♫ aivi & surasshu - The Answer (GHOST DATA Remix)
Aiesu sat idly staring down a console - the machine connected to that big amber ball that used to be Rebeka. She sat in some strange hour of the night. The room as dark as her eyes, the air just as warm, the sensation of bubble-wrap beneath her lids, her heart like poprocks - fluttering and hurting.
Exhausted, she’d done everything required of her, her person had effectively become a glorified life-support system.
But then, something caught her eye.
What the hell was that?
It took a moment for the penny to drop. Already, the bank of servers behind her were warming up, the room going from the sound of the respirator equipment to a low hum of fans and induction pumps as she began loading up pattern assessment software. She watched, wondering if this would be like the other ‘transmissions’ — noise in Rebeka’s neural circuitry like a braindead patient blinking - scatterings of nonsense text she couldn’t make any sense of.
Plaintext rendered nothing, the servers drawing a blank.
Next, signals processing: Inerpreting the different characters as voltage streams.
Still nothing.
But then she remembered a trick: Early on, the LSDF had used simple bitmaps to communicate with her using black and white dots in common image files before she had her first template - before she had her first physical body or any kind of personality - when she was basically a living rock on a desk in a laboratory somewhere.
It wasn't for any meaningful text or dialog but to respond with patterns and simple rules of mathematics… Just proof of intelligence. Rebeka had no understanding of ascii tables, like the maesus usually wired up to this equipment for maintenance - the kind they used as glorified computers… But Seiren had been teaching her to read.
Could it really be that simple?
She pasted the text into a terminal, saving it as an image file.
"Ha!" she called out, covering her mouth in surprise.
Eyes wide. Shock.
Trembling hands reaching for a communicator, punching in numbers.
Answering machine.
“Luca. Luca. Luca, pick up the phone."
Nothing. She eyed the clock. Made sense.
"Fine. Look. You’re going to want to see this” she said, holding up her communicator to snap a photo of the terminal and then the resulting image file.
Seiren could wait.
Code:
>ARE YOU THERE?
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Message sent: = 14 characters, received 0, lost 14(100% loss, 0% response)
Aiesu sat idly staring down a console - the machine connected to that big amber ball that used to be Rebeka. She sat in some strange hour of the night. The room as dark as her eyes, the air just as warm, the sensation of bubble-wrap beneath her lids, her heart like poprocks - fluttering and hurting.
Exhausted, she’d done everything required of her, her person had effectively become a glorified life-support system.
But then, something caught her eye.
Code:
>ARE YOU THERE?
>Duplex stream success!
>Recording response
>Response issued: @ 03/05/Y38, 04:22
ÿØÿà JFIF ` ` ÿÛ C
ÿÛ CÿÀ " ÿÄ
ÿÄ µ } !1AQa"q2‘¡#B±ÁRÑð$3br‚
%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyzƒ„…†‡ˆ‰Š’“”•–—˜™š¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª²³
´µ¶·¸¹ºÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚáâãäåæçèéêñòóôõö÷øùúÿÄ
ÿÄ µ w !1AQaq"2B‘¡±Á #3RðbrÑ
$4á%ñ&'()*56789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz‚ƒ„…†‡ˆ‰Š’“”•–—˜™š¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª²³
´µ¶·¸¹ºÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚâãäåæçèéêòóôõö÷øùúÿÚ ? ú7öÿ ‚¤xûö}øËñRÇ⟨xûál{àî‰
\x¾æëYðµÅÐ_°YçOna\F%¥êÄò·m€Iî ÿ ‚àëÿ loá÷…¾ |@ñ/‚|5ñV„ú¿‰ô«]RòçJºV9õK„Mm2->;¦T}
ú¨ºX\`Jôør§ÂÏúü@ÿ “€ÿ †Žÿ ë?ùç×þ=¿äÿ Lÿ ×Ózè<ÿ ¬ð¯ÂŽÚß‹¼-ñㆼ?â_ˆüOÕü
¥kðÙèZ®½=ºÅ<÷Çê2ÛÈê³½“Þ›F‘@0˜€Š€?8?á¬~)ÿ ÑKøÿ )*ÿ „þFÏù¿è
þ³þAÿ ôëþ§ýŠúÿ þÿ Ûû?þwü[/øhøgíÿ øI?â{ÿ Ù÷}«û/ì¾GöÚ?wæ}¿Îòÿ yänýÍzü9Ságýþ ÉÀÃGÇõŸüŒ?óëÿ
ßòÿ ¦ë¿é½ðåO…Ÿð½¿á.þßøÿ ÿ ü-_ø]¿ð„ýºÏûþÿ ³ù_Ú~oÙ¿´~ÿ ïþÏöß³ùœy^Wî¨ÿÙ
>Response ends
What the hell was that?
It took a moment for the penny to drop. Already, the bank of servers behind her were warming up, the room going from the sound of the respirator equipment to a low hum of fans and induction pumps as she began loading up pattern assessment software. She watched, wondering if this would be like the other ‘transmissions’ — noise in Rebeka’s neural circuitry like a braindead patient blinking - scatterings of nonsense text she couldn’t make any sense of.
Plaintext rendered nothing, the servers drawing a blank.
Next, signals processing: Inerpreting the different characters as voltage streams.
Still nothing.
But then she remembered a trick: Early on, the LSDF had used simple bitmaps to communicate with her using black and white dots in common image files before she had her first template - before she had her first physical body or any kind of personality - when she was basically a living rock on a desk in a laboratory somewhere.
It wasn't for any meaningful text or dialog but to respond with patterns and simple rules of mathematics… Just proof of intelligence. Rebeka had no understanding of ascii tables, like the maesus usually wired up to this equipment for maintenance - the kind they used as glorified computers… But Seiren had been teaching her to read.
Could it really be that simple?
She pasted the text into a terminal, saving it as an image file.
"Ha!" she called out, covering her mouth in surprise.
Eyes wide. Shock.
Trembling hands reaching for a communicator, punching in numbers.
Answering machine.
“Luca. Luca. Luca, pick up the phone."
Nothing. She eyed the clock. Made sense.
"Fine. Look. You’re going to want to see this” she said, holding up her communicator to snap a photo of the terminal and then the resulting image file.
Attached files: response_03_05_y38_0422.image
She hit send and collapsed into her chair. Eyes on the large amber marble. She skimmed for Seiren's contact details. Then she remembered their last encounter.
Seiren could wait.
Attachments
Last edited: