning flickered and crackled across her right fist. Gally gave a dark grin.

That was when a low green glow enveloped her fist. The heated air began to radiate away from her fist, and the ends of her dark hair rippled in the resulting current. Her pale face was soon given an indirect green glow. Her eyes gleamed with light from that super-heated flame.

"The person responsible for the recent deaths shall be fated to pay. If it seems not so now, then I shall twist fate to that person’s defeat with all the strength of my spirit and my body." Gally gave an extra jolt of energy, and the glow of plasma around her fist flickered brighter. "Whatever body I have. Whatever…body…I…have."
 
 

Tens of thousands of years into the future, the trans-flux capacitors detected a slight ripple of a certain frequency in the fabric of reality. Massive discharges of plasma from any source could cause minute ripples in reality--flubbing normal rules of probability, for example. Plasma discharges from cyborgs were the easiest of plasma as those discharges were from such concentrated sources. Gally’s burst of plasma made her an easy mark.

Though Aura had access to the banks of computers responsible for and regulating the trans-warp machinery for time-travel, she was unaware of what the machine was doing now. This was because Aura was bathind in a hot tub that formed itself out of the floor at the behest of her metnal command. As Aura soaked her body and submerged herself in heated saltwater, the machines she seized now acted without her knowledge. The machines had no AI: no will of their own. However, they were programmed to pull a certain cyborg and a certain gynoid through time if certain emergency conditions occurred. Such conditions were met, and Gally was now being targeted to go through time--just as Vicki did.
 
 

In 3102, on Mars, Gally could not know that she was being targeted by the trans-warp capacitors. She was now outside and in the blue-green fields outside of New Sunrise Village. The settlement was off and in the distance. As Gally stood with fists clenched, one foot before the other, the Techies were a safe distance away (a block’s distance) as they regarded her. To the east, behind New Sunrise Village, the sunlight made its burning descent into the yellow-green horizon. Now, with the sky dimming, the two moons seemed larger in the sky.

A wind rippled across the plain, fluttering the grass and playing with the dark silkiness of Gally’s hair. Gally grunted, then dashed forward—a running gray blur of anger. Her hard boot-feet of metal dug up a backward cloud of loam. She scraped to a halt, gouging the plains and kicking up more loam and uptorn grass.

Before the cloud of plains debris could dissipate, Gally did four rapid-fire punches:  left-left, right-right. Her eyes saw her fist flicker in the air, but her mind knew that she threw four bullet-quick punches. Gally then tried a low kick and a high kick—snap-snap. Her double kick was quick enough to make snapping sounds in the air.

Gally leapt up and forward, holding her body straight—going six feet above the plains. In midair, she jerked her metal self through two somersalts. She landed, and her feet sank five inches in to the ground. The move Gally did--if done correctly and left unblocked--could behead a cyborg or mutant. She did the move correctly.

Still kneeling, Gally suddenly snapped her legs up and backward. She landed on her feet. After her maneuver, the quick plasma she summoned made green arcs in the air that dissipated. Gally then ferociously grinned as green plasma-fire covered the second halves of her her arms and legs.

With the lust for revenge in her still-living and nanobot-pervaded brain, she began to strike. Punches, kicks, elbow strikes, Gally struck out forward, backward--then attacked to both sides. Her feet flew and made glowing arcs in the air. Green contrails hovered and fading in the air. As she struck all about, the air filled with a near-haze of plasma.

Then, the plasma haze faded. The smoking ring of grass around her also smoked, also reduced its gray output. Gally stood there, in the center of the charred ring. Breathing heavily, the cyborg cooled her body’s systems. That rapid and prolonged usage of her body’s plasma-controlling capabilities both exhausted and heated her at the same time.

She stood, let the cooler winds of late sunset blow over her metal body. Gally then extanded her arms to facilitate the cooling. Tilting back her head, her neck of electromagnetic cylinders extending, she looked at the sky. The stars were coming out. And, with her synthetic eyes, Gally tried to look into the deep darkness of space.

I will find you, thought the cyborg. Restored to a type of body that I tried to avoid, I have lost much of my fear. The fear has been shunted and replaced with misery-fueled hatred—hatred of you, my opponent. My enemy. My enemy…

Gally lowered her arms. She lowred her face. Sunlight was now down and going away from the land. The light of the two moons began to take up the sun’s role in providing light for the land. What now?

Gally ran back to the Techies. "Nice show, Gally," said Jonas. "Seeing that, I’d like to try out a berserker body some day. But, weren’t you pressing yourself a bit? You just recovered from multiple trauma. And, since your brain went into hibernation before being put into a new body, you should be in physical therapy now."

"Should be. The wee one should be in therapy," said Lisa. "Note how she is not. Aye, Gally’s a great little one. The history archives were quite correct in their accounts on her worth." Lisa then reached into a top pocket of her coverall—into a pocket lined with foil. She pulled out a long and thin bar—then handed it to Gally.

"Thank you," said Gally with sincerity. Gally removed the wrapper from the bar, then brought it close to her face. She closed her titano-ceramic teeth over a quarter of it and bit down. She had hardly chewed it when she swallowed. The gluchose-heavy chocolate was especially sweet and delicious to her: Gally had forgotten to feed her brain after that extensive workout.

Gally wanted to try out her plasma control capabilities again. But, she felt unanticipated energy close over her. The wind began to blow across the plains, a different wind. Then, the four and one-half foot cyborg girl-woman with Japanesque features was not there anymore. She had vanished into time when machines from beyond history took her. This left the chocolate bar’s wrapper to flutter off in the breeze.