image [https://imgur.com/ASxjX27.jpg]

As I blurted out my desire to save the TCC, Uncle and Janus looked at me like I was crazy. But I felt it was my job to fix her, since it really wasn't her fault she broke.

Uncle was saying that I was just being “foolishly empathetic”…was he calling me pathetic? How rude!

“Uncle, you don’t understand..." I stood on my toes and leaned forward with fists clenched in front of me, "she’s fixable, I can do it.”

“It’s best to let her be decommissioned.”

Decommissioning her would delete her completely. If that happened, she’d be dead for good.

Something about that made me anxious, so I didn’t want to let it happen. Broken things needed to be fixed, not destroyed. If we were killed every time we made a mistake, we'd never have a chance to make that mistake right. It just wouldn't be fair.

I tugged on Uncle's arm, begging him to let me try just one time to save her.

“Please please please please…” I kept repeating that until he gave in.

“You do understand that this poses a security risk to us all, yes? We’d have to turn the power back on.”

Actually, I already thought about that. We could just turn back on the systems that run the TCC's AI. Everything else would be disabled.

He wasn’t happy, but there were some protocols in place to keep a captured, rogue AI from causing trouble. And to add to that, since only her mind would be active, she couldn't hurt me. This plan was very low stakes.

Uncle could promise me exactly seven minutes of safety to help out TCC. If I took any more time, he’d have to shut her down again and force me out.

"Seven minutes…?" I whined out. "Why not more?"

"Any longer and the power systems will reset on their own, and the tower will be active again."

I guess seven minutes was fine, given the situation. But still, would it be enough time to save her? Solving the problem wasn’t going to be easy, since I really didn’t know what to expect…but I’d figure it out. Probably.

“Are you really letting her go in?” Janus gave him a shocked scowl. “Who knows what’ll be waiting for her!”

“It’s much like her future, wouldn’t you say?” Uncle retorted. “One day she will be called to make decisions much harder than this, and I won’t be there to hold her hand.”

He turned at patted my head.

"If her feelings are this strong, I support her." He said, encouraging me.

Janus still didn’t like the idea, but he gave in and also told me to follow my emotions.

Okay. Now that I had permission…this was going to be like the last time I hacked into the system. But I really needed to concentrate if I wanted to stay in her head for seven minutes.

I sat down on the ground like one of those meditating monks, but I couldn't hold that position very long before my legs fell asleep.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I decided to sit up against the Hornet instead, supporting my back with it.

Uncle sat cross legged next to me, then said I should lean on him for more comfort.

I scooched over to him and laid over his lap, letting my head rest on his leg. He held my shoulder tightly, making sure I'd stay put on him.

His suit reappeared. It was comfy enough to relax on. Much better than the hard surface of the Hornet.

"I'll be right here. Remember that you're not alone."

"Thank you, Uncle. I love you."

I always said I love you to my family before I went to sleep.

"I love you too, Young Mistress."

My eyes started to close. My mind began the sequence to connect with the tower again, putting the rest of me in sleep mode.

This time, my link to the tower was stronger. I went into a trance like sleep and let my imagination paint the environment.

~☆☆☆~

A dreamscape of lights lit up before me. A grid of red, green, and blue traced out the environment, creating outlines of walls and flooring. Pulses of light raced across them until they were solid lines.

Walls slowly filled in with silver surfaces like metal, and white fog spread out ahead of me in a long hallway.

The floors also looked like metal, but it was grey with symmetrical lines of blue and white lights across the borders.

If you looked close enough to all of the surfaces, you could see little veins of light shine in them. That was mana that ran through the whole computer to power it. Since we were running on emergency power, they were hardly visible.

Above me was an open sky, like a twinkly night to be precise. It was beautiful with its billions of star-like lights, exactly what I imagined space to look like from the surface. I could have looked at it all day (or night?), but it only made me anxious to see the real thing someday.

Not to ruin the magic, but it was just a bunch of diodes that expressed the computer's life and thoughts, kinda’ like how a brain has neurons.

“One day we’ll see the real thing, right Samael?”

My snake didn’t answer me. He usually responded with a 'hiss' when I'd say his name.

He must not have been here, since this was a digital world and all. Not having him around was weird, like I forgot my favourite accessory back home.

Speaking of which, something immediately felt off. One step forward almost made me fall over.

I felt...taller. Was this place just small?

No, I actually was taller, and my hair was like, five times heavier for some reason.

One of the walls had a reflective surface, so I looked and saw my reflection to discover…

"Oh my gosh, I'm older!"

I looked like a grown up. I still had a similar dress on, but it looked more detailed and pretty, with an open skirt in the front. It almost looked like a wedding dress you could run in.

My pony tail was on the back of my head now, as opposed to the left side. It was like, five times bigger too! I also had long, flowing hair coming down my back too.

Man, I had a lot of hair…awesome!

I felt like a princess, I looked so cool! I did a few power poses just to show off how cool I turned out to be in grown up form!

I guess I still was a synthetic life form, since I had my armour skin and crystal heart. That was good.

After a few funny faces in the mirror, I got focused on the mission at hand, and that was to save the TCC.

"Let's do this!"

I saw tons of doors to my left and right, all of them had little windows and signs that said something about each room. The only bad part was that the insides of the rooms were pitch-black, so you couldn't see in them. That was probably because the tower wasn’t online, so nothing was active.

These rooms must have been the different programs and systems in the tower. Each of them had some purpose that allowed the tower computer to work properly.

The hallways were laid out like spider webs, all interconnecting and merging at the very center core. That’s where all the AI code was.

But there was one big problem…

“How the heck do I get there?!”

It was a big maze. Super big.

Luckily I kinda’ knew one way to get around here. If you look up at the diode stars, they all were converging above the core and swirling around, slowly falling down in a tornado-like twist. At least I knew where the goal was, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be as easy to get there.

Well, no sense in standing around worrying about it. I had to get to the core before my seven minutes were up.

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