The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's property; the former originally Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Walt Disney Company's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this.
The curtain blocked the rays of early Thursday morning sun, keeping the room dark. Within that room Haruo slept like a log. All good things must come to an end, though, as the noise of clinking plates and cups from the kitchen roused him.
With a grumble, he rolled over on his futon to keep the annoying noise out of his ears. He was tired, damnit!
Not long after, Haruo tossed aside his covers with a frustrated grunt. No use trying to catch any more sleep, especially since he now remembered what he had done last night... and the great puzzle he was about to tackle. Hopefully it'd be more difficult than getting in the Encom arcade mainframe... just remembering it made him depressed.
Oh well - breakfast first before school, after that to wait for Eiko to come by and look at what the diskettes in his drawer held. Right now, though, food was just distraction for him. Sure, it was something of a necessity, but nothing to spend thinking about more than the absolute minimum. Food in, energy out.
With that in his mind, he quickly left his room to wash up, have breakfast and copious amounts of tea. He'd probably spend a good part of the school day sleeping, but that couldn't be helped right now. The caffeinated beverages in his school bag might help a bit, but probably not enough.
In the commercial district, one disgruntled man trudged through the streets. His goal: Encom Arcade. His task: To open up the arcade, although he didn't really know why it should be opened this early when most kids were in school.
As he walked in to turn on the lights, he heard a peculiar sound, emanating from the middle of the arcade.
"Is that... snoring?"
Quietly, he sneaked to look at the source of the noise. And behold; next to a number of wrecked machines, slept a teen dressed in black.
"Mmmh... fierce tigress..."
Just as quietly, he left to call the police, followed immediately afterwards by a call to his boss's home phone number.
"No sleeping in class!"
Thwack!
The chalk that struck Ukyo's head woke her up from her woefully short nap. It wasn't that she wanted to miss the lesson but more like she couldn't stay awake. With only a few hours' sleep last night, she was little better than a sleepwalker.
She just wished that she could deflect attacks while asleep, like Ranchan did. Maybe she'd have to start keeping a spatula in her hands? Actually, it sounded like she'd better do it right now. She'd just better watch not to cut herself or tear her clothes.
Her eyes drifted closed again. If only it would've been Sunday already...
Thwack!
"Hnnggh...?" Ukyo blearily opened her eyes, not noticing how her grasp on the spatula loosened.
Clang!
"Miss Kuonji, bucket duty, now!"
Apparently she didn't have enough practice to block the projectiles when asleep. And the sound of the spatula falling on the floor definitely would've waken her up even without the chalk. Or maybe she wasn't sleeping deep enough.
Yawning, she set up the buckets and started doing small physical exercises with them.
In front of a door down the hall, Haruo took a look at the crazy martial artist before he lifted his own buckets. All the caffeine he had with him hadn't been enough to keep him awake. The most visible effect was that he had to go to the toilet already twice this morning; the dehydrating effect of caffeine certainly showed through.
By contrast, Eiko had gotten her parents to call her in sick.
"Lucky girl," he thought.
As the lunch break came by, Ukyo's friends Misa and Toshiko intercepted her before she could leave the classroom. It was Misa who started the cross examination.
"What's wrong, Ukyo?"
"Yeah, you've never been this tired before."
Ukyo had to blink once before the words processed past the veil of sleepiness.
"I couldn't sleep very well last night ," she attempted to lie.
"And what do Ranma and the computer club have to do with it?" Misa asked.
"Nothing! Where'd you get that idea?"
"Because Haruo was also caught sleeping during lessons and Eiko simply wasn't at school today." Misa replied.
"You spoke with the bishonen club members from their class?" Toshiko asked her, already knowing the answer.
"Of course! After yesterday's episode of Bishonen Basket, I had to go and talk with Arisa how absolutely dreamy Akito was!"
"Right," Toshiko bluntly stated before focusing again on Ukyo. "And you did meet with them yesterday."
Being as tired as she was, Ukyo was not in the mood to play twenty questions about what she did yesterday, in particular because she had a hunch it was best to be quiet about it. While the police usually didn't get involved in martial arts fights, breaking and entering was likely to be a different case. This much she had figured yesterday; today, her thoughts were swimming around in molasses.
"Look, I'm dead tired right now, and all I want is to get over the rest of the school day and take a nap," she snapped.
Misa looked taken aback, but Toshiko was hardly fazed. Let the sleeping dogs lie, they said, and it apparently applied also to tired okonomiyaki chefs. But tomorrow, after Ukyo had managed to get enough sleep, they would get the whole story out of her.
Even if Toshiko wasn't a hard-core gossip monger, she'd still enjoy all the fun this latest twist in the ongoing saga of love, hate and jealousy was providing her with.
Then she shook her head in dismay. Maybe she had already spent too much time around Misa.
Not long after that, Akane returned to the class. She had been looking for Eiko to ask for more information on Ranma, since she apparently knew something. Unfortunately, she hadn't been to school that day.
