00001111
Copeland proved to be most helpful. He poured his energy into Bob's powers and I held his ever-fragmenting code together. Bob never knew he was there, and it was just as well. I was starting to assume he'd forgotten I was there too. I was getting exhausted with the whole thing. Merging was great to start with, but it was no picnic in the long run.
And I was starting to get suspicious that I was malfunctioning.
In my efforts to keep Bob in one piece I noticed that the parts I held were degrading faster the tighter I took. Plus I was loosing power exponentially. I asked Copeland to perform a scan.
"Whoa." Copeland said.
He had an excellent bedside manner. "What's wrong?"
"What happened to you, Glitch, you seem to be damaged." He took a second. "That's right, you were damaged when we met before." I sighed and he ceased the scan. "Why in the Net did you merge when you knew you were malfunctioning?"
"Now you're talking like a sprite." I chided him. "Bob and I knew the risks when we tried it. It was the only way to get back into Mainframe. I guess I'd hoped too much. I thought perhaps getting rid of my physical form would fix me. Seems I was wrong."
"Dern straight."
I focused more critically on him and he took a second to recover himself.
"Wow, I guess I really miss Turbo."
"We'll get him back. When Daemon's gone he'll be fixed and you can go back to him." I told Copeland. "You're lucky."
"Well, you're on the other side of lucky." Copeland told me gravely. "If you keep up what you're doing you'll run so low on power you wont be able to stay in one piece!" He pulled some energy from his 'Bob' reserve. "I'm sending out a sublevel message. If the other keytools are out there in hiding, maybe they can help us out. Until then I'm giving you some of my energy. If you come apart, there's no way to keep me in here and we'll all be erased, you, me and Bob."
I sighed, exhausted and in no mood for arguing. "Fine, do whatever."