Hello Protocol for Dead Girls Read online

  What’s happening? You’re glowing more, Daiya says.

  I look down at my hands. I know they aren’t really hands, though—they’re just what my imagination is projecting them to be. I’m getting more comfortable with that idea, and maybe that’s why it’s letting me change. Maybe I’m becoming more of what I really am now.

  To me, my hands don’t look brighter. They look like light. The sensation I have running through me, though, is truly spectacular. It’s almost a feeling of growing. It’s like, if evolution was a thing that happened in real time, in a measurable way. I feel like I’m changing.

  Who is this?

  The message isn’t a visual text, and it isn’t a voice in my head, either. Like a lot of things here, it’s unlike anything in my previous experience. Since I don’t truly have the senses of touch, hearing, sight, and so forth, I suppose it’s logical that the senses I do have are something outside of those.

  That small, brief question shoots through me like an arrow. It blooms, then fades.

  Jim Lee has made contact, I tell Daiya before focusing my attention on Jim.

  I’m Jennika Monroe, I tell him. I died. My memories were uploaded. But you didn’t just upload my memories. I’m here. Consciously.

  I wait for his response. I imagine him having a mental breakdown in some little office cubicle.

  Ha ha, he says. Very funny, Mark. Now leave me alone. I’m busy.

  Great. He thinks a colleague is playing a prank on him.

  This isn’t a joke. This is real. I understand from your perspective how it would seem impossible and you’d look for some other way of explaining it, but I really am Jennika.

  Enough, man. I’m starting to get mad.

  I sigh in frustration. I finally have a connection with the outside, but I still can’t make myself be heard.

  I’ll prove it, I say. Stand by.

  Glancing at Daiya, I say, I need to prove to him that I am who I say I am. He doesn’t believe me.

  He doesn’t believe a dead girl trapped inside a computer is talking to him? Go figure.

  I don’t especially care for her sarcasm, however appropriate, right now.

  How can I prove who I am to Jim Lee? I can’t offer up a memory. My memories are a matter of data now. In fact, the people on the outside of this environment probably have more access to my memories than I do, since I don’t remember how I died.

  Okay, so what does this Mark guy know, then?

  I find that, with my connection to Jim Lee via SNS, I can slide right into all of his communications. There’s a Mark right at the top of the list of most frequent contacts.

  Mark Gebling, level two engineer.

  That’s probably the guy.

  So how can I prove I’m not Mark? I’d have to offer something that Mark wouldn’t know.

  My memories might be a matter of electronic indexing, but the great equalizer of any network is permissions.

  It can be a big problem. Sometimes an engineer is tasked with a job that touches multiple places, and the engineer gets stonewalled in making any progress with the job because access to something hasn’t been granted. And if that something has a high security level or is managed by someone who isn’t very responsive, a person can be completely screwed.

  Permissions. Which devices does Mark have access to?

  I feel an expanding sensation. If I had breath to take, this would leave me breathless. As I push from Jim Lee’s SNS to Mark Gebling’s, something coalesces for me. It’s something that gets bigger, and melds, but also expands in numerous, possibly infinite directions.

  It’s not my surroundings expanding. It’s me. I’m growing, reaching, and filling the spaces around me, in multiple pathways, simultaneously.

  Oh my god.

  I’m not just infiltrating the network. I’m merging with it.

  I don’t have a circulatory system anymore. No heart, no blood, no veins. But what I do have is access to all the pathways in this system, and the energy of them flow through me like blood and pure, intoxicating energy.

  I never experimented with drugs, but I did have oral surgery once to get my wisdom teeth out, and I’m pretty sure that no matter how high someone got from psychedelics, they would never feel as awe-inspiringly capable as I feel right now.

  There’s a glow in me, and it’s a feeling, not an appearance. I’m flooded with a sense of energy and knowledge and, and…centrality. Yes, centrality. Like everything is orienting itself around me, supporting me, becoming a part of me to command.

  This is what being a god must feel like.

  I no longer care about Mark or Jim Lee or permissions. I’m surrounded by pure energy. In fact, I’m pure energy.

  I want to stay here. Right here. I hold myself very still and focus on nothing but right now, in this feeling.

  Nothing else matters.

  11

  Not So Fast

  Something on the periphery of my awareness keeps flitting around. I try to ignore it, and it only moves. The movement takes me away from my feeling of centeredness.

  It’s bloody annoying.

  Like in the old days, when I was alive and sleeping and something kept edging me toward wakefulness, I’m disturbed away from peace by whatever annoyance this is.

  A sharp, youthful wail goes up, shattering my peace.

  It’s Ashta.

  I come back to myself. Or what I use to think of myself. My sense of self is evolving. More than simply knowing I’m no longer human, I no longer feel as if I am.

  I focus on the wail. The sound of it echoes in my mind long after it ends. It puts my nerves on edge. I can’t coexist peacefully with this wail.

  I narrow my view, focusing on one thing instead of the entirety. I cut away all the rest so it doesn’t distract me.

  The wail. Ashta.

