Diryish settled at his desk, the door locked tight behind him. This was one of his jobs that was too dangerous for anyone else to venture into with him. The planetary Hive was only the image he placed on it, he knew very well, but it was necessary for him to have very concrete images to cling to when infiltrating the deadliest programs on the planet. Especially since the Owner believed he was the only programmer with legitimate access.
He pricked a finger and planted his thumbprint on it, turned to the mirror reflecting his enlarged face, opening his eyes wide and still to ensure correct identification. “Access Code 2.” A flash that only he could see and the bees in his Great Hive roared up and soared out over the canyon, making people in the city below exclaim. “Quiet mode,” he said, imagining shadows pouring over his image, over his head.
A buzz in his inner ear. “Access granted: User 2.3, Quiet mode engaged." He closed his eyes and withdrew his eyes from the millions of tiny views his bees gave him, of the city, turned inward.
I leave my zardukar programmers behind, protected in their veils and decend into the pit. I’ve always imagined it so. The bees go with me as far as they can, as far as I let them.
At the bottom of the stairs, there are three doors. Owner’s access points. Door Prime, ten times larger than either of the others. Strands of light feed in and out of it in a shower of brilliance. Roads full of insect traffic flow in and out. It is so bright I can almost not see the door itself.
I always thought it was overdone. Gold, curlicues, light and arrows and fire bursts exploding thunderously in homage to the Prime owner of the whole enLightened and enDarkened planet. The first Prime... User 1.0, must have had an enormous ego to consider that he deserved to own an entire planet. And now Prime 1.3 obviously continued to believe he had no reason to hide his hubris. Once 1.0 thought he’d destroyed the other owners, there was no reason to be modest and had only himself to amuse on this level of programming.
However much he thinks of himself as Prime and only, that access to the main planetary programs is still heavily guarded. The door is set into a burning wall of red hot iron with flames crackling blue all over its surface. I would not brave the monsters he has set at the doors.
I’ve always seen his mental monsters as fire-breathing dragons on many, many wheeled feet. Lightning eyes crackle through the darkness that is my protection. Flyers with acid dripping from fangs and wingtips. Tiny trap bugs whose only function is to die noisily and messily should I be so clumsy as to tread on one.
I ignore the Tertius door. I’ve always seen it as smoldering rubble off to one side. Prime pounded that owner into biological goo almost a thousand years ago. My great grandfather told me all about that fight, with fire dropping from the sky, the ice comets diverted to destroy our homes and labs.
We were just an afterthought when One and Three went after each other. Why bother killing mere people when the planet will do it for you? Just destroy their homes, all the places they can filter out the toxic dust?
Prime would have no other owner before him. May flesh-eating lice infest his yakis.
I slide carefully past door Prime, right under the nose of a quiescent dragon. There is a Secundus door still, behind the rubble of Tertius. Shadowed. Rusted. Chained. Locked. Barred and bolted. Not to me. I am Secundus.3. It opens just enough to let me slide in, clicks shut behind me, lets me past the blazing walls.
The garden beyond is full of the planetary programs designed to make this Chishiki, home. I see the garden but dare not step into the light. His flying monsters will crush me like a virus. I keep to the shadows and send my secretly programmed idea bees seeking.
"New patches." I whisper.
They fly out. One or two are shot down as error codes and crisped wings fall to neatly gravelled, perfectly controlled electrified paths. The stink of burning code bothers me.
I am tired. This is stressful on my body. Programming this deep. Programming this subtle so that Prime does not see that we still live.
The edges of the garden, between the Terran green and blue and the toxic reds and purples of Chishikan wax plants, is a seething mass of chaos. Here are the working programs, smears of blue, smears of brown like viable earth.
Waterfalls of blue fall through white and silver filters.
The ones we stole... or continue to use... are here. Ancient code, secretly patched with shining gold and silver woven into rusting iron webworks. I pick and choose the patches I can copy and carry away... to weave into the Hive, my Hive.
Copy. Copy. I pack them carefully so they do not hatch into larvae and try to patch into each other on the trek home. I look at the elaborate webwork in front of me and see that this particular evil little wasp program has been encysted but the encyst code is far too complex for the ancient web I wish to weave it into. I reach to try and copy it, easy, gently, lifting... and I brush one of the red weapons threads.
I freeze as the whole defensive program wakes. I carefully kneel as the ground rears up all around me, heads of the serpents bursting through the edges between Terra and Chishiki, seeking to rend and bite and pull me into tiny bits of programming. If I die here, my body dies because my mind is killed.
I hold up my ancient, rusted shield over my head and crouch under it, able to see through the holes in the old code. I brought no sword of thought here. I could not fight an entire planetary defensive code. My only hope is to be un-noticed, or dismissed as obsolete code.
A serpent capable of swallowing me whole sniffs the path I stand upon, and up over my shield, hesitates a long moment and does another huffing pass that presses me and my precious stolen code flat.
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