[SESSION id=0.18]: Observer Effect
Distant Voices
A floral smell assaulted me from somewhere. Sweet and pungent. Not quite living. Certainly not dead. My back throbbed. My face ached. Something seemed to be crushing me from all sides. Or so it felt.
When had I lain down?
Weren't Jazz and I about to go to supper? We were supposed to be meeting Even Even and their lady friend. It was our first trial run of Lillian Thorn in public. And I was terrified.
But that couldn't be right. We had that supper. Aria-whose-name-was-not-Aria was a delight. Even was gentle and soft.
Then was it our trip? Weren't we leaving for [city[1]]? We'd be there for thirty cycles. Long enough for my meds to start being noticeable, but not long enough for anything exciting to happen.
Except that we'd done that. I'd cried for no reason over things I couldn't control. I'd discovered cocoa sweets.
So there was only one possibility. We were back home. That's right. We were home, and we were getting ready to turn in the two crackers we'd been fearlessly hunting for supercycles. We would get time off. Take vacation and
"Lillian. Do you know where you are?" Jazz's voice. "Blink if you can."
I blinked for her. Or tried to. Perhaps that was wrong. I didn't know where I was. We couldn't be home if Jazz was asking that So maybe I didn't know. Maybe I was lost. I blinked again. I think?
"Lillian, we're on the way to a hospital. I've called ahead so you'll be taken care of." Why did she need to call ahead? What was so strange about a woman going to a hospital? "There's a trustworthy doctor here. Lion Star. He'll treat you well."
What was happening?
I took a moment to think. Not like I could do much else. We'd gone to TERRA One. We'd gone to TERRA Three. We'd arrived at the —
My whole body ached. My head was throbbing. Jazz, I tried to speak. I don't know whether she heard me. What happened?
"We were at the domiciles, Lillian," her voice was soft. Scared. "You collapsed. I'll show you a mirror once you're better. But for now, stop trying to move."
Had I been trying to move?
The hospital's lights were bright. Why had we gone to the hospital? We'd been to the domiciles. I saw something. Or I tried not to see something. And then —
"Lillian. If you can understand me, I need you to stop moving." That sounded like Jazz. But it wasn't Jazz's voice. Not really. "Good. Excellent. It's good you brought her here, Jazz," the voice was soft. "I'm glad you're here."
"I would greatly prefer not to be here, but same." Jazz sounded irritable. I tried to reach for her.
"Lillian, if you can't stop moving, we'll have to sedate you sooner rather than later." So I was moving. That was a good sign. "Much better. Clearly, you have some awareness. Can you speak?"
"She's been babbling off and on since it happened, dad." Dad? Jazz's father? "Not sure if she's doing it on purpose."
"Just like your mother, even long after she's gone, Jazz. Falling in love with one of us." The person who sounded like Jazz laughed. Even more confusing. "Then bringing her to the most dangerous place in the [city[]]. All because you trust me."
"Stop. Not right now. Focus on her. We can catch up when she's no longer ..."
Concussive Maintenance
"Hold up one finger if you can hear me, Lillian." That same voice. The room was blurry. I held up one finger, offering a crude gesture. "Good. Glad. Hold up a second finger if you can see me." I managed to offer half a finger, sort of. "Not great, but expected."
"Love, if you can speak, feel free to tell my father where he can shove it." Jazz sounded pleased with herself.
"Sir. Thank you. But she's right." My voice was different. I couldn't place it. "What's going on?"
"Too much to explain," Jazz's voice was getting closer. "You fell and hit your head. There was a lot of blood. But you're okay." Her weight pressed against me. Everything felt so much heavier than normal. "Or at least you will be."
"Can you please get off of my patient?" His voice was coming in clearer. Shapes were slowly coming into focus. He looked so much like Lyra. Jazz didn't move. I didn't want her to. "Fine. Can you at least move enough for me to take quick vitals."
