It's All About the Benjamins

[Cam Beckett]

"Well, it's hard to say. I've never heard of 'Setec Astronomy', but neither has the chemical database.

If I had to theorize, that chemical is what made him susceptible to this stimuli -- picking up on some signal Natalie was emitting, with her need for gloves. First guess is telepathy, but I've never heard of telepathy coming from a bottle before, and the fact that you're not picking anything up implies it's more complex than that."

[Samantha McManus]

"Well he's absorbed things before."

"Like one time he turned into a car and someone tried to... trick his ride? He was all chrome and shite when he tried to shift back."

[Cam Beckett]

"Well, he's absorbed this well good, then. Maybe all he needs to...process? it is time. Without knowing more about, well, anything involved in this reaction, subject or additive, I'm not sure we can be more precise than that."

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie frowns, looking at the previous vat. "So, just to make sure I understand," she says, "The chemicals that this Finn mixed with Will seem to be inhibiting him? Is that the hypothesis we're going with?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"It's a distinct and highly probable possibility," Tosh said, "But... wait... shit. I think we might be the one's stuck on gloves."

"Let's try a small jump. Will. I need a t-shirt."

[Narrator]

"It's a distinct and highly probable possibility," Tosh said, "But... wait... shit. I think we might be the one's stuck on gloves."

"Let's try a small jump. Will. I need a t-shirt."

No change. Will remained be-gloved.

[Cam Beckett]

Natalie frowns, looking at the previous vat. "So, just to make sure I understand," she says, "The chemicals that this Finn mixed with Will seem to be inhibiting him? Is that the hypothesis we're going with?"

"I wouldn't say "inhibiting" -- that implies a purely negative reaction. The subject can apparently pick up on non-spoken cues now, which could be seen as an evolutionary advantage, if viewed in the right light."

[Nailah Weaver]

"What's the evolutionary advantage of being cartoon oven mitts?" Nailah asks, holding her hands up so the goofy faces on the mitts are looking at Cam.

[Cam Beckett]

"...Might help it survive heat?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Or... electricity..."

Or he just needs a hand.

"Okay, another dumb idea courtesy of the sharkbro in my head. Will. Thing from Addams Family."

[Narrator]

No change! Nailah's gloves continued to fit normally.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Maybe it's cause I'm still wearing them?" she says, pulling the gloves off and putting them on the ground. "Try again!" she tells both Tosh and Will.

[Narrator]

Before anyone could try again, the gloves practically ~exploded~ outward, rapidly increasing in mass and weight into the red clay from before, spreading out over the floor in front of Nailah and Tosh! From a few ounces to 30 kilograms of clay in a half-second.

[Samantha McManus]

"Jesus!" Sam blurts out, jumping back from the claysplosion.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh, too, jumped back. "I guess he's reached his limit for now. Or perhaps... the electric charge we used to free him worked something like a temporary shot of adrenaline, though not enough of an effect to wake him entirely."

[Cam Beckett]

"I wonder if it's more...conceptual than that. You said he liked being 'useful', right? Well, Nailah just finished 'using' him."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"That certainly sounds like Will," he half-chuckled. "Though if he really wants to be useful he should at least turn into a computer terminal like he did in my evil twin's volcano base so we can communicate."

[Narrator]

And so it be done! The clay shifted and twisted, bulking up and building into metal, plastic, cables and wires. A keyboard for input on the front, a monitor for display, a case to keep all the important innards inside. A cord snaked out to connect to a nearby power outlet, providing the new computer terminal with power.

Natalie could feel the new device pinging the network, sending out signals as it booted up, looking for network addresses and requesting permissions from the university's central server.

The device had a blank prompt, flashing in classic DOS green.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Holy shit that worked," he laughed excitedly. He ran to wheel over a chair and quickly typed:

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Hello Will

[Narrator]

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>>Will.exe restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. 

A problem has been detected.  Operating system failed to load properly.  If this is the first time you've seen this error screen, restart your computer.

Then, there was a large -- and I mean large -- listing of code scrolling past the screen, as various files tried and failed to load. Some pretty heavy fragmentation in memory, it appeared, as if the device had been shut down from power in the middle of saving things. Weird filenames and structure, too -- consciousness.bat, joiedeverve.dat, ennui.exe.

For all it's errors and warning messages, the system was active, and accepting inputs, at the very least, and Natalie could tell that the system was, in fact, online -- if in rather poor shape, both physically and in terms of file structure and organization.

