“So how’re your girls doing?” Mrs Possible asked, taking a sip of her tea.
“Urh. Don’t ask.” Vivian replied, slightly bitter.
Mrs Possible laughed at that response, “You sound like me when I was raising Kimmie-cub and the boys.”
“Yeah but I’ve got triplets, ones that can put holes in walls and can move at hyper speeds. Not exactly the same. I have a whole new respect for single moms now.”
“I can see how three, formally villainess’, robots would be challenging to anyone.”
“They’re not actually robots, more like androids that are learning to be human. Abby is the most reasonable of them, the one who’s adjusted to their circumstances the most. Debbie was the one who seemed to resist the….um…. change in her life, I honestly thought for a while she’d go back to being a villain. Now she’s saving people from burning buildings and rescuing car crash victims.” Vivian took an exceptionally long drag of her coffee before continuing, “Wendy on the other hand surprises me on a daily basis. She’s the opposite of Debbie in many ways, she’s very soft spoken most of the time and seems to really accept some of the ways we live our lives that the others don’t or can’t, like religion or Christmas or human’s inherent need to amass wealth. I don’t think she understands it though.” She said before muttering, “I can’t claim I do either.” After it, “She’s developed an interest in reading, not the usual way they download the information into their hard drives, actual reading. I’ve seen her study the words, characters, plot like you or I would. It’s truly marvellous.”
“What books does she like?”
“Romance, real life, almost everything in the travel section, some fantasy. It’s mostly human drama without getting too fanciful. Although I saw reading ‘Wizard of Oz’ and got her the prequel, ‘Wicked’ I think it’s called, for Christmas.”
“I hear it’s really good. Maybe you should take them to the musical?”
Vivian laughed an uneasy laugh at the mere suggestion, “Baby steps, doctor, baby steps.”
A waitress chose that moment to bring their food and set it on the table. After she’d left the two doctors continued their conversation, “So what did you make their artificial skin out of? It’s extremely realistic, from what I’ve seen of them.”
“A synthetic made out of chains of unstable molecules. Easy to repair, but with it covering their joints it makes it hard for them to use their flexible appendages. It has a tendency to break when they do so.” Vivian stopped when she saw the smirk appear on the red heads face, “What’s so…” She trailed off and flustered slightly when she realised the implications of what she had said, “You’ve got one dirty mind for a neurosurgeon.”
“You said it not me. And you’ve got more experience with them than I do.”
“How does a nice upstanding man like James tolerate you?”
“I have my ways.” The Dr Possible said in an, almost impossibly, low husky tone.
“So…… I’m surprised that Debbie’s skin lasted when she reached up to that height for those people.” Vivian tried to change the topic back somewhat smoothly; it didn’t work out as planned.
“Ok, I’m done teasing you, for now. I’m curious how you managed to make three distinct personalities for them when you reprogrammed them. In simple terms for my little “dirty neurosurgeon” mind.”
“Alright,” She started with a smile, getting into programming mode, “in simple terms I didn’t actually reprogram them as such, just added new data to the existing program. I gave them a standard A.I. package I’d already developed for Oliver and added a more complex ability to learn. The distinctness you refer to is a combination of a few things. The most important of which is the actual prime purpose, which was originally to be perfect, I changed that to be vague enough so they themselves will have to decide what it truly means. To make things truly diverse I added…… um…. Let’s just say random bits of code that the program had to decide on exactly what it was. So even I couldn’t predict the outcome of their personalities, or how they got to that stage.”
“That sounds like a lot of work, I’m still not sure how though.”
“The how doesn’t matter. Just as I don’t know how my brain truly operates, just that it does.”
“Touché.” She emphasised with a mock salute with her empty mug of tea.
“So how’re things in the Possible family?” Vivian not so genteelly changed topics.
“This is about Kim isn’t it?”
“That might have something to do with it.”
Mrs Possible sighed and rested her head in her hands, “She’s a grown woman in college and all, I just wish she’d have talked to me about it before it came out on the ‘net. Sometimes it feels like she didn’t trust me with the truth about her sexuality until there wasn’t anything else she could do, like she was forced into it.”
Vivian felt nervous and poignant at that, “Err…. I didn’t actually mean that. I didn’t even know Kim was gay.”
“Then what were you talking about?”
“I just heard that Kim didn’t react pleasantly when she saw the news of Debbie. I think she recognised her.”
“Oh that. I think in the end she decided her mind was playing tricks on her.”
“I should tell her about the girls. Just in case they accidentally cross paths and something happens to them or Kim.”
“Only tell her when you think you and your girls are ready. You don’t want to rush things; you might want to talk over the prospect with them as well.”
Vivian smiled again, with relief, “So enough about the girls, back to Kim’s love life. Is she seeing anyone?”
They laughed and joked for another hour when Dr Possible had to get back to the hospital. Vivian was truly grateful she had such a friend to share such things with and visa versa.