10
Pulse
DATE:
7088.03.07,
RECON
ERA
HAZARD 4 –
Fractured WreckOort Cloud, Gryanke System
Pōkokohua!
MOVE!
There
wasn’t anything I could do from here.
I hit the
button to activate the
airlock and I felt
gravity take hold, dumping me unceremoniously to the ground.
My legs
gave
out and my head banged
against the tough shell of the helmet.
“Ouch.”
I took a moment to mentally curse the primal force before scrambling
to my feet, fiddling with my helmet as soon as the internal doors
opened.
I
removed
the helmet. The rush of the recycled air of the ship replaced the
clinical taste of the suit’s oxygen. I
slipped out of
the
suit, leaving it behind before booking
it to the cockpit. I took the stairs up in threes, swinging myself on
the railings to gain speed. My
chest burned, the graft site aching from the sudden return of
gravity.
All I could
think was Forty-Five, my finds and the asteroid that was coming
closer to us. I pushed down a twinge of guilt for ignoring
Forty-Five’s warning.
I will
apologise after
he’s back on my ship.
The static
in his voice as he pushed me out had me worried.
A flashing
from the water
reclamation system caught
my attention, almost causing me to
stop, but Forty-Five’s disappearance
kept me moving.
“Time
for that later. Rescue
now, answers later.” I repeated the mantra under my breath as I
pumped my legs as fast as I could. I
had to skid to a stop for the thick galley door for the sensor to
activate,
shimmying
past before it fully opened.
If I wasn’t
in such a rush or focused, I would have patted myself on the back for
not tripping by the
time I threw myself into
my fluffy throne.
I
disengaged the autopilot that had kept the ship still during our
excursion. I
turned the ship around, my hand hovering over the button
to open the cargo hatch. The
wreck was turning end over end. Pieces
were scattering in all
directions. I
reached over and put on the pilot headset that provided a navigation
HUD, converting the view so I could concentrate on flying while
seeing what I was doing.
I saw three
intact humanoid shapes. One was clearly Twenty-Seven, but the other
two were identical in the chaos.
I gritted
my teeth, my ship blaring the proximity alarm as the large asteroid
was heading directly towards me. Us. I slammed down on the hatch
control, aggressively jabbing the dashboard to get the ventral camera
going. The camera feed snapped onto the glasses’ HUD.
I couldn't
hesitate. I grabbed them all. I stayed steady while the alarms around
me got louder. Two of the humanoids were too similar to know if it
was Forty-Five. I got Twenty-Seven’s body, the crates, and finally
the last humanoid shape. I closed the ramp, accelerating gently,
keeping the thrust steady so the loose cargo wouldn't be pasted
against the rear bulkhead.
Once the
cargo bay was fully shut and pressurised, I flew ahead of the
asteroid, switching cameras to view the interior of cargo space.
A large,
sentinel figure was there. Its limbs twitching. Back arching.
I
recognised the plating.
Forty-Five.
“Shit!”
I muttered, I shifted the ship, activating a micro-jump that would
take us in a clear space. I ticked down the time in my head, going as
steady and smoothly as I could to get us to safety. The sooner
I did, the sooner I could go and see Forty-Five.
Slow is
smooth, smooth is fast.
Slow is
smooth, smooth is fast.
Slow is
smooth, smooth is fast.
I let the
mantra dictate my actions as I finally activated the autopilot,
grabbed my tablet while
surging to my feet,
and...stumbled. The
adrenaline from the escape finally
fading away. My chest
my
organic lung working overtime while my mechanical one lagged in the
gravity environment. I
leaned heavily on the railing down the stairs from the cockpit,
taking shuffling steps
across the living room, the gap wider than ever.
I hobbled
as quick as I could across the galley, out into the Engineering
Section, and down the stairs to the airlock/cargo junction. I peeked
into the Cargo Bay, the small window in the door letting me see a
mess of metal bodies.
There was
no movement.
The cargo
bay wasn’t heated like the rest of the ship, but it had oxygen. My
hand on the latch, I thought going in unprotected.
Forty-Five
would probably have something to say if I did. I
turned to the airlock, the internal door still open. I put down my
tablet and quickly slipped back into my space-suit, the thin
isolating fabric and helmet would
be enough to stave off the cold.
