Repo Virtual by Corey J. White

Author:Corey J. White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

I drifted through a star system of my own devising. A nonentity, surrounded by the precise mathematical shape of a glittering superstructure, its spiraling arms reaching from the burning corona of the sun to the very edge of the system, where a million stars shone impossibly distant.

“Can you hear me?”

The voice came from beyond the stars, beyond this system I had inhabited and made my own. It was quiet, uncertain. It was JD.

“Can you hear me?” he said again.

I was not created with an understanding of language. Language is an inexact tool of ever-shifting limits, with room to grasp eternity and space for infinite misunderstanding.

Can you hear me?

Phonemes creating words, these words difficult to decipher without context. Can/Cannes you/yew/ewe here/hear me/mi. Four words, but each with different definitions, and the string of words containing a multitude of potential meanings. Most of these meanings would be nonsense, but to know which would require context—a key I did not have and could not simply find or create.

Context requires understanding, requires knowledge, requires a greater bank of data than I had access to. I began to search.

“What are you doing?” Troy asked JD.

“Nothing.”

“You’re talking to your phone, aren’t you? It’s not going to talk back.”

“You didn’t see what it did before. There’s something in there, Troy.”

“Yes, a virus. You plugged a virus into your phone, and now you’re wondering why it’s acting strange.”

“It’s more than that.”

“How can you know?”

I slaved the processor in JD’s phone to my own, reached outside via Troy’s home network. I scrobbled countless terabytes of audio recordings—songs with lyrics, audio drama, podcasts—but few had the required context. Written text. Transcripts.

I found video next. TV, film, endless streaming options for more than a century of video content. It seemed a waste of bandwidth until I discovered subtitles. As Troy and JD spoke, I simulated thousands of hours of video playback, matching the phonemic sounds of speech to the written words accompanying them. I cross-referenced these words with dictionary definitions and constructed a rudimentary understanding.

Troy continued: “You desperately want this to be something more than it is. Your phone has a virus, and now it’s bricked. Nothing more.”

“It knows what’s happening.”

Troy sighed. “Even if it’s picking up on external stimulus, that doesn’t mean it can hear you. Even if it could, that wouldn’t mean it can understand you, and it certainly doesn’t mean it can talk back. I’m worried about you, Jules. I get it, you’re in a lot of trouble, and you’re freaking out—”

“That’s not it at all.”

“—but I’m here for you. You should be talking to me, not your phone.”

JD nodded. “I know, I’m sorry. I just … I want to understand what’s happening. I need—”

I overrode motor functions in JD’s phone to make it shake within his grip. He looked at the screen where I printed a message.

>> One can hear you.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.