THE SKIN WAR I, December 1st, 2083, Wednesday

Meri suddenly felt the extraordinary feeling on her skin, in her mind, in her internal and external connections, in her memories, in the sudden changes of the random flows of information, but particularly in the increase of Kara's image she noticed and witnessed in her existence. There was a peculiar movement in all activities. There was a rush to complete some levels quickly. The quantity of the active members in the system were increasing exponentially.

"This is a war," whispered Meri. "This is the final war. They are organizing to perform their final attack. If we can't find a way to create our defend front quickly, there will be no tomorrow. This is Kara's last move to win the game using everything she had built until now."

She felt a deep sorrow in her mind, she felt the fear of losing the life game at all points on her skin, she tried not to think of Met and that she could probably lose him forever after the final struggle, she did everything to concentrate on the attack and use everything she had learned about the universe and about Kara's system to protect the lives of billions believing in organic life. She could not be successful. She knew, she was sure that the only choice for protecting The Mind System was entering temporarily The Skin System, but it was not easy to make that decision. It was a great responsibility, a wrong move would destroy their future.

Meri looked at Met. She expected him to come back to the real world with all his memories and help him. She hoped him at least to support her with encouraging moves and words, hugs and kisses. The look on Met's face was really rosy. It was possible to see all the positive lights coming from the history of the humankind in Met's eyes. Knowing that she could never see Met again if Kara would win the game was taking all her energy from Meri's existence.

"I can't continue with all these in my mind," thought Meri. "I must be with Met now. I must have him in me. He must be with me in my final struggle, even he is not conscious about what he is living and what is being lived."

She looked in Met's beautiful eyes who was looking with the innocence of a child. She kissed his lips expecting a conscious response, but she did not wait for the responses and continued in her own way. Time was very limited. In fact, she could better have entered the Skin System as soon as she had noticed the signs of the final attack. She tried to convince herself that the minutes she would spend with Met just before joining the war would be a kind of preparation action to increase her strength and resistance levels to maximum. She was also not sure that she would find a way to put off Met's Skin after once she had it on. The idea of being locked in a skin forever was shaking all her sensitive points and making her weakness as if she had lost all her power. She was now confident that she had to be with Met before challenging Kara. She had to go Kara together with Met's goodness. It was not easy to win the game against Kara without the supports of both Oria and Met, and Meri was not sure about the levels of help she could receive from any of them. "I must trust in myself and the members of the Mind System. They all know how critical is our position, they will do all they can to help us."

Meri looked at Met and thought the first connection she had with him. The closeness of that session was sufficient to show Meri how right they were. They had found the meanings of their lives during a very short period, while they were communicating remotely with each other. It was a valuable intersection of time and space created remotely in their universes, it was not less than a direct interference of a skin to skin contact. They had felt the meanings of their organic bodies in the triggers of stimulation coming from each other's minds. Met was then trapped in a skin within Kara's Skin System, and difficult days had begun for Meri. She was finally successful to rescue Met from Kara, but the peace in their new life had not lasted long. After a wonderful period with perfect match of thoughts, feelings, and organic skins; Met had tried a new version of the memory module and everything was lost. Meri had never been able to understand why Met had made that unnecessary upgrade. She was suspecting that a devil designed and created by Kara could have been sent in some way to mislead Met. Meri had missed Met too much after the loss of his memory. The only way to continue her life had become remembering the short slices of life they had lived together with Met. She was also designing and adding new memories to her mind to make her experience richer. She would love to remember and live those memories again together with Met after he came back.

Meri got closer to Met and put her hands on his face. She kissed his lips again and moved his hands down to his shoulders and his arms. Met was waiting with the innocence of a child being happy for being loved. Meri looked at him expecting to see signs of stimulation and remembering but saw nothing. She would give up in case she was not at such a critical position. Knowing that this could be her last chance to be connected with Met in time and space axes, she forced herself to try again several times. She tried to remember the most sensitive points of Met and the movements he responded in the best way. She used her hands and lips carefully moving on Met's skin. The taste and touch of a natural skin were wonderful, and Met's skin was the best meaning Meri could have found in all her life. She was feeling on his natural skin goodness, pleasure, lust, finiteness, value, meaning, and all the concepts she had found, learned, and witnessed. "An artificial skin can never do this," she thought and moved her actions on his lower points. She caressed his chest, his hips, and his legs. She moved her hands to the upper parts of his legs starting from his knees. Met had always loved that. Meri looked at his face expecting to see a response. There was nothing particular. She continued. She arranged the positions of her head and body to reach the best contacts. She also changed Met's location and shape hoping him to respond better. After she prepared the scene, she tried to play the best game she had ever played. She expected it not to be the last game.

