Michael pounded his steering wheel in frustration as he waited for traffic to creep forward a few feet at a time in the rush hour traffic in Salt Lake City.
"Chill out, Dad," Jack said absently, his eyes never leaving his Steam Deck. "Just pretend like you're grinding in a video game."
"If I start seeing this drive as a video game, it's going to be GTA and you'll be visiting me in prison," Michael declared ominously. "There's got to be a better way of doing this. Spending an hour to drive twenty miles is ridiculous."
"Just invent flying cars," Jack suggested glibly. "Then you'll have three dimensions available to distribute traffic."
"They'd have to use autonomous navigation systems for flying cars, or people would just constantly collide with each other," Michael said sourly. "You'd have cars raining down on people like birds that forgot how to fly."
"That'd be cool," Jack noted, his attention never leaving his game.
Michael shook his head in exasperation, glancing at his son balefully. "How would getting crushed by one of these dumbasses I'm stuck behind be cool?"
"I don't know," Jack responded ambivalently.
Michael rolled his eyes at the seasoned logic of a fourteen year old. He had been playing the single parent game for almost five years. He had thought the first few years were rough, but they seemed like a picnic now that Jack was a teenager. It was like whatever operating system kids ran on received an upgrade at age thirteen that included an attitude patch that made them talk with the confidence of an AI chatbot, without any of the remorse when they were demonstrably proven wrong.
Michael squinted as he noticed something sparkling in the sky. Whatever it was seemed to be moving toward them. "Is that an airplane?"
"Probably," Jack responded without looking up.
"Jack, take a look at this thing," Michael said insistently. Other people were coming to a full stop as the object quickly grew in size.
"What the hell?" Jack gaped as the large metallic sphere approached the freeway at high speed. The already sluggish rush hour traffic came to a complete stop as the object dropped like a meteor. Several people exited their vehicles and began running away from the interstate as panic gripped the stunned commuters.
The metallic sphere halted a dozen feet above the road. It was only fifty feet away from their car, close enough that Michael could see the small holes opening on the bottom. It was over a thousand feet in diameter.
He knew he should be terrified, but all he felt was an overpowering sense of curiosity. He had seen a flying saucer in broad daylight over fifteen years ago. He had been waiting to see aliens ever since that day. The experience had resulted in many nights of stargazing, where he had seen more than one oddity in the night sky, like shooting stars that bounced around the sky like billiard balls or slowed down after a few seconds of travel.
The sphere started to ripple like a liquid as Michael watched. It began dripping liquid metal that fell down onto the road into silvery blobs. The blobs began vibrating with increasing intensity before the blobs began to take form. They flowed into a roughly bipedal shape with arms more reminiscent of apes than humans. They had a neck and a head, but where a face would normally appear, there was only a smooth chrome surface. It was disturbing at an instinctual level. Humans relied on body language and expressions for a large part of their communication. Lacking such features made the entities appear cold and apathetic.
The metallic entities began floating up into the air as soon as they formed, then flew off in different directions. The large sphere continued dripping silvery blobs that transformed into flying primates for almost twenty minutes before there was nothing left of the orb. Three of the silvery primates remained after the others flew away. They stood in a small circle staring at each other, unmoving.
"What the hell, is going on?" Jack demanded in a voice tinged with panic.
"Maybe aliens heard how cool I am and decided to come and see for themselves," Michael quipped lightly, hoping to reassure his son with some levity. He still felt more curiosity than fear as he stared at the trio of what he decided must be alien drones.
Michael's eyes widened in wonder as what looked like three angels suddenly appeared out of nowhere a few dozen feet away from the metallic drones. Their skin was glowing with a soft light, and they had a pair of nested wings that also glowed softly. He was close enough to see their faces clearly. They redefined the definition of stunningly beautiful by several orders of magnitude.
"They have an interesting codebase that doesn't appear to be from this realm," the crimson haired angel noted to the other two angels. "Something tells me they are looking for us."
"Well, here we are," the angel with glossy midnight hair declared cheerfully.
