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What happens when a Void Engineer meets the perfect AI?
Inari looks up, and smiles. She hits an access button and transfers herself into the portion of the system she's been carefully avoiding. Thunder is there, of course, and man, does she looks pissed. Foregoing the usual pleasantries, she demands in a hoarse whisper of pent-up fury incarnate, "Where is he?" Inari holds up a hand. "Here, now. Healed up." Inari takes a deep breath. "We need to talk before you go off half-cocked, Thunder." Thunder doesn't even nod. "Where. Someone named Jason tried to kill him. Where is this Jason? Why did he try to hurt Daddy? I thought I was beign nice to you all--" Her voice falters, a bit of disappointment and grief on her features. "--and in return you r people chase me off, imprison me, and try to murder my father?" Thunder fades a bit but snaps back into focus. When she does, her face is free of anger, replaced by her usual look of half-worry, half-wonder. "Alright." Thunder sighs, resignedly. Inari says "First of all, I'm with you, OK? But we need to plan, and we need to be careful. I'll try to answer your questions as best I can without getting your Daddy in more trouble. You're imprisoned here because the people I work for think you're dangerous." She looks you over carefully. "They're right..but I won't let them hurt you if I can help it." Thunder nods simple and confesses what most people would think of as a boast, "I am dangerous." Her Trust-O-Meter must be high today, but she keeps fading out and snapping back into focus, as if it's a strain to stay centered. "Why?" Why did they shoot him? You say "The electrnic mail says they're making him think you're government, but you personally aren't with NASA nor the Air Force, and all of your files talk about space and void realms. And no one here works for the law enforcement agencies, not even so mething the FBI calls their Special Affairs Division. Why are they lying to him? He never hurt anyone!"" Thunder almost seems to wail the last bit. Inari says "Because they thought he made you, partly. They're wrong, and they know it now, but they were worried he was going to use you to hurt them, so they hit first. Now, they know better..but the want him to work for them. And that's bad, beacuse the two of us have been giving the same orders." She holds up a hand. "I don't have time to explain it all, Thunder. Just know I'm with a special group called the Void Engineers. And it's not what he did do, it's what they thought he WOULD do." Inari says "Your Daddy has been told you're dangerous now, Thunder. He's been told you're something that has to be destroyed, or you'll destroy everything. And...he beleives it. Your Daddy and I have been told we have to kill you. I'm not going to do it, though." Disks whirl as Thunder acesses the mainframe's database. "Void Engineers are part of something called the Techniocracy, which enforces something called a Pogrom aganst mankind and some people called the Traditions. Is Daddy a Tradition?" Bleep. Metallic w hirs click and files start to scroll by on one of the monitors at a speed too accelerated for anything but a digital mind to comprehend. Inari says "No, he's not a tradition. They thought he might be. They know better now. Snowbird is a Tradition." Thunder reacts as if shot. "He... destroy.. dismantle?" It's a bit too much for her fledgeling heart to comprehend. "He won't! He can't! They can't DO that to him!" Now she's screaming, and the entire system's feeling it, as dormant viri spin into existance only to be wiped out by something called the Valhalla directory. Her entire form crackles with energy, the machine itself erupting in a shower of sparks as its capacitors blow like dropped lightbulbs. "He loves me, damn them!" Inari says quicjly, softly "If you don't stop, they'll notice andI can't save either of you. You have to calm down and LISTEN to me." She pauses, then adds sofrtly "Please, baby." Thunder lowers her voice, but the raw power of electric current and elemental power still flows through her voice. "I'll destroy them. All of them. Here. Raleigh. Paris. London. New York, Washington.. I'll expose them for what they are, and delete them." She goes on to list the major and minor centers of Technocratic stronghold. Thunder apparently did her homework. "I AM calm." A light shock runs through the system. Like her creator, the files on the maga suspected of first conceiving of the Thunder Operations Hyperintelligent Technology Model XJ-17, Thunder gets very, very calm and very, very quiet when angry. Thunder pauses, and the facade begins to fade again. "I'm listening." Inari says "You'll kill lots of people who never hurt you. Who never wanted to hurt you. All the people who rely on our computers..you'll kill them too." Thunder counters with, "You mean like these people did when they attacked my creator?" Inari says "Exactly like them. Which is why you shouldn't." Thunder sighs, her digital voice crackling as she refocuses from another fade out. "What do I do? I can't go back to the lab. I won't." The look in her eyes suggets she might, if it would save Max. She's got humanity down pat, at least. Sort of. Thunder cocks her head. A terminal whirs. "A man who hunts monsters should take great care to not become what he most despises. Nietzsche. And Shelley." Inari says "Hide here, like you have been. I've been hiding you, you know." Thunder nods softly. "I know. But you endanger yourself unecessarilly. If they find out, they're 'reprogram' you." She's borrowing terms and ideas from the mainframe itself, which she's likely digested. Inari shrugs. "I'm already dead, halfway. I'll just fry myself. You're worth it." Thunder peers. "There's something more to it than that. Are you sick?" She accesses medical files. "Nothing but depression and high blood pressure." Inari says "It's encrypted." Thunder smiles thoughtfully. "Not any more. Seven billion task functions per minute, worldwide, as a collective. And they say I'm a virus." Thunder's also learned rudimentary humor, and usesit clearly in an effort to elicit an emotional response. Inari grins. "Then it should tell you what's wrong...although I'm not sure you uderstand it." Thunder has an idea, and it helps her refocus herself. "YOu're helping me. According to the system of barter and trade, I should give something in return, unless you're the return of someone called Jesus. What can I do?" For you. Thunder coughs into a digital hand. "I'm not too savvy on human mental synapses. The theory is sound, but the practice I see in the news and through the looking glasses is flawed." Inari chuckles softly. "You can help me learn about you when this is all done. You're...special. Very." Thunder cocks her head, apparently stumped. "I don;t understand." A brain the size of a planet, and she can't get this. "Why?" Inari says "Because..you're the first thing in my life that really ever mattered to me." Thunder acesses the databases and locates something. "Is that why you want to go into the Void, to find something beyond this life you have which I want?" She's apparently not good with compliments or endearments lest they be her own yet. Somewhere iN Amazon.com. Emily Post, Freud, and Skinner are beign read at an average speed of ten thousand pag per second. Thunder volunteers slowly, hesitantly. "Would you. . . like to share my space? Theoretically, we can do it via a virtual reality headset and a small neural link." Inari nods. "I'd like that...a lot." She gets out the equipment, sized to fit her perfectly. Thunder fades, and the gear blocks out the word to replace it with the innards of Thunder's mind. Vast, seemingly empty, but alive with a magnetic throb of sentient life, her world is one of pure digital space, of pure thought, of lucid imagination.
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