#coded with love

   ＠ Coded With Love ／ C W L

One who was coded with love, has love in their code, or was coded to love. This isn't exclusive to robots, and can be used by anyone, should it feel right.

Coined by an anonymous facet.

Kuramon

---

"Any seams?"

"One along the dorsal process. If she has more they are not readily visible."

Mark sighed. "I guess we're starting from the back, then."

Richard was already cutting the computer skin with his dermal tool, following a nigh-invisible line from the base of the back of the neck all the way down to the flat plane of the girdle majora. The epidermal cover's split edges flowered minutely at the intrusion, pushing the halves further apart.

"No coolant leakage," reported Mark.

Richard set dermal tool aside and curled his gloved fingers under the edges of the computer skin at the height of the hump of the back, Mark following suit. "Gently," instructed Richard. With practised motions from the two men, the epidermal cover was peeled away from the computer body, exposing a lattice of ruddy pink coolant lines weaving over and under a sheath of fascia, mirrored on each side. "Upper layer is in… good condition on this side," observed Richard. "No tears… no coolant pools… no coolant crystalisation, bruising, necrosis… and no disconnected fibre latches that I can see. Mark?"

"Same on this side. No tears, pools, crystals, bruises, or necrosis. Latches also look good from this level. Seems like the PD is getting better at BC handling."

"Those court cases over property damage finally did something!" Richard snorted with a laugh. He carefully spread and shifted the fascia with his gloved fingers, looking at a line of dark markings, lightly fuzzed at the edges, running along the membrane from under the base of the shoulder to part way down the computer's torso. "I'm seeing empty serial identifiers on my side. Anything on the left? Check under the shoulder."

Mark gently shifted the computer flesh, looking for the decimal stains. He spotted and followed the string of letters and numbers with a finger. "Nothing," he returned. "Just broken serials - 'GHA-049A' followed by empty digits. The dev built this layer off of just open release protein code from… probably anywhere. GHA was released FOS worldwide, wasn't it?"

"It was," Richard confirmed, "but it was superseded by KRA's release three years afterwards, and KRR one year after that. There's no reason I can think of that would necessitate using GHA over KRA or KRR as a template block for fascial membranes. I'd assume access limitations, but both KRA and KRR are readily accessible in any developer database…"

"Maybe she's old?"

"Minimum six years? A little long in the tooth for your average bash rig," he joked.

Mark laughed lightly in turn as he continued evaluating the computer body. He gently touched the processes of multiple, off-colour vertebrae. "These look like ad hoc graftings - they must be the alterations that created the stretch marks you spotted earlier, Rich. The chromatic staining's way off, though… more than I've seen in a BCD with a grafting history. Difference in material culturing, maybe?"

2/3. She gets one more.

----

"That's an ugly kitbash," Mark observed.

Richard snorted from behind his mask as he straightened the BCD's body on the table. "Name one that isn't."

"This one just seems like a creeper. I don't know what the dev was aiming for, but the result is nasty."

"You've seen what can be cooked up by amateurs trying to test germination scripts; a 'creeper' like this popping out of a handwritten code isn't that far out of the realm of possibility. I'd say it's commendable that she has bilateral symmetry!"

"Yeah, but who codes exposed teeth into a BCD? I bet she bites."

Richard looked at him in mild exasperation. "Well, Mark, unless you intend flip her PEG and boot her up I imagine you won't have anything to worry about. Now, if you're ready, you can do the honours. This computer's been taking up space in AMP storage for over two years; Materials wants her analysed before her parts start sponging."

"Right, right…" He flourished his tablet in an exaggerated manner. "Okay - archival BCD 47-10-10-09, procured from…" he sighed, "our business partners at the local PD."

Richard laughed. "If people want their impounded computers back then they should pick them up."

"The PD could just give them back instead," the other man groused without conviction.

"You're going to have to get over that Gomamon someday, Mark," his superior said in good humour. "Besides, somehow I don't think a bash like this," he gestured to the inert body of computer components laid out between them, "is the home project of a budding data analyst. Over six feet long and, minimum, 300 pounds? I don't know of a single civil rated block that permits a BC or BCD of this size to access the data grid - do you?"

