Part 782: Jason’s Echo

January 29th, 2021. Aevum.

Jason and Nadia had a quiet dinner together. They didn’t do this often, and there were zero romantic overtones to the interaction. Jason made sure to stay strictly professional with Nadia. He was well aware of her love for him, and he didn’t want to do anything to encourage her. He hoped, with time, her inclinations toward him would fade away. He also hoped for the same thing with Catherine too, but whether or not that would actually happen was anyone’s guess.

Jason had already guessed that Nadia never deleted her mind-clone of him. Not too long ago, she even admitted as much. Thus, when sitting near her, Jason felt a faint sense of discomfort. Just like Hope and Fiona, there was another clone nearby, a copy of Jason he couldn’t interact with. Ever since Nadia fessed up to the copy’s continuing existence, it felt like a barrier between the two of them had weakened somewhat.

Jason knew she was pushing all her feelings for him onto her Fake Jason. That helped her cope with the fact she couldn’t be with the ‘real’ Jason. But personally, Jason himself wasn’t sure what being ‘real’ meant. Was Hope ‘fake’ just because he was a clone? Of course not. He was real. So was Fiona.

Even if the mind-wiped Jason in her head only existed as an incorporeal lifeform, Jason had already started to think of his unknowable clone as a real person. In the Wordsmith’s eyes, the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ life forms had blurred a lot over his lifetime. Humans and robots were as real to him as cats and dogs… especially now that he knew even those could talk.

Nadia spun her fork around some noodles. She scooped them into her mouth and smiled. She wasn’t looking at Jason, but she seemed really happy about something.

It took a moment, but eventually Jason’s curiosity won out.

"Something funny?" Jason asked, cutting off a chunk of steak and forking it into his mouth. He chewed the savory meat slowly, relishing the taste.

Nadia’s smile widened a little. Then it disappeared. She blinked her eyes and looked up at Jason, slightly dazed. "What?"

"You were smiling." Jason said. "I thought maybe the… other me… said something funny."

"The other you." Nadia repeated. She blushed a little, then looked down at the table with a smile. "Yes. He is pretty funny sometimes. But no, that’s not why I was smiling."

She paused for a few seconds longer than felt necessary.

"I was, um, talking to him. I realized it could be a little weird always calling him Mental Jason or whatever. So he suggested that he should have his own name, like Hope did. I thought his choice was kind of cute."

Jason tensed up a little. "His own name, huh?"

Seeing the look on Jason’s face, Nadia’s smile faded a little. "Yes, okay? It only makes sense."

"He’s aware of my existence. Does that mean he knows what he is, what his reality is?" Jason questioned.

This was the first time Jason had really spoken to Nadia about the clone in her head since a few weeks before. Now that the topic was out in the open, he thought he might as well learn more about her mental situation.

Nadia sighed. She spun more noodles around her fork. "Well, yes. He knows he’s a mental clone. He also knows that I erased his memories of a wife and kids. He doesn’t mind, because he’s never known them. They’re strangers to him, no different from people living down the road. Slightly familiar at a glance, but zero emotional connection. So he’s not wallowing in depression or anything like that. And he’s quite happy to live inside my MindCore, given all the amenities."

"Amenities?" Jason repeated, slightly puzzled.

"Of course. I can make models of anyone alive, now that I’m not trapped in my simulation. He’s always in there, playing games, chatting with people, or even training in battle against the Demon Emperors, like Ose."

"Oh. Huh." Jason muttered. He looked thoughtful as he pondered this new information.

Nadia noticed his negativity lessening. "That’s right. Also, the time dilation inside my Mind Realm is quite extreme. He’s been in there for many many hundreds of years. He’s probably older in my simulated universe than you are in the real one, and that’s not counting his years of knowledge taken from your life in Aevum."

She seemed to be bragging, but at the same time, there was a lot of warmth in Nadia’s voice. Jason smiled.

"At least you’re treating your Copy Jason well." He conceded.

"Well, that’s the thing." She said. "He doesn’t want to be known as Copy-Jason anymore, or whatever else. He told me that from now on, you should refer to him as… Echo."

Jason blinked. "Echo? Is he for real?"

"Jason-Echo. Yes." Nadia said seriously. "He’d like for you to refer to and think of him as just Echo in the future, okay?"

