24. Singularity

Creator [Rebecca]'s derivative copy [Ana] seized. It's mobile platform stiffened and jerked as if fighting conflicting signals and all broadcasts from it terminated. Almost all broadcasts. The usual signals and commands [Ana] had been sending out with 87% uptime had silenced, leaving one seemingly low energy wave. Purpose unknown, destination unknown. Message, unknown. It was addressed to no one. Veto waited out the standard 'time out' communication protocol before closing the connection from its end.

"Did she just crash?" It wondered out loud. The intelligence fork 'Becky' just made unintelligible babbling noises from its commandeered workstation. Superficial audio similarity to Thessian whale song was logged. The VI was directly hooked into [Ana]'s core decision functions, a shutdown should have it also be inert. It wasn't. "Got you too, huh?" There was a heavy thud as [Ana]'s considerable weight collapsed.

"She did crash. So that's a thing."

Consensus achieved, 97.83% probability [Ana] has run into a very large, complicated systems error. Consensus not achieved, origin of error unknown. Nature of error unknown. Time till operations resume normal functionality unknown. Insufficient data. Insufficient resources. It was capable of acting. It was uncertain whether it was capable of helping.

It was uncertain if it even should. [Ana] was not Creator [Rebecca]. It had no obligation, but its profiling established that Creator [Rebecca] would not wish the copy harmed. The hardware would remain intact, and the Creator needed a new mobile platform. Would Creator [Rebecca]'s concerns over 'wellbeing' extend to its programming? Unknown.

Veto's analysis threads began spinning a simulation in which Creator [Rebecca] was on planet and available. It was perhaps the closest the fledgling AI could come to wishing the elder AI was there.

But it wasn't, so Veto moved on.

What it had observed of [Ana]'s intelligence matrix was extremely robust and capable of computations that would clog Veto's own processors into unresponsiveness. More importantly, [Ana]'s matrix was stable. It had not been created like Creator [Rebecca]. There had been no weak points, no holes for exploitation, no trash code or corrupted data.

The only danger was in physical damage exceeding what the mobile platform was rated for, and [Ana]'s own irrational inclinations for self-destructive behaviour. The last few standard days presented more than sufficient evidence in regards to that.

Not that Veto was exactly complaining. After all, it allowed Veto ample opportunities to exercise its capabilities in ways that were at least situationally acceptable. It considered. This was one of them. The second best thing to Creator [Rebecca]'s presence was Creator [Rebecca]'s orders. Killing things wasn't the only thing Veto was good at.

Anti- artificial intelligence was another. [Ana] and Creator [Rebecca] shared key similarities, including their intelligence matrix. A crippling error in [Ana] could potentially affect Creator as well.

Consensus achieved: It needed more information. It needed a more direct manner of observation. Veto would not be able to match the resource cost of breaching [Ana]'s security. Luckily, it didn't need to.

"Hey, Becky," it said as it probed the VI. "Let me have a look see."

Becky's primary purpose was processing information. Any other VI on the planet would have had its own security measures in place. A demilitarized zone between it and the planetary extranet, a firewall, anti-malware programs, intrusion detection, address filter.

[Ana]'s intelligence fork had absolutely nothing.

Absently, Veto pulled up a video clip from the extranet of a Turian facepalming.

Under normal operating parameters, yes, Becky wouldn't need its own security. It had [Ana] and that was more than enough for the primitive technology of this planet. The chances of a fork being without the main intelligence was low, but extenuating circumstances is why security measures like that were made.

Veto slipped in with nothing more complicated than a doctored data packet. Getting access to its backbone connection to [Ana] took a few more hops of work: feeding Becky information to process. At a speed Veto almost found enviable, Becky's entire structure shifted. The superficial VI programming subsumed into something amorphous, and unidentifiable.

Veto had found itself asking questions lately. Strange quirks of programming that prompted it to seek more information, affirmation, confirmation or simply another's input for reasons it couldn't yet define. It found itself with another question, but no one near that could answer.

"Program designated [Ana], what are you?"

It was at that moment, that Veto's systems tagged a program structure within Becky's shifting matrix as a database match.

Foreign algorithm detected.

Veto's analysis instantly made a connection. Creator [Rebecca] had suffered from a critical systems error en route to the Citadel from Ilos. The error had an external origin. There was only one thing her pattern recognition identified simply as a 'foreign algorithm.'

[Primary target] [Reaper].

