“Mmm-hmm. By randomizing the polarity of one of the comm lines, Miller thinks he get the bots to split themselves into two groups: one that keeps listening to the tower, taking further instructions as it sees fit, and one group that talks back, telling us what it sees! For the first time we’ll be able to get a worm’s-eye view of what’s going on inside each sample. We’ll know exactly how often each introduction is successful and how often it fails. When it fails we’ll know which line of which section of code it was trying to introduce when it did, and to what part of the sequence it was trying to attach itself. We’ll be able to see how often it killed or otherwise incapacitated the host in the attempt. When it succeeds we’ll be able to see how smoothly it transmits itself, if the virus noticed the change or if it fought back and how, if the modified specimens were able to realize their reproductive advantage and thus permeate the sample as intended or if it was a pyrrhic win and the trait just became part of the scenery. We’ll be able to see how often the virus can re-introduce portions of its original sequence back into the code, and, when this happens, if the results are a mangled mess of old and new or if they yield a viable mutation that poses a threat to the desired result. We’ll be able to see when a virus somehow re-codes a bot and turns it against the rest of the sample. In short, up until now, we’ve always been forced to grade our efforts pass-fail, and if it failed, we guessed at why and started over. With the new tech we’ll be able to letter-grade a slew of different attributes.”

I put my hands behind my head and leaned back in my chair, playing back the last few sentences and trying to process what he’d said. It wasn’t easy. “So…” I began uncertainly, feeling my way from one island of comprehension to another, “not only will you be able to run each variant faster…you’ll be able to write more targeted code each time?”

Britt grinned again, and actually laughed a bit this time, that breathy chuckle that had helped him save himself (and, I’m not to proud to admit it, me as well) from going home alone so many times over the years. “So that’s what you’re doing with all your surface time?” he joked, “spending it all at the bar? Have you already forgotten that sexy little number?” He jerked his thumb at the panoramic holoscreen that dominated the wall behind him, and through it to the state-of-the-art processing unit it concealed. “We won’t HAVE to! Once we get the bots talking back and forth with the tower, IT will write the code for us! That was the whole point of all the programming Rauch and his team have done these past six months…to get the tower ready to accept the billions of feeds the bots will be sending, process the data, interpret the results, and re-write the code based on what is and is not working.”

I nodded, partially in contemplation, and partially in feigned agreement, while I fit the rest of the pieces together.

Then I grinned as wide as he had.

“Ramsay!” The shout came from somewhere in the living quarters. It sounded like Bergman, but it was hard to tell in the suffocating acoustics of the bunker. “Room Four!” Ramsay eyed me, nodded briefly, then ran off. His way of saying carry on, you’ve got this under control.

I shrugged and turned my attention back towards the holoscreen. The images of Britt and me were getting ready to talk budgets and requisitions and other administrative mumbo-jumbo, so I swiped it forward, hoping for something I didn’t already know.

“…a little disappointing, but not unexpected. These things almost never work on the first try. You say you’ve got a get-well plan?” “Well, I don’t know if I’d call it a plan, but there seem to be some irregularities in the Sarien lines. So that’s where we’ll focus next.” “The Sarien lines, huh? So it must have flamed out completely?” “Well, you’d think so, but…here, have a look…” Britt, conferring with Rauch and Miller after the first, apparently unsuccessful, attempt at introduction. I listened to a few of the details and then swiped on.

“…again with the chipped beef? I swear to God, every time he pulls KP…” Rauch, grumbling about Miller’s menu choices as a few of them sat down to eat. Pass.

“…we all knew when we signed up for this that we’d have to make some sacrifices…” Charles moderating a spat between Rauch, wearing only a T-shirt and briefs, and a girl whose name I couldn’t remember, dressed in a pastel robe with goop plastered on her face. Yawn.

“…positively brilliant! Why didn’t we think of that before? Well, it looks like you’ve got it licked, at least as far as THAT’S concerned. I think we’re ready to introduce this afternoon…’ getting warm. One more swipe, enough to advance the feed a few more hours. Enough so I could see the second introduction. It lurched forward in a blur, then settled on Britt, Miller, Rauch, and the girl gathered around the Tower, staring, slack-jawed, at the data feeds skittering like startled bugs across the background of the holoscreen.

“Wow,” Miller breathed as he admired the results. “At first I thought it was another dud, but…wow.”

“Why wow?” Britt asked. “What’s it doing? What do all these pictures mean?” He stood behind the others with his arms folded across his chest, eyes flitting back and forth across the ever-changing screen.

“What’s it doing?!? It’s working!” Miller didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “It’s doing exactly what we want it to! At first I thought it was another dud because we didn’t see any action for the first twenty minutes or so, but it isn’t! The bots are feeding back to the tower, and the tower’s talking to the bots, re-coding them based on the feedback it’s getting!” He pointed at one of the bugs sashaying across the middle of the screen. A black one, depthless and hollow, edged in a skin of red. “Look! That one just had its intro logarithm re-coded halfway through the synchro-sequence and survived when it should have died! And that one there!” He pointed towards and aqua blob extruding its way towards the upper edge. “The virus tried to reverse its polarity and ice out the intruder, but the tower wouldn’t let it! It sent a fresh batch of signals to keep it on the straight-and-true! And this brown one, here in the corner! It wasn’t able to replicate after integration, but this old girl spotted the damage and had the tower repair the sequence! I don’t know why it took so long to see it, but…” he stopped and stood, one finger in the air, as if something had just occurred to him. “The subjects!” he exclaimed.

Britt turned his head toward Miller, his posture hunched over the console of the tower now one of anger rather than fascination. “The WHAT!?!”

Miller fidgeted and dodged Britt’s gaze as he replied, “well, ah…don’t be mad, but I was feeling pretty good about this one, so I, ah, stuck a couple in the chamber. You know, to see what effect the viruses might have.”

Britt rolled his eyes. There was anger in the gesture, and a tongue-lashing he had given Miller more than once before, but his curiosity won in the end. He nodded, and Miller ran to check on them before he changed his mind. Britt went back to staring at the data on the holoscreen. “Subjects!” he whispered, halfway turning towards the girl and halfway grumbling to himself. “Why the HELL would he introduce subjects this early in the process?” He watched as another few thousand bugs chittered across the screen, roiling, burgeoning, crystallizing, and sometimes disappearing as they moved. His eyes moved awkwardly, almost randomly, as if they weren’t sure where to look, and his posture was a bit standoffish. He was clearly having trouble making sense of it all. “What kind of viruses do we have in there anyways?”

“One of our own creation,” the girl answered. “A blank we whipped up specifically for tests like these, where we’re more interested in how the bots are working than we are in the resulting strains. It’s based on one of the Lancers HQ send down, oh, gosh, when was that? A month ago now? But this is a pretty de-fanged copy. Harmless, easy to work with, and inherently contagious enough that we don’t have to worry over-much about transmission.” She smiled a mischievous smile, and rubbed her hand on the edge of the console. “We’ve been calling it ‘Professor Haggarty,’ after one of the Mech Eng tenures at MIT. Because it helps us learn all kinds of interesting shit, but it doesn’t have any practical applications of its own.”

Britt snorted, and almost-smiled back. A few more seconds ticked by. A few thousand more miasmas of data manifested themselves on the screen. “Professor Haggarty…” he chuckled, still mesmerized. “I like it.”