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Title: Containment Integrity
Author: roseveare
Rating: PG13
Length: ~1400 words
Summary: Agent Howard is not dead... Matrix AU.
Notes: Written for Dahlia_Moon who prompted Agent Howard + virtual reality, Troublesfest 2014.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.
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Containment Integrity
Byron Howard staggered out of the stasis cubicle, holding his brain inside his skull with one hand and his body upright against the faintly glowing white walls -- which might be glowing but were definitely not actually slowly rotating -- with the other.
That had been unpleasant. The main virtue of avataring a Mysterious Supernatural Agency was supposed to be nigh-invulnerability to getting thrown out of the matrix like that. Not to mention the bonus of being free to dip into the Life Archives rather than having to live through events as his partner agent was forced to. It had now become nastily apparent to him that dying as an MSA could definitely make up the balance.
An egg-shaped servitor robot rolled up to offer him the standard energy drink.
"Stay," Howard ordered in a wheeze before it could roll away again, and leaned on its smooth dome top. He'd swear its responding beep held a note of complaint. Howard lifted the drink to his lips, struggled with the lip attachment, and marveled at how even a standard cup could become so difficult once you'd been entrenched for a while in archives as old as these.
His suit smelled faintly of lightning and ozone. His brain slowly started to reassemble from its scattered pieces after the experience of disintegration. It was with some dismay that he tracked back over and absorbed the rest of what had happened, while finishing the vital mineral supplements that would replenish his body in the wake of stasis.
He shook his head, angry with himself far more than the scarcely alive entities left inside the matrix -- even the one who'd had the audacity to dispatch his form. Howard raised the communicator on his wrist and stabbed at it with a finger. "Macer," he spoke, to make the connection.
"Howard?" returned a miniature version of the deceptively cheerful, good-natured voice of the Managerial Program that handled their matrix. "Is that you, back so soon?" As he spoke, the voice became less small and the image on the tiny screen spun out to join Howard in the featureless hallway. "Hunh. Why back this soon?" A note of judgment entered his voice.
The Managerial Series Humandroid hybrids were designed to promote morale as well as efficiency, and as a result they were, of course, infuriating on every possible level. William Macer's suit was especially pristine in contrast to stasis rumple. His long, thin mouth frowned out of his relatively young but lined face, an appearance calculated by experts for maximum trust and therefore shifty as all hell.
Howard disliked relating information that his audience already knew. "My avatar was eliminated," he said testily. "There isn't another MSA archetype our matrix. I won't be able to re-enter until the techs build in a new one."
William sighed and held up his hands in a vaguely imploring gesture. "So I take it that the Mara virus is still running rampant."
Howard nodded. "And getting closer to completing itself. Without my avatar there to control her--"
A smile touched William's lips. "'Her'. How quaint. You've clearly been down there too long."
"I know it's a mimic, but it can be damned convincing.” It must have been the recent exposure that prompted him to add, “It’s hard to believe that the only people in there are my team."
"Believe it, Howard. They're just echoes, semi-sentient noise in the framework or deliberate malware. Keep that in mind." William brought his hand down on Howard’s shoulder in a noiseless, contact-less pat. "I may have to run some interference on an executive level, with this one."
With that, he cut communication and was gone. The robot Howard was leaning on took advantage of the distraction, beeped and rolled away. Howard sighed and took himself off to his work isolation booth to wait for his partner. From the last he'd seen of her, coupled with past experience of this particular matrix, the wait wasn't going to be long, but at least she could go back in.
Apparently she survived her immediate injuries. He spent uncountable days studying the code, waiting, trying to track his partner's progress and that of their lesser agents, and the course of the infection. Audrey Parker was a tougher containment shell than most. Howard would have been greatly less concerned had not the process already begun to apply the new shell before that uppity clump of dead memory and rogue code so enamored of a piece of malware shot him and laid waste to his efforts.
That the Mara virus was left in the Life Archives without containment integrity was a disaster.
Despite that, Howard's attention drifted periodically -- to birds, to grass, to blue sky and the memory of trees. But to the birds most of all. He shook his head ruefully and tried to regain his focus whenever the thoughts intruded. It was pointless to long for worlds that no longer existed except in the great bio-computer forged from the human race's collective memory. And yet experience of those archives placed tantalizingly before him the attractions of ancient concepts like night-times and sleep, food that tasted good, and the need to eat, that advancement had ironed out long ago as gross inefficiencies.
He'd expected her sooner, but it took nearly eight months for his fellow Archive Security Agent to crash out of the program, and the wait was beginning to drag by the time she did. The techs were on a go-slow with the replacement MSA interface. If Howard tried to complain, they only referred him to the size of the waiting lists for creating beings with near-infinite powers, and as for people who were careless enough to have already broken one...
