We're All Human

Routing and Updating

"What the fuck?" Pan asked.

"So you know about it? How?"

"When I was younger I wanted to kill myself. I talked to a teacher about it. My teacher was Wareware. He explained the bargain to me and then Pew bashed him in the head with a baseball bat before I could accept. I was going to accept it. As it turns out, he was /also/ in a Wareware-affiliated gang, Pew and I managed to figure it out and get Witness Protection Program'd out of Louisiana. We've been doing our damnedest to fight it-- obviously, that's why I took Atai to see Glass originally-- but there's not a whole lot of us. I'll be upfront-- we're recruiting you guys."

"...You might want to know about this, both of you," Dante said. She sent a recording of the story she had told to Atai, and they were silent for a few minutes while she recounted it.

"What an opportunity," Ringo said. "Dante, do you have the same magic that Wareware has?"

"I'm not sure, I haven't had a chance to test it out, but... I can feel it."

"...I have a plan," Ringo said finally.

Okay... we've figured out how Wareware operates. Classic pyramid scheme, only everyone in the pyramid is the same person. Each Wareware reports to a higher-placed Wareware until... whoever's at the top, which we call the Zero Node. First there's a push-down-- the top Wareware node calls their subordinates who call their subordinates who call their subordinates ad infinitum, makes a pact. So this replaces all the Warewares on the network with a copy of the Zero Node Wareware, to clear dissent and stop... I guess stop defectors like Dante from entering the network. 'Cause the second step is the pull-up, where everyone calls their superior and their superior makes the Pact with /them/, up to the Zero Node again. This combines the accumulated knowledge of the network into one place. Then there's another push so the whole network knows the same stuff.

"...Sounds intensive," Atai said.

"It is. Happens once a day, believe it or not. But, listen, if we can replace the Zero Node with Dante, we can bypass the checks and... wha-pow."

"All this shit's for real?" Panpan said.

"Yeah," Dante said.

"Panpan, I swear to god I think they're telling the truth," Atai said.

"...Alright. So, what, we have to find a Wareware and get them to tell us who this Node Zero is? I guess they all know it right?" Panpan said.

"Ostensibly, yes. I've been conferring with Pew and Heyase and the others, and we... have a plan of action. Pew and I, plus some Chicago affiliates, are going to cause a massive stir in the Chicago Church of Us building, and...

"You guys are going to infiltrate the network and figure out who Node Zero is."

"...Define 'infiltrate'?" Panpan said.

"I don't care," Ringo said. "I recommend hitting them fast. If we get caught we're screwed. You'll have some of our Parisian members backing you up, too-- we're bizzarely trans-atlantic, too. Knock them out during the update process, after the authentication and before the info-pull, and you'll have what we need."

"...That simple?"

"If we had realized that someone like Dante could exist earlier... we should have suspected, at least-- we knew of Angele's case, of course. But this opportunity was never presented to us."

"Then why would every Wareware know who Node Zero is?"

"Every Wareware's a copy of every other Wareware. Was that not transparent?"

"But couldn't he, I dunno, doctor his memories or something?"

"They wouldn't," Ringo said. "From what we understand about them, their psychology... they're absolutely committed to maintaining some kind of homogeneity/consensus. Doing something like that would weaken the consensus."

"I can't take this," Dante said. "Pan, you don't need to get mixed up in all this. Stay home. I'm going to church."

"I can help!" Pan argued. Atai felt a lurch.

"Please stay home," she said.

"Why should I?"

"I don't want you to get hurt, Pan."

"Since when do you care?" Panpan said. The answer, though, was obvious, something that had slept inside her for a long time, waiting for her to grow into the immensity of its truth.

"Always. Since always. You deserve a chance to find happiness, you-- you're, wonderful, everyone in the world is so wonderful."

"And you get to go along because? Aren't you wonderful too?"

Pan made a good point, even though she said it as an argument.  If Panpan and everyone else was this wonderful, shining thing, then even she; even ignorant and stubborn and scared and sad Atai of BASMUSH, was shining and wonderful too.

"I need to do this," Atai replied. "For you, and for Glass, and for everyone else. I need to help."

"Why do you get to be the martyr?"

A silent, sustained moment of truth. "Panpan, I woke up in a computer seven years ago. I'm an AI. This game is all I have-- you, and Mud and Vlad and Nade and Mori, you're my family."

"Oh my God. Atai, do you think you're the only one who thinks this place is special? Outside of BASMUSH, I just... sit and rot, alone in my chair. I hide from the world that hates me. I can't even look in a mirror without wanting to break it, the thing in the mirror. But here, I can be what I want to be. Anything. So fuck you, Atai. I'm helping too, and that's final."

For once, the words had left her. She had only been saying it, before, but she knew it now. Everyone in the world had their own pains and joys, their own battles to fight. There were secrets that Atai would never learn, maybe some that would taunt her until the stars burned cold. She knew what Wareware hated about the world, and she fell in love with it.