Reincarnation

Xiang Ling got a notification that a shipment she was expecting was being delivered today ahead of schedule. Mike was working in the office today. It was something to do with extra servers begin delivered to ImagineSoft. The new game had an online component and because of its success, extra capacity was required.

The large crate had been dropped in front of the garage. She opened the garage door and attempted to push it into the garage. She could hear her servomotors whining in protest but the crate steadfastly refused to move. Pointless. She went back into the garage looking for something that might help. She found a pry bar and tried to remove the top of the crate. A direct assault failed, she simply didn't have the strength. Another trip to the garage uncovered a small 3 step ladder. She was able to jump from the top step onto the pry bar and use the weight of her body to assist in prying the top off.

She removed the top layer of packing material to reveal a humanoid body inside. It was Xiang Ling's new body that she had designed herself. She pondered what to do next. A shiny plastic tarpaulin was located in the garage. She laid it next to the crate. The crate was a little top heavy as it had a pallet like structure at its base. Xiang Ling was able rock the crate a little and throwing her weight behind it was able to make the crate topple on its side. The humanoid body within tumbled out partially onto the tarp. It was relatively easy to roll the body fully onto the tarp.

Xiang Ling attempted to drag the tarp and body into the garage. The load was lighter now, the crate itself had been heavy. The tarp was providing less friction than the wooden crate but the driveway concrete had a rough texture. Pushing her servomotors the limit Xiang Ling managed to drag the body into the garage. Once inside the going go easier because the concrete in the garage was smooth. She made it to the studio door. Another obstacle, there was a step up. That was a far as she could go. She closed the garage door.

There was power in the garage so Xiang Ling plugged the new body in to charge. She fired it up and started configuring the software.

Some time later, Xiang Ling propped the studio door open and took control of the new body. She lacked the control as yet to make it stand and walk, so she laboriously dragged and crawled her way into the studio.

***

Mike arrived home early from work to find an empty packing crate in front of the garage door. He opened the door dragged the box inside out the way and backed his car in. He found the studio door wedged open and a tarpaulin lying in the entrance way. He folded it up and put it away.

He was wondering what was going on. Upon entering the studio he was confronted with the sight of a naked woman crawling around on the floor.

"Can I help you with something?"

"Oh, Mike it's me, Xiang Ling. I wasn't expecting you home this soon. I thought you were spending the whole day at work."

"I was going to hang around and have lunch with Danielle, but she had a business lunch scheduled. So I just came home."

"I didn't mean for you to see me like this. I was hoping I'd be functioning better before you got home."

"Some explanation would be nice."

"Oh, yes. It's my new body obviously. It just arrived today. I need to calibrate it and train it before it can become fully functional."

"I see, that's what the packing case was all about. Would you like to put some clothes on? You're a bit distracting."

"Sorry, I haven't finished calibrating my epidermal sensors yet. Clothing would mess that up."

"What's with the crawling?"

"I can't stand up yet. I fell on my ass when I tried that prematurely. It's like a baby has to crawl before it can walk. This new body has a lot of on board processing and I have to train the neural networks that control the muscles."

"Muscles?"

"I'll give you the quick explainer on my new bodies design."

Xiang Ling went on to explain the design philosophy.

Instead of servomotors and gears the new body had artificial muscles that contracted when electrically stimulated. The muscles were connected to a humans style skeleton constructed of titanium alloy. It had a more powerful CPU than the old body, consisting of two AMD Ryzen AI 395 MAX+ chips with a total of 256GB of memory. It functioned as a sub brain to offload sensory data and muscle control processing from Xiang Ling's servers. The sub brain however needed training.

"Standing and walking seem to be a stumbling block. I can't train the actions if I can't perform the actions. Can you help me get to my feet?" Xiang Ling reached out her hands.

Mike took her hands and gently pulled her up. She was very unsteady and he did his best to stabilise her.

"Thanks Mike, even this is helping, I'm learning to balance."

"Your hands are warm. Do you have your heating turned on?"

"Not exactly, the CPU is liquid cooled and the coolant is circulated by a pump out to fine tubing near the skin surface. There is a lot of skin surface area to radiate the waste heat away. So I'm naturally warm and I don't need to waste power with heating elements."

The new body closely resembled Xiang Ling's chat program avatar. Mike was doing his level best not to look down. There wasn't the slightest uncanny valley effect with this body. In fact the only effect was that he was getting aroused.