Tosh had seen worse damage before, as well -- it looked like it was mostly software that wasn't loading, as opposed to actual hardware damage. It wasn't even all the software -- basic system functions seemed to be working at the underlying level; it was more applications and programs that didn't seem to be loading properly.

[Natalie Denisov]

"Poor thing," Natalie says as she assesses what's going on. "The OS, for lack of a better term, is pretty scrambled. If this were an ordinary computer, I'd recommend saving off what you could and reformatting it, but with this... we're probably going to have to rebuild it a piece at a time."

[Narrator]

What Natalie could tell about the file structure was definitely interesting.

When you designed a memory structure, you followed certain rules of organization. File structures, tables of folders -- it all follows a logical pattern. Down at the bare metal, the 1s and 0s itself, that file system isn't as organized, but a well-constructed system of pointers makes everything easy to find.

This computer had not been designed. It was, after all, an electronic representation of a biological lifeform. Everything was all willy-nilly, if you excuse the pun, and had not been aided by the harsh shut-down caused by being melted down and run through a printing press. That table of pointers was corrupted, and would need to be reconstructed to try to restore the data.

On a more fortunate note, it looked like none of the data had been erased or overwritten -- which would indicate that Will was alive, and not a glorified vegetable. It just required some repair, and maybe some new software, to get everything accessible again. A mess, but not an impossible mess by any stretch of the imagination, especially with the University's processing power at their disposal.

The underlying system was still working -- hence why error prompts came up, and the console was awaiting new inputs and commands. A rough guess? Will's subconscious was untouched, undamaged from the chemicals, herbs and poor treatment. As for why Will apparently ran could understand UNIX, your guess is as good as mine.

A little bit of investigation with her powers, and Tosh's computer expertise, could reveal some hints as to how structure had been applied to the chaos, before everything had gone kaplooie. Someone had sectioned the hard drive into three partitions -- a user named "Morrigan", apparently, who had had admin privileges back when the OS was actually enforcing things like that. There was plenty of room on the hard drives, though that seemed just to be native storage space rather than anything being erased or deleted. Frankly, Natalie had never seen storage density like this; petabytes of information. The university had more storage space, of course, but this was just one console. Fairly impressive for a small little device!

The hardware was...old. Well-worn might be the best description. 80s-era computer parts, which might explain the green-and-black display and clunky keyboard, as well as the old-fashioned ports lining the box. The fact that it could connect to the university's system at all didn't really make sense considering the age of the hardware, but then, Will had never given the laws of physics much of a passing thought; why would he obey the laws of computer processing?


Still no telepathic contact for Sam -- it might as well be any other computer in the room.

The prompt blinked, shiny and green.

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie nods, processing it through her own brain, "I think we can fix him while he's like this or at least repair enough that he should start functioning again so that maybe a telepath could help with the rest." Her brain started running through the pointers, looking at where they should go and trying to get a mental picture of the cross references. As she did so, a printer across the room started attempting to spit out the diagrams her brain was creating, but Natalie didn't seem to notice.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh busied himself by accessing and speed reading diagnostic reports to catch up to Natalie.

"Yeah. Basically his 'file structure' is corrupted. But it's not as bad as that sounds. His mind data is all there, it's just too disorganized to function. Between me and Nat this is totally doable."

[Nailah Weaver]

"Make him turn into something repairable. Clever!"

[Samantha McManus]

"I don't... know if I like this," Sam sighs.

[Natalie Denisov]

"We have what the core system should be pointing to and the applications are still there, we just have to repair the pointers so the system knows where to find things. Or at least repair enough for him to be actually functional. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but we're not looking to rewrite the way he works, just make it so he can find the stuff he needs to function again."

[Cam Beckett]

"I'm pretty sure installing Windows 10 on him would violate the Geneva Conventions, so we'll try to avoid that."

[Narrator]

Natalie nods, processing it through her own brain, "I think we can fix him while he's like this or at least repair enough that he should start functioning again so that maybe a telepath could help with the rest." Her brain started running through the pointers, looking at where they should go and trying to get a mental picture of the cross references. As she did so, a printer across the room started attempting to spit out the diagrams her brain was creating, but Natalie didn't seem to notice.

There was a method to the madness, as Natalie (and anyone reading the printouts) could begin to see -- a very complex system, with excessive recursion. It's not hierarchical at all -- everything referred to one another, with data referencing and calling upon one another in an extraordinarily complex system.

