Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1) by Mariana Morgan (essential reading txt) 📕

safety locks, like the rest of the VRP, are under strict copyright protection. Any attempt to modify it would feed back to my lawyers. You can easily make changes within the drag-and-drop menu, make something more challenging, increase difficulty levels and so on, but essential safety locks are not removable. You can’t, for example, fall and die because you broke your neck. Not in any VRP that is licensed for general sale.

‘That includes my custom VRPs,’ Eloise added as an afterthought.

‘Can the n-suit/VR interface be tampered with?’ Gonzalez asked.

Eloise thought for a second, her eyes focusing on some distant point only she could see, frowning slightly.

‘Yes and no,’ she replied slowly. ‘The interface itself has too many back-ups to fail by accident, and VRPs are coded to fail to run with a faulty n-suit. But you could modify the n-suit to send erroneous readings.’

‘Such as having the n-suit downplay the intensity by ten per cent?’ Gonzalez asked.

That was the simplest method he was aware of. It involved one, single instruction, so it also took the least amount of time to implement. More complex re-programming could offer a much wider variety of effects. For example, an exception could be made to the ten per cent rule to exclude death. Basically, a VRP would run thinking it was operating at eighty-five per cent of someone’s capacity while it was really at ninety-five. But if someone tried to increase it from eighty-five per cent to, say, ninety-two, that in theory would bring the actual intensity to a hundred and two per cent. If a hundred per cent was taken to mean death through trauma, then one could quickly understand why the manipulation of n-suits’ programming was extremely dangerous, and why exemptions to the rules had to be in place if someone did choose to manipulate the software. The extensive software offered a virtually unlimited number of exceptions to be made to any modification. The process was not only infinitely complex but also extremely delicate and risky.

But if it could be done, it was guaranteed that humans had done it.

‘Yes, it is possible,’ Eloise confirmed. ‘But why would anyone want to do it?’

Ingram gawked at Eloise with her mouth wide open. Was the Elite woman for real? How could anyone be so naive?

She could think of dozens of VRPs she had been forced to run in a crudely modified n-suit during her basic training. She remembered the suffering and the inhumane exhaustion the VRPs and the n-suits weren’t supposed to let happen. She remembered the injuries…

‘Oh, I don’t know… to increase the reality of the experience, perhaps?’ she blurted out. ‘To make sure someone is still scared shitless of real accidents and does their best to avoid them? Or maybe because they don’t give a fuck what—’

‘Enough, Sarge!’ Gonzalez’s tone cut like a whip and Ingram obediently closed her mouth.

It is strange,a tiny voice at the back of Ingram’s head piped up, how he can switch from being caring and reassuring, clearly having discovered the right wavelength to communicate with this crazy Elite woman, to suddenly acting like a tough CO who can control my rage better than I can.

Eloise gazed from Ingram to Gonzalez with avid curiosity. It was decades since she had watched two actual human beings interact. And it was fascinating.

The woman in front of her was clearly torn between conflicting desires. But then again, so was the man. The military hierarchy made it both easier and more difficult for them to manage their intentions. Watching their internal battles at play, studying them with something resembling her usual highly tuned observation skills, was illuminating. Eloise knew that her algorithms coded all that and more into her various VRPs, but this wasn’t coded. It was real. There were no algorithms governing the possible outcomes. It was more than just a little frightening to accept such randomness.

And then a thought struck her.

‘You went undercover as a police gendarme?’ she asked.

‘Erm, yes.’ Ingram blinked, surprised at the sudden change of topic.

‘Why?’

‘Excuse me?’ Ingram was clearly puzzled, her previous fury somewhat forgotten.

‘Why? Why would any Elite place themselves among the Leeches?’ Eloise spat the word like it was something contagious and repulsive, and Ingram felt herself heat up again. She opened her mouth to snap back, but another of Gonzalez’s sharp looks paused her long enough for her to rethink her rebuke. It was hard; it felt like drugtox was still affecting her self-control.

‘Because the mission profile required it,’ she said coldly instead.

Eloise clearly wasn’t getting it. Elites had power and resources. Leeches had nothing. It made no sense. She wanted to ask more, but Gonzalez interrupted her.

‘Ms Moretti, there will be plenty of time for you to ask questions. For now, with your permission, could we get back on track?’ he asked, and Eloise nodded after a brief hesitation. ‘You mentioned that the VRP you investigated at the 4th was altered. How?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ Eloise replied, her eyes lighting up again with eagerness to consider a VRP mystery and a puzzling yet familiar challenge. ‘Huge portions of the code were damaged. And what was left looked… messy. That’s why I wanted to use my own lab to analyse it.’

‘But you do suspect something?’ Gonzalez said, watching the woman carefully. She was a lousy liar. Each time she spat out big words and VR jargon she looked natural and relaxed. But then, from time to time, her vocabulary would simplify, making her sound like a little child, and it wasn’t hard at all to recognise the evasiveness for what it was.

Eloise sighed, closing her eyes and replaying the code she had seen at the 4th.

‘I remember catching a glimpse of code that didn’t make much sense. I didn’t get a chance to study it properly, but it looked like the interactivity was changed.’ She sighed again. This was going to take some time to explain. ‘You are correct that the n-suits can be modified. And yes, you are correct that people might have various