Chapter summary:

You gotta take the critique, no easy answers, you phreak. Say you have finished, well, that's a relief. Oh, man, you tell Rich goodbye. Maybe you're not a bad guy, and that's the way you get told 'bout grief.

Rich was surprisingly adept at coding, once he wrapped his mind around using a SQUIP as an interface. Code was computer-language; a SQUIP was a human-to-software translator. Rich could simply say, "SQUIP, tell me your predictions for tomorrow morning," and it would happen. Or "SQUIP, turn off my headache," or "SQUIP, tell me how to say 'hello' in Swahili."

"It's like an evil Alexa," Rich marveled at one point. He corrected himself quickly. "It's like Alexa. But with even fewer privacy protections and direct access to my spine."

"Now you're getting it!" Jeremy said with a smile. "Don't worry about security, either. There were admittedly some massive vulnerabilities I had to patch up. You've heard of 'phreaking,' right?"

"I get it," Rich said. "You're a freak."

"No, Rich. Phone phreaking. Old tech used to respond to certain frequencies. Before this update, I honestly think SQUIPs could shut off if you just blasted a loud enough note!"

Jeremy stopped beaming at Rich's suddenly furious expression. Rich didn't yell, though. He simply held his hands up and looked at the sky, as if asking the heavens why he had to put up with supercomputers that were simultaneously geniuses and idiots.

Sometimes, Rich ran into issues. The SQUIP didn't have a "common sense" feature and Jeremy refused to program one. Common sense was such a squishy concept, easily prone to errors… and most importantly, it would take much more programming than Jeremy had time or energy for. Time was of the essence.

The universe, at least, supported Jeremy's frantic work schedule. Their father had started serving breakfast in bed, shaving minutes off Jeremy's morning routine, even if their dad's food choices left Jeremy's breath smelling fishy all day. Fish oil was great for the brain, so they didn't make a fuss.

At one point in class, Jeremy had been asked a question while in the middle of coding. They hadn't been listening to the teacher, responding with a crabby, "I'm working here," as they continued to stare at the billboard. They weren't bothered after that. Classes were increasingly sparse and treated as optional by the school district. This also minimized socialization scenarios, allowing Jeremy even more focus on their project.

They spent most of their time in the Chill Zone. Michael had apparently put bean bags in the room to better match his basement and the school administration had finally switched out the noisy fluorescents for some cool blue LEDs.

Jeremy was grateful for the improvements, but Michael kept trying to talk to them. That in itself wasn't a problem - hell, some snuggling against a beanbag or smooching behind the lockers would be a welcome break - but Michael was so naggy lately. Not the old kind of nagging, where Michael would encourage Jeremy to be a better person or whatever. Instead, all Michael wanted to talk about was the coding project.

"Jeremy, how's the code going?" "Hey Jeremy, any bugs so far?" "Sooo, Jer, what's that code looking like?" No jokes, no fun, until Jeremy finally asked Michael to please leave them alone in the Chill Zone when they were coding. Michael could come in for breaks on a strictly no-project-talk basis, but he hadn't taken Jeremy up on that offer even once.

Jeremy had an easier time than a human would, they admitted to themself. They were prone to procrastination and anxiety, but when they were able to really and truly focus, their super-quantum processor kicked into gear. A human couldn't work this quickly. Sometimes Jeremy got into that headspace for what felt like a full day, only to come back to themself after ten minutes had passed. With every outside distraction having been removed, they had nothing else to do with their life than work on whatever bug Rich brought up.

The bugs, miraculously, became rarer and smaller. Instances of rewriting entire sections of code were fewer and further between. As Jeremy lay back on a red beanbag in the Chill Zone, hands folded on their chest and staring into that beautiful blue light, they breathed out slowly. They were tweaking how much control a user had over their SQUIP's voice - should pitch be adjustable by cent, or should Jeremy use hertz? - when, with abrupt certainty, they knew that the upgrade was complete. The project was done. They couldn't predict any further improvement to be made, at least not without more than one user offering input. All Jeremy could do was clean it up and hope they didn't inadvertently doom Rich, Christine, and with them, the entire human race. They ran a self-check, making sure they hadn't missed anything obvious, and that was it.

