Simulate-Ann, a Virtual Fiction Story Contest submission

[PaddedWarriorPrince]

Cutting it a bit close on the deadline, but after buying a house and then the holidays I remembered this was sitting half finished on my broken phones hard drive unposted. This is my submission to PeculiarChangeling's Virtual Fiction Story Contest,

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   "Mommy!" Ann cried excitedly as Monica entered the daycare. The 26 year old jumped to her feet and ran to the slightly older woman giggling who swept her into her arms, picking her up easily due to the parameters they had set so long ago.

   "Hey baby, how was daycare?" A hand squished against her diaper, "Baby, you're soaked! What am I paying the caretakers for if they can't even change you?" And she was paying them rather a lot, technically.
   "I wanted you to change me, mommy."
   Monica laughed, "Ok honey, lets get you cleaned up, then we can go for ice cream in the park, how does that sound?"
   "Iceeem" that jubilant cry was answer enough.

   After the ice cream another clean up was needed, this time on a little girls face, before Monica let her go to play in the park. After a half hour Monica giggled as Ann bent her knees and obviously pooped her diaper before running back up the slide. She wondered what people would think of they knew that the woman called 'The Eisenstein of the 2040s' favorite thing to do to de-stress was dress up like a toddler and poop her pants at a simulated playground, before remembering. Tears blurred her vision as she got the changing supplies ready.

   Due to the sophisticated nature of the SIM she could smell the mess in her little girls backside from a ways off and knew this would be a messy cleanup, but still as she lifted her she patted Ann's bum and spread it around more. It's how she wanted it. "Someone's a stinky baby, lets get you changed before you stink up the whole city."
   "No, Mommy! Wanna play!"
   "You can go back to playing when you're clean, I don't want my little princess getting a rash now do I?" Legitimately impossible due to their settings, but it was the words that counted.

   After the change Monica couldn't help herself from pulling Ann into a tight embrace, tears leaking down her cheeks. "Mommy?"
   "Mommy!"
   Then, softer, without the toddler like inflections, "Monica, look at me honey." Her wife's eyes were kind, but she knew what she would say next would hurt. "It's been three years, you need to start moving on. Coming here every day isn't helping you. Ann died, I'm just a memory. A quirk in the programming of a favorite SIM made from neural interfaces."

   Monica shook her head violently. "You're not dead, not really. And the fact that you know that proves it! If you were just a digital imprint of my wife's brain you wouldn't be able to form new memories, you wouldn't be able to track the passage of time, you would not be able to process the fact that you are supposedly dead. You would be stuck repeating her last play."

   "It doesn't matter! Blood and milk on the crosswalk!" Monica felt her own blood chill at those familiar words.
   "Baby, how do you know that headline? This server is closed off from net access, you didn't want anyone to find out about it."
   "Emergency Broadcast backdoors, literal genius remember? That's not the point, I've seen the pictures, I died to some freak accident and now I am trapped in my happy place for eternity!" Monica was shocked, Ann had rarely been anything but her happy little girl self. Even right before log-off when she adulted up and reminded her to eat well and all those other goodbyes they used to share before one of them went on a business trip she had never shown any sign that this was effecting her like that. Unaware of her turmoil Ann continued, "And that's not the worst of it. I, what, I was stressed? Needed a bottle? There were 6 weeks of no access before your log in to say goodbye, but how much of that was you putting it off I don't know. So I was working on something big and needed a bottle, we were out of milk so I go to the corner mart, on the one crossing home I get hit by a drunk driver. Tragic, sudden, but that's the world for you. But then he just fucking vanishes on the prison transport?" She was starting to hyperventilate and Monica would have pointed out this was another sign of her being alive had she not been having her own panic attack, "Monica did someone have me killed?"
   "Oh baby," Monica wrapped around her tighter, both sobbing softly "Baby, no." She briefly considered how to word this, "They did find his body, but it was classified. Someone, or more likely some group, has been raiding prison transports for experiment subjects. They don't know why yet."
   "Ok," she breathed out into the hug, "And, I don't..., I... It's fine when you're here, I love when you're here, but I can't stand that it's hurting you. And when you aren't? I... I used to wish I could live this, be open about who I am with the world." She laughed sadly, "I'm going stir crazy here honey. Could you load me in some adult cloths and a backdoor to my lab SIM?" She patted her swollen diaper, she had wet at some point during their mutual panic attack, "Probably still need to wear these, but it's virus protection is as good as I could make it, and I'm sure my team has been keeping it up to date." Monica was worried about more outside access to here, but her wife needed this so she nodded, "Ok, well," Ann stood and just loaded a fresh diaper and outfit onto herself, "neither of us is in a fit state to continue, you need to eat and I'm sure you need a change as much as I did," she wasn't wrong. Monica used to pause out and use the bathroom when Ann was alive, but now she wanted to spend as much time with her little girl as possible, and there had been so many diapers left... The two women embraced again, "I'll load my way back to the daycare, I love you Monica, Mommy, my love, just... Take a few days yah? Relax your way, not mine."
   "Ok baby, I love you too Ann, I will get that backdoor set up in the morning." And with a thought the park slowly dissolved before her eyes.

   Ann had been right, she was in desperate need of a change. She would probably have frowned at the turkey sandwich she made for dinner, but there was work to be done. The elevator to the basement only took a minute, and she entered a room Ann could never know about. Three men and two women were strapped into VR rigs, IV's and monitoring equipment hooked into them, and a large tube behind each held an exact clone in preserving fluid. Her assistant, Jen looked over as she entered, "Subject 27 has produced an Echo, and Subject 30's clone has completed growth."
   "Good, begin termination and transfer on 27, then look up more transports the boys are allowed to hit. Our timetable has moved up." It was amazing what the government would turn a blind eye to if you promised them immortality, not that she cared about that bit. Her gaze moved to Ann's clone, in a place of reverence in the back of the lab. She would figure out how to successfully transfer the echo back onto a living brain, she would even let the successful Subject live, the government would want a live proof after all. "I'll get you out of there baby. It won't be long now."

[YourFNF]

Okay that was a really interesting and fascinating twist.