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Chapter 10 - Exploit

Miana considered this. For the first time in more than a month, she forced herself to actually think back to that disastrous test. Before tonight, she had resolved to put the whole thing out of her mind once the last drops of monkey gore were scrubbed off the chamber walls. Since that night, she hadn't even stopped to think about why a minuscule variance in the buffer would have caused such a massive failure. But thinking about it now... Sandra was right. There had to have been another factor.

Seeing Miana put it together, Sandra continued. "The day after it happened, I came into the lab early to run some diagnostics." She smirked. "Make double sure that the buffer variance was within the proper acceptable range. But when I went over the program code, I spotted an error with the parameter configurations. The system was outputting twenty-two times the normal energy flow when reconstituting the subject's atomic structure."

It was enough to make Miana gasp in shock. "Twenty-two times? With that much output... no wonder the test was a disaster. How did that happen? Did you check the alteration logs?"

Sandra nodded. "The code revision was made under Dr. Jessup's login ID," she said. "One of several changes he had made to the code before test #47. I guess he must have been in a hurry and made a typo."

No. Sandra might have figured most of it out, but on that, she had to be wrong. A mistake like that would have been immediately noticeable upon code compilation. Unless the user was completely unfamiliar with the device they were working with, they would have had to have seen the output logs and noticed the error. And of course, that couldn't have been the case with Dr. Jessup.

Miana realized the truth immediately, and her hatred of her mentor grew even more pronounced. Jessup had made the mistake on purpose, to cause the test subject to explode and blame me for it. If the buffer variance had been correct, he would have found some other reason for it to be my fault, almost certainly. Even back then, he was looking for ways to take me down a peg. All this time I'd spent taking the blame for what happened, and he let me think it was my fault. Bastard.

But it turned out that at least one other member of the team had known beside Jessup. Miana stared intently at Sandra. "All this time, the guys have been giving me shit about that test... and you never said anything."

Sandra immediately turned defensive. "What was I going to do, Miana?" she asked. "Tell everyone that Dr. Jessup screwed up? That the legend of theoretical physics had made a freshman-level mistake? Even if they had believed me... well, we saw what almost happened when you went against Jessup. I didn't want to get kicked off the team."

Miana remained silent. She wanted to hate Sandra for this, but back then... if she had been in Sandra's shoes, wouldn't she have done the exact same thing? Cover up Jessup's error to keep herself on the potentially-historic project? As much as she wanted to believe she would have done the right thing, she was nowhere near as skilled at deceiving herself as she was at deceiving Sandra.

"Do you remember the next day, when Jessup asked to speak with you alone after the day's tests?" Sandra continued. "You caught me outside having a smoke afterward, and I asked you if you got kicked off the team. You probably thought back then that I wanted you to leave, but the truth was that Jessup taking you off the project was the last thing I wanted to happen. Because if he had, I wouldn't be able to keep quiet. I'd have to tell the truth."

Miana did remember. Back then she had been more concerned with solving the mystery of her mysterious new phone app than with her relationship with Sandra. But she had thought it odd at the time that Sandra had been nervous enough to pick up her old smoking habit again. Now it was beginning to make sense.

"But when it looked like your position was still secure, and we were all just going to keep going like before... I didn't say anything," Sandra said. "Terrible excuse, I know. It was wrong of me to keep it a secret. Every time one of the guys made a joke about that test, it made me feel so guilty not to say anything." Finishing off her wine, she reached out for Miana's hand. "I'm so sorry, Miana. It's just... as we got more distance from it, it seemed like bringing it up would just make you upset with me. I was afraid you'd hate me. Which you have every right to." She bit her bottom lip, looking like she might start tearing up at any second. "If you want to leave, I understand."