"How about that?" Chris asked, fingers flicking over the keyboard. Titch sat beside him on the desk, a look of concentration on her face as data poured through the cable connecting her to the terminal.
"It's like I can feel it moving," she said, grimacing. "It's OK, though. I'm ready. Here we go. Up aggression."
Chris carefully tapped a few more keys. The terminal's powerful fans spooled up to meet the load, and Titch winced, gasping out loud. Chris quickly began to undo the changes. "Titch, are you OK? That's it, we're pushing too hard; I'm backing down-"
"No!" Titch said forcefully, squinting. "Nnnmh - Don't be a pussy. I'm - fine. How's the hook rate?"
"It's actually steady. For once we're keeping up. You're doing well!"
"But- aah- is it enough?" she asked, hopefully. Chris anxiously studied the screen for a few moments, then sighed.
"...No, not quite. Just keeping up won't work, at this rate we'll be left with invalid code again... if we get anything at all." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "I'm sorry, Titch. Maybe we should stop for now."
"N-no. Ahh!" The little persocom growled. She turned her head with difficulty, looking him in the eye. "Thirty seconds. Do it. Promise me you won't s-stop."
Chris met her determined gaze. "...Titch, that's too much for you-"
"Promise me!" she interrupted him fiercely, dropping her head with exertion. "I can...nnyyn... do this for you. Thirty seconds. Full load. I want to... Just d-do it! Promise!"
Chris looked uncertainly at the monitor, hesitating. It was a bad idea. They shouldn't. No, it was too dangerous-
"Chris?" she whispered beseechingly.
"Titch, I-"
"P-Please..."
"I... promise." Chris sighed, reluctantly punching in a few more keys. The tiny persocom flashed him a shaky smile as he pressed Enter.
Then she threw back her head, and screamed.
"TITCH!" Chris yelled, scrabbling for the cable where it plugged into the terminal.
"AAAH NOOO! YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED! YOU FUCKING PROMISED!" she wailed, her piercing voice ringing in Chris's ears. He gritted his teeth, forcing his hand to move away. Titch convulsed, falling over. The screaming did not stop.
Chris turned desperately to the monitor, his eyes flying over the readout. It was working. Twenty seconds. An eternity.
Hurry!
Titch's body began to spasm, her anguished cries coming in shrill bursts now. Chris picked her up and held her as gently as he could, tears springing to his eyes as her little body failed in his hands. He felt the heat growing inside her.
Ten seconds.
Titch fell to whimpering, her spasms slowing down.
8 seconds
"I can..."
7 seconds
"do... it..."
6 seconds
She fell silent, twitching.
Oh no.
Smoke. She fell still.
Titch!
He tore the cable from the terminal. She was too hot to touch, but he held her anyway.
TITCH!
The smoke was thick, now. His hands seared with the pain.
NO
As her body began to melt in front of him, Chris was the one who was screaming.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Chris gasped, opening his eyes. "Titch!"
Bedroom ceiling.
A dream.
Oh thank Christ.
He exhaled, lifting his arms to look at his shaking hands. Hands that just a moment ago were holding... No. He dropped his hands onto his face, groaning. The rest of the previous day had been uneventful. He'd left Titch downstairs, deactivated. Admittedly, he shouldn't have. Without her he couldn't run tests on the Interpreter, so he had resigned to fruitlessly pouring over the useless snippets they'd found. But then he remembered, he was still angry at her.
Just a machine... right?
He sighed. Two of them, now. He wondered how Ivy got on last night. Truthfully, he'd been avoiding his new persocom. He'd heard her moving quietly about the house at times, behind the locked home office door. She never tried the handle, and Chris had no idea if she knew it was locked or not. She was nowhere to be seen when he'd gone to bed; perhaps being quiet downstairs.
Chris stretched, splaying his legs a little. His leg bumped into something warm and soft, and so he reflexively rolled over... coming face-to-face with Ivy.
"Morning, roomie!" she said chirpily, poking him on the nose.
"YAA-WHAT THE F-ooof!" Chris scrambled away from the persocom, landing roughly on the bedroom floor.
Ivy sat up and yawned, stretching. "Phew! That was a good night. This bed's really comfy!" she bounced on it experimentally, grinning and wrinkling her nose as she looked at him.
Heart racing with fright and confusion, Chris stared, panting, at a complete loss for words. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, a loud high-pitched laugh spilled into the room from the doorway.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Titch cried, as Ivy joined in with the laughter. "Ooh, just look at your stupid face! Hahaa! You look like a deer in headlights. Aaand *click*!" She held her little hands up, making a picture frame of the scene. "That one's your new background on every terminal in the house."
