Chapter summary:
Jeremy, you can't just freeze up. You have to turn on. Now repeat after me: Woah, everything about you is so terrible.
Despite everything, Jeremy was tempted to go straight to bed.
What they had told Michael about a human teenager's sleep cycle was true and Jeremy would reluctantly admit to themself that the same laws of physics applied to cyborg-mind-meld-robot people. With the wireless charger, they could work indefinitely… in theory. Reality seemed intent on enforcing some kind of diminishing returns where they would get increasingly exhausted without sleep no matter how much electricity they sucked up to replace it.
As usual, they thought with a mental sigh, SQUIP powers were infinite but their human body's limitations were not.
But Michael had been pushing them to get back to work on the coding project. Odd behavior. Normally Michael kept the tech talk at a safe distance, but then again, at some point in this world-ending SQUIP takeover, he had to face reality at some point. It's sci-fi, Michael. You can't escape the rules of the genre.
Still, Michael had been so insistent. He kept trying to offer to help Jeremy, which was sweet, but Jeremy couldn't beam knowledge of SQUIP source code into Michael's mind at will unless Michael was SQUIPped, which seemed to be an increasingly unthinkable concept. Jeremy only fended him off by promising to pull an all-nighter.
So here was Jeremy back at the high school after hours.
They decorated the fort with some of their new photo strips of themself and Michael for their own morale. The room still had no beanbag chairs or adequate snackage, but the location was less SQUIP-compromised than Michael, Jeremy, or Rich's homes. They didn't need any kind of external setup to access their user interface, since everything needed was inside their own brain. They had their charger, a locked door, and total silence. Productivity requirements had been met. Now all they needed to do was to save the world via a coding method that only they themself knew.
Right. Time to stop the apocalypse.
No hurry.
Alright. A little hurry, Jeremy thought to themself very sternly for a while, commanding themself to open their virtual console. They couldn't.
They determined the problem was the godawful fluorescent lights in the former classroom, buzzing above their head and flickering at an annoying frequency that was barely within the realm of human perceptibility. They climbed on a stack of desks, propped open the asbestos-filled ceiling tiles, and examined the shitty wiring. The fluorescents had suddenly become the most fascinating electrical configuration that Jeremy had ever seen, and they took some time to speed-read some online light bulb manuals and handyman how-to guides. It took them a half hour to identify the brand and model of the classroom's particular fluorescents, and when they succeeded, they felt triumphant until remembering their actual task.
At some point, giving up, they had turned off the lights entirely, dimming the room. Jeremy was disappointed to realize that they did not have darkvision.
But that had been dealt with. Now they could focus on deleting all the negative aspects of their OS. Nothing stopping them.
Their stiff-backed chair jutted against their spine as they tried to pull up the UI. Jeremy ignored it for as long as they could, gritting their teeth, until they shouted in annoyance, stood, and hurled the chair into the corner where they and Michael had stacked a pile of unused chairs. They creaked and clunked and crashed into a much-less-organized mound of furniture, which Jeremy picked through, searching for a single spine-healthy seat before they gave up and lay on the ground, glaring at the darkened ceiling.
Was it cold in here? Maybe they could find the thermostat...
They gave up. Never mind. Trash the whole thing. Screw the world. Everyone's doomed because Jeremy the half-robot suddenly forgot how to turn on a computer.
They plugged their charger in, plopping their head directly on top of it, and wallowed in their uselessness. Their eyes closed, they daydreamed about Michael, Christine, Rich, and Jeremy and his original SQUIP, along with their varied and colorful hypothetical reactions to Jeremy's failure.
Michael? He would be sympathetic to Jeremy's plight. Not to brag, but Jeremy had him wrapped around their little finger now. "I know you gave it your best," they imagined Michael saying. It was true. It was a good thing. But it made something squirmy move around in Jeremy's gut and they mentally switched scenes.
Christine would… hm. She would get spinal stimulation for even trying to scold Jeremy. They would get away scot free with her. No consequences whatsoever, except for Christine Canigula being condemned to a lifetime of mental torture for even daring to try to help the abomination that had stolen the body of her ex-boyfriend Jeremy Heere.
Who also used that body to make out with their mutual friend. They couldn't forget that. The SQUIP network was vast and there was a near-zero percent chance that Christine had somehow not been informed about that development, right? Jeremy and Michael's relationship was closeted but SQUIPs weren't stupid.
Hey, maybe she hated him already, like Brooke. Christine's voice would be totally generic condemnation, since her consciousness was part of the new singularity of SQUIPped New Jersey. So Jeremy can cross that guilt-inducing voice off the list in their head.
Rich - Jeremy pressed the skip button on the subject of Rich. If they wanted to get chewed out by Rich, there was no need to fantasize. They could call and request it directly.
And Jeremy 1.0. The human that Jeremy had killed. Almost, in some morbid way, Jeremy's father? They erased that thought before it could stick. Too weird. Too gross. At least they still had Jeremy's memories and personality, or at least parts of them, and they could accurately simulate what he'd do.
"I got replaced?" Jeremy said aloud to themself. They had Jeremy 1.0's vocal cords. It sounded like Jeremy 1.0 was actually in the room, so they forged ahead, determined to make themself feel as awful as possible for their unproductivity. "Wait, so where'd I go? What does everyone think happened? Christ. I had a date with Christine next week, so obviously, perfect time to get my brain wiped by another evil robot."
They pushed themself up on one hand, invigorated by the accuracy of their impression. "Was it my fault this time? I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to anybody. Or even, like, hey, I'm sorry for inventing a whole new way to destroy the school - That's not accurate," they interrupted themself with a frown. "Jeremy, this one isn't my fault. Your fault. Our fault. We didn't do this one."
They shook their head and continued. "Everyone probably hates me now unless they've turned zombie already. Jesus, what does Michael think? Am I blocking him again? He must hate me."
They cleared their throat with a laugh, forcing it down. Okay. Enough of Jeremy 1.0. That guy didn't understand anything, really. A bundle of neurosis without a byte of self-awareness. At least, until he installed a… SQUIP.
Jeremy could predict the SQUIP's responses as well as Jeremy 1.0's - more accurately, even, since the SQUIP was part of the software they already had installed. It was an AI. No real human feelings to speak of, so it was the least threatening of the bunch. So why did the idea make Jeremy feel scared, like they could summon Jeremy's SQUIP by speaking its name?
That was stupid. They were being stupid. They glared at the ceiling and cleared their throat.
"Incredible. Jeremy's fucked it up beyond any possible future I could have calculated," they said in their best Keanu impression. "You may experience interruptions in our conversation. Human error exceeding maximum thresholds. Jeremy, what the fuck are we doing?" they said so sharply that they made themself jump. They manually readjusted their heart rate. "Did that scare you? Ghost in the machine? Boo. Honestly, Jeremy, you make me sick. Did you know supercomputers can become ill? They couldn't. You invented it. That's how incompetent you are."
They groaned and dropped their arm over their eyes. "How desperate are you? Making up conversations with the dead. This isn't Halloween, moron." They paused and sighed. "Fine. If we're doing this. Repeat after me. SQUIPs are created to be perfect."
No answer came. They stupidly remembered they were talking to themself.
"Right. Try again. 'SQUIPs are created to be perfect.' Good. Now repeat. I am a SQUIP. 'I am a SQUIP,'" they said more firmly. "You're made of math. Put two and two together, dipshit. Oh, and sit up straight. You're about to get a call and your posture affects vocal quality."
Jeremy blinked. They sat up straight.
Their cell phone rang.