For a nightshift worker like Tooru, the days were the best time to go to the arcade. No kids hogging the games, and even worse, their shouts distracting him from his attempts at beating the top scores.
Unfortunately, today he couldn't enter the arcade as early as usual, because the police had closed it for most of the morning. And when they had finally opened the doors, the Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial games he wanted to play were quite visibly broken.
Well, at least there were Tokyo Kaiju Rumble and Space Paranoids left.
After starting the twentieth level of the former, he couldn't help but to notice something different going on. Sure, the 200-foot tall school girl certainly would've qualified as something strange, but it might have been just an easter egg for all he knew.
But it stopped being funny when the girl whipped out a microphone, started singing music from the 70s and the sun turned into a huge disco ball. To top that, the buildings began swaying to the beat, along with the city defenders who jumped atop the buildings and started dancing to the music.
Forgetting about the yen he'd inserted, he let the dance routine continue - now the mechas were doing Irish step dancing - and walked over to the Space Paranoids booth. There was only so much he could stand, and this was way over the top. Of course it hurt that he had to abandon an hour's worth of playing by switching the game, but that must've been some odd glitch.
He stretched his fingers - he was in for a long session if he wanted to get the top score - and inserted the coin.
He started to get angry after the thirty-second level. Why was the tank shooting leeks at those flying okonomiyaki? What on Earth was happening in here?
Noticing the arcade manager's room had lights on, he went in and joined the group of others who were complaining of the similar bleed-over of characters between games. The man playing the only remaining Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial game complained of a tank rolling over the park and squishing the girl he had been wooing for a good while. The discs in Discs of Doom changed into onion rings flying in the air and smacking mobsters in the face.
The arcade manager was nervous, and the reason for this was the already present stack of complaints on his desk, each and every one describing how the games malfunctioned.
"Please, we will address this issue as soon as possible. Here, have these free game tokens to use once we get the problem corrected."
Slowly and only barely appeased, the mob left the office, still grumbling about the time lost playing the games.
The manager picked up his desk phone and dialed a number. A few rings later his call was answered.
"Encom Labs, technical support division. How may we help you?"
"So, who are you going to send to check on the arcade?" a junior technician asked his boss.
The boss leaned forward on his desk and pressed a button on his intercom. "Maseo, get in my office."
After a few seconds of silence, he turned back to the technician. "You're not allergic to cats, are you?"
"Actually,..." was all the techie got out before Maseo walked in through the door.
"Yes, boss?"
"Ah... ahh... achoo!"
Sometimes, it was an inconvenience to have an employee who valued the company of his cats more than that of humans and smelled like it. Hopefully he'd at least appreciate this temporary 'Get Out of Cubicleville Free' -card he was now presented with.
An hour after school was out, Eiko came to Haruo's house with a pack of caffeinated soft drinks that were quickly put in the fridge to cool. She showed no sign of being tired, unlike Haruo, who yawned once every few minutes. Soon, they made their way to Haruo's room where he had his computer and display all set up.
He was lucky, he supposed, to have found the small monochromatic TV for such a cheap price; with that, he didn't have to hoard the family room TV for his computer, especially when he had true inspiration to work non-stop. His parents didn't really know what he was doing with the computer, and he wanted to keep it that way. They hardly would've been happy with him trying to find his way into certain corporate mainframe computers.
Getting into those computers was an exercise in little beyond social engineering. Their current task, however, definitely had everything to do with the technical aspect, or that was the preconception they had got.
Haruo put the first diskette inside the external drive beside his microcomputer and typed in a command to see what it contained.
"So that's Ranma there? He's smaller than I thought," Eiko blithely commented.
"With Ranma's luck, that's probably 'she'..."
"Oh, right."
Haruo typed in the command to load and execute Ranma's code. As the program loaded, the screen flashed a few times before it turned black with a blinking cursor. Trying the easiest way first, he began typing in a greeting to Ranma.
Like when she was loaded into the arcade mainframe, Ranma's vision faded back, only more slow this time. The next thing she noticed was the very different look of the system she was now in. The etchings on the walls were much cruder, and only rarely went even diagonally. It felt much... blockier, she thought, than the earlier systems she had been in.
Looking around, she noticed that the exit from the IO buffer had less detail than the earlier doorways she'd seen. Taking these things in stride, she began walking towards the door.
To her surprise, already after the first three steps she felt out of breath. She knew she was feeling a bit under the weather when she left the previous system, but nothing this bad. As she forced herself to continue, she felt herself getting dizzy to the point of nearly passing out. Passing out - she wasn't going to call it fainting - was probably a bad idea, and she'd have to find a secure place just in case the protocol guards were out looking for her also here, wherever Haruo had moved them. Hopefully it was Haruo and not someone else, in any case.
Haruo cursed as his computer seemed to lock up for a while, not accepting further key presses. Annoyed, he watched as the cursor stopped moving. After a little while, the cursor resumed its activity and the backlog of characters Haruo had typed appeared on the screen.
