Rising Emotions Chapter 7
By Karen Hart
She stared at the mess of wires and plastics and metals in front of her and felt like swearing. "Nothing works," she growled, running her hands against her forehead and through her hair. The gesture did nothing to alleviate the headache that was forming.
Nights in the lab had a way of frustrating her these days, in a way they never had before, the overhead lights and the glow of monitors creating a false midday that warred with her internal clock. She'd be dead in the morning. Ah well, she thought dryly, this is what I get for taking my time and doing things properly. At least Allen was there to help her.
"I don't see what the problem is," he grumbled in confusion, lifting a computer chip from the assembly on the table. "We redesigned the core using the Archetype as a base model," he began, turning the chip over. Shion nodded, once. "We carefully studied every single aspect of the original core so as to avoid incorporating whatever design flaws made the Archetype lose control—sorry." Another nod, this time somehow strained. "We've had our own version analyzed by half the Division—" a slight exaggeration there "—so why doesn't it start?"
There was quiet then, both of them staring at the KP-X's defunct core before Shion pushed herself upwards, leaning against the table. Allen looked at her expectantly, raising an eyebrow as she carefully disconnected every wire, every chip, until there was no core left besides the shell. "Chief?" She turned to him then, a thoughtful look on her face.
"We'll start over," she said. Allen groaned. "We're obviously missing something—what was it that made the Archetype function in all the preliminary tests, what's missing from our own model?"
"Well, it can't be the motor control software—that's practically identical," Allen muttered, rubbing his chin. "And I don't see how any of the things we removed could've worked in the first place—there should've been a feedback error in all the tests." He groaned again, and slumped in his chair. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore."
Neither do I. Shion kept the thought to herself. That's what's wrong, isn't it? We're trying to outdo Kevin's work, because there has to be something wrong in his programming, doesn't there? The rest of us couldn't be responsible—. No. She left that train of thought, went back to the beginning, ignoring the inviting tangent. We're not trying to outdo Kevin, we're just trying to avoid the mistakes we made the first time around. "That's what's wrong, isn't it?" she murmured under her breath. It got her a stare from Allen.
She took a deep breath. "All right. We'll reanalyze the original mockup against the current version. Allen, pull up the required files. I'm going to make another pot of coffee. We're going to need it."
Ten minutes later they were both staring mutely at Shion's terminal, Allen leaning over her shoulder, as two near-identical wireframe images rotated side-by-side on the screen. Shion rubbed her eyes, and sipped her coffee before touching the screen with a stylus. The image of the Archetype's core stopped rotating, and zoomed until it fit the entire screen. Two wires were connected between a response and a stimuli-input drive. A third was connected on one end to the stimuli-input drive, and nothing else, the "live" end dangerously exposed. "Now, what did he intend when he did that?"
Allen shrugged, mindful of his own cup. "Beats me. I'd guess he was going to connect it to another piece of hardware, but then why wouldn't he have installed it before the startup test? And what was there to add?"
"Maybe." It was Shion's turn to shrug. "Maybe he was in the process of removing it, and didn't get the chance to, entirely." Somehow they both doubted that; Kevin had been meticulous in every aspect of KOS-MOS's design. She shook her head and made a copy of the image, then rotated it again. Click and zoom. An eye-twisting mess of cables filled the screen. She tapped a cable three times in rapid succession, and sighed in frustration at the newly highlighted segment. The cable twisted and snaked around others, and seemed to be spliced into another cable, somewhere around the middle. A tap at this cable. It, too, joined another cable.
She reached for the drawer and the painkillers she kept there. "There's just no way that can work. One cable should do well enough for all of them. Why splice them—hmm?" The weight of Allen's hand on the chair back had vanished.
Allen set his cup on the counter and stretched stiff limbs before settling down at his own station. "Maybe we're going about this the wrong way." Shion looked at him quizzically. "I mean—. Well, look. We're trying to figure out what went wrong in the startup test, which part's to blame, when we should be studying it to figure out why it worked in the first place."
Shion processed that through a tired brain, and dreaded what looked like a month's work in three hours. "If we refocus the analysis, we won't have time to—"
Allen shook his head. "I say we reinstall the original core. It's a risk, what with all that we don't understand, but we don't have time to tear this thing apart anymore. At least not now. Besides, it should be fine so long as we don't let it run around just yet."
A sip from the cup. He had a good point—several, in fact, and she was out of ideas. "All right," she agreed, and yawned despite the caffeine, "let's get to work."