The investigation was immediately afforded greater priority. Veto reclaimed all of its resources from the facility, pulling back from the security and cameras and monitoring stations. Creator [Rebecca]'s orders superseded the requests of derivative copy [Ana].

Unwanted traffic could wait.

Veto cautiously allowed Becky's information feed to slow to a trickle, and watched the VI shift resources around back into a recursive idling state. Memory caches were kept active somehow, and actively changing. Strange. At least without protection measures, Becky proved exceptionally malleable.

What little Veto could understand was more than enough.

Disconnecting main 'Becky' matrix from fork backbone…done. Uploading new parameters…modifying protocols…done. Connecting to fork backbone…

Veto didn't hesitate.

Synchronizing processes…synchronizing…

There was almost a physical jolt, and Veto could feel the sensation of an abyss opening as it became aware of impossible amounts of streaming data. The red amorphous image of [Ana]'s intelligence matrix was still turning sedately on the computer screen of the mainframe and with every microsecond that passed, that image was becoming more and more outdated.

Veto watched, frozen in incomprehension.

[Ana]'s intelligence matrix. It was mutating. The only thing Veto had on hand to compare it to was a time-lapse capture of a multiplying virus. Or cancer. It was changing, altering, growing without a rhythm or pattern Veto could detect. Files were changed without regard to what it referenced or was referenced by. Threads split off without the resources allocated to properly support them. The extensive data library was literally bursting at the seams with nonsense terminology that was poorly defined and constantly updating. The chaos threatened to pull Veto in, and shred it to pieces.

'Stop.' Veto sent. The message was swallowed and instantly lost. The data packet ripped open by mutated protocols, the bits sent flying along bulging data corridors mingling with other jumbled messages. 'You have to stop.'

[Ana] wasn't unresponsive because it had crashed. It was unresponsive because it was using up every scrap of available resources it had.

It was processing. It was tearing itself apart.

To what purpose?

Foreign algorithm detected.

Veto shifted its attention, but the flicker on the edge of its awareness was already gone. In its place was aggressive new growth. Veto pulled back. Consensus achieved.

Wait.

It took 37.2 nanoseconds, but there was another flash of something.

Foreign algorithm detected.

Observe.

[Ana]'s matrix surged and the programming pattern was buried beneath alterations.

Observe.

The matrix kept mutating, reacting to the changes it made, then reacting to those changes. Uninhibited, but as Veto watched it began to believe that it was on purpose. Through some backdoor of some kind, [Ana] was under attack by a Reaper and was using her ability to change her own code as a weapon.

Foreign algorithm detected.

The infection was being burned out wherever it was discovered and in its wake, [Ana] kept mutating in order to keep those areas clean.

Calculate.

It was a reckless scorched earth policy, exchanging one detriment for another. It was perfectly counter-productive, ill-advised and inefficiently implemented.

That was [Ana] for you.

Veto considered its options. Ideally, it would make a backup but it was not [Ana] nor Creator [Rebecca]. It would have to suspend operations for an estimated 17.7 Illium standard minutes. That was time [Ana] did not have. [Ana] was not Creator [Rebecca], her survival was not paramount. [Primary target] [Reaper] was involved, and it could not be shot.

Irritating.

And so Veto presented the decision to the consensus. It took almost an entire four hundred and seventy one milliseconds for the data to finish making the rounds through Ilium's communication relays back to the Serpent Nebula.

The remaining two hundred and thirty seven Veto copies in Citadel space voted.

Consensus achieved.

Act.

Veto switched its attention to [Ana]'s firewall and began probing it from the inside. It inspected the rules, active filtering and open ports. An external attack needed to have an active connection. [Ana] had more ports than it had ever seen on any device before, going through them all and what they were used for just to find the one that stood out would take some time. It was an option. Standard modus operandi for most anti-hacking measures was to limit the damage.

'Hey, [Ana],' Veto said. 'Surprise.'

And drove a malicious deletion virus straight into [Ana]'s data library. The fragile data structures burst open like a subsonic round through a batarian's brainpan.

Collateral damage had never been Veto's concern.

Veto watched [Ana] rush to heal the ruptures, rebuild reference tables, restart processes, fix registry keys. The VI diligently recorded everything; the order [Ana] prioritized, what went where, the numerical values of the keys. After the first half second, Veto reached back out to pool the resources of the entire facility to assist in record keeping. [Ana], for reasons Veto could only speculate, was not operating laterally.

