When everyone in the Human Sphere was studying your code specifically it didn’t matter how many software centres you employed, you were still outnumbered. PanOceania didn’t scrimp when it came to their security software, but there was a natural problem that came when you were responsible for mass producing megagoons. If she hadn’t spent that long weekend optimizing the blink command interface she wouldn’t have been able to run the Carbonite program in half the speed she had – and the ORC in the doorway would have killed her. It was worth every hour she’d put into it. She built every part of it herself – every chip scavenged from a broken phone, every line of code checked and crowdscanned to make sure it didn’t contain government spyware, even the unicorn stickers along its back were salvaged from her elementary school textbook. There’s never been anything more uniquely hers than this machine. Iyanka hammers into the hacking device as frantically as she can. Bullets continue to impact across her body and for the first time today Sandra starts paying attention – and feeling fear. Those same armour systems that do all the hard work of aiming for her and correcting her motions are now fighting against her, holding her in place like an iron coffin. She tries to pull back behind the doorframe but can’t. She doesn’t want to die over… whatever this is. That was fast – faster than she’d expected. She’s surprised when she feels the impact of bullets against her plate. Two scatter for cover, one of them screaming – but the third opens up in return. Two of them have holes in their faces before she even has time to register what they look like without them. The multi-rifle assessed the situation, loaded the correct ammunition type, and opened fire before she’d even blinked away the smoke.įive targets. Besides, it’s not like she needed to be into what she was doing – her visor performed all the tactical assessments for her and her gun corrected its targeting with the unnatural snap precision of an aimbot. No expense was spared on her power armour, but her morale? Unneeded extravagance. Terrorists? thieves? corporate espionage? Doesn’t matter. Thirty five dollars from the local hardware store wasn’t going to get in her way. The entire system of design and procurement was manifest in her. Kilometers of open space – one of the more expensive parts of this whole process – had been set aside for her to train in.
Skyscrapers filled floor to ceiling with software engineers had written the code that made that matter dance. Ten thousand researchers on three planets funneled their collective brilliance into steel, tessium and nanoweaves. Sandra ‘Scipio’ Moralez was the speartip of the greatest organizational principle created by humanity. It cost three hundred billion dollars to take this door.