Terry lay in his bunk, his blanket pulled up over
his head, the picture of asleep innocence to the recording devices. His breathing was even and his eyes closed. Despite his growing hatred, and even rage at the
innocent machine set to watch him, he kept his heart rate low. It was as if he could feel the norepi pushing
as if his body wanted to be ready to
fight, or run away. He could do neither.
Old
man, you may own this planet. You may have owned my family, but you no longer
own me.
His eyes twitched back and forth behind closed
eyelids as he examined Thurmontaler’s codes from the outside. It was odd.
The whole system had been designed, years... centuries ago but even then
it had never been unified, or all of a piece.
There were programs that were spare and elegant and precise next to
programs that were shoddy, cobbled-together bits of code that limped along and
when it did function, it functioned almost randomly. Those had the most re-writes, patches,
add-ons and sometimes the hanging bits made things worse instead of fixing the
original.
Since his modern seed gave him access to the whole
of the node in the system of planets, he had access to everything. He had overview. He could see that Perrin kept this kind of
system access to himself and to a handful of men closest to him. All other castes had barriers between them
and code. Input devices that set you
apart from real action and effect on Chishiki.
The node was as complex as a cast glass marble with
a dozen layers of colours and... no. It
was more complex. It was living and
mobile as a cell, pulsing with DNA instructions and mitochondria and levels of
genes acting on one another. The outer membrane, that he could envision from
his own, recently built bubble of code, he could examine for the first time
from the outside.
That’s why he kept thinking of it as an enclosed system. Until the next ‘spine came, or the next
courier, the whole system was isolated, here.
Thurmontaler was treating the membrane more like a wall, or a force
field, without a break.
There was the obvious entry points to controlling
the whole system. Each one plastered
over with the Font’s DNA. But in his
mental hands he turned the sphere of code over and then over again, peering
deeper. It was as if his fingers caught
on microscopic ridges that shouldn’t be there.
That
boy couldn’t have been of Perrin’s line.
There’s only two boys who are inheritors of the Font, and one has been
driven off planet, out to the greater galactic body. So who was he? What DNA was he? And how had he gotten into
the code in the first... ah.
His
mental hands, carefully tracing what seemed to be ancient damage on what should
have been a smooth sphere... found more than a crack. It was not a flaw, but a
line of code that specified legal entry of some kind. He drew a fingertip
over it thoughtfully.
Was there only one?
He considered. There was the
chime of his wake-up. He sat up slowly, stretching. Can I disable the station recorders somehow?
Without having them notice? It was one of
the messier bits of code I could see. Could I... hmmm. Could I re-write it? Replace it?
I’d have to make it sloppy as it seems to be now, but that would hide
the fact that I’ve not written code before... at least not like this. I’ve coded on screen but this... in my
head... playing with shapes that fit together, or not...
I could do that. I could also trace down this line of code... see if there are any more hidden on this whole surface... see if I can get into the Font’s code. I’ll be able to see where that boy came from
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