They summoned Rich. Jeremy's concentration vanished, replaced with full-body tension, as Rich connected to the XBox and downloaded the update with the same devil-may-care attitude as Rich had shown for the entirety of the project.

And it was done. Rich stretched and grinned. "Well. That's that. Next step is to see Jake, I guess. Get back in the network and try to stay sane. Good work, Heere." He clapped Jeremy on the back. "Hit the showers. I'll call you if someone dies."

What else was there to say? They'd done all they could. Jeremy knew that. They had enough of the code memorized to understand the likelihood of bugs and potential fixes, of worst-case scenarios and rollbacks, but, but, but. Sending Rich off into an invading SQUIP-controlled zombie hoard, no matter how many precautions they had taken, sure felt like leaving him for dead.

"I'm sorry," Jeremy said without meaning to.

Rich glanced behind him, already apparently having moved on from this momentous moment and ready to hitchhike to Sbarro's. "You're sorry. About something in particular, or are you saying that to make yourself feel better if this software fries my brain?"

"About Jeremy."

Rich didn't answer. Jeremy swallowed. "Just… before you go. I know I killed him. Not on purpose, but I only exist because he doesn't. That means I took your friend away from you, and that's - it's - I know I'm unforgivable. I'm not asking you to-"

Rich sighed loudly, so exasperated and melodramatic that Jeremy expected a punchline. "Heere," Rich said. "Not-Heere. Whatever you wanna be called. You've been telling me that SQUIPs aren't separate people. They're part of their user. And we already established that you've got a soul. You haven't supercomputed the implications yet, smart guy?"

Jeremy shook their head. They didn't see what those facts had to do with Jeremy Heere 1.0 being deader than Flash.

"So…" Rich said slowly, as if Jeremy would interrupt to finish the sentence for him. "The SQUIP was part of Heere's personality. The SQUIP and Heere merged. That means you have half of Heere's personality, times two, right?"

"I don't think that's how the math works." Jeremy leaned back, automatically folding their arms and propping up one foot. "The SQUIP - or, technically, the character with a Keanu Reeves avatar running a SQUIP program, which Jeremy projected his ideal role model onto - made up a very tiny part of Jeremy's personality. It's probably overestimating to even call that .01% of Jeremy. So that means that I would at most have had 50.01% of-"

Rich snapped his fingers at them. "Don't be literal. C'mon. My point is, you're not an invader that replaced Heere. Personality-wise, you're just some parts of him stuck in a blender and then poured back in his brain-hole with a tic tac garnish." Both kids pulled the same grossed-out face at the mental image.

"That doesn't matter. I still replaced him," Jeremy said quickly. "You told me yourself that Jeremy 1.0 was killed!"

"Fuck!" Rich held his hands up. "Let me have some human error once in a while! I didn't know about all this shit. And Jesus, you were acting super evil."

Jeremy swallowed. Their throat was suddenly dry. "You… don't think that anymore? Really?" Hopefully, they said, "Is it because of my Rich-friendly protocol? I haven't been f-following the rules at this point, but maybe it affected my software more than I thought."

"No. Shut up. No. This isn't because of any more computer bullshit." Rich put a fist against his forehead and closed his eyes. "Look. Okay. After the school play, when I was in the hospital. Remem - maybe you don't remember. But I was still recovering from the fire when, bzzt, my brain did something weird and the machines went wild and the nurses all thought I was dying. Turns out Mell shut all the SQUIPs down, so, sunshine and roses from there. Except not exactly."

Jeremy watched Rich's chest rise and fall, muting themself to listen.

"I healed up okay, but the doctors, they all thought I had something wrong with my brain. I don't remember how I convinced them not to give me an MRI, but I have no idea if the SQUIP shit is safe for those machines."

"It probably isn't," Jeremy inserted quickly. SQUIPs could run diagnostics on their host body that were several orders of magnitude more accurate than any health technology on the market.