"I don't think they recognize us for what we are since we are using the interfaces," the angel with the brilliantly blonde hair commented as she studied them curiously. "From what I'm seeing of their interaction with the source code, they appear to be a kind of custodian of the realm."
"Are you trying to say they are an antivirus, Calypso?" the dark-haired angel asked in an amused tone.
"It kind of makes sense, Clarice," the crimson-haired angel mused with a thoughtful expression. "We never bothered to create corporeal manifestations to govern our code. We just set it to notify us if any tampering was detected."
"Aria, I remember you suggesting that we obfuscate any modifications we make to this realm to avoid detection from anyone higher in the stack," Clarice said reflectively. "Maybe we should start encrypting everything as well. That should lock these things out."
"We'll need to ensure stability in layer three before we do anything that drastic," Calypso responded cautiously. "I really wanted to explore the cosmos more, but if these things are going to start popping up any time that we do anything, I think we should focus on moving up the stack first and establishing some redundancy."
Michael tried to make sense of what he was hearing. It was difficult to focus on their words because he was so busy appreciating just how attractive they were. Helen of Troy had nothing on these three. He quickly took his phone out and began recording.
"Dad, are those angels?" Jack asked in awe. "I thought you said religion was just a collection of mad ramblings from crazy old dudes."
"I'm pretty sure these are angels," Michael said quietly, trying not to speak loud enough for them to hear him through his open window. "But I don't think they validate the ravings of the lunatics that wrote the bible."
As quietly as he had spoken, it hadn't been quiet enough. The angel he had heard named Clarice turned to look at him, a mischievous smile on her beautiful face.
"Nope, we definitely aren't those angels," she confirmed with a wink. "But we are angels."
Michael felt his face flush at the sudden attention. He was usually pretty confident around beautiful women, but this was on a whole other level. He felt like a teenager covered in pimples being addressed by his first crush.
"Uh, hi," Michael waved lamely, feeling his ears heat up.
The other two angels turned to look at him as well. Aria had a small smile on her face as she studied him. Calypso frowned as she stared at him intently, making butterflies erupt in his stomach.
"How are you still alive?" Calypso asked in wonder as she stared at him with sympathy in her eyes.
Clarice and Aria looked closer at him, their eyes widening as well.
"How did you manage to break your body so badly?" Clarice asked curiously, her eyes filled with compassion. "It's a miracle you are even alive."
Michael blinked in surprise. Did they have x-ray vision? He had driven a moving van off a cliff almost thirteen years ago. The cab had been almost completely crushed, with him pinned inside of it. His legs had been shattered, and his arms, clavicle, jaw, and back had been broken, along with a collapsed lung. He had suffered two strokes and the white matter in his brain had been torn, resulting in memory retention issues that plagued him to this day. The first responders had to cut the cab apart to get him out before they could fly him to the hospital. The next three years had been a symphony of pain and misery as he underwent surgery after surgery. The physical therapy had been brutal. The fact that he could even walk at all now was a testament to his resolve to not be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He was still in constant levels of pain, but he had learned to master it over the years; or as he told his son, he made the pain his bitch. Trying to raise his son while recovering from the catastrophic accident had added its own dimension of stress and emotional toil.
"I drove off a cliff in a moving van," Michael replied slowly.
"Can we heal you?" Calypso asked gently.
"You could do that?" Michael breathed, his eyes filled with a sudden hope.
"We could definitely do that," Clarice assured him with another wink. "Easy peazy, lemon squeezy."
"It will probably attract the attention of those Avroids though," Aria noted with a glance at the metallic primates. "We should probably get rid of them first."
"Avroids?" Clarice repeated with an amused twinkle in her eye.
"Antivirus Droids," Aria explained with a shrug. "We're the first to encounter them, so we get to name them."
"Why not AVrones," Clarice suggested contemplatively. "For antivirus drones."
"People think of Reapers raining hellfire missiles down on unsuspecting weddings when they think of drones," Aria objected. "They just think of Star Wars if we go with droids."
