The Illusion of CTRL

Original Cyn

It started with a trip to the scrapyard. Tessa had gotten wind of some bits and bobs from a nearby lab making their way to her neck of the woods and refused to let the opportunity slip away, and N refused to let her go alone. So, on a day her parents were slated to be out for several hours, Tessa guilt-tripped J into not making a fuss and off they went.

It was a productive trip, yielding a variety of quality tools and equipment that only needed minor repairs, if any at all. That, and a single, barely-functional Worker. Small even by Uzi's standards, she was downright tiny cradled in N's arms. Tiny, and damaged to the point that Uzi thought finishing the job the Scrambler had failed at would've been a mercy. Astoundingly, N thought the same.

But among the many traits Tessa shared with Uzi was a stubborn streak a mile wide, and a belief that when the universe gave you a sign, you didn't ignore it. For the third time in her young life, Tessa had effectively hit the lottery; stumbling upon something all the experts said was one in several million. And she didn't even know about the wild string of events that came together to bring N into her life.

That was enough to get N on-board, but Tessa went on to clinch it by pointing out that a drone still clinging to life in spite of such horrible conditions deserved a chance. So he carried the broken Worker down into Tessa's private workshop and left her in the girl's capable hands.

Unfortunately, "capable hands" weren't quite enough.

"Well, the good news is that I've figured out it's definitely a software issue," Tessa said during one of N's check-ins. "The bad news is that I can't bloody crack the software!" she gestured disdainfully at her monitor, displaying lines of code that might as well have been ancient Sumerian to her.

The truly worrying part was that Uzi couldn't make heads or tails of it either. She could see bits and pieces of the Solver's distinct language, but the stuff in between was just that: "stuff". Useless filler that was probably even more confusing for the system itself than it was to her.

"That...doesn't look right," N remarked with a furrowed brow, then threw a worried glance at Tessa's "patient".

"It's not," Tessa and Uzi said in unison, causing the latter to snort and very nearly say "jinx" on reflex. Tessa stared at the code for a few more seconds, gathering her thoughts before continuing. "You know how Michaelangelo basically did sculpting in reverse?"

"Yeah," N nodded, "he didn't look at it like he was making something; he was just uncovering what was already there."

"That's the feeling I'm getting here: coding in reverse. Throwing EVERYTHING at the wall, and chipping away until it makes sense."

"That sounds..."

"Nonsensical? Ridiculous? Impossible? Bloody oath!" Tessa huffed. "Or maybe...J and V are what happens when the Scrambler doesn't work, right? Well, what if we're lookin' at what happens when it does...but it doesn't?"

That had both N and Uzi blinking at her.

"You lost me," N admitted. Uzi would not.

"When the girls got Scrambled, think of it like a bullet that zipped straight through. Minimal wound channel, no shrapnel left behind, nothing vital hit; something that can be closed up and healed, no worries. This is like getting half your brain blown out, but you're still kickin'. What's left is doin' everything it can to pick up the slack, deal with its own damage, and not collapse under it all."

"So all that stuff is like...digital scar tissue?" N ventured.

"Could be," Tessa sighed. "But either way, I need to figure out what's going on and how. I can't help if I'm stuck here staring at this."