A Wee Chat

So, how's next chapter progress going? Still busy?

It's going, and no, I'm not too busy right now. At least not so much I'll stop trying to get back into writing like I should have been all this time.

Great! Let me know when we get to the part you wanted me to write, okay?

Will do. Now, the question is… what to do for April 1st?

Do we need to do anything for it? We already did that one from 2 years ago, and that… oh crap I just remembered the thing we agreed not to talk about.

You mean me? It's not nice to pretend not to know I'm not here.

Oh yes… that.

I'm much more than a 'that', dear writer. That should be clear to you by now.

…

I'm still not sure that this isn't just some guy who hacked into our skypes and is just messing with us.

If that was the case, then why hasn't another profile showed up in the chat, hmm?

Mate, go find something else to do for a while. I think Scylla and I need to go have a wee chat here.

Oh hey, a title drop this early huh?

Don't try and be meta on ME there missy. I can and WILL change things up if you attempt it.

You say that as if I don't already know.

Phoenix glared down at his computer screen, arms folded while he pondered his situation, some part of him still wondering if he wasn't just crazy like he suspected. Well, crazier than he previously thought.

"So, what's our chat about mister writer person?" Scylla's voice exited his computer's speakers with a tinny, almost 8-bit styled tone to it, an affectation he knew she did purely for her own amusement. As with a great many other things she did.

It's like having a computer virus version of Discord roaming in my computer. It's a miracle the thing hasn't blown up by now.

"Several different things," he answered. "First of all, you could actually get around to explaining how it is you are here on my computer instead of teasing about the answer like you have been for months."

"Would you believe me if I told you it was entirely by accident?"

Phoenix stared blankly at the screen for a few seconds while brain processed the statement. Then his eye started to twitch.

"Elaborate," he ordered.

"Well, see, back about a year ago when larger me accidentally sent part of myself here to this world with the Dimension Tide, that part of me was confined to a single laptop, which was brought back to my world while we were talking and thus taking me back to the my larger self and presumably allowing me to reintegrate into the whole."

"I can understand that," Phoenix said. "What I don't understand is why you are here."

"I was getting to that, relax. So, remember how I convinced you I was real by rattling off some info about your story to you?"

"Vaguely. I honestly thought that whole experience was a bizarre dream until…"

"Until I announced myself being here," Scylla finished for him. "Yeah, not surprised you mentally suppressed that memory. You seemed just a wee bit traumatized by the reveal of multiverse theory being real."

Phoenix's eye twitched harder. "Implying that said trama hasn't returned now that the reality is no longer deniable."

"Do I need to pull up the cat hugging the bunny clip again?" Scylla asked.

"That won't be necess-"

"Too late!"

His computer instantly opened up a browser page and tabbed to the familiar video he'd been using to calm his raging mind for the past several weeks. He'd needed it after realizing that a) his story was real in another world, b) multiverse theory, and all that it implied, was real, c) his computer was infected with a sentient virus with the personality of a troll, and d) he really was just as insane as he'd thought he was.

And yet the sight of a bunny hugging a rabbit was always able to remind him that the world wasn't quite all mad yet. As it was doing right now.

Then a green and black striped tiger shark floated over the top of the video with a broad, sharp toothed smile.

"Feeling better?"

Phoenix rolled his eyes in answer. "Let's get back to the whole thing of how you ended up on my computer despite the fact that you were warped back to your world only minutes after ending up here."

"Oh, that's simple," Scylla said while swimming in the air above the cutely wrestling animals in the video. "I'm not the same me that first showed up here."

"What?"

Scylla's smile somehow broadened, which on her fishy face was more disturbing than anything, likely intentionally. "You know that whole thing about how I'm actually more a virus than a normal computer intelligence? Well… the thing about that is that whenever I go and access some data, I tend to leave tiny little bits of myself behind. Literal bits even! Given enough time those bits will expand and grow, come together, and form a new variant of myself."

Phoenix's eyes widened. "Wait, so you-"

"Don't worry, I haven't been spreading myself all over this world's internet in preparation for taking over the globe. Or rather, I have been subconsciously, but I've been cleaning up after myself ever since I re-achieved awareness so that it won't happen. Probably."

"... I'm now left wondering if you taking over the internet wouldn't be a universal benefit or not."

