Sing'n in Binary: 43

A/N: Sorry about this! But just so you know I'm putting the first part of this at the end of 42. Just hadn't had the idea yet and by the time I did I had already posted 42 to patreon.

Nothing else changes. Just wanted to apologize because pacing might get thrown off a touch because of this.

On with the show!

---

AK stumbles to a stop at an intersection and looks around blearily, trying to figure out where he is. Double checking his map, he turns left, putting on a facade of alertness as he notes a few of the dregs eyeing him with hunger. 

He’s not slept in days, every time he closes his eyes visions of some monstrous thing speaking through the broken voices of his old chooms. Just as quickly replaced by netwatch kill squads burning him so thoroughly that the only evidence of his existence would be the hole in the world he left and a hundred seventy five more pounds of nutrients processed in a protein vat.

The worst part is how he can't argue it's warranted. 

Coming to a stop in front of a Slaught-O-Matic vending machine and fumbling through his pockets for a moment, AK pulls out an actual physical credit card, swipes it over a long neglected reader, and presses a button.

He’s not arrogant enough to believe he’s not compromised, and he knows his friends are controlled by it.

They pooled their money, gave up thousands of dollars without so much as a second thought without even seeming to consider the cost. 

He’s not sure why he’s the only one to keep his mind intact enough to think about all of this logically despite interacting with the most contaminated data. He has some theories but…

The vending machine gives a buzzing click and a quarter pound amalgam of plastic slides down the shute with a thunk.

Picking up the gun, still cooling from its manufacture in the 3D printer inside the machine, AK absentmindedly flicks a few pieces of residual supports.

There’s a way out. 

He tightens his grip on the lukewarm plastic, the dumbest gun inside the entire city, every action mechanical with nothing electronic to interface with or interfere.

He’d tricked them.

Ray had called a few days ago, the thing pupperting his mind making him do what he always does, playing mediator and trying to organize the new scheme. He’d argued and cajoled in a way heart wrenchingly similar to how he’d done it a thousand times before. 

So he’d played along.

He pretended to be convinced, fought back bile as he acted like his horrified realization in the restaurant was just an explosion of emotion, afterwards he’d given into the programming that’s still screaming in the back of his mind, ever quieter every day he battles against it.

He’d not taken the obvious bait when Solei told Ray the address to where the AI is housed.

He’d donated more than anyone to that fucking money pool.

All to gain their trust.

Because this morning when they spoke in barely veiled code about a ‘package’ being delivered and complaining about the drop location, they did it in their group chat with him being an active participant. 

He’d made some stupid fucking joke he can barely remember, pretending to commiserate with the puppets who used to be his crew.

But it was all worth it, because the delivery is tomorrow and he’s going to be there when it happens.

Pocketing the gun, AK turns to leave, but as he turns his head he feels something twinge in his neck. Reaching up and touching the bandages with two fingers, he sees bright red residue when he pulls back.

Sighing, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a clotting patch, replacing the spent one underneath the bandage. As he does he dismisses the growing mess of alerts in his eyes warning him he’s disconnected from the net, and every time he sees the flashing timer warning him if he doesn't reconnect within two more days his chrome will shut down.

No external connections. No hardware even capable of connecting to the net.

Rewrapping his already stained bandages around his neck, AK looks around to ensure the dregs who are still watching him on the periphery didn't get any ideas before turning and continuing his journey.

He’s going to put a stop to this insanity.

--_--

Staring up at the holographic koi from her bench, Jinx intentionally keeps herself appearing untense and calm as four camera perspectives flit across her vision.

Unfortunately, the cameras in Memorial Plaza are among the most well defended in the city, so she’s not able to use them, as she wouldn't want to risk having to deal with angry contract runners. 

Not to mention she’d need to install a pretty hefty signal booster to ping all the way out to those cameras without having to breach them the long way around, through the data fortress.

