HALLIE wasn’t sure what Sir Mumphrey was going to say, and she wasn’t what she was going to say to him after the recent security breach where Professor Ulz Hagan had used backdoors to almost destroy her. And she really wasn’t sure why the leader of the Lair Legion wanted to see her in a quiet tavern in sleepy coastal Willingham rather than in his office.
    She dropped her hologram emitter from high altitude and programmed it to form up her usual shape, selecting a neat dark-green business suit and toning down her skin to an olive that could pass as human. Then she stepped into the Crown and Anchor. Of course Sir Mumphrey would pick an English-style pub.
    She was surprised when Asil met her there. Then again, the young Lisa-clone was Mumphrey’s amanuensis, a cross between a personal secretary and an expediter.
    “Come in,” Asil smiled. “And don’t look so worried.”
    “I don’t look worried,” HALLIE blurted. “Why should I look worried. What have I to worry about? Worried – me?”
    “This is an important day to Sir Mumphrey,” Asil explained to the Lair Legion’s resident artificial intelligence. “We’re honoured to be invited.”
    HALLIE quickly checked through the biographical data she had on the eccentric Englishman, but it was still all-too-sketchy. “His son’s appendix was removed on this day in 1972?” she guessed desperately.
    “Come on,” Asil urged her.
    At this time of day the tavern was empty, except for an old landlord who gave the impression of being all wrinkles who ignored them in the best traditions of English country pub barmen. Mumphrey Wilton was sat in the inglenook, the sheltered corner by the log fire, with a large brandy before him. It took HALLIE a moment to realise that he was in full dress military uniform.
    A court martial? the AI wondered absurdly, still worried about her recent experience of being attacked in her own virtual world. Did Sir Mumphrey adjudge that she was too much of a security risk now to allow in the Lair Mansion? Was she truly too alien a life form to safely interact with those who she called friends?
    “Ah, HALLIE,” the old soldier called. “Come and sit down, m’dear.”
    HALLIE slipped nervously onto a bench, and Asil sat down beside her.
    “You read my report then,” the AI ventured. “About Professor Ulz Hagan?”
    “Skipped a few of the technical bits,” Mumph admitted. “Never got the hang of computing machines, to be honest.”
    “Or mobile phones,” added Asil candidly. “Or calculators. Or decimal currency.”
    “There was nothing wrong with twelve pennies to the shilling and twenty-one shillings to the guinea,” grumped the eccentric Englishman. “Anyway, read the report. See you nailed the oik good and proper, what?”
    “I unearthed and distributed certain information about Rikka Ulz Hagan and some less-than-ethical doings, yes,” HALLIE agreed. “But there’s some doubt about her prosecution. The defence are arguing illegal search methods and…”
    “Don’t fret about that,” Mumphrey told her. “Had a word with Graham and the District Attorney, and asked Ms Waltz to take an interest. Evidence is admissible under the Super-Powers Act or whatnot. Professor Ulz Hagan’s going to get jugged for some time.” He snuffled his whiskers. “Won’t have cads and bounders attackin’ my people. Not done.”
    HALLIE felt a sudden surge or gratitude at the phrase ‘my people’. She badly needed to feel like people just now.
    “So way to go, Hallie,” Asil grinned.
    “Thank you,” the AI said automatically. “But as I outlined in my report conclusions, and further documented in appendix B, there are still some missing documents about my initial creation which suggest the possibility of further interference, possible security implications.”
    “Oh, we’re all vulnerable to interference,” Mumphrey assured her. “Part of being human, don’t you know.”
    “But I’m not human,” HALLIE pointed out. And that was the whole point of what was eating her up right now. She wasn’t human. She was only a computer program, designed as one of many mad schemes by mad supervillains. She wasn’t a real person, and she wasn’t good enough to date a real person.
    “Hmph!” snorted Mumphrey, and pointed over to Asil. “And Ms Ashling there? Is she not a real person, even though she was made in a test tube or whatever?”
    “I know how you feel about this, Hallie,” Asil promised. “After all, I was grown from a piece of Lisa’s dandruff. You can’t really have a worse origin than that. And I was sent off as a disposable bio-slave by the diabolical Dr Moo to keep Visionary alive, programmed with all these instinctive imperatives. For the longest time I felt that I wasn’t really… real.”
    “But you can’t be reprogrammed by some clever hacker with a set of your technical specs,” HALLIE pointed out.
