Firestarter revisited

I've never pretended that I could understand Lily's biology. Such as it was. She was synthetic and the best biochemist I knew was debating doing another Doctoral based on figuring out how she worked. Mindo, the man who created her, was half way to New Switzerland by now so our chances of ever really knowing were slim to none. Her psychology? Not quite so far beyond the edge of Human knowledge.

Technically, Lily was an AI. While she'd originally been programmed to work within a set range of parameters, she'd achieved full self awareness. She was "real" for all intents and purposes. There was a conscious Ghost in her pseudo-organic shell. That was something I could try and understand.

Her recent antics though, made little sense. The whole Ardra episode had confused the issue on multiple levels. x0x0'd managed to extract the parasitic fragment of Ardra's personality matrix from Lily's mind, but it had left my little girl unstable. Again. She'd reverted on multiple levels into, well, I wasn't entirely sure.

There'd been a period before when she'd stated lighting fires around town. It was a bid for attention. At least at some level. Then, as now, much of her mindset was that of a child. Setting something on fire wasn't actually that unusual for a kid, so we'd figured out how to deal with it. Though now, the behavior was different. This time she hadn't set a little fire in the corner. This time she'd burned up one of the residential buildings.

That, and she was stealing things.

Neither behavior was what I expected.

I gave Gallagher permission to lock her in one of the cells in our small jail. It wouldn't hold her if she decided to leave, but at least it would give the illusion that we had her under control. Gallagher, Krenshar, and Cody were all trying to talk to her. I tried too, but she didn't seem to notice me. Though, in truth, I never really did have that much influence over her. I'd adopted her, true. But I hadn't raised her and her maturity levels were rather haphazardly across the board.

Maybe she'd choose to talk to me. Maybe not.

There was some talk that she'd gotten herself addicted to a psychotropic drug from Al Raquis. Spice they called it. Though, as far as I knew, it was a locally occurring mineral they skimmed off the surface of the sand there. Not really a spice at all. Which was all the more confusing when you considered the fact that she wasn't exactly organic. How could she get addicted to something when she didn't have the biochemical or neural pathways to support addiction?

Almost makes me want to break into that case of Scotch Nack gave me. Almost. Only plus side right now is that 'Brina's back out our way for a little while. Elsoph's project had some down time, so she's got time to be here with me. Means if I break out anything alcoholic, it'll be the Gin. In moderation. With a very special presentation.