milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

guardian bob,
mouse

(no subject)

Not too long ago, Bob gave Mouse an assignment. She's working on it. Been working on it for a while.

She's sitting at the Bar with a portable workstation. There are two VidWindows above it: the one on the left displays lines of blue and yellow code, while the one on the right shows code in a glowing, nasty-looking green. Mouse frowns and presses a key. The two VidWindows blink out and are replaced by a larger one, this showing blue and yellow code with green spliced in. Whatever Mouse is seeing, she doesn't like it.

Or maybe it's what she's not seeing that she doesn't like.

"Aw, fraggit," she mutters before shutting off the workstation, shutting her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. "Bar, gimmie a Snow Crash. If ya please." A glass of something that looks like liquid static appears beside her. She picks it up with a mumbled thanks and takes the distinctive swig of a sprite who's had a long, difficult day.

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"How can you stand that stuff?" asks the incoming Guardian.

"Hey, just 'cause some of us're lightbytes..." Mouse grins and winks at him. "Need it ta clear all this code outta my head, else I won't be able t'sleep."

"How's it going so far?"

"Darlin', it ain't goin' nowhere. I can't figure out where Daemon's code got in. I mean, she could infect a whole system with a buffer overrun, but sprites don't work that way."

"Hm." Bob rubs his chin thoughtfully. "I guess it would help if we actually had some surviving sample of the infection code, but that might be more trouble than it's worth."

"Yeah. All I got is scans from Turbo an' some from Daemon herself, in th' system records. I don't even know if they're complete."

"And I don't even want to think about what we'd have to do to get more..." He shivers at the thought.

"Me neither. I ain't that curious."

"So..." says Bob after a pause, "what are you using to test for security holes? The scans from Daemon, or something else?"

"Well, I'm lookin' at scans of infected code from Turbo, mostly. An' his uninfected code. Don't ask me how I got that," Mouse adds. "I'm lookin' at th'infected areas an' tryin' ta see where the virus took hold."

"Oh." A beat. "Does that, uh, usually work?"

...yeah, he doesn't know the first thing about coding, can you tell?

"Sometimes. Usually yer buddy Guardians capture a virus an' test it t'find out how its infection works. This really ain't the...ideal way."

Bob cringes. He's always had mixed feelings about that practice. It may be necessary in order to create cures, but it's so... barbaric.

But in any case, it's not really an option here, is it?

"Have you talked to any of the people here in the Bar who worked on the cure? They might have some insight."

"Been wantin' t'talk to Hiro, but I ain't seen 'im around. Oracle's in more often. Hey, if ya see either of 'em, lemme know, sugar."

Bob nods. "I will."

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