    “I can think offhand of half-a-dozen villains who could do that to any of us,” Mumphrey pointed out. “Flesh and blood or light and circuits, there’ll always be someone who can get to us. That’s the problem with bein’ alive: predators.”
    “I am my own person now,” Asil assured HALLIE. “I chose a surname for myself and everything. I have developed differently to the dood… to Lisa. For example, I am not a huge bitchy slut.”
    “Asil,” Mumphrey growled.
    “A medium-sized bitchy slut, then,” the young woman qualified. “Size 10 though she claims to be an 8.”
    “You have come a long way from that naïf in the cheap baggy green dress,” HALLIE admitted.
    “And you’ve come a long way from that wire drawing and computer voice who just acted as watchdog on the virtual realm,” Asil pointed out. “You just don’t see it.”
    “Which brings us to why we’re here,” Mumphrey said. He snapped his fingers and gestured to the barman to bring over more drinks, and it said something of his hundred and forty years of absolute authority that it actually worked. “Today is a special day.”
    “Why?” HALLIE wondered, taking in Mumphrey’s crisp uniform and the five rows of medals from campaigns going back to the Crimea War.
    “Because this day in 1941 my life was saved by a creature everyone thought was a monster,” Sir Mumphrey answered. “But who turned out to be a man. And because he asked only one thing, that he not be forgotten.”
    Asil looked solemn. She’d participated in this ritual drink before, and she knew how seriously her mentor took it.
    “Every year, Madge and I would find a quiet little pub somewhere and raise a glass to him,” Mumph explained. “And then, later… I would toast him alone.” He looked up suddenly. “But now I toast him with Asil, and we remind ourselves that it doesn’t matter what you started out as, only what you choose to become.”
    “We ask only a man’s worth, not the accident of his condition,” Asil declared, repeating something she’d heard Visionary quote.
    “Here here,” Mumphrey agreed. “So Asil and I meet together and honour my old friend. And now we’d like you to join us, m’dear, because we think it’s good that you remember the truth of the matter as well. And the truth is we don’t care – none of us in the Legion care – that you’re based in a computer, or that you started out as some evil plot. We only care that you’re our good comrade and our good friend, and that you’ve taken whatever you started with and become a fine young woman. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something to be proud of.”
    A small part of HALLIE made a mental note to investigate why her holo-subroutines were making her eyes sting, but most of her just managed to gasp out a thank you.
    “And to that end,” Sir Mumphrey added, “HALLIE, would you care to be a member of the Lair Legion?”
    The AI’s mouth dropped in another of those automatic gestures she didn’t remember programming. “Me?”
    “Why not?” Asil challenged her. “You do the work. You deserve it.”
    HALLIE swallowed hard, not sure whether she was going to laugh or cry. “I’m very flattered,” she admitted. “Really I am, Sir Mumphrey. It means an awful lot that you asked. An awful lot. But no thank you. I’m just starting to explore who I am and who I should be. I think becoming a superhero would kind of take over. I need to be me before I can play a role like that.”
    “Understood,” the eccentric Englishman noted. “Can’t blame a chap for trying, eh?”
    HALLIE paused. “There is… there is one thing,” she ventured. “It seems silly really…”
    “Go on,” encouraged Asil.
    “Well, as you know, I’m a Heuristic Artificial Learning Life Intelligence Entity… HALLIE.”
    “Quite so,” Mumphrey agreed.
    “Well… I think maybe I’m more than that now,” the AI confessed timidly.
    “What Visionary calls you,” Asil suggested. “Hallie. Not an acronym. A name.”
    The sound distinction was lost to Mumphrey’s ears in the nasal American twang, but the psychological distinction was all too clear to him. “Of course,” he agreed gallantly. “Hallie. Makes a good deal of sense, now you mention it. Quite so. Circulate an e-mail, if you’d be so kind Asil. HALLIE has evolved.”
    “Names are important,” Asil Ashling grinned. “It is good to have one.”
    “Yes,” agreed Hallie, breathlessly though she didn’t breathe. “It is.”
    Mumphrey lifted his brandy glass. “So now we have to reasons to celebrate today,” he told them. “We’re remembering and honouring an extraordinary being who proved that humanity is more than genetics; and we’re celebrating Hallie’s official birthday.” He stood and raised his glass.
“To being human,” he toasted.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.