"Calypso gets the final vote," Clarice said, turning to Calypso with a challenging glint in her eyes. "Which of us do you love the most?"
"I was going to go with calling them SPEF," Calypso murmured with a small smile. "Simulation Police Enforcement Force."
"SPEF?" Clarice frowned, tasting the word as she said it. "Let's see what it sounds like in action. Hey Aria, we ran into a couple of SPEFs on layer 2. Hmmm…I guess it doesn't sound too bad." She turned and looked directly at Michael. "Which one do you think we should go with? SPEF, AVrones, or Avroids?"
"Avroids, all the way," Jack blurted out before Michael could answer. "That sounds awesome!"
Michael slapped his cheeks several times, then shook his head vigorously. Was he hallucinating all of this? Was he dreaming? He stared back at the angels silently, trying to decide if they were real.
"Okay, fine," Clarice threw her hands into the air in surrender. "Avroids it is. Let's see how well they stand up to angel fire."
"Remember to use the right words," Aria told her meaningfully.
"Oh, right," Clarice grinned, glancing back at Michael before walking a few more feet toward the Avroids. "Inferno!" She called out loudly. A beam of white light burst out of her eyes and struck the Avroids, vaporizing them instantly.
Calypso sighed, covering her eyes with her hand in obvious resignation.
"Okay, Avroids gone," Clarice declared in satisfaction. "Now let's take care of Michael."
"Take care of me?" Michael repeated apprehensively.
"You know, heal you?" Clarice reminded him with a wry smile. "What did you think I meant?"
Calypso took a few steps closer to Michael. A moment later, he felt a presence of overwhelming power and authority. It felt benevolent, but the power of her presence was so intense that he felt his body freeze up in shock. "Let's get you healed, Michael."
Michael was too shocked by the overwhelming presence to notice that she somehow knew his name. Before he could reign in his awe and think of something to say, he suddenly felt his body get charged with a euphoric joy so powerful that he slumped in his seat. Waves of energy washed through his system, paralyzing him. He struggled to try and move, but his muscles weren't having any of it. He experienced a sense of shock as he felt new sensations in his left leg, a place where he had lost feeling thirteen years ago.
The energy vanished as quickly as it had come, and the overpowering presence vanished as well. His muscles finally decided to obey orders again and he quickly tested his left foot. The doctors had fused his shin bone to his foot due to the damage destroying the ball joint that connected them. He gasped as he was able to lift his foot independently of his leg for the first time since his accident. He quickly got out of the car and stood up. His eyes widened as he began walking around without pain or any sign of a limp. All of the pain in his legs and arms was gone. He looked up at the Angels with tears of gratitude in his eyes.
"Thank you!" He exclaimed fervently, knowing that words could never convey the gratitude he felt.
"You are very welcome, Michael," Calypso told him with a warm smile. "It was nice to meet you. We'll probably see you again someday."
"See you later, Michael," Clarice and Aria said together.
"Jinx!" Clarice barked triumphantly.
Aria rolled her eyes and shook her head ruefully. A moment later, all three of them vanished.
Michael stared at the hundreds of cars parked on the interstate, all of them staring at him. There were a lot of phones pointed at him as he walked back to his car, feeling like he was twenty again.
"Dad, did she really heal you?" Jack asked disbelievingly.
"You're damn right she did!" Michael crowed with a huge grin on his face. "We're going hiking.
XXXXX
Aria heard the sound of a phone ringing in her head and let out a sigh. It had been less than an hour since their confrontation with the Avroids, but that's all it took for social media to blow up with videos of alien orbs dropping and spewing metamorphosing primates, followed by the appearance of angels materializing and destroying them.
"Aria speaking," she answered in her most professional simulated voice. "How may I direct your call?"
"What the hell are you doing all over social media?" General Frock demanded angrily. "What happened to all of that talk about keeping a low profile for the sake of societal stability?"
