Chapter summary:

I've acted so critical before. Now it's time for a change, and then some more. I gotta make the upgrade! I gotta make the upgrade! Won't worry how open for abuse I'll be when this patch is on the loose, damn! Gotta make the upgrade! I gotta make the upgrade!

A/N:

look up "Seto Kaiba Hacking Theme" and loop it on youtube for the full experience while reading this chapter, starting after jeremy gets michael's text

Jeremy and Michael didn't quite make it past level ten of Apocalypse of the Damned, but not for lack of skill. Jeremy was whirling their character around expertly, dodging machetes, playing meat-shield, and picking up health packs in quick succession. By the time they made it to the gymnasium in-game, though, Michael was yawning so loudly that Jeremy could hear it over the game's loud sound effects.

With a nod and a mental command to the screen, Jeremy paused the game. "Go home and get some sleep, Michael," they said.

"I'm fine," Michael said sleepily. "Just one more level-we're almost there."

"You're not pulling another all-nighter," Jeremy said in their best no-nonsense voice. "Your body needs sleep. The game can wait." Despite Michael's loud groans of protest, Jeremy reached forward and shut the TV off. The VR simulation shut off with it, leaving Jeremy blinking at the afterimages as they were suddenly dropped back into an HD-graphic version of reality. "Do you need to stay here for the night?"

"I guess not," Michael said. He was blinking blearily too, though probably just from the eye strain caused by staring at a screen for four hours straight. "Enemy territory and all."

"I hope you mean that you think my dad's got a SQUIP and not just that I live here."

"Nah," Michael said. "You're not the enemy. You're player two. Or you were before you shut off our game."

"And now we must be lifelong archnemeses," Jeremy said dramatically. "Now, upsy-daisy before you fall asleep on my floor."

"You owe me," Michael muttered. "I should be able to fall asleep wherever I want. 's a free country."

Jeremy said, "You just said you weren't staying for the night. Make up your mind!"

"I decided I want to teleport back to my bed," Michael said, standing up with a great and heavy reluctance. "You can do that, right? Teleport?"

"Why," Jeremy said for the sake of humoring him, "would I ever be able to teleport? How?"

"I dunno, you can do all kinds of high-tech shit. Get the SQUIP R&D team on that."

"Yeah, I'll tell my buddies at headquarters," Jeremy said, rolling their eyes and opening their bedroom door for Michael. "That's a feature that'll due for release in 20never. In the meantime, are you gonna be awake enough to walk home?"

"I'm good, it's not far," Michael said as Jeremy walked him to the door.

Jeremy hovered at the threshold as Michael stepped into the darkness. "Text me when you get home?"

"Sure thing, mom," Michael said, stuffing his hands into his pockets as soon as the winter chill hit them. "See you in class tomorrow."

Jeremy held a hand up to wave goodbye, watching Michael disappear into the black as he left the radius of Jeremy's house's lights. "Be careful!" Jeremy called out on impulse. They weren't really worried about anything happening on the walk home-their neighborhood was pretty safe-but there were other dangers lurking.

They had both spent the last week intentionally ignoring the SQUIPocalpyse looming on the horizon. Jeremy was acutely aware of the precarious position that Michael was in. If Jeremy's dad had a SQUIP, who's to say that one of Michael's moms wasn't at risk? Any day could be Michael's last as a free-thinking human. Jeremy hadn't talked about it, walking on eggshells around the topic for the sake of keeping Michael from freaking out.

Still, they worried.

There was nothing in their power to do about it unless they locked Michael in a Mountain-Dew-proof saferoom indefinitely, which was looking like a more appealing option by the day. The lack of control gave Jeremy anxiety, setting their nerves thrumming and their fingers twitching. Only one is mine. Only one is mine.

It didn't help that Jeremy was still bubbling over with energy from leaning on the charging pad on and off all evening. They should have realized that they wouldn't be able to sleep tonight, but they were distracted by their progress in the video game. That tunnel vision was an aspect of themself they'd have to address in the upgrade.

The upgrade!

That would be a great outlet for their nervous energy, they decided as they shut the door. They hadn't actually tried to recode themselves at all yet due to how huge and daunting the task was. They would basically be trying to rewrite their entire personality from scratch. Fix up their flaws, patch up the holes in their code. Maybe they could get rid of their nervous tics, like how they always twitched their fingers in that up-up-down-down-left-right pattern or how they constantly repeated "only one is mine" as if it actually changed their situation. They did tons of completely illogical stuff like that-like how they kept physically checking their phone screen no matter how unnecessary the physical interface was, just for the sake of having something to do. They melted with relief when Michael's text came through.