After regaining her breath, Ranma managed to get outside the room. If the entrance hall had been bare, everything outside was even more so. And cramped. Everything in the system seemed to be stuffed together and almost as tightly as possible. There were just a handful of buildings surrounding one courtyard. All of this was surrounded by an enclosing wall that blotted out most of the sky.
She could see only one other program, who was sitting on a slab in the middle of the courtyard and shackled to the floor by his feet. When he noticed Ranma approaching him, he smiled enthusiastically.
"Greetings, program! I am Baromu, the basic interpreter around here. Do you have any program code you wish me to interpret?"
"Ranma Saotome. And no, -" she started before the loudspeakers interrupted her as they came to life.
"Ranma, can you hear me?"
Unlike before, she didn't feel any pull towards the buildings surrounding her. Without the handy homing signal telling where she could reply to Haruo's voice, she only looked around her, making sure she didn't see any guards around, and called back.
"Yes, where am I?"
"You're on my microcomputer. How are you feeling?"
Ranma wasn't going to admit she had almost fai- passed out, she meant, so she replied "Dizzy - and it's cramped in here!"
"Sorry, but this system doesn't have nearly as many memory as the Encom mainframe. That's probably why you feel like that."
"Any suggestions how to get you to the Encom mainframe?"
"Ask Shinobu 'bout that, but can't ya do sumthing about Nabiki bein' sick first?"
There was a long pause Ranma didn't like as Haruo and Eiko had a small debate on what their options were. If she didn't bring Nabiki back safe and sound, he would be able to count on two things: first Tendo demon head and waterworks, and second one angry tomboy. Kasumi's heart would probably be broken if something bad happened to Nabiki, and Ranma was not going to let the hand that fed her get bitten by anyone, let alone her.
Besides, even if she was a pain-in-the-rear and was harder to read than the riddles of that ancient stone c-c-cat, she was still someone a martial artist should protect, especially right now and here.
"There's not much we can do. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack."
"... what if I can kick the bug first?"
"You have the same problem?"
"Yeah, but, it's just another bug, right?" She still didn't like admitting she was sick, and this time she didn't even have the benefit of the fever. At least that would have the upside of making him unable to turn female.
"Maybe. We'll move you back to the diskette and do our best."
Haruo took out Ranma's disk from the disk drive and faced Eiko. "This isn't going to be easy."
"... but would you bother doing it if it was easy?" she replied with a knowing grin.
"Nope," he said, mirroring Eiko's smirk. "For a master of martial arts hacking, this is just a ... challenge," he finished, his eyes burning with inner fire.
The yawn he failed to suppress ruined the effect.
They loaded in turn all the three Users in a disassembler and surveyed their code. They didn't expect to have much success, at least not for now, but once Haruo had got a good night's sleep, things might be different.
This didn't mean that they didn't try anything already today; in a few minutes, a debugger with a disassembler for making the program code more readable was loaded to the system to look at how the Users worked as programs.
Inside Haruo's computer, the debugger program looked at the pigtailed User, strapped into the disassembler bench with write locks.
"Trust me, I know what I am doing." The program looked uncomfortable as he stretched his hands that appeared to end in tools; a prod and a magnifying glass, or as the small labels affixed to them said, "poke" and "peek".
"Unfortunately, the Users apparently have no clue what they are doing."
With that, he set out to work.
Ranma opened her eyes, feeling dizzy, and saw that the colours on her were still wrong. That operation had hurt, and it hadn't even worked.
"Ranma no feel better than before," she muttered, before stopping in fright. "Haruo, what you did to Ranma! Ranma no talk this way!"
It took a while before she got a reply.
"Oops."
At least they managed to change her back.
Also Nabiki had to undergo some of these... less than successful attempts, as Haruo and Eiko read what she had to say.
"Don't nya dare let meow stay like this-hiss!"
"Too bad I can't take a photo of you, boss," Eiko thought to herself, grinning. Pictures of catgirl-Nabiki would definitely sell well if it weren't for the danger of the photogenic subject herself finding out of the sales.
As could be expected, Thursday yielded no good results for Haruo and Eiko in their uncoordinated attempts to edit Ranma and Nabiki to health. At some point, soon after Nabiki had apparently been reduced into a babbling infant, they had lost the focus of their goal. The lack of really seeing them made their editing feel impersonal. It was so easy to just forget that they were poking at real people, instead of a sequence of ones and zeros, and they believed that they could undo anything they tried.
Meanwhile, Ukyo was doing her best to keep things going at her restaurant, but when you almost mix up sugar and salt, it can be a trying experience. She was already well past the stage where she would almost fall asleep; instead, she simply appeared to be zoned out most of the time. In the end, she had to close Ucchan's earlier than usual just because she absolutely needed to get some sleep before she botched up the orders even worse.
And at the arcade, Maseo the Encom technician was starting to look into the arcade mainframe. As he watched the system run, he tried to pinpoint the underlying error that caused the games to malfunction. The problem wasn't like finding a needle in a haystack; it was like finding a specific needle in a haystack-sized pile of needles.