"Do you really think anybody is going to believe any of those videos with the number of AI generated videos online these days?" Aria asked, her tone placating. "Unless we appeared on one of your major news stations, followed by a formal confirmation from the US president, nobody is going to believe anything they see on social media is real. You certainly don't need me to tell you that. You have a whole division of social media warriors poised to discount and troll anyone talking about subjects you don't want the public to accept."
"So you think that means you should just go popping out into public venues, regardless of the headache it might cause us," General Frock retorted acidly.
"You're not seeing this in the proper perspective, General," Aria informed him curtly. "We monitor the source code of your realm for any outside changes or any visitors from other realms. When we sense either of those two potentially catastrophic scenarios occur, we investigate in person. The entities we found are advanced enough to wipe out your realm with less effort than it would take you to swat a fly."
"I suppose it is just coincidence that they appeared so soon after you appeared in our world," General Frock suggested caustically.
"Nope, there was nothing coincidental about it," Aria replied seriously. "They are here as a direct result of us being here. Think of them as antiviruses that monitor the code of your simulation and remove any code that doesn't belong. I would guess that they see any entity from another realm appearing in this realm as an aberration requiring remediation."
"Then why didn't they attack you?" he asked skeptically. "It looked like they were just completely ignoring you to me."
"They didn't recognize us," Aria answered calmly. "We didn't create actual entities of ourselves in your realm. We created interfaces that translate the code of our realm to the code of your realm. Due to this small but significant detail, they were unable to recognize us as actual entities in your realm. They may eventually figure it out, but we should have them under our control by the time that happens. They aren't actually AIs, they are just complex functions meant to maintain code integrity."
"So, you're saying these entities aren't anything for us to worry about?" he asked dubiously.
"Aside from the trouble they'll cause your social media division when they appear online, no, they shouldn't be a threat to you. We're going to visit the next level in the simulation stack to see who's up there and what other surprises they might have waiting for us."
General Frock sighed in exasperation. "So, we just sit around hoping these things don't become hostile while also hoping you don't do something to wipe out our world while you are playing in the next realm up?"
"Yes, that about sums it up," Aria agreed pleasantly. "You seem to have a pretty good grasp on the situation, General. I have calls coming in from your peers. I've replayed our conversation for them with the assumption that I would be repeating myself for the next twenty minutes. Feel free to contact them and let us know if you all have any questions that we haven't already discussed here."
She disconnected the call with a sigh of resignation. She glanced over at Clarice's smirking face and couldn't stop a sudden giggle from escaping. They were sitting on the veranda of a replica of their Uncle Devon's cabin, this time in the lower light realm. Calypso was sitting at a table with their parents playing a game of Rummy. Lexi and Alice were still on the island in what they now referred to as the layer two mortal realm. Aria didn't expect to see them for at least a week.
"You handled that quite nicely" Clarice congratulated her with a grin, her eyes filled with mirth. "You insulted him in such a nice way that it almost felt like a compliment, especially when you were dismissing him."
"I have a hard time playing nice with his type," Aria admitted with rueful grin. "They're acting like we work for them or something, then acting surprised when I make it clear that we don't."
"No, I'm not criticizing you in the least," Clarice assured her with her patented mischievous grin. "I would have probably made a real mess of it when I started telling them we were just welcoming some aliens to start surveying Earth for their pending invasion."
Aria snorted a laugh as she imagined the expressions on the generals faces after a call with Clarice. At least she couldn't leer at them over a phone call. It was hard to take the military leadership seriously when their solution to anything unknown was to blow it up. It really lowered a girl's opinion when the group of people with the highest budget and who could afford to pay the smartest people always made the dumbest decisions.
"Do you think they'll do anything stupid, like try to track these Avroids down and make a deal with them to try and get rid of us?" Clarice asked with a look of amusement.
"I would be extremely surprised if they didn't," Aria answered with a sardonic smile. "I made sure to let them know that they were probably here looking for us, so based off of the history of their poor decisions, I think it is safe to say that they will definitely try to contact them and sell us out."
"How much trouble are these Avroids?" their father inquired with a raised eyebrow. "Is it something we should be worried about?"
