Sing'n in Binary: 30

Of all the liquids Aria’s tried, Miso soup is among her favorites. 

Certainly chief among them in the category of hot liquids.

The custom spoon stirs the silty miso paste as she ladles out another steaming sip into her waiting mouth.

She’s not exactly sure how or when she grabbed the miso, but is certainly glad it happened.

Leaning back on the tree and resting the bowl between her torso and her knees as she adjusts herself to look up towards the night sky, cicadas giving a pulsing yet ever present buzz.

She does remember setting the time to night and toggling the cicadas, the soothing noise a very good idea if she says so herself.

Solei actually catalyzed that a few weeks ago, they’d been talking about what they wished they could have seen while it was still around. Solei had talked for almost ten minutes about cicadas, how entire forests of them would sing in one voice. So Aria added them as faithfully as possible to her environment.

The look on her friends face when she’d first heard them singing is a very happy memory.

Picking the bowl up again, she forgoes the spoon and drinks the last of the soup directly from the dish.

Taking a deep breath she despawns the bowl and sits up strigher. 

Ok.

This all feels like one big problem but it's not, not really. 

It’s a bunch of little problems, problems she can solve one by one.

All she has to do is identify them, separate the parts from the big scary mass.

Now that she’s not freaking out it's surprisingly easy to start. The fact is, it’s just not safe for her to shut down and perform a full load test until there’s someone to monitor the process meat-side. Which means if she’s doing this now it’s time to come clean with Jinx.

She’ll think about that later.

Moreso, the fact is without a replacement part it's just not a good idea to do the test anyways. The processor works right now, and until it stops working it doesn't really matter what the underlying state is. 

The only teeny tiny problem with that line of reasoning is that if her brain does something like explode there’s consequences. Insignificant, tiny things, barely even worth mentioning.

Like data corruption.

But she’s days away from getting enough money. The worry about total CPU failure is no more likely now than it was for the past month since she redlined herself. Meaning there’s no difference if she doesn't do anything. Which means Aria can avoid dealing with all the uncomfortable consequences to the –not proven– potential of her brain falling apart.

Like telling Jinx!

Sliding bonelessly off the tree and into a heap on the ground, the miserable pile of lies gives a pained groan.

After she finds ADMIN… does she have to tell Jinx?

It's not just that being an AI is scary, which does play a big part. It’s that Jinx is friends with ‘Aria the human netrunner’ not ‘Aria the program.’ When she finds out, do all those happy memories and associations carry over to this ‘new’ person? Or do they have to start from scratch? 

Worse, what if she just decides she doesn't want to interact with this ‘new’ person at all! Because if every interaction with someone is built on a lie, when it gets revealed, what's left?

Aria sighs.

Plus ADMIN would hate the idea of someone knowing her true nature, so it’s a pretty good idea to avoid that if at all possible. She’ll have enough on her plate already arguing for her continued autonomy without that particular worry.

But again, she’s been running around with a –possibly– defective CPU for over a month. If she doesn't do anything stu-

…

Anything else stupid, she’ll be fine!

All that’s changed now is –maybe– something’s wrong, has been wrong for ages, and in a few days when she finds ADMIN it’ll be added to the long list of things they need to talk about, and they’ll find out together.

Therefore, through cold calculation and reasoned analysis, Aria’s decided to do what she’s already been doing!

Go logic!

Straightening herself up, Aria turns down the volume to the cicadas, if she hurries she’ll be able to get some proper reports to Rick from that last batc-

There's an unfamiliar chime, evoking a confused blink. Scrolling back through the logs she scans fo-

There it is again!

Tracking the sound to its source, she finds it’s an old alert she’d set up for the apartment door! Someones trying to get in!

TygerSlice!

Pulling up the unlock command, she almost lets him in before caution takes hold. So before she lets him in she pulls up the camera for the apartment's hallway.

Revealing someone who’s not Tygerslice! 

At least not without serious cosmetic reconstructive surgery. For one she’s significantly shorter, and a girl. The person who’s probably not Tygerslice is adjusting a large duffle bag over her shoulder while waving a hand held piece of electronics over the reader, looking increasingly confused.

