The Glitch Saga- The Complete Collection

by Stephanie Flint

  A spike of fear runs through me. I haven’t gotten all the glitches worked out from the first one, let alone a second.

  “We’ll create the next vessel in five days,” Commander Rick says. “The code from the first Legion Spore has been imported into a file here, and you’ll have the rest of today and tomorrow to make programming changes as necessary. “

  “Sir, with all due respect, I don’t think it’s ready for that.”

  Wrinkles crease in his forehead. “You have removed the glitches, have you not?”

  “The ones I’ve found, yes. But there’s the matter of its personality, and even if I prepare code based on the previous one, this one is—how big is it?”

  Commander Rick raises an eyebrow. “Approximately one hundred and sixteen individuals. More than twice the size of the first.”

  For the love of the Community… one hundred sixteen people forced to make the merge?

  Commander Rick tucks his hands behind his back. “M’boy, you once said that you believe in the ideals of the Community.”

  “Yes, but I don’t see how—”

  “Using these prisoners in a second Legion Spore not only clears up room in our transformation facilities, but the process is considerably more efficient. We will end this war with the Oriental Alliance in half the time of having just one vessel, and thus ensure the security of the Community and our territories. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Considering the stern look in his narrowed eyes, “no” isn’t the right answer. “Yes, sir,” I say carefully. “Valid point. But I think we should wait until we’re sure the first one doesn’t have any more problems. I haven’t found the personality code yet. I’m not even sure it exists.”

  Disappointment radiates telepathically from the commander. “There have been no reported glitches since your last mission, and everything you’ve done suggests the vessel works as intended. As we’ve seen before, a skilled beast master with the proper codes may control it. The CLS Legion Spore is, at its core, no more than a hub—a computer—which may be programmed.” I shrink under his disapproving gaze. “The creation of the second vessel will proceed as planned.”

  I drop my gaze and scan the network’s encrypted files. It turns out the Camaraderie had voted on creating a second Legion Spore when Lady Winters was still alive, back before Val joined.

  The commander motions me toward the opposite room, where a large server throbs with technology. It will be moved directly below us onto a steel grid—the framework for the next Legion Spore. My stomach does a somersault of protest, but I distract myself by looking at the sleeping faces, some beast, some human.

  I pause. The man at the end of the row has short black hair, a nose once broken, and muscles that mark him as a soldier. I’ve met him before, while I was with the rebels at the OA training base in Japan. Commander Kita—our tour guide. I rest my fingers on the tube. I wasn’t friends with him, by any means, but it’s painful to know someone who is going into the hub.

  “That’s the hacker,” the commander says.

  I turn. “What? He’s the one—”

  “He’s the one who broke into the Legion Spore and targeted the telepathy controls.” Commander Rick crosses his arms. “He’s strong. He’ll be an asset.”

  I gape at the commander. “You’re going to put him in the second Legion Spore?” A chill rushes through me. After what I’ve seen Martinez do, I know this isn’t safe in the slightest.

  Commander Rick smirks and thumps the glass. “Plenty safe, m’boy. His memories will be wiped, like all the others. Put extra emphasis on isolating his program, if you are concerned. He’s the strongest life-spirit user here, and his ability to use techno sight allows us to incorporate two powers for the price of one chair. Common sense.”

  “This isn’t common sense. He hacked the Legion Spore. Despite all the firewalls, despite the programming, he made his way in through a glitch, changed the primary code, compromised our system, and took control of the ship. Sir, I’m sorry, but—”

  The commander glowers at me. “Master Zaytsev, you are speaking out of turn. His personality will be wiped. The man who hacked the Legion Spore will be dead. All that will remain are his powers, which are incredibly useful.”

  I swallow hard. “Sir, with all due respect—he knows how the Legion Spore functions. If he’s kept conscious during its creation, which he must be since he’s a life-spirit elemental, there’s no telling what he could do to jeopardize the project. In the most recent glitch I’ve dealt with, the man responsible knew he was going to be put into a hub. He had life-spirit. He deliberately tried to remember key events so they would be incorporated into the Legion Spore’s programming. This man could do the same.” I grip my pendant tight within my fingers. The commander must understand…

  Commander Rick lifts my chin. “If that is a concern, then you will need to prepare a protocol that prevents such occurrences. I trust you can do that.” His eyes challenge me to say otherwise.

  “Yes, sir,” I whisper, numb.

  “That’s m’boy.” He smiles again. “I expect the program to be fully functional in time for its creation.” He turns and leaves, his boots thumping the shining floor.

  I’m alone in a room full of sleeping inhabitants. The tour guide, the hacker, remains slumped against the frosted tube, his disheveled black hair spiked with ice, the thin lines of frost covering his chest, his neck, and his chin. I trace my fingers over the cold glass.

  How much will he remember?

  I take the rest of the day, the night, and part of the next morning to get my bearings with the updated program for the second Legion Spore. The coded framework is already in place, much like the steel grid beneath this floor. Security cameras reveal the giant hangar below me. The only exit is through the doors to a lower level, or through a portal. Inside, giant steel columns have been set up in a rough approximation of the Legion Spore’s framework. Though the chairs and wires are empty now, there will be four hubs linked together as one central unit. Metal grates mark the path for walking and climbing, like ribs made of steel, tungsten, and fiberglass.