"Hahaha! You were right," Ivy laughed, waving at the still-hysterical Titch. "That reaction was priceless!"
"I KNOW! Ohh Chris, you don't look so good. Rough night? Hahaha!" Titch guffawed.
"What. The fuck. Is going on?" Chris grated, his voice wavering with stress as he glared at the two of them. Ivy bounced out of the bed and waltzed out of the room, laughing all the way, so he directed his glare at Titch. "What have you done?"
"Well," Titch said, trotting towards him in between fits of giggling that sent her little bell ringing. "It turns out Ivy's running the latest KESS ESC, hahaha - and - and wouldn't you know, heheh, someone went and left her on default settings yesterday! Hahaha! Soooo... I thought I'd make few changes!"
She pointed at the empty doorway, hardly holding herself together. "Snnnrk! What - what do you think, Chris? Do - do you likey? Hahahahaha!"
"For fuck's sake, Titch... arrgh!" Chris clapped a hand to his face. "No, I don't. This is awkward as shit. Set her back!" Five minutes awake and his nerves were already a bag of smashed bricks!
"Oh come on, you wuss. I saw how creeped out you were by her yesterday and she did as well, you know! You couldn't wait to get away from her! This is definitely better than you tip-toeing around your own house."
"Coffee?" Ivy said cheerfully, as she strode back into the room with a mug. "Titch is right." she explained, matter-of-factly. "I'd have adjusted anyway, as dictated by my default parameters. Adjustment helps me integrate better with any humans I'll live with by becoming more compatible with them. Titch just sped things up a little."
"Over four thousand parameters configured!" Titch beamed, proudly. "Boy, she sure is complicated. You know, for a machine. I bet that manual comes in a bigger box than you did, Ivy!" Ivy laughed at that, putting the cup on the bedside table and flopping back onto the covers.
"Woa, wait - Titch - configured?! Ivy, you connected to Titch? Oh no! No, I told you not to do that!" Chris said frantically, picking himself up off the floor.
"Of course I didn't. You told me not to. So we just talked it out!" Ivy said, cheerfully.
"Which, by the way, took forever. You're welcome." Titch said, hands on hips and bell jingling as she waggled her head from side to side.
Chris reached for the coffee. Closing his eyes, he blocked out the room for a moment and took a long, deep drink. It tasted good, and it was the perfect temperature.
"Why did you listen to her, Ivy?" Chris asked grumpily, looking at the mug. She did not deserve thanks for this delicious coffee.
"You didn't tell me not to listen," Ivy retorted, "Besides, collecting data from persocoms about the people I interact with falls within the purview of my default settings, as does modifying my own parameters like I said." she paused for a second, considering him. "You should know that, surely? You work on this sort of stuff for a living, Titch said."
"I do know that." Chris replied indignantly. "I... just... It's the morning, I'm... tired. Shut up. Both of you, go away."
Ivy shrugged, hopping up and leaving the room with the legs of her jogging bottoms trailing along the floor. Titch stayed right where she was.
"Aww, Cwissy. I'm sorry." she said, pouting cutely. "But please give Ivy a chance. Maybe she wouldn't be quite like this if she'd auto-set... but trust me, it's better this way. I love her like this, she's so funny! You know this was practically her idea, heh! She said it would be way more fun than a wake-up alarm. It took her two minutes and four-point-three-four seconds to sneak into that bed 'cuz of the squeaky floorboards and then you woke yourself up anyway, but oooh, it was still totally worth it-"
"Titch," Chris said quietly, putting his cup down as he remembered. "Why are you not deactivated?"
Titch's eyes flew wide open. For several seconds, she didn't speak. "Uh... Oh. Well-"
"You pretended, yesterday." Chris stated, not looking at her.
"...yeah."
"You ignored a deactivation command."
"...y-yeah."
Titch appeared to wilt before him.
"Please leave." Chris said, quieter still. She left quickly, pattering out of the room without another word.
Chris fought down a rising sense of panic. Titch might ignore an everyday request; indeed, she did that a lot lately. But now she could bypass a call to command mode? Now, Titch could circumvent a deactivation request? The implications were terrifying. Nothing took higher priority than a call to command mode from an authorised human, at least in NEIS system architecture. All upper levels of the operating system were bypassed, creating a direct link to the underlying logic. If infected persocoms could refuse such requests...!
Chris finished the coffee slowly, calming his jangling nerves. Just a dream. Titch was OK. She was probably right about Ivy, too.
In spite of himself, he chuckled. It was kind of a funny prank, in retrospect.