  This place.

  My questions are growing.

  Jim Lee. Right. He might have answers. At least, he might be able to point me in the right direction to find the answers.

  He’s only human, after all.

  Daiya.

  I look around for her, but she appears to be inactive. She must have gone into sleep mode.

  Did I go into sleep mode? How long has it been since I last spoke to her?

  I don’t feel like I’ve been in sleep mode.

  I feel so fractured.

  After checking my chronometer and comparing it to my activity log, I realize it’s been two months since I last communicated with Daiya. Two months since I communicated with Jim Lee, too.

  Two months?

  How?

  This isn’t good. The more time that passes after my death, the more likelihood that, if I was murdered, my murderer could be caught. Which means that if someone killed me, that person will likely go on to kill someone else. Maybe multiple people.

  Plus, my family and friends. Two more months have passed without them knowing that I’m not truly gone.

  Ashta. Where is she?

  I have a deeper sense of this system now, and searching it is similar to simply closing my eyes and sorting out my thoughts.

  Technically, I’m writing small queries and getting pingbacks to multiple locations, but that might only make sense to a tech geek. Or maybe only to someone who has become digital.

  That line between the virtual and the physical world is growing fuzzy.

  Never mind that. I still know what’s right. I need to find Ashta. A person, no matter their current form, doesn’t leave a child in distress. Even if that child isn’t strictly human anymore, either.

  How do I find her?

  I focus on where I am, and where the wail seemed to come from, and something’s different.

  I can see everything in here. Every device. Every connection. When I focus on them, I can see what’s inside, too.

  It’s pretty awesome, almost as if I’ve suddenly gained a superpower.

  That’s a cool thought.

  I pinpoint Ashta’s location and consider the best way to reach her. T
hen a new thought occurs to me. Since I don’t have a physical body, and everything in here is just some kind of digital transfer, could I just bring her to me rather than having to go to her?

  I’m not concerned about permissions. My knowledge of what’s in here includes the fact that I can manipulate anything I want to. Touch anything I choose to.

  All I need to do is bring Ashta to me.

  I focus on her, and she transforms into a cascade of packets, rushing toward me. I could have transferred her as one file, but it would have taken longer. This way, I almost immediately start seeing bits of information flying my way. They arrive at my location and converge, like a bunch of magnets snapping together to form one solid block.

  Then Ashta appears. Her eyes are big and serious, and she looks up at me with a surprising lack of surprise.

  “Oh,” she says. “Hi.”

  She says it out loud, and whatever has happened in the time since I last saw her, I can be certain that she hasn’t realized that she’s not a person anymore.

  Not wanting to broach that topic now, I speak to her aloud. “Hi, Ashta. Are you okay?”

  “I guess,” she says.

  “I heard you make a noise. You sounded upset. I was worried about you.”

  She nods. In her innocence, it doesn’t occur to her that I wouldn’t be concerned about her. Just from that nod, I can tell that she lived the kind of life where she never had to wonder if she was loved or if the adults around her would protect her.

  “Someone pulled me,” she says, her lips twisting into a pout.

  “Pulled you?” I repeat.

  “Yeah, they pulled me really hard and it started to hurt. But then you brought me here.” She gives me a little smile of gratitude.

  She’s not a person. She’s a collection of files with a certain something holding them together with a consciousness. If she was a person, I couldn’t just look inside her head and see her recollection of what happened.

  But since she’s something else, that means she has log files. I put my hand on her shoulder comfortingly, but in truth, the gesture is more utilitarian than simply reassuring her.

  She hasn’t mentioned the fact that I’m made up of blue light now. I hadn’t thought to put on a more human appearance before bringing her to me.

  Not important. I shake off all my other thoughts and focus only on accessing her log files and analyzing them. I think about asking Ashta before I begin, because it seems polite to ask a person before you start rooting through her log files. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of like reading someone’s diary and medical records, rolled into one. But Ashta’s just a child, and she wouldn’t understand what I’m asking. Worse, I might upset her.

  So without asking, and feeling a bit guilty about that, I access Ashta’s activity log.

  Most of the time, log files are routine stuff. Backups, saves, changes made, and times the files were accessed and by whom.

  But…

  The last system update on Ashta shows something worse than these simple facts.

  Files deleted.

  The log says Ashta was deleted. But here she is.

  What does that mean? And what does it mean that someone decided to delete her? The logical conclusion would be that her cause of death was determined and the case was closed.

  Fear spikes through me. What if the people on the outside decide to delete me? I’d cease to exist. I’d never get to talk to my family, or Elly and Bryce. I want, at the very least, the chance to say goodbye to them. To tell them what I appreciate, what I regret, and what my hopes for them are.

  I deserve to at least have that.

  But I don’t want to cease to exist, either. Maybe it would be better, given my situation, but my sense of self-preservation is strong. I may have died, but I’m not ready to go. My existence here is different, but at least it’s still existence.

  Plus, it’s proving more and more interesting, the longer I’m here.

