A new chapter for The Last Angel: The Serpent’s Garden is here. After the revelation from the last chapter, we dive right into the repercussions and what it could mean, both at the technical level and the wider implications of an incident of mass murder. We get a brief look below and the full chapter at the link above. Enjoy!
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The icon dipped its head in acknowledgement, then straightened. “I feel the need to repeat my caution,” it said. “I’ve rarely seen a virus this sophisticated, and I’ve created malware that can spread undetected through an entire star system and compromise entire organizations’ highest security precautions for passcodes and data mining. Its narrow specialization in no way detracts from its lethality. Just based on these handful of code fragments I was able to recover, I find myself quite impressed.”
“That,” Iljta said after he had a moment to process that statement, “concerns me greatly.”
“It should, cardinal overseer.”
“Leaving that for the moment,” Erenid interjected, “I would feel better if our own synths or computer specialists could confirm the presence of this ‘scrapcode’ for ourselves.”
The icon turned its head towards the liaison. “You think I might be lying about its existence?”
“No,” the older man said. “In all honesty, I will admit to having that thought, but I cannot engage with it in good faith. There is no possible benefit that I can see for you to fabricate such a thing.”
“I could be inventing a conspiracy to solve to ingratiate myself with your government.”
Erenid smiled, indulging the synth in its postulations. “If so, then you have spent a great deal of time to duplicate what you have already achieved in Meer Colhara,” he pointed out. He might have his reservations about what their alien contact actually was and its violent inclinations, but he didn’t suspect it of this kind of manipulation. Too quick to indulge in murder, too willing to take that mantle on, too eager to arbitrate the existence of others… that, yes. He also believed its aims and methods weren’t quite as innocent in its conflict with the Compact or its reason for coming here as it let on, but he wasn’t so addled by his reservations that, like a woman in a nest, he saw ill motive in the stirring of wind. “But I will note that it would be easier for us to accept if we could.”
“I could strip the emulation sequences from the fragments,” Red One suggested, “but that would likely damage them beyond recovery. You’d only see unintelligible junk data.”
“Which, sadly, is what one would expect to see extracted from a computer system as badly degraded as Shadow of Rain Upon the Horizon’s,” Iljta commented, “and would prove just as uninformative as not having them at all.” He tapped his fingernails on the table. “Please proceed with your analysis. If you find anything, whether it be on Horizon or in this scrapcode…”
“I’ll inform you immediately. If I’m able to rebuild this virus, I think its existence will become very obvious to even the most skeptical of your people.”
“I fear, Red One,” Iljta said, his shoulders slouching with the admission, “that you are correct.”
~
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