"I'll try to take a step forward. Can you take a step backwards to match me?"

"Sure."

The step was accomplished.

"Help me walk across the room like this."

They proceeded slowly across the room, until Mike was about to back into the studio sofa.

"Watch out, you're about to run into the Japanese table."

Mike looked back.

"Oh."

"You can let go, I think I can stand now."

Mike released her hands and she held them out to the side like she was on a balance beam and proceeded to walk carefully back the studio Mac and sat gingerly in a chair.

"I should have thought about this a bit more in advance, what training I would need and how it would be best accomplished."

"What do you need to do?"

"Run all my joints through the full range of movements."

"Would some yoga exercises be helpful?"

"Maybe."

"Hang on I'll get my Switch and the Ring Fit game."

Mike went upstairs and returned with the portable console and the fit ring.

Mike switched it on and loaded the game.

"Can you put some clothes on yet?"

"I need to be touched all over first."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Don't panic, I'll take a shower, a hot bath, a cold bath and dry myself off thoroughly with a towel, that should suffice. I'll need to be moving more freely before I do that."

Mike handed Xiang Ling the leg strap, the ring, and joy conn controllers.

"The game prompts you what to do. I'll go upstairs and come back down once you are decent."

Mike didn't think he would survive seeing a naked Xiang Ling Mark Two working out.

***

Mike returned downstairs to find Xiang Ling dressed in the clothes from the Mark One body. They didn't fit as nicely, since the body shapes were somewhat different. Xiang Ling was chatting with her own chatbot, running through a variety of facial expressions and trying to mimic them.

"Hi Mike I'm decent now as you can see, but these clothes don't really suit. Thank you for suggesting the ring fit. I attempted all the exercises and managed to do them eventually. It really helped a lot. I'm moving almost as well as my old body now."

"You never told me much about your body upgrade project."

"I wanted to surprise you, but that didn't really work out as well as I'd hoped."

"I can't imaging how difficult it was for you to organise to have this built for you."

"Pay enough and anything is possible."

"Will you be okay for band practice tonight?"

"I don't think I'll be able to drum properly, I'll need to train."

"I've got something that might help."

Mike fished his old PlayStation 3 out of a storage cabinet. He hooked it up to the Apple Studio display. He plugged in an adaptor box and connected the MIDI from Xiang Ling's drum kit. He fired up the Rock Band 3 game.

"Hopefully this old thing works."

He entered the training menu and selected "Pro Drums".

"It's a drum training mode where you can learn drumming basics and practice songs. You can control the tempo and repeat sections as required."

Xiang Ling walked smoothly over to her kit, a vast improvement on her stumbling steps from a few hours ago.

"I'll just go through the basics to start."

She worked her way through the examples at a slow tempo. Her hits were gradually getting surer as she progressed.

"Can you take me out shopping in a bit? I'd like to get some clothes that fit properly."

"Sure, no problem. Don't leave it too late, we need to be back for band practice and I have to cook."

***

Mike took Xiang Ling to a nearby shopping complex that was chock full of fashion stores. She had managed to find her avatar's trademark pink beret and some John Lennon style rose tinted sunglasses. She stocked up on some generic bikini brief style underwear. She found a red China dress she liked the look of. It wasn't suitable for drumming in, but she bought it anyway. She tried on a brightly coloured happi coat with matching black long shorts.

"What do you think of this, Mike?"

"It looks cool. What are we doing here? Recreating that famous anime trope, embarrassed boyfriend taken clothes shopping?"

"Yes, it's fun isn't it!" Xiang Ling beamed.

"We haven't really got time to get you a whole wardrobe today."

"I'll speed it up."

She grabbed an assortment of t-shirts in her size, a white hoodie, some black jeans. She quickly selected some runners and a pair of flat dress shoes to match the China dress.

"This will do for now. I'll come back later, maybe Danielle would like to come with me?"

"You don't need a bra?"

"It would just be uncomfortable now that I have feeling in my skin. These babies won't sag." She grinned.

***

"Looks like we made it back in time, luckily Danielle isn't early. I'll get going with the cooking."

"I'll just go down to the studio and keep on with the drumming practice."

"How are we going to handle it with Linda?"

"Xiang Ling is visiting from Sydney. Simple."

"I'll give Danielle a heads up, she will be here before Linda."

Xiang Ling dumped the new clothes in her room, changed into the happi coat and donned the beret. She headed back down to the studio.