  All that’s missing is the people.

  I rotate my shoulders nervously and return to my coding. The planned vessel works perfectly in my simulations, but no matter how many times I run said simulations, the program is a cold rendition of a flying hub. I can’t lock in on the first Legion Spore’s personality. It’s simply not there.

  I pour myself a cup of coffee, but it’s been sitting in the pot too long. Four in the morning…

  I’m not sleeping until this program is finished, until I have some reassurance that the Oriental Alliance hacker isn’t going to pull Martinez’s stunt. I spare a glance at the locked doors. Kita’s cooler is visible through the slatted glass. He’s cold. Immobile. Frozen until he can be hooked into the giant machine.

  I swivel my chair across the room and take my coffee there.

  I wake five hours later to beeps. I yawn and reach for an impossibly hard to find alarm, smack it, and then close my eyes again.

  “Good morning, Master Zaytsev.” The commander’s voice on the intercom seems amused. “I trust you slept well?”

  I rub my eyes. “Just researching.” I glance at the screen, trying to remember what I viewed last. Something about robotic laws. I squint, mentally dimming the bright light. I’d found an old film and had it playing in the background.

  The commander chuckles, his voice crackling. “I’ll have the technician bring you brunch. Any preference?”

  My stomach rumbles. “Not particularly.”

  “How about a fine black tea? Do alert me once your work is complete.”

  Tea—of course he would offer tea. Couldn’t offer coffee or juice, could he? “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The radio beeps, signaling that he has left the conversation.

  I have the first protocol written by the time the technician arrives. She sits the silver tray on the nearby table and excuses herself. I lock the door behind her.

  Break
fast consists of black tea—I’m not quite sure why there’s milk in it—along with poached eggs and a strawberry streusel that makes my mouth water. I finish it quickly, re-examining the protocol as I do. This one prevents the Legion Spore from reprogramming itself. Only a human operator can do so. I’ve also programmed a set of redundant backups which can be restored if problems arise.

  Hours pass. Next protocol—the Legion Spore may not telepathically control its operator, and the vessel may not suspend the life of the operator without the operator’s express permission, which is given with a set of three passwords. I write them on a slip of paper and jam them into the desk, just in case I forget. I create a rerouting system in case of power failure—should the Legion Spore’s air elementals be compromised, it can use shapeshifting to control navigation. Host memories can now be quarantined with a simple trigger—no singing me to death or bombarding me with images of Lady Black’s seductive advances.

  I install a very clear directive that it will not fire on Camaraderie ships.

  If I don’t do these right, or if something goes wrong, a glitch could turn the vessel against the Community. I’ve got to protect my family, and myself. If the hull destabilizes because I accidently type the wrong command, I could plummet to my untimely death. But I want to be with Val when she has our child, not stuck in some bombed-out building in OA territory.

  Deep breath—focus. All I have to do is focus…

  I cross-reference the glitches from the first vessel, ensure they can be countered, and then organize the protocols in a manner that prevents the Legion Spore from taking overt control. By the time the technician brings dinner, I spin circles in the swivel chair, alternating directions so it doesn’t unwind on me a second time in a row.

  I glance at the window to the cooler beyond. What if Kita programmed the cooler to shut down his body while letting his mind process information? He could hijack the system without ever being detected. I gnaw at my lip and search the program for signs of tampering.

  Nothing. He’s sound asleep, all powers inaccessible. My hands shake and I take a deep breath.

  There’s one more protocol I want to add—a fail-safe.

  I create the seventh and final protocol in a separate document, away from hub interference and from everyone else.

  Should all other measures fail, I can order the Legion Spore to shut down its life-spirit powers, rendering the vessel inert. A self-destruct protocol. It’ll fall apart rather than risk greater danger to its allies. I imbed the program deep among the other systems, then pry open Val’s locket and remove the picture. I lightly scribe the command code around the edges of the heart: For Val and child, I love you. Here’s to our comrades and our calling, hoping our lives might be saved.

  It’s long, and I have to command the Legion Spore in Russian to activate it, but I don’t want to accidently start humming that song and fall to my death because there’s nothing to hold the ship together. Besides, using Russian reminds me of home, and I doubt anyone else would think to use that password without having to dig deeper before they could use it.

  I twist Val’s locket in my hands and glance at the hacker once more.

  It’s a command I hope I’ll never have to use.

  I’m still troubled by the idea of creating a second Legion Spore, so I use the central hub in Siberia to take me to the Camaraderie mansion in Canada, where Benjamin resides. Within seconds I’m standing inside a small, well-lit room beside an even smaller hub. The outer corridor looks similar to Commander Rick’s airship, except the walls are covered in gold-colored floral wallpaper. Warm air drifts from a cast-iron radiator beside the door, and a long black and red rug runs the length of the floor. Clockwork lanterns offer the hallway a yellow cast and flickering shadows.

