Star Fields

Chapter No. 118. Test 2.

Chapter No. 118. Test 2.

Just when you thought it was safe, shit happens!

This time Alexa came to me at night, but this time she was dressed.

I looked at her with trepidation showing in my eyes. "What's up?"

"I think that I've located a possible Tyco code infection."

"Where?"

"I think it's in this series-5 update."

I sighed. "I was afraid of that."

"The problem is that the code is buried in it."

"What could we do to purge it?"

"I don't think that the androids have isolated the Tyco code from series-5 code. It might be because they expected us to do the purge."

"Why can't they do that?" I asked.

"I don't think that they are authorized to do it."

"And we are?"

"I believe so, but we're going to have to do it directly in the main processor core, and we had better do it soon because I don't think it will be possible once the series-5 is installed in everyone."

I climbed out of bed. "Let's do it now."

She smirked. "You're not going to dress?"

"No use wasting time."

She laughed.

We both became tiny and entered the main processor core. We had to duck photons bombarding from all of the fiber lines coming into the core. The series-5 code was in the operating system memory, but it was buried in trillions of lines of code that we only see as quantum states. It was like reading Brail without touching anything.

"I think I've found it," Alexa said. "It's right here in this update memory stack."

"Yeah. The problem is how to find the Tyco code in this."

"I think I might know how we can identify the Tyco code. It has a signature on each line that has a TY."

I chuckled. "Surely, it's not that easy."

"I think it is. I think this Tyco nut is an egotist who thought he was smarter than anyone else."

"Okay, let's purge it."

Our efforts to remove the Tyco code proved to be impossible.

"Every time we try to erase it, it comes back," Alexa complained.

I had to think about that for a moment. "Maybe it's a time shift trick. It's able to avoid erasure by becoming invisible the moment we try to erase it. That's a typical quantum trick."

"Maybe this Tyco was smarter than we thought," Alexa said.

"There might be a way to fool this. I could make time stop for a fraction of a microsecond to allow us to erase it permanently."

"That would be like fooling the fool," she said.

"Yeah, something like that. Let's give it a try."

I had Alexa purge the data while I interrupted it. It worked, but it took us some time to purge all of the Tyco code. We had to wade through trillions of lines of code. Doing that at the speed of light was not easy, but because we were tiny, we were able to accomplish it by just thinking.

We came back out of the processor core into my bedroom.

"Hopefully, that will take care of it," Alexa said.

"I wouldn't hold my breath," I said. "I doubt that we've seen the last of this problem."

"You're probably right, but it seems as if when we think we're done with it, it pops up again."

"Let's go have a beer," I said.

"I'm not much of a beer drinker," she said. "How about some wine?"

"Sure." I turned to leave my bedroom.

"You're not going to dress?"

"Do I need to?"

She chuckled. "You're paying me back, aren't you?"

I gave her a smirk.

Then she did something I hadn't expected. She made her clothes disappear.

"Okay, we're equal," she said.

I didn't argue with her. We went to my kitchen area and I got a bottle of wine from my wine cooler and poured us two glasses.

After a few sips, we both felt better.

"I'm not sure how we should use our powers," Alexa said. "It makes me nervous realizing what I could do."

"I know what you mean. I'm not comfortable with it either. I always worry that I will become angry and do something that I would be sorry about."

"I think we will be tested," she said. "We have been given these powers to do good, and we have to prove that we're worthy of that trust."

"I agree. The survival of the android collective depends upon it."

"That's a very scary responsibility," she said.

I had to agree. I didn't like the idea of being tested like this, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.