That doesn't make much sense for a computer -- no one would write something like this. No one could write something like this -- it's obfuscated code of the worst order, written by a monkey. A monkey who was insane, on drugs, and being ordered around by a second, different monkey who was philosophically opposed to commenting his code. It wasn't at all like ASHLIE. For one thing, ASHLIE seemed more...powerful? More active? Staring at ASHLIE was like looking into the sun; staring at Will's memory was more like looking into a cluttered room -- not a lot of activity going on, due to the lack of anything working properly, but an organizational nightmare.

From a cognitive science approach, though, it probably made more sense -- people don't learn things sequentially, and you're constantly building upon and changing old memories and opinions based on new information. A complex decision tree, rather than clear if-->then statements.

As Natalie probed, though, things began to make sense. A little bit, at least. The code was crap -- she could certainly do better -- but it was beginning to make some sense. She could even start accessing some of the data -- fragments of memory, bits of opinions, concepts, sensations...

She could also feel the core processes of the machine running underneath everything. There was the order you would expect out of machines; as it connected to the various devices around the room -- like the printer that was pouring out Natalie's diagrams. Compared to the chaos that was the memory structure, this was a lot...smoother. Functioning normally -- optimally, even. It pinged, it beeped, it waited for input. It was sitting there, calmly, waiting, as it ran normal background processes. It was peaceful and tranquil -- no sign of the errors or stresses the "active" memory had displayed.

[Natalie Denisov]

"I think we start here," she says, indicating a section of the diagrams, "Start restoring these connections and getting things pointed in the right direction."

[Samantha McManus]

"I guess I should... go back to being out of the way."

[Cam Beckett]

"I guess I should... go back to being out of the way."

"You could get us some snacks! That's totally being part of the team effort. Two sugars in my coffee, if you would," Cam said, waving his hand a little at Sam. "Caffeine does wonders to the mind."

[Nailah Weaver]

"Mind if I tag along? I'm not really much use here either..." Nailah says.

[Samantha McManus]

"Oh, I'll get you a bloody coffee," Sam mutters before looking to Nailah.

"Be my guest. Anything to keep from going stir-crazy."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Please don't Sam, he's bad enough without stimulants," Tosh commented.

[Natalie Denisov]

"None for me, thanks," Natalie says distractedly as her mind sinks deeper into the code, looking for the first place to begin.

[Will Stanton]

Cue the montage!

https://youtu.be/rUGQHdYUIEo


At first, it was slow, painstaking work. Natalie and Tosh would identify a piece of memory, note where it was -- and then twenty or thirty new errors would pop up, complaining that a bunch of other things it was expecting to find wasn't there. Aggravating and frustrating work. Tosh's drone was programmed better than this!

But over time, things began to fall into place -- like a puzzle slowly working it's way in from the edges. Not only were areas of memory easier to find, it was almost as if the computer itself was beginning to assist, bringing key issues to the forefront to be solved before they could create cascading errors. Everything began getting smoother and smoother -- still slow, but faster and faster. It even seemed to begin filling in the cracks left behind, as Tosh's commands and Natalie's guidance worked to create the superstructure.


Finally, they were ready, and Will restarted for the nth time.

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STANTON(c)1989 X-Corp
BIOS Date: 08/14/29 19:41:02 Ver: 27.00.05

Press DEL to run setup
Checking NVRAM..

1024GB OK
Auto-Detecting Pri Master...WAS Hard Disk
Auto-Detecting Pri Slave...Not Detected
Auto-Detecting Sec Master...CDROM
Auto-Detecting Sec Slave...Not Detected

Initializing Stanton(R) Boot Agent GE v1.2.18
PXE 2.1 Build 003 (WfM 2.0), RPL v1.28

Connecting to network...
...
...
Connecting to network...
...
...

Starting WILL.EXE

...
...

...

>>Hello, beautiful.

[Natalie Denisov]

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Hi, Will. Unless you're talking to Tosh...

Natalie sags back into a chair, relieved and tired but not fried.

[Will Stanton]

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>>Frankly, you're all beautiful right now...Natalie, was it?  Don't feel left out; I'm gonna kiss all of you when I'm back on my feet.

>>When I have feet to be back on.  Little...little groggy.  Getting up to speed though.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh felt a wave of victorious relief when Will finally began to respond.

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Even Bruce?  He fought a talking gorilla for you.