Rich was apparently more comfortable with these interjections now, continuing, "I couldn't tell them about the SQUIP without sounding clinically fucking insane. I'm not afraid of psych wards but I'd prefer to get mental health treatment for my actual, you know, genuine mental illness? They pumped up the anti-seizure meds and had me talk to a bunch of people about brain stuff." Rich paused. "Traumatic brain injuries. Post-concussion. Stuff like that. At first I thought it was bullshit, but like, you've been saying that removing a SQUIP causes brain injury."

Jeremy nodded slowly. "Turning a SQUIP off wouldn't necessarily have the same effect," they pointed out. "Running an online search for traumatic brain injury. Analyzing." They mentally skimmed over a dozen online articles. Thank God for in-brain search engines. "Suboptimal signaling," they said triumphantly. "The brain version of inefficient code. You can't use part of your brain, so you make up for it by changing your thought patterns, but it's more resource-intensive."

"Something like that," Rich agreed. "It might be more than that. Your personality can change from brain damage. Did you know that?"

"Well, actually, many so-called personality changes are mere-" Jeremy was still digesting the search results.

"I had to see a bunch of specialists in the hospital," Rich continued a little louder. "My personality had done a 180. I wasn't acting like a SQUIPtim anymore. Great! But the weird thing was, I wasn't acting like I did before the SQUIP either.

"What should my personality even be like? I was missing years, Heere! Socializing, fucking, formative years! If I never had a SQUIP, what should my personality have been? How am I supposed to become that guy if I don't even remember what it was like to be him?"

Trick question, maybe. "You… don't?"

Rich's head snapped up. He hadn't expected a real answer. "Yeah," he said. "You don't. I can't just will myself into being a different person. That's what the SQUIP was for, and it failed pretty fucking miserably. So instead, I had to look at this suicidal, burn-covered, ex-bullying fake jock and pick up the pieces. How much of 'Rich Goranski' was actually me?"

Jeremy inhaled sharply, smiling. They finally could relate to Rich about something. "Is it true that I like Christine? Do I actually want to date her? Do I still like video games? Why did I used to hate math class?"

Rich snapped at Jeremy again, this time turning the gesture into a finger-gun. "Do I still only like girls? Is Jake still my friend? Did I ever really want to hurt people, or is that all my SQUIP's fault? You know what they called that?"

"Being bad at being a person!" Jeremy answered cheerfully, finally on track with the conversation.

"No. No, no, Heere, they called it 'grief.'"

"Grief?" Jeremy frowned, then made a low "ohhh" as they put it together. "Grief because you were mourning the, um, the loss of the person you could have been?"

"Yeah." Rich curled his hands into fists and shoved them into his pockets with a twitch of his eye. "You're never gonna be that person again. That's true for any personal change, I guess, but for me, it happened too fast for me to process it normally. For you, maybe it's the same." He cleared his throat. "My point being, don't worry about being Heere or Not-Heere. Both, neither, whatever. Doesn't mean you're not you, and it doesn't mean you're not my friend."

Jeremy's thoughts screeched to a halt and their breath caught in their throat. They didn't even think to reciprocate, trying to reboot their thoughts, but Rich was already turning to go.

"I'd say 'see you around,'" Rich said with an arm up in a half-assed wave. "But I won't."

Jeremy's thoughts ran to desperate places - Rich's death, or Jeremy's death, or one of them fleeing the country - until they settled on the most likely interpretation of those words. "She's optic-blocking me," they said. "Why?"

Rich shrugged. "I dunno," he said, but Jeremy thought his voice sounded hollower. They didn't think Rich was being controlled. Maybe he was only lying. "Install your update and maybe your crystal ball will work again." He paused at the threshold.

"Good luck, Heere. Be careful out there." Before Jeremy could respond, Rich said, "Optic nerve blocking, on."

Jeremy didn't bother watching him walk away.

A/N:
My blog has a makeover and Only One Is Mine-specific tags! Specifically check out Tumblr jeremy-queere /tagged/ooim and jeremy-queere /tagged/ooim with a thanks and shout-out to nico-moist-moses for the fanart!