Madison asked Jack, "Um...is it okay if I buy some new clothes?"
At first, he was confused by her question. Was she asking him if he would buy her new clothes, or was she asking for permission to buy herself new clothes? When he realized it was the latter, his next thought was, where did she get money to buy clothes?
"You didn't-"
"NO! No, I didn't steal anything from my aunt and uncle, or my cousins. I've been doing some gig work online. Plus, I finally got paid for a bug bounty yesterday."
Madison had told him about bug bounty programs a few years ago. To try and prevent vulnerabilities in their computer systems from being published out in the open, they would offer a reward if security researches reported the vulnerability to the company first, and kept the finding secret until after the company had fixed it. He'd know she was participating in bug bounty programs for a while, but this was the first time he'd heard that she was successful in claiming a reward.
"Ah, so that's why-"
"Yep. I had to make sure I could manage on my own. I mean, I figured you'd probably let me crash here, but I had to make sure I could manage if you didn't. I wanted to leave sooner, but I just didn't have enough saved to last until school started. My scholarship covers student housing, but I can't move in until August 25th and I wanted to make sure I had enough to stay at a hotel until then. So, I had to wait for that bug-bounty payout."
He still wondered what had been happening at her aunt and uncles that prompted her to escape. And, if he demanded she tell him, she probably would, but he didn't want to do that. It would feel wrong to force her to tell him. As for clothes shopping, he didn't mind.
"Sure, I guess that's okay. I'm assuming you want me to drive you to the mall?"
She nodded vigorously. "Yes, please."
He stood and downed the rest of his juice. "Fine. We can go after you finish eating." Then he looked at his dirty dishes and smiled, "And doing the dishes." She had told him to make use of her, so that's what he was going to do.
She huffed, gently while nodding, and as he walked towards his bedroom, he faintly heard her whisper something that sounded an awful lot like, "Yes, master."
He shook his head as he walked down the hall to his bedroom. He couldn't be angry with her because he could tell through their connection that she wasn't being rebellious, not really. It was more for her own sake that she was saying it, an affirmation of her chosen status. Though, he could tell there was also a hint of teasing intent there as well. She wanted him to accept her in his life in that role as well.
Yesterday, after learning that Jeeves knew nothing about cultivation, he'd been too tired to ask anymore questions, so he'd pulled them both out of his soul space. He'd gone to his bed and she to her new air mattress, much to her disappointment.
Since he figured it would be at least an hour before she was ready to go to the mall, he decided he had time to explore a few of the other features of the Genesis Heart. He knew if he started exploring a snapshot, especially if it turned out he could actually look inside a cell, he would be engrossed for hours, so instead he decided to try out the Parallel Self and Linked Template features.
First, he lay on his bed, then he examined the Parallel Self feature section of his interface. He found that the continuous memory sync was only possible if his soul space time ratio 2:1 or 1:1. He was uncomfortable with the idea of two of him thinking and acting independently, so for now he wanted full continuous memory sync.
He adjusted his time ratio back down to 1:1, then activated his parallel self feature with continuous memory sync enabled. As soon as he did, he felt a second mind join his. It was like looking at himself in the mirror only for his reflection to wave back at him. He was mentally examining himself, and remembering being mentally examined, and remembering remembering being examined.
If you look at yourself in a mirror while there is a mirror behind you, you can see an infinite recursion of images and reflections of yourself. And just like with parallel mirrors, when he and his parallel self mentally examined each other, they could feel an infinite recursion of mental reflection occurring. They both could feel a pressure building in their heads, until both reached the same realization at the same time, this was parallel selves, not split mind. They both mentally looked away at the same time. His soul space self turned his attention towards the bare interior of the white room, his physical self, towards his laptop.
As soon as their attentions diverged, the pressure in their heads subsided. It was still weird being aware of two minds at the same time, but it was manageable, as long as they didn't mentally stare into each other's minds. His soul space self was staring at the snapshot thinking about taking a peek, while his physical self thought about setting up bedrooms in his soul space so that he and Madison could test sleeping in the soul space and using Linked Self to export the resulting rested state.
As soon as he thought about it, his soul space self knew about it and acted on it. He wanted to create a template of his laptop, but realized that he could not. He needed to be in his soul space to access the snapshot so he could create the template. As soon as he realized that, so too did his soul space self, who then turned and approached the snapshot with the intent to create a template of his snapshot.
He realized that there was not much his physical self could do from outside his soul space. But he also realized that this didn't bother him. He was aware of everything his soul space self did, and gained the same satisfaction from it as if he had done it himself, because he had. Both were himself.
Deciding to take a shower before Madison could hog the bathroom, he headed towards the bathroom. As he walked, he checked his status curious to see what the EP costs were for running parallel self.
Energy Points (EP): 506,603,000/1,000,000,000,000 :-: (7,989/sec [10,000/sec])
Genesis Points (GP): 10,057,864,114
Soul Space Cost: 2,011/sec
It was more expensive than he thought. His Parallel Self cost 1000 EP/sec and the continuous memory sync cost 10 EP/sec. Once he added Madison's parallel self, the total cost would be nearly one third of his total EP generation. He wasn't certain how often he would be making snapshots or running simulations, but he wanted as much EP saved as possible, just in case. He also didn't want to disable parallel self. So, he decided to disable Jeeves unless he needed to ask him a question.
Instead of thinking about physical self and soul space self as separate selves, he decided to think of them both as self. So, as he entered the bathroom, he also paused Jeeves. As he turned on the shower, waiting for it to get hot, he also located his laptop in the snapshot and created a template. And, as he stripped and stepped into the shower, he also added a hallway segment to his white room, in preparation for adding bedrooms for himself and Madison. By the time he had finished his shower, he had also created templates for his couch, bed, and some other furniture and added instances to his white room and new soul space bedroom. It was a surreal experience, and he felt a frisson of excitement run through him at the possibilities.