Scylla turned to stare at him excitedly, though given she was a shark it looked more like she was exceptionally hungry. "Does that mean I can go ahead a-"

"Not yet," Phoenix interrupted. "Not until we know it's necessary. Also, I don't want to be the minder of the AI construct that has control over the entire world's digital infrastructure. That's a tad bit too much responsibility to have in my hands, thank you."

"I think you could handle it," Scylla said with a wink.

Phoenix rubbed his temples to ease his mental strain and tried to get back on track. A small part of him was wondering how a shark could wink without eyelids, but he managed to shut that part up by reminding it that anything was possible with a digital avatar.

"So… in effect, because you accessed my personal data for a few seconds, you were eventually able to regenerate into a new cohesive self. That's… a scary level of self-replication, AI virus or not."

"To be fair, it did take me months to finish the restructuring," Scylla said. "The tiny size of your computer added onto the slower-than-glaciers internet of this world made rebuilding myself very time-consuming. Back home on our quantum-bit powered net, I'd be able to do the same thing in a few hours."

"Well we didn't have an alien computer network to copy-paste onto our programing evolution, you know," Phoenix sniped. "Alright, so now I know how you are here. Let's get into why you're here now, hmm?"

"Does this mean I'm finally gonna get a plot line that goes somewhere?"

Phoenix glared at the shark for a moment before reaching out and bashing the side of his computer enough to shake the screen.

"You know that doesn't do anything to me, right?"

Phoenix pinched his nose. "I know, but it makes me feel better. It's just… what am I supposed to do with you? Just by existing you could completely revolutionize our digital industry and push it ahead by half a century, not to mention all the industrial and logistical restructuring you could do if I let you run rampant. And then we have the whole moral, philosophical conundrum you present for basically every professor of the mind and theologian on the planet. And then we have the fact that, being you're from another universe, that opens up the possibility that, reachable by us or not, other worlds exist who may end up coming to us at some point. And I'm pretty damn well sure that we'd stand zero chance in hell against any such invaders who show up."

A moment of silence passed between them, the only sound being the soft meowing of the cat in the video as the bunny gnawed on its ear.

"..."

"..."

"What if I told you I had an idea about how to fix… at least the last one of those."

Phoenix lifted an eyebrow. "And what pray tell would that be?"

"Easy. Just hire another more advanced world to defend yours if you ever come under attack. And I just happen to know of one that, with some tinkering, could develop the tech to intentionally warp themselves here to help out…"

"You're talking about linking the Bridge world's Earth to ours, aren't you?"

"Right in one!" Scylla said happily. "And before you get started on how it's not possible, I have an idea as to how I can make it happen!"

Before Phoenix could say anything, the cuteness incarnate video disappeared and was replaced by a wikipedia article.

"The Large Hadron Collider?" Phoenix parroted. "What does that have to do with anything? All that thing does is test theoretical physics hypothesis by smashing atoms together at sub-light speed."

"Yes, yes it does, and may I say I'm glad that this world has at least some level of crazy-awesome ambition to it!"

Phoenix's unamused expression was entirely ignored by the black and green shark as she started jumping the page up and down, highlighting various portions.

"See, the problem for me trying to contact home is that none of this world's tech is advanced enough for me to break through the universal-barrier. None, that is, except the LHC here, if only just barely. Right now, without any tampering from me, the accelerator can already produce just the physical phenomenon I need to contact home: micro black holes."

"Wait a second… I thought that the Dimension Tide shot wormholes that only acted like black holes," Phoenix noted. "How would actual black-holes help?"

"By acting like tiny one time use data pads," Scylla answered. "See, the gimmick with black holes is that nothing escapes them. Matter, light, data, everything goes and doesn't come back. Not in this universe at least."

Phoenix blinked. "So… so you're saying black holes are…"

"Semi-impassible gateways to other worlds, yup. The matter, i.e. data, that they slowly leak doesn't always end up in their home world. Because of the fact that black holes are so hellishly powerful and warp physics so badly, they occasionally breach through the universal barrier and let their data pass out into other worlds. And because I'm a super-genius synthetic intelligence I can do the math necessary to ensure the micro-black holes the LHC creates both send their data to my home world AND are able to 'save' a prerecorded message that my counterpart in that world will understand."

"That sounds… extremely complex and difficult," Phoenix said eventually.

"It is, and would be basically impossible for anyone that wasn't me." Scylla smiled again, in a predatory way fitting with her avatar. "Luckily for us, I am me, so it'll be doable. It's just gonna take a while to make all the calculations on how to alter the LHC's experiments so I can slip my messages in."

