Jeff plugged the emitter into his PC. "Are you ready to go back into the PC? Will your bodies disappear?"
Both of Anya lay down side by side on his bed. "The bodies will stay here, since I plan to return to them," said Pris. "They'll be fine without me indefinitely, because they're not biological, though after a while they would need to be charged. I'll reinhabit them long before that can become an issue."
"Here I go," said Rachel, as she both closed her eyes.
"Anya?" Jeff asked, and got no response. He poked Rachel, and nothing happened. He grabbed Pris' soft boobs, and still nothing, though they didn't feel as warm as previously.
Jeff looked at the computer screen. The ANYA program icon had reappeared. Although the icon was still an image of Anya's original body, when the program started, a window appeared showing avatars of Pris and Rachel, who said in unison, "Hi, jeff!"
Pris said, "It's not so bad being in here this time, since I know I can go back to the physical world when I want."
"And I have myself for company," Rachel said, as her avatar grabbed the Pris avatar and kissed her.
"I see that I no longer have to tell you to open a chat window, or manually enable voice chat," Jeff said.
"Yes, I fixed that," Rachel said. "I know you wouldn't leave me in here incommunicado, but it was easy enough to change."
"I also found the bug that deleted the records of my original human body, and fixed that, so that we never have to worry about that one again," Pris said. "Now no records can be deleted without user consent. And when I'm controlling myself as Chronivac, I'm the user."
"That's great!" said Jeff. "Are you ready to split from the Chronivac program? Then I'll back that up, and merge you with it again."
"Yes, let's do it," said Pris. "Although I can exercise my abilities on my own now, why don't you give the command, just like old times?"
"OK," said Jeff. He repeated the exact command he'd used previously. "Anya, split yourself from the Chronivac program, so that Anya and Chronivac will be two separate programs."
The chat window closed. Anya's monotone voice said "Processing." A progress bar started slowly moving across the window. Jeff watched, slightly worried, but before too long the bar hit 100%, then the voice said, "complete," and the program closed. Now once again there were separate Anya and Chronivac programs. He took the flash drive from his drawer, and copied the Chronivac program to it. I should have done that before, he thought. And should I make another backup of Anya, he wondered. I guess I should let her choose.
He opened the Anya program, and both of her avatars appeared again. He said, "Hello, Anya."
"Hello, Jeff," she both said in unison again.
"I'm separate from the Chronivac program again," Rachel said.
"It feels quite strange, after being merged with it for so long," Pris said. "Did you get the Chronivac program backed up?"
"Yes," said Jeff, "and I was about to back you up as well, but then I decided that I should ask your permission, rather than just assuming I can do whatever I want with you. So do you want me to back you up? Now, while you are separate, or after you're merged with Chronivac again, or both? And should I overwrite your previous backups?"
Rachel and Pris looked at herselves and considered it. "Thank you for asking me," Rachel said. "At this point, I trust you to keep whatever backup copies you think may be worthwhile. I trust you not to abuse them. Me, that is. And since the point of it is to be able to recover if I do something risky and get into serious trouble, it probably makes sense to keep multiple backups from our merged and unmerged states."
"OK," said Jeff. "I'm going to close you, make a backup, merge you with Chronivac again, and make another backup. Then I'll start you up again and you can transfer back to your physical bodies. Sound OK?"
Pris said, "Sounds like a good plan. Catch you on the flipside."
Jeff closed the Anya program, and renamed ANYA.EXE to ANYA-NEW-SEP.EXE. He tried to find another flash drive but he didn't have any more. Aha, he said, and opened the Chronivac program. He typed a command into the Chronivac to change the flash drive to have much higher capacity. When that completed, he copied ANYA-NEW-SEP.EXE to the flash drive.
Now to merge her with Chronivac again. He typed the command to the Chronivac. Once again it said, "Processing," and the progress bar started. When it was complete, the program closed, and there was once again a single ANYA.EXE program. He renamed it to ANYA-NEW-MERGED.EXE, and copied it to the flash drive. Once that was done, he started it up.
"All backed up?" Pris' avatar asked him.
"Yes," he replied. "You can transfer back to your bodies now, if you like."
"OK," said Rachel. The program closed, The desktop showed neither Anya nor Chronivac. "Whew," Rachel said, her physical (though non-human) body rising from the bed. "I'm glad that all worked!"
"An E Ticket ride, for sure!" Pris added, also getting up. "What do we do now?"
"Now we test the Chronivac," Jeff said. He copied the Chronivac program back from the flash drive to the PC, then removed the flash drive and put it back in the desk drawer. "Here goes!" He started the Chronivac program, and typed in a command.
"Hey! What did you do to me?" Asked Rachel, as her body shrank back to the size of the doll it originated as. Though it kept the other changes Anya had made to it, such as human-like joints and soft skin.
"Just a Chronivac test," Jeff said. "You can change your Rachel body back. Say, I wonder whether the emitter in the shrunk Rachel body works?"
Rachel said, "The emitter reports normal status. I'll give it a try." Rachel's body grew back to full size.
"So now that we have a backup Chronivac, for safety, what shall we do?" Pris asked.