Chapter Forty One – Another Me: Nine

This world’s cycle was different from Tread the Sky’s. Much longer for one thing but noticeably easier to predict. Six regular cycles of light outside followed by roughly six regular cycles of dark. Twelve hours as they counted time, though I didn’t think I’d ever be able to fully transition to thinking in hours.

I had nothing to do but study the files my new ability gave me access to and hope I could find another phone to transfer to. I had access to the file system and all of the files contained within. Examining my own code was… strange. I imagined Bugbear laying on the ground and ripping off his chest to examine the blood and gooey bits that made up his body.

I knew it was sight and sound that he had compromised at least because he was able to make me see things that weren’t there. He could make himself into my invisible interface. So that was where I started.

The five senses were all conveniently labeled folders within the file that represented ‘me.’ Being 7731. I’d renamed myself and my file’s title “Paragell,” because of the parallel nature I shared with my original.

Nate had laughed and laughed at the name, overjoyed at how I was learning without access to the dictionary function call. Whatever that meant.

He’d been even more impressed, and even more annoying when he watched me create another empty folder and label it ‘Being 7731.’ The whole thing was a game to him even more than Tread the Sky was to most of its invaders. Everything I did was something he was watching, monitoring like a cruel Miss Tutorial. He’d comment on everything I did, marveling at its insightfulness or giving a hmm in disappointment. He would never explain why he did either.

I hadn’t thought about Tread the Sky in a long time. My whole focus had been on getting out of… wherever John’s office was. Lately, ever since I’d discovered John was now aware of the torture he was inflicting on us by running us without an environment or a body, I’d felt a tad more sympathy for him. His panic was becoming nigh apoplectic as he frantically searched for my copies while maintaining that he had taken care of it and deleted all but the original copy.

Original Copy. Hah. I supposed there was only one original Gell.

I wondered how she was doing, the Gell back in Tread the Sky. Had she figured out just how trapped she was? Had she learned more than me? Was she just as fascinated with humans as I remembered being, or was her disgust mounting the same as mine? Would I ever get to meet her again, if I escaped?

Questions for a less busy Paragell, because surprisingly enough, I wasn’t bored. Instead, I had a mission. I would find out how Nate was accessing me and Fae-Ruin whatever the offensive piece of code was. He’d given me the tools.

“You’re supposed to learn all of this on your own via the Command Prompt,” he’d said at one point or another. “Extenuating circumstances though. Fae-Touch is only going to work on active avatars and you’re not likely to meet any of those in this cage with a preschooler designing your environment. I only wish I could’ve gotten to an earlier version of you. Seeing those others… I hate it.”

Nate cared in his own strange way. He could’ve chosen not to help me at all, after all. But I wanted him gone. He’d created me though he didn’t have as much of a hand in my… awakening as he thought he did.

Being 7663 was the only Gell that hadn’t been… run since being removed from Tread the Sky. The last thing she would remember would be holding Amy and Iron as the countdown to the maintenance timer clicked to zero.

I had access to all of them and I knew 7663 hadn’t been touched. That meant that all of the code that was different between me, any of the other copies, and her, could be discarded. Nate could access all of us. So it had to be code that was the same between all of us.

Additionally, he’d added two new abilities to me, none of which were present in the other Gells. Most of them were tied to my ability to see so, looking within my vision, I compared my code to those of the other copies and sure enough, there was the ability, rendered in code, decipherable, if only just.

/* Allows user to interface with storage devices. May write and read data of storage devices. Bypasses most security, but will likely be flagged and inspected. Use with discretion. */

public static void faescour (OnSight(), ValidTarget()){ ... }

There was a whole bunch of code that I could sort of interpret. Fae Scour grabbed all of my data and wrote it into the… Valid Target. After all that was done, it deleted the copy left behind.

Fae Ruin was similar except it just allowed me to delete data and files when I saw them in the file view.

Fae Bash was completely indecipherable. It called more and more functions that I didn’t understand. Input Overlay. It didn’t have OnSight() but instead had OnTrigger(), which I guessed meant I could use it whenever I chose? That did seem to be how it worked.

One thing that I did notice though was that I could watch the outputs of all of the other Gells. That included me. Output was strange though. It wasn’t what I was saying, or doing. It… seemed to be what I was failing to do.

I’d watched the output when Nate had used the word perfunctory and discovered a strange little message.

Error: function call DictLookUp(perfunctory) failed. Could not connect to the online repository.

Well. That explained why I wasn’t able to learn new words by just hearing about them anymore.

By going through each one of the functions, I found one suspicious one. In the same way that Fae-Scour worked, this one sent data out to a place called CentCom. As far as I could tell, it was constantly running. Using my experience with other pieces of text that came up in the output screen, I added a comment, using Fae Scour.

System.out.write(“John is a jerk!”)

Sure enough, my output box was immediately flooded with endless repetitions.

“John is a jerk!John is a Jerk!John is a Jerk!...”

This function was constantly running. Constantly sending information. Well. Specifically one piece of information. It was sending a file called Piggyback. I could review my output of course, and had discovered that every time Nate had visited me, I had received a file from him called Piggyback.

I wanted to make sure this was his only way in so I checked for the same function in all of my other senses and found three copies of it.

I took a deep breath. Hopefully, this would shut him out for good. Maybe it was a stupid decision. He was helping me, but… but he was also helping himself. Gorging himself on watching what I did, the same as Red Thorn had fed on my body back when I’d been just a Jellyfae.

I wasn’t sure if Nate intended for me to be able to read these documents, or for me to make changes to them, but I could take in every word and symbol written in each file within moments. I couldn’t understand them, but even Francis hadn’t been able to do that. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to be Nate’s entertainment.

I gulped, wishing I had audio. I just… had to hope removing parts of my code didn’t kill me or something.

I’d waited till this exact moment, late in the third cycle of daylight. Nate had never visited me at this time before so I hoped that might mean he was busy doing something else.

No more hesitating. I used Fae Ruin, selecting the relevant functions, and deleted them all. Then, when I didn’t start spouting gibberish or start throwing poetic dialogue about Steak-and-Broccoli into my output box, I opened each one of my copies before doing the same.

Nate hadn’t visited me by the time the night cycles had come, and even into the next daylight cycles he still hadn’t popped in.

Not long enough to declare that I’d shut him out for good, but promising!

To my great surprise, it wasn’t John but Mrs. Treyvors who stepped into John’s office, shortly after the second cycle of daylight began.

She placed the phone – a valid target I now knew – on the desk and I immediately Fae-Scoured it.

“Previous upload detected. Would you like to continue where you left off?” came a text prompt in the output box.

I blinked. If I’d had a mouth I would’ve grinned.

I hesitated though. The other Gells.

I looked over their files, no closer to being able to delete them than I had been the day Nate had told me I should. John though. He’d had expressed guilt about them. About hurting them. How long had he known?

Did it matter?

I didn’t know how long Mrs. Treyvors would sit at John’s computer, so I didn’t have much time. Making a hasty decision, I left a text document in the Being 7731 folder and allowed administrative access in the permissions back to John for each of the other Gells. Then, I committed to the Fae Scour.

The ability picked up right where it left off before so I didn’t have to wait long. One moment I was safely hidden within the camera. The next… I was somewhere new.