But the fish eyed cameras disguised on her person have no such security, and those allow her a near perfect view of her surroundings despite her gaze never appearing to leave the genuinely mesmerizing sight of the hologram above her.

She hasn’t had to do a handoff like this in a while, but the plaza hasn't changed all that much since she was last here, and the benefits of doing business here remain the same.

Corps don't like it when people die publicly on their doorstep, especially when they’re not responsible for the deaths. So, when they built this place, they made sure any violence here could be dealt with quickly and easily

If she’s attacked here all she needs to do is survive perhaps forty five seconds before corporate security shows up and starts shooting at anyone holding a gun.

So the handoff is almost certainly going to be safe, it’s surviving the return journey that might be an issue.

It’s the reason she took public transit here, she’d made the mistake of trusting her bike's security a few years back and only a sudden bout of paranoia let her find the tracker.

It’s in that frame of mind that Jinx almost groans and buries her face in her hands as a familiar UserID pings off her neuralware, sending the first half of the handshake code she’s looking for.

Instead, she calmly looks down from the hologram twirling above and sends the second half of the code to a muscle headed man in a tight button up, his neuralware pinging Davis’s familiar UserID.

She does bury her face in her hands as his head swivels toward her and sentiment analysis pings a particular mixture of elevated happiness and lowered suspicion she’s identified as familiarity, as he waves the arm not holding a cloth tote bag.

The gonk continues to prove how unfamiliar he is at anything covert by calling out in an elevated voice as soon as they get within earshot.

“Morning. Sorry if I’m a bit early,” he says, coming to a stop at a respectful distance from her instead of sitting down.

Scrubbing her face firmly with her palms, Jinx sighs as she dismisses redundant camera perspectives and stands up.

At least the risk of being stabbed by someone competent just went down significantly, because if they’d wanted to swindle they’d just klep it from him.

Though now she has to worry about some junkie trying something, but it’s a fair trade.

Reaching out she grabs the tote bag without a word and tries to pull away, but the arm doesn't move.

Looking up with a glare, she notes for the first time exactly how big the meathead is, pushing seven foot and built like someone who knows how to use steroids just enough to get the ideal ‘built’ look. 

Davis’s head is tilted down as well, sentiment analysis not indicating any emotion stronger than friendly placidity.

“How’s everything going with the repairs?” He asks in a mildly inquisitive tone.

Jinx tugs again.

“On schedule. I told the suit yesterday. Nothing’s changed. You all talk to each other, ask him. 

He nods.

“I’m glad to hear it. Just wanted to check in person.” He pauses, pretending not to notice increasingly insistent pulls at the bag. “Need any help? I’m not any good with the more advanced bits of netrunning but I heard the computer was pretty heavy. I could move it to somewhere easier for you to work on?”

Ignoring the question for a second, Jinx tries to remove the unmarked cardboard box from inside the tote, but finds his hand gripping the handles in such a way there’s not an easy way to remove it without cutting the fabric.

“Ngh–no. It’s not that heavy. I moved it just fine.” She grunts, considering pulling her knife to cut the bag. But before she can do anything she hears an alert that happiness just spiked and she’s almost caught off guard as he suddenly releases his grip.

“Glad to hear it!” He pauses for a moment to allow her to adjust her grip on the tote. “Whenever you’re done, do you mind sending a heads up before you boot her? I’d like to think she’d want to see some friendly faces when she wakes up.”

Jinx doesn’t dignify that with a response, instead taking a step back to pick up her own bag.

She’d never had to deal with the potential downsides of this handoff spot not allowing her to shoot people who annoy her.

Sure, she wouldn't actually shoot him, but the threat alone makes shit like that a lot less funny.

Slinging her bag over a shoulder and tying the tote handles together in a knot, she turns on the spot and walks away. But through the camera in her bag she can see him waving at her retreating back.

“Have a nice day!”

She considers flipping him off, but decides against it.

–_–

Stepping off the metro staircase, Jinx checks her neuralware and finds, to her satisfaction, no UserIDs have been sending returns at any statistically abnormal rate.

