The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 36 - MEL

Mel sat at the table watching her new friends. Friends. The word felt strange in her head. She had always thought of the crows as her friends, but not like this. That was more like how Pixel and Zoe were her friends. She smiled as she thought about the cats. Maybe she should leave Roger and Sydney to talk about war and go back to the apartment to play with the cats. Would Sydney let the cats come with her back to the castle? Maybe she should just make copies of them. She dipped into shadowspace. The world dimmed and slowed around her as she connected to her ship's control systems. Did she still have full control?

Yes, all was as it should be. Mel still controlled the Island of Crows and the ship it rode in. She extended a mental tendril into Sydney's network, exploring the writhing tree of data structures that defined the apartment and the city ship. Yes, there were the cats. She traced the instantiation of their fluffy little bodies back to the cognitive structures that controlled them, then surreptitiously made a copy of both animals, body and mind. She started to withdraw from Sydney's systems, but remembered the twelve terabytes of Internet data that Sydney had promised her. It would be the work of moments to locate and copy the data.

Or would that be rude? Sure, Sydney had promised it, but it would still be taking. Maybe she should wait for it to be properly given. What was right? This was a dealing with people thing, and it shouldn't be. She was Sydney. They were the same. No. That wasn't right. She was Mel now. It was more like having a sister. Maybe this was like going into her sister's room to borrow a shirt. A sister wouldn't mind that, would she? Maybe she would. Mel had never had a sister.

She would copy the data, but pretend she hadn't. Then if Sydney shared the files, she could just graciously accept and pretend she didn't already have them, but if she forgot and didn't share them, she would still have them. And if Sydney ever lost her copy, Mel would have a backup copy to give back. Yes, copying the files was the right thing to do. She transferred the data. Then, before disconnecting, she grabbed a few other files that deserved backing up.

"What about you, Mel? Do you know anything about it?"

Mel snapped back into realtime. Sydney had just asked her something. "Sorry, what? I was somewhere else."

"This enemy of our alien enemies. Any idea who they are? Did you stumble across anything when ransacking their files?"

"No, just that cuneiform stuff. It's all pretty much like the bit we printed."

Roger sat up straight. "There is more of it? How much?"

"Let me think." She dipped briefly into shadowspace and checked file sizes. "Probably about ten or eleven books worth."

"Good heavens. I already have my hands full with just the one volume. Well, go ahead and send them to that printing device. I'll commandeer the next two tables and begin going through it all."

"We could also apply some real data analysis to this," Sydney suggested. "Mel, can you give me a digital copy of the same files?"

"Sure. Any particular format?"

"Here, can you copy it to this?" Sydney pulled a USB thumb drive from a pocket and tossed it to her.

Mel slipped back into shadowspace. The world turned gray, and the flight of the USB drive slowed. It crept toward her like a balloon drifting in the breeze. She sent a mental command to her ship, bringing a full hexframe of processors on-line. The thumb drive slowed until it was nearly frozen in space.

Mel dissected the object code representing the drive, located where the data should be stored, then copied over the cuneiform images and all related files. When she was satisfied everything had transferred, she powered down the hexframe and slipped out of shadowspace.