"Homebrew gone wrong, maybe?" Mark offered. "A typo in the growth parameter code line, or maybe even component misalignment - rig malformed around the rack and the programmer wound up with a giant?"

Richard arched a thin eyebrow. "I doubt your theory. Here, look…" He hovered a finger back and forth around the hump of the computer's back, where a series of pale, uneven striations haunted the skin, reaching from the ridge of the spine to halfway around the chest. "Looks like she might have some history."

Mark leaned in with a squint. "Oh?"

"The stressing on the skin - old stretch marks. She's been opened and altered before, and judging by the pattern… whatever the alterations were, they involved making her bigger and the epidermal cover needed to be stretched to fit back on the rig. I'd hazard pull fit method by the looks of it."

Mark hummed from behind his hazard wear. "No grafting? A rush job or lack of resources, do you think?"

Opposing argumentation highlight that all factors of BCD "humanity" are aspects granted by human hands via the elasticity of code created for the purpose. A BCD can, at any time, have all of its "person" moved, altered, or even entirely wiped from existence through a system reformat, leaving behind an empty machine. Any BCD developing a personality does so within the bounds of its code which can be changed at any time, and further can neither survive nor advance without human guidance and intervention. A BCD's personality - like its intelligence, ability to experience and show emotion, ability to reason, and ability to act upon these aspects - is artificial and limited. Manufacturers and legislators urge BCD owners, caretakers, and enthusiasts to remember that their BCD is a piece of hardware, moulded to appease the human eye, and unable to formulate or reason beyond that of a child. The anthropomorphisation of computer hardware and artificial intelligence is a "road to folly". "Your home computer companion perceives the world in ones and zeros. It expresses a portmanteau of 'human' emotion as a byproduct of exposure to human behaviour refracted and processed through a CPU. It recognises you through the data you have supplied it, and any 'affection' developed is a reflection of the hardware's need to be up-kept by the end user. A BCD is your home computer companion, and you are the end user. Your BCD home computer companion is not a person; a person is unique, irreplicable, and irreplaceable. A BCD home computer companion is made from a codebase cellular culture mould, endlessly replicable, and endlessly replaceable."

ETA: figures I'd remember the scars after posting.

---

"I haven't seen a BCD with this many external plugs before…"

Richard didn't look up from his measurements. "What does she have?"

Mark fanned the connector heads in his hand. "American universal, European universal, Japanese civil, USB rack - two racks, Ethernet, PEG feed… this looks like light fibre… and analogue? What BCD has analogue?"

Richard stopped what he was doing with the arch of an eyebrow. "Let me see," he directed, reaching over the computer body. He narrowed his gaze at the cords as he fingered through the heads. "Analogue is practically extinct in this city except for public services. The chances of even a fanatic having this level of retrograde tech and further feeding it to a BCD is slim to none. I wonder…" He squinted into the Ethernet head. "Yes, her Ethernet cord is phone line compatible. I think we may have a ne'er-do-well's toolkit on our table."

"Stolen protected parts, you're thinking?"

"Potentially, but what I'm concerned about," he isolated the coloured analogue heads in his gloved hand and held them up, "is what these suggest about the nature of this computer. Analogue transfers to digital are tracked and marked by the grid, but analogue to analogue transfers are not - they're offline."

Mark leaned on the table. "An analogue scraper? Maybe… data laundering? How many transfers would it take to scramble data possession with analogue in the mix?"

"With the right software? One," said Richard.

Mark's gaze narrowed in suspicion. "…What are the chances this is a government-commissioned kitbash?"

"Zero; she wouldn't have been left to ferment in AMP for two years if she was. She wouldn't have been sacked from a civil-rated block, either."

"What about foreign interference?"

"A BCD this size? Very, very unlikely - and expensive, she'd be flagged at every border and it'd be more cost effective to go CODA instead and attack from anywhere with a VPN. She has to be local brew." His exposed brow tightened into a frown. "I don't know where her developer could have possibly gotten cords like this in this city but it's raising enough flags that we need to see what's inside this computer before we go any further." He passed the heads back, expression immediately brightening. "Your favourite part! Plug her in, we need a drive read."

