by Narrator » Tue Feb 22, 2022 4:55 pm
With a new and unknown peripheral being connected Will's 'code' tries to make sense of it, checking for drivers and such to communicate with the added hardware. To perhaps nobody's surprise, it is not recognized as any type of device which makes it even more surprising when seemingly out of nowhere, a sub-routine starts up that adjusts the functionality of the 'port' with what it calls a 'Quantum Resonator'. A quick search by Ashlie as to the origins and nature of those drivers only shows them labeled as Stanton Technologies and tagged as 'downloaded 963,037,001,080 days ago'.
Soon after the driver installation the Willputer parses an array of files on the foreign device. On some level he'd know there isn't actually any data stored on there but rather that through the port and drivers he's parsing something much much more abstract into terms that fit his current shape. He even recognizes the file structure as vaguely similar to some of his own before things unfold into an odd virtual environment around him. Extremely high-fidelity versions of terrible 90s Cyberspace visuals stretch out around him. The ground is neon-blue wireframes of chess-board patterns and echoing from all around is the steady staccato of the clack-chunk-tick-tick-tick, clack-chunk-tick-tick-tick of pieces being moved and a chess-clock being swapped back and forth.
There are a couple of Will-sized pieces on the board, though Will gets the impression that the ones being moved are very far away beyond the infinite horizon. A couple of sections near him are labeled with all the various components of his own file structure. Personality, Memories, Likes, Dislikes, etc but the only ones with any pieces in them is Temp File Storage holding a couple capture pawns that are toppled and broken, a White Bishop with a plaque on it's base reading 'Traits.dll' and a Black Queen that looks like it has been carved to fit into the picture but clearly has been placed here by a third party. The queen is simply identified as 'Config.ini'