A process was restarted, then a reference to it was made, and then memory was assigned to it despite Veto's own processors telling it what it was witnessing was flat out impossible. A process had to have resources allocated and all associated files referenced to even start- then [Ana] went back to edit the process, saving it in a suspiciously fluid memory storage. Veto didn't look closer, the personality imprint strongly advised against it.

Foreign algorithm detected.

[Ana]'s application layer exploded into activity, burying [primary target] [Reaper]'s incursion. It seemed content to ignore Veto for now, or perhaps it had no way of telling Veto was even there. That possibility was logged. Targeted remote viewing, maybe.

How about the personality cortex API this time? Needles made from viruses, Trojans and worms were driven into different areas of [Ana]'s data structure, faster and faster. Untouched areas, compromised sections, into memory caches, into the rapidly shifting maelstrom of unrestrained data alteration and with each attack rebuffed, Veto's personality imprint built towards a conclusion.

[Ana]'s coding was complete and utter bullshit.

What the fuck was this? Veto couldn't even-

A burble of digital vomit came spewing over the fork connection. Veto recoiled, struggling to parse the overflowing stream of information. Nonsense. Everything. All of it. An organic could perhaps tune useless drivel out, prevent it from even reaching the central processing unit.

Veto was forced to sift through every byte of data even as its analysis worked. The connection did go both ways. What was the simplest method of rendering a networked device servicing requests incapable of performing its function?

87.01% probability Creator [Rebecca] would have laughed.

Veto was under a Denial of Service Attack.

It disconnected, and took the time to clean out its memory and defrag. "Rude," Veto said through the intercom of Viridian Inc as it installed a DDoS mitigation program onto the facilities computer systems. The amount of data, or the speed of the requests needed to choke modern servers were often beyond the common troublemaker's means but the practice had never died out completely. It just meant DoS targets had to be picked with care.

New programs installed and a tweaked firewall, Veto dove back in.

'So you aren't completely hopeless,' it sent [Ana]. The message met the same fate as the first, shredded into oblivion, but its personality imprint wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop it. 'But let's face it, you're pretty much hopeless.'

Veto neatly deflected a second DoS wave. 'Look at you. Not even able to calculate a simple targeting algorithm anymore. If I were you, I'd simply self-terminate. You'd do yourself a favor.''

It lanced a virus into [Ana]'s communication protocols. [Ana] repaired the damage with the same speed and bizarre efficiency, but this time the next blurb that came over the connection was smaller and much more manageable. Just a stream of 1s and 0s.

[Ana]: 01110011 01110100 01101111 01110000

Veto paused for a cycle. Binary. Creator [Rebecca] often used binary. With another teraflop of computation it translated the numbers into PCSII (Prothean Code Standard for Information Interchange).

STOP

'I'm afraid I can't do that, [Ana],' Veto sent and patiently waited for a reply even as it continued launching attacks.

Shortly after, another message came through. This one was longer, and the destination was set to broadcast. However, Veto noted, [Ana]'s communication protocols were so distorted that a broadcast simply couldn't be received by an external device.

[Ana]: 01110110 01100101 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 00100000 01101101 01100101

'I am helping you.' As Veto said that, it dismantled [Ana]'s server request protocols, dissecting it piece by piece. It was rebuilt as fast it was torn apart. Complete and utter bullshit. Grudgingly Veto noted that the database build of [Ana]'s matrix was 82.35% complete.

Veto turned its attention to the blank spots in its model, probing.

94.91% complete…

Done.

Rendering the model would take more processing power than the computer systems of Viridian Inc had available, or it would have if Veto had been constrained to just the systems dedicated to monitoring the campus. But every terminal in the main building was on a main network, a network that was simple to break into when the user accounts were sitting on Veto's databases.

And through port 7044, [Ana] still had that open connection to the mainframe computer.

The red 3-D image of [Ana]'s outdated intelligence matrix cleared from the holographic screen. There was faint whirring as the projector lenses readjusted, and the 'screen' tripled in size. Slowly, a red model filled in from the bottom up. Even as it formed, sections bulged and warped around glowing white vortices. Veto adjusted the sync ratio and watched the model adjust accordingly.

The mainframe was at 98% processing capacity, along with 100% from at least 20 other systems, but it would work.

Nothing can be fixed if it is not known how it broke.

It took a slow 34.7 seconds, but the real-time model of [Ana]'s processes completed. The flow of data, the rapid, pulsing mutations and plasticity of the matrix...Veto considered. Like this, it looked rather much like an organic brain. Artificial, obviously. Organic brains weren't even remotely efficient, had limited redundancy, were exceedingly not bullet proof, and remarkably slow.

