milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Cal is not impressed by any of this.

There is an eyepatch on the seat of the chair next to him, and the fabric of his blousy white shirt bears evidence of much exasperated plucking.

Someone wanna tell him to lighten up?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Sounds cool," Cal says, with the air of one still waiting for the punchline. Enzo has not mentioned anything that would upset people yet.

At least, not any people with control issues. Which Cal of course would know nothing about.

"It is! Only it's dangerous, too." Here's the kicker. "We can get hurt, if it's that kind of Game, and if the User wins..."

"- Oh." Yeah, there it is. "I see."

He doesn't ask Enzo to finish the sentence.

Enzo nods. "We've got a way to not be nullified now, even if we lose, but it's a really sucky way, and the Game still trashes that part of the city. So we still can't let the User win. That's part of my function!"

"The Guardian thing," Cal says. His tone and expression have gone fairly neutral.

"Right! We learn all about Games and how to win 'em, so the civilians don't have to and so someone's in the Game who knows what's processing."

This is the awesome part of the job.

This puts a different light on things. Cal himself was in the military once. Only for a few months, but still. Someone has to do the dangerous shit, and Enzo is obviously getting more training than he ever did.

It's still not the best thing Cal's heard today, but he can deal.

"So it's pretty important," he says.

"Totally! You only have to fight viruses if one comes to your system, but Games and Tears happen all the time."

Cal nods. "Are there a lot of Guardians?" he asks.

"'Bout ten thousand. Not enough."

Cal cocks his head a little. "How many - people are there in your world?" Sprites and something else, he can't remember the other word right now.

"In my system, or in all of cyberspace?"

Pause. That distinction had not occurred to Cal. He'd just figured that cyberspace was - cyberspace.

"Uh, your system."

"About eighty thousand. It's only one city."

He's starting to lose Cal again. Cal can deal with the idea of a world inside computers as long as he doesn't think too carefully about the logistics or where things go. But once he starts trying to apply concepts like cities, he gets lost.

(Cal is aware that it's not quite the same as a physical planet, but that distinction becomes difficult to hold in mind when talking to a boy who exists physically and is not just abstract programming.)

He still nods like he totally gets it. "What would be an ideal number of Guardians?"

"I dunno. Enough to have one for every system, I guess. But there's more systems all the time, and a lot of 'em aren't even on the 'Net so we don't know about them and they don't know about us."

Heck, until he was 01, 'they' were 'we'.

Lost. So lost.

"So - each system gets one Guardian?"

Doesn't mean he's going to stop trying.

"No, there's not enough. I'm not sure how they figure out who needs us most."

"Oh." Cal nods. "It sounds complicated."

"Yeah. Some Guardians just stay in the Supercomputer and go out to other systems who don't have one when something real bad happens."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only