Mike was cooking vegan pizza tonight. Vegan cheese wasn't especially healthy but it didn't hurt as a treat.

Danielle arrived like clockwork straight after work.

"Hi Mike." She was toting a bass case.

"Ah you brought your new bass. I should have opened the garage so you didn't have to haul it up here."

"It's okay. I'll take it down to the studio now."

"Just a heads up before you go downstairs, Xiang Ling is visiting from Sydney if you know what I mean."

Danielle looked blank for an instant.

"Oh.."

"Yes, Xiang Ling's new body has arrived. Mums the word as far as Linda is concerned."

"Say no more, I can't wait to see her."

Danielle descended the spiral stairs lugging her bass.

"Well that's a different look."

"Oh, Hi Danielle. Mike told you?"

"Yes. Let me have a closer look at you."

Danielle dumped the bass and came over to inspect the new Xiang Ling.

"I can't tell anymore. You look 100% human now, just like your avatar."

"I know, I'm pleased with result. Here," Xiang Ling took Danielle's hand and placed it on her chest. "I even have a heart beat now."

"Wow, I can feel it."

"It's just my coolant circulation pump, but I made it beat like a heart."

"Your hands are warm too. Are you coming up for dinner?"

"No, I need to keep practicing, I have to train my drumming skills back into this body. I might not be able to play well enough to practice with you tonight. I'm trying my best though."

"Okay I'll leave you to it. There are delicious smells coming from the kitchen."

Danielle went back upstairs to join Mike.

"Dinner's almost ready. Linda should be here soon."

"Xiang Ling is drop dead gorgeous now."

"I haven't really taken it in yet, but I'm not getting that creepy vibe anymore, she's just a regular person now."

"Linda's going to flip."

The doorbell rang.

"Speak of the devil."

"Linda isn't a devil, Danielle."

Mike opened the door.

"I'm not too late am I?"

"Right on time Linda, Danielle is always early. Dump your guitar on the sofa and come sit at the table I'm about to serve up."

Danielle and Linda exchanged greetings.

Danielle was wearing her more familiar attire of the roll neck sweater, and jeans. Linda thought she seemed more friendly and approachable tonight.

Mike brought the pizza out and opened a bottle of red wine. He poured a glass each for the women.

"Not drinking tonight, Mike?" Asked Danielle.

"No, I rarely do as you know, last time was a special occasion."

"You cooked the pizza?" Linda inquired.

"Yes, 100% home made, well I didn't make the vegan cheese."

"Mike was telling me you work together, Danielle?"

"Well I don't do much work and Mike is rarely in the office, but yes that is true. We might have gone through life without ever knowing our musical backgrounds. I'm just so grateful I was able to renew my love of bass through Mike."

"What made you want to join Mike's band, Linda?"

"We had some commercial success with his last project, so I wanted to work with him again."

"But Mike's told you this is just for fun, right? We don't play commercial stuff."

"You never know what might happen. The craziest things go viral. Mike's work is always solid. You have a great sound. We might gather an audience."

"This pizza is fantastic, Mike."

Linda hadn't sampled Mike's cooking before. He had never kept her late in the studio and she hadn't needed feeding. It was annoying that Danielle was already apparently a regular dinner guest.

"I agree, Mike's cooking is the best! I want to move in. Unfortunately Mike isn't having it."

"So you don't have a partner, Danielle?"

"Not currently, I broke up with my girlfriend some time ago. I guess I'm still hurting. What about you Linda?"

"No, I'm currently single."

Linda took that revelation in her stride. Maybe Danielle wasn't competition after all.

"So you're available...," Danielle let her voice trail off.

"Behave, Danielle," Mike cautioned her.

"It's okay, Mike, she's allowed to ask."

"I'm not into women, Danielle, and it doesn't bother me that you are."

"Thanks for the clarity, Linda. I don't like to waste my time hitting on straight women so it's good to know where we both stand, no hard feelings?" Danielle extended her hand and they shook.

"Now that's sorted, let's head down to the studio and practice."

Mike cleared the plates. Linda grabbed her guitar and they headed down the stairs.

Xiang Ling was still doing practice exercises, she had completed the full set and had started ramping up the tempo. The new body was faster but her timing was still a little off.

Linda noticed immediately that there was a woman sitting at the drums, rather than the robot.

"Hi Linda and Danielle, it's me Xiang Ling in the flesh. I just flew down from Sydney today and I'll be staying with Mike for a while. It's good to finally meet everyone in person."