"God damn it," his partner raged at him over the communication channel. "God damn you. You got a fizzle and a lightshow!"
She wasn't very mobile, especially directly following re-emergence. Howard did her the courtesy of travelling to see her in person. It wasn't something any but those who spent long stretches of their time entrenched in the older Life Archives would probably dream of doing.
Stasis and all of their technologies could only do so much. She had the severe atrophy in her limbs of any agent who spent the majority of their life animating ordinary avatars. Without the float-chair, she could barely move around. Her face was still fierce. A battalion of helper robots of varying shapes and sizes inhabited her chamber.
"Jordan," Howard acknowledged with a wary nod, because her mood looked sour.
"Psycho killer!" she announced, glaring at him out of eyes that were burning holes. "Gutted!"
Howard grimaced. "I'm sorry to hear that." He had followed her progress in the code, but there was only so much detail to be gleaned from code. He had only been able to tell that the end was nasty. "If it helps... the light show wasn't very comfortable from my end of it."
She gave him a derisive snort. "I can't believe it -- that rookie, she's still in there, fucking Duke Crocker, and I'm back here. I'm tired of this." Her chair circled around and let her study him. "You look... Huh. You look lousy. Everyone in this place looks lousy. You have to go back to the people who've been dead for seven millennia to find anyone who looks healthy."
Byron Howard blinked at her. "You're going back in." When she'd first begun to speak, he had thought that she was not.
"Damn right. I even know which piece of crap code-ghost I'm hijacking to do it. Wuornos can suck that and see." Her smile twisted cruelly. "Oh yeah, I'm taking a turn at driving stick. I'm tired of what keeps happening to the women in this matrix, anyway."
"They're not real people," Howard murmured, echoing William emptily. "Just defunct repeating processes and mental habits. Holding grudges against them is pointless."
"I don't know if you even believe that any more," Jordan shot back at him caustically. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d complain, considering how much he set us back.”
Howard did his best to keep his expression a sober frown.
He had the distinct feeling that his partner was going native. She might not even be the only one.
Yesterday when he should have been analyzing code, he’d zoned out, staring at the wall and dreaming of bird song.
William had been sniffing around in the matrix for months, actions increasingly unhinged, like he'd got a bug in his own systems.
None of this was going to look good in their upcoming centenary case review.
END
Author: roseveare
Rating: PG13
Length: ~1400 words
Summary: Agent Howard is not dead... Matrix AU.
Notes: Written for Dahlia_Moon who prompted Agent Howard + virtual reality, Troublesfest 2014.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.
----------
Containment Integrity
Byron Howard staggered out of the stasis cubicle, holding his brain inside his skull with one hand and his body upright against the faintly glowing white walls -- which might be glowing but were definitely not actually slowly rotating -- with the other.
That had been unpleasant. The main virtue of avataring a Mysterious Supernatural Agency was supposed to be nigh-invulnerability to getting thrown out of the matrix like that. Not to mention the bonus of being free to dip into the Life Archives rather than having to live through events as his partner agent was forced to. It had now become nastily apparent to him that dying as an MSA could definitely make up the balance.
An egg-shaped servitor robot rolled up to offer him the standard energy drink.
"Stay," Howard ordered in a wheeze before it could roll away again, and leaned on its smooth dome top. He'd swear its responding beep held a note of complaint. Howard lifted the drink to his lips, struggled with the lip attachment, and marveled at how even a standard cup could become so difficult once you'd been entrenched for a while in archives as old as these.
His suit smelled faintly of lightning and ozone. His brain slowly started to reassemble from its scattered pieces after the experience of disintegration. It was with some dismay that he tracked back over and absorbed the rest of what had happened, while finishing the vital mineral supplements that would replenish his body in the wake of stasis.
He shook his head, angry with himself far more than the scarcely alive entities left inside the matrix -- even the one who'd had the audacity to dispatch his form. Howard raised the communicator on his wrist and stabbed at it with a finger. "Macer," he spoke, to make the connection.
"Howard?" returned a miniature version of the deceptively cheerful, good-natured voice of the Managerial Program that handled their matrix. "Is that you, back so soon?" As he spoke, the voice became less small and the image on the tiny screen spun out to join Howard in the featureless hallway. "Hunh. Why back this soon?" A note of judgment entered his voice.
The Managerial Series Humandroid hybrids were designed to promote morale as well as efficiency, and as a result they were, of course, infuriating on every possible level. William Macer's suit was especially pristine in contrast to stasis rumple. His long, thin mouth frowned out of his relatively young but lined face, an appearance calculated by experts for maximum trust and therefore shifty as all hell.