  I mentally search the tech throughout the mansion before finding a reference to Benjamin’s study in the attic. It can be accessed by a narrow staircase outside the kitchen. At the top of the stairs, pale morning light shines through the shadow of branches outside, casting a deep green diamond of color on the opposite wall. The circular drawing room has a stained glass window in the upper tower. I lift my emerald pendant to the glass, examining the two together.

  The window is an artistic representation of the Elizabeth pendants. The diamond-shaped emerald sits at its center, surrounded by warm, amber-colored glass. Lead solder emulates the wires crisscrossing the pendant’s face and connecting the loops and hooks along its circumference. A small green square below the main ornament represents the dangling jewel below.

  At Benjamin’s study, the door creaks. Benjamin looks up and stares at me from across a long, wooden table. The walls are covered in rows of scorched shelving, each with different boxes and bottles. Drawers line the area below his work, one overflowing with numerous instruments and tools. Heating and cooling apparatuses sprawl across the table, liquids bubbling in a transparent tube while a piece of metal heats inside a ceramic crucible. It looks, for all that the room is considerably well lit from the window on the outer wall, like the laboratory of a mad scientist. He grumbles, holding up a small pair of jeweler’s pliers before flipping through an oversized, leather bound book at the edge of his workspace.

  I press my lips together, willing myself not to speak while he works.

  He starts to move the trinket and light explodes from the artifact, sending wire shrapnel pinging against glass and bronze flasks. I throw my arms over my face. Benjamin curses loudly in my head, then crosses his arms and scowls.

  Well… I guess that combination won’t be working after all. The discarded shrapnel floats into a cardboard box under the table. Is there something I can help you with?

  “I wanted to ask about the Legion Spore,” I say. “I’m working on coding the second vessel, but I’m concerned about a glitch from the first one.”

  Benjamin floats a chair to the center of the room and sits, though it doesn’t quite read right. He’s sitting a centimeter too deep, inside the seat of the chair. He leans forward, his forehead wrinkled with curiosity. I’ve been following your progress. Which glitch are you referring to?

  “The personality. It’s separate from the coding, and appears to be coming directly from the power matrix. Is that even possible?”

  The spirit rubs the goatee on his chin. Maybe.

  I grab a chair and sit in front of him. “What causes it? Why don’t the other hubs show signs of personality? Why is it that, when I separate the programming from the Legion Spore, the personality isn’t encoded?”

  Benjamin pushes his glasses further above his nose. Well, it could be that the hubs were created using powers, while the Legion Spore was created using the pendants.

  “Why should that make a difference?”

  Hubs bind spirits to a single directive by using life-spirit powers and radiation. The individuals within a hub are still separate entities. The pendants, on the other hand, alter and create.

  I frown. “So—the pendants might have altered the powers of the Legion Spore?” I’m still not sure how that would cause a personality to form.

  Possibly. The individual spirits within the vessel, and their powers, now overlap rather than maintain a defined distance. He taps his leg thoughtfully and the book on the edge of the table reappears in his lap. He flips through the yellowed pages until he finally scribbles on a page whose central sketch is an amalgamation of squiggles—and vaguely resembles the Legion Spore.

  When you first reported a personality, I checked to see if we had accidently created an artificial secondary spirit. After all, I suspect that the guardians from the time stones are artificial spirits, and I’d be willing to bet there’s a piece of jade somewhere in those stones. Got to be careful with jade and enchantment-based alchemy—messy stuff. Same with mercury. Don’t use it. He waggles his finger at me.

  I wrinkle my nose. “I wasn’t planning on it?”

  Good. Anyway, I checked to see if a piece of jade might have slipped into the composition, but that’s not the case.

&nb
sp; My heart skips a beat. If Benjamin doesn’t know what’s going on, how am I supposed to figure this out? He understands the effects of using the pendants more than anyone I know. “If we can’t reprogram the personality, what about installing a fail-safe as backup, in case the personality goes rogue? Say, a protocol that would shut off the Legion Spore’s powers so it no longer holds itself together?”

  Benjamin stands and paces behind his chair. The bodies within the hub rely heavily on their powers. They would die without the proper powers to sustain them. If you really wanted to dismantle the Legion Spore, a shield would certainly do the trick. But it would be impossible to carry on board without destroying the vessel. Once the act is done—it’s done. You wouldn’t be able to bring the vessel back online without new components and a new merge.

  He tugs his goatee thoughtfully.

  Still, it might be possible to salvage the original components, depending on how well the fail-safe separates them from the vessel. People, beasts… we all have a spirit. He gestures to the whole of his body. Our spirit sustains us. But some people—life-spirit elementals—control this essence. They can suspend it, heal it, remove it… It’s possible you might be able to write the protocol in such a way that the life-spirit elementals use their powers to support themselves in order to minimize the loss. However, if they can’t sustain their bodies, they may try to sustain their consciousnesses. Some Catonian relics, and even human artifacts, were created when a spirit was removed at the event of the body’s death and then placed into a specific object.

  “Like the people who were attached to photographs in the article about the first Catonian relic you found. Or like how you’re attached to the pendants,” I say, sitting on the edge of my seat.

  Benjamin stares at me a moment too long. Yes. He turns, his hands fiddling with the apron strings at his back. You would be surprised at what a person will do to live.