Land of Chime and Aspiration

Ragatha: OH MY GOD!!

Grant: Hopefully that does it.

[CLUNK]

Kinger: oh

Pomni: Oook Kinger!

Ragatha: Caine!? What is going on

Gangle: I-is it a virus?

Zooble: Did someone delete him?!

Pomni: He didn’t disappear like last time! Kinger will know what to do!

Destiny: Caine has always been a… tricky program.

Grant: It wasn’t that bad.

Destiny: Grant. That AI singlehandedly closed an entire branch of C&A.

Grant: If only Mike could see–

Destiny: …Grant. Are those what I think they are.

Grant: These shouldn’t be here…

[File directory path: …haracters/CA_NeuralScans(Obselete)]

[Navigation pane:

CANDA

+ -Command

-Config

-Cookies

-Cursors

-Favorites

- -Characters

- +AI

- -CA_NeuralScans…

- Abigail_Brooks

- Grant_Best

- Riley_Verselis

- Susie_J_Acker…

- Zoey_Raghavan

- Cellar

+ -Forms

-Help]

[File and folder listing: Contents of ‘CA_NeuralScans(O…’

Abigail_Brooks (Zipped file)

Grant_Best (Zipped file)

Riley_Verselis (Zipped file)

Susie_J_Ackerman (Zipped file)

Zoey_Raghavan (Zipped file)

Cellar]

Caine: WOWIE! That was quite the outage!

[WackyWatch: OFFLINE | 2:3:17:05:23.02]

Destiny: The neural scans were supposed to be archived.

Grant: W-well, someone must’ve tampered with the files while the building was abandoned.

Caine: Well, everything seems stable…

Grant: But these names… I don’t recognize any of them besides mine.

Caine: I guess nothing else to do than to get this ball rolling again!

Grant: Does that mean other people put on the scanner!? Does no one fear pink eye anymore!? Why was the headset functional in the first place!?!?

[File and folder listing: Contents of ‘CA_Neura’

Abigail_Brooks (Now-unzipped file)

Grant_Best (Now-unzipped file)

Riley_Verselis (Now-unzipped file)

Susie_J_Ackerman (Now-unzipped file)

Zoey_Raghavan (Now-unzipped file)

Cellar]

Destiny: Ooookay the folders unzipped.

Grant: Okay… None of this is normal.

Grant: There’s gotta be something that was left running that’s doing this.

Gangle: Why did the computer close? And for so long?

Zooble: I don’t think we’ll get much of an answer. Our perspective is limited, and I’m more surprised this hasn’t happened before.

Ragatha: Reasonably… we shouldn’t have come back online at all. It’s likely the building finally got bought out, which should mean our computer should’ve been junked.

Ragatha: B-B-B-BUT!!! It’s good that that didn’t happen!!!

Grant: Caine? That shouldn’t be running. We killed that version after it merged with 2.0. Did it automatically run on startup?

Caine: …

Grant: I’m gonna see if stopping the program stops all this weirdness.

Kinger: Hm? Caine?

[End Process]

Ragatha: Huh? Uh… whatcha doin’ buddy?

Caine: Uh…

Caine: Kinger?

Kinger: ? Yes, Caine?

Caine: Wait… Who is–

[DWOOM]

[KLANK]

[bounce]

Pomni: Hard to say...

Kinger: Huh? What's–

[turn]

Kinger: Oh. I see.

Kinger: Oh. I see.

Kinger: Gimme those, Ragatha.

Ragatha: Is he gonna be ok?

Kinger: Oh, he's fine, on a technical level. It seems like his program stopped suddenly. Give me a sec.

Grant: A lot more went into the closure.

Destiny: You just can't admit that it was a failure.

Grant: It was a set-back!

Destiny: Grant, the Caine AI flew off the rails so quickly that it broke the subsequent attempt at a second itteration.

Grant: And no one bothered to follow up! Make a third! Figure out how 1.0 broke containment OR how it subsumed 2.0!

Kinger: Caine. Wake up.

[tink tink]

[bwip]

Kinger: Heya Bud. You conked out there for a bit.

[SNAP!]

[GASP!]

[ZWOOP]

[SNAP]

Kinger: …Caine?

[shiver, shiver, shiver]

Caine: A-am I… still here? Am I gone again?

[chatter, chatter]