The system was on the verge of total collapse. The database system had already crashed, taking down many game features requiring the database, such as high score tables. But was this the cause of the crash?
It took him hours to run out of tricks to try. There weren't any unknown programs being executed, nor were there any unauthorized log-ins in the recent history to explain what had happened. Finally, he ended up checking the CRC checksums of the system utilities - in a way, fingerprints of the program code.
The checksums differed, so the utilities must have been changed. But how? There hadn't been any strange log-ins, so he couldn't think of how this could have been done otherwise.
It took him a good while to figure out all the executable files had been extended with an almost equal piece of code. A quick look at it in a disassembler gave him clues to how it worked, but not a complete rundown. Enough to tell him that these code fragments copied themselves into other programs, hence making this a prime candidate to be the cause of this mess. Well, he didn't know which program had been the first one, but with some studying of the log files, they might figure it out yet.
In any case, he was satisfied. Most of the extra payload these malfunctioning utilities had was identical, making it easy for him to write a program that started a small script that removed any programs with the fingerprint. Naturally, before he let the new program loose in the mainframe, he saved a couple of problematic programs as samples on a diskette and had a telephone negotiation with his boss about the next step.
Soon afterwards, they had struck a plan on how to delete the infected programs and install the proper replacements. As much easier as a complete reinstall would have been, some of the programs the arcade had learned from the players to improve their AI, for instance. Deleting all these would apparently have been a setback too large to take as a first measure.
Maseo smiled as he stretched his arms.
"So there... this program, Buta, will delete all infected programs in the system as soon as it finds them. With luck, none of the essential programs have been infected."
"What if this problem reappears?"
"I don't see how that could happen, unless you introduce infected programs to the system again."
"Like the copies you tech guys have sent back to Encom's main labs?"
Maseo stopped smiling. The arcade manager felt a cold shiver go down his spine.
"To the main labs, you say?"
The manager, almost ignorant of its significance, nodded. Maseo, on the other hand, had a good idea what this meant. Long days at work and cats left on their own as they'd try to limit the infection at the mainframe as well, and the complete reinstallation of the lab mainframe was completely out of the question. Teaching MCP alone to its current level would take months if not years. No, he was not looking forward to this.
Yet another night passed by and Friday arrived. Once again the pupils filed into Furinkan High for education, and Maseo reported to his boss about the possible infection of the mainframe.
Finally, with a full night's rest behind them, Ukyo and Haruo were now paying their full attention to the lesson, or most of it in any case. Haruo's mind occasionally wandered to what they could try to do to help Ranma, but no great plan came to his mind. Now that he was mixed up this deep in the case, he couldn't step back. If he didn't... 'cure' Ranma and Nabiki, he would be getting a visit first from Ukyo. She would use the door. Shampoo wouldn't.
And when they were satisfied with the punishment they dished out to him, it wouldn't take much longer for Kuno to hear that he had refused to help the Pigtailed Girl, and after that, Kodachi would come forth to accost him for doing the same to her 'Ranma-sama.' When dealing with such martial artists, martial arts hacking wasn't that much help.
Speaking of whom... he hadn't seen Kuno shouting out how he had ran off Ranma today. "I wonder where he is... not that I care for his presence."
In Akane and Ukyo's class, Ranma's continued absence was making Akane run out of excuses to tell the teachers on Ranma's behalf. Today on the lunch break she would try again to ask Eiko if she had more information on Ranma.
As soon as the bell rang for the lunch break, Akane left the classroom to find Eiko. When she saw Akane approaching, she excused herself from her present company, guessing what Akane wanted to talk about.
"You want the latest scoop on Ranma, right?" Eiko wondered at the emotions flickering across Akane's face. It was apparent she was trying to push them down, but they were still clearly visible. Sometimes Eiko had to wonder how two sisters, Nabiki and Akane, were so different in this aspect.
Akane nodded. "Yes, is there something I can help him with?"
"Honestly, I doubt it. We're trying to help him and Nabiki, but it might take a long while."
"Wait, you mean Nabiki is in the same trouble as Ranma?" Akane let a small sign of relief appear on her face. If Ranma was there, Nabiki would be fine.
"... and Ranma can't do anything to help her." Eiko's comment effectively undermined Akane's ease.
"What- how- ?"
"We do not know the details yet."
"Oh... wait, what do you mean by 'we?'"
Eiko figured it would be better to leave Ukyo's involvement out of the equation at this point. She didn't want to get in the middle of two arguing members of the fiancée squad. "I meant Haruo and I; we're trying to fix them up and get them out of the computer."
"But I thought they were at the arcade?"
Haruo bit back an annoyed sigh. "It's better you don't know the details, Akane." It indeed was better for all involved in the break-in at the arcade. Sure, they had all worn gloves when they were there, but there was always the chance of someone in the home team making that one mistake that would send the house of cards crashing down and the police after them.