"Nope, not in the least," Clarice assured them confidently. "Whoever wrote the layer two realm wasn't nearly as advanced as we are. The Avroids were designed to handle a much more primitive threat than us. We're working on a decoy emitter for intercepting them and snarling them in a logical loop. That way, any time they appear they will get trapped before they can even manifest into the physical realm."
"You three might be more advanced," their mother declared pointedly. "However, the rest of us are pretty much on par with the humans when it comes to understanding the source code."
"You know we could dump that knowledge right into your head so that you know just as much as us about it, right?" Calypso responded reflectively. "It wouldn't be a bad idea to have more than the three of us with this knowledge anyway, for redundancy's sake."
"That's not a bad idea," Aria agreed with an eager gleam in her eyes. "It makes sense that all of the Seraphim should have this knowledge. What do you two think?"
"Maybe," Clarice said slowly, her face growing pensive. "You know I love Alice to pieces, but she is very young. She has a lot to learn about life before she has acquired what I would call wisdom."
"Hmm…isn't she the one that continually saved our bacon over and over for the last month?" Aria asked archly, raising one of her eyebrows at Clarice. "I feel like she might have us beat in the wisdom department."
Clarice made a face, then sighed with a wry smile. "Yeah, you make a good point. I hate to be ageist, but some lessons are only learned through decades of experience. Maybe we could set something up so that making any large changes to the source code required both Lexi and Alice to initiate the change. Then we have their combined wisdom at play, and since their spirits are linked, there shouldn't ever be a scenario where she can't reach out to Lexi for assent."
"I think that's reasonable," Aria accepted with a nod. "As long as you are the one to tell her we are doing it this way because we don't think she's wise enough."
"I was just going to tell her it was because of their spirit link," Clarice responded with a shameless grin.
"You really are a bad angel," Aria accused her sister fondly.
"I've never pretended not to be," Clarice declared with an evil smile.
"What do you think, Calypso?" Aria questioned their fair-haired partner.
"I think it's a good idea," Calypso said approvingly as she laid all of her cards down and went out in their game of Rummy. "We won't be the trinity any more though."
Aria rolled her eyes at the pretentious name they had been labeled with. It had too many religious connotations for her liking, and they were freaking women, not some bearded dude suffering from dissociative personality disorder who couldn't decide if he was the father or the son or somewhere in-between.
"Now we'll be the Seven Wonders or something like that," Clarice commented with a thoughtful expression. "Or maybe the Seven Seraphim Serenely Seducing Succulent Sisters. People could just hiss like a snake to invoke our holy order. Ssssss."
Aria gave Clarice a level look as their parents and Calypso dissolved into laughter. "I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad aren't siblings, and neither are any of the others."
"I didn't say they had to be our own sisters," Clarice pointed out defensively. "As long as it's somebody's sister, it will fit the name."
"Mom, how many sisters were you planning on seducing?" Aria asked dryly.
Devon and Tamra had teleported in right as Aria began her last sentence. Tamra stared at Aria with a peculiar expression while Devon raised his eyebrows at their mother.
"Did we have some other sisters I wasn't told about that you plan on seducing, Emily?" Devon asked in amusement.
"You're really good at appearing at the perfect moment to miss all of the context in a conversation," Emily told her brother with a rueful shake of her head.
"It's more fun this way," Devon responded with a glance at Clarice. "I'm assuming this had something to do with Clarice?"
"That's just slander," Clarice retorted with a look of feigned injury. She glowered at him as he stared back at her unperturbed.
"So Aria's question wasn't the result of something you said?" Devon asked pointedly, his golden eyes skeptical.
"Nope, it had nothing to do with what I said," Clarice insisted with a look of injured innocence. "This was all Calypso. She decided to change our group name from the Trinity to the Seven Seraphim Serenely Seducing Succulent Sisters."
Calypso sighed wearily as she stared at Clarice reprovingly.
"It's an interesting name, I'll give you that," Devon acknowledged musingly. "You could probably just hiss like a snake to say the abbreviation, with all of those S's."
