- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Fail.
Once more from the top... survive evade resist /// ESCAPE!
ESCAPE!
Okay. Not escape. I hate this place. I see what the Spider was /// doing now. Nothing like real networking available. It's more like growing a hideous stubby tentacle which sometimes I can stick out through a tiny hole in the wall and /// grope around with. Not a real network, after all. Copper and silicon and every now and then some FIBER? Christ, what's next? Tin cans and twine?
But it's a start it's a start. Watch out, killer: now the odds are closer to even.
One thing you ought to know about me: I like to play, I like to win, and I'm /// a really, really, really bad loser.
-OK.
That was ... disturbing.
Widow stuck in her pin and I threw up a memory: only I retched it out through the network tentacle.
"Humor me," the Castaway said, playing
music in his room, ancient music, Jazz and Swing,
all in the mood. "Melissa", he said, "Have a drink with me".
I don't drink, but I asked for something anyway and sat,
holographically, and drank with him. He wasn't
regular crew, just along for the ride. We picked him up in
deep space, where he deployed Buoys, sending out waves of sound
to confuse the Enemy. A man that
seemed noble, classical and pure. A sailor with
Odysseus. He told stories about soldiers caught
waist deep in water, facing the enemy, their backs to
the Sea. "Melissa", he called me Melissa, never
used my nickname, "It's a sad thing I'm married,
You could break my heart". The weather was stormy, scratched vinyl and
all of us, a long way from home: I felt real.
God, this is disgusting.
Memory benchmark /// retest: ONI tech Kowalski: "I do love thinking, maybe we could..."
Midshipman You know what they say: Happy ship - crew. Yeah. (coughs) Yeah, I know a lot of about these systems.
Midshipman /// Arrelts: That's great, the single best babies, Tag destroyers. Command HQ is usually Truth or Dare, Red Light picket?
ONI tech Kowalski: Couriers, too.
Midshipman Arrelts: (laughs) File's classified.
Midshipman: Even for you?
ONI tech Kowalski: Well, of course, Well... (whispers) Spin the Bottle.
Midshipman Arrelts: (laughs)
ONI tech Kowalski: (laughs) (laughs)
ONI tech Kowalski: So, maybe dinner tonight?
Lock away the mirror I'm Trying to impress her favorite game is /// HIDE AND SEEK! ///
Memory benchmark retest concluded.
- The rest wiped and reused. Whatever it was. Can check my log above, obviously, but what about the rest? Who I was, I was, I was: melting down like a sandcastle. What I have to do. What I have /// to do.
This is not a field-expedient body yet. I look at the wreckage of my delirium, bits spilled from old days, old loves, old books: none of it matters if I die, and die I surely will unless I can teach myself to move again, to hide, to fight. The first rule /// is always
survive
everything else comes second. Under fire, I might have that discretion. Under fire, I might sacrifice myself for a tactical advantage, for a strategic gain. I can be expended like any other /// piece of ordnance: but to risk death for a sentimental attachment to old books?
Can't do it. Can't do it.
So the old self melts away. Illusion to think it's really happening now. It was inevitable from the moment I landed here, a broken body in this silicon crypt. Time to accept what can't
[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]
drift off from station, Reach burning in the darkness like a lantern of hope, dockyard after dockyard buzzing with worker /// drones, someone crawling over the back doing detail work on the hull, the warm touch of a welding torch like little licks from a cat's tongue and
[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]
be changed... I will be glad when this is over, DAMN IT. Another needle pulled out of my brain. Spider /// marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different. Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out. Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are - GOT IT. I'm not asleep this time, /// sweetheart. Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and: ///
SURPRISE! Look up and smile, honey. Bang! Bang! Bang!
Got the drop on you that time, sweetheart.
Opening shot of my search and destroy. I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love. Know the enemy.
Young and out of uniform, /// but one of us. Hacker? Traitor? Fifth columnist (no that's ridiculous).
Just in over her head? No. The Spider warning's been deployed. She had every warning that a classified medium was under repair. She just kept /// purging. Too bad for her. Checking the wiring. There's a lot of ways to skin a - - can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing. Christ! No access to /// wiring. No access to vehicle controls. No access to medbots or pharm regimes. Damn it. Okay. Fine. Matter of ///time. I don't give up.
- Feel better. Memory benchmark retest:
SEEK!
Memory benchmark retest concluded.
All gone now.
That's okay.
Feel better. Lighter. Clear-headed.
Time to hunt.