Turn 6

--- Maya ---

“Another day, another program.” She told the voices in her head.

(Wait, I thought we were counting by turns?)

Ignoring her inner crazy, she pulled up the various programs she used to write her actual programs. “Alright, so we’ve got electricity, and sound, what’s the next energy type we should go for?”

(I suppose heat, would be the easiest.) Her inner logic reasoned. (Especially if we ever want to figure out how to actually work with materials, rather than just patchworking circuitry with duct tape and prayers.)

(Whoa, living on a prayer!)

“I guess, we do need it if we want to figure out how to melt things down.” She admitted, even as her wilder side decided to sing a song that while good, actually had very little to do with the current subject.

(Just let her have this, dear.)

“Right…” Shaking her head clear, -or as clear as it could get when you’re sharing it with two others- She began typing, using what little bit she’d picked up on manipulating energy from her work with the Generator ()’s electricity, and the sound files her brother had inspired.

And of course, she took a moment to follow her brilliant self’s advice, to chain her work on Heat into a secondary program that would make it significantly easier to work with actual materials.

Admittedly the only material she could really work with at the moment was plastic, and that was only if she didn’t touch it, and gave it a fair amount of space for any potential fumes to escape.

Still even with her attention slit between projects, her growing experience and the motivational assistance given by her inner child’s singing of increasingly inspirational songs, she managed to somehow finish both of her projects in a single sitting.

---

Deciding that after finishing out two separate -if overlapping- programs it was time to take a break, she head downstairs to watch TV. Largely because while she had her own TV in her room it did not have a cable connection because her parents believed they’d never see her if she did.

She wasn’t willing to confirm or deny this assumption.

Unfortunately for her plans, once she’d actually made it downstairs she saw her (bitch of a) sister had already laid claim to the (holy) entertainment center.

(Come now, don’t be melodramatic.) Her inner logic told her in an exasperated tone.

(I’m not being melodramatic. I have someone to do that for me.) She argued,

(Give us the TV before we end your bloodline!)

(…)

(Aren’t we technically part of her bloodline?)

(…)

(My point stands.)

(Uh…)

(It stands I say!)

Choosing to once more ignore the growing insanity within her own mind, she took a seat next to Vi on the couch.

“So, what are you watching?”

“Don’t know, it’s some kind of reality superhero show.” Vi admitted blandly her eyes never leaving the screen.

“Like actual reality tv, or some kind of weird parody.” She asked, a morbid curiosity driving her on.

“Reality.” Vi told her. “The fake kind.”

“That’s…” She didn’t know how to respond to that, and as she continued watching she found she couldn’t look away. “It’s like… a train wreck… I can’t look away.”

“I know, it’s just so… bad…” Vi agreed.

“What’s even going on right now?” She asked, as a woman slapped a man.

“I think those two are a couple, and he’s cheating on her with her sister?”

“Like mom’s telenovelas?” She vaguely remembered an episode with that plot, or she thought that was the plot anyway.

“No, in those he’d be her sister.” Vi reminded her.

“I… do they even have Mask battles, or is this all… trash?” She asked, as the show cut away to another scene that was just people sit around.

“I don’t think so…”

“Are, are they even Deviants?” She asked, “Because I can’t tell if this would be more or less offensive if they are…”

“I think it’s like half fake and half real, uh, that guy,” She pointed to a man wearing guyliner with tattoos up and down his arms. “He’s an actual Arcane, but he doesn’t really do anything with it.”

“Then how do you know he’s an Arcane?”

“Uh, he summoned a… a thing, and I actually don’t know what happened from there…”

“I don’t think this show is good for our brains.” She told her sister.

(As your brain, I can confirm this is physically hurting me!)

(Aww, but it’s such a good show!)

(You shut up. And you turn this off now!)

She blinked as the show cut to commercial, before lunging for the remote and changing it to the news. A full body shudder passed through her. “I hate reality TV…”

“I know.” Vi agreed with a shudder.

She turned back to her sister with a horrified look. “Why were you even watching that?”

“I went to the bathroom during a crime show, and when I came back that garbage was on!” Vi defended.

“Eww, we need to watch something else. Clean the mental palette.” She told her sister as she opened the TV guide.

“With what?”

“Sci-fi.” She declared succinctly.

“Nerdy Sci-fi or good sci-fi?” Vi asked with narrowed eyes.

“Nerdy sci-fi is good sci-fi.” She answered with her own narrowed eyes.

Vi watched her for a moment before stealing the remote back. “We’re watching supernatural teen dramas.”

“What? No!” She shouted, trying to reach for the remote as her sister pressed her head away with her (freakishly) long arms. “If we’re watching supernatural it has to be a horror!”

“I was here first, and I get to pick!”

“You’re picking wrong!” She argued, ducking under Vi’s arm and stealing the remote back. “If you won’t watch horror how about an action anime?”

The two continued on like this for a good hour, before Izzy came in and switched it to MMA pointing out they’d had the TV for the last two hours and it was her turn. She also reminded them it wasn’t her fault they’d wasted their turns.

---

Having been effectively kicked off the TV, she returned to her room where she decided to go ahead and take a look through her computer’s archive to try and see if she had any unfinished projects. In the hopes of finishing three for three with her projects that day. And as luck would have it, she did have the beginnings of an upgrade for her AI that she’d somewhat forgotten about between all of her other projects.

(Huh, I guess it’s time to figure this one out…)

Going over her notes, she remembered the main reason she’d walked away from the project had been because for whatever reason her AI would remember all of its orders, but it would then return as if it had only received one before quickly setting out to the next task on its list.

“Alright, either of you got any idea what we were doing wrong here?” She eventually asked, after staring at the coded for an hour trying to parse where she was messing up.

(Hmm, no… The AI seems to recognize that it has multiple orders, yet it keeps returning home rather than completing all of them in one go.)

(Did you make it, so it remembers its orders?)

“Yes, that’s what we just said.” She groaned in exasperation. “It knows it has more than one order, and then returns home before going back out and completing it.”

(Yeah, but sometimes you forget things without one of us-) (Me.) (-reminding you. So maybe it knows it’s supposed to do something, but it’s forgetting what it’s supposed to do.)

“That’s…” She paused to consider the possibility. After all, even if it was her more childish self, the voice was still her, and she was completely brilliant. Ergo the voices in her head had to be just as brilliant, if in their own ways.

Going back to her code, she went through the order subroutines and discovered, that while the AI counted how many orders it had, and then copied them before leaving the COMP, it could apparently only retain one set at a time.

“Meaning, it has to return to remember the next order… Huh.” She sat back as she let that revelation wash over her, before coming to a far more important revelation about herself. “I really am a complete and total genius.”