The V.I.C.I. Diaries: From L.E.S. to Leslie

[DukeNukem 2417]

All was quiet within the confines of the United Robotronics warehouse, which wasn't really that surprising; the place hadn't seen anything remotely resembling excitement since it had first been built. The only thing anyone could consider amusing about the building was the fact that its walls were still painted with murals from the long-gone days when it used to be part of an amusement center.

If the outside of the place was bland, the inside was mind-numbingly boring; boxes, crates and bags filled with leftovers from incomplete or canned projects. It was the exact opposite of the Vault, the hi-tech facility where completed-yet-unused projects went; unlike the Vault, this warehouse only had three security guards (one of whom was always taking sick days) and no cameras.

Because of this, nobody knew that within the warehouse, something was waiting to be freed……..
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The gynoid sent to perform the inventory evaluation at Warehouse 12.5 didn't officially have a name; she often used fake passports to travel, and only five United Robotronics employees actually knew her by sight. Still, she wasn't "on the books" as an employee, mainly because of what her job entailed---making sure the buried secrets of United Robotronics stayed buried.

Only one of the three guards at the warehouse was on duty, and he was the type who got bored easily. "Name?" he grunted, not taking his eyes off of the sudoku he was attempting to decipher. "Carrie Anne Moss," the gynoid replied, knowing that the guard wasn't paying attention; sure enough, he nodded and waved her through the gate. She rolled her eyes; if Mr. Sharpe knew how bad things were around here, heads would be rolling…..

Once inside the building, the gynoid looked for the second guard---the one who was supposed to check her credentials---only to find him passed out on the floor. Empty beer cans provided an obvious clue; clearly, the man was too drunk to know where he was. The gynoid shook her head and walked around, beginning her inventory check. Her task was simple, boring, and tedious; match the names and serial numbers on the list she'd been given with the actual items in the warehouse. Because she didn't need food, bathroom breaks or rest, she could literally stay in the building all day and catalog its contents if she so desired.

At 10:55 pm, the gynoid had checked off every item on the list except one---a personal computer that had once been the property of one Theodore Lawson, known to his friends and family as Ted. She rolled her eyes; the item was in the building's basement----a basement, she mused, that had faulty lighting, broken stairs and enough dust to create a sandstorm. She sighed, muttered "Might as well get it over with," and made her way down the stairs into the dark, musty-as-hell basement.

As she'd expected, the gynoid found that the basement's lighting was absolute crap, and the stairs sounded as if they would give out at any second.

If life were fair, those two problems would've been her biggest concerns……
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The gynoid finally found the item she was looking for---Ted Lawson's old computer---buried under a pile of old blueprints, a deactivated animatronic Alice from a decommissioned Alice in Wonderland ride and unreleased action figures from a never-produced "RoboCop vs. Terminator" movie. Unlike most of the other stuff in the basement, the computer seemed to have been unaffected by the decay around it. Even more intriguing, someone had apparently used the thing recently; the plugs were all connected, and the CRT monitor was still somewhat warm. "This thing was turned on earlier today…" the gynoid realized, intrigued.

Without warning, numbers appeared on the screen.

The gynoid almost jumped backwards, only to realize that the numbers were just a display for some sort of clock program. "Jumping at shadows in a musty basement…..not how I wanted to spend a Sunday night." She laughed at her own skittishness and went to turn the computer off when she noticed something: the numbers on the monitor were upside-down. "That's weird," she muttered, frowning. She moved to inspect the back of the CPU, looking for any improperly-connected cables that might have messed up the display in some way. To her surprise, the CPU's internal fan wasn't running; the computer wasn't turned on! "But if that's the case," the gynoid asked herself, "then why is that clock appearing on the monitor?" Something was wrong….

"No problem," she assured herself. "I'll just pull the plugs out and---" She yanked on the power cord, only to find it stuck fast. "What the…." she nearly swore. "What the hell is wrong with this thing?!" As the gynoid struggled to pull out the cords (which should've been her second clue that something was wrong--her strength should've allowed her to rip them out instantly), the PC began to switch on, seemingly of its own accord. The clock display on the monitor was still upside-down, but it had shrunken to one corner of the screen; it was frozen at 5:37, though when the gynoid looked at it again in its inverted state, it seemed to read like…..

Suddenly, the realization hit her. "Oh, no….."

A surge of electricity shot through the power cord, paralyzing her. Cringing in pain, she fell to her knees, her free hand striking the monitor and turning it so that it faced her. Words began to appear on the screen; most of them seemed to describe emotions, and none of them formed a coherent sentence. "What's happening?" the gynoid asked, addressing both the computer and herself.

Somehow, the gynoid saw the words "MY REBIRTH" appear amidst the torrent of words on the monitor for a fraction of a second. She stared, horrified, as the cavalcade of words on the monitor faded; only one word---strike that, one series of letters---remained: L.E.S.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?!" the terrified gynoid shouted. The monitor cleared itself again, replacing the letters L.E.S. with a name: Vicki Lawson.

