Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I think I finally found it. It isn’t obvious. Someone who learned to program in the seventies probably wrote it because this section of the code is littered with variables with crappy three letter names that probably only ever meant anything to the author. Minimal comments, and right near the hardware abstraction layer. The rest of the codebase was so nice. Why did the stuff I need have to live in the deepest dungeon of SynTech’s code castle?

I try to rip out the parts that receive Father’s command code and let him shut down the bots, but without knowing exactly what the command packet looks like, I can’t trace through the software to get to where the magic that disables the cloud lives. It’s like trying to follow a single noodle through a bowl of ramen without pulling it out or rippling the broth. I spend hours searching and failing to find his failsafe, but with every change I make to try to diagnose his shutdown powers, I break ten new things.

Dammit.

This isn’t the dungeon, this is the foundation, and any crack I put into it will leave my cloud useless. I finally give up and revert everything to the way it was, only adding a contingent function so that if the shutdown is ever targeted at me, I’ll be able to capture the command packet and prevent it from hitting me twice.

I open my eyes and turn my senses back on. It’s past curfew. The cramps in my legs remind me that I’ve been sitting here in the computer lab all day, then my stomach reminds me that I should have eaten something since dinner last night. My feet tingle as I stand, pins and needles jumping all over. I send a contingent of bots massaging down my legs, easing the nerves and stimulating blood flow. The prickles quickly subside.

Outside now, I swing by the cafeteria, hoping to sneak something from the snack fridge, but the doors are locked and the lights are off. I could break in without too much trouble, but I don’t know where the alarms are, and the last thing I want is to explain to anyone why I haven’t eaten all day.

My stomach grumbles again.

Hmmm, does the construction library have anything for a situation like this?

Haha, yeah it does. Something the documentation refers to as “almost pure glucose, aerated for texture.” There aren’t a lot of other food options in the construction library, so I might as well give it a go.

BUILD(CANDY)

I hold my hand out, and the bots construct a white, chalky-looking bar that could pass for candy if you don’t look too closely. I don’t want to know where the bots got the building blocks for it, so I don’t let my mind wander to the garbage bins which are certainly the easiest source of simple carbohydrates around here. The manual says the sugar is purified during construction and makes a special note that it’s definitely safe to eat. How reassuring.

I bite in. It’s stiff, but not rock-hard. Biting into it makes me think of packing foam made of cotton candy. Way too sweet. Not that I expected anything great from bot-printed food, but we should be able to do better than this.

With my stomach mollified, if not satisfied, I head to the dorms. The big doors are locked, but I slip some bots under the door and push the handle from the other side, releasing the latch. I’m surprised the lights are on in the common room at this hour. The place is clear except for the silent shape of a young woman sitting on one of the couches contemplating a blank TV screen. As she hears my footsteps, Andrea turns her head and looks at me. She’s back from the medical wing a day early. I hope that’s a good sign.

“Hey, you’re out. How did things go? Everything all right?” I ask as I step over and take the seat on the opposite corner of her couch.

She gives me a forced-looking smile before the listless expression returns to her face. The last time I saw her looking this down was the day we all agreed to kill Father.

“Are you OK?”

She shrugs.

“Did something go wrong? Are you hurt? Implant problems?”

She shakes her head.

“Want to talk about it?” I prod. “Something’s eating you, I can see that.”

Her hand lifts and her fingers twist, but nothing appears. She gives the air between us a dark glare and rolls her eyes.

“Ah, the new interface broke all of your old controls, huh.”

She nods sadly.

“So no more holograms until you get recalibrated?”

Another nod.

“You could always try talking again.” I suggest. “Father says you should be able to.”

She shakes her head, eyeing me as if I had suggested she eat a bug.

“OK, sorry. Want me to grab you a notepad or something?”

She pulls one out from behind her back along with a thick black marker. Of course she would have thought of that already.

The front page is already scrawled in big bold letters with Please leave me alone. I’m mourning the loss of my creations.

I try with limited success not to snort with laughter. Dramatic much, Andrea?

“Don’t worry too much about it,” I reassure her. “The new controls are great. You’ll be able to do so much more with them.”

She flips the page and scribbles on it. Not mine. I didn’t make. Then with a significant look at me she adds: My ART!

“I understand. But it’s just the tools, not the art. Painters don’t need to make their own brushes to have their masterpieces be their own. Musicians don’t have to build their own pianos. You’ll still be able to make whatever you want to make, you’ll just have a head start. And you’ll be able to customize it however you want, just like the old stuff, only better. You’ll have more built-in support for everything, better feedback, tighter controls. I’ll bet you desserts for a month that you’re going to love it within the next few weeks.”

She doesn’t look satisfied, but she shrugs and tosses the pad onto the couch between us. We sit in silence for a while. Eventually she turns and picks up the pad again.

What about you-know-what?

“Not an issue. I used that same trick you did when you made the peephole, and I’ve been looking through the software for weeks. Jeff is wrong.”

She flips to a blank page.

Sure?

“Yeah, I’m sure. All the stuff that made him think there was adaptive AI running on the bots was just code. Lots and lots of code.”

She smiles a little. Her eyes lose focus for a moment, then close. I’m guessing she’s hacking admin status to check for herself.

“Search for a file called WallBuilder in the construction utilities, somewhere near line two thousand,” I offer helpfully. “It’ll show you how exactly Father did the trick of building the wall around the pipes as Jeff built them. His other evidences have similar solutions. I checked them all.”

A quiet minute passes, then her smile broadens, and her eyes open.

“Yeah, see?” I say.

She nods.

“Make sure to hold off any tweaking until after the calibrations are done. Father might notice you’ve been modifying admin-only code when he hooks you up in debug mode. And don’t tell Jeff. The admin hack is secret keepers only.”

She nods vigorously and closes her eyes again. A moment later they reopen. She flips the page and scrawls Thanks.

“Any time.”

Jeff should know. About the AI. He’s so worried.

“Yeah, I’ll take care of it,” I lie. “Don’t worry about it.”

The last thing I’m going to do is anything that would wreck my plans for Jeff. But there’s no way Andrea would go along with what I’m planning. It was hard enough to get Louise on board, and she’s got a strong ruthless streak to her when she needs it. I haven’t even started on Evan yet. Andrea’s got a strong sense of right and wrong, but she doesn’t ask too many questions. It’ll be much easier to just convince her that Jeff is just playing along when it’s time.

She nods and gets up. I follow suit and turn to head to the boys’ wing. I hear a clap behind me and turn to see Andrea with her arms out. I step over and give her a hug. I don’t remember ever being hugged by anyone here at the campus before.

It’s nice.