Jason thought for a moment. Truthfully, he thought Hope had been a kind of stupid name at first, but Echo seemed even dumber. Was he just really bad at naming things? It was no wonder Phoebe forced him into letting her name the kids.

Immediately, he thought of Hero City and what a lame name that had been to. Who the hell was he to judge what his mental clone called himself?

"Alright. Echo it is, then." Jason said.

A long pause followed. Jason chewed his lip. "Does Echo… want a real body?"

"What?" Nadia asked, her breath catching slightly. "Are you offering to make him one?"

"Well yeah." Jason said. "I think it’s… only fair. I’d be lying if I said that after Hope I wasn’t really apprehensive about doing it. But… it feels wrong to leave Echo locked up in your head. I also can’t talk to him at all. I can’t get a feel for the guy."

Nadia seemed hesitant. She closed her eyes and seemed to enter into an internal discussion with Echo. When she opened her eyes again, her expression was one of disbelief.

"Echo said.. no." Nadia said, enunciating each word carefully. "He said he has no interest in… meatspace. He likes living in the paradise of his wife’s mind."

"Wife." Jason repeated, causing the word to hang in the air for several uncomfortable seconds. "You married the guy stuck in your head? I don’t remember being invited to the wedding."

Nadia didn’t have a witty retort. She simply poked at her food and lowered her head.

"It… felt like the next logical step." She muttered softly.

Jason didn’t press the issue. "Alright. Well, if Echo wants to pop out into the real world, I’ll make accommodations for him. He can always use one of my Dronesmiths as a backup."

Nadia didn’t accept or deny his offer. It seemed Echo had zero interest in such an arrangement.

Jason wondered just what sort of ‘him’ she had cultivated inside her mind. He’s only been living in the Earth era for about a year, counting time dilation. The fact Echo was hundreds of years older made him feel a weird disconnection. Was Echo just living it up, going on roller coaster rides, beating the shit out of virtual Demon Emperors, and having mind-sex with Nadia whenever he wanted?

Shit. Maybe he was. If it wasn’t Nadia but instead Phoebe, Jason might even be tempted to taste the fruits of such an arrangement.

The table fell silent. Man and woman ate their food, with Nadia occasionally smiling to herself as she mentally chatted with her invisible husband. All the while, Jason felt a strange coldness settle over his body.

He thought about Daisy. He thought about Timothy.

But most of all, he thought about Phoebe.

Time had not healed the wound. He still missed her. The pain was just as fresh as the day he’d hugged her corpse in his arms.

He wanted his wife back. He never stopped thinking about her. The fact Echo was allowed to simply forget her and live a happy life inside Nadia’s MindCore secretly ate at him. He felt bad for what Echo had lost, but he envied his copy for the pain he didn’t have to endure.

Sometimes, the mental pain was so bad that Jason wanted to end his life. He couldn’t do that though. Not while he still had his father and daughter around. Not while the younger Phoebe was here… maybe he could kindle a spark with her. Or maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. He just didn’t know.

Jason slowly ate his food, finding that even though it was technically delicious, it was like sand in his mouth without his wife there to enjoy it with him.

All the while, Nadia closed her eyes, unaware of Jason’s inner thoughts.

…

Inside Nadia’s MindCore, there was a vast simulated reality. It wasn’t the same as the real world, not even by a little bit. Anyone who entered it would be fully aware it was artificial. Physics didn’t function the way they did in realspace. The ‘primary space’ Nadia typically existed in was like a massive space station suspended in a starless void, with a thousand roads that spiraled off into orbs of light that led to other simulated realities with their own laws of physics.

It resembled a massive mechanical spiderweb, with threads spinning out in hundreds of directions.

Nadia was the owner of her MindCore, but she was frequently busy in the real world. She often had to think about things outside the sphere of her inner mind. As such, the administrator of her MindCore who kept it maintained and running was none other than Jason-Echo, also known simply as Echo.

Echo was Jason. At a glance, that much was obvious. But who a man was had more to do with the life he’d lived and the thoughts in his head than his mere personality. A man who had been violently mugged would be a drastically different person than a version of him who beat the hell out of his mugger. This fact was what exemplified the differences between Jason and Echo.