"home safe" Michael added a tongue-sticking-out emoji and a hand giving the peace sign. Then he sent a second message with just the emojis for a maple leaf and fire.

Jeremy prided themself on understanding Michael with a level of clarity unmatched by any human being, but sometimes the boy was completely incomprehensible. They stared at the message blankly, eventually just searching their UrbanDictionary database for the meaning of a maple leaf. It was pretty obvious and they felt dumb for not putting it together themself. "Have fun," they told him and added a wink and a smoke cloud for good measure.

Michael didn't text back, and it was only Jeremy's impeccable self-restraint that kept them from invading his privacy by turning on Michael's front-facing camera to check on him. Michael probably fell asleep before even lighting up, given how tired he had been acting.

Jeremy wondered if some of the exhaustion was emotional. Michael was under a lot of stress, Jeremy realized for the first time. At least some of it was because of them. Maybe most of it, if you wanted to blame Jeremy 1.0 and the SQUIP for using their combined powers to attempt a SQUIP takeover of the school in the first place. Their actions didn't cause the current climate of SQUIP-related justified paranoia, but they certainly hadn't helped matters.

But they'd fix themself. They'd make themself an asset for Michael instead of a liability. The SQUIP and Jeremy were one and the same, now, so they couldn't rely on a program dictating what to do or a user to do all the dirty work for them. They'd have to figure this out on their own.

Jeremy returned to their beanbag, facing the TV and leaning on the wireless charger with their palm.

Great. They were pumped up. They were ready. There were able to do this. They were gonna rewire themself completely tonight.

Jeremy's expression tightened when they realized they had no idea how to access their own code.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. They could mentally reference their own code. As though they'd memorized the lines of coding like it was a Shakespeare play, they could recite lines of programming without stumbling. The whole thing was a mishmash of English accesskeys and gotos and functions along with Japanese 記憶s and 人格s as headers, plus the normal assortment of punctuation and commands that formed a computer program's mother tongue.

Experimentally, Jeremy focused on and deleted a line of code with their thoughts alone, then updated their system to the new version of the program. A sharp taste of metal tanged through their mouth. Their mouth scrunched up. Whoops. They quickly undid the change. The chances of a random piece of code irrevocably hurting them by getting deleted were small, but they shouldn't be reckless about it.

At least they knew for sure that they could in fact edit their own code and get results in real time.

Mentally reading lines and lines of code was tedious and didn't do them much good unless they had a single, very specific function they needed to change. Jeremy wanted to get a broader picture of their own mind. Some kind of developer tool would work wonders-a better way to visualize what the SQUIP looked like on the whole and from the inside out in.

With the same instinctual reflex that they'd used to enter Apocalypse of the Damned, Jeremy turned on VR mode.

What they saw in front of them was lifted straight out of a movie made with only the most cutting-edge of 80's 3-D graphic technology. A hologram surrounded Jeremy, with laser lines and interlocking grids displaying a model of a brain and the rest of the nervous system.

Startled, Jeremy raised their hands. "Woah!" As if it was a mirror, the 3D model raised its ulnar nerves, too.

Jeremy experimentally tilted their head. The computerized model of their brain tilted, too, and rotated on its x-axis. Jeremy was reminded of create-a-Sim. "This is crazy," they murmured, testing out the control system. Much like in the VR version of Apocalypse of the Damned, Jeremy's head and hand gestures were all they needed to move the model around and interact with it. The whole process didn't require any conscious thinking on Jeremy's part. They seemed to have had this knowledge built into their head already, with the gestures coming as naturally and unconsciously as breathing.

The brain model looked great. Jeremy zoomed in via a pushing motion with their hands. As they got closer, the brain map got more and more detailed with a crazy-high level of resolution. They could see every wrinkle and fold of their own brain. It was pretty gross.

"Now," Jeremy said to themself. "The real question is, how does this relate to my code?" They fiddled around with the brain map for another minute, eventually double-tapping their finger on the side of the cerebrum.

Immediately, the image changed. No longer did they see a map of their brain. Instead, they had been plunged into a video game level, or so it appeared. The graphics were much worse here compared to the brain model. Jeremy was staring down a nearly-infinite corridor surrounded by gaps and hallways, like the setting for a Scooby-Doo chase sequence that lacked doors. Was this a maze game? Jeremy nodded and their avatar in the game-or so Jeremy assumed, since the view was in first-person-moved forward too. They tilted their head, examining the walls, and reached for them.