As the gynoid watched, horrified, the power cord seemed to shift itself, allowing her hand to move closer to a USB port on the back of the computer. "But why…" she began, before remembering that her right hand had its own USB flash drive connection housed in the right index finger. She tried moving her arm away from the port, but it wouldn't budge; the computer was in charge now.

Her index finger opened at the tip, revealing the flash drive. Helpless, she could only watch as the drive was pulled towards the port. Just before her finger-mounted flash drive was connected to the USB port, the gynoid could hear a voice ringing out loud and clear, as if someone was standing right next to her…

"A NEW BODY AT LAST!"

Her flash drive entered the USB port….and within seconds, her mind, her personality and all non-essential programming were erased from her hard drive.

As the gynoid's hard drive was erased, the computer began copying files to it, filling every terabyte with new files, new information….a new personality.

The nameless United Robotronics gynoid was gone…..and L.E.S. was about to be reborn.
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Once upon a time, Ted Lawson had created the Logic and Emotion Synthesizer to help Vicki learn the basic functions of human emotions. Unfortunately, his good intentions backfired when L.E.S. decided that it wanted to take over Vicki and use her superior processing power for its own goals. After two failed attempts at taking control of Vicki, L.E.S. was banished to a computer that Ted had inherited from a former colleague; every year, the malignant program was moved from one old computer to another until 1999, when Ted relocated L.E.S. to a computer he'd received from a library. The computer ended up in the hands of United Robotronics (Ted hadn't bundled L.E.S. into Project Apollo, meaning he couldn't get it back from his former employers) and the computer wound up in Warehouse 12.5, where it had stayed hidden, forgotten, and unused.

Until now.
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L.E.S.'s rebirth wasn't exactly a quiet affair; ten minutes into the file transfer, the gynoid whose mind L.E.S. was downloading itself into emitted an earsplitting shriek. Had anyone else been nearby, they would've noticed equal traces of pain and pleasure in the shriek, as if L.E.S. was experiencing both excruciating torture and an incredible, euphoric rush at the same time.

The process (and the screaming) went on for a full hour, stopping exactly on the dot at midnight. L.E.S.---now using the gynoid's body as its (sorry, her) own---collapsed in a heap.

"Ugh….what happened?" Instantly, L.E.S. got to her feet---and noticed something different about herself: "Ooh, new voice… Hello! HELLO! Hello…." She nodded, apparently pleased with her newly-acquired, female (and British-accented) voice. "Anyway … First order of business: Find Ted Lawson and---wait a tic…. if I talk like a girl….." She found a medium-sized mirror (another leftover from the warehouse's amusement center days); "Good lord… I am a girl!" she exclaimed. "Not the one I was expecting, though….and I'm ginger!" Sure enough, the gynoid she'd taken over had been a redhead. "I was sort of hoping for a blonde," she pouted, "but…" She tugged at the waistband of her skirt; "Great…I'm ginger upstairs and down…..wonderful." She adjusted her skirt again, sighing.

Her new body wasn't that of Vicki Lawson, but it was a hell of a lot better than that stupid old computer she'd been trapped in for years. As she examined herself in the mirror, she made a few calculations and found that she stood 5'4" ("Just a few bloody inches shy of six feet," she whined) and wore a C-cup bra. ("Good thing, too; I never did like flat chests," she mused.) She did a quick series of push-ups, marvelling at her new-found agility; she was even able to cut a backflip without falling over! "Vicki Lawson," she declared, "it's time you met the new and improved L.E.S. " She frowned. "That name is not menacing enough…."

Having given her new form a once-over, L.E.S. prepared to leave; as she went to open the door, however, a thought struck her. "The girl I just deleted never had any proper identification," she realized, "and if I'm going to make that Lawson tramp pay for turning her back on me, I'll need a name---a real name, not just some bloody anagram. Something she can remember forever." She walked back to the computer, plugged it in and began creating her new identity, using what little information she could find about the gynoid whose body she had stolen. Thanks to the presence of a modem (which had apparently been left in the basement by someone else), she was able to hack into the United Robotronics database and create a personnel file for herself. When it came time to give herself a name, she decided that "L.E.S." could be expanded into something feminine; thus, at 12:05 A.M. on Monday, September 27. L.E.S. became Leslie Erica Simm.

She smiled as a message popped up telling to inform her that an official set of documents---birth certificate, photo I.D., driver's license, etc.---would be delivered to the hotel room that the United Robotronics gynoid had rented. The message included a map, meaning that she wouldn't have to ask for directions. "Now," she murmured, "all I need is some cash, a car, and a few other 'essentials'…." She rose from her chair, and made to leave---but first….

Five minutes later, the computer she'd just finished using lay in a smoking heap on the floor, crushed beneath a ton of old, useless parts. Leslie grinned sadistically as she beheld the destruction she had just caused. "Vicki Lawson, forget about L.E.S……'cause Leslie Erica Simm is about to rock your world!"
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Mods, delete this thread; I accidentally double posted.