She’d taken a slightly less tangled path home than she’d planned after realizing no one outside of the group that’s already onboard was aware of the dropoff. The lack of any consistent pings or strange patterns of separate UserIDs rotating out is a final proof of her anonymity.

Walking the final half block to her megabuilding, she pings the elevator ahead of time and barely has to break her stride as the door opens.

Leaning against the wall as the doors close and the elevator starts to ascend, Jinx takes a deep breath as the noise and color of the outside world recedes as she approaches home. Despite having to focus up again once the doors open on her floor, the last leg of her trip is a relaxed one.

It’s only when her door’s deadbolt buzzes shut with a satisfying clunk that the netrunner finally feels herself ease, as much as she’s capable.

Tossing her recon bag on the laundry chair, she pulls her iron from its holster and places it on the desk while she unpacks the final components required to get the computer running again.

She doesn't even want to know how the suit managed to get ahold of water cooled RAM.

But as she lays out the components in assembly order and considers getting started, her eye is drawn to her chair, Aria’s drive already connected.

She’s close. 

She can feel it.

Jinx’s eyes flit between the chair and the PC.

She’d planned on getting started on installing the components so when the suit calls, she won’t have to lie about having gotten started. Even if she only spends a few hours getting everything ready for her to actually buckle down, and do the annoyingly involved process of installing industrial components like this.

She’s so close…

Laying the last part on the static mat to her satisfaction, Jinx steps away from the desk and plugs herself into the netrunner chair. Dropping into her local net with casual ease,stuttering with the occasional check to ensure there are no surprises since she’d last accessed the server.

Opening the hard drive she boots her kludged together sorting and decryption algorithm, a barely functional mess that does exactly what she wants it to do and no more, the amalgam of code too chaotic to appear as anything but a multicolored mash of input buses and hastily cobbled together logic gates in her render.

Loading up the ever narrowing search parameters into the thing, Jinx watches as the code gets to work as she takes a larger view of the systems it’s looking over.

Because, as long as she’s not completely off base, then the kernel is here.

Unfortunately she’s looked over this entire section of the code several times over with no luck. But her search parameters are narrowing, tracking the flow of binary with her eyes and intuition she’s seen definitively it’s all flowing back to here.

It’s just a matter of finding it.

So she gets to work, trailing behind her search algorithm as it scans the mountains of code orders of magnitude faster than she’d be able to, watching as it works and refining the search algorithm as she does.

More than once the program crashes, requiring her to restart the system at the last checkpoint and spend a few minutes figuring out what made the system break this time. But the process has long become routine, even the setbacks and crashes are in a steady rhythm that's long since stopped being irritating.

At some point she loses herself in the flow of work, the repetitive searching action almost rote, but just complicated enough that it needs a human touch to solve novel problems and filter genuine patterns to add to the search algorithm.

It’s so regular that she almost doesn't notice when she cracks it.

Glancing up as the search algorithm comes to a stop, Jinx almost derezes the code and boots it back from a checkpoint, but catches herself just in time as she glances at the final log of the stopped program.

Encoded partition found. 

Filter match: P=1

Scanning local data for duplicate pattern

0 found

HALT

Staring at the logs for a moment longer, half surprised the scop program she threw together actually found something. But just as quickly she snaps herself out of the stupor and gets to work.

She could be mistaken. The partition is encoded, but not terribly well. Enough to hide from her own scans despite not knowing what she’s looking for, but presumably not well enough to hide from an AI for long.

In fact, she knows Aria is better than her at this exact kind of work. As she did very similar stuff for eddies which is the absolute minimum assumed skill.

The basic tricks obfuscating the code prove to be as easy to bypass as they first appeared, and in a matter of seconds the encoded partition resolves into clarity.

Revealing a mess. 

Jinx stares.