But it's not impossible, maybe the reason he –or she– too so long was because of all the cosmetic mods. So Aria sends a ping and sorts through the returns, eventually finding no one with the TygerSlice’s UserID. 

So this isn't him! 

But that still leaves the question of who it is.

She ponders this as the figure smacks the device with the palm of her hand.

Maybe it’s the buildings owner? From the logs her scanner is trying to use a sort of ‘skeleton key’ access port. But she’s paid the rent! What’s the owner doing here?

Speeding out her netport while keeping a careful eye on the unknown element, Aria accesses the backdoor to the main security setup and finds…

Someone’s put a block on the security system! The port that should be sending an alert to the corporate security service the building’s contracted with has a piece of malware on it!

Flipping though the other cameras she finds almost a dozen other doors left open and their interiors ransacked!

Turning her attention back to the woman with a glare, Aria traces the exact neuralware of this criminal and starts working to quietly breach.

That was close! She’d almost let a thief into Tyger’s apartment!

Well the buck stops here! 

Using her access to the main network she starts writing a patch to the security exploit that allowed the thief to bypass the door security. While she works the criminal shrugs and starts walking away from her door and towards the next. 

But the full might of a machine intelligence is far beyond their ability to circumvent by just walking away! Before the thief gets the opportunity to steal from anyone else Aria has already completed the patch! Sending out from the top down using her administrator access, by the time the thief waves her scanner in front of the next door it’s already too late!

As the alert of an attempted intrusion makes its way towards the hub the malware cracks under her grip, allowing it to sound the alarm properly!

Apparently the thief was listening for that alert, her head twitching as the message got out. Now looking even more confused she jogs over to the elevator and presses a button, but Aria’s not allowing them to leave that easily! So she blocks the message, not allowing the elevator to move.

It takes the criminal about fifteen seconds to realize it’s not coming, confusion turning to alarm as she books it towards the stairs.

Aria watches with a great deal of satisfaction as the would-be thief has to navigate down the stairs as fast as possible with a big, heavy duffle bag. She almost drops it several times, and nearly falls down the stairs in trying to avoid dropping the bag and keeping speed.

Serves her right for stealing!

By the time she gets to the bottom she’s thoroughly winded by the effort, leaning against the doorframe to catch her breath before her head whips to the sound of a vehicle pulling in.

It’s not the security, but she doesn't know that!

Watching the thief run away with her ill gotten gains, the irritation of her getting away with anything is moderated by the fact that she didn't get away cleanly!

Aria doubts she’ll be seeing her again!

Now all that’s left to do is wait for security to show up! They’ll pull the camera footage and make a report to the police! Then they’ll deal with the issue.

Pulling back from the main security setup, Aria keeps the cameras pulled up while she waits.

–_–

The security didnt come! 

Scanning through her modifications to the security system for a fourth time, Aria tries to identify where the line of communication failed.

She knows they saw the alert because the main server sent a dismissal message, but no one came in to check! Which is ridiculous! 

What on earth are they doing if not what they’re paid to do? 

They might have been plainclothes and very sneaky but she doubts it! So all that’s left is the contents of the alert itself. 

The only thing that’s changed is her modifications, therefore she messed something up, which led to a catastrophic failure in the apartment complex's security. But for the life of her she can't find it!

Giving up, Aria reverts every change she made to how she first found it. Including some small optimisations to the payment processing system which would sometimes redirect a transaction to some random account. 

Probably a dummy account for testing, but it wasn't isolated properly.

But maybe somehow that was the lynchpin for this whole thing? The idea’s just as sane as anything else!

Thoroughly irritated by now, she storms back to her computer, drafting her own security in her head.

Until she figures out what she broke, it’s her responsibility to ensure both her security and the security of all the other tenants she just put at risk.

Flopping onto the grass and opening up a new project, Aria creates a synched list of all current tenants and gets to work.

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A/N: this is just backlog that I'm posting now, I need to remember to find a way to lengthen this chapter a little to make the flow proper. If not it's not the end of the world.