War is just a form of politics by other means. It's an old saying. In the last few months Jet's come to understand the opposite is also true. Once you understand that, being Baron gets a lot easier
She'd still give anything to be anywhere but a stuffy office deep inside Crystal Tokyo, explaining exactly how search engine optimisation worked and the value of being top of the heap come election time.
Square peg meets round hole. She wishes to be somewhere else, for any excuse. Her wish is granted
Koimura, deputy for west Hiroshima, sees the change in her face and offers his best Pan-Am smile.
“Wow, no need to react like I ran over your dog,”
A twitch rolls through the cyber's body and her gets the feeling that maybe he's just touched a raw nerve.
“I need to leave. It's personal.”
Jet doesn't even wait for the formalities, she's gone and out of the city. A ping reminder for a 3-whip sounds in the back of her mind, but she ignores it. By the time the message from Kusadasi gets to gets to her wondering where she is with the Independent Alliance trying to push a no-confidence through she's left the city.
By the time she bothers to respond, she's left the planet.
“My brother's shuttle has gone missing.”
That's the only explanation she offers. A message from Koimura reaches her, letting her know he's stepped out of the vote, out of respect. Well-wishes follow from the entire parliament, but she doesn't read them. The Tokyo parliament might as well be a weber-block for all it matters to her and getting to the moon.
For the first time in years she feels the vast gulf of space – the void between worlds yawning open to swallow her body. It gives her time to think, time to entertain the worst possibilities and fears. Time to despair. Time to hope.
She's twenty minutes out when they find the wreck.
No sign of life.
Stellvia passes a moment before she starts her landing, streaking to the moon. The difference between a crater and a deft landing is an instant in time, but she's mastered it. Made it instinct.
Shards of carbon sit splashed across the surface of the moon, deep scars carved in the dust where the harder parts land. One ofthe three spacesuits there finally notices her arrival, putting itself between her and the wreck.
“Hey! Stop!”
No force in the universe could stop her. Eventually, the suit relents.
“We found parts of the cockpit. Over there.”
Nothing recogniseable. Splintered carbon. Cable. What might be a finger. A piece of instrument. A chunk of the canopy. A boot burst on impact. Dessicated rags, crumbling to the touch. Remnants of a seat. A control column with flakes of something pressed into it. A shattered helmet, and the remains still inside.
Something tears inside, a little death deep inside her heart. She feels the magnificent desolation engulf her soul, alone in the galaxy.
She can't even cry.
“How?”
The suit holds up its hands, taking a step back. “We haven't even found the recorder yet”
There isn't one. They stripped everything out of those lightweights – even the black boxes. She asks herself how.
Her muse answers with a way to find out. A paper dating backdated
She launches with the skull in hand. Ruined, but the hardware seems intact. RAM chips can still hold residual charge. Jet pings a message to A.C., hiding her reason for now. Confirmed. She has maybe five hours with that model – 1 hour already gone. Six to the Forge. Four Home.
Already, she knows her brother is dead. Fine. She resigns herself to it. But she has to know how. Or who?
For her own sanity.
She has four hours to figure out what to do.
“Hey Jet, What's....”
Anika throws up when she sees what inside the helmet. Jet doesn't care – she just needs somewhere to put the chips – something that'd let her get access to what was inside.
The last few moments of memory, right before the impact.
The Galatea project is nowhere near complete. But her puppet might do.
Jet cuts through the remains with a saw. This isn't Mackie. This is just a thing. A remnant. Mackie's gone, she reminds herself.
Parts of the mainboard are gone, but the core chip and memory stacks seem to be intact. Most of the control and I/O interface has broken off along with something she can't identify. It doesn't matter – she knows a dirty way around.
It'd work through her puppet's interface if she tied the core through it.
To buy time, she powers the chips, locking them into a continuous self-refresh mode. The last few seconds are burned in.
After thirteen years, you pick up a few tricks. Amuse helps, filling in the blanks before she knows they're there.
She has to know. What killed her brother.
It drives her forward, feeding into inspiration.
The puppet's interface isn't supposed to be used like this, and neither is the mainboard and memory controller but it works. It'll work long enough for her to dive in. Jet checks signal paths. All looks well. Battered hardware is holding up. The shock gel inside the skull did its job. One last check. An alarm.
A ghost. A consciousness.
She hates whomever decided on that term.
She sickens at the idea of what she's done. She's seen broken AI minds before. Sometimes dead is better and she knows it. She wouldn't have even tried this if she thought there was a chance....
But there it is. An echo. A ghost. A mind broken on impact.
Frankenstein's compulsion takes hold. She has to know. To see for sure.
She dives through the connection.
There he is, bewildered in virtual space. In a Daze.
“Mackie,” she tries. The ghost responds. It remembers. She doesn't dare hope it's intact – she knows that's beyond her skill.
There's no relief. It's not really him, her mind whispers and she longs to ignore it, forcing herself to answer. She wants it to be, forces it, pulling the puppet into a sisterly hug. A show, maybe.
