"We’re going to have to do this more often," Susan said as she hugged Maribel outside the Main Terminal of the Aurora National Airport. Luis had removed her suitcase from the trunk of Maribel’s armored black Prada.
"Yes, mi hermana. I never thought I’d have a chance to say those words," Maribel stepped back still clasping both of Susan’s hands, her vision was a little unfocused as the beginning of tears started to fill her eyes. "Mi hermana Susan." She smiled and pulled Susan back into a hug. Speaking in heavily accented English, Maribel continued, "Now that we have found each other, we must find a way to spend more ti together. I can’t wait to et your family... Our family now. I have a brother-in-law and a nephew! Dios mio."
"We will always be a part of each other’s life from now on," Susan replied. Her eyes were also filled with tears, btu inside her emotions were a complicated jumble. She felt a very real and strong kinship with Maribel, but she also knew that just a few months ago, Maribel did not exist. Susan had made her up, Maria Isabel Flores, as a cover identity that she used as she worked in Guatemala to begin her son’s transformation of that country from a drug-trafficking stronghold filled with gang violence and poverty to a shining example of a nation devoted to peace, and the safety and happiness of its people. She had conceived Maribel’s na and personality, even her family history from her own imagination. Then, Joe Torres, an imnsely powerful extraterrestrial computer, had filled in her complete back-story, docunting her existence by hacking into computer records and even placing aged paper copies of key docunts and records in public archives in Peru, Guatemala, and wherever else he deed necessary.
Maribel had started out as fignt of Susan’s imagination. She had lived in Susan’s body with Susan’s own personality buried under the artificial construct. Susan now rembered all of that ti spent as Maribel. She knew here every thought and emotion as if it were her own, because they had been her own.
Now, with the creation of an android body and a fully independent Maribel personality transferred to it, Maribel was in one sense, as real as any other person. In another sense, she was a machine housing a complicated program that thought it was a person. Joe told her that, in essence, every living being was no different. A complex piece of biological hardware whose very structure caused the ergence of a complex ballet of electrical and chemical signals from which consciousness and self-awareness erged. Susan couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that whatever it was that made people into... well, into people, was nothing more than the machine-like interaction of the various cells in their brains and bodies. Intellectually she knew it was true, but so core part of her still felt as though there must be sothing more, sothing that so people called a soul.
All this buzzed through her head as she hugged her new ’sister’ good-bye in front of the airport terminal in Guatemala. Susan also knew that they were both actually in a simulation room on Blue Island in the Bahamas being ’tricked’ with full sensory feeds being fed into their brains and bodies by an advanced alien technology. She knew but could not tell from any external or internal sense that she wasn’t actually at the airport, having arrived there in a Toyota driven by Maribel’s bodyguard and treasured personal assistant, Luis, after the two won spent the day together, catching up with each other’s life history. Maribel, she also knew, would never know this entire day was, like her entire life history and every mory from her earliest childhood until this very morning, were all created pieceal out of thin air in the last couple of months.
Yet, still, Susan felt a deeply personal and emotional connection to Maribel. She was a part of herself, after all. She felt protective of her ’sister,’ yet sohow pitied her for not being ’real’ and for not knowing her true origins. Susan realized again that she also ’loved’ Maribel like a sister and knew that Maribel truly ’loved’ her back, as she had been programd to do.
Susan’s genuine tears matched Maribel’s although they ca from this much more complex backdrop of emotional turmoil.
"I will co back to visit you as often as I can, and I’ll stay longer next ti. I can’t wait for Dan and Timmy to et you. They are going to love you as much as I do. I just know it. Timmy is so excited to have an aunt, you wouldn’t believe it." It was true and a lie at the sa ti, Susan felt a little like she was betraying Maribel by not being fully honest about her origin, but she also resolved to treat her like a loved family mber, like a real long-estranged sister.
Maribel squeezed the hug back harder, "I don’t want to let you go," she whispered. "Finally eting my sister after all these years... It’s like I have a whole new life having a whole new life." She stepped back and looked into Susan’s eyes.
Susan gasped. A mix of fear and suspicion washed over her at Maribel’s words. Did she know or suspect sohow? No, she couldn’t. It was just a coincidental turn of a phrase. "We’ll never let go of each other again, no matter how far apart we are," Susan replied after the briefest pause.
Maribel smiled and a tear rolled down her cheek. Susan imagined that it was because Maribel knew her real nature and was deeply hurt by Susan’s continued deception. No, she couldn’t allow those thoughts. I’m going mad, she thought. I can’t do this anymore. "Maribel?"
"Yes?"
"Take care of yourself. I know you have Luis and your other bodyguards to keep you safe, but this man, Rafael. He sounds so dangerous. I can’t imagine how soone with that history that could truly change... I an, I believe you, of course, but... just please be careful. You’ll have to make sure he’s staying on the right path... I an..."
"I know, mi hermana querida, I know," Maribel whispered as she put a finger up to Susan’s lips to quiet her concerns. "I am fully aware of what I’m getting into." She t Susan’s eyes again, her gaze and her words seeming to convey so many hidden anings.
Susan’s tears flowed anew down her cheek. She shook her head back and forth with small movents showing she really couldn’t imagine being in such a situation.
"He is going to therapy, you know. It was hard for him. n never want to admit that they need help. He said he would do anything for , even change. It’s funny, I asked him if he could change from Jaguar to a lamb, and he laughed. He said, ’perhaps not, but I can change from a Jaguar to your very own Mucuchies’."
Susan shook her head with a puzzled look. "What’s..."
"Oh. Mucuchies is a kind of dog. It was bred for protecting the animals on a farm... They are big, strong dogs, but very loyal, and very cuddly. They co from Venezuela, but there aren’t many of them left," Maribel giggled. "It was such a cute thing to say. I asked him, if that ant I was his lamb needing his protection, and he said, ’No, he would have to protect everybody else from , because I was the real jaguar." She giggled again.
"That’s so sweet..." Susan replied, her tears strengthening, knowing that was a completely fabricated mory that had never happened. She hoped that Joe would rember to implant the sa mory into Rafael during his therapy sessions. That was sothing a man should not forget saying, if he valued his relationship... "Just... take care of yourself, sister."
"I will," Maribel promised. "Call when you are safely back ho."
"I will." Susan promised. Wondering how long she should wait to match the usual travel ti. In reality she would be in the invisible treehouse in her backyard just seconds after the two won parted. Maribel would stay in the simulation experiencing the illusory car ride back to her house to the east of Guatemala City. She would step out of the ’car’ and reappear outside an identical, but real vehicle outside her ho. Later that day, she would re-enter the car, and another simulation, to go pick up Rafael from his ’retreat,’ a private, residential, treatnt facility where he had been for a week, undergoing intensify therapy sessions at her insistence after his temper flared. Not toward her, he would never do that, but toward the governnt, the CIA, and other cartel mbers against whom he held great resentnt and hostility. He said he was being sent to obedience school. Maribel had replied that a Mucuchies without proper training was just a wolf in disguise, too dangerous to live among civilized people.
Susan recalled this from the mories they had created for Maribel. In a way, she envied Maribel. There was sothing about having such a powerful, dangerous man willing to give himself entirely into her care that made her feel..., but it was ti for her to go.
"I hate to say, good-bye... but, if I don’t, I’ll miss my flight."
"Not good-bye, ’Nos vemos otra vez, mi hermana," Maribel replied.
"Yes, we will see each other again soon." Susan slowly drew her hands away and took the handle of her suitcase. She looked into Maribel’s eyes one last ti, before she turned toward the entrance to the terminal. She wiped away her tears with her sleeve as she walked resolutely.
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