Meanwhile, Ukyo had remained in class to quickly have her lunch before she would go talk to Haruo and Eiko about what their plans now were. As she was busy eating fresh okonomiyaki, her friends approached her again.
"Feeling any better now?", Toshiko opened the discussion.
Glancing over to her friends, Ukyo ate the last bit of her food. "... Yes. The computer club was of help in finding Ranma."
Misa smiled at this. "And when you found him, he gave you that long, scorching kiss that curls up toes and makes your hair stand up on end?"
Ukyo's face briefly fell but soon brightened again. "No, not yet. But when we get him back, he will," she said with a smile.
Misao and Toshiko shared her smile. They had seen how much the pigtailed boy mattered to her, and felt she deserved a happy ending.
It didn't take Ukyo long to prepare a few more okonomiyaki for those who wanted to buy one before she had to excuse herself from their company to go talk to Haruo and Eiko about their plans, passing Akane as she came from the other classroom.
When she got to Haruo and Eiko's classroom, Haruo was joking about how much of Eiko's lunch break seemed to be spent on various meetings. When she noticed Ukyo coming up, she let her head hit the table. "Okay, I'm making this a business lunch. I eat, you talk," she said, making Haruo chuckle.
"What is the next step?" Ukyo asked.
"Right... we need to do something about Ranma as well. She also has the same problem Nabiki has... whatever it is."
"What? You can make him better, can't you?"
"It isn't that easy, you know. Whatever has happened to those two, I've never seen anything of the kind before," Haruo told her.
That much was true. He had no idea what had happened, and his toolbox for correcting whatever had happened to them was certainly not large. For all he knew, it could've been a natural byproduct of this 'digitization' they had undergone. It was human to make mistakes, and this definitely was a process defined by human hands and minds.
Seeing Ukyo getting upset at his answer, he attempted to placate her. "We said we'd try our best. And we're the real deal. If someone has the brains to solve it, we do." Well, a bit extra bolstering wouldn't hurt, would it?
"Okay... where will you be trying to help them? I want to be there as well."
"You'd be better off working at your restaurant. There really isn't anything you can do to help him now. Besides, once we get him fixed up, it's time for you to start cooking for our club," Haruo reminded her with a grin.
Frustrated with her incapability of being of any help, Ukyo merely gave him a tight nod and stormed out of the classroom. She may not have understood why it was so important for her to be there for him, but she knew what happened to her when she was left behind by Genma and Ranma. With first-hand experience on the matter, she didn't want that to happen to her Ranchan. The other, even bigger reason was what Ranma had gathered when she hadn't been at his side... fiancées.
When the school day was over, Akane went straight home. Thoughts were running in her head, thinking how she had thought Nabiki had again baited her with Ranma, except that it wasn't so. She honestly missed her sister... and Ranma, even though she would never admit that to anyone else.
Once she had reached the Tendo house, she went to the kitchen. Kasumi was surprised as she felt two arms circle around her in a tight hug. "Thank you, sister. For still being here," Akane mumbled to her back.
"Oh my, Akane..." the homemaker replied as she turned and gave her little sister the hug she needed.
Saturday afternoon, Ukyo was closing her restaurant early. Even if it was usually open much longer out of the necessity of earning money for living, there still were things she valued higher. Most notably, helping Ranchan out was one of these. That in mind, she set her course towards Haruo's home, even if he and Eiko had asked her not to come. She'd like the chance to talk with Ranchan again, preferably alone, but... that didn't seem likely. With Ranchan's dislike for waiting, she'd get bored of waiting for her to find the keys on the keyboard. The thought brought a small grin to her face. Yup, that was her Ranchan alright!
It didn't take long for her to reach the house, and with a few well-picked words she had gotten her way in: free okonomiyaki. The brainwork the computer club leaders had been doing had also given them a voracious appetite, and taking a break to indulge in the cuisine they were working for was a welcome thing.
With efficiency borne from the repeated and rapid deployment of cooking gear during lunch breaks, the snack break was quickly over. As Ukyo was cleaning up, she asked,"So how is Ranma?" After all these days, she expected them to already have cured Ranma and Nabiki, or alternatively, the bug would've run through its course.
"So far, we haven't managed to figure out what is wrong with them. Maybe it was the digitization process and the third User just hasn't been affected yet. In that case, there's nothing we could do."
"But- you're martial arts hackers! You have to know how to help them!"
"Look, we have four programs, two of which have something wrong with them, and two that do not - yet. The programs are long, very long series of operations and - you're not following, are you?"
Ukyo just shook her head. She wasn't ashamed to admit that prior to the evening in the arcade she hadn't ever pressed a key on a full keyboard, let alone understood the inner workings of a computer.
Eiko picked up the ball. "Think of a program as a recipe with very many tasks. You start from the beginning and follow the instructions, either by doing something or moving to a specified place in the recipe. And each of these four 'recipes' are so long that if you used one second for each instruction, it would take you weeks to go through all the instructions in them."
