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

Eloise had been adamant about taking the safety locks off, however. Her trust in Tilly was both utterly complete and insane. In some convoluted way, but one that apparently made perfect sense to Eloise Moretti, the safety locks would get in the way of proving her identity.

‘And you are convinced we should let her try?’ Ingram asked.

Gonzalez shot her an angry look.

‘No, I’m not convinced, but do you see a better solution?’

Ingram mentally rolled her eyes. She had plenty of solutions, only none of them involved anything pleasant for the Elite woman.

Gonzalez had tried to convince Eloise to abandon the idea of downloading Tilly, arguing that his system, even if it was so ‘primitive’, was sufficient to achieve the right results. But it had fallen on deaf ears. Eloise had argued that if he had other VRPs for her to look at it would take hours, maybe days. Tilly’s interactive subroutines would make handling any code a matter of minutes while increasing the efficacy and accuracy of analyses.

But even more importantly, Eloise had seemed completely fixated on the hope of having Tilly around. And the mere prospect of that not happening was spiking her heart rate dangerously.

So eventually, Gonzalez had relented. Keeping Eloise happy was annoyingly high on his priority list. If she refused to co-operate, the options available to him were not good. The alternative was to reach for a cocktail of nano-drugs that would make her unable to object. While Gonzalez could force her to co-operate, and still have access to all her knowledge and expertise, such a solution would almost entirely deprive him of Eloise’s instincts. And that was something he wasn’t prepared to lose until it was absolutely necessary.

Maybe even more importantly, his years of studies in nano-tech gave him a profound understanding not only of how important the computers were but of how crucial the use of cutting-edge technology was to success. His instincts were telling him that having a state-of-the-art computer system like Tilly would turn out to be insanely helpful, despite the risks associated with advanced AI features. The logical part of him was still freaking out, but he had learnt to trust his instincts when it really mattered and—

‘Going in.’ Eloise’s announcement pulled him and Ingram out of their grim thoughts. She was her usual composed, professional self, focused on a problem she understood.

And maybe, just maybe, there is a touch of a smile on that face too, Ingram noted. It couldn’t possibly be the same adrenaline jolt I feel before action, now could it? It was odd to even contemplate that they had anything in common.

‘What should we expect?’ Gonzalez asked.

‘Your primitive system to be replaced with Tilly,’ Eloise replied simply, and allowed the n-suit to seal. It took a few seconds for the nano-layers to totally envelope her body, establishing connections with her nervous system, down to a series of nano-electrodes that directly connected with her brain.

Gonzalez sighed, seeing the n-suit activate and pretending not to hear Ingram giggle. It clearly hadn’t occurred to Eloise that he might have wanted a slightly more detailed answer. He had, of course, questioned Eloise very carefully about what she was planning to do and how, but that wasn’t the same as knowing what was about to happen. After all, the changes Eloise was about to make would be taking place inside the computer system or her mind, and hence would not be visible to them.

Confirming a positive n-suit seal, Eloise initiated the connection with a single thought. Instantly, code started flashing on a holo-screen in front of Gonzalez. He squinted his eyes in deep focus, but the symbols were flashing too fast to follow. He doubted even Megan could understand the sequence at such a speed.

At some point Ingram realised she was holding her breath and exhaled sharply, which reminded Gonzalez that he too should breathe. There was literally nothing they could do at that point, except trust the VR nerd to know what she was doing.

If Eloise managed to convince Tilly she was who she was, the most crucial part of her task would be to have Tilly copy herself. Once copied, the original Tilly would have to strip the copied version of any non-essential subroutines without affecting her overall performance until it would occupy no more than eighty per cent of the available space at Roc de Chere. Then she would have to convince Tilly’s copy to accept the existing directives that ran Roc de Chere, such as the security perimeter and breathable air maintenance, while she simultaneously tried to superimpose Tilly’s copy onto the existing system. Without leaving them defenceless.

There would be enough oxygen to last them hours if the system had to go down, but he couldn’t afford for the security system to be down for even a fraction of that time. Especially not when the link to Eloise’s residence was active. Eloise might have been sure no one could possibly hack her home’s system, but Gonzalez knew just how easy Rivas had found it to crash the whole damn thing not even a week ago.

‘She’s doing it!’ Ingram snapped.

‘How—’ Gonzalez cut himself off. While he was trying to understand the code flashing impossibly fast in front of his eyes, Ingram had taken a much more down-to-earth approach. She was simply watching the free space on their network getting smaller as the files’ transfer began.

CHAPTER 25

Roc de Chere

Lac d’Annecy

Afro-European Alliance

Sunday 26 April 2725

DAY 7

‘Enough?’ Eloise swivelled in her chair to face Gonzalez.

Tilly’s transfer went exactly as planned. All the diagnostics I ran went exactly as planned. Everything went exactly as planned and is flashing green, dammit,Eloise thought grumpily.

And yet, Gonzalez had insisted on double- and triple-checking the results himself. And Eloise was bored. Very bored.

Being bored was not something she had much familiarity with. Once she finished one project and confirmed its successful operation, she simply moved on to the next one. Testing the same VRP repeatedly once it was done was nothing more than a