Daemon Rising, part 4b

[a1enzo]

[Due to the wonders of Millitime, this takes place the morning after this thread, yet at the same time is happening right now. Whoa.]


Contrary to his own expectations, Enzo slept pretty well last night. No nightmares, although he did have a weird dream in which Hex turned into a pile of nulls with Mike the TV's voice. At any rate, he's well rested and ready for some world-saving.

But first, breakfast. He's at the Bar, eating a large waffle with far too much Maple syrup. Frisket has a bowl of something you're probably happier not knowing about.


[Leading to a supply run, mass digitization and mission briefing, and divers excitement and alarums.]

[First two subthreads are plotlocked. Enzo, at least, would welcome greetings in the third.]

Comments

[a1enzo]

"No, Daemon." He pronounces it Day-mun. "The virus. The one who was taking over the 'Net? I told you about her."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"- oh, her."

Mary tries to remember what she's heard about Daemon. The trouble is that she's only ever had a shaky concept of the Net anyways; it's all jumbled together with people who aren't people and computers and viruses and information.

She seizes on what seems to be solid information: "She is dead, then?"

[a1enzo]

"Yeah. But we weren't able to kill her." He gives a small, humourless laugh. "We tried to blow her up but it just made her mad. She's only deleted 'cause she self-destructed."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Witches are like that," Mary announces. "And she sounds like a witch - even if what she does is different."

[a1enzo]

Enzo shrugs; he doesn't know much about witches. "She was gonna destroy the whole 'Net 'long with herself. But Hex took the cure we made and spread it all over the 'Net. But she got totally fragmented to do it. So now she's deleted too."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Why would she want to kill herself too?"

Mary shakes her head. "That is only stupid - or mad."

[a1enzo]

"Oh, she was mad. She's always been totally random. Well, except when Bob cured her, then she was kinda sane, and she was really sane when she turned into a sprite, but then she became a virus again to fight Daemon and then she was crazy again."

He shrugs. "But someone had to distribute the cure before the countdown finished, and only a virus could do it fast enough, and there still wasn't a way to get it everywhere 'cept by fragmenting. If the infection didn't get cured everyone'd die anyway."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Oh - I meant that Daemon was mad," Mary explains. "Because she was going to destroy it with herself too. But Hex you said had to pull herself apart to get the cure everywhere - and that is not mad. That is brave. It is being a hero."

[a1enzo]

"Oh. I don't think Daemon was random. It was just her function."

It's not a good thing, it's a terrible thing, but still, the necessity of following one's function is something every cyberspatial resident understands. Even if someone's function is horrible, it doesn't mean they're crazy.

"Yeah. Hex was brave." He smiles. "But she was still crazy." But now, after everything, he can say it fondly.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Sometimes," Mary says - thinking about Duo, and Han Solo, and several other people she's encountered in-bar - "crazy is not bad."

[a1enzo]

"Sometimes," Enzo agrees. "Depends on the kind of crazy, I guess."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Yes. There is crazy that is funny - and there is crazy that is mad, and only doing things that do not make sense - and there is what people say is crazy because it does not make sense, only it is just that nobody else understands it."

[a1enzo]

Enzo nods. "Hex was the second kind, mostly. She'd, like, decide to blow things up or screw up the system just 'cause she could, and then later she'd get bored and just stop. But when she was a sprite, I think she was the third kind of crazy. She told me some stuff that was weird, but it kinda made sense anyway. She said I'll understand it better when I get older." He sighs. "I hate having to wait 'til I'm older."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"I don't see why you ought to have to," Mary says, immediately.

"It is not as if grown-ups understand anything better anyways. What did she tell you?"

[a1enzo]

Enzo chuckles at that.

"Some of it was kinda the same thing you told me before. About Matrix and me not being the same person really, even though we are, or we were... And she told me how she might not have turned into a sprite if she'd just been standing somewhere else when the Game landed, and then she wouldn't have brought Dad back... and then I guess the 'Net would've been destroyed, 'cause he was the one who had the idea... and she said that the older you get, the more complicated the world is." He shake his head. "It's complicated enough now."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary looks wise.

"It is only complicated because people make it complicated. Things are still true and not true; only adults often do not like to know about things that are true, because they are frightened. It becomes complicated because of all the pretending. Everything else is just as it is."

[a1enzo]

Enzo's brow furrows. That makes some sense... but there's stuff where that doesn't apply.

"'Not all variables are Boolean.'"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Boolean?"

It sounds like a nonsense word to Mary.

[a1enzo]

"It's an expression. Boolean means it's got a value of true or false. But there's other variable types, ints and doubles and chars and strings, and they can have all kinds of values, y'see?"

It feels odd to explain something so basic, the way Mary might feel if she had to explain the concept of the alphabet.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary files the word 'Boolean' away in her memory - it's a useful one - before turning her attention to the second half of the sentence, which dumped her back right in the realm of nonsense.

"Ints? Chars? I do not know," she says, stiffly, "what any of those mean. They are not words in English."

[a1enzo]

"Oh, those're short for 'integer' and 'character'."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"- characters are people in stories," Mary says, and inserts that into its place in the sentence before exclaiming, scowling, "It still does not make any sense!"

[a1enzo]

"Yeah, but they're also, like, letters and digits and punctuation and spaces and things."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"So they can be any letter," Mary says, a little impatiently. "What of it?"

[a1enzo]

"I dunno, it's just an example. Not everything's true or false."