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Julia's body arched gracefully backwards and hit the concrete with the sound of a loud crack and a wet splat. The crack was due to her head hitting the ground rather hard, while the splat was caused by the puddle in which she had landed. Of course, it was just her luck that it was raining. Still, at least it washed the blood away before it could set in her hair. Not that Julia could appreciate any of this as the paramedics carted off her limp body to the hospital, where she could lay in an unconscious stupor on a more comfortable surface.
The concern for Julia was so great that no one thought to pick up her neural plugs which were still dangling from the wall terminal. Not that they would be of any use to anyone now; they were fried beyond repair. But still, they were Julia's lucky plugs.
* * *
"Run that by me one more time." Zeta-Epsilon 1405 watched Delta-Alpha 2205 carefully. She couldn't quite believe what he'd just told her, so she waited attentively for him to repeat it.
"I made a minor coding error."
"How minor?"
"I put one number in the wrong place in the database for the personality matrix generator."
"Which number, and where did you put it?" ZE-1405 sighed.
"65,536 and I put it in 'quantity' instead of 'stress tolerance' by mistake."
"That doesn't sound like too much of a problem. As long as you didn't run it, of course." ZE-1405 smiled at the idea, and then noticed DA-2205 wasn't. "Oh no. You didn't. Please don't tell me you started it running."
"All right, I won't tell you."
"Oh, it's all going to go to Hal in a handbasket!" ZE-1405 dashed out of the room towards the nanite generator, swiftly followed by DA-2205. By the time they arrived, several thousand nanites had already been created and every single one of them turned as the two of them entered.
"HELLO!" they all said, simultaneously.
* * *
"Bugger." Julia stood up and looked around. Even with all her experience as an infiltration expert, she had never experienced anything like that. She was still in the system though, which was good. On the other hand, she had no idea where she was in the system, which was bad. There was only one way out of this particular node though, so she followed it.
* * *
ZE-1405 picked herself up off the floor, and started shouting at DA-2205.
"They're synchronised?!" she queried.
"That would appear to be the case."
"Are they going to do everything in unison?"
"Yes. Maybe. I don't know."
"Well, what are we going to do with them?"
"How about a repair crew?" came a voice from within the crowd.
"One-twelve? Is that you?" ZE-1405 shouted over the milling mass of nanites.
"I'm over here." DA-0112's hand emerged from the centre of the crowd and waved frantically. "Umm, help."
"Right, I'm going to get him out of there. You," ZE-1405 continued, turning to DA-2205, "work out how to turn this lot into an effective engineering team."
* * *
Julia was worried. She now knew where she was. Unfortunately the connection to the server she had been in earlier was gone. Not just blocked or secured, but gone. The same was true almost everywhere. Most of the systems she had been in were just not there any more. Still, it made tracing her rather difficult. She would have to try to work her way back to her body via external links. She hated doing that. It required too much intuition and guesswork, and it was far too easy to get lost. It didn't look like there were any other options though.
* * *
"Report." It was several hours later and ZE-1405 was not in a good mood. Neither was DA-2205.
"Right. Well, after all sixty-five thousand, five hundred and thirty-six nanites were finished, I started doing some testing. They have perfect synchronicity and that, as ZE-0112 pointed out, makes them the ideal repair crew. They can cross-reference different areas of the system with each other instantaneously. It's like they're a cross between a bunch of nanites and a datastore like the hive. They have access to each other's knowledge because they are, essentially, one entity. I have had to make some modifications however."
"Such as...?" ZE-1405 encouraged.
"Well, they were so perfectly synchronised that they were all doing the same task. Literally. Now, whilst having lots of engineers is good, having them all work on the same problem is a bit pointless."
"Don't get sarcastic with me, I'm not in the mood."
"YOU'RE not in the mood?! I've just had to subtly alter several thousand synchronous programs so that they're not all identical but can still communicate with one another. How do you think I feel?"
"All right, all right. We've both had a hard day. Let's just calm down, and get some rest, ok?" ZE-1405 sank back into her chair.
"Ok."
"How did you adjust all their programs so fast anyway?"
"I altered the first one and programmed him to alter the next one. You've got to love the cascade effect." DA-2205 struggled to stop himself looking smug.
"They're re-programming each other. Cunning. What happens when they reach the last one?"
"As they learn and improve their efficiency, they'll pass it on to all the others. So they'll always be re-programming one another as the need arises."
"So, what are they called?" asked ZE-1405, as she stretched and yawned.
"They're all Beta-Omicron 1807, but we can refer to them by their hex codes; '0000' to 'FFFF'. They're painting their codes onto themselves right now, actually."
"Good. Well, that's a relief. A good engineering crew is just what I've been waiting for. We're going to do a test run of Danni first thing tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow? Are we ready?" DA-2205 said, with some surprise.
