I awoke to the sound of birds twittering away, which threw me for a loop for a few solid moments. I hadn’t heard wildlife without actively seeking it out in weeks, I guess mom left the window open. I couldn’t really remember if there was something to attract birds to the apartment, I hadn’t really been taking in that much last night.
There were some other sounds around me I noted too, the occasional clink of metal on ceramic was clear but everything else was a bit muddled as I was used to in this vaguely awake state. It got quiet again for most of the time it took for me to wake up, only the twittering of sparrows to break it.
When I cracked my eyes there was a ray of sun playing across my face from around the edge of a curtain, at one point I would have hated that since it would have woken me up when I was a flesh and blood human. Now though? It means I slept somewhere with windows and natural light; the sound of birds had been a nice implication of it, but this was proof.
I sat up then stayed there for a while, just apricating the light then mom’s voice broke the relative silence.
“Good morning Sam.”
Turning around while sitting on the couch, I could just peek over the divider between the main room and the kitchen to see where she was looking up from a book with a slight smile. The empty bowl that had probably contained cereal was abandoned on the table beside her, she seemed to be the sort of person who wore a bathrobe around the house a lot. Aunt Clara did that I think, I guess mom here picked up the same habit.
“Morning.” I answered.
“You slept a lot longer than I expected.” She commented eyebrows knitting just a little. “Everything ok?”
“Huh? How long did I sleep, it doesn’t seem that late?” I asked confused a bit.
“Around eight hours, it’s seven twenty.” She answered after a quick glance at the clock on the stove, it didn’t look like an LCD display from back home as the shapes were a bit too soft and rounded without obvious segmentation.
“Oh, that’s about what I normally do.”
“Curious, the production model is intended to run on as little as an hour of maintenance. I’m not surprised you need more as the prototype with preservation settings chosen, but I wouldn’t have expected more than maybe four hours.”
“Really? Lilly says they are often busy the full time.” I was just finishing straightening the dress out as I spoke, having taken the opportunity to get a bit more decent during the conversation. In some ways being near-naked around her wasn’t too bad since it wasn’t anything new, but like, that’s different from being comfortable! “I’ve asked her about it a few times, and it seems like there are a million little things to do.”
“Hmm, maybe it’s related to you doing more ‘unnecessary’-” She air quoted with one hand, the other keeping the place in her book. “Actions through the day, like gestures. That could potentially mean more maintenance work.”
I shrugged. “Maybe? I sleep a pretty similar length of time regardless of their activity.”
“You haven’t seen any issues from it?” I shook my head. “Well, something to look into.” She finished with a concerned frown.
“I don’t mind too much,” I responded with a shrug. “Having a ‘normal’ sleep schedule is one of the things that sort of help to tie me back to being human.”
She studied my face for a moment, then changed the topic with an expression that implied this wouldn’t be the last time I would hear of this topic. “If you say so. Now, I don’t have a specific plan for today. I know you have talked about researching those incursions so I could set you up with a mass network connection at work if you want.”
I hesitated for a second. “Er, there was something I am not sure what to do about…”
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I wasn’t really looking forward to this, but I also wanted to go through with the plan we had hashed out over my breakfast. Namely collecting my stolen stash in the taxi depot and then going around to pay for it. We planned to give a half truth half lie explanation, we weren’t going to pretend I wasn’t a person thankfully but instead go with the idea of being an experimental design that accidentally got left to fend for myself. Before I get to enjoy whatever awkward interactions come of that, we first need to get my stuff.
Mom parked her trike, which she seemed to affectionately refer to as chev, in the small lot adjacent to the building, we hadn’t talked to the company that owned the taxi depot but I didn’t really want to add another thing to whatever the rest of the day will be. Besides I knew from when I had originally met Natalie there wouldn’t be anyone by for another week or two at least by the normal schedule. “how do you get in?” She asked curiously as we got out of her vehicle.
“I can show you, follow me.” I said walking around the front of the building, I did a quick glance around as I emerged onto the street beyond, when I didn’t see anyone I gestured for her to follow.
