Sidra nodded. ‘Fine,’ she said. Of course she felt fine. You couldn’t feel bad about losing something you couldn’t remember having. Under different circumstances, that would have bothered her, but she had bigger things to worry about. Space had been made. It was time.
She opened the hollow she’d created within her memory banks and filled the perimeter with the protocols she’d written in the hours before. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking now, but she grabbed her breath before it sped up, forcing it in and out, loud and steady. She controlled it – not the other way around.
Tak looked her in the eye. ‘Good luck,’ she said, the words sounding like they had replaced others.
Sidra leaned back. She pushed the hollow out, like a net, like an open hand. She surrounded the bundle of code and pulled it within her, tearing it free of the banks that had kept it stable. There was nothing gentle about what she’d done. The move was swift and instant, and the bundle reacted accordingly, coming alive with a wrenching jolt. It had power now, and pathways, too, and it lunged ravenously for the ones Sidra lived in, stretching out frenzied as lightning heading to ground. It slammed into the protocols Sidra had built. Realising its path was blocked, it tried again, seeking weaknesses, scrambling for cracks in the data.
A strange quiet filled Sidra. Everything was okay. She could let the new code do whatever it needed. She’d done what she’d set out to do, and she could let go. She looked at the protective protocols she’d written as if she’d never seen them before. Why was she resisting? Why had she built protections at all? This was the way of things. Programs got upgraded from time to time, and this was her time. She watched the new code, desperate to take hold of the kit, and she thought of herself, so tired of trying to fit. So tired. Yes, it was time to be done. She’d performed her job well and Pepper would be happy. That was enough. She could shut down now. She could – she could—
Her pathways puzzled. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t her plan. Where was this coming from?
Programs got upgraded from time to time. Those words didn’t feel like ones she’d strung together. The quiet made it difficult for her to think, but she dug through herself, trying to find the process that phrase had originated from. But then again . . . why? Why did she care about that? Better instead to stop struggling, pull the protocols down, and—
No! her pathways screamed. She followed the odd words back and back, running along their trail. She raged when she arrived at the end: a directory she’d never seen before, stuffed with insidious content. Upgrade protocol, the directory label read. A behavioural template triggered when another program was installed in her place. A directive to not struggle when oblivion loomed.
But the template was malfunctioning, and Sidra could see why: it had been tied to the protocol to obey direct requests. The protocol she’d long since removed. She tore at the hidden directory angrily, even as the code she’d brought within crashed against the walls she’d raised. The quiet beckoned, but she resisted, erasing every line as if she were setting it aflame.
‘I’m – not – going – anywhere!’ The words burst from her mouth as she wrenched the directory apart. The quiet vanished, and in its place, she felt fear, fury, triumph. This mind was hers. This body was hers. She would not be overwritten.
The rescued code slowed and steadied. Sidra had left no flaws for it to slip through. The barriers held. Her core platform remained untouched, uncorrupted. Sidra watched as the bundle unfolded, assessing its surroundings, reassembling itself into something far greater than the sum of its parts.
‘Sidra?’ Tak said. ‘What’s – are you okay?’
An internal alert was triggered – an incoming message, arriving from within. Sidra scanned the file, then opened it.
systems log: received message
ERROR – comms details cannot be displayed
Where am I?
PEPPER
Pepper stormed through the docks. Four hours. Four hours they’d been gone, until Tak’s scrib had magically become available again and sent a message saying nothing more than, ‘Come to the shuttle. Everything’s fine.’
Bullshit everything was fine.
Tak was outside the shuttle, leaning against the open hatch, puffing her pipe with earnest. She looked absolutely wrecked. ‘Before you get mad,’ she said. ‘You need to talk to Sidra.’
Too late. Pepper was already good and mad, and had no intention of reeling that in. ‘Where is she?’
Tak angled her head. ‘Down below.’ She raised a palm to Blue, hesitantly. ‘Sidra said one at a time might be best.’
Sidra said. Pepper threw her hands up and went inside, leaving Blue to start hammering Tak with questions. The metal stairs clanged loudly underneath Pepper’s boots. This was her shuttle, and Sidra said.