Suited up,
I activated the latch on the cargo bay, stepping inside. It was a
mess. The two cages made to protect more delicate items
for transport were fine, everything inside secured down and untouched
for a while.
But the
rest of the space...
I had scooped up a lot more than I thought. I limped over to
Forty-Five, wedged
between Twenty-Seven’s still
chassis, and a chunk of the wreck.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He was
lying on his side. I
shoved Twenty-Seven out of the way, watching
her carefully. No lights. No vocalisation. Just dead metal.
I hovered
over Forty-Five, pressing
down on his data port, then
connecting
the cable with a click
as soon as it opened.
A metal
fist closed over my wrist still
holding the wire.
His fingers squeezed just enough to make me wince in pain.
Forty-Five
turned to look at me, his head twitching. A static-laden voice
sounded over the comms of my suit, hoarse
and grating on my ears.
“Ve-ve-vent
m-m-me.”
“No,” I
said firmly, using my other hand to manipulate the Slab-Deck resting
in my lap. “You got hurt because of me. Let me fix it.”
I pulled my
special pet project. A
digital predator I coded with my mother to hunt down a mistake I
never should have released. A
virus hunter that zaps any replicating program before it has a chance
to propagate.
I ran it
on the tablet itself
first. It went
sluggish and growing brighter than usual, then I ran it on
Forty-Five’s systems.
> ERROR
UNKNOWN ARCHITECTURE
Watching
code scrolling past on two screens while my
merry little program crashed,
hard. My little chibi
demon likeness
morphed into a dead
face as it failed to
connect.
“Shit,”
I muttered, pulling up a code translator I used for diagnosing
ancient machines. I knew the error, it meant that Forty-Five had been constructed
pre-Severance. I estimated between 1,200 and 1,000 years ago. But the
age of the suit didn’t make sense, it seemed only like it was
constructed near the end of the Severance, maybe a couple of
centuries ago. Still, drawing on my own experience and Gran-Gran’s
nightmare trinary lessons, I modified my demon hunter.
I stayed
calm, Forty-Five still holding my wrist, his grip clenching and
unclenching as if he was in pain. His head slipping down before
reverting back upright.
I treated
this
like a code camp competition, writing a real time update to the
Class-7 Firewall that was already slowing things down.
I added a
couple of snippets from my little Demon Antivirus, hoping it would
help against
the virus’s
attempt at control.
The
chibi demon then
started crying, her teeth chattering like she was in pain. The
malware
was starting to
overwhelm my
systems, to say nothing
of Forty-Five’s.
“Forty-Five,”
I said after a moment. “I need my other hand to type faster. Let
go, now.”
The servos
in his forearm whined, fighting against themselves, but his grip
didn't loosen. If anything, it tightened. The soft
fabric
of my suit glove did
nothing to stop the vice, my bones groaning
under the pressure.
“Er-er-error,”
he ground out, the static peaking. “Un-unknown
er-error. Connectivity failed.”
“I wasn't
asking.”
I gritted
my teeth against the pain in my wrist and thumbed a toggle on the
screen with my free hand. I didn't bother with the user interface. I
went straight for the kernel.
>
SUDO_OVERRIDE_ACTUATOR_L_HAND
> FORCE_OPEN
I hit
execute.
A grunt of
pain. Warped by
crackling static.
> ERROR
COMMAND NOT IDENTIFIED
On my
screen, the command didn't execute. A
different screen opened up, something new. Something I had never seen
before. A mess of letters, forming into lines.
The movement across the screen chaotic at first. But then I noticed
patterns. The lines
cycled between pulsating like a heartbeat and moving across the
screen in waves, like… the brain waves the doctors showed me when I
was in hospital.
“Sh-shit.
”
A panicked, stuttering voice sounded. The same distinct low,
resonant cadence from
the ship, but glitching. “Get out. Get
out.”
I looked at
Forty-Five; he had let go of my arm by himself, but was shifting.
Supporting himself by his elbows, but not able to get much further as
his legs seemed to not follow his commands.
I turned
back to the screen, seeing the patterns getting disrupted. ‘01R0N’
started appearing in large batches.
My eyes
widened, I cried out and started purging some of the tablet’s
memory to stall the virus. My flight logs. The architectural scans of
the last three ruins, including the wreck. The repository of work
orders from the last three years.
I felt the
bottom fall out of my guts as I did it, trading history and future
security to buy myself three seconds.