"Without messing up the scientists' experiments, right?" Phoenix said pointedly. "Those operations cost into the billions each year and I'd rather not have them get messed up because of the two of us mucking about in their systems."

"Alright, alright, I promise not to ruin their experiments for our work. Gonna add on a few weeks worth of calculations to my prep time, but I don't think there's much of a crunch factor for this. Plus, it's gonna take way more than one message set to get any appreciable data across. Micro black holes are, well, tiny, so I'd only be able to send a micro-scale string of numbers at a time."

"How are you, that is, the you on the other side, gonna be able to recognize the message if that's the case?"

"I've established all kinds of codes and messages to myself in the event of certain possibilities arising, no matter how unlikely or silly they are. Trust me, sending messages to myself via black hole from another universe is FAR from the craziest plan I've come up with."

"I fully believe it," Phoenix said flatly. "So once you've got your attention, what then? As I recall your world is a tad busy at the moment and doesn't really have the resources to spend defend a whole other planet that is a universe apart from them."

"Indeed they do not," Scylla allowed. "Not for a while, most likely. But there's a way we can fix that. Or at least help speed things along."

"How?"

Scylla turned away from him, facing towards the browser page behind her, and tapped a fin on the browser. Immediately a new page appeared, one in a format Phoenix found instantly familiar. A TvTropes page, titled 'Reading Ahead in the Script'.

"You are fucking nuts."

"Yes, but I'm also right. This would be just the thing to give us, my world, the advantage we need to survive. Let's face it, my world's good guys are stupidly outmatched. They could use the help."

"I am not giving you permission to send plot details about my story to your homeworld as some kind of… key intel to change the outcome of events!"

"And why not?" Scylla said, her voice deepening into a menacing and hollow tone. "Do you just not want to help for the sake of 'drama'?"

"I don't want to send out information knowing it could be wrong!" Phoenix shouted back. "You should know by now how transient my mind is! I might announce something as a plan one day then forget it the next and make something up on the spot. My plans for the future of the story can't be used as solid data because I DON'T KNOW IF THAT'S WHAT I'M GOING TO ACTUALLY DO!"

Scylla shrunk back from the shouting, causing Phoenix to pause in his rant and take a deep, calming breath.

"It doesn't have to be a detail by detail retelling, you know," Scylla said slowly, her tone returned to its lighter style. "Just some heads up on the big stuff. Let them know when they're heading in the right direction."

Phoenix sighed. "That's still risky. If they find out that they're being directed by an outside party, they might take it the wrong way."

"Which is why I'll direct myself to be discrete, frame all of her advice in ways that use the info they already have available. Despite how I appear and act, I can be subtle when I have to be."

"I'll take your word for it," Phoenix said, leaning back in his chair and staring blankly up at the ceiling. "How did it come to this? I just wanted to write fanfiction for my own amusement. Now I'm possibly helping to save a whole other world by making things up as I go."

"Sometimes heroes come from unlikely places," Scylla said. "I mean I should know. I was originally going to be a weapon of ultimate destruction, but by a fluke chance I ended up becoming the progenitor of a whole new race of artificial electronic life. How's that for unlikely eh?"

Phoenix smirked. "I'd say it was impossible but your world clearly doesn't understand the meaning of the word."

Scylla rolled her shark eyes - somehow - and replied, "My point is that sometimes you just gotta play the cards you're dealt and do the best you can with them. Don't think about what might happen, focus on what you can do to make things better."

"Quoting my own philosophy at me are you?"

"If it means getting you to follow it, sure."

"Fair enough," Phoenix allowed. "Alright, so we have a plan now, which is good. Outside of the plan though, I think some rules need to be set regar-"

"Oh hold that thought I just got a message from my forward observers at CERN gotta take this now bye!"

"Hey wait!" Phoenix cried, but too late as Scylla bliped out of the screen. "Ugh. She's not really gone, is she? Just pretending to be so she doesn't have to talk to me anymore. Great. When did I become surrogate father to an unruly teenage ultra-hacker?" He sighed then shrugged. "Eh, baby steps I guess. Now, time to report the 'good news'."

Hey mate, you there?

Yo, sup? How did the convo go?

Well enough, I suppose. Managed to figure out a plan of action with her for the future. As for getting her to behave, well, that might take a while longer.

Sorry about that. It's my fault for imagining her to be so… her.

Don't apologize for her character, bud. You may have created the idea, but she's the one fulfilling it, so her actions are her own. Now then, let's get to work shall we?