Flight Home

The software routines in the prototype in her pocket manage the wings and tail well, steering Cathy cumin where she wants to go by actually pushing the air, the same way a bird does… except powered by science, of course. She takes a minute to hover and examine her reflection in a fourth story window, to see how this particular shell came out:

Coal black, non-reflective skin; no hair; dark red claws, teeth, and pupilless eyes. Pointed ears that go a bit above her scalp, lining up with dark red ram's horns curling back from her forehead. A lean, muscled body… except in ‘all the right places’. Leathery wings with claws coming out of her back, and clawed bird feet. Her face is sharper and more angular than her own, giving a predatory cast to the face.

The hologram is of course dressed: A tight leather top that shows off a lot of cleavage (with accommodations for the wings) and matching boy shorts (with accommodation for the tail), both in the same color scheme as the skin.

It's all fake, of course: A high quality Hollywood render of a daemoness. Cathy is a normal enough woman, and is actually wearing some tight boy shorts (with the prototype in one pocket, her wallet and keys in the other), a sports bra under a tight tank top, and a pair of activity socks with the rubber grips on the bottom, her hair tied back in a bun. The prototype unit creates a solid shell hologram to provide the rest: Makeup, hair style, clothes, and even accessories like a normal looking cell phone (which will take pictures, interact with contactless payment systems, transfer data, and do other things people expect of a simple cell phone) cleverly overlaid on her actual body.

Satisfied, Cathy moves on, enjoying the flight to her house, unconcerned with cameras: Lethe Protocol actively scans for and hacks them, using an AI algorithm to edit her out: She's effectively invisible to machines. Eventually she gets to her home, an old farmhouse on eighty acres well outside town, and lands in her own back yard, out of sight of the cameras she has installed on the outside of her own house.

Looking around, she doesn't see anyone, and the camera counter shows “0”, so she speaks to her prototype: “Dinah, street clothes.”

The unit dutifully switches the hard shell hologram to the specified set. She opens the lock on her back door (an actual mechanical lock), and goes inside… to a big, empty, eight bedroom house.

She walks through the dining room (with a folding table and two camping chairs that are positively dwarfed by the space), and into the kitchen (which has two stoves with ovens, a giant freezer, a standard fridge, a microwave; the many cabinets are bare, save for a pile of disposable plates, bowls, cups, and tableware; the freezer is full of TV dinners, the fridge: Various drinks). For now, she grabs a beer out of the fridge. Cracking it open on the way to the living room, she takes a sip, and sits down on one of the two pieces of good furniture she actually has in the house: A comfy recliner (the other being her bed).

Sighing, she again uses the prototype, “Dinah, pull up the financial workstation.”

The prototype immediately surrounds her with virtual screens, connecting to her various accounts to give her a full view of her finances: Mortgage, credit cards, checking, savings, and retirement accounts… plus her workbook on maintenance costs: Insurance, utilities, memberships, food costs, and such. She stares at it a moment, “Eh, brute calculations are for computers. Dinah, how long will my savings last with my current expenses?”

“Three months,” flashes across the HUD, visible only to Cathy.

It's a start… and with the prototype… “Dinah, how long will my savings last if I cancel all of my entertainment subscriptions and my bus pass?”

“Four months,” flashes across the HUD.

She takes a gulp of her drink, “Dinah: Cancel all subscriptions classified as ‘entertainment’ as well as my bus pass.”

The AI goes through and cancels her UsTube premium account, her online streaming accounts, her MMORPG accounts, and so on, navigating the menus on her behalf very quickly.

Taking another mouthful of beer, she gives another order, “Dinah, update my resume, sign me up for a couple online job search engines, and get me a list of a few good jobs I can do.”

Cathy gets a “Processing…” notice on her HUD. In the meanwhile, the supergenius walks through the house, turns off all the lights, and sets all the thermostats down to fifty. When she's done, she goes through the list….