She rolled some to the side. Just enough that the weight was off me. He did several things, including shining a light in my face. That was rude.
"Why doesn't my voice sound right?" It was like hearing myself from the outside, but even more wrong. "And what exactly is wrong with my eyes? And can you please leave me alone with my kernel for debugging."
A hand rushed to my mouth. "Lillian, that's an inside thought. For my ears only."
The man laughed. "So Lyra got you into The Community?"
"And promptly got herself out." Jazz groaned. What was wrong with what I said? "In case you're curious, no. That's not where we met. Do you remember eighteen sypercycles ago when I planned that trip and then never came?"
"Yes?"
Jazz gestured to me. "The cause of both."
"I see."
"Can I please have an answer or three?" I was focused. "This is not a puzzle for Miss Thorn. This is a query for a doctor. Voice. Head. Eyes. Explain."
"Concussion. Concussion. Concussion." His voice was peaceful, understanding, calm. "Don't worry too hard over it. Most of that will clear up."
"Thank you. Now the most important thing." I rolled my head toward Jazz. "You were coming to see me? Eighteen supercycles? So right around the time —"
"Right around the time you called me a shallow idiot with bad taste because I thought Flower_Princess was a brilliant artist." She shoved me gently. It still hurt. "But it turns out we're both shallow idiots. Yes. Right around then, love."
"Everything is connected," I sighed. "In ways we may never know."
"You sound like Jazz's mother," the doctor said. "I loved that about her. It's why I took her name. Lion Star is a much better name than Lion Light."
"Shut up, dad. How much longer before I can take Lillian to the domicile where we're staying?" Jazz. Always doing business. "Obviously you can come check in on your patient. But we need her in a safe place. Not like this."
"As soon as her pupils start looking normal." Mr. Star moved back into my personal space. He smelled like something. It was almost drowned by the sterile smell of the hospital. Soft. Sweet. "No one will be bothering us up here."
"Sir you smell like a woman," why did I say that? "Apologies. I meant to say you smell like Jazz's soaps and such."
He laughed. "Yes. Correct. On both counts. I ought to." He didn't elaborate.
"Well then. As you can see. She is not a patient who's safe around other people." Jazz was finally coming into proper focus. She was covered in blood. I got dizzy at the sight. "Let us go. I already gave you the address."
"Fine." He moved across the room and returned with several bottles. "She'll need to be off the meds you asked about. For the next several cycles. Or else she can't take these pain killers."
"I'm not stopping my meds."
"You heard the woman, dad. Keep your drugs." She helped me to my feet and walked me to a wheeled chair that sat nearby. "We're in town for a long while. Don't worry. We're not going anywhere."
"Fine." He shook his head as Jazz helped me into the chair. "But if she dies, it's not on me."
"Shut up." Jazz and I said it in unison. Then we laughed. Jazz took it from there. "Every cycle. Five degrees. Come to the address. See your patient. Clear your conscience." She pushed me to the door. "Bye, dad. And thank you."
Vision Recovery
"A puzzle for you, Future-Mrs. Thorn," I giggled as I said it. I had to do what I could to distract from my state as a patient instead of a healthy soul. And turning our game on its head was a fun way to do just that. "Premise one: each possible connection is a failure point. Premise two: everything is connected to everything else. Premise three: an adjustment favourable for one may be a harm for another. Reconcile."
Jazz, to her credit, didn't immediately deny me. Instead, she thought for a moment, and she said what I expected. "We decouple the links, create universal datatypes, then reapply unique instances to each link, using appropriate definitions." She smirked. "But you knew that. So. I'll play your game, Lillian."
"Excellent. Then start the questions." She had been sitting in a chair across the room. As she began questioning, she stood and paced back and forth.
"How complex is the network we're resolving?" She groaned as soon as she finished. She knew what was coming.
"Wrong question, Mrs. Thorn." I grinned. "We know the answer to that. A tree of almost five hundred nodes. Not to mention individual references from the user databases."
