There were some hints of remaining identity, but not much. The Machine had been its usual thorough self and acted without getting sidetracked or distracted from its plan.
The girls stirred as Professor Natsume instructed Ranma, bringing them out enough that they could hear this briefing.
"These nine are your responsibility, Sergeant, we've rescued them from the Machine but their pasts are gone."
"You couldn't find nothing out about them before the Machine got 'em?" Ranma frowned, REALLY not liking much about this situation.
"Nothing. Of course we can't use any computers or computer records that might flag the Machine, so we can't look at school records or the like. Yet." Professor Natsume stood near the first one as she began to blink and her breathing quickened. "This one is named Mercury for now. Next is Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Uranus, and the young one at the end is Saturn."
"What's with the outfits?" Ranma asked.
"Those were part of the recovered equipment, I had Nuku Nuku help me get them dressed," said Natsume. "The material is similar to kevlar but more stretchy and ends up skintight as you can see. The color coding is unfamiliar but each was clearly sized for one specific individual, there's also some plasticine armor and weapons that apparently went with them. I conferred with one of my colleagues who felt that the skintight qualities were supposed to further give male humans hesitation in killing them."
"Gotcha. Cheesecake factor," said Ranma, seeing the point. "Why me?"
"Would you really want to see what Sergeant Saeba would do with nine attractive amnesiacs?" asked the Professor.
Ranma winced. "Still, why me? Why not have 'em stick with you?"
"Actually we are debating whether to split them up or not, and so we may end up doing so later," admitted Professor Natsume. "In the meantime we're just too busy with the scheduled move of the base to do something about it now. They're safer with you than with most of the young men of the base, who haven't seen too many women since the fighting started."
Ranma acknowledged the point, knowing how often his cursed form got hit on even from guys who knew he was a guy and not interested in that sort of thing. Desperation made some guys who were otherwise capable of rational decisions - just plain stupid.
The Professor considered adding more but the girls were coming awake. Because they had been wiped clean of their pasts, there were core values the computer had been able to slam into their largely empty heads. He hadn't been able to add new stuff, but he HAD been able to change those directives to something friendlier.
Such as the directive Kill Ranma Saotome. Though he'd discovered it only on that tall tanned woman, he had no reason not to think it wouldn't have been copied onto the remainder. Working theory, suggested by Sergeant Saeba in that coded tele-conference, was that the Machine had somehow come across the identity of Ranma Saotome and had calculated out a higher than average danger level from his adaptability and fighting prowess. Since that was not acceptable, Professor Natsume had changed that and copied it to the rest of the mindwiped girls.
Now, of course, all he'd done is replace the word Kill with
(Posted Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:16)
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