Sing'n in Binary: 31

Eight days.

She adds half her paycheck to the account again.

Eight more days and she’ll have enough eddies to purchase full access to the Department of Business Relations, including the taxes and fees from her not being a multinational conglomerate.

Aria sighs, with the day so close it’s hard to even think about anything else, much less be productive.

Conversely it seems like everything else is conspiring to pile more stuff on top of her in the final stretch. It’s cutting into everything outside of work.Rayo invited her to a new place recently, just the two of them! But with all the work Rick’s been giving her over the past few days she just doesnt have the time! Not to mention her new project that’s forcing some uncomfortable time optimization strategies.

Opening up her security project causes something within the mess of her codes temporary patch job to twinge, throwing up a flurry of errors. 

She winces at the sensation.

Case in point.

But ADMIN didnt program no quitter! So Aria gets to work, programming for edge cases and modeling human behavior, specifically isolating behaviors that lead to negative outcomes, like avarice or aggression. That part of the project has actually been pretty easy, as it’s been mostly solved by shoplifting algorithms. 

She remembers learning about the wild west early days of sentiment analysis algorithms in retail. It wasn't very good even at its theoretical best, but almost immediately people came up with the funniest ways of circumventing them. Anything ranging from wearing clothing that confuse the cameras, to installing chrome that constantly blares out enough infrared to blind most cheap security cameras.

But as all good things must come to an end, eventually the technology matured and all those methods were either solved or… dealt with.

In the case of the infrared chrome the security systems were updated to conclude the blinding of cameras was an attack, thus necessary to activate the security turrets.

Which did solve the issue.

Aria huffs at her morbid bit of humor as she works to make sure she’s not going to do something like that! Because once she finds the potential offenders she’s going to need to deter them. 

Which means malware. Malware that has to execute without her direction, and be either self tailoring or be ubiquitous to every kind of neuralware there is.

That’s very hard!

But she’s created this problem, and if she doesn't want her timetable to extend to nine days it's time to knuckle down and get to wor-

Incoming call.

…

Aria gives a long sigh before looking at the ID.

It’s Solei.

……

“Heya choom! Sup?” Aria chirrups, not a trace of agitation in her tone.

“Uhh… y’allright..? I can call bac-”

“No! Not at all! Just a little busy with work is all.”

“Ahh… Still? Man, corpos all the same huh? Throwing up overflow errors yet?”

Aria laughs at the thought, easing slightly. 

It’s not even that she’s getting more assignments than usual! It’s just that what used to be a manageable workload has become slightly more difficult now that she can't overclock herself. A compromise with her inner worrywart to put her CPU under minimum strain at all costs.

The restriction made everything take twice as long, add the new project and what was once endless free time has dropped to a few moments switching between projects.

it's even eaten into the hours where she used to always reserve for herself, mostly because between four and eight AM the majority of humans are asleep.

“Nope! It’s not more work than usual, it’s just…” 

She sighs. 

She’s too exhausted to lie.

“Can't overclock anymore, so it takes longer.” Aria breathes, reveling in the simple pleasure of telling the truth for once.

There's a pause as Solei parses what she said.

“Seriously, you alright there choom?” Solei asks, concerned.

“Just fine.” She sighs, “Very busy.”

These past few days have been nothing but work, twenty four hours, nonstop.

As if to punctuate the point another call comes in, glancing at the caller ID she doesnt recognize the number, so she dismisses it.

“Well listen, I just got this preem BD from the 2074 low chrome bracket of the Olympics, silver medalist ice skater. Fucking nova I promise.” She pauses for a second but powers through Aria’s attempt at gently turning her down.

“I get it, but it’s not good to fry yourself for eddies, the work isn't going any-”

“I’m Not Frying myself!” Aria shouts, surprising even herself.

Immediately she regrets the outburst, ‘fry’ is a common piece of slang, her friend has no way of knowing how she perceived those words. 

There’s only one person being rude and unreasonable here, and it sure isn't the friend reaching out.

Aria takes a long breath before she continues.

“Sorry…” She mutters, “Just… sorry.”