  While I’m connected to Ashta, looking over her log files to see if there’s anything I missed, I feel a new command come in. It’s an odd sensation, almost like a telepathic message, but it’s more like an automated notification from a mechanical source.

  They’re looking to delete all traces of Ashta, permanently, including her log files.

  Strange. I would have thought they’d archive those things for legal reasons, as well as ensuring that if anything came up in the future, they’d have proof of what had already been determined and why.

  I put both arms around Ashta, so that they overlap at my forearms and I’m holding her within my digital embrace. I transfer everything about her into my own directory, which I keep carefully hidden from the outside, and I return a message to the automated gatekeeper, telling whoever is pushing the button on the outside that they’ve been successful in deleting Ashta.

  I try to imagine Jim Lee’s reaction to data refusing to be deleted, and it makes me smile. He, or whoever is out there, can think what they want for now. But surely, once I’ve found Daiya, I’ll be able to prove to Jim Lee that what I’m doing is not something that a co-worker could do just to mess with him. Hopefully, I can also convince him that there are sentient beings in here.

  Ashta leans into me, her little arms wrapped around my waist.

  I feel a rush of relief that I was able to stop her deletion.

  Then I think of Daiya and I feel a sense of panic.

  12

  Regroup and Ungroup

  It’s an odd thing for me, this growing sense of the system I’m in. The more I access it, the more I feel like I’m becoming part of it. Not in a way that makes me feel indistinct, but in a way that gives me a different type of reality. I have new senses that I can’t entirely identify just yet,

  Hopefully, I can use them to find Daiya.

  Ashta’s log files show her interactions. Her activity list is surprisingly short. I think she must have spent a lot of time in sleep mode. But that only makes it easier to note each instance of her talking to me or to Daiya.

  And…a third person.

  That thought makes me feel cold. Could a fourth person have been deleted before I even knew she existed? Maybe it’s the one Daiya saw, the one who screamed and disappeared.

  I need to find Daiya. I have an identifier for her, thanks to her interaction with Ashta. I can track her and every system that she’s encountered.

  Ashta seems unaware that I’m digging around in her history. Could I go all the way back and see what memories she has of being a real person? I’m pretty sure I can.

  I put a mental pin in that idea for later.

  I don’t have time to search here and there and wherever Daiya might be. I need something faster. Something more…omniscient.

  Okay, let’s flex my digital muscles and see what I can do.

  Maybe I can accomplish two things. Maybe I can find Daiya while also doing something that Jim Lee and other people on the outside can’t fail to notice.

  I need to choose a good target. Something that will sting those people on the outside, but won’t harm overall operations or cause major damage to the network itself.

  All I have to do now is think about the virtual environment, and it all lights up in my mind. Like it’s waiting for me to tell it what I want.

  I won’t lie, it’s a thrill.

  Aha. There’s a legacy server that hardly gets any access. It looks like the kind of thing that gets kept around just in case it contains anything or is connected to something that might be affected if the server wasn’t there.

  Networks are like that. People think they’re all state of the art and that the engineers know exactly where everything is at all times. The truth is, a network is like a person’s body. Parts of it are constantly being broken down and replaced, just like skin cells and bone cells. Break it down, build it back up, all while using it at the same time.

  If that sounds like it wouldn’t work, that’s true. It often doesn’t. Stuff breaks all the time and requires a great deal of
frantic work to fix it.

  A legacy server like this one probably isn’t significant. But if someone wasn’t concerned that it might be significant in an unknown way, it wouldn’t be there.

  It sure would be a shame if something…happened…to that legacy server.

  Bubbling with laughter, I focus my attention on that old server. It takes amazingly little effort to destroy its operating system and turn it, effectively, into a clay brick.

  Like pointing a finger at it.

  I don’t stop with that, though. I insert myself as that old server’s operating system, and suddenly, it’s like I have a little factory of slaves, waiting to do my bidding.

  With barely any effort, I program it to flood the environment with queries to find Daiya. Everything this server has access to will halt until that task is completed.

  Within a minute, Daiya’s location lights up in my mind. She’s apparently in sleep mode inside a backup server.

  I don’t wait to find out where else she is. If I find a current version of her, I’ll just merge the two.

  I pull sleep-mode Daiya to me, inactivated. It would probably be less strange to her that way. I don’t know what it would be like to have two instances of herself running simultaneously. Maybe that could lead to some sort of virtual psychosis. I don’t know how this stuff works yet, and it seems better to play it safe.

  I link the inactive Daiya files to me just as I did with Ashta’s files. The search for another Daiya is still going on, so I start a search for the fourth person.

  While I wait, I add a tag to any attempts to access the legacy server. Immediately, I see three different people poking around. I track them back to their logins and find that two of them logged in within the last five minutes, while the third, MPace, has been logged in for the last four hours. That person is presumably working their regular shift. The other two, I’m guessing, are higher-level engineers responding to an alert from that person.

  Looking closer, I can see that those two are offsite. Whether they’re always offsite, or they’re logging in from home during their off hours, I can’t tell.