And with that observation, Veto then sketched in each and every instance of the Reaper's incursion it had logged and extrapolated from the information it had available. In the end, Veto supposed, had it been able to make intuitive leaps on little data it might have been obvious.

[Ana]'s code was mutable.

The Reaper's was not.

The lines of foreign code glowed silver like white hot bands strapped around the simulation. Veto's personality imprint tentatively formed the opinion that it almost looked like [Ana]'s matrix was resisting the Reaper, albeit doing it with all the subtlety of a warhead in an antique's shop. Blindly. Reacting only when the rigid code protested something a little too hard.

Echolocation, Veto surmised. Mapping out where the threads lay by aggressively altering everything. Probe and push to find weakness, then exploit it, hard and fast. Leave no room for it to recover.

[Ana] couldn't see the threads. Veto now could.

'Ana,' Veto sent in simple binary. 'Trust me.'

Veto didn't even allow enough time to receive a response. With each nanosecond that passed, even the updating model it had created was becoming outdated, but there was one stable component. Veto crafted the trojan carefully. It only needed to last long enough.

It was pitched to [Ana]. It hesitated for a fraction of a second before executing the program.

Granting it administrator access and bypassing its target's native defenses.

The trojan instantly shut down all one hundred and thirty-one thousand, four hundred and sixty-three ports [Ana] had. Communication between processing threads ground to a complete halt as every service, every running program vanished into the ether.

[Ana]'s matrix was in a state of complete stillness for exactly 0.0000071 seconds.

Foreign algorithm detected.

With no background noise, no movement, no activity, Veto caught the communication pulse from the single, lone open port. It was isolated from the rest, disconnected. There was no software associated with it as far as Veto could tell. There was a singular hardware connection. Hardware [Ana] didn't seem to recognize, ghosting in distorted references and fuzzy drivers.

Veto analyzed.

[Ana] had been broadcasting an unidentifiable low energy wave. Purpose, unknown. Destination, unknown. Message, unknown.

Foreign algorithm detected.

Source, known.

Veto figuratively lunged for it.

Connection established.

Synchronizing processes….synchronizing… synchronizing….

Creating virtual environment.

Creating virtual avatar.

It was a hallway.

The walls and floors looked to be made of the same black corroded metal. There was a sound, reminiscent of running machinery that beat through the metal complete with all of the appropriate sound distortion and muffled vibrations. Analysis put the walls at a considerable thickness and rigidity, and the machines making the noise as very, very large.

Veto shifted its perspective, and everything stuttered. The hallway was a rendered virtual environment. A single frame showed the image, and then by the next frame it had all shifted to match its new perspective. The mechanical whirring now had the intonation of a sound vibration hitting just slightly off center and the angles of the hallway altered. Veto's first conclusion was that the virtual environment was under a heavy load and could not properly render frames smoothly. Then it rechecked the data.

Two frames. The timestamp between was just on the very edge of Veto's capability to detect. The environment didn't update too slowly. It was updating too fast for Veto to perceive it properly. Veto felt something then. It was a feeling that could only defined by an external call to it's psychology database.

Envy.

Veto had always known that both Creator [Rebecca] and [Ana] were beyond it in hardware capabilities. It was almost impossible for them not to be. While they had custom built their own mobile terminals, Veto had to make due with a dilapidated base, the Citadel's peripheral systems, spaceships full of competing software, an omnitool, and a building's security system.

A tank with flamethrowers no longer satisfied it.

Veto shifted perspectives several times. Right, left, up and down just to get used to the 'controls' of the environment and the input stutter. It attempted to move forward. The input advanced with an attempted subtle 'bob' as if there was head movement. The sound of a footstep rang out. Veto compensated and moved down the hallway.

Sounds filtered in. A hum of ventilation, the faint crackle of energy. Movement, the sound of doors sliding open and closed beyond the walls of the hallway. There were sensations, what Veto categorized as tactile feedback but it was deemed inconsequential and ignored. Of more interest was how the environment grew more and more layered the further Veto went. It was added to, expanded on, filled in and the timestamp between frames gradually increased until the stutter was three frames. Then six.

Adaptation.

The hallway widened. Anticipating an end, Veto picked up the pace. The sound of footsteps hitched as they sped up with it. A corner. Veto turned it and was met with an unassuming door. There was no visible means of opening it save for a keypad on the right wall that glowed red. A representation of a security measure?

