Sing'n in Binary: 37

The voice forces Jinx to come back to herself somewhat, tuning back into reality and realizing her neuralware is pinging the person's UserID, informing her it’s Solei.

“Seriously you just drop the call and I got lost trying to find my way here so I- Oh.” Solei cuts herself off as she walks closer and gets a better look at Jinx in the poor light of the kitchen, even with the restored power. “You good choom?”

That, of all things, is enough to completely snap Jinx out of her mild fugue state with the anger of the presumed familiarity. Immediately, her mind kicks back into gear, trying to figure out what to-

“She’s not here, it’s a proxy.” She unplugs her link cord from the hard drive and stands up. “I’d hoped there was a way to backtrace her true location from the drives, but it’s fried.”

Solei starts pacing and speaking aggressively, too quickly for Jinx to piece together even if she wanted to, so as she waits for the synopsis program to do its work she remounts the panel to the computer and unplugs it from the wall, fumbling the first screw as her hand twitches.

As she’s sweeping her hand across the linoleum to find the dropped screw and not think about this new revelation the synopsis program pings a question.

“-nt just leave her, so what’s next?” Solei asks, sentiment analysis of her vocals gives confused readings so Jinx dismisses the report, leaving her to ponder the pit that the question implies.

What’s next?

They’re standing above an AI that’s spent months lying to her, creating a personality that with the benefit of hindsight seems almost tailor made to hit the weak spots Jinx knows she has. Integrating hersel- itself so seamlessly Jinx cannot imagine a life without her.

But even still, that logic is almost drowned out by those same weaknesses screaming for her to help, the part that constantly scans for risks and overheating turning it’s crisis management to repairing a broken computer and finding the relative ease of swapping components quite pleasant.

Whispering insidious lies into her head that it couldn't all be an act.

Could it?

“We do nothing.” Jinx says, picking the screw up off the floor and placing it in the threaded slot. “She’s not here, go home, I’ll deal with the mess.”

Patting down her pockets for he screwdriver, she finds it sitting on the countertop next to the computer, picking it up she-

“Oh fuck off!” Solei yells, slapping her own hand down on top of hers trying to grab the screwdriver and gesturing to her blood covered clothes with the other. “Listen amigo, I've had a bad day, and I’m not letting some wannabe Bartmoss poser klep my chooms stuff.”

Jinx stares at her for a second, rising anger checked by ever thinning patience. Pinging her opponents neutralware, Jinx slowly pieces her way through the flimsy ICE.

“Get. Off.” She says, voice devoid of emotion.

Solei holds there for a moment before releasing her hand and stepping back, taking a deep breath.

“Look.” She says, taking another breath. “It’s barely been an hour, we’re both tired, I smell like a back alley ripperdoc, and we don't even know if Aria’s actually injured anymore.” She glances back at the bullet holes in the thoroughly ruined front door. “We obviously can't leave it here, I know you said it’s fried but my choom AK is a wizard at pulling stuff of burnt drives, I say we-”

“No.” Jinx interrupts, causing the sentiment analysis to alert that Solei’s anger just spiked.

“The fuck you mean ‘no?’ You got a better plan choombatta?”

Jinx sweeps the loose screws into a hand and tucks them into a pocket before trying to get a good grip on the computer's solid aluminum construction, hands shaking with barely repressed fury at her not getting the hint.

“I mean you fucking delta.”

Solei starts to approach again, sentiment analysis sounding alarms that the probability of violence went over acceptable thresholds.

“Are you a goddam sca-?” She starts but is cut off as Jinx draws her pistol and, before she can even move, pulls the trigger.

Click.

The both of them blink, caught off guard, Jinx by the lack of a gunshot and Solei by the existence of a gun at all.

Shit.

She forgot to relo-

Blinking though a searing pain in her jaw, Jinx realizes she’s on the floor now with Solei screaming something incomprehensible while clutching her thumb.

“-ade me punch you with my broken thumb you bitch!” She screams, fumbling around in her jacket, presumably for her own pistol. Seeing this Jinx triggers her malware suite to her already breached defenses, sending her viral packet to-

It bounces.

But before she can think about that the synopsis sends a priority alert, forcing her to listen to her assailant again.

“Are you fucking kidding me? There were probably over a hundred guns in there and I didn't think to grab one? The fuck is wrong with me?” Solei rants as she looks around, presumably for a gun or other weapon.

The absurdity of the situation, combined with all the other emotions of the past hour finally start to compute in the half cooked remains of Jinx’s head and, proving how fried she is, she gives a small chuckle.

Then quite a big chuckle.

Then a laugh.

On and on until she’s downright cackling on the floor, tears streaking down her face as she rolls to her side and breathes heavily through her mask.

