Sat 11/26 15:07:57 PST

I pull another few thousand bots in and add them to the rings emanating heat around me. The stones of the Residence steps beneath me are still freezing cold, but I’m not bothered enough by it to worry about warming them. Maybe I should have grabbed a jacket, but what’s the point of being a technowizard if I don’t use my powers? I’ve paid a dear enough price for them, so I’m going to get all I can from these microscopic metal bugs.

A stray paper with a handprint decorated like a turkey blows across the grass of the commons. Must be from the nursery kids’ crafts earlier today. I snatch it out of the air with a thought and pull it into my hand. Millie’s name is drawn in crayon at the bottom below the finger-tailfeathers on the construction paper. Inside the palm area, a neater hand wrote what she is grateful for: Father, the Butler Institute, Saving the World, Nanny, and Pumpkin Pie. As I look at it, I get a brief flash of memory, handing something not so different from this to Gramps at a Thanksgiving feast at his house. I must have been in kindergarten or preschool. I don’t remember who else was there, but I suddenly recall eating so much pie that I threw up. I write up everything I can about it and link it in my database. They come like that sometimes, bits of recollection. If I can gather up enough of them, maybe I can piece together something like a real memory of my childhood.

Thanksgiving weekend here has been less than festive for me. Even if the turkey dinner in the cafeteria hadn’t been a sad parody of a real Thanksgiving, the day would have been ruined anyway since Evan wasn’t there to eat it with me. He got his upgrade surgery that morning, and I haven’t seen him since. Then Louise went in yesterday, and Andrea had hers today. My ploy to delay Jeff’s procedure seems to have worked, since the appointment for his upgrade is gone from Father’s calendar. Something to be grateful for there. But it’s been lonely without my favorite siblings around.

Oh well, more time for practicing with the bots. And working on my index. And digging through the mountains of code in my head.

I’ve been splitting my spare time this week between continuing my deep dive into the implant code and stoking Jeff’s paranoia. The stories that I’ve told him keep getting better with every whispered encounter. At this point I’m not sure how much more I can accuse Father of doing without pushing too far and toppling the whole story. All of our illustrious progenitor’s legendary exploits were public relations stunts to pacify the public about his secret deadly nanotech plans. All the SynTech facilities in the world are going to spring to life on his signal, pouring out bots to consume the universe. The only reason he had so many children was to make sure that he had enough test subjects.

That last one hit a little close to home for me as I spun it out for Jeff.

At least my work on the index is paying off. I don’t think anyone’s realized how severe my memory problems are getting. It isn’t even hard to keep up the facade of normality during class and meal times anymore. I spend the bare minimum effort that it takes to get my homework done, which isn’t much with how powerful the programmed part of my brain is getting. I don’t have to type up my work anymore since I adapted Jeff’s old keyboard typing routine to feed straight from my index. Now I can transfer anything from my electric brain to external computers at around a hundred words per minute.

And then there’s my looming need to find out how Father shut down Chad’s cloud. I’ve devoted every minute I could and probably a lot more that I should have been sleeping to sitting alone in my room with my eyes closed, crawling through the cloud control code. I’ve got my mental arms around the broad outlines of it now. If I had to, I could probably contribute to the codebase without messing it up too much. But figuring out Father’s secret override capabilities work is still beyond me. I assume the part that sends the shutdown signal is only available on Father’s side, but if I understand the cloud’s architecture at all, there must be something on our side that accepts it. It’s in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. I just can’t find it.

The clock in my head hits 18:00. Evan is supposed to be out of the Residence any time now. It’ll be good to see him again and end this vigil on the steps outside.

It’s another twenty minutes before I feel Evan’s shape coming out of the medical wing. He’s not in any rush, in fact he turns back to look at the infirmary doors three times before he reaches the foyer. Finally, I feel him turn toward the front doors of the Residence. I get up and turn around as the rush of warm air shoots around his massive frame.

“Aw, were you waiting for me?” he says as he sees me, his broad smile stretching across his face.

“I heard you’d be out tonight, thought I’d drop by.”

Evan grabs me in a huge hug as he steps into me, lifting me a couple of centimeters off the ground as he does it. I’ve missed this guy so much.

“How are you feeling?” I ask as he sets me down.

“Good, brother. The new implant is nice, and this recovery was way better than when I got the old stuff installed. I didn’t even get any new scars. He hauled the old stuff out one microscopic piece at a time using the bots.”

“Nice. No complications then.”

“No,” Evan says, but then he hesitates and gets a look in his eyes that I haven’t seen there before. Something I feel like I’ve seen in real life but can’t remember anywhere outside of Hillside High’s weekly episodes. “Well, maybe one little complication.”

“Oh, really? And did you want to share something about this complication?”

“I met somebody,” he gushes. “Her name is Valerie, and she is so, so hot. I’m in love, man. We spent all day talking every day I was in there. I really think she’s into me. She’s only like five years older than I am. We’ll probably be dating soon.”

“Butler kids mixing with the staff? Isn’t that the sure way to get her fired?”

“Don’t worry about it. Everything was entirely above board. You remember Mariana?” I give him a blank look, I can’t tell if I don’t remember her or if I never met her. The name doesn’t ring a bell at all. “The Brazilian girl that used to work in the barber shop with Allison? Used to dye her hair a different color every month?” I shake my head. “Hmm, she must have gotten pregnant and left just before you got here. You’d remember her. Anyway, she’s back to deliver the baby and Valerie was waiting for her to give birth. She’s a nurse or a midwife or something. The labor was taking forever and she had time to kill. So we were just talking. Totally innocent.”

“Yeah, I can tell how innocent you think it was,” I laugh. “You know she’s probably on Father’s hit list, right?”

His smile disappears and his sturdy frame seems to deflate a few centimeters. “Not cool, brother. Not cool.”

I should have let him dream for a while before raining on his parade. “Sorry.”

“It’s probably true though,” he sighs after a moment. “Damn dirty old man.”

“Yeah. Sorry,” I say again. “But there’s hope. We’re getting close. I’ll check Father’s calendar. He might not get around to her if he doesn’t have her scheduled yet. Her name was Valerie? Got a last name?”

“Valerie Gil,” he says. “One L on that, not like fish gills. It’s Spanish.”

“Is she from somewhere Spanish-speaking?”

“Does California count?”

“Sure.”

“Then yes. But she only speaks English and Vietnamese.”

“Vietnamese?” I ask.

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“Her Grandma taught her. She used to spend a lot of time with Ba when she was a kid, what with both her parents working all the time and all.”

“Ba being her Grandma?”

“Yeah. On her mom’s side. Keep up, brother.”

“Of course. Yeah. My bad for failing with my psychic powers that were supposed to keep me current on everything you talked about when you were holed up in recovery.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make up for your weak telepathy by telling you every detail. But first, food. Cafeteria still open?”

“Yeah. It’s even steak night. Your favorite.”

“Let’s move then. Those ribeyes go fast, and I don’t want to get stuck with a sirloin.”

He slaps me on the shoulder as we head to dinner. It’s good to have Evan back.

Sun 11/27 11:16:15 PST

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.