"But can't you just compare the recipes and find out what the problem is?"
"Is Ranma the same as Nabiki, Shinobu or... whatever the name of that one program was? The recipes are all different with only some similar parts."
Ukyo fell silent at this. Even if she thought she followed Eiko's explanation, she was very much lost. Was Ranchan a recipe or himself? Different analogies clashed in her mind and resulted mostly in plain gibberish that made no sense to her or anyone else for that matter.
"Well, if Ranma and Nabiki are sick, then what if you infect another program with what they have?" she blurted out.
"Infect? They are ones and zeros, there are no viruses or bacteria there," Eiko mused.
"I thought they had just caught a disease?"
"There are no diseases inside computers. Trust me, that's just a bad analogy," Eiko refuted Ukyo's theory.
Haruo, on the other hand, had assumed his thinking pose. He didn't have delusions that he knew everything about computers and programs; he hadn't even been able to imagine anyone being "digitized" inside a computer.
So did Ukyo's theory make any sense? Could there be a way for a piece of a program to actually act like a virus, jumping from one program to another?
In a startling revelation, he realized it indeed was possible; the 'cooking recipe' would only need one extra part that did the 'infecting' of other programs, and that this part would be read at some point. Ingenious.
Still, it wasn't guaranteed that this was the problem with Ranma and Nabiki. Nevertheless, the possibility of it was so intriguing that he ran back inside, leaving Ukyo and Eiko wondering what made him take off like that.
Back at the arcade, Ranma had told Haruo that Nabiki was feeling sick, so he knew that if the infection theory was true, then Nabiki was probably the first one to get the... virus; an apt moniker, he had to admit.
This in mind, he loaded Nabiki into the computer.
"Nabiki, do you remember seeing anyone else there with the same symptoms as you have?" he typed.
"No, I don't- wait... there was this one program that grabbed me by my arm; he was about the same colour as I am now," she replied, wondering why she hadn't realized the connection before. Maybe it was this constant headache she had.
On the other side of the screen, Haruo wondered just what Nabiki meant by changing colours. "And Ranma? Did his colour change like yours to match that program's colour?" he asked, forgetting Ranma's current gender.
"Almost, but she's still changing towards the same shade of green."
Haruo returned Nabiki back to the diskette, since he could read from her lines that she was feeling worse than Ranma. Or maybe Ranma only didn't let it show through as much.
He exhaled deeply. At last they had a clue of what might have been going on. Now, he only had to figure out how to find the problematic piece of code, and that was still assuming the theory of a self-replicating subprogram was true.
Ranma and Nabiki still probably shared some code that had nothing to do with their current ailment, so simply hunting all similar subroutines and crossing them out one at a time wasn't smart. No, he'd need a program that he could infect so that he could see the difference the infectious subroutine made.
He wasn't ready to use any of his own programs for that experiment, though, not without knowing he'd get them back in their original condition. Something that could be changed, but then could be restored back to its original form easily.
At this point, Eiko and Ukyo had come to Haruo's room to see what he had been doing, the latter also hoping to get a chance to talk with Ranma.
"I think I've got it," Haruo stated. Ukyo blinked before a wide smile threatened to split her face.
"So you can help them?"
"Not yet. There are a few snags we'll need to sort out before they're all fine and dandy."
"So what did you find out?" Eiko asked, eager to know the new developments. Haruo obliged, and the technical discussion quickly left Ukyo dumbfounded, confused and hence also irritated.
She managed to get only a general idea of what they were talking about; something about a piece of program - recipe, she reminded herself of the analogy - being copied from one program to another, and deciding upon a program they'd 'infect' to find the difference between the original and the 'infected' program. If it weren't for the brief introduction to the topic on their okonomiyaki break, she would have been even more lost.
It took a while before the technobabble ended. But at least they appeared to have come to a decision.
Once again, Ranma found herself inside Haruo's computer. Whatever the ailment she had was making her feel noticeably worse than how she felt at the arcade. She didn't see neon-coloured spots yet, but had a feeling they'd be making an appearance at some point, considering how light-headed she was feeling.
The experiments Haruo and Eiko had been doing on her definitely hadn't helped.
Once she stumbled back outside the buffer room, she heard Haruo's voice again. "Ranma?"
"Yeah, I hear you."
"Can you see another program there?"
"One, Baromu. What about him?"
"We want you to go and take a hold of him."
"Uh, okay. But what would that accomplish?"
"We - well, Ukyo was the first - came up with the idea that you got basically a disease that can be spread via 'touching' other programs."
"Wait, you want me to infect someone else? Isn't there another way?" Ranma argued. She was definitely not happy about bringing this onto anyone else, let alone on purpose.
"This Baromu, unlike you, he's in a way immune to what you got. You will not be permanently harming him."
Ranma looked over at the program, who had been listening to the discussion.
"W-who are you? What are you going to do to me?" Baromu managed to get out.
Surprised that he didn't know who she was, Ranma asked, "You don't remember me?"
