Disclaimer: I don't own the Andromeda or it's crew. Good thing too: the potential for abuse of power is overwhelming.
Rating: R
Note: This was one of those things that just appears fully formed in your head and falls into the keyboard. I thought it up as I was de-fragging the hard drive ('de-fragging, it sounds vaguely obscene', I thought) and it fits challenge #8 pretty good.
PURGING
By Mandy Green
"I don’t know why you insist on doing this yourself Harper," Rommie said as he prepared to jack in. "You could set up a clearing subroutine to realign the buffers every month. It would save you having to do it manually."
"Hey, I don’t mind Rom-doll. And anyway: I like to be thorough. You never know when something unexpected might get stuck in there that a program couldn’t cope with." Harper grinned at the avatar. "Tell Dylan to watch out for power surges would you?"
"All right," Rommie said as Harper inserted the jack into his neural port. "I still think this would be easier with a automatic purge and re-calibration."
Holo-Rommie appeared in front of her. "So do I, but she doesn’t seem to mind so I suppose it doesn’t matter." Holo-Rommie nodded towards their mainframe where the core personality was stored.
Harper missed this exchange; he was a beam of energy flowing at high speed through Andromeda’s systems. Finally he landed in a VR simulation of the primary interface buffers.
"Hello my lovely, Harper is here to bring a spring to your step, a smile to your lips, a…"
"Hello Harper." Mainframe Rommie appeared above him, a slight smile hovering over her lips. "Is it that time of the week again?"
Harper dragged his eyes away from the yard of cleavage at eye-level and grinned. "Oh yes. Can’t you feel it? That itchy, frustrating sensation that only the Harper can resolve?"
"Now you mention it, I have been rather…out of sorts for the last few hours." Rommie gazed down at the tiny speck of light that was her engineer and a secret that she kept compartmentalised safely from her two other selves. "I think I might have a lot of extraneous material clogging my data flows. Are you man enough to give me what I need?"
"Oh baby, you better believe it!" Harper moved to the nearest connection point and asked, "Where do you want me to start today, oh most lovely of all AI’s?"
"Start with grid seven. I need my relays smoothed."
Harper reached in and ran his fingers over the tangled energy lines.
"Ohhhhh, yes," Rommie sighed. "That’s so much better. Again." Harper flicked a few errant data bits into place and watched Rommie ripple in pleasure.
"Feel like sharing the wealth babe?" Rommie nodded and soft pink lightning shot up over Harper for a moment. "God," Harper said as the discharge crackled away again. "Rommie, you are the best."
"Then why do you continue to hit on my avatar?"
"Jealous?"
"Don’t be silly: How can I be jealous of myself. Now go to the secondary node in alpha three."
Harper laughed and accessed the new system. "You’re all knotted up here Rommie. What have you been doing?"
"Trance fiddled with the environmental systems again. Fix it…please." Rommie almost pouted.
"You wish is my command." Harper replied and pushed himself into the energy node, directing information back to the correct files and returning overwritten code to its previous pristine state.
Rommie sighed, "Oh Harper, that’s so good. Don’t stop. Ohhhh!" She sighed as the last file slid firmly back into place. "Oh the Harper is good."
"Mmmm," Harper moaned as electricity jumped from the surrounding systems into his virtual form. "That’s the way I like it. Oh Rommie."
"The main buffer. Now! Harper, I can’t wait any longer." Rommie cried. "Purge me, Harper. Purge me good."
Harper dove into the main buffer, energy and light pulsing around and through him, Rommie’s essence invading his neural net. Entwined at an elemental level they rode the datastreams together until finally all systems cleared in a flare of power. Light shot through the core and the floating forms of Harper and Rommie reluctantly separated.
"Until next week." Harper said.
Rommie nodded and smiled as Harper, exhausted exited her now purged and satisfied systems. "Until next week...lover."