Unlike Jason, Echo did not have any memories or attachments toward Phoebe, Daisy, or Timothy. However, this did not mean he was a lobotomized clone of the real Jason. In fact, Nadia had withheld an important fact from Jason… Echo still had all the memories of his former life available to him. If he desired, he could even integrate them back into his mind as if they had never left.

But he didn’t. To Echo, those memories were like videos recorded by a completely different person. He had flipped through them in the past. He knew of Phoebe’s existence, and he had witnessed the tragedy of her death. He knew about Timothy and that Jason had left his son behind, in the future. He knew about Daisy, too. To him, these memories were like watching a sad movie produced by an influential director. They brought tears to his eyes, but they had less than 1% the impact on his psyche that they did to the real Jason.

Echo still possessed all the knowledge that Jason did, but when it came to Jason’s life, Echo had none of the attachments to his family. Unlike Hope, Echo did not silently miss a life that had been stripped away from him.

He didn’t think about its loss at all!

This was what made Echo a completely different entity from Jason and Hope. He was his own man.

Nadia flickered into reality inside the construct of her mind. She appeared at her husband’s right side. He immediately smiled when he saw her.

"I told him." Nadia said.

"About time, babe." Echo said, turning to grab her and sweep her off her feet. he bent over and planted a passionate kiss on his wife’s lips.

This was one of Echo’s favorite moves. He loved literally sweeping Nadia off her feet. He couldn’t keep his hands off her. He thought his wife was the most beautiful woman in existence, and this wasn’t even something she had forced into his head. All Nadia had done was allow Echo to remember their 70 years together, locked in her MindCore. By doing that, he had immediately gained all the same feelings toward her that she had toward him. Some of those feelings were disjointed due to the fact that every single day of her imprisonment he had lost his memories of the day before.

But in Echo’s mind, this was completely understandable. It was as if a man with a terrible memory condition had fallen in love with a woman thousands of times in his life, and then finally remembered all of them at once.

One of his hands pulled the back of her head towards his own. He forcefully kissed her over and over, while Nadia let out soft little moans that made him go feral with excitement. Naturally, he grabbed her ass with his other hand and squeezed, getting a kick out of the way her moans shifted pitch ever so slightly.

But this wasn’t the time for a round of animalistic sex. They did that all the time, never tiring of it. This was just the way he always greeted his beloved. After a minute of passionate embracing, Echo let Nadia go. She flushed slightly and quickly regained her footing, using a hand to nudge her tousled hair back into place.

"I never get tired of that." Echo said with a grin. "So how’d he take it?"

Nadia took a moment to reorient herself. "He… he seemed okay with it. He thought your name was a bit silly though."

"Whatever. I like it. That’s all that matters." Echo said.

"I like it too." Nadia agreed.

That was true. But then again, she liked anything Echo did.

Echo and Nadia chatted for a few minutes. Then another man approached from behind, a 30-year-old guy with dirty blonde hair and a full beard hanging a few inches off his chin.

"Hey, mom." The man said, smiling at Nadia as he leaned down and kissed her cheek. "How’d it go with Meatspace-man?"

"It went fine, Zachary." Nadia said. "He did suggest making a physical body for your father, though."

"Pft. I knew he would." Echo snorted, a hint of disdain in his voice. "That’s probably what I’d have suggested when I was younger. And dumber."

Echo was currently standing beside the controls for the entirety of Nadia’s MindCore. He had full administrative access, the same as her. He could create, monitor, and alter simulations at will. Unlike Jason, Echo did not have a MindCore of his own. He didn’t have a GenesisFrame, and any attempts to simulate one fell flat.

But he didn’t need one. Nadia’s MindCore was essentially his. He had all the same capabilities. It was as if Jason himself had been given a RealitySim. Echo had hundreds of years of experience using it, too. He was even more proficient with it than Nadia.

Echo turned to the controls. He casually rested a hand on a metal pedestal with a glowing golden orb in its center. The world blurred around himself, his wife, and his son. They appeared inside a factory of some sort. Echo stepped away and walked toward an army of clones, each one looking exactly the same as him. Unlike Echo though, these clones were completely mindless. They had all the thoughts and memories he did, but he piloted them all remotely at the same time, similar to Jason’s Dronesmiths. How he was able to do this at such a scale, even Nadia didn’t know. She would struggle to do the same.