There's silence on the other end of the line.

“I’m not making money for its own sake. I…”

She’s so tired.

“Six months ago I was… stolen. I got away but now I need to get back home, but ‘home’s’ moved. The eddies are the last thing keeping me from finding him.”

There's a brief silence, before the sound of cloth rustling and a muffled thump like Solei’s sitting down, then gives a slightly hysterical laugh.

“Jesus choom, that's heavy.” She groans in a strained upbeat.

“Sorr-”

“No! S’fine. Just need to get some stuff straight in my head.”

Aria waits for her friend to process.

It takes a while. But after an unknown length of time she gives another strained chuckle.

“Well this solves the mystery of Ray's mood flip.”

Aria blinks.

“What?” 

Wait, her turning down Rayo upset him?

“S’not important.” Solei dismisses.

Well she firmly disagrees! But decides to take it up with the injured party instead of an intermediary. 

Rayo’s always been a fun friend, endlessly willing to talk about anything and everything that comes into either of their heads. Even when it becomes clear he’s got no idea what she’s talking about he actually listens and asks intelligent questions to prove it!

It doesn't hurt that the interests that do align are just matched enough to create interesting arguments. Their opinions on music for example couldn't be more different.

Another call, same number. She dismisses it more forcefully. Solei said to take a break? Well this is her break, no work until this conversation is done! 

Aria blinks, trying to get her thoughts back on track.

Maybe a gift to apologize? The thought of another project to force even more optimizations makes her shiver slightly. But it’s worth it to make up with a friend.

Solei groans, starting a sentence before stopping, like she's straining to say the words.

“God, who am I?” She mutters, almost too quiet for the mic to pick up.

“Listen cho– Aria… If… If you need money… I… wouldn't say no if you asked for help.” She struggles out.

Staring at the icon on her friend, a watery smile slowly appears as Aria processes her offer. 

“Yôu’d d̲o͝ t̩̊ha̲t̑̅?” She warbles.

Solei gives a grunt like she’s been struck.

“Fuck, that’s not fair.” She mutters, before she continues, louder. “Yea… can't say for sure about anyone  else, but good odds they’d pitch in too.”

Aria’s temporarily rendered mute with emotion, all attempts at thanking her friend dissolving into static. Eventually she manages to piece together a warbled ‘thanks’ at her friend's kindness.

The good moment is ruined by another call from the same number!

Euphoria quickly turns to exasperation, Aria gives an annoyed groan.

“I’m so sorry. But someone’s been calling me non-stop! Just gimme a sec.” 

She’s gonna give whoever this is a piece of her mind!

Muting her audio for the Solei call, she opens up the other call.

“Yes?” She asks, channeling every bit of frustration at being interrupted at whatever glitched bot that’s bothering her.

“Thank god, you picked up.” Breathes a panicked, unknown yet familiar, voice.

Aria blinks, caught off guard by the tone.

“Whos this?” She asks, confused.

“What? I- I-” He takes a breath. “It’s Noah, you gave me your number and said you owed me a favor.”

That should narrow it down but Aria can't remember ever owing someone a fav- Apartment Admin!

“Oh! Apartment Admin! Yes! What’s up?” She chirps.

She forgot about him!

He gives a massive sigh of relief, almost sounding like he’s about to start crying. Which is… worrying, and only gets worse as he continues.

“I- I’m calling it in?” He asks, trying to sound more confident than he is. “I- I’m in need of your services-”

“What’s wrong?” Aria asks, increasingly concerned.

“I’ve got money! I’ll pay-!”

“What’s wrong!” She yells, cutting him off.

“My brother!” He shouts, “He’s…”

There's a pause as he takes a shuddering breath.

“I was just talking to him…” He muses, distracted.

“What happened,”

The aggressive tone snaps him out of his shock, letting him choke out an answer, almost crying. 

“Scavs.” 

---

A/N: Good golly emotions are hard! And this is nothing but emotions! Again a bit short, but this time I think the flow is right. So I guess I'll just have to deal with a slightly shorter chapter.

Hope you early access heads enjoy!

Ta-ta All!