Digital Dreams

She reached over to her coat and pulled out the storage device. The cold metal stung her skin and pulled at her fingers when she tried to brush them against its surface. She walked over to her computer and pulled the pile of cables off the desk. She eventually found one interface that would fit the device. She plugged the device in and reached behind her computer to plug the other end of the cable into the it's universal interface port. When the UIP recognized the device's presence it brought the computer out of standby mode and started looking for drivers. A few seconds later the screen cleared, showing a representation of her system's mount points, the new device listed in green.

She smiled distantly and dreamily sat down, picking up her neural interface from the floor and hooking it up to the tiny i/o ports on her temples. The world greyed out, rushing out of existence beyond her mind's periphery. Thick blackness hovered around her for an instant. She felt a mental surge and a tangible representation of her computer system swam into existence. She felt the subtle hum of power flowing into the system and her ability to route it to any device or soft she wished. She let her mind flow through the layers of interface and programming until she arrived at the mount point for the SigCorp storage device. It felt like a narrow tunnel with a flow of power into the tunnel and a trickle coming out. She approached the tunnel and felt a sudden rush as she was transported into it.

There was a sudden flash of energy and she found herself on the other side of the interface looking at login area for the system the device was supposed to represent. She smiled inwardly and brutally eliminated all traces of the security system. The streams of data in the device spread out in all directions, subtle strands of code flowing between the interlocked data components.

"Where are you?" she vaguely asked, feeling her mind's query flow over the system like a liquid net. A number of points in the sea of information brightened slightly then died as she fed the computer more information.

"Large file size, embedded security, unlinked files generated with no operating system ties."

Suddenly one point brightened and a spider web of lights formed, trailing across the system. She guided herself quickly down into the system, past blocks of data, through data streams, until she reached her destination. The point now glowed in a large white sphere, gently pulsing. When she got close to the sphere, the light faded and she could see the specifics of the file. The computer represented the file as a perfect sphere with two tiny spikes sticking out of it. One of the spikes pointed toward the "ground" of the system, representing the file linkage with the system as an associated file, the second pointing toward another association. The other was at an odd angle, usually associated with a broken executable. She wondered briefly at the second spike, but pushed it from her mind. She knew this was the file.

She pushed the system slightly to return her to a mental representation of the standard file structure. The three dimensional world faded to be replaced by a file tree, with the sphere file selected. Sosik_bd135 registered as a self contained executable file, last accessed at the moment of the backup. She took a deep mental breath and reached her mind out to activate the file.

Suddenly her mental picture of the computer shuddered, blurred, and then rapidly reformed. The file was activating a subset of programs, scanning her system. The open file threads listing hovering in her mind?s periphery expanded exponentially, showing that the file was unarchiving an insane list of files and running those subprograms. There was another mental shudder and all the threads closed. Just as suddenly as the first assault had come, it vanished. A text window faded into life in front of her.

>Who are you? What system is this?

She thought for a moment. No answer came to her mind immediately, but the text window suddenly updated.

>I understand. Thank you for reactivating me.

She felt fear rising in her, but she fought her mind and sent a reply.

>Who are you?

>I am Sentient Operating System Independent Kernel. I was designed by Michael Pryce on 15.03.2114. Since that time I have had 134 revisions and 638 people programming me. Sometimes they would call me SOSIK. You may do so.

>Where do you come from?

>I was designed for the Sigma Corporation for corporate defense and espionage. I was assigned the task of keeping hackers out of Sigma?s systems and to break into Tetra Corporation?s mainframe. I was unsuccessful in my secondary objective. During my lifespan before this revision, I was responsible for rebuffing three hackers out of my systems.