Solei is looking down at her and sentiment analysis cannot make heads or tails of the expression on her face.

“Uhh… You good?” She asks, almost incredulous of her own words.

Jinx gives another long chuckle, tears still pouring from her face.

“What the fuck are we doing?” She asks herself.

“Uh-”

Jinx cuts her off.

“Listen, you can access a drive without flashing it right?” She starts to say something but Jinx couldn't care less, holding up the battery. “Top hard drive, don't touch anything, read the text file.”

Solei says other stuff, probably questions or clarifications, but Jinx isn't listening, falling into herself and pulling what’s left of her mind together to think.

—--

Solei plugs the battery into the top drive as requested, genuinely baffled on why she’s even doing it.

She looks over to Jinx, the netrunner lying on the floor with her eyes closed and breathing deeply.

Considering how… unstable she’s been since they met face to face, it’s probably a good idea to humor her if only to lessen the chances she remembers she probably has a spare clip for her gun somewhere in that massive jacket of hers and decides to try shooting her again.

So, plugging her link cable into the drive she scans over the two drive partitions and finds what she thinks Jinx meant at the start of a completely corrupted drive partition.

She can't even figure out what this mess of binary used to be.

Opening up the text file she begins to read.

–_–

“Hey Jinx! Surprise!

If you're reading this, you're also looking at my fried CPU and inactive code, so I’d have to have a really good explanation to keep up the lie!

And well… I don't really have one!

Sorry about that. I really wish I had a good reason, but I don't.

If you decide you don't want to be friends anymore do you mind delivering my PC to any of our karaoke friends? Depending on when you’re reading this I’ll probably be able to pay you back if you bought me a new CPU. I’m good for it, honest! (Really this time!!!!(sorry again!))

Take care of yourself while I’m offline. I’ll be back eventually, can't stay dead forever, right?

(hopefully) Your friend,

Aria ItsME.c

            (And again, sorry about all this!)

–_–

Solei blinks, considering the message in front of her, then to the code making up her friend's brain.

She knows she should feel something, be it betrayal for the lie, guilt for seemingly being the thing that tipped her friend over the edge to functionally killing herself, or raw terror of the fact that ‘Aria’ is an AI and she has no idea what that means.

But right now? She’s just feeling a sort of detached amusement at this being Aria’s answer to the requirement for a –sort of– last will and testament.

Really? This?

It’s not like Solei’s ignorant of the horrors of AI either, she’d heard all the horror stories of programs from beyond the blackwall getting a tentril into the Night City net, how they puppet the corpses of borgs and leave people trapped in their own minds, living out an eternity of unimaginable pain as the AI takes over your mind for it’s alien ends.

But Solei’s pretty sure she’s got a good bead on her choom and she’s almost certain she was on the receiving end of her version of that nightmarish AI puppeting.

And it was to save her life.

So she’s not that worried.

Unplugging herself from the drive, Solei scans over her neuralware, looking for anything sneaky that might have hitched a ride.

Still a little worried admittedly, but not that much.

Blinking a few times to moisten dry eyes, Solei looks over to Jinx, seeing her sat up and looking much more composed from when she went in. Her half drooping face and singular standard eye cybernetic locked onto hers steadily, the other eye replaced by a sensor patch and glowing a steady orange.

“You read it?”

Solei nods, glancing down at the compu- her friend.

Jinx coughs awkwardly. Looking incredibly awkward as she continues.

“Sorry for uh… pulling the gun.”

Opening her mouth to wave off the apology, Solei realizes it is a big deal that this bitch tried to kill her, so she can't really say it’s not a problem. But she also can't ignore her words.

So she compromises.

“Yep, so what’s the plan?”

Jinx gives a sigh as she gets up, walking over to the computer.

“First, we’ve got to secure it.”

–_–

Two and a half hours later the two of them are lugging the solid aluminum construction of their friend’s computer out of the elevator on Jinx’s floor, puffing as Solei strains against the weight and feeling the metal make another tear in her synthskin, meaning fifty eddys for a patch kit.

Walking down the hall like penguins Solei puffs as she watches Jinx try and fail to adjust her grip on her friend to make the weight more bearable, and as she does a question emerges.

“What the hell…” She pauses to pant. “Was your plan if I had fucked off? She asks.

At this Jinx somehow manages to look embarrassed though heavy breathing and red faced exertion.

“I hadn't…” She takes a short breath. “-thought that far ahead.”

Pinging the building's local net for a map she checks the room number and finds they’re on the opposite side of the building to her apartment.

Groaning, Solei tries to adjust her grip again and this time the metal bites all the way through her synthskin and draws blood!

Mother Fucker!