Eleven years before the events of The Edge of Madness
“It’s doing anything, Anders. Are you sure it is going to work? If not, I need to take her now so I can give her a proper burial.” Joren insisted impatiently. The hour was late, and both men were tired, both for entirely different reasons.
Anders couldn’t blame him. The lifeless body of Joren’s barely teenage daughter lie on the padded and reclined table before them. He couldn’t image the pain the man was suffering at this difficult time, but he had a rough idea. His parents were taken too soon; slain in cold blood by Crimson Skull thugs looking to make a quick cred off unsuspecting victims. His father had fought back, and paid the ultimate price. His mother’s life was taken when she threatened to turn them in to the Galactic Imperium authorities.
That left Anders with very little choice but to take a chance and join the Galactic Imperium. Though he wasn’t the most physically gifted in his class, he was good with numbers and his fingers. They danced gracefully across the Holovid keyboard projected beneath the screen illuminated in front of his chubby face. His breath labored from intense concentration mixed with moderate obesity.
“It will work. I ran the numbers hundreds of times already. I know it will work. There must be something I’m missing. Let me run it through one more time.”
Joren sighed audibly and leaned his back against a nearby wall, arms crossed and a blank stare brimming with despair aimed at the cold, metal floor. This man was the closest person to a friend that Anders had, and he refused to let him down. Now here. Not now.
On one screen, he dug deep into the program files, looking for any indication of what might be causing the transfer to fail, while on the second screen he ran a few basic scripts to find any open conversations on the Grid that may help in his code troubleshooting. The wires attached to Ava’s brain ran into his computer and should be copying her consciousness. It kept failing, which mean something just wasn’t right. If even one line of code was incomplete or incorrect, it would certainly prevent it from executing successfully.
As they normally did, Anders eyes bounced wildly across the screens. Back and forth they read expertly crafted code, frantically looking for an error; any error. Though the current situation was dire, his pace was always the same. Nonstop.
“Snowman, I appreciate the effort, but I think we’re done here. She deserves a proper burial and I need…I need some time alone.” Joren’s somber voice interrupted the methodical tapping of stubby fingers on the projected keyboard.
Anders Fleury, whose self-given moniker was Snowman, pushed his oversized glasses back to their proper spot on the bridge of his nose without missing a beat. “Joren, you have to trust me. I know I can do this. I know it will work.”
You have to trust me, Joren. I know this might seem like a far-fetched idea to you, but all my calculations confirmed it should work. I just have to find the error that’s holding it up.
THERE!
Immediately as he finished speaking, he spotted it. Buried deep in the code’s foundation was an incorrectly pointed directory. In theory, he should be able to rewrite it to point to a valid databank to complete the upload. With code, theory wasn’t always reality, as he all-too-often found out the hard way.
Just a few adjustments. Let’s redirect that pointer here, and make sure the connection is secured. We don’t want anyone to compromise this Grid node and be able to copy the code during transfer or see what we are trying to accomplish. The G.I. has spiders crawling all over the Grid, looking for anything they can report back to Intelligence. Best not to make it too easy for them today.
A pleasant ding from the Holovid indicated the transfer was successful. Moments passed. Nothing happened. The silence between the two men dragged on as they waited, until Anders couldn’t take it any longer.
“It should work! I fixed the error, and the code executed successfully. What the hell else is wrong with this thing?!”
Just then, a voice squeaked out from the Holovid. It wasn’t just any voice; it was child-like, almost whimsical in nature, eternally naive to the world around them.
“Hello? Is anyone there? Daddy? Daddy is that you?”
Both men’s jaws hit the floor, hard. Neither could believe what they were hearing. They exchanged an incredulous look. As the realization set in, Anders smiled warmly at the broken man at the other end of the room who now stood upright in shock. Usually quite stoic in nature, Anders never thought he would see so much emotion from Joren in his lifetime.
Trying to sound normal, Joren answered, “Give me just one minute, Ava, sweetie. Daddy has a lot to explain.”
“Okay, but don’t be too long. I think its past my bedtime.”
Joren placed a hand on the should of the master coder, his grip firm with the slightest shake. “I’m going to need some time. Thank you, Snowman. You were right, you did it.” Joren met Anders’ eyes. The pain mixed with pure bliss created a pressed smile that made Anders shiver from the oddity.
Most would have been marveled at the success of his programming expertise. He brought someone back literally from the other side, despite the myriad of claims that he was crazy and it couldn’t be done. Few knew about the program, fewer still knew what he was trying to accomplish with it.
Now, he knew they were wrong because tonight, he proved it. Maybe not to them, but to himself. Tonight, that’s all that mattered; he performed a quantum physics equivalent of a miracle. Anders metaphorically patted himself on the back as he swiveled off his chair and exited the room.
To the one who preferred the moniker Snowman over his birth name, though, it was still all zeroes and ones.