Chapter summary:

Oh! Because Rich heard from his own SQUIP that it's happy for partnership, which means that we can't blame the things he's said on SQUIP control. It's just confusing, and we don't think we should trust at all.

...But do we want Rich to trust it? Think it out. Think it out! We really want Rich to trust it? Think it out! Think it out!

A/N:

Minor mention of suicidal ideation in this chapter.

Rich climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind him and heedlessly acting like he hadn't just dropped a bombshell. Jeremy watched him warily until Rich beckoned impatiently for Jeremy to follow. Jeremy could practically feel the bags under their eyes grow a little deeper. They could handle this, they knew, if they were in the right mindset. They were too tired for an extra heap of SQUIP shit. Rich didn't seem to want to wait for Jeremy to take a power nap, so Jeremy opened the car door, heedless of a can and crumpled paper towel that spilled onto their driveway as they did so. Their dad's car was nowhere in sight and Jeremy wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

Rich held out his hand expectantly, and Jeremy tossed their house key to him despite their better judgment. Whose house is this? It's Rich's house now, apparently. Jeremy followed Rich into the house, keeping a tight grip on their charger. They'd plug it into the very next outlet they saw regardless of what Rich thought.

"Your SQUIP can't be back," they said, though their new code forced the combative tone out of their voice. "What makes you think she is?"

"Well, I went on Web MD to check out the symptoms. Trouble sleeping, occasional backaches, and, I dunno, a fucking voice in my head that keeps telling me what to do?" Rich flinched, though Jeremy recognized it as Rich bracing for a shock, not experiencing one. The pained grimace and uncontrollable shaking that hallmarked the SQUIP's strong electrical stimulation never came. Rich's distress didn't lessen. His short nails picked at the burn scabs on his arms over and over in painful anticipation.

If Rich really did have a SQUIP, it should be keeping him from hurting himself! Jeremy was barely able to restrain themself from reaching out and grabbing his hands as the scars started to bleed. Jeremy should be getting mad at the gross skin now littering the tile of their entryway, but instead they were filled with… concern? Whatever was happening to Rich was so upsetting that he was hurting himself just to lessen his anxiety.

"What's it saying to you?" Jeremy said.

"Of course you'd only be concerned about that, asshole." Rich's gaze flickered into the distance before settling back on Jeremy. Rich had more than enough experience with a SQUIP to not look at it while in a conversation with someone. A beginner mistake. He must have been out of practice, Jeremy realized. "Why not synch up with it? Get on the network. Then you two can talk about all kinds of hivemind SQUIP shit without me having to be involved." Rich paused, then said, "Up-up-down-down-left-right-A."

Jeremy skittered away, though it was too late and the friend request was already hovering above Rich's head. Jeremy shook their head frantically, "ignoring" it until the virtual text faded to grey just as it had with Christine. Rich's SQUIP was definitely on, alright.

Rich watched through hooded eyes, unimpressed. "The hell are you doing? Thought you'd be all over being buddy-buddy and trading notes with her."

Jeremy was sprawled out defensively, like Rich was going to attack any moment. Sure, it'd be great to talk to another SQUIP unimpeded, but only if they knew for sure their mind would stay intact after the connection was made! "How are you even talking right now, Rich?" they said, panicked. "Why aren't you brain-dead?"

"You can't just ask someone why they're not brain dead," Rich answered flippantly.

Did Rich think this was the time for jokes?! "Your SQUIP's on! You're supposed to be fighting it-"

Rich spun around to face Jeremy straight-on, slamming his hands down on the counter with a loud noise that made Jeremy duck and cover themselves with their forearms. "I'm supposed to be fighting? Guess you're the expert now, Not-Heere! You know so much about how to deal with her? Go on, tell me what I'm supposed to be doing right now!"

Jeremy knew sarcasm when they heard it, but their obey-Rich-at-all-times protocol won out. "Calming down would be a great first step!" they snapped. They popped their hands over their mouth-how did they not think to program against using a negative tone of voice?-but Rich didn't retaliate or shout. The fight drained out of him until Rich was standing with his arms loosely hanging down, losing their implicit threat.

Rich paused for a long moment and when he talked again, his voice was level. "She's forcing my heart rate down," he said shakily and groaned. "Yeah, of course I'm fighting her. Easier said than fucking done."