Howard disliked relating information that his audience already knew. "My avatar was eliminated," he said testily. "There isn't another MSA archetype our matrix. I won't be able to re-enter until the techs build in a new one."
William sighed and held up his hands in a vaguely imploring gesture. "So I take it that the Mara virus is still running rampant."
Howard nodded. "And getting closer to completing itself. Without my avatar there to control her--"
A smile touched William's lips. "'Her'. How quaint. You've clearly been down there too long."
"I know it's a mimic, but it can be damned convincing.” It must have been the recent exposure that prompted him to add, “It’s hard to believe that the only people in there are my team."
"Believe it, Howard. They're just echoes, semi-sentient noise in the framework or deliberate malware. Keep that in mind." William brought his hand down on Howard’s shoulder in a noiseless, contact-less pat. "I may have to run some interference on an executive level, with this one."
With that, he cut communication and was gone. The robot Howard was leaning on took advantage of the distraction, beeped and rolled away. Howard sighed and took himself off to his work isolation booth to wait for his partner. From the last he'd seen of her, coupled with past experience of this particular matrix, the wait wasn't going to be long, but at least she could go back in.
Apparently she survived her immediate injuries. He spent uncountable days studying the code, waiting, trying to track his partner's progress and that of their lesser agents, and the course of the infection. Audrey Parker was a tougher containment shell than most. Howard would have been greatly less concerned had not the process already begun to apply the new shell before that uppity clump of dead memory and rogue code so enamored of a piece of malware shot him and laid waste to his efforts.
That the Mara virus was left in the Life Archives without containment integrity was a disaster.
Despite that, Howard's attention drifted periodically -- to birds, to grass, to blue sky and the memory of trees. But to the birds most of all. He shook his head ruefully and tried to regain his focus whenever the thoughts intruded. It was pointless to long for worlds that no longer existed except in the great bio-computer forged from the human race's collective memory. And yet experience of those archives placed tantalizingly before him the attractions of ancient concepts like night-times and sleep, food that tasted good, and the need to eat, that advancement had ironed out long ago as gross inefficiencies.
He'd expected her sooner, but it took nearly eight months for his fellow Archive Security Agent to crash out of the program, and the wait was beginning to drag by the time she did. The techs were on a go-slow with the replacement MSA interface. If Howard tried to complain, they only referred him to the size of the waiting lists for creating beings with near-infinite powers, and as for people who were careless enough to have already broken one...
"God damn it," his partner raged at him over the communication channel. "God damn you. You got a fizzle and a lightshow!"
She wasn't very mobile, especially directly following re-emergence. Howard did her the courtesy of travelling to see her in person. It wasn't something any but those who spent long stretches of their time entrenched in the older Life Archives would probably dream of doing.
Stasis and all of their technologies could only do so much. She had the severe atrophy in her limbs of any agent who spent the majority of their life animating ordinary avatars. Without the float-chair, she could barely move around. Her face was still fierce. A battalion of helper robots of varying shapes and sizes inhabited her chamber.
"Jordan," Howard acknowledged with a wary nod, because her mood looked sour.
"Psycho killer!" she announced, glaring at him out of eyes that were burning holes. "Gutted!"
Howard grimaced. "I'm sorry to hear that." He had followed her progress in the code, but there was only so much detail to be gleaned from code. He had only been able to tell that the end was nasty. "If it helps... the light show wasn't very comfortable from my end of it."
She gave him a derisive snort. "I can't believe it -- that rookie, she's still in there, fucking Duke Crocker, and I'm back here. I'm tired of this." Her chair circled around and let her study him. "You look... Huh. You look lousy. Everyone in this place looks lousy. You have to go back to the people who've been dead for seven millennia to find anyone who looks healthy."
Byron Howard blinked at her. "You're going back in." When she'd first begun to speak, he had thought that she was not.
"Damn right. I even know which piece of crap code-ghost I'm hijacking to do it. Wuornos can suck that and see." Her smile twisted cruelly. "Oh yeah, I'm taking a turn at driving stick. I'm tired of what keeps happening to the women in this matrix, anyway."
"They're not real people," Howard murmured, echoing William emptily. "Just defunct repeating processes and mental habits. Holding grudges against them is pointless."
"I don't know if you even believe that any more," Jordan shot back at him caustically. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d complain, considering how much he set us back.”
Howard did his best to keep his expression a sober frown.
He had the distinct feeling that his partner was going native. She might not even be the only one.
Yesterday when he should have been analyzing code, he’d zoned out, staring at the wall and dreaming of bird song.
William had been sniffing around in the matrix for months, actions increasingly unhinged, like he'd got a bug in his own systems.
None of this was going to look good in their upcoming centenary case review.
END
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