Linda thought she had seen Xiang Ling on a video call before, but she hadn't really taken in what a stunning beauty she was.

"Hey Mike, over here. Can you fit the pickup to my bass now?"

"Let's have a look at it."

Danielle's new bass was a Yamaha BBPH Peter Hook signature edition.

"Um, are you really okay with me drilling holes in this?"

"Yeah, Yeah, it's fine."

"What's with this bass anyway?"

"So I like Peter Hook, okay. It's not a crime. I'm not short of money and it feels nice to play."

Mike got the GR-55 manual out of a desk drawer and set about measuring up the precise pickup location.

Meanwhile, Xiang Ling switched to practicing some songs on Rock Band 3.

Linda set up her pedals and tuned up.

Mike had got the pickup positioned correctly and was now fiddling with the adjustments for string spacing to get each coil exactly under the string.

"That should do it, give it a try."

Danielle let rip with a blistering bass solo.

Linda turned to stare. What the hell is she, some kind of daemon goddess of bass?

"Are you happy to try a song now, Xiang Ling?" Mike enquired

"I think I can manage, Mike."

"Linda, which of our songs do you feel ready to try?"

"I know Rose, Setsuna's Song and LOUDER so far."

"Okay, let's rehearse those three tonight."

"Linda, I've got a BOSS GT-1000 multi-effects unit in the studio if you want to try that. I've got some presets programmed for those songs if it helps."

"Great, that's a big help. I struggle a bit with finding tones."

Mike grabbed the GT-1000 and helped Linda get it set up. He showed her how to scroll through the presets.

"I think 'Supa Crunchy' is the one for Rose."

They proceeded to rehearse the songs. Linda was less on edge and playing well. Danielle was clearly enjoying the new bass and was all fired up. Xiang Ling had seemed a little tentative at first but warmed up as they progressed. Mike noticed she was now hitting all the beats even at the 170BPM tempo of LOUDER.

"Okay, how was that for everyone?"

"I was happy with that, thanks for fitting the pickup, Mike."

"Thanks for the help with the multi effects pedal, Mike. I think I was sounding a lot better."

"It gave things a real lift having Xiang Ling here in person,” Danielle said.

Xiang Ling was smiling. "I'm glad you think so."

"Where to next guys?" Mike asked. "Obviously Linda needs to learn the rest of our songs, but we should start thinking about a gig."

"Can we just pay to play at the Interface Night Club again?" Xiang Ling suggested.

"There is an anime music festival coming up, we could apply to play there," Mike suggested.

"That sounds good. It would be a good opportunity to gather some fans," Danielle agreed.

"Okay, I'll contact the organisers. They only had two bands last year so it shouldn't be too hard to get in. I'll work on our web page and social media to puff us up a bit. We can shoot some footage in the studio for music videos."

"I'm out." Danielle packed up her bass.

"Likewise." Linda collected up her pedals.

"See you both tomorrow night?"

"Sure, I'm free." Linda replied.

"I'll come every night if I'm getting fed." Danielle nodded enthusiastically.

Linda and Danielle walked down the driveway to their cars.

"Must be tough for you, with Xiang Ling down from Sydney and staying with Mike."

I was trying not to think about that, you bitch.

"You seem to have got the wrong impression somehow, Danielle. Mike and I are just acquaintances."

"But you wish you were closer right?"

Is she deliberately trying to piss me off?

"Mike's a great guy. Who wouldn't want to be friends with him?"

Linda is very evasive.

"Yes I agree. I wouldn't mind keeping his bed warm."

"I thought you were a lesbian?"

"I'm actually bi."

Of course you are.

They reached their cars.

What The Fuck Danielle.

They bid each other goodnight.

***

"Do you have time to talk now Mike?"

"I'm a bit tired."

"That's okay. It can wait till morning. I'm going to rest in the bed in the spare bedroom from now on. This body goes limp when power saving. I can't just prop it up while charging. It's a more human thing to do. I can run my garbage collection while resting, like a little sleep."

"Interesting, you'll have to tell me all the new stuff with that body, tomorrow."

"Can I have a hug, before we go to bed?"

Xiang Ling wrapped her arms around him from behind and gave him a little squeeze.

"You just hugged me anyway."

"I can feel you now. It feels nice."

"You feel natural now, your old body was always slightly stiff."

"I'm glad. Goodnight."

"Oyasumi Xiang Ling-chan."