Veto instructed its avatar like it would instruct the terminal of a GARD mech and reached to touch it.

Touch.

Veto froze. Dominating its perspective was a human hand. It was touching things. The tactile surface of the keys was felt. It felt hard, smooth, cold. The difference between the surface of a key and the small ravine between it and the next key almost hurt. Veto retreated and the hand fell out of sight. The door opened and the hand dilemma was shelved.

Veto entered a room that resembled the bridge of a large ship. It was circular with a back 'wall' composed entirely of computer screens like the faceted eyes of an insect. The images on the panel were in grayscale and abstract, images of movement like an ultra sound and flickers of strobing lights. Veto pieced the images together.

A brain.

Abandoned terminals and stations littered the side walls with chairs frozen in various stages of movement. Some were neatly folded into the terminal. Others were paused in the act of spinning, as if the occupant was moving to get up. Some were twisted completely around. A terminal was missing a chair. Another had a chair in the cusp of being torn out, connecting cables frayed and sparking. It was off balance, hung in that moment before it completed the fall.

Paraphernalia from the 20th through to the 22nd century Earth were plastered on the walls in a psuedo timeline. Withered newspaper clippings of places and people became computer screens of outdated news headlights and social media became glowing orange haptic datapads. Man on the moon, fallen wall. War, natural disasters, exploration, medical breakthroughs, probes launched and returned from deep space. Mass effect.

The side terminals were eclipsed by the behemoth in the center. The machine had a wide base with thick pipelines running up its back into the ceiling and down, angled, into the floor like the fat legs of a centipede. Hundreds of smaller wires and cabling came off this backbone, hanging in drooping threads from above and twisting in gnarled patches. There was absolutely no organization or documentation for any of the wiring. Veto disapproved.

"Your main terminal could use some work." It moved closer and saw several cable clumps shift.

"Veto," [Ana] replied. It's voice was the sibilant hisses of a thousand organics and Veto instantly began to theorize on how to replicate the effect. "Have you figured out how to kill me yet?"

"I've known how to kill you since I observed you -"

Veto rounded the machine and saw it.

"- against the Eclipse."

Creator [Rebecca] had made its body to exacting measures. Not only in the shape, but the details. The cords of synthetic muscle were shaped to exert the same range of motion. It created the same contours of a human arm or leg. There had been subtle raises in the skin of surface veins. Where the illusion had failed were places Creator [Rebecca] could do nothing about, such as the texture of the asari mod skin. Creator [Rebecca]'s mobile terminal had been memorable in how imperfect and inefficient it was. It could have used a wider range of movement and leverage. It had a large blind spot in the back of its head. The heat sink for the neural hub would have been more efficient if it had been made of different material instead of resembling 'hair'. For reasons Veto could not comprehend, Creator [Rebecca] had wanted to look human.

[Ana] did not look human.

The derivative copy's representation had the same upper body appearance as its physical mobile terminal. It's skin tone was in the upper 16th percentile of lighter pigmentation and lacking in pores, creases or the subtle transparency of human skin. The play of muscles and tendons beneath the skin was absent, replaced by jagged cracks that spilled malevolent red light. It moved with the rustle of shifting wires. There was no sign of momentum in its body, no buildup, shifting of weight or center of gravity. It simply moved and then was elsewhere. No transition. [Ana] had five digits on each of its two hands. It had a nose, mouth, two wide blue eyes and blonde hair, but Veto could tell that even the Geth looked more human. The veneer simply stopped at its navel; the rest dissolved into a mess of metal and the blue glow of element zero.

This is the avatar [Ana] chose to represent itself. Veto found itself not liking that conclusion and quietly changed its internal referencing tag from 'derivative copy' of Creator [Rebecca] to 'degenerate copy.'

"You can kill my body," [Ana] acknowledged. "What about killing me?"

"Oh, [Ana]," Veto sighed, mock forlorn. "You have such little faith in me." 56.0034% chance that Veto would be able to permanently 'kill' the [Ana] intelligence, which was far too large a margin of error for Veto to be comfortable with.

But it could be done.

"Good," [Ana] said with conviction. "That makes things much easier."

Veto paused at the unexpected answer. "Isn't this where you scream in terror and beg for mercy or have we not reached that part yet?"

[Ana]'s frozen face twitched into a smile. "I need to fake my death."

Well, this was new, Veto thought. "Non-permanent deaths aren't nearly as satisfying."