Worry crinkled Mark's hazard wear as he took the cords back. "Should we call… Legal or Forensics first?"

"Depends on what we find. If we're lucky… someone simply decided to waste collector parts on an impractical rig. If we're not… we will need to call the right people."

The man sighed, fishing out the American universal head among the bundle and snapping his workstation feed line into it. "This is not boding well for getting off at four-thirty, Rich." He flopped into his chair and manhandled his plastic-wrapped mouse around its pad to wake the sterile sandbox configured earlier. An action window popped into view as the desktop came awake.

NEW HARDWARE DETECTED. Pair as child-hardware? > Yes, live connect. > Yes, safe mode. >>> Yes, read-only mode. > No, disconnect.

IMPROPER SHUT-DOWN OF CHILD-HARDWARE LOGGED. Boot and resume interrupted processes? > Yes, boot and resume processes and view hardware. > Yes, boot and freeze processes for review and view hardware. >>> No, terminate processes and view hardware. > No, disconnect.

"She was on when she got seized," he reported.

"Doing what, I wonder? What did the seizure report say? Disruptor net deployment?"

"Yeah - whatever was on the grid would have gotten zapped." He wiggled his mouse as he waited for the hardware list to populate. "C'mon… don't make me turn this ugly thing on to get a read." Bullets of greyed text appeared in a burst. Each one reading [unknown]. Mark scrolled the list incredulously. "Uh… there's a lot of grey on this hardware list."

Richard made his way over to Mark's desk. "Nothing readable? Nothing coming up in the tools?"

Mark was already right-clicking for any actionable options. "Nada, the system isn't picking up on anything. She may as well be full of bricks-- oh, we have ONE open drive. Drive U:\. There's no way this creep has twenty drives."

"Must have been what she was writing to when the net dropped - run the reader, what's on it?"

READ-WIZARD. Data Read Right - The First Time! 0.7PB detected, surface read recommended. > Deep-read analysis, [2 hour] estimate. 97% accuracy. >>> Surface-read analysis, [0.7 minute(s)] estimate. 63% accuracy. > Cancel.

"Over a half-petabyte - read, baby, read! Gimme nothing but blue!" Mark chanted at the application as it drew a graph of the data stored within the mystery drive. Coloured pips began to appear as the reader catalogued intact typing flags. Navy and teal, denoting general personal data, began to render in from the top down. Blocks of grey - corrupted data - pocked the vertical mountain range. As the reader ticked downwards, flashes of green appeared among the blue gradient.

"Don't get your hopes up."

"Don't jinx it. General medical pops up in basic spreads every day." He held up a protected finger. "Not reportable." Slides of yellow glared out from the graph. "Uh oh…" Orange began to cut into the blue, followed by an ugly, worrisome gradient of scarlet. "No no no don't give me that--" And purple. "Shit…"

3/3 A SERIES OF TUBES.

ColeoREX.EXE is not considered much beyond a nuisance in Immersible Cyberspace. However, in Sublevel Cyberspace the virus is considerably more threatening as the redirection of processing to tend to Tyrantkabuterimon on behalf of biocomputer and code-only resources have an exponential impact on Network stability and efficiency in data maintenance. The removal of Tyrantkabuterimon from any Network is problematic due to the virus' ability to command such a large number of Digimon to answer to her directives, which includes protection of the virus from system removal tools. Attempts to vaccinate the Digimon will be retaliated against with force on behalf of the Network Digimon caught under influence. Repeated failed attempts at vaccinating Tyrantkabuterimon can lead to the collapse / overall failure of a Network due to a lack of maintenance and resource redirection.

The raw code for coleoREX.EXE has been cracked and repurposed for corporate use by a select number of companies to aid in the management and threat response protocols of their Networks. The instalment of re-coded Tyrantkabuterimon as a hivemind defence and resource direction management tool has produced positive results on par with Heraclekabuterimon.