Previously: The Lair Legion's resident A.I. Hallie finds herself trapped in a Land that Common Sense Forgot with a severely curtailed memory. To her, it seems like it was only yesterday that she was in 1999, existing as a simple (albeit ingeniously complex) program inside a computer mainframe. Today, however, she is a three dimensional holographic woman living in 2008, surrounded by friends she has no recollection of ever meeting. Filling in the missing gaps is proving a bit more complicated than she had anticipated...
"spiffy?" Hallie asked.
"Dictator for Life of the island nation of Badripoor" Visionary informed her.
Her holographic face darkened. "Look, if you're not going to take this seriously..."
He held up his hands defensively. "Swear to God."
"spiffy?!"
"He was Mayor of Gothametropolis York for a good long while too" the Regular offered.
"And I suppose he cleaned up the town and moved on to a bigger challenge?" she asked skeptically.
Visionary made a face. "Well, no... GMY is still pretty much a hell hole. But they spend a lot less time on impeachment hearings now. Sadly."
Hallie put her virtual head in her virtual hands, which itself was still rather novel. "How did all this happen in only 9 years?" she sighed, frustrated at the memory block which kept her from accessing a huge portion of her own mind. "And how can it all be so convoluted!?"
"If you're looking to assign blame..." he answered judiciously, "Well, do you remember a guy called the Hooded Hood?" He frowned as he took in her obviously frustrated state. "Look, I know it must be confusing... but we'll help you get to the bottom of your memory issues."
"It's not just not remembering!" she complained, getting up and pacing. "It's this... this... body! How can I have a body? How can I be walking around a room? Why am I waving my arms? I don't even know how I have arms, and now I'm waving them around like a mental patient!"
He got up from the sofa and clasped her in a hug, which she accepted somewhat rigidly. "It's okay... Just calm down a bit and the arm waving will stop. You like to gesture when you're agitated."
"I had only just decided on a face graphic for display on a computer monitor, and now here I am all three dimensional and... Are... are you hugging me? How can you be hugging me?"
"Oh... I didn't mean to overstep... Did... did you want me to stop?"
She swallowed. "No, it's just... How?"
"Um..." Visionary answered hesitantly. "Well, I know there's a lot of math involved... Something about electrical pulses through holofields creating a localized force field effect..." He paused and raised an eyebrow. "Or maybe that was how they got the Enterprise out of that Nebula on that rerun of Star Trek the other night... Um, either way, it's something you devised so you could touch things."
She blinked as she allowed him to hold onto her. It felt... odd. She was aware of the contact, certainly... but was this what touch really felt like? "I... I came up with this?"
"Well, you ran your basic ideas by NTU and Al B who helped you refine and implement it, as I understand... But you have the best understanding of your own programming and abilities." He gave her a squeeze. "You're pretty smart yourself, you know."
The squeeze felt good, somehow... until an image of an overly patient blond woman popped into her mind. She pulled back from the hug quickly, with a guilty flush. "Um... fascinating" she swallowed. "And you... feel me?"
He coughed. "Well, not without... I mean, it's not something we've, um... There are certain boundaries that we..."
"Oh!" she blushed furiously, not knowing she could. "No! Not... I meant... do I feel... um... Do I feel... real? When you hug me. Or, um... shake hands. Do I feel real?"
He gave her an awkward, heartfelt smile. "You are real."
"You know what I mean."
He hesitated. "Yes, although... after a little while, it kind of... um... do you know that feeling you get when you lie on your arm funny and it goes to sleep?"
She stared at him, her lips tightening slightly in frustration. "No. I don't know that feeling. I don't know any feeling."
He winced. "Ah... right. Sorry. Although, in my defense, you had to at least have experienced that feeling once or twice when you were human."
She froze. "When I was what?"
"Er... yeah, I was going to save that for later, wasn't I?" he berated himself. "Um... you were human. A couple of times... although I suppose you might have been some form of nymph the second time..."
Her eye twitched briefly as she stood there, carefully breathing. Or pretending to without thinking about it. Finally, she sniffed. "A guy called the Hooded Hood, you say?"
Visionary nodded encouragingly. "You'd be surprised how much can be traced back to him."
Author's Note: I'm going to try and add little bits to this story as the week goes on, but I also welcome anyone interested to treat it as a round-robin within the round-robin... If there's a character currently in the Land that Common Sense Forgot that you'd like to reintroduce to amnesiac Hallie, feel free to write up a little conversation. None of it needs to go anywhere, so don't feel the need to advance the plot any. Oh, and I wouldn't worry about when in continuity any tie-ins take place... It seems like most of the good guys were reunited last we saw them, or about to be. I'm sure we can find a place to slot this substory into things. Just assume that Vizh and Hallie take a break from their sessions now and then, and there's plenty of opportunity for any additions to happen before or between these sessions.
Not that I'll be disappointed if there aren't any tie-ins... Lord knows there's enough to write about out there already. But I thought I'd offer.
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