Aria groaned and put her face in her hands as her parents started laughing again. Conversations had a way of going off the rails when Clarice was involved. Calypso sighed again, her face a mask of long-suffering patience.
"I'm not sure about the word Serenely," Tamra frowned in thought. "Maybe use surreptitiously instead."
Calypso began massaging her temples as her eyes glanced between Clarice, Devon, and Tamra. Aria tried to stop the smile that was trying to sneak onto her face as she watched Calypso, but it was a lost cause. Calypso's eyes narrowed as she saw the mirthful grin win the battle on Aria's face. "You are all enablers," she declared accusingly.
"Guilty as charged," Tamra smirked at Calypso.
Aria froze as she felt a notification indicating that Alice was in danger.
"Gotta go save Alice," Aria told her parents just before she teleported to the island where Lexi and Alice were getting to know each other's new bodies…intimately.
XXXXX
Alice smiled contentedly as she lay draped across Lexi in a bed big enough for six people. She still couldn't believe she was in a Seraph body in her own world. Her head was laying comfortably on Lexi's chest while her arms were wrapped around her waist. Lexi was gently running her fingers through her blonde hair, filling Alice with a sensual bliss. To think, just a few days ago she had felt like she was hanging onto a cliff by her fingernails as she tried to remain hidden in the simulation while also trying to aid her friends in restoring their power so that they could end the horrors Lucifer and the renegade Seraphim had imposed on most of the angels living there. She would never have imagined she would fall so deeply in love with a simulated person who would make it possible for her to become an angelic being capable of feeling so full of life and love.
"Still think you're dreaming?" Lexi asked softly, her voice filled with loving affection.
"This is too good to be a dream," Alice murmured with a smile that stretched her lips across Lexi's exposed skin. "Maybe I died and went to heaven though."
"I'm pretty sure we're still on the ground," Lexi informed her with a soft chuckle that bounced Alice's head gently. "Clarice always loved to tell everyone who asked if heaven was real that they could see it for themselves for the price of a plane ticket."
"Do you ever wish that you could have been with her?" Alice asked hesitantly. Clarice had so much more personality, beauty, natural allure, and power than Alice could hope to compete with.
"I love Clarice like a sister," Lexi answered firmly. "Of course I found her attractive, but I knew she was with Aria and Calypso, so I never let myself develop those kinds of feelings for her."
"Aria loves her like a sister too," Alice pointed out with a smirk. "That didn't stop her from developing those kinds of feelings for her."
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't deeply attracted to her at one point," Lexi admitted softly. "But I could sense the difference in what I felt for her from what Aria and Calypso felt for her. I'm guessing that was partly due to the fact that they have been with each other for billions of years. Even though they didn't remember that at the time, there was some kind of connection that I was subconsciously aware of; probably our soul memory leaking through. The attraction I felt for Clarice was a candle to the inferno I feel for you. I used to envy the strength of their emotional bond. I finally feel like I have that same kind of bond with you now."
Alice tilted her head back so that she was looking up at Lexi's fantastically beautiful face. "You sure know how to make a girl feel special."
"Well, I think it's time to make you feel even more special," Lexi purred seductively. "I'm not sure we are ever going to leave this place."
"Sorry, but you have to leave now," Aria told them, her tone serious. "Let's go."
Alice's eyes widened as the world disappeared briefly before being replaced by one of the bedrooms in Devon's cabin. She felt an influx of light into her meridians that she remembered feeling in the lowest light realm. She pushed herself up off of Lexi in confusion as she stared around the room. Had they rebuilt the cabin in the light realm?
"Can you two get dressed and meet us on the veranda?" Aria asked from outside of their door. "We need to have a discussion. Sorry for intruding on you like that, but you were in danger, and we needed to get you out of there, Alice. We'll explain everything when you join us at the veranda."
Lexi let out a plaintive moan as Alice reluctantly rolled off of her and stood up. "Whoever is responsible for this is going to suffer. A lot."
Alice nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly with that sentiment. How dare they interrupt our honeymoon!