Wednesday, August 3. 2005Tommy Xiang
Tommy knew that Fair_Weather_Friend didn't want to talk to him. He knew that he didn't like him. But he also had a pretty good idea what Night_Watcher was going through. He had seen patients writhe in pain when a few nerves began firing randomly. Half the nerves in Night_Watcher's body were probably firing right now. At least, that's what his brain would think.
"Well?" "I'm running the check right now. Ok. It's finished. Everything looks good." "Ok copy the new file over the top of the old one." "It says, 'Access Denied: the file is currently in use or read-only'." "Oh no. No." He felt panic climbing within him, clawing at his stomach, twisting and churning inside of him. "Can't I just go unplug him? He doesn't live too far from me." "No, we haven't finished the system that allows for an externally initiated offload. If you just unplug him, it will destroy his short-term memory. And who knows what else it will do." "Why are we doing this?" Tommy could tell that Fair_Weather_Friend was frightened. He was frightened himself. But they were frightened for different reasons. Tommy breathed deeply, trying to keep himself calm. Nothing was going how it was supposed to. His plan--he hadn't done anything according to the his plan for the day since, well, he couldn't remember when he had first deviated from the plan. He glanced at his watch.
"We've got to rescue him." "What?" "We've got to get him out of there." "I thought you said that we couldn't unplug him." "We can't. But the error is a localized error. We can go in, and get him away from it, and then maybe he'll be able to initiate the offload himself." "So we're going to swoop in like white knights, and save him?" "Something like that." "What if we get caught ourselves?" Tommy thought a moment before answering. "Well, I'll probably starve to death before anybody breaks into my apartment and finds me. I don't know what will happen to you." "I don't like this. I'm not a hero. I don't want to die. I'm just a kid. You go in." "I am going in. I'm going to need help, though. I wish there was someone else I could ask, but you're the only other person that has an implant." "What about the girl?" "The girl?" "Yeah, the girl I saw last night." "You saw a girl last night?" "Yeah. I was in the forest level, and there was a girl there." "You must have been dreaming. You go to sleep there a lot. I've seen you. Let's get going." "I told you. I don't want to." He saw no reason to continue arguing. Either Fair_Weather_Friend would help, or he'd live up to his name. Nothing Tommy could say would change that. "I'll see you in there." With those words, he hung up the phone, and began connecting himself to the system. Trackbacks
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