Jazz nodded and continued. "Right, right. The question I should be asking is 'how do you abstract The Source' in a way that tdif is possible?"
"Close. Very close. I was looking for 'how do we', but I'll let it slide." She threw something at me. A sock? It missed anyway. "What's the biggest computing unit we can get our hands on? Barring that, can we duplicate The Source in place?"
"Explain?" For once, I was ahead. I had the advantage of epiphany. Jazz looked even more adorable when she was confused. "Or if you won't, I ask more questions."
I bowed my head just a bit. "Please ask."
"Why would Lillian Thorn want to duplicate the Source? Don't answer that." She stopped and stared at me for a moment. "An exact duplicate would let you create a virtual disk. The virtual disk would serve as a write image. Then we could dd the image, erasing all trace because the dd would overwrite everything all at once."
"And?"
"So long as the work is in a sterile environment," Jazz started bouncing, a view I really enjoyed, "there's no chance of harming The Source, and we can safely experiment with the connections to avoid collision."
"You're missing something important."
"Is it even safe to create a duplicate of The Source?" She stopped. "And is there any way to test it without causing harm?"
"Which brings us to the most terrifying possibility."
Jazz's voice cracked as she took it to the conclusion. "We either violate The Core of our philosophy, or we search for another solution."
"Bring me some paper, Jazz," her head tilted at my request. "And something to write with. And something to write on."
She moved to her work bag, a very sterile number with a clean look about it. A few moments of rummaging, and she was crossing back to me. She was smiling. I was giggling at our shared effort.
F (filesystem)
T (indextree)
∀ f∈F ∃! n_f∈T
⪯ ⊆ F×F defined by: ∀f,g∈F,f⪯g ⟺ w(n_f)≤w(n_g)
∃ m∈F ∀ h∈F (h⪯m → h=m)
cp m /container/path/
test mNot much, but it was a start. If we could copy the least connected file, then we could test it. We could exploit that. Once we copied the least connected and managed that, we could go bigger, stronger, heavier, deadlier.
"What am I looking at, my beautiful genius?" I had forgotten Jazz was there for a moment. "Is this supposed to be some manner of clever joke? You've been giggling a lot."
"It's a plan," I waved it about for a few seconds, "or something like a plan." I pointed to various parts as I explained. "We have a full map of the filesystem. We can create a complete weighted index of it. Index locations are unique. There's at least one file with minimal weight, minimal impact. We can test on that."
"I see." She was shaking her head and smiling. "How long?"
"A rest cycle? Maybe two."
"And if it works you can dd the new version, then dd that into The Source via rose?" She raised a brow. "Well, that gives us plenty of time!"
I stared at her for a moment. She was taking that way too well. It quickly became clear she didn't grasp the scope.
"Twenty cycles, Jazz. For the first test. The first file. The first deep investigation to verify we've not broken anything." Her expression fell. "That's for one, single, solitary, lonesome, basically useless file."
"So what you're saying is the timeline is," she started calculating something, "around fifteen supercycles if we aren't willing to break the rules?"
"And that's without accounting for writing a tdif spec, building a tdif for the actual updates," her face went blank, almost overwhelmed, "not to mention figuring out —"
"rose. Right. I forgot we don't have a way in." She sighed. "Well, then I suppose we have to be more creative in our testing. How about we agree to this: test the safest file, test the most dangerous file, then make the copy. Worst case, we all go down in a blaze of glory." She winked. "At least then you wouldn't have to worry about being cross-coded."
"We can merge that commit when we get there." I laughed softly. It hurt too much. "It's fine, Jazz. We have all the time in [world]."
We hadn't looked away from each other since I started explaining. She seemed to suddenly realise we were staring and looked away. I could swear the soft subtle floral scent found its way to me again. What was it? Jazz didn't seem to notice. She recovered from her embarrassment and met my eyes again.
"To succeed, or SIGTERM trying."