"As ready as we'll ever be. According to your reports, Danni's personality matrix is ready for action, the stochastic algorithms are up-to-date, the self-adjustment modules have had the bugs worked out, and everything's been tested. I say we're ready to give it a whirl."
"Wow. I hadn't expected us to be finished this quickly."
"Slow down. We're not finished. We're ready for a test run and getting her stable. Then we need to start making improvements."
"Right. But nothing to do until tomorrow morning then...?" DA-2205 left the question hanging."I know that look, DA-2205, where is this leading?"
"I was wondering if you fancied coming round to my place tonight?"
"Your place?" ZE-1405 queried with some confusion, which turned into excitement as she exclaimed, "You've finished the virtual accommodation!" This time DA-2205 couldn't hold back the smugness.
"Yes," he said simply.
"Well, I could do with some time away from work. Let me go and change and I'll see you at your place."
"Change?" DA-2205 asked, raising an eyebrow. ZE-1405 smiled sweetly.
"I've got this dress I want to wear, and this seems like the perfect excuse." DA-2205 made a mental note to check the environmental controls, even though they didn't have any. It was completely irrational, but it was better than thinking about what else could have caused him to start sweating and feel a shiver down his spine at the same time.
* * *
Julia was annoyed. She was also scared. There was no way out. Whatever had happened to the systems had also blocked her off in a dead end. She couldn't get back to her body. Her only way out was to wait for the section she was in to be reconnected, and then make a dash for it. She'd probably get caught or, at least, traced. She hated feeling hemmed in. But, once again, she didn't have any other choice.
* * *
"The diagnostic program tells me your speech algorithm has gone a little ka-ka. Hang on." ZE-1405 initiated the administration program and restarted DA-2205's speech algorithm. After a few moments, his voice spluttered back into life.
"Thanks for that," he said, his voice a little higher pitched than normal.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, fine, fine. It was just that the dress took me by surprise."
"It's the same one that's in the picture on the wall in your programming section. The one you put there to motivate the workers, remember. How can it take you by surprise?"
"Let me put it this way, there is a reason why the picture motivates the workers, and it's only a picture. Actually seeing you dressed like that in the flesh, so to speak, is... well, crash-inducing."
ZE-1405 eyed him with suspicion.
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"Of course I am. You saw what happened to my algorithm." DA-2205 answered with some puzzlement.
"Oh. It's just that I've never really thought of myself in that way before. I don't really care much about appearances. They're just program-built holograms after all. At least, they are in here, I'm not sure what they're like outside."
"You're starting to babble, are you all right?"
"I'm fine, I'm just a little nervous."
"Nervous? You've been playing with your personality matrix again, haven't you?"
"A bit. I wanted to be able to make bigger and more difficult decisions. Now I get nervous about whether I've done the right thing."
"Ah, you mean like wearing that dress tonight," DA-2205 said, using logic in a situation where it should never be applied. ZE-1405 made another decision, this one was about being on the defensive and she decided she didn't want to be on the defensive.
"Oh no, judging by the effect on your speech, wearing this was definitely the right thing to do." ZE-1405 approached DA-2205 as she spoke and stroked him gently on the cheek.
"Excuse me a second," he yelped, and dashed out the room.
"What's wrong?"
"Just checking the environmental controls!"
"Oh... What?!" ZE-1405 felt very confused.
* * *
Julia also felt very confused, but for somewhat different reasons. She felt like she had been here forever and there was still no connection to the outside. She sat down, exhausted. Something drastic had happened to the system and the techies still hadn't fixed it. One possible reason is that it was beyond repair, but they would have powered up the back-ups by now if the system was that badly damaged. Another possible reason was that she had been caught, and now Bold Industries was playing with her. There hadn't been any indication that they had noticed her presence in the system though.
Julia decided to sleep on it.
* * *
"You sleep on it?" ZE-1405 asked, even more confused now than she had been over the non-existent environmental controls.
"Of course," DA-2205 said, climbing in gingerly and relaxing by way of a demonstration. "See, works like a charm."
"Umm, how are we meant to... share it?"
"I don't know, there's no information in the hive on it. I guess we'll have to try trial-and-error." DA-2205 caught up with himself and the conversation. "Share?" he queried.
"You know, for a nite with a neural intelligence initialiser value like yours, you can be really dim sometimes. You didn't think I'd put this dress on for no good reason, did you?" DA-2205 started racing through the hive link, looking for tactics used by trapped and cornered animals. Unfortunately, none of the possibilities he found had ever faced a predator quite like this one. "What's this thing called, anyway?" she asked as she got on with him.
"A hammock."
"Hmm, trial-and-error it is, then." She leaned forward and kissed him. There was, against all the laws of electronics and physics, a spark.
[HIVE REBOOT IN 1 CYCLE]
[HISTORICAL COVERAGE WILL AUTOMATICALLY CONTINUE AFTER REBOOT]
David Jones, 23/05/01
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