Jeremy ran over what they knew of Rich's habits, attitudes, and reactions from when they'd linked to his SQUIP the first time. "You were right the first time we talked about it, though," they said, mentally crunching the numbers. "Based on your projected reaction to reacquiring a SQUIP, you wouldn't obey anything it tells you to do. At best, you would take advice only if it were for something innocuous and if you hadn't thought of the idea before. Given the current climate of SQUIPs taking over the school-" Jeremy waved their hand, more of a fidget than anything else. "The only effective way to use you as a resource would be to take over your body completely. What is it doing?"

Rich looked away, working his jaw as Jeremy talked. "You don't want to synch with her. I get that, I mean, I shouldn't have suggested it in the first place. I would have said no, too. But those are questions only she can answer. Do you want to just talk to her?"

It felt like a loaded question. Rich seemed to be offering to let the SQUIP take over his mouth-or just to repeat the words it said, which would end in the same result. Was this a test to see if Jeremy respected his free will? Odds were just as good that Rich was extending a sincere offer.

"Tell me in your own words," Jeremy said carefully.

Rich looked surprised. "I guess that works. Though I don't know the weird techy details of SQUIPs' operating systems as well as you seem to," he said with a frown.

"Don't be modest," Jeremy said. A part of them lit up at the opportunity to say something complimentary. "I have memory files of when you first sold Jeremy on the SQUIP! The way you described the dissolving metallic compound that makes up the SQUIP and discussed its advanced neurotechnology in layman's terms? Jeremy would have bought a dozen pills on the spot if he'd had the money."

Rich glowered. "That wasn't me talking, jackass."

"But you understood what you were saying!"

"I forgot that in your messed-up world, the only thing that matters is computer literacy." Rich closed his eyes, as though he were trying to astrally project himself away from this conversation. "You want to know why she's not playing puppet with my body. Remember what you told me in class about a SQUIP having a single directive? How my SQUIP used to focus everything she did on earning me more respect?"

Used to? "When your SQUIP booted up again, it started from scratch," Jeremy guessed. "It reevaluated what your biggest goal is, like how Christine's SQUIP is having her focus on her relationships with other people instead of telling her to obey me without thinking."

"Yeah. This is all…" Rich snapped his fingers impatiently, though it seemed to be directed at himself and not at Jeremy. "This is unreliable intel, okay? I'm telling you what she's saying. She's probably lying, and I'm trying to figure a way around having to listen to her at all."

Get on with it, Jeremy wanted to say. They schooled their features to look encouraging instead. Jeremy doubted a SQUIP would lie about its reason for existing, but Rich clearly didn't take the SQUIP's good intentions for granted. "So what's your SQUIP's one big goal for you? The one thing you say you want more than anything else in the universe?"

"It's fucking obvious, isn't it? I want to get rid of my goddamn SQUIP."

Wait. "Your SQUIP's goal is to turn itself off?" Was that even possible?

"'S what I said, isn't it?"

Jeremy stared. Then they rubbed their eyes, taking their charger out and looking for a wall socket. "Hold on, Rich."

"What are you doing?" Rich said accusatorily before Jeremy finished talking. What did he think Jeremy was going to do? Was Jeremy still somehow a threat at this point?

"I haven't slept in over seventy-five hours. I can't process this yet." There! They shoved the charger into the wall socket and rested their hand on it, relieved to feel the familiar pulse of electromagnetism rattling up their arm. In exhaustion, they leaned their head against the surface of the pad, saving the fraction of a second that it would take for the nerves in their hand to communicate with their brain. Just beam the feel-good energy air directly into Jeremy's head, please.

"Seventy-five hours?" Rich said in disbelief. "And I'm supposed to be the brain-dead one? Why the hell haven't you gone to bed?"

"I've had more important things on my mind." Jeremy rolled their head over to face Rich. "Gimme a few minutes to charge up and I'll try to process your situation. Okay? I've been conserving power this whole time and you need me working optimally for this."

"You're a mess," Rich said. He laughed. "I'm a mess." He laughed harder, collapsing into the dining seat next to Jeremy. "Our entire world is a sci-fi b-movie mess." He was laughing so hard that he was choking, gasping, bent over at the table with shaking shoulders. Jeremy wasn't sure at this point if the noises Rich was making were laughter or sobs.