The ghost tells her what she needs to know.
Mackie's dead. And someone killed him.
--
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
She'd still give anything to be anywhere but a stuffy office deep inside Crystal Tokyo, explaining exactly how search engine optimisation worked and the value of being top of the heap come election time.
Square peg meets round hole. She wishes to be somewhere else, for any excuse. Her wish is granted
Koimura, deputy for west Hiroshima, sees the change in her face and offers his best Pan-Am smile.
“Wow, no need to react like I ran over your dog,”
A twitch rolls through the cyber's body and her gets the feeling that maybe he's just touched a raw nerve.
“I need to leave. It's personal.”
Jet doesn't even wait for the formalities, she's gone and out of the city. A ping reminder for a 3-whip sounds in the back of her mind, but she ignores it. By the time the message from Kusadasi gets to gets to her wondering where she is with the Independent Alliance trying to push a no-confidence through she's left the city.
By the time she bothers to respond, she's left the planet.
“My brother's shuttle has gone missing.”
That's the only explanation she offers. A message from Koimura reaches her, letting her know he's stepped out of the vote, out of respect. Well-wishes follow from the entire parliament, but she doesn't read them. The Tokyo parliament might as well be a weber-block for all it matters to her and getting to the moon.
For the first time in years she feels the vast gulf of space – the void between worlds yawning open to swallow her body. It gives her time to think, time to entertain the worst possibilities and fears. Time to despair. Time to hope.
She's twenty minutes out when they find the wreck.
No sign of life.
Stellvia passes a moment before she starts her landing, streaking to the moon. The difference between a crater and a deft landing is an instant in time, but she's mastered it. Made it instinct.
Shards of carbon sit splashed across the surface of the moon, deep scars carved in the dust where the harder parts land. One ofthe three spacesuits there finally notices her arrival, putting itself between her and the wreck.
“Hey! Stop!”
No force in the universe could stop her. Eventually, the suit relents.
“We found parts of the cockpit. Over there.”
Nothing recogniseable. Splintered carbon. Cable. What might be a finger. A piece of instrument. A chunk of the canopy. A boot burst on impact. Dessicated rags, crumbling to the touch. Remnants of a seat. A control column with flakes of something pressed into it. A shattered helmet, and the remains still inside.
Something tears inside, a little death deep inside her heart. She feels the magnificent desolation engulf her soul, alone in the galaxy.
She can't even cry.
“How?”
The suit holds up its hands, taking a step back. “We haven't even found the recorder yet”
There isn't one. They stripped everything out of those lightweights – even the black boxes. She asks herself how.
Her muse answers with a way to find out. A paper dating backdated
She launches with the skull in hand. Ruined, but the hardware seems intact. RAM chips can still hold residual charge. Jet pings a message to A.C., hiding her reason for now. Confirmed. She has maybe five hours with that model – 1 hour already gone. Six to the Forge. Four Home.
Already, she knows her brother is dead. Fine. She resigns herself to it. But she has to know how. Or who?
For her own sanity.
She has four hours to figure out what to do.
“Hey Jet, What's....”
Anika throws up when she sees what inside the helmet. Jet doesn't care – she just needs somewhere to put the chips – something that'd let her get access to what was inside.
The last few moments of memory, right before the impact.
The Galatea project is nowhere near complete. But her puppet might do.
Jet cuts through the remains with a saw. This isn't Mackie. This is just a thing. A remnant. Mackie's gone, she reminds herself.
Parts of the mainboard are gone, but the core chip and memory stacks seem to be intact. Most of the control and I/O interface has broken off along with something she can't identify. It doesn't matter – she knows a dirty way around.
It'd work through her puppet's interface if she tied the core through it.
To buy time, she powers the chips, locking them into a continuous self-refresh mode. The last few seconds are burned in.
After thirteen years, you pick up a few tricks. Amuse helps, filling in the blanks before she knows they're there.
She has to know. What killed her brother.
It drives her forward, feeding into inspiration.
The puppet's interface isn't supposed to be used like this, and neither is the mainboard and memory controller but it works. It'll work long enough for her to dive in. Jet checks signal paths. All looks well. Battered hardware is holding up. The shock gel inside the skull did its job. One last check. An alarm.
A ghost. A consciousness.
She hates whomever decided on that term.
She sickens at the idea of what she's done. She's seen broken AI minds before. Sometimes dead is better and she knows it. She wouldn't have even tried this if she thought there was a chance....
But there it is. An echo. A ghost. A mind broken on impact.
Frankenstein's compulsion takes hold. She has to know. To see for sure.
She dives through the connection.
There he is, bewildered in virtual space. In a Daze.
“Mackie,” she tries. The ghost responds. It remembers. She doesn't dare hope it's intact – she knows that's beyond her skill.
There's no relief. It's not really him, her mind whispers and she longs to ignore it, forcing herself to answer. She wants it to be, forces it, pulling the puppet into a sisterly hug. A show, maybe.
The ghost tells her what she needs to know.
Mackie's dead. And someone killed him.
--
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?