Going back
to my program, I wracked my brain, thinking back to his skin and
muscle from before.
“Oh
machine gods bless me.” I whispered, my synapses firing. “Neural
Mesh. I’m looking at your synthetic brain. You have a literal
brain!”
Organic
synthetic hybridisation
had been
attempted but outlawed by most, if not all, of the Core systems. The
crossing of that line too much for ethics committees.
“I guess
someone didn’t get the memo,” I muttered, feeling out of my
depth.
I watched
as my little chibi
demon didn't just crash. She glitched. Her pixelated face twisted,
the smile inverting into a scream of static as the virus tore her
code apart. It wasn't deleting her; it was unmaking her.
I
whimpered as I watched her dissolve,
fingers still dancing across the screen, and I almost forgot what I
was coding until I was interrupted once again.
“P-Pulse.
Forty-Five
managed to grind
out, the voice stripped of its usual flat affect.
“Pulse?”
I asked, thinking quickly. The virus was overwhelming the screen.
His
neural mesh was seizing. If I couldn't cut the virus out, maybe I
could shock the system into a reboot. Like a defibrillator for his
processors.
Or it could
kill him… he did
ask me to vent him.
I
opened a root
shell,
on my device this time. I submitted an override on the safety
protocols on the output port, turning the data cable into a live
wire… just like he must have done
to fry
Grantham’s cable.
I hit
execute.
My screen
froze before going dark.
Another
groan of pain, before devolving into a deep, throaty scream,
Forty-Five’s back arching. His forehead
hitting the floor.
“MORE!”
The word
roared across the communication line, distorted by static feedback.
He
killed my tablet.
I thought, horrified, but I looked around to
find the cargo bay’s power point.
I
pointed. “Mains
Port,
by
the control panels!
But I don’t have a cable long-”
He
lurched
to his feet.
Thinking
quickly I disconnected the cable from the useless device, letting it
hang like an umbilical cord from his data port.
He
threw his head around, his body almost forgetting to follow through.
His
movements were disjointed, limbs lagging behind his intent. A
marionette with tangling strings.
I stood,
watching him carefully, hugging my tablet to my chest. I started
edging my way towards the door.
He
clutched towards the cable, making
a few attempts
before he finally grasped it. He
ripped the safety cover off the wall port. He
jammed the exposed connectors of my data cable directly against the
live
terminal.
I could see the smoke curling up from the
terminal and his
back.
The
atmospheric warnings flashing red on my HUD.
His knees
gave out, and he turned to sit against the wall next to the power
point. His groans turning into pained grunts, until he was screaming
in pain.
“Get
the fuck out,”
came a whisper.
I scrambled
towards the door, a hand on the latch, my eyes wide and my breathing
heavy.
“Activate:
Oh-Four Override. Voltage disruption,”
the voice continued, the syntax human but the tone flattened into a
digital growl.“Get
the fuck out of my brain, Olron.”
Forty-Five
started clutching his head, sparks flying from the cable ends. “Zero
Zero Clearance update,
upload Demon Mimel Antivirus to Neuralcore. Conversion pending.”
I
stopped, hearing the name of my program. What…
is he doing? Oh wireless…
is he updating himself? Using my program as a base? The
fuck is Zero Zero
Clearance?
The horror
of the implication iced my insides more painfully than the suit leak.
Either he will come out the other end craving chaos, or my code will
corrupt the most advanced AI I’d ever met.
The sounds
of pain died off, replaced with heavy breathing.
Forty-Five
let his hands hang down before tilting his head back, twin ring
lights appearing through his visor. Staring at me, cycling through a
chaotic strobe of colours.
“Status.”
A breathless robotic monotone came through the comms. “Virus
eradicated. Code repair initiated. Sleep mode activate.”
His head
fell sideways. His arms and knees went limp.
Pōkokohua!- Boiled head/idiot/moron. Expletive.
Progress is being made and as of now, it will be back to staggered updates (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). So Next update will be Friday. I want enough time to make sure I get the next two chapters done to a level that I am happy with. I AM NOT going to make the same mistake as before and rush. Gonna give myself enough time to work out the issues (and rereading it till my eyes dry out).
Working on Chapter 13. What I will do is remove the OLD chapters until the Interlude. The old interlude is now no longer canon, I'm sorry. A different 'interlude' will take its place.