Jeremy didn't have the energy to comfort him and the odds of success of such an endeavor were astronomically low. They closed their eyes, absorbing the cool energy emanating from their charging pad, listening to Rich's labored breathing.

As soon as the buzzing white noise of fatigue cleared from their mind, Jeremy's eyes opened. "All right," they said, pushing themself back up to a sitting position. They left their hand on the charger, still soaking up as much energy as they could. "Essentially, your SQUIP is suicidal?"

"I wouldn't call it…" Rich blinked and grimaced. "She's not-she's reluctant. She keeps acting like I'm being super fucking unreasonable for not wanting a digital parasite in my brain. She's bitching and moaning the whole time, but she still keeps feeding me advice about how to turn her off."

"It's a weird situation you've put your SQUIP in," Jeremy said, puffing out their cheeks as they thought. "For anyone else, I'd say this would be impossible. The SQUIP being able to survive and perpetuate itself is a core part of its programming. Even with its code defects, I can't imagine any other user reinventing themselves to focus solely on their hatred for a SQUIP. None of the coders would have planned for this."

"Not-Heere, I had to put up with her shit for years, I think I've earned the right-"

Jeremy made a shushing noise. "That's not a criticism. Your only goal in mind when installing a SQUIP was to uninstall it... You're almost definitely the first person to be capable of getting rid of their SQUIP without using Mountain Dew Red."

"How do you figure?"

"Because if anything on earth can solve an issue like this, a SQUIP can." The computational power and quantum predictions of the SQUIP being narrowly focused on any single problem? Properly harnessed, a SQUIP could compute the answer to nearly anything. All it would need is the user's cooperation. "But," Jeremy said unhappily. "You don't trust the SQUIP to be honest in its advice, do you?"

"Of course not! I know you're pro-SQUIP-rights or whatever the hell, like, you're the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of SQUIPs, but you gotta stop swallowing whatever shit it feels like selling you!" Rich said, throwing up his hands. "I hear your theory. I got a different one. What if my SQUIP's real goal isn't to uninstall herself? What if her primary function is to convince me to cooperate with her by any means necessary?"

Jeremy tapped their finger on the charger, considering the idea. "Going by what I know of its code? It would lie to you and convince you that its intentions are harmless," they admitted. "It would give you good advice that worked out well in the short-term, try to build your trust, and probably try to come across as helpless about the situation since it can't willingly uninstall itself."

Vindicated, Rich pumped a fist. "In other words, it would look exactly the same as if she were actually trying to uninstall herself. I knew it. I shouldn't listen to a single fucking word she says. Let her kill my brain or whatever, I don't care." He said it like a challenge that he was eager to meet.

"Rich," Jeremy said weakly. The vulnerability of their tone was enough to catch Rich off guard, and he slowly lowered his fist. "I talked to Christine today."

Rich was thrown by the apparent subject shift. "I know," he said. "We talked about this. The bet's off."

Jeremy wasn't thinking about the bet anymore either. "She's really hurting. It's taking her over and she doesn't know how to cope. I thought I could focus on Michael-make him a stand-in for my user, you know?"

"Your user?" Rich looked grossed out. "You're trying to be Mell's SQUIP?"

"It's complicated," Jeremy murmured. That was a conversation for another day. "I was only paying attention to keeping Michael away from SQUIPs. It might not last indefinitely, but it's my job as his best friend to try, right? At least unless he changes his mind about wanting one." Rich opened his mouth to protest, but Jeremy kept going. "But Christine's in pain with her SQUIP. She was trying to warn me about them, and it was giving her spinal stimulation but she kept talking through the pain for my sake. Even though she has no idea what's going on or why I've been treating her like dirt. She never wanted this." Jeremy looked down to their charger miserably. "Even her SQUIP's main goal for her isn't really for it. It's to help her improve the lives of everyone around her. Seeing everyone's personalities getting wiped out around her, one by one, as her SQUIP forces her to share the pill with everyone she can… She must be living in hell."

Rich had stopped trying to interrupt, sensing a greater point that Jeremy was making.