\Taxi return - yK5jn1\ I prompted the door as she caught up, it smoothly opened as usual. I then hopped onto the platform, then walked across it confident that it would stay exactly where it was after hundreds of times crossing it then vaulted the fence onto the walkway before turning to face mom again.
“Don’t worry the platform won’t move and I can just tell it to stop if it did...” I said initially confident then trailing off at her shocked face, trying to guess what it was about. Was it the route I had taken or something else?
“How did you open the door?” she asked while gingerly crossing.
“The taxis send it a code to open, and I just have it memorized.” I shrugged. “Most things are like that around here, I have been surprised by how lax security seems to be. I’ve stolen people’s wallet keys like that a few times if I urgently needed water from a vending machine or something like that.”
She frowned while accepting my help over the railing. “That should be impossible, all the wallets I know use single-use codes generated per transaction.”
“Really? It has worked with basically anything I have tried so far. I could show you with yours I expect.”
“Sure, I’m interested to know.” She answered distractedly while looking up at the umbilical above us, it was in the middle of moving from one taxi to another. “I’ve never been in one of these before.” She thought for a second intently studying one of the large bug-like robots that was in the middle of replacing a light bulb on another taxi. “I think they are using one of our competitors for the maintenance equipment, Daimler Mobiles if I am not mistaken.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I can give you a tour if you want, it won’t take very long…” I answered with a smile she couldn’t see.
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I knew that I had fairly few possessions over here but seeing them all fit in the little trunk of mom's car made it pretty stark. We had brought a suitcase and a few plastic bins to hold stuff, but the only one even vaguely full was the suitcase. It made sense I suppose, I had only been in this dimension for about a month before being picked up after all. It’s not like I had been stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down either, basically just stuff I actively needed. Which given I’m a synthetic is a surprisingly short list when the building had food and water aplenty.
Mom had pointed out on one of the trips I made that I had rather a lot of dresses or skirts for someone who had to climb several meters of ladder with nothing to ‘obscure the view’. My face had been puffing steam for minutes after that, I was so used to being alone in the building and had been actively focused on attempting to imitate the style I had seen on the assistant synthetics around that I hadn’t even thought of that. Thankfully she had waited until I had brought down the last load of stuff from up above before pointing it out, I doubt I would have been able to repeat the trip otherwise.
I gently closed the lid of the trunk, then looked up toward mom. “Would you like to experiment with your credit card now? I doubt anyone will be bothered with you being parked here for a bit more, no one checks and I haven’t really seen anyone use this one over the big one down the street.”
“Sure, I’m quite curious to see if it works as easily as the door did.” She agreed while searching through her handbag for her wallet.
Finding a vending machine to test on was just a matter of moments, the things seemed far more common here than I was used to in Orchardville back home. I had been astounded to find them even on the trail systems, you could be walking through the middle of a forest and just come across a trio of drink and snack machines under a street light off to the side of the path.
“I am very sure this wallet works as I described earlier.” She declared holding the device in question up. “So, when I tap this it should be sending a single-use code.” I nodded, as she picked a bag of chips and tapped her wallet.
\Offer Card Token - 4Tp2 - Woodward J\ The wallet said.
\Confirmed valid \ the machine responded before grinding into action.
It was exactly the same kind of thing as I have overheard before. I walked up to the neighboring drink machine, selected random water, and then told the machine her card number.
\Confirmed valid \ This machine agreed.
“See? Easy.” I pointed out while twisting the lid off.
She was frowning while looking between her wallet and me. “It shouldn’t be, these have been mainstream for well over a decade and they’ve had years of malicious work done against them without issue.” She tapped her finger on the heavy black plastic for a moment while staring at it as I took a long chug out of the bottle. “Is this how you were breaking into stores?” She asked glancing back up at me. “Unlocking doors with someone’s electronic key?”
“Yeah, I would just follow a courier and then take their access code. Although theirs tend to be a lot longer so I usually wrote those down.” I answered while doing the lid up,
“Write them down? What do they look like? Wait I probably have something here...” She fished around in her pockets handing me a pen and a receipt, accepting the bottle in exchange which then disappeared into the large worn handbag.
