command_dot_com | Return of the Guardian

Return of the Guardian

For the past few cycles everyone's been waiting on a sort of bated breath about this. The recompiler has been checked no less than five times over to make sure nothing could go wrong with it. It stands ready, a cylindrical casket with a transparent cover, the interior padded for the comfort of the returning sprite.

For the past few cycles Dot's been on bits and bytes worrying if this will work, and is now standing nearby, out of the way of the debugging duo as they get to work. Now, all they can do is hope it turns out all right.

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"That's right," Mouse interjects, now standing a few pixels from the bed where Bob's lying. "So don't go usin' yer Glitch powers 'till we've done a few more tests. I don't wanna have'ta do this again," she says sternly. Then she breaks out into a grin. "Welcome back, sugar. It's good t'see you."

He's having trouble focusing on what they're saying. Every word starts a new jumble of conflicting thoughts in his head. And every time the word 'Glitch' is spoken, part of him snaps to attention, awaiting orders--

And he it they finally understand.

"It worked." A huff of disbelieving laughter. "It actually worked."

It worked, it really worked because ~~they~~ she has Bob back. And things can stop being insane.

As soon as the cover lifts up and Bob is out of that bed, he's going to be in a hug for his runtime. "Welcome back."

"No, I--it's--" He shakes his head and tries to collect his thoughts (his thoughts, spammit, he knows his own mind, doesn't he?). "The merge. It worked. It's here."

Ah, what sprite can truly be said to know his own mind, my son?

Phong, satisfied that Bob is more or less operational, presses the button to raise the casket's lid. As though reading Dot's thoughts, he hisses, "Please be gentle with him."

He peers at Bob, somewhat concered at this odd statement. "What is here?"

"Glitch."

And even as he says the name, there's a part of him perking up and waiting for a command. That is weird.

It's my function to follow the operator's commands. I can't go against my code.
But I can't give commands to myself. That makes no sense.
None of this makes sense. What are we supposed to do, then?

Dot pauses with her hand reaching for Bob's. Give her a nano to process that. "Glitch is a part of you..."

"...He's aware of what's happened? with Us?" Yes, it's capitalized for a reason.

...he was honestly not expecting that question.

"I'm not--wait." He closes his eyes, blocking out the unfamiliar input so he can focus. Sorting through memories that are his and not his...

Inside Bob's head, there is the mental equivalent of a jaw dropping.

I've been offline for how long??

"...we're kinda still working on that," he says sheepishly.

(He hasn't even tried to sit up yet. His body feels foreign, too large, inefficent.)

Dot sits down on the edge of the bed, she's more thankful he's back...And more likely once he's well enough to stand to give him a piece of her processor on not telling her about something like the fragmentation effect.

"It's alright....take all the time you need to sort this all out."

"Thank you," he says gratefully. Truth be told, Glitch isn't happy about it either, and is making that fact known.

"How do you feel physically?" asks one of the medics. "Can you move?"

"I think so..." He flexes his fingers and toes experimentally, and then, slowly and deliberately, pushes himself up into a sitting position. Everything seems to be in good working order, although all that muscle shifting seems strange and unwieldy to Glitch.

Since Bob is up, it is best to perform a surface scan. Phong, who can reach highest, checks out his head with the otoscope; one binome checks his BPM while another smacks his knees with one of those funny little mallets. Next, Phong brandishes a tongue depressor and commands him to say aaaah.

Bob complies. "Aaaaah..."

Phong inspects his throat, nods in satisfaction, and consults with the mednomes. Finally, he reports, "Your baud rate is unusually high, but all other signs are quite normal. But I am not entirely certain I follow what you are saying about Glitch. Do you mean it is... conscious?"

He nods. "After we merged in the Web, I thought it was just... gone. I guess it was just inactive because of my code damage, and fixing my code woke it back up again."

This is going to take some getting used to.

Phong is now taking notes on this singular occurrence. "Remarkable! Is its consciousness separate from yours, or are your minds merged as well?"

"Separate. Mostly. I think." He winces, rubbing his temples. "It's... kinda loud in there right now."

"I wonder if this is s'posed t'happen," Mouse says from her console, where she's going over some specific bits of Bob's code. "Y'know, when y'merge with yer keytool. There's no way of knowin' fer sure, sugar, 'less someone else with undamaged code tries it."

"That's not likely to happen," Bob murmurs.

I wonder... what else can we do now?

"Well, if y'can hear Glitch now...maybe he knows," Mouse supposes. "Do y'think ya could, well, ask 'im?"

"I don't know."

There's... something different about his voice.

"This has never been done before. It will probably never be done again. This is as strange to me as it is to anyone here."

Strange as it is to anyone else. Yes, that seems to have become the new default setting for the system now. Strange.

Dot knows Bob's voice, and this is his (his original voice, the way it was before the Web), but the way it's talking is... not Bob. Which, by process of elimination, means...

"What do you think will happen... Glitch?"

"I suppose we just have to learn to live with each other."

Bob blinks and rubs his temples again. He did not know Glitch could do that.

"So... uh... what exactly happpened? Is everyone else okay?"

Dot gives Bob a look, they're going to have to discuss their personal lives later if...Glitch is going to end up being a witness to everything.

"There were a few injuries sustained during the fight with Daemon..but...mostly everyone's ok." Dot answers, she'd been over-seeing several parts of it herself. "The group from Milliways helped rebuild a LOT of the damage that the fight with Daemon here caused... and the Guardians have started trying to piece things back together. Starting with fixing all of the Net Ports they totalled."

"Wait, there were people here from Milliways?"

He was mostly unconscious for that part.

"Enzo recruited them, they used the digitizing lazer to come in, except for Danny, who stayed ghostly for the duration of his visit here." Dot fills in the rest. "Enzo got the cure to the code-writing Users in Milliways, they managed to fix the errors so it would cure people completely of Daemon's infection. He brought a team in because he thought there would be resistance to the cure."

Which there was quite a bit of.

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