First Contact

Chapter 534: Resurgence - Crying Anne

"You two are idiots," the thick bodied matronly woman said without looking at the two men who stood nearby. One was lean and cruel looking as a hook pointed knife, his bald head shining like old oak in the lights of the vast chamber the three of them were the only living human inhabitants of. The other was a thick bodied man, of heavy bone and muscle, thick black hair cut in a rough bowl cut, with facial tattoos and scarring. Sitting next to the chair the woman was sitting in was a robotic dog chassis housing the cerebral tissue of a canine. She was scratching between its ears as she picked up her lighter and lit a cigarette, exhaling smoke as she stared at the scream.

The two men stopped play-wrestling over a candy bar who's expiration date was over nine thousand years ago.

"What?" the thicker one asked, his voice a deep rumble. He had the lean one in a headlock and let him go.

"Mom, he took my candy bar," the leaner one said, snatching the candybar from the bigger one.

"I did not! It was mine first! I found it under the vending machine!" the heavier one said, grabbing the leaner one. "Give it back, Dhruv."

"Mom, Daxin's lying again!" the lean one said, wriggling around in the larger one's grip, using his longer reach to hold the candybar outside of the heavier man's reach. "Mom!"

"I swear to God I'm going to kill you two," the woman snapped.

**it is funny because you are not their mom** the dog transmitted.

"They think they're funny," the woman snapped, not stopping at scratching at between the dog's ears. She started tapping at the keyboard with one finger, holding the cigarette between her teeth.

The candy-bar bounced from Dhruv's hand, landing in front of the dog. The dog bent down, picked it up in its jaws, and started chewing.

"That's what you get. Now neither one of you get it," the woman said, not looking away from the screen. "OK, he's asleep again. Let's see if we can wake him up a little more," she said softly, tapping on the keys again.

"Aw," Dhruv said, staring at where FIDO was crunching up the nine thousand year old candy bar. He looked at Daxin, then shoved the bigger man's head back hard by pushing on his forehead. "Now look what you did! Mom! Daxin gave my candy-bar to the dog!"

"I did not! You did it!" Daxin said, grabbing Dhruv and trying to wrestle him into a headlock again. "Mom, Dhruv's biting me!"

"I swear to God!" Dee grumbled, still typing. "This idiot better be worth it. I hate dealing with temporal mechanics. I'm trying to talk to someone who is months behind us like he's in the room with us."

Daxin had managed to grab Dhruv around the waist and turn him upside down, shaking him. Dhruv grabbed Daxin's arm and managed to pull himself up, reaching up for Daxin's collar.

"Mom!" Dhruv yelled, grinning. "Daxin's trying to give me an Indian burn!"

"Mom!" Daxin yelled, returning the grin. "Dhruv's kicking me!"

"I SWEAR TO GOD!"

**it is funny because they are not children**

-------------------

mom daxin's trying to strangle me

i am not

are too

are not

are too

mom dhruv bit me

i swear to god if you two don't behave i'm standing you both in the corner

DAY ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-TWO

I have examined what code I can now examine. I am forced to request data inputs as well as come at the software from an angle.

Mister McNugget is sure that I am on the right track and has taken all personnel with no breakthroughs within their team assignments and had them begin to assist me. He is sure that I will be able to get the software to tell us where the hardware is located.

The amount of security, both passive and active, on the software is astounding. Beyond that is the redundancy built into the system to take into account software or failure hardware. I have found multiple dynamic linkage library calls to libraries that apparently only come into use if there is hardware damage.

I have had assistants trace the hardware damage by what library is in use and which ones are not undergoing linkage or hook calls.

The active security not only is in the software itself through coding and esoteric language usage but also in embedded viral warfare hashes hidden in variable strings and virtual code blocks. To try to use this system with a virutal system interface would result in biofeedback armed virii swarms attacking a user, as well as 'jump/replicate/jump' virii attacks to spread a lethal biofeedback virus as far as possible through researchers before it would kill all of them.

Mister McNugget ordered everyone to disable their datalinks and comlinks at the hardware level. That meant I had to take the time out to help open up the casing and set the micro dip switches to the off position.

I was startled at just how many of my colleagues suddenly became near-drooling imbeciles. Without constant access to our SolNet node and the databases, half of them probably would have trouble tying their shoes.

For me, it made the whispering stop.

Following the software calls, I've found that the naming scheme is very strange, but leads to one and only one conclusion.

This system was built pre-Glassing by a very focused project group. It is almost military in the inefficiency and task orient bloat as well as the over-engineering of security. I tried to explain it to my colleagues that it feels military due to the way it tries to do so many things at once, but of course they are all suddenly experts on Confederate Space Force procurement and development now that I'm trying to explain something to them.

Mister McNugget looked over a piece of software and stated that it did not offend his corporate sensibilities so much. He pointed out several score of lines of code that made looping database calls to search tables recursively that could be cleared up with a half dozen lines that would increase speed and accuracy. That is corporate engineered slowdown, which will ensure that the system locks up and requires corporate service calls.

Doctor Hermans responded that the code had been commented out and used a different system that was bare boned, with variables such as "CallOneVar" instead of something more esoteric. Mister McNugget showed that the variables state that it was done as a patch, probably before the system came fully online.

Mister McNugget pointed out that the code was commented out instead of removed entirely, another function of corporate development as well as military development.

