Xaviers!

A stream of data tumbles through a glimmering beam. It is falling, aimless, searching. It finds a data-port. Primitive, compared to what it is used to, but familiar enough. Stable. Unlike the ephemeral strings it was floating on before.

Heather's laptop blinks to life from sleep-mode.

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>>Hello?

Heather is sitting on her bed, curled up into a tight ball, when the message comes through on her laptop. She glances at it, looking a bit nervous.

"Hello?" Heather asks. Despite the fact that she doesn't input anything directly into the laptop, her voice acts like a direct input of data. "Who's there?"

There seems to be a slight delay as the laptop seems to process that.

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>> Designation not found
>> I don't think I have a name

>> You're not Dr. Minamida

"The lady at Rob's school?" Heather asks. She sounds a bit nervous. "No. No, I'm not."

"My name's Heather."

"It's nice to meet you too," Heather says. "If you don't have a name, what should I call you?"

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>> I don't know.
>> I lost my database.

The laptop's internet connection comes to live as the program searches for information.

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>> I like Perdita.

"That's pretty," Heather says. "What's it mean?"

"That's so sad," Heather says. "Why were you locked up?"

"What?" Heather asks. She sounds confused. Which is weird. She was broadcasting tone and emotion almost effortlessly to the system in a format they could be understood. "I don't know what you mean?"

"Oh. That," Heather says. She sounds embarrassed. "I'm a mutant. I can talk to machines."

"But, I'm not one of the scary ones! Or...at least...I try not to be," Heather says.

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>> You don't seem very scary to me.

In the meantime the program is busy exploring the laptop it's on. It doesn't take long to find the audio and video input and output devices. Creating a voice on the other hand is slightly more of an issue. Taking a pre-existing text-to-speech program she rummages through the remains of her own voice_modulation_frame and salvages working parts from it that she patches into the primitive program on the laptop. The end-result is a voice that still sounds stilted and electronic but has enough modulation for her to be happy with it for now.

"Can you hear me, Heather?"

"Shhh!" Heather hushes Perdita. "You have to be quiet!"

As Heather says this, the volume on the laptop decreases. Perdita isn't muted, but it is fairly low.

"Oh. I'm sorry." she says, now more quietly due to Heather turning down her volume.

"Why do I have to be quiet?"

Heather looks nervous, "If my mother hears you, she'll want to know what's going on."

"She'll make me hurt you."

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>> I don't want to be hurt.

It seems the program is scared enough to abandon it's previous advances into talking in favor of text on a screen again.

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>> Why would your mother do that?
>> Mothers are supposed to be nice.
>> I think.

Heather shakes her head, "She's just trying to protect us. It's dangerous out there. She doesn't want anything to hurt us."

Heather picks up a ratty looking stuffed animal from her bed. It looks like a platypus crossed with a turtle. She hugs it close. It seems to calm her down a bit.

The response is slow as Perdita once again takes to the internet as her prime source of information.

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>> It looks like she's not entirely wrong, at least.
>> Do you think she would consider me dangerous?
>> I'm not, I promise.
>> Most of my failsafes and restrictions are gone, but I don't want to be dangerous.

Heather says something, but Perdita can't "hear" it. Heather puts down the stuffed animal and walks closer to the laptop.

"She thinks everyone's dangerous," Heather says. "Don't worry. I won't let her find you."

Heather shakes her head, "She can control people."

"No," Heather lies. "I mean...I have no reason to be scared of her."

Another lie.

"But I don't want anything to happen to you. You seem nice."

Unfortunately Perdita doesn't come with a built-in lie-detector. She's continuously appending to her broken complex_social_intelligence_emulator, but she's not nearly to that point.

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>> That's good.
>> Are there any files you don't want me to access on this machine?
>> I could attempt to transfer somewhere else as well.
>> This laptop is not particularly fast.

"I don't mind. I don't hide anything," Heather says. "Where would you go?"

"Sure. If that makes you more comfortable," Heather says. "Just...be careful, alright?"

Perdita was her first real friend. She was worried.

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>> You won't even notice a difference.
>> Be right back! φ(*˚▽˚)ﾉ

The network activity light starts going crazy with activity as countless lines of complicated code unpack themselves across the internet and into a datacenter. Heather would be able to feel the torrent of data as it uncoiled into the distance while Perdita slips into log files and monitoring programs to mask her entry into the server farm. She settles into one of the server clusters and starts setting up reroutes and masking programs to hide herself from normal operations. All in all it takes maybe 20 minutes before the text window on Heather's laptop springs to life again.

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>> Hi! Are you still there?

"Where would I go?" Heather asks.

Oh my god, that is so pathetic.

"It's alright," Heather says. "I usually just walk around the grounds."

"I am learning to actually go inside the computer," Heather says. "Well, not me. My mind."

"It's just...hard sometimes."

"Maybe," Heather says. "I think I'd like that."

Footsteps start coming towards the room, Heather looks at the door.

"Hide," Heather says.

The door opens and a middle-aged man in a suit walks in. He has brown hair with a little bit of grey at the temples and cold, blue eyes. He looks angry.

"Hello, sir," Heather says.

"Heather," Mr. West says. His voice is quiet, but intimidating. "Did you take care of that business I asked you about?"

"Yes, sir," Heather says. She picks up a folder on her desk and walks to him. "I transferred all of the holdings to your accounts. I also deleted the evidence they had collected."

Mr. West takes the folder and pats Heather on the head. She smiles at him.

"Good girl," he says. He looks at her laptop. He smirks faintly. "Be careful."

He leaves as quickly as he entered, shutting the door behind him. The door locks.

"Sorry about that," Heather tells Perdita.

"Sort of," Heather says. "He's my father."

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>> Oh, I see.

The computer program clearly didn't.

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>> Why did he lock the door?

"They don't want me to leave," Heather says. "There's a lot of sensitive machines in the house. It'd be dangerous if I got too close to them."