THE CONSTRUCT: In The End

PART NINETEEN

35.

'We've a problem' Una tells Steve and the Doc. 'What I had thought of as a glitch before is something potentially much worse ...'

'Meaning what?' asks Doc.

'Parts of the construct code were being deleted, or so I thought, but it's rewriting itself. It's an intelligence taking control of the construct ... redesigning ...'

'I see it ...' Steve says, now working with intent at his particular station. 'I'll work on getting my avatar to either Aiden or Nigel or both if they so happen to be together. What am I telling them?'

'Just get to them before we're locked out ... we'll figure it out or be screwed if we don't.'

The rate the code is being rewritten is many times that of what a team of ten could input if they were working all out with a heated fury in tandem with one another. Here are just three members of the original five working away.

Doc's role was the body and the transfer of consciousness from the body into the construct and back again along with the monitoring of the effects. Her area is more specific. There is only so much she can do at her station and console, and still, she has two bodies to look after and monitor, and both of them ... their consciousness at least ... are within the construct.

With Nigel being the main creator, it would be of great benefit if he were able to work a console ... obviously enough, he can't. On top of all this, if Steve's avatar finds either Aiden or Nigel, what good would that do? Then it hits Steve. He needs to provide a gateway, a doorway within the construct to the bar and at that, he needs his avatar to find both Nigel and Aiden otherwise one of them may have to pay the price.

They have to tear down the construct before they lose all control. Doing that will cost both Nigel and Aiden their lives unless they are out before the crash. If Nigel were to meet his end within the construct, then the construct also crashes with most everything being destroyed along with it to the point where if any future attempt to rebuild would as good as having to begin from scratch.

No one wants death to come, not even the corporation. They want the control of the construct. Terms of the contract signed by Nigel and Josh, the construct is now technically theirs, it's rights, ownership ... the works. Nigel went in prematurely to prevent the take over and his death would of course see to it that the corporation would be the new owners of nothing technically. .... And if it goes belly up, they will have no returns on their investment.

And Aiden has basically lost his soul to the corporation. He is an employee of theirs, even with the fact that his allegiance does not lie with them. They may suspect this be so as they also expect him to do his job, so his death would not be in their best interests.

The bar Steve aided Josh to create is more or less a prototype, a test run of the actual construct, and with the construct in operation, so too is the bar. It is incorporated into the main programme but runs separately. The bar will remain in operation even if the construct crashes so long as Nigel's life isn't lost while inside the main body of the construct.

Therefore, Steve needs to get Nigel and Aiden into the bar area as soon as possible. The interaction with Steve, or Steve's avatar, within the construct is most odd. In here he has been silent, up to now ... that is.

He works the bar whether that be the bar Josh created with Steve's input or the bar carriage of an old-style luxury train, ... cleaning glasses that don't need cleaning, or don't even exist for that matter. He had been taken hostage then hurt in a way which cannot be easily understood. And in such, as well with some alteration from the actual Steve due to potential construct collapse, he is ... different, different in ways which are not so easy to compute.