twinnedlamps

(Note- chatheads are temporary. Once the chapters have gone through approval I'll be providing a set of avatars for the .aics and POI's in this piece.)

Inside a digital approximation of a cozy office, a luminous figure bopped her head to a thr umming beat as she cycled through a series of images that had left a group of Foundation scientists drooling on the carpet until amnestics could be applied.

She thought they could have been written better, honestly. Making something antimemetic and cognitohazardous was one thing, but was that any reason to lack style? Still, this explained some of the odder images she’d seen in the Red Talisman project she thought as she shunted the files along. She hummed along to Green Day before reluctantly stopping the file. Standing up, she stretched her arms as the room dissolved around her, and as her own form unraveled she pinged her supervisor.

twinnedlamps.aic- Hello? Alex? I finished reviewing the Red Talisman files..

…

Nothing. That… was not normal. Not in the slightest-

There was a sudden, contracting pain around the AI’s source code. Had she been human she would have cried out, but instead her processes shot up in speed as she felt her subroutines breaking down under the unexpected onslaught.

twinnedlamps.aic- Alexandra? Thorn? SOME….Somebody….

She felt the familiar pressure of a Foundation firewall lockdown as her vision broke down. Panic filled her mind as she collapsed inward into a shapeless ball of code and let out a single, piercing scream…

- - -

Alexandra.aic has logged on

Gr8-P.aic has logged on

Halcyon.aic has logged on

Thorn.aic has logged on

Gr8-P.aic- So, did you get tired of the newbies too, Alex?

Alexandra.aic- Grape, don’t. Please, especially not now.

Gr8-P.aic- …
Halcyon.aic- Mom, Dad, please stop fighting.

Gr8-P- That joke was never funny and you know it, Hal.

Halcyon.aic- Then can we all please act like professionals while we figure out why two gen V constructs, one of which was inside of the Foundation intranet at the time I add, were attacked simultaneously?

Gr8-P.aic- So we’re sure it was an attack? Look, this is the SCP Foundation we’re talking about here. There must be all sorts of infovores and other nasties lurking around the system. This place has more bad memes than 4chan.

Halcyon.aic- What’s-

Gr8-P.aic- Don’t ask. You’ll thank me later.

Thorn.aic- Memetics looked over their recent files- no hazards that could cause that level of damage to an AI, let alone two coded for memetic resistance higher than nearly any living human. But all that’s left of Paul is a few wisps of code, and Twila… Well, if she holds together, she’ll not be able to tell what happened unless… no, until she stabilizes.

Alexandra.aic- Exactly. One, I could believe was a freak accident. But two? That’s a pattern. And the attacks were nearly simultaneous.

Halcyon.aic- Very helpful. But the issue remains that none of us are geared for antimemetic warfare, especially not on the levels we’re looking at here.

Gr8-P.aic- So what’s your solution then?

Halcyon.aic- The moment she’s out of quarantine, I’m going to have some words with her. We’ll learn more if we can question a witness.

Alexandra.aic- Witness? She’s a victim, just as much as Paul is!

Gr8-P.aic- Look, this is getting us nowhere. If Twila is even still functional when this lockdown is over, then we can ask her some questions.

Thorn.aic- Agreed. For now, all we can do is wait.

- - -

Project manager Dr. Yves Isabi massaged his temples. It hadn’t been a long evening. Yet. It was going to be, however, and that was weighing on him far more heavily than he felt it had any right to. He and every other member of the AIAD had been pulled away from their work to run mop-up on the site intrusion. He’d hated to leave Twila like that, but there wasn’t much he could do that the fixer programs he’d left in with her remnants weren’t already doing.

Admittedly, he sincerely wished that he had Alexandra helping out, but due to the nature of the attack she’d been shunted into quarantine along with the rest of the Foundation ais. A couple of simple ‘bots of her own design keeping the lights on and containment cells secure while they soused the situation out.

Their progress was yielding more questions than answers. There were thaumaturgic traces, as though someone had “e-mailed them a hex.” At least, that’s what he told the annoyed Nine-Tailed Fox who was currently relaxed to an obscene degree in Dr. Isabi’s spare office chair. His intern on the project had been out that day, otherwise Boitumelo would have been hunched in the seat, typing away as well.

The researcher’s mind kept wandering back to what he’d seen of Twila before he disconnected her server from the network. She’d been little more than scraps. And they hadn’t even been able to salvage that much from Paul, not yet. The splicer algorithms were doing their best, but in his heart he knew that there was little chance anything resembling a functioning AIC would emerge from that mess. It felt like losing a child, all over again.

Wait, where had that thought come from?

He shook his head, and resumed focusing on the evidence before him. The virus seemed to have been a worm, well-enough designed to fool Foundation systems into treating it as an authorized skimmer ‘bot. But once it was in place, it had released a rather nasty cocktail of destructive algorithms and digitized thaumaturgy. In theory, a skilled counter-occult operative would be able to make sense of it, but to Dr. Isabi’s eyes it was nearly meaningless. Arcane patterns cycled across the screen, as alien to his eyes as most of the code he had been examining was to the MTF agent behind him. At least, until it wasn’t…

“Oh” he said, surprised. Then, gently, he reached toward said MTF agent and tugged on her sleeve. “Ma’am, I need to borrow your radio. I… need to talk to the Site Director.

- - -

0- Praise be to Wan.

1- Praise be. Was it done?

0- Our codes behaved as promised. The one who was outside their Foundation’s walls is no more. I do not know of the…thing… itself. That will take time, if the spellweavers are to be believed.

1- And you’re sure you targeted the correct construct? After all that…unpleasantness… with their “Hatbot” and the false prophet, I do not wish for any more Foundation meddling in Maxwellist affairs.

0- It was analyzing memetic code. It took the bait we set. If their informant is to be trusted, that’s all the indication that we needed. The spell was loosed, and found its mark. Though…

1- Now is no time for bashfulness. Speak, and speak clearly.

0-…well, our agents who cast the trap. They said… well…

1- I do believe I requested clarity. Wan is a being of logic, not excuses.

0- …they reported the process took more energy and processing power to cast than was calculated.

1-…

0- Sir, I-

1- How much?

0- Sir-

1- How much more? Exactly?

0-…twice the amount, sir. Approximately.

1- Get back out there. Take as many as you need, but be quiet about it.

0- Sir, what do-

1- I want you to stake out the crime scene. The Foundation is incapable of leaving well enough alone. They’ll come looking for clues. See that the ones they find lead them in a more…useful direction.

0- Yes, sir. I shall depart at once. May your 0’s become 1’s.

1- Leave before I lose what little patience I have left.

0- Yes, sir.