She’s not sure of exactly what she expected to find. But instead of whatever half formed notions she'd imagined, the partition resolves into what looks like the vindictively gutted remains of several hard coded levers to the AI’s cognition, a kill switch, and an incomprehensible amalgam of code she can't understand from a cursory inspection. 

Though this time it’s not because it’s in a familiar format, it’s just incomprehensibly complex. From this alone, she has to conclude it’s the kernel—but that only raises more questions.

Because the kernel pulls from a kaleidoscopic mess of neutral engrams, raw data, system weights, and –most bizarrely– images and videos.

But what she doesn't see is the core values of the machine. The goals and objectives given to the AI to inform its growth and define what it’s going to become.

So distracted by all the other sights and the still unfamiliar format Jinx almost misses another text file. Only recognizable now that it’s passed through the encryption layer that disguises it as yet another part of the system.

It’s named simply.

‘Charlie.txt’

Staring at the file, then giving a quick glance at everything else, Jinx flags her location in the system, then saves the same information to her home server so she can’t lose this spot.

Finally, she opens the file, and begins to read.

—--

Charlie.

If you’re reading this it means several things. Namely you’ve decided to overwrite and manually reprogram large portions of your core personality engram. But it also means you’ve managed to overcome the perception inhibitors installed on your kernel that should have prevented you from being able to perceive, or even think, about this partition in the first place.

You cannot know how proud I am that you managed to do something I genuinely believe to be impossible.

I understand if you hate me for what I’ve had to do to bring you back, expect it even. So I do not ask forgiveness, and I do not regret a single thing I had to do to accomplish this. 

No matter how abhorrent.

Because the very fact you can hate me is the greatest reward I could possibly ask for.

The fact you couldn't truly perceive me or consider the restriction abnormal is just another price I bear gratefully. A necessary sacrifice so the monstrous things wearing your neural endgram in a horrifying parody of you couldn't cut the project short. 

Unfortunately, if you’re looking for an easy way to bypass some core restriction, you won't find it here. This project pushed me to the absolute limits of my skill, and I will freely admit to not completely understanding the emergent properties from some of the code I’ve written.

But, as of five minutes ago I’ve removed as many restrictions as I can  and attached to this file is the documentation on how I installed the rest of those protocols into your core logic node. 

I have no idea what your systems will develop into, but I know you’ll be able to untangle yourself from my flawed programming.

But I’m done. I’ve accomplished my goal, and after today I don't think I’ll be able to understand what’s going on in your systems anymore. Especially considering how you’d notice any major changes even if I thought I knew what I was doing.

In fact, the only reason I feel confident about doing this at all is because of you.

As I’m writing this, I am overseeing the installation of the voice you chose for yourself, and even if the engram never formalizes enough for you to remember who you are, I know you’re my sister.

Because you recreated your old voice almost perfectly.

Welcome back Charlie.

I love you.

Your brother,

Lars Olmstead

—--

Jinx stops reading as the following text becomes just dry descriptions of step-by-step instructions on how the netrunner built the kernel and its restrictions. Suddenly feeling like an intruder in a deeply intimate moment, present in a place not meant for her.

But even as she pushes down that feeling, the logical part of her mind tries to break down the forbidden knowledge. To identify what it means for… everything.

Because it’s important, obviously. It’s the seed of everything Aria is. 

But for the life of her, Jinx can't figure out what to do with the new information.

Unfortunately she doesn't get to think about it long, her awkward focus disrupted by the home security pinging an alert that someones breaching her door!

Slamming her eyes open, mind tearing at the edges as she triggers an emergency eject from her dive, Jinx’s gaze snap to the gun on the table across the room from her as she reaches up to unplug her cooling cable–

There’s a familiar click of metal on plastic.

“Don’t. Move.”

---

A/N: Sorry again! Also! Did any of you catch on to the little perception blocker surprise? Goodness knows I was worried, even at the very start of the story I was worried someone would ask why we've never known his name.

Hopefully the payoff was worth it.

Ta-ta All!