“OK, so there’s a weird, layered aspect to this when I say it, but this is your wallet’s code.” I explained while I scribbled it down on the back of the receipt, then lifted it to reveal 4Tp2 written on it.
“It’s that short?” she asked inspecting it. “That seems wrong it should be at least a sixteen-character code and- wait you say it sounds layered when you say it could you try it again and focus on listing to that?”
“Sure” I agreed even as she selected a drink without waiting for my reply.
When I focus on the overlayed sound as she tapped her wallet, I realized it was something kind of like saying /7wU4-juM8-MKgT-D8XY/, the idea of trying to describe how it sounded like that despite only taking an instant to convey kind of hurt my brain to think about. Something in whatever part of my brain drove my speech ground as I attempted to mouth it out to myself. After a few attempts, I decided it probably wasn’t even possible to do so. Maybe you could make an analogy, like saying it was a rising tone here or the taste of green there. Wait, that doesn’t make sense either-
Clunk
I was startled when the can of some orange-flavored sparkling water dropped out of the machine. I shook my head to clear it of distractions and then responded to mom’s expectant look. “Yeah, there is a long character sequence in there.” I glanced between her wallet and the machine with a slightly guilty look, aware what I was going to suggest wasn’t exactly free. “Would you mind doing it again?”
“As many times as it takes!” She responded eagerly, whatever worries I had about being frugal clearly weren’t going to block her curiosity.
/89Lh-uWqF-yGrk-ueSB/
“Oh, It’s definitely different this time.” I commented, then I paused while tilting my head quizzically. As the not-sound trailed off I realized even the code was just another layer to it. “I think there’s a whole load of other protocols and exchanges being done, that’s an authorization code. let me try.”
As I uttered the request, I marveled at everything it involved that I hadn’t even been consciously considering. Beyond the 16-character string that I handed off instead of whatever I had initially not-heard, I seamlessly answered every intermediate handshake, prepared appropriate responses to detail requests, and packaged everything as it was requested by the machine.
Mom had started pacing as I relayed what happened. “So not only do you still seem to have the whole communication package active somewhere in your subconscious, but you also are able to generate valid codes of off some small key, ho-“ She paused frowning. “Wait how far away can you hear the abbreviated code?”
“A meter or two at most with a card, a few meters for like a courier. I can’t hear that one for example, although that applies to the entire interchange, not just the code.” I answered while pointing out the courier across the street. “I don’t seem to pick stuff up that far away, but walls and stuff mostly don’t interfere.”
“Curious, it should be in range.” She half mumbled while looking at the robot proceeding on its task, she seemed to consider something for a long time before she spoke again. “I have a guess but…”
“Oh?”
“This is wild speculation, but a known potential security issue with modern cryptographic circuits is that they are magically noisy.” She started explaining. “All complex enchantments are to some degree and the theory goes that one could derive the process for an operation by recording that noise. Which could in theory reveal the seed for the cryptography matrix.” She started rooting around in her handbag, emerging scuffed notebook. “But no one’s been able to actually do it outside of a lab context and people ignore it as a concern because otherwise there isn’t really a space or time effective way to run those operations.” She took the pen when I offered it, beginning to write into her notebook without the slightest interruption in her speech. “It’s possible you’re capable of it in a real-world context, it fits if that short sequence you hear is actually the root key used to generate the actual code.”
Huh.
“I guess that could make sense,” I said with a hand on my chin. “It is certainly a better explanation than the one I had; I thought this place just had really poor security protocols.”
“We could probably do some experiments back at the lab, I am curious as to why all your communication is restricted to that range…” Mom said still scratching notes down. She was silent for a few moments while staring at what she had written, then looked up at me with a grim expression. “We should probably not any specifics get out, if you gave someone a reproducible method to do that our entire society is suddenly very, very vulnerable. Even people knowing you are capable of that would put you at risk, as I imagine there would be people eager to exploit it.”
“I don’t have any intention of doing that!” I said while I held my hands up. “It’s bad enough I have just been casually stealing stuff!”
“Hmm, well, shall we go and pay for those things then?” She asked with a raised eyebrow.