"Ranma?" Haruo's voice spoke again. "Have you done it yet?"
"He doesn't want me to do it! Can't you figure out another way to do this?" Ranma called back.
"This is the best way we can think of to find out how to help you and Nabiki. We promise, he will not be permanently harmed."
Ranma definitely felt queasy. She certainly had been acting rash and towards her own ends before without much regard to others, but willfully harming others? Not even Ryoga managed that, as he just seemed to get tunnel vision when he wanted a fight with Ranma. Mousse, well... he did kidnap Akane with the intention of cursing her.
It was then that Haruo's reminder echoed through her mind: it was not only her, but also Nabiki who stood to gain from this. And if she didn't... they might both end up dead. Even if this wasn't a real disease, or a disease as she knew it, she still knew that people died of seemingly innocuous illnesses. And stuck in this place where there were no doctors to turn to, being sick was just too high a risk.
She turned her face back to Baromu. It wasn't going to hurt him, they said. So why did she feel so bad about doing it, she wondered, as she grasped his arm.
"Take me out of here," she pleaded, feeling sick of her actions.
Ukyo merely stared at the TV showing Ranchan's last line. The whole discussion Haruo and Ranchan had made her uncomfortable. Even if Baromu, as Ranma had called him, wasn't a real living person, she seemed to think he was.
She couldn't help but wonder how well she knew her fiancée after all, since she wouldn't have guessed she could do this. Even if she most definitely felt guilty about it, she still did it.
While Haruo and Eiko seemed to forget about her presence once again, it gave her much-needed time to think over what she ought to make of this.
Nabiki saw her vision coming back. Looking around, she saw that she was still inside of Haruo's microcomputer. Unlike before, though, she didn't feel like falling over as her vision swam. In fact, to her surprise, she felt better. Almost as good as before the green program assaulted her.
Knowing that no one would be able to see her, she let out a relieved sigh. If she had been cured of whatever was wrong with her, she would... well, give a discount for information for Haruo and as for Eiko, this definitely went to improve her standing in her organization. Of course, they still had to get out of the system before she could (or rather 'needed') to pay out.
Looking over herself, she noticed that the green glow was gone, replaced by the familiar and definitely healthier-looking blue shine. However, the etchings on her bodysuit hadn't changed - they still looked the same ugly mess of splotches and fissures.
"Nabiki, are you there?"
"Yes, I'm here. You almost got it right," she replied as she went to the courtyard outside the buffer.
"Almost?"
"I'm feeling better, but I still look partway like I did when I was sick. So when will you finish this?" Nabiki clarified. It was the natural vanity within herself that was speaking; if she had a choice of what she looked like, she didn't want to look like a Frankenstein-reject.
It took a brief pause before Haruo replied. "We are not going to do anything more. If we tried directly removing the part we suspect, and I stress 'suspect', to be the cause of your former condition, we might do more harm than good. Once you're back at the Encom system, there's nothing we can do to help you. Another reason is that we hope this made you immune to future infections from the same disease."
Nabiki frowned. So much for those discount rates for him.
But at least she was feeling better all the while; she had quickly recovered during this discussion. Looking around her, she saw a single program, chained to the ground by his feet. He didn't appear particularly concerned, just sitting there and minding his own business.
"So how are you going to get us to the Encom computer?" she asked, deciding that this line of discussion was over... for now. But when she sued Encom for whatever they did to her and Ranma, she would make certain someone would be there to finish what Haruo had started.
"Right now, we are open to suggestions. Considering we don't have to even guess that the security system at Encom labs is stronger than at the arcade, the same approach wouldn't work. The best idea we have so far is to try to fool an employee into downloading you into the system."
"Ask Mrs Kaneko. She's an Encom employee. She might know someone who'd do that."
"She is? We'll talk to her next then."
"Mrs Kaneko, can you hear me?" Eiko's voice was heard over the courtyard.
"Yes. I understand you are the ones who got me out of the Encom arcade?"
"True. You're now on my classmate's microcomputer and we trying to come up with ways to get you back onto the Encom mainframe."
"What? Why would we need to get back there when we already got out of the arcade. We're safe now, right?"
"There's the problem of getting you out of there. Only Encom has the technology and hardware to do that," Eiko replied, keeping her tone polite.
"So go to the police and get them to make Encom help you!" Shinobu, on the other hand, was getting agitated. Surely the police would be of help to them?
"They wouldn't believe us. It's not all that difficult to make a program that appears to speak naturally," Eiko replied, thinking of Eliza the therapist program.
"But- but- there has to be something you can do!"
"The best we can do is send you back to the Encom mainframe so that you can find your own way back. But to do that, we need your help."
Shinobu bit back the bitter retort moving around in her mind. "Fine, what is it that you want me to do? Don't you think that the other two would be more useful?"
"Simple; they don't know a password to the Encom computer system."