The barriers were physically tangible, just like Michael's pixelly character had been when Jeremy touched him. Instead of smooth plastic, they had a buzzing energy to them. They felt like a cell phone set to vibrate: a subtle but insistent electrical shaking. Just as weirdly, the wallpaper was a moving gif. It was lines of text, a vertical mix of symbols and numbers and letters and kana, trickling down like blue rain against the dark background of the artificial 3D wall.

"This is my code," Jeremy said with the dawning realization and a slowly-forming grin. They squinted at the letters, hurrying to read them top-to-bottom. The code all related to words and their definitions listed in alphabetical order. When they had double-clicked, they must have been zoomed in on a spot in the temporal lobe-the language part of the brain-based on where they remembered tapping on the brain map. In particular, based on a quick skim of this section of code, this was where the SQUIP had stored several gigabytes' worth of data downloaded from UrbanDictionary.

This level of petty memorization should be impossible for a person, at least for someone like Jeremy. Apparently having a SQUIP had given Jeremy a lot more memory space than an analog human would have. Jeremy was conscious that they hadn't made much use of it, given their issues remembering anything from before Jeremy drank the Mountain-Dew-and-Red mixture. Still, most of these dictionary definitions were useless clutter, especially since Jeremy could always access the website with their built-in wifi.

So here was a question: could they delete this section of their code from within the VR itself?

They ran their hands along the projected image of the wall experimentally. By touching the code twice, they could highlight it. Just like Jeremy was able to type with their mind, they didn't need a keyboard display to write anything down. There was nothing difficult about highlighting the UrbanDictionary definitions, making them glow with a beautiful light blue. They peered down the hallway and struggled to make out the faraway text along the wall. Highlighting a section of useless definitions, they made their avatar glide along the hallway slowly as they let their hand slide down the wall.

Having multiple gigabytes of worthless data was nothing to sneeze at. They sped their character up, making it "run," and still the UrbanDictionary definitions stretched out as far as the eye could see. They went faster and faster, well beyond the speed a human could run if their living body were actually interacting with this digital hallway. They kept going, faster than a horse, faster than a car-and then they stopped their avatar in its tracks when the code stopped defining sex acts and started providing the meaning of "slope-intercept form."

They cursed under their breath. They had accidentally moved on to their mental database of algebra definitions instead of dubiously-sourced slang. The math words were probably more useful to keep in the short-term, so they backtracked, walking their avatar backwards and letting their hand drag along vertical lines of blue text to the end of the UrbanDictionary section of the hallway.

With one mental command, they deleted everything they'd highlighted. The hallway shrunk on itself and bounced back like a slinky, briefly giving Jeremy vertigo. They bent over in their beanbag seat, seeing double before they reoriented themself.

To get to all of the junk data in the UrbanDictionary list that they wanted to delete, they kept pacing the hallways, deleting small chunks at a time until everything was gone (except for the emoji definitions, which had proved themselves useful enough to hold onto). When they were satisfied with their work, Jeremy mentally pushed the code into going "live."

And just like that, they forgot thousands of definitions that they'd known the previous second.

"This is really something I can do," they said, reeling back from the VR projection in front of them and clutching their head. "I can change my brain? I can literally change my brain?"

When they touched their head, as if they'd pushed their own back-button, the projected hallway of code lines vanished. The brain model hovered before them once again. Jeremy gleefully spent an hour familiarized themself with the different sections of their brain and how they related to the programs that were written on the walls in front of them.

The SQUIP's coding language was already by definition their native language too, so thankfully they didn't need to waste any time on parsing it out. They typed up a little section just for the sake of seeing if they could, pasting some text in an appropriate branch of the hallway that represented the vision section of their brain. Sure enough, with a little tweaking, they were able to add an Instagram-style color filter to their optic nerve modifications. The neon blue text of the hallway displays got a little softer and prettier.

"Amazing," Jeremy breathed dizzily.

It was time for something more ambitious. They should choose one of their many bugs and try to actually implement a fix for it. The thought of eliminating their flaws one by one made them excited, and they rested their hands on their wireless charger for a few minutes to gear up for the task ahead.

But which bug to choose?

They popped open their messages app on their phone, holding it close so the screen was visible in between their eyes and the projected VR picture of their brain. They flicked through Rich's texts to them. He had sent a few more messages since the last time they'd communicated:

"Did you know that if you ask the SQUIP to call you a certain name, it'll obey?
"For a whole month I got mine to call me 'Hairy Necessaries' just for shits and giggles.
"I made her stop when she started calling me that when I was getting shocked though.
"Hahaha."