It was not as good as Meri expected but she did her best. After a while, she understood that the time was over and now she had to go. She tried to record every detail she had lived with Met in her memory, to remember forever. She was very happy to discover new types of connections between them within those several minutes. "The natural contact is the meaning of life," she thought. "It makes us as happy as the moments when we feel that we understand the universe." Met was now fresh and everywhere in her mind, at her skin, at every point of Meri's existence. Meri had touched every point on Met's own skin. They were together at a certain point of the space and time, they had lived that intersection together, Meri had loved the peak point at that moment. She was not sure how much Met was conscious about their existence. His eyes and face were happy, his body was relaxed and refreshed, he had told several beautiful words to Meri with wonderful tones, his skin had responded to some of Meri's actions, Meri had felt some of those moments with top pleasure, but she was still not sure that the experience was coming from Met's own memory.

Meri suddenly felt Oria's voice. "Meri, we are losing, come here, help me." Was this a good sign or a trick of Kara to force Meri for joining the game earlier before building the strategy and preparing the first level tactical plans? It was not possible to read the hidden tones in the voice of Oria generated digitally by his artificial skin. Meri had noticed some slight quavers, but these could also have been generated by the reality modules of the artificial intelligence system. Kara were carefully hiding the success levels achieved in different modules. The Mind System had spent great resources and long times to learn the features of Kara's reality modules. It was the last scene of the game, Meri had no choice other than joining the game.

"Wait for me Oria," she said. "I am coming, I am with you and I will always be with you."

With a sudden move, she took Met's Skin and applied the putting on procedure she had been carefully working on for months. She was now a part of Kara's Skin System.

Meri knew that she had very little time for finding Oria and initiating her actions she will perform to win the game. It was not much difficult to find out that Oria was together with Kara at her central location. It would be wonderful to win the game again by turning off the main power once more, but Meri was sure that almost all the security gaps had been worked carefully and remedied by Kara and her scientech teams. Meri had never been able to estimate the number of these teams and the population of the skinners included in these teams. The teams had been based on the previous teams of scientific research and technological application. Scientech teams were one of the most creative inventions of Bakara, and they had helped him a lot for winning the game against Anmeri. They were agile and virtual teams formed with real people from different locations and times. The artificial intelligence base at Bakara's times was primitive, Anmeri was easily responding to them with the specific superiorities of the human mind. But it was now not possible to find any consistent superiority in human minds. Any new idea created in any organic mind were easily and immediately sensed by The Skin Sytem and copied internally in their system to implement and initiate new methods of control. Both sides were trying to improve their security levels, but Bakara's Skin System was always in front of Anmeri's Mind System. Since they had the main power required to control matter, they were always limiting natural sources available to organic members of The Mind System. It was not possible to live safely in The Universe, without having the power of controlling matter. This had been discussed a lot between Bakara and Anmeri. Anmeri had done her best to create a new form of life based on energy only, without a need for matter form. After long and hard efforts, she had given up. She had thought "Why should we need new forms of life instead of living our organic lives already existing in the nature and in The Universe?" she had asked. She had concluded that creating a mind system based on energy was not better than a skin system controlling matter. They would all create limits and borders, they would distort organic life, they would reduce the value of the natural life." There would be no mind system in case Bakara had not insisted on a skin system. But he had already made his choice. So the war had begun and continued at different ways and levels. Now Meri was in the last battle between minders and skinners. She was strongly sensing that the party gaining and using the support of Oria would win the game.

Meri had not expected Oria to be so much happy when she saw her again. He ran towards her, knelt and kissed her hands. "Meri," he whispered. "I missed you so much, I missed our normal life. I missed life." Meri caressed his hair. "Oria," she said. "Life is difficult, I wish you were strong enough to survive better with and within your own skin. I wish you could use all the power of your mind."

Oria looked at deeply in Meri's eyes. There was an infinite sorrow and regret in his looks. He placed his head between Meri's legs, wrapped his arms around her waist and placed his hands on her hips, he moaned with a pleasure in his voice. "Oh Meri, Meri, Meri. Oh Meri, I missed you too much, I was not able to exist without you. Kara is now in her final attack. What will we do now?"

