Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict by Thomas T. Thomas Page A

think you’ve got a ghost.”
    “I don’t understand. You mean, in the building?”
    “No, in your computer. Kind of a presence.”
    “What does it, um, look like?” he asked.
    “I haven’t actually seen it!” she said.
    “How do you know it’s there?”
    “Because Rover says so.”
    “Does he … tell you … what it looks like?”
    “He hasn’t actually seen it, either. But he senses something. Sometimes bits of data will appear in a database and then, when he tries to run a trace, they suddenly go missing. It’s as if he’s growing a little … forgetful.”
    “Can that happen to an intelligence?” Brandon wondered.
    “Not with the six terabytes of extra capacity we built into him.”
    “Then could it be another intelligence? Maybe one playing games?”
    “Not in the same system. That would be … oh, schizophrenic.”
    “Well, I’m not sure what I can do about this. Have you talked to Callie?”
    “Not yet. I don’t have more than a notion—just Rover’s suspicions.”
    “Please tell me when you’ve got something solid. I work better with a target.”
    “And you’re good at cleaning up things,” she said with a grin.
    “Hush, Penny!” he whispered. “That’s gotta be our secret.”
    Still grinning, she twisted her fingers in front of her lips and then brushed them off—locking her mouth and throwing away the key—just as the waiter came to take their order.
    * * *
    After the required nine months, plus or minus two weeks, Antigone Wells returned with John to collect their new son. They were met at Parthenotics, Inc.’s offices by their first counselor—now their case worker—Ashley Benedict. She had a folder of paperwork for them to sign and final payments to arrange.
    Among other things, Benedict produced a certificate from the City and County of San Francisco attesting that Alexander Wells Praxis—they had settled on the first name to honor John’s immigrant grandfather, the other two so that their family names were conjoined—was “the biological offspring and adopted child of one Ioannis Mixalis Praxis, a widowed man, and Antigone Leigh Wells, an unmarried woman,” that the baby had been born within geographic confines of the county, and that he thus had full citizenship rights in the State of California, Federated Republic of America. He was as legal as could be.
    When they were done with the business end of the transaction, a female attendant in hospital whites brought in an articulated crèche/carrier basket and set it on the conference table.
    Wells stood up and peered into the carrier’s recesses. A pale, chubby face nestled among the folds of a light-blue blanket shifted and looked up into the shadow that her head was casting. She stared into his eyes—they were dark blue and quite self-aware. She studied his nose. She opened his blanket to count fingers and toes. She even pulled the tabs on his diaper and examined his tiny penis, which had already been circumcised.
    “He’s perfect,” the attendant said happily.
    It seemed so. All the parts were there. Everything had the correct form, for a newborn. Wells didn’t know exactly what she had expected. Talons? Cloven hooves? But still … She was haunted by those thousand other embryos—or “parthenotes”—tiny proto-Alexanders, down to his pearly, shell-like fingernails, who had failed to survive, who had not made “the first cull.”
    “Is anything wrong?” John asked. “You’re frowning, like you’re worried.”
    “No. No. … He’s perfect,” she answered, consciously echoing the attendant.
    John bent his head over the carrier. “Hello, baby boy. Welcome to the family.”

4. Retribution
    Wearing special goggles that let her view code actions from several perspectives at once within the system, and with a lagging time scale that allowed for her limited human senses, Penny Winston watched as Rover dealt with his spasms of forgetfulness. What she saw reaffirmed the claim of the AI’s original