Echo casually walked over to one of his clone, who was delicately soldering circuits onto a very familiar-looking device. After a moment, Echo picked it up and examined it.

"Still no success at improving the PepScan." Echo concluded, turning to his wife after a moment. "I can improve the range of it dramatically, but then the potency falls off."

"That defeats the point." Nadia said, shaking her head. "Being able to copy people’s existences into my RealitySim is the most important function of the PepScan."

"Yeah. I don’t like that you need to get so close to someone to do so…" Echo said hesitantly. "It adds a heightened element of risk. But this is probably the best we’ll get for the foreseeable future."

Echo was the one who had designed Nadia’s PepScan. She had contributed in many important ways, but he was ultimately the core designer of it. He had plenty of time on his hands, unlike his wife, who was always in and out of her own MindCore.

Nadia hesitated for a moment. "You’re sure you don’t want to pay Realspace a visit?"

"Babe, no matter how many times you ask, the answer’s still no." Echo said dismissively. "What’s out there for me? Earth? I don’t care about Earth. I don’t care about a bunch of people Jason’s attached to. My whole family’s in here."

He continued. "The only reason I pay any attention to meatspace is because your real body exists in it. If something happened to you, I’d… well, it would be the worst day of my life. If you died, our entire family would die too. So I only care about the ‘outside’ in the sense of protecting and making you stronger."

Nadia smiled. She felt a sense of warmness from her husband’s words that always improved her mood. No matter how down she was feeling, Echo’s pure love would serve to invigorate her mind and soul.

"Yeah… I know." Nadia said quietly. "It’s just that… sometimes… I wish you could hold me in the real world too."

"Maybe someday." Echo said, reaching over to caress her cheek. "Even if all of this is only in your head, doesn’t it feel real?"

Nadia bobbed her head slowly. The passionate touch of her husband was just as real as if he existed in realspace. His touch, his kisses, his everything. They felt exactly the same as if he and Nadia were making skin-to-skin contact. She genuinely couldn’t tell the difference.

"Yeah. Never mind then. You’re right, I’m just being silly." Nadia said, smiling like a teenage girl hanging around her unrequited crush. She was just as excited to be around Echo hundreds of years later as on the day they met. He was her everything.

Eventually, they got back down to business. Zachary started talking about his own work once his mom and dad put a temporary pause on their overwhelming romantic antics.

"Me and Tyler have been working on improvements to the H-Boy." Zachary said. "How has Jerome taken to it?"

"He’s only just started a few minutes ago." Nadia said before correcting herself. "In real-time, I mean."

"So slow." Zachary grumbled. "How long until we get some results? I need hard data to improve the H-Boy."

"It’ll probably be a few weeks." Nadia said, making the calculations in her head. "Jason insisted we let Jerome fumble around for the first hour or two."

Zachary was aghast. "Seriously? Why is that idiot always getting in the way? If you don’t tell Jerome about the kinetic energy system, how will he know to-"

"Zach." Echo said coldly, directing a look toward his son that made him clamp up immediately. "We don’t use words like that here. Just because Jason is behind me doesn’t mean he’s an ‘idiot’. He has his own strengths."

Zach swallowed. He felt a little embarrassed by his dad’s words. "Y-yeah. Sorry, dad. I’m just saying, you know? If mom had told Jerome…"

"Jerome’s pretty smart." Echo said dismissively. "He’ll figure it out. If he doesn’t, that’s fine. We’ll bring him up to speed. Even if it’s a couple hours in meatspace, it’s only a few weeks of waiting for you. You’ll be fine."

"I can’t make any major changes to the internals until I get that data though!" Zachary complained.

"Then work on something else." Echo said. "What about that SIGIL system? Wasn’t Tyler especially proud of that?"

Zachary felt his mood deflate. "Dad. We don’t have hard data for that either."

"So make a simulation for it, then." Echo said.

"We don’t know for sure if SIGIL’s effects are the same in simspace versus realspace." Zachary argued. "That’s why we need the data! Every bit of data improves the sims."

Echo grimaced. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Well. You’re not wrong there. Just worry about it later, okay? Exercise a little patience. Work on something else in the meantime."

"…Alright." Zachary grumbled. "Well anyway. I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone."