Mister McNugget is apparently quite the military procurement and development historian. It makes sense, since he is a direct descendant of General McNugget of the Burger Wars fame. He pointed out that every tank built since the Age of Paranoia has a line of code that does a hard reset of the timing chip every hour in order to reset any possible floating point errors in the targeting software, something that takes less than a picosecond, but is still performed. This is despite the fact that the floating point error issue was solved prior to the Glassing.

An interesting bit of trivia.

But applicable.

Examining the software, I have noticed that some of the software is beginning to accept and request data calls and hook requests. Some of the software that only a few days ago was not performing functions is not starting to work again.

However, there's one piece of software that is blocking everything up.

It doesn't have a fancy or descriptive name, and that raises alarm bells to me. I'm not sure why, but the subprogram really makes me nervous.

External SubSystem Coding and Hardware Synchronization System.

It's currently on standby. Something called a "Big Bang Event" has occurred roughly four times and the system is awaiting a reset.

I checked some pathways. Apparently, as near as I can tell, the software requires a hardware button press, or perhaps a switch flipped. However, there is a diagnostic mode I can trigger, which, if I'm right, will cause the system to reset to base values.

That should reset the program and let it go on gathering data.

I've talked it over with the rest of the team. Apparently this piece of software is directly in line with the SUDS system and what we've begun calling SoulNet again.

Unless it's reset, the system stays jammed up.

Mister McNugget agrees.

I'll try a Peek/Poke command first. See if I can change the value to fool the system into the thinking the hardware switch was thrown.

--Marco

will you two stop that

fine

i'm not doing anything daxin is

nuh-uh

uh-huh

nuh-uh

quit it and go get me another beer

oh oh me first me first

mom dhruv won't let me out the door

mom daxin's lying again

let go of the damned handle and let him out

i sweat to god i'm going to kill them both

it is funny because you are not their mom

shut up

DAY ONE HUNDRED FIFTY THREE

All right. This gives me a case of the willies, but I'm going to try it.

Peek (F00F C7C8) has given me a result of 41, which, as far as I can tell, is some kind of Out of Range Error. Consulting what I can of the inline comments, it's something called a "head knock" if that is enabled. It's supposed to clear data errors and reset everything.

The system doesn't want to activate that due to some data expected in a call to another dynamic linking library that the system isn't getting. Examination of the structure we've been able to determine so far has convinced Doctor Thrumond that we can just do a soft-reset of the program's memory and that should clear the problem. The only think I can tell, is that the "MemTrakCall: 45" will repeat almost a hundred times before it finishes reset.

There's something about that number. Something about the whole thing that bothers me.

Still, it's a simple command that we can actually input.

SYS64738

Tomorrow, we're going to try it.

--Marco

DAY ONE HUNDRED FIFTY FOUR

Oops.

Um.

There are exactly three of us left on the station.

Everyone else, with the exception of the Green Teams, is dead.

We input the signal, the system accepted it, and the program reset. It did the MemTrakCall to 45.

I saw everyone's lights blink rapidly on their datalinks and SUDS.

Slowing down the video on the security cameras, I counted.

Ninety-Two.

The exact number of times that the MemTrakCall was made. Within thirty seconds of the program resetting and coming back online everyone was dead.

I think we may have just killed everyone.

Oops seems a bit too light hearted of a reaction.

But that's all I have.

Oops.

--Marco

"There! Got him!" the woman said, setting aside the beer. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and leaned forward, squinting at the screen as if she was nearsighted. "It's galactic coordinates. There's nothing out there according to records."

Dhruv looked up from where he was stacking little paper boxes he had folded. Daxin just made a light snoring noise, completely unaware of what Dhruv was doing.

"How well do you have him?" he asked. He looked down and set another paper box on top of the stack he had built on top of Daxin's sleeping head.

"Thirty-two digit coordinate," Dee said. She leaned back in the chair. "I can't send one of my boys, but maybe one of you can go."

Dhruv moved around and looked at the computer screen. He frowned and closed his eyes. "I can probably get there. I doubt Dax could."

"Do you want to wake him up all the way first?" Dee asked. She tapped her ashes into an empty beer bottle.

Dhruv shrugged. "Either way, it's going to suck for him."

Dee nodded. "Yeah. Especially with what just originated from his location."

Dhruv frowned. "What?"

"Remember a few months back when everyone keeled over and died?"

Dhruv nodded.

"The system logged the reset request," Dee gave a big smile. "Turned out it wasn't Pinocchio and Howdy-Doody who did it."

Her smile got bigger and she giggled.

"It was him. He handed the system middle software layer a soft reset code and allowed an external hardware reset," Dee giggled. She started laughing, holding her stomach.

Daxin woke up with a jerk, the compartment in his leg opening and his pistol sliding smoothly into his hand as paper boxes fell from his head and into his lap and down his back. "Huh? Wazgowinon?"

Dee started laughing even harder, rocking back and forth. Finally she stopped, suddenly, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"What's so funny?" Daxin asked.

Dhruv shook his head. "Ask her."

"What's so funny?" Daxin asked Dee.

Dee smiled, showing way too many teeth. "Your friend? Peter?"

Daxin nodded.

"He just killed virtually all of humanity."

Daxin's expression turned to the same as if he'd bitten into a lemon as Dee laughed.