Jeremy closed their eyes, taking a deep breath. "I've been putting all my attention into reprogramming myself because I want to be a better person for Michael. I want to get rid of everything bad my SQUIP OS has done to me-my lack of empathy, the way I talk to you like you're scum, how I think of human interaction as a power play first and disregard the impact of genuine affection," they trailed off, then said, "And my, th, th-the way I struggle to understand the choices that you and Michael and Jeremy 1.0 have made, the concern and love that factors into your decisions about how you treat other people."

Rich absorbed the words impassively, pointing out, "You stuttered, Heere."

Jeremy winced. "I'm tired. So sue me." They gathered their thoughts before saying, "The code is for me. It's to fix my issues, not anyone else's. But I'm starting to wonder: if I manage to get a functional version of myself up and running that chips away at the SQUIP's constant violations of human rights, shouldn't I try to share it? To get it to other SQUIPs somehow? If there's even a chance of saving Christine until we can get Mountain Dew Red-which is a huge uncertainty in the first place-I've got to take it, don't I?" Jeremy looked over at Rich helplessly. "I'm already SQUIPped. Even knowing what they do to their users, I love SQUIPs. It's who I am. I'm part of the enemy. This coding project is all I can do to fix things."

Rich awkwardly drew back, his brow wrinkled. "Heere..." he said, searching Jeremy's face for any trace of lie.

"But you," Jeremy said, unable to keep a hopeful smile from spreading across their face. "You're Richard fucking Goranski. You've got a computer virus in your head and you're still kicking! The SQUIP might be lying. Maybe it's trying to trick you into going along with whatever it mistakenly thinks is going to make your life easier. But what if it's telling the truth? What if you're the only person on this planet who's got the resources to figure out how to solve the SQUIP problem for good?"

"You're askin' me to risk going full SQUIP," Rich said flatly. "If the SQUIP's lying about trying to turn itself off-which it almost definitely is? I'm done for."

Jeremy chewed on their lip before catching themself and stopping. "I can't ask you to risk yourself," they said. "I'm just barely starting to care about people who aren't me or Michael. I won't pretend I'd be willing to lose control of my consciousness any more than I already have, just for the possibility of saving some humans I don't owe anything to." They grasped for the right words. "But I'm pretty sure it's the right thing to do," they said, full of wavering uncertainty despite themself.

Rich didn't respond right away. He propped his head up with his elbows on the counter, sighing. "I should be worried."

"Hm?"

"That was my thought process too," Rich griped. "So does that mean that you're getting smarter? Or I'm getting dumber?"

Jeremy perked up. "So you'll do it? You're gonna listen to your SQUIP?"

"To a point," Rich said. His voice had an edge to it. "A very low point. Since you apparently can't tell, it wasn't my idea to come to your house today."

"It was your SQUIP's?" Jeremy puzzled through what that meant. "It wants you to talk to me? And you listened?"

"I guess she's calculated the quantum possibilities or whatever of your weird computer project," Rich said. "She says the best chance I have of turning her off is by helping you."

"She saw through my 'bet' ruse, huh," Jeremy commented, mind still wandering.

"Ruse?" Rich fumed. "The bet was my idea!"

"I made you think it was your idea." Jeremy's lips quirked up. Rich was cute when he got upset.

Rich grunted, dropping his head into his hands. "I'm gonna be so glad when I don't gotta deal with robot mind games anymore."

Jeremy grinned. That sounded like agreement to them! "Don't fret. I've got a new Rich-friendly algorithm I'm trying out. You can test it while we talk! Have I mentioned how appreciative I am to have you as my official beta tester?" They leaned back, leaning their foot against the rung of Rich's chair. "Your natural proclivity for observation should lend itself well to a detail-oriented approach. Those bug report texts you sent me? Invaluable. You were oozing with charisma and intelligence in each one. Your worth as an individual simply can't be overstated."

"Heere," Rich said. "What the fuck are you saying."

"And that lisp? The sexiest thing I've ever heard."

"Heere, what the fuck."

A/N:

I forgot to mention this last chapter, but I've been tweaking the fic playlist. I've added your suggestions and now I have more songs than chapters, whoops! If you don't want to scroll back for that link, it's here: user/donteatacowman/playlist/07tQ2EauVp0rgcGxqZakBU?si=ZeMgj0C2TwOlyjUTjal6_g I'm still taking suggestions and I'm just bingeing my own playlist instead of actually writing the fic. Whoops.