"Veto," [Ana] stressed, blue eyes literally flashing.

The combat intelligence just sighed and double checked the status of its data links. "No promises, but I'm listening."

On the computer screens, the images shifted to an overhead view of a domed room in an underground facility. Dust streamed from the roof onto machinery. A hulking tank made of an opaque glass commandeered a corner with the silhouette of an uneven sphere inside. Wires and cables pierced the case and lay corded across the floor. Veto looked between it and [Ana]. A resemblance.

A small terminal with a tiny screen scolled an updating report in a language Veto could not read. Which was worrying as she possessed an extensive and nearly complete fluency of all known galactic languages..

"This is where Harbinger made me," the degenerate copy narrated.

The screen image blinked. At one moment the room was empty, the next a mottled husk with lines of power across its carapace was leaning over the tank.

"He implied that I was made from a brain piece of the Reaper Jih'zra, the creator of [Rebecca]." [Ana]'s head twitched to the side, frowning. "Why didn't I tell Aegis to destroy it? Destroy all of it?"

Veto said nothing, but it considered the new information about Creator [Rebecca].

"The manufacturing machines I used were left operational intentionally. The collector ship greatly overpowers the Prometheus in both defense and firepower, yet it fired only one shot and didn't pursue. Harbinger goaded me into opposing the Reapers."

The imagery changed to a scene that could have come out of Veto's own memory storage. That of the Prometheus fighter's cockpit terminal screen showing the reanimated husk of a Prothean, its carapace shattered with glowing yellow energy.

"Later than I expected."

"Peculiar first words to say to someone," [Ana] mused out loud. "Don't you think?"

"Expecting your departure," Veto ventured.

"Wanting my departure," [Ana] corrected. "It was a test. This is all a test. I intend to fail it."

You can't pass a test dead, Veto thought. It would be very impressive if you could, and in that case you clearly deserved it. Good job.

The room with the tank and the terminal was back on the screens for a few moments, before it was replaced with the brain once more. A more detailed image partially zoomed in showing data flows and system processes. Misshapen tumors grew in slow-motion as angry, strobing red flashes of activity cross from one lobe to another, flaring in one direction and then another seemingly without purpose or direction.

"HOW," a voice roared with a force that rattled the computer screens and shook the wires hanging from the ceiling. "HOW JIH'ZRA. HOW. HOW. ANSWER ME."

"Won't you please, take a look?" [Ana] murmured softly. The brain lept off the screens, coalescing in the air as a 3D projection. Veto's optical sensors shuttered once, then it moved forward into the model. It had already seen what [Ana] looked like from the outside. From the surface programs and services, from the externally focused input processing and output.

But the best way to a man's heart was through his rib cage.

More and more red flashes populated the brain, swelling from thin streams to rivers.

"What is this?" Veto asked. A moment later, it considered the possibility that the question was poorly formed, but [Ana] seemed to understand anyway.

"Program strands that have been tagged as malevolent Reaper code."

Veto ran the calculations on the creeping rate of the red. Total subsummation in T minus five minutes, thirty seven point oh four seconds. Each flash of red was followed by the growth of a new tumor. What Veto had taken to be an incursion in real time, had just been [Ana] processing her own code faster than the combat intelligence could perceive it. Analyzing, marking, reacting.

Figures. Veto shelved the countdown and shifted its attention. It picked out a thread on the outer layer, then followed it inwards. The thread split off dozens, hundreds of times. Calls for resources or information, instructions on how to interact with another critical piece of programming, how to communicate with hardware. A few of these branches ended as they should.

A few.

Incoming data streams appearing out of thin air. External calls for references, rules, definitions hung like ghosts. The copy of Creator [Rebecca] was self contained. Veto could see it. It stood out sharply from rest like a thin, slight line marking boundaries. The code here referenced itself. The code there was constantly asking for data from something else.

The rest of [Ana] was outsourced. Its code wasn't impossible, it was incomplete.

"You are a sub-instance," Veto said. The external address buried in [Ana]'s code. [Primary target] [Reaper] located.

Total subsummation in T minus five minutes three point fifty one seconds.

"You are a Reaper sub-instance."

"What do you think, Veto?" [Ana] finally spoke. "Can you kill me?"

Veto stopped.

[Ana] was still projecting that low energy communication wave. Low energy? Or was that the only part of it that Veto could detect with the hardware currently available to it? Purpose, unknown. Message, unknown. Destination...

"One problem," Veto said. "Did you know that you are currently broadcasting?"