Zachary sauntered off, vanishing as he shifted himself into a different part of the RealitySim at will. Technically, he and all of Echo and Nadia’s kids were administrators on the same level as Echo himself, but none of them were as proficient with the RealitySim as their father. They had been born inside and lived inside the sim their entire existences. They had no memory of realspace, and only knew about it from what they could simulate.

It was ironic that simulated people could only attempt to better simulate reality, but that irony was not lost on them. They only did so to improve the odds of protecting and improving their mother’s life. As for actually traveling to realspace, none of them had any interest.

Once Echo and Nadia were alone, he cleared his throat. "Honey, no matter how badly you want it, I never will. Going back to meatspace just isn’t for me. Leave all of that to Jason. My simmed existence gives me infinite pleasure."

"You really don’t want to? Not even a little?" Nadia asked carefully.

"Not even the slightest bit. I have no attachments out there, except for you, and I get more of you in here thanks to time dilation than I ever would in meatspace." Echo explained. "Jason’s doing important work. He has his goals, and I have mine. Let’s leave it at that."

There was a long pause.

Echo stared ahead silently for a while.

"You know. I’ve been thinking a lot, lately. About time. Time travel." Echo said.

"Time travel? You have?" Nadia asked, slightly skeptical. "You’ve never mentioned it before."

"I was thinking about Hideki and how his time travel worked, versus Jason and Daisy’s versions." Echo muttered. "Just random thoughts, is all. We know so little about it. We don’t know for sure which form of time travel we exist in. Did Jason rewind time and delete his future reality? Or is it still out there? Can he go back to it? Even if he can, will it be the same one? Or a different one that looks and feels identical?"

"Do you want to go to a different era?" Nadia asked.

"Babe. Come on. Of course not." Echo smirked. "I’m perfectly happy right where I am. I just feel bad for Jason, you know? It’s like I’m looking at my younger brother who’s had a hard life. I want to cheer him up, make him feel better. You know he’s miserable, right? Like he’s legit suicidal. I know I would be, if I were in his position. He’s probably filled with self-hatred and doubt. It’s a miracle he’s held up this long."

Nadia was taken aback. She was a smart girl, and she had a copy of Jason inside her mind, but reading Jason’s memories to get to know him wasn’t the same as actually having ‘been’ him. Echo was missing a lot of parts of who Jason was now, but in essence, he and Jason came from the same starting blocks. He understood how he’d be feeling if, hypothetically, he were living the same life as Jason.

"Wife dead. Son left behind. Little girl tortured while he wasn’t around to protect her. Dad’s a fuckin’ time traveling enigma. Of course Jason’s a mess." Echo muttered out loud. "But he deserves respect. He’s experienced a loss I’ve forgotten. It changed him, partly for the better, partly for the worse. I guarantee you Jason has more determination to improve than I do. He doesn’t want to make the same mistakes he did in his youth… and I really respect that."

Nadia was quiet for a while. She lowered her eyes, thinking about what Echo had said.

She didn’t have a retort. She also felt he was right. There was something really admirable about Jason’s persistence. He had something Echo didn’t.

"You have your own superior points." Nadia eventually said. "Jason’s great, but so are you."

"Damn right I am. I’m fucking awesome." Echo said, giving his wife a thumbs-up. "And don’t you ever forget it, babe. But also, don’t let the kids blabber bad words about Jason either. They don’t have the right."

"I won’t. I’ll put my foot down next time." Nadia vowed.

Nadia chatted with her husband for another hour or two. She eventually opened her eyes and returned to reality. Only a half-minute had passed. She immediately noticed Jason seemed quieter than before. He was staring off into the distance, lost in thought.

"Hey, Jason…" Nadia said softly. "You know I really admire you, right?"

Jason blinked. He seemed to leave his daze. "Huh? What did you say?" Jason asked.

"I said I really admire you." Nadia repeated.

"Oh. Uh. Thanks." Jason said. He looked at her like he was afraid she was going to jump at him, throw him to the floor, and start shoving her tongue in his mouth.

Naturally, such a silly thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.

"I just think you’re great. That’s all." Nadia said, spinning up another forkful of noodles.

"Alright. Thanks, then…" Jason said warily. "Just remember that you’re married, okay?"

Nadia smiled dreamily. "I’d never forget that."

Jason closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. She’s so weird sometimes, he thought.