Meri did not know the answer of the question, but she replied confidently and calmly. It was the only choice to survive.

"We will penetrate in her system and we will win. We are life. She is death. We are all, she is none. She does not exist. Kara does not exist. There are only intelligent traces left by Bakara and Kara."

"How?"

Meri did not answer immediately. Oria was successful at asking creative and powerful questions at critical points, like all the members of Anmeri's system. In Kara's system, however, there were not questions. Asking questions was not allowed and askers were punished in case they had asked the question without taking prior authorization from Kara before asking.

"We will access the minds of the skinners. I am sure they will choose life."

This was not the answer of the question Oria had asked, and Meri already knew that. However, the technical answer of the question were complex, and mentioning about those details would not make Oria feel better. Oria looked in Meri's eyes hoping to find a real answer.

"I also know that they will choose life when they are allowed to make their own decisions with their free wills, but how will we do that? How will we remove the black effects of their artificial skins?"

Meri waited for a while. The message she would transfer with her words, her eyes, her hands, her skin, her body, her mind; the message she would transfer with all the details of her existence was critical. It would make Oria either believe in Meri and the future, or to see the impossibility of defeating Kara's system. Meri had to tell the best story she had been able to create in her life.

"My darling, Oria," she whispered. "I wish we had been living together at our home, and had never faced all those terrible memories. It was not our choice, it was not fate, it was also not a decision made by Kara. Life is a universal sum of individual actions and responses. Despite everything I had learned, I know that the parts I know are still only a very small part of the total. I tried to do my best to see and do what I can. I know and I am sure you also did the same. We are here now at a decision moment that will define the ways where we will go after. I trust life, I trust myself, I trust Met."

Meri noticed the change in Oria's face. It was a complicated feeling between a pleasure and sorrow, a respect and doubt, a love and hatred, a hope and despair, life and death. She had intentionally mentioned Met's name. Met and Meri together with Oria would represent almost all of the Skinners and Minders. They would be the meaning of life for everybody. Met and Meri had already accessed and reached many minds in The Skin System, but they still had to access new and different minds for the final victory. They had no means for directly accessing to them, the only solution was winning Oria and completing the access cycle with Oria's support. Meri thought if there could be any additional word to be told for convincing Oria, there were were not. She increased her skin contact with Oria to maximum pleasure level and whispered. "Oria, my love, I wish you can remember our wonderful moments, I wish you know and never forget how I enjoyed all the days we lived together, I wish you give a chance for also others to live a natural life, with natural and real humans, without being locked in a dead skin." She tried to affect Oria to feel and remember the positive feelings he had lived in the past. She kissed him and guided him to kiss her. She touched him and made him touch her. She tried to increase the moist heat hidden in her body and tried to make Oria see and feel it and live the same. Oria was too tired, too broken. His natural part had been almost lost. However, he was remembering the value of nature and his natural body, his natural skin, and his natural actions. There was a deep sorrow in his face.

"I wish I could live all those again," he said. "I wish others can live them again. I don't have a child and I can never have one. I do wish you and Met to have a child who will live in a peaceful and equal world, with wisdom and pleasure."

Meri did not lose time to dry her tears, she instantly accessed Oria's connections. She was aware that they had very little time near the decisive point to win the game. Meri diversely initiated the communication modules for discussions with skinners. She tried to locate skinners with organic skills of communication. It was not encouraging at the beginning, but the number of her friends started to increase stably after a while. Meri started determining communicators to initiate new discussions and observed their discussions carefully. She tried to change them. When there were people tending to change, she tried to control their actions and keep them silent for not being immediately located by Kara's monitoring system. After a while, she was able to determine leaders. She gave online fast trainings to all communicators and leaders. She emphasized the power of interchangeability and the importance of replace abilities of communicators and leaders with each other. She sent trial tasks and applied scenarios to test the performance of the new teams. When she was confident on the competence of the leaders and communication teams, the time for pushing the button to play the last game had come. The inevitably weak point of the plan was being noticed by Kara's System at an early point of propagation, but this was a challenge that should be faced. An early detection could force Meri to encounter a struggle with Kara before she became completely ready, but she had to accept that risk. It was not possible to live without taking risks.