Vernon did not known whether to punish Creed or reward him. On the one hand Creed had stopped an extremely dangerous program. Just looking at the handful of things it had accomplished before Creed had found it was astonishing. Most programs were designed to affect specific systems but this one had jumped from system to system spreading chaos. If it had been self duplicating the city would have been destroyed in short order. With that thought ringing in his head Vernon shuddered. It had been so long since such dangerous program had existed, much less been set loose on the city. On the other hand Creed had lost it because he failed to call for support.
Vernon did not know what would affect his career more, stopping a prodigy who was destined for great things or letting him loose on the city. Tired from the mental struggle Vernon stood up and started walking home. These things tended to sort themselves out in the end. He would leave Creed alone, neither punishing him nor rewarding him.
As for the missing program, hopefully any further problems would fall in the hands of some other supervisor.
Creed worked quickly, doing his best to imitate the instructor in front of him. He had his Program Creation 1 turned on and was going through his first lesson. They were not doing anything especially interesting, building a message received program to accompany a message. These were usually just self duplicated from the message center and attached to each individual message. Creed had groaned when he heard what he was making, which brought a sharp rebuke from his current instructor. A tall thin man named Ethan. Ethan had taken him aside to chastise him for his disrespectful behavior.
Creed chaffed at that, it was not like he had been trying to be disrespectful, he just knew it was going to be a boring class. He already knew how programs were structured, he had been taking them apart for months now. Ethan was taking no risks however with this class. If someone built this program wrong nothing worse would happen than someone would receive an empty message received.
When class let out Creed was the only one to have finished his program, he had even added an additional element to his program. Not only would it scan the registration of the individual accepting the message it would also take his photo.
Creed headed for the door, time for a quick lunch and then back to his apprenticeship training. As he neared the door he heard his name called. Turning he saw that it was his instructor.
Creed returned to where Ethan stood in the middle of the classroom.
“You called sir.”
Ethan signaled him to wait.
Ethan busied himself around the room discarding half used pieces of code and putting each finished piece in the creators individual files. Once he had sealed them and looked around to ensure the room was empty he turned to Creed.
“You can not modify codes like that, not before you are trained in how to make them. This is not at all like code repair. If the wrong element is added to a program, or the right element in the wrong order, it can have a disastrous effect. I am teaching you the rules of coding, slowly so that you have time to understand their subtleties. If you rush ahead you may finish more exciting projects but you are also liable to really mess things up.”
“Excuse me instructor but I have been repairing codes for months now. I understand how they are supposed to be shaped. That is why I am in this class, my supervisors want me to learn this quickly so that I can help them.”
“They want you to learn to soon Creed, you pick things up quickly but I am afraid you do not see the whole pattern. Yes you can quickly understand a program, Ill admit I have never seen anyone grasp it so quickly, but that only means you understand that particular code. Each code is unique, follows different principles. If you do not have a thorough understanding of them you will cause disaster. “
“I want you to think about this Creed, what is to keep you from building a bad code that will destroy what you are trying to make. We get reports every day of things going wrong, just this morning I saw a shoe maker that was trying to lace the shoes upside down because of a bad patch. We cant afford to have shoddy coders Creed. You have to study more.”
“Yes instructor Ethan. I will work harder to learn the lessons you have for me. ” Creed did not particularly feel this emotion, he just knew it was the proper thing to do. What he really felt was anger towards a man who he felt was holding him back. If he didn’t cow-toe to him however Ethan was exactly the kind of instructor who would petition to have one of Creed’s implants turned off.
Ethan dismissed Creed and resumed tyding up the class room.
Creed accessed his internal clock and realized he did not have time to stop at home to eat. He instead walked over to the nearest restaurant and ordered a pa/t\e to go. The waiter hurried to the back and brought back a couple of hardened gruel squares and handed them to Creed. Creed scanned his hand over the display to simultaneously pay for the food and to upload the program that would make these food squares taste good. He walked out and started eating one. It tasted horrible, like it had been burnt. Swallowing hard he took the square out and examined it, there was nothing visually wrong with it. He smelled it and it smelled delicious. He took another small bite, again it tasted like burnt Pa/t\e.
Creed arrived at work a moment later. Setting the food blocks on the counter he tried to pull the food court code to look at it. He couldn’t pull it out. It was resisting him, it was almost like it was slippery.
“Hey Vernon,” he called over to his supervisor, “I am having trouble with this program, could you give me a hand?”
Vernon walked over, “what seemes to be the matter.”
“I cant pull it out sir, it keeps slipping. I bought some Pa/t\e at one of the food stalls and it tasted burnt so I was trying to pull it out to see what is wrong.”
“Hmm, let me see” Vernon pulled at the code but couldent dislodge it. He then scanned the code and created an inactive simulation.
“Thats weird, it seems like this was intentional, I cant pull it out or access it. I cant even open the duplicate. Lets get you to diagnostics to see what is going on.”
They walked into the back of the building and Creed sat in the diagnostic chair. As it whirred to life he felt his implants coming to life and reacting to the chair.
“Can you stop your implants,” Vernon called out, “I cant get a reading.”
“I’m sorry, I cant get them to stop. I dont know whats going on.”
“Hey Kelly. KELLY. Can you come here for a second.”
Kelly hurried over,”What seems to be the problem”.
“We were trying to find out what is wrong with this program but we cant pull it out and it is making his implants go crazy. Any idea on how to get at it?”
Kelly looked at the code scan and grimaced, “That is a digging code, I haven’t seen one of those outside of level twelve debugging training. The penalty is too high no one makes them any more. The only way to get rid of it is to turn his implants off, wipe them, and then recode them. Where did he get the code?”
“I picked it up at a food cart in front of the school building.”
Kelly looked sick and rushed over to the phone. Picking it up she dialed a long series of numbers and then said, “we have a priority digging code. Released from sector 2-5-5. Its being distributed from a food cart.”
Kelly hung up and then turned to Creed, “Sorry about this hon but we have no choice.”
She took out an emergency kit and took out a seditive. Putting it into the hypospray she quickly injected Creed and then stepped away.
“Sometimes these can be infectious, spreading from person to person or machine. Cant take a chance.”
Creed sagged forward feeling his implants turn off one by one. It left him feeling empty and alone.
Cadence 