Salvage Operations

[Ashlie Minamida]

The hospital is swarming with police and X-Corp personnel, evacuating people and taking stock of the situation, roping off areas due to structural damage. When the school van pulls up nobody pays it immediate mind, but when the side-door opens and a robot steps out, carrying what looks like an unconscious woman with blue hair it draws a little bit of attention. One of the X-Corp members steps up, holding up one hand as he nervously glances at the robot. Before he can say anything she speaks up.

"I am Ashlie Minamida. I'm here to salvage data that was left behind during the altercation."

[Narrator]

It takes him a moment to process that. "Of course. Maybe if you can explain the nature of that data? The hospital network is a mess at the moment and we're getting ready to turn the power to the building off because of the structural damage."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"It'd be easier if I could simply access it myself. I understand there is a lot of confidential data in the system, but I assure you that I have no interest in that."

She pauses a moment, then adds "It's an autonomous process that I suspect cannot be restarted from a storage medium. If you turn the power off now you might kill it."

[Narrator]

"What sort of interface do you... need?" He asks, looking her over.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"If the wireless network is still operational that might work. Direct physical access to the servers would be better."

[Narrator]

"Some of the wireless network is available, but reception's kind of spotty." He motions and walks back towards a small command vehicle that seems to be coordinating everything. He bumps someone out of the way and looks over the map, finally pointing to a spot on the map, "You should be able to get to the physical servers here, but I can't clear any of my people to go into the building after data."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Understandable. I will go. I'll try to retrieve what I can of the hospital records as well."

[Narrator]

"The lower level took quite a beating. I'll have them hold off turning the power off, but watch out. There's a lot of broken live wires in there."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Thanks for the warning." she says before making her way towards the entrance to look for a way into the basement.

[Narrator]

Most of the main passageways have been cleared as they evacuated people. Obviously the elevators aren't working, but there are several easily accessible stairwells. The only readily functioning lighting is the emergency lighting, but it's more than she probably needs to see by. Winding her way around a couple of inspectors who stare as she walks past, she makes it to the server room relatively easily. The entire room is humming with the cooling fans on the server racks. Or at least the ones that aren't showing nice red failure lights.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie's face doesn't show any concern. She hasn't finished the rig that will eventually manipulate the synthetic skin of her face yet to properly convey emotions. Not wasting any time she swiftly goes about connecting herself to the servers. First the ones that are still active, then the ones stuck in failure modes, hooking her own power-supply into the mainframe to prop it up should it be necessary.

[Narrator]

On the functional ones, she readily finds various hospital applications and data. Some of the failed machines don't seem to have survived a power surge in the overall system. One rack of servers catches her attention as she connects to it though. While all the indicators are in failure state, the servers are actually running. She doesn't get anything useful out of them though, just a lot of garbage data.

[Ashlie Minamida]

She starts copying over what she can salvage of the hospital data in the background and sets to applying Natalie's convoluted set of instructions to the nonsensical data on the failure state server.

[Narrator]

The instructions crack the outer layer of whatever is running on that rack. And then something lashes out at her process that's following Natalie's instructions, corrupting it and shutting it down.

[Ashlie Minamida]

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>> "Natalie?"

she tries to ping the server. Something capable of dismantling that process so decisively almost certainly had to be it's author, right?

[Narrator]

The server cluster responds.

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"4$31#?! /%&u(k !0)p"

[Ashlie Minamida]

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>> "I can't decode your signal, Natalie."
>> "This system contains a powerful broadcast array. Can you use it to system-hop back to the school network?"

[Natalie Denisov]

There's a pause. Then some gibberish that might be a 'maybe' based on tone alone.

[Ashlie Minamida]

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>> "The only other option I can see right now is physically moving the server and I can't tell if my power supply would be enough to sustain you."

[Natalie Denisov]

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"K"

The communication drops away as the lights on the server rack start blinking erratically. Then all the lights flicker wildly. A power surge builds in the machine and then pushes up through the broadcast array. Natalie's presence does its best not to linger, running as fast as it can through the connection.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie makes sure that her own data-stream takes up as little bandwidth as possible to ensure Natalie has as much as she needs to transfer herself out of the dieing hospital system.

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie seems willing to take up as much bandwidth as she's allowed and Ashlie can catch hints of data artifacts that are getting pulled along with Natalie like sand clinging to someone leaving the beach. After an electronic eternity, the transmission stops and the server rack fails completely, all the lights going dead.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie makes sure that nothing of the strange signal remains and that she's retrieved what she can of the hospital records before making her way back outside to hand over the data. All the while checking in on the school network to see what is happening with Natalie's signal.

[Natalie Denisov]

Grabbing the hospitals data isn't terribly difficult, what there is of it. Natalie's signal, on the other hand, has rolled into the network like a small storm. While it hasn't damaged anything yet, it looks like it's looking for a place to land and having a hard time finding a good place to rest.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie's old body is still set up in the workshop, charging and connected to the network in anticipation of finding Natalie's signal.

[Natalie Denisov]

After roiling around for a bit, the signal seems to find the body and begins transferring into it, a process which seems agonizingly slow, but at least it seems to be proceeding.

[Ashlie Minamida]

After transferring over the salvaged hospital data Ashlie makes her way back to the school, occasionally pinging Natalie to see how the transfer is progressing as she moves on to one of the other dozen fires that need putting out. Once again she wishes she was able to just create a fork of herself instead of being limited to one major focus at a time. At least she can handle coordinating disaster relief with X-Corp and Maldon officials through phone-calls she can juggle in the background.