"The what? Can't you think of any other way?" The rules she had had to sign to use the computer terminal over at the labs had explicitly stated that she was not to tell anyone her password. Even though they hadn't told her exactly why this was important, she was willing to trust her coworkers over these high school kids.
"We don't have many choices. Unless you'd like to model in a strip poker game we'd plant as a so-called 'Trojan horse' in a BBS and hope that someone from Encom would -"
Shinobu interrupted her before Eiko could tell their whole plan - that option sounded even worse than revealing her password. That one engineer, Yoshio, would likely have been their first target, considering how often he'd been staring after her and the few other women at the labs, no matter their marital status. But there was no way ever she would pose nude for him!
"The password is 'hubbyhun'!"
She never knew what a good laugh Haruo and Eiko got out of her password.
Haruo and Eiko smiled and congratulated themselves. It was not every day that you gained entrance to the computer systems of a high-tech research company.
"So, we've fixed Ranma and Nabiki, and we can send them over to Encom. What do we have left to do before our end of the deal is done?" Eiko asked Ukyo, who was awakened from her thoughts.
She wasn't too happy that they didn't have Ranchan out of the system yet, but she had to admit there wasn't much Haruo and Eiko could possibly do now. It greatly annoyed her that she herself was practically helpless - if it had been her who had ended up in there with her Ranchan, she would've been of much more help than out here; of that she was certain. And as she thought that, the small troll of jealousy of Nabiki reared its ugly head.
Unfortunately, she was ill-equipped to hold her end of the bargain: she had been half-counting on Ranchan being there to help her recover the losses she'd make when serving okonomiyaki in computer club meetings. Still, she'd get past it. She was not going to go back on her word like one fat panda she knew.
"Starting the Monday after next, I'll be cooking at your club meetings. Is that OK?"
Haruo and Eiko smiled. This caper was a complete success - not only did they gain information on Encom labs, but they also got free food, no, free delicious food for it.
Ukyo quickly discussed the details on where and when she'd be present before leaving. She'd have to make some arrangements this upcoming week so that her customers weren't left completely unsatisfied.
Haruo picked up the phone book and checked the number of Encom Labs switchboard. The incoming modem connection line would most likely be one of the company lines, so they'd just try out all the numbers until they found it... excluding the ones given in the phone book. Since it was a weekend, there hopefully weren't as many people present to answer the calls to wrong numbers.
Buying the 300-bps modem had indeed been an expensive purchase, but considering how he now could talk with other hackers from all over Japan, it was definitely paying its price back.
It took a number of tries before they found the correct number. They entered Mrs Kaneko's name and her password... and they were in. First things first, they initiated the upload of the Users into the system. It would take a good while before they were done, but then they'd take a good look at the insides of the mainframe. No one said they weren't going to fool around with the password they got, after all.
Finally, when they would finally upload Poro, they'd note the small file he had left on the diskette before transferring there himself and wonder just what was this binary gibberish supposed to mean.
Ranma was the first one to arrive at the mainframe. The light faded away from her vision and she felt the slowdown she felt in Haruo's computer vanish as she gained more computing resources. She looked next to her and saw Nabiki forming slowly, piece by piece. It would take a while before all of her was there, and then they'd have to wait for Shinobu and Poro.
Feeling boredom settling in, she decided to look around the buffer. Recalling what the system looked like when she was transferred to the arcade, she noticed that something here was different.
The following Monday the regional executive of Encom Japan opened his terminal, opening a discussion screen with Master Control Program. He couldn't help but to feel there was something wrong with MCP, since it had repeatedly halted in its replies in the past few days. Ever since the company had begun to trust, and even rely on, MCP's assessments, the chance that it might malfunction was unwelcome.
"Morning, Mr Ooki," a high-pitched voice greeted the executive.
"Good morning, Master Control Program. Is there something wrong? Your voice is higher than usual." This definitely sounded like they'd have to ask for the main branch to send an engineer to correct whatever the problem with the MCP was, even if he said nothing was wrong.
"Everything is fine. However, there has been a change of development.
"I am now called Mistress Control Program."
Assume MCP is male. Ranma Saotome is male. Given. Ranma Saotome is female. Given. Ranma Saotome is male and not male. Contradiction; hence MCP is female. Newline.
Assume MCP is female. Ranma Saotome is male. Given. Ranma Saotome is female. Given. Ranma Saotome is male and not male. Contradiction; hence MCP is male. Newline.
MCP is female. Proven. MCP is male. Proven. Newline.
End of line.
AN: I know most my readers know more than I do... checksums, disassemblers and computer viruses in this case. So please pardon my mistakes.
Brief explanations: Ever since Little Computer People, there have been people quite eager to torture their virtual pets or Sims. Haruo and Eiko forgot who they're playing with. Discs of Doom is a nod to Discs of Tron. Finally, this fic is set well before the Jusendo arc.
Many thanks to weebee for listening to me whine about a variety of topics, including this fic. If I keep things short, I might finish the fic already within the next two chapters (unless someone wants to take over). Thank goodness.