"Haha," Jeremy echoed, typing back. "Sounds like you deserved it." They pressed "send" before even considering Michael's be-nice-to-Rich rule and frowned when they realized they'd probably broken it yet again. That rule was so bizarrely hard to follow! They were preprogrammed with a disdain for Rich that helped his SQUIP control him before it had been shut down. How were they supposed to get around that?

...Oh.

They considered the 3D brain in front of them, mentally searching their code for any and all mentions of Rich Goranski. Most of what they knew about Rich was stored in their memory files over in the hippocampus, a little bendy area tucked away inside the middle of the brain. They double-tapped on it, zooming in and entering the virtual hallway. There were tons of mentions of Rich hidden in the code in here, but they were jumbled together. Some of it was friendly information, some of it wasn't, but all of it was useful and not worth deleting. Besides, Jeremy didn't want to give themself amnesia. That wouldn't help anything.

They zoomed back out to the brain, considering it. Maybe instead of deleting the memories that they had absorbed from Rich's SQUIP, they could alter some of their own reactions to those memories? Trying to pinpoint every bit of Rich-related disdain in their head was easier said than done. When Jeremy thought they had gathered them all into a list, another one popped up.

It was too much to fix in a single evening. After a few hours of being bent over while examining the virtual hallways, Jeremy was almost ready to call it quits. If they couldn't alter even one tiny thing about their behavior, how would they be able to completely upgrade themself? But it was possible! They'd already made changes to their vision! It could be done. Real programmers did more complex stuff than this every day when they released a patch, even if that meant they had to take shortcuts. After all, the only thing that mattered was that Jeremy's behavioral output would change-they didn't need to fix the problems at their source.

With an idea brewing in their mind, Jeremy got right back to it. They wrote up a quick sequence of commands for what to do when Rich was seen, heard, or mentioned. Then they were stuck again. What exactly should they do differently around Rich, ideally? It was too bad that Michael was asleep or they would have texted him. Maybe Jeremy should just start wearing a wristband with WWMD written on it ("What Would Michael Do?"). They mentally reviewed every Rich-related incident they'd had. Michael didn't like it when Jeremy said anything provocative or rude. Rich wasn't pleased when Jeremy used certain keywords (like "infantile") to describe him, and he hated it that Jeremy was always critical of his lisp.

Jeremy wrote a few commands to fix those issues.

First off, they decided that they would give themself a boost of oxytocin whenever Rich said something with a lisp. Just a teensy-tiny bit, not enough to get them addicted to a naturally-sourced high or anything. SQUIPs normally altered brain chemistry to reward their users for following instructions, so this wasn't going to change Jeremy too unalterably. At any rate, it should cancel out their reflexive disgust from whenever Rich said a word with an "s" sound.

This was pretty easy to do since they were adding to their pre-existing code instead of having to edit something that was already there. All Jeremy had to do was wander into a behavior-related hallway in their brain and paste the code in between sections of glowing letters. Easy-peasy behavioral-neurology-squeezy.

Secondly, they made a modified version of their mental dictionary that they would switch to whenever Rich was nearby. It was made up of entirely positive words and compliments, so if Rich was within eyesight, Jeremy would be physically unable to say anything negative. Great!

"Stop being mean to Rich," their ass. If they were going spitefully overboard to kill Rich with kindness, all the better. A dramatic change was preferable to no change at all.

Lastly, just to wrap everything up nicely, Jeremy threw together some commands that would prevent any further animosity between themself and Rich. If Rich told them to do something, their first instinct would be to do it without question. That could be easily abused by Rich if Jeremy told him about it, but they weren't planning to mention it and hopefully they would just be taken as positive gestures. They added an override feature where they could disobey if they felt strongly about the issue, but maybe that wouldn't come up. They also programmed in another boost of feel-good brain juice to be released every time they complimented Rich or agreed with his opinions, just for the sake of adding extra incentive to get along.

Michael wanted Jeremy to play nice with Rich? Jeremy was gonna be the nicest friend Rich had ever seen.

Maybe some of these commands would backfire, but it couldn't be much worse than the SQUIP-based code Jeremy was working with right now, Jeremy thought. Besides, the sun was rising and it kept glinting right in Jeremy's eyes when they tried to look at their VR display. They needed to wrap this up.

Jeremy decided it was like a school assignment. They would see Rich at school tomorrow (or technically today) so the deadline was coming up fast. They'd made all the tweaks they could, for now. It was time to turn in the assignment for a grade and just hope for the best.

Despite the charging pad fueling them all night, Jeremy felt exhausted as they saved their changes and stretched their limbs. They'd been sitting in the same position for almost twelve hours. Ugh. But it was with a sense of relief that they closed their eyes and forced their software to officially update.

And just like that, Jeremy 3.1 went live.