When I became a programmer, Jin-woo reflected as he dove into the corrupted code streams. Nobody mentioned anything about having to debug a super system that could kill me. That really should have been covered in the university curriculum. Maybe an honor course?
The system's architecture sprawled before his consciousness like a multidimensional spiderweb woven by a mathematician having an existential crisis. Each strand pulsed with data, some still clean and orderly, others twisted into corrupted knots that made his digital synapses ache just looking at them.
"Alright," he muttered. He knew the mental and physical strain he was about to endure would be legendary. This was to hoping he would make it out to the otherside. "Let's try this systematically. No heroics, no shortcuts. We've learned that lesson the hard way."
The first line of corrupted code made him wish he could still get headaches in the traditional sense:
```
sys.reality.core {
quantum_state = ∫∫∫(∇ × F) • dS where F = ψ(x,t)∂/∂t
temporal_sync = lim[n→∞] ∑(1/n!) * ∮∮(μ₀/4π)
error_margin = undefined[recursive_loop detected]
base_functions[WARNING: CORRUPTION SPREADING]
}
```
"That's... not supposed to look like that," he observed struggling with the lancing pain throughout his entire body. He watched as the mathematical constants began sprouting imaginary numbers like digital mushrooms. "I have to admire the creativity. It's like watching a fractal have a nervous breakdown." He tried to laugh, but found that even with his mechanically enhanced mind, that was now beyond him.
He attempted to isolate the next corrupted segment, carefully constructing quarantine protocols that could replicate when certain parameters were met:
```
establish_containment {
barrier_function = exp(iπ) + 1 = 0
stability_matrix[n,n] = ∑(k=0 to ∞)[Pk(x)Pk(y)]
quantum_anchor = ∮(P dq - W dt) ≥ 0
// Please work please work please work
}
```
The system responded with another burst of static and flashes of pain that felt like someone trying to download the entire internet directly into his consciousness. Numbers inverted themselves before his eyes, source codes he couldn’t understand threatened to unravel with each attempted fix. He felt his body hurt in ways he didn’t know possible, and yet, his mind was becoming more disconnected. Like some mechanoid that had been given a command sequence after its body had been mostly destroyed.
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Jin-woo was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He knew without a doubt that the pain would have crippled him by now if whatever had happened to him didn’t make it muted. As though it was happening to someone you love and not himself. Concerning and makes you frantic to fix, but not the death spiral if it was yourself.
Not this time! He grimly pushed through the disorientation.
I've seen how this ends. We're doing this right, even if it takes all the processing power I've got. Processing power…? I’m not–
He shook his head. Not now. There were more important things to keep his mind busy with another existential crisis. He had an entire lifetime to worry about what his mind was telling him, right now though, he had to figure this out. Again he continued to develop the quarantine protocol and prepared to destroy and rebuild large parts of what had been affected already. He still needed to figure out how to have the system replicate what had been lost pre-existential code cancer and how to teach it when to stop.
The corrupted code evolved before Jin-woo's eyes, each line mutating into increasingly complex mathematical aberrations. His attempt at containment had worked about as well as trying to hold back a tsunami with a shower curtain. Not at all. Tides upon tides that never stopped smashing his measly containment protocol.
Each one made his attempt look even more pathetic. Almost insulting his experience and intelligence. He took it as a challenge to do better. Jin-woo had decades under his belt in experience alone, there was no way he would allow his ego to take such a massive hit. Not in this lifetime at least.
They never tell you in coding bootcamp, he thought wryly, knowing fully well he’d already made the same joke just moments ago. His habit of reusing jokes kept rearing its hideous head. Having such clear thoughts should have helped his creativity, but it didn’t seem to. That or he was not as artisticly comedic as he hoped he was.
That one day you might have to debug the fabric of a super system while your own consciousness glitches like a Windows 95 screensaver.
He snorted a laugh, his unusually deep tone making him laugh even more. Jin-woo noted how he was able to laugh now, the pain must have become dull enough to joke about his situation. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing yet. It just was at the current moment.
New error cascades flooded his vision. Each one was more complex than the other. The situation continued to escalate.
```
CRITICAL_SYSTEM_ERROR:
dimension_matrix = {
∑∑∑(∂²ψ/∂x²) * ∫[0→∞](e^(-x²)dx) where
reality_constant = √(-1)^∞ * lim[n→∞](1 + 1/n)^n
quantum_state[undefined] = ∮∮∮(∇ × B - μ₀ϵ₀∂E/∂t) • dV
warning: recursive_loop_detected[infinite_regression]
}
// System stability compromised
// Reality anchors destabilizing
// Why did you think this would work?
```
"Did the system just sass me?" Jin-woo muttered. He watched as the code spiraled into increasingly impossible configurations. Each line seemed to mock his previous confidence, his old certainty that he could control any program he created. This was just getting better every moment he worked on it. Memories of how Demina kept evolving its code, the horror they faced.
He shook his head, refocusing. He needed to methodically isolate smaller segments of corrupted code. Slow and steady. Like Dr. Chen always said, you can't brute force elegance.
His newly constructed quarantine protocols took hold, each line carefully crafted. Jin-woo could see it take hold and develop its own version of what he had applied. He felt horror seeping into his skin only to notice that it wasn’t the corruption’s doing. The system had taken the directives and applied it in an almost intelligent manner, a self learning manner that fought for its own existence. One that he had seen with his own eyes.
“Demina…?” It had to be. She was responding to his directives!