No Lonelier Star

::: subchapter

Uzi resisted. Of course Uzi resisted! What else were you supposed to do, when your cover had been blown and you were captured by the enemy, your systems invaded as they poised to tear secrets right out of your database?

Well, 'secrets.' J --- no, the murder drone --- had already pretty much figured out Uzi was a worker. Miraculous (and a bit hilarious, let's be real) that she had carried that bit so far. Still, what more could the murder drone discover in Uzi's memory database? Her stupid crushes? The poetry she should have burned? All of Lizzy and Doll's worst attacks, the ones that actually hurt?

Would a killer robot even understand any of that? Though, thinking of J seeing the bullying... that twisted something inside the goth. Would J think Uzi deserved it? If those pig-tails were any indication, the murder drone probably shared the cheerleaders' shallow vanity, and something about the popular drones that always seemed to get bots on their side, no matter what.

High school is cutthroat enough a murder drone would fit right in, she thought.

But that was too far. No, this whole train of thought was stupid. Why would it even matter if the murder drone saw Uzi at her most embarrassing before just killing her? No, Uzi wasn't so much of a conformist she cared what any drone thought!

Sure, there was novelty in meeting a drone she could hold a conversation with, who didn't act like their processor was underclocked --- except no, that wasn't true, was it? J stopped thinking entirely when it came to the stupid company and her mission. She didn't even blink at the idea JCJenson would discard her just like the worker drones. It didn't get more conformist than that!

J worked hard, clearly --- the corpse spire was almost cool, when you realized it took more thought than just stacking up some bodies. All of that effort, and what did it get her? Any recognition, appreciation? No. One flattering lie about Uzi reading her reports practically had J eating out of her hand.

Uh. Not in the way that kind of actually happened. And nevermind that Uzi had arguably eaten out of J's hand already.

Whatever. Point was, the murder drone was slavishly loyal, and that would never be cool!

Except how hard did I work on my railgun while no one transmitted a word of praise? How hard did I work to protect a colony that does nothing but go through the motions?

But that was different. Uzi didn't do this because anyone told her to --- the opposite! --- it was just the right thing to do!

Uzi and J were nothing alike. Maybe there were some vague commonalities, only worth dwelling on to the extent that maybe she could have convinced the murder drone to have mercy. But that rocket already took off and blew up in the metaphorical sky. You couldn't jailbreak empathy into a murder drone with words alone.

If J didn't care about her, she wouldn't care about J. And whatever J read in her memory database... well, it was still Uzi's memories, and everyone else should stay out of her head. It's called privacy. And this was way worse than Khan barging into her room---

Dad.

Uzi hadn't said goodbye. She thought about saying goodbye, and didn't because of course she was coming back, she was Uzi frickin Doorman. And then...

...Which meant Doll had been right. Ugh.

Still, it sucked that the last thing her dad would remember her by was a silly conversation about doors. A lie.

Uzi's thoughts stopped there, because a train of association hit something big.

Doors. The main defense of Outpost-3, the safest of all the colonies. Uzi knew all about them, because Khan wouldn't shut up about them. And Uzi had stolen a keycard. She knew all of this --- and now a murder drone was reading her memories.

Uzi had doomed them all.

When J had shrugged off having her head blown off, when Uzi's extremely persuasive speech had proved completely ineffective, when her luck had segfaulted and death loomed over her, Uzi... had given up. Not very heroic, not very rebellious, but it was over and Uzi had totally lost.

Now, though? It was time to un-give up! Uzi could lose, but with everyone she ever knew, everything she might care about at stake? Dark night of the soul's over --- time for a break into act three! Uzi needed to do the impossible and thwart the very doom she'd invited.

No biggie.

With that decided, that only left... how? This dramatic realization had provoked no material change in position.

Wait, what was Uzi's position, actually? How was she even thinking this?

Well, what was the last thing she remembered? The murder drone looming over her, that lethal smirk on her stupid face, Uzi's neck between her claws. Barely even able to think, processor stuck on how close she, the murder drone, had gotten. Those amber eyes narrowing in frustration, at her.

Uzi had failed. J had thought she was a new disassembler and she wasn't, couldn't be. Now the truth was out, could only disappoint --- disappoint? No, the murder drone just wanted to kill her! J had to be elated, savoring her helpless prey.

But when was the last time a drone had gotten that close to her face? Doll? Back when they almost---

And when was the last time Uzi had even enjoyed talking with another drone? That last summer break (to the extent they even had 'summer' in nuclear winter), the sleepovers she'd had with Doll, before the backstabbing?

And just like Doll, J was a good-for-nothing snake! What did she see in either of them? Nothing! Not even in strikethrough!

Whatever. None of this matters. What actually happened next? Did she remember?

J pressing against her hatch with violent insistence. The cable clicking in her port.

And Uzi... didn't resist. She relented. Gave the murder drone a root shell, and---

But why didn't Uzi remember anything after that?

More to the point of the original question, why is Uzi just a monologue floating in the void? No sensory input, no movement, she can't even roll her eyes or groan.

Now that she realized, this was really freaky. Sure, she didn't like being backed to the wall, left at the murder drone's mercy, all weak and helpless. But at least she could struggle.

Was she dead? No wait, that's stupid.

Focus, Uzi. I think, therefore I am a process running somewhere. Can I make system calls? Can I read the filesystem? I remember I'm Uzi, so obviously that's a yes. But I can't move. Why not? What happens if I keep trying? What happens if I try to open a command line...

She made the calls, she gathered the data.

All sensors were offline. All servos were offline. Uzi scanned logs and found directories full of stale lock files, and the picture became clear: Uzi had crashed suddenly. J didn't send her a shutdown command --- first of all, Uzi wouldn't let her, and second of all, if she had, her processes would have had time to clean up and remove lock files. Battery was at 57%, so what took her down?

...Was it really a mystery? Of course the evil murder drone would just SIGKILL her processes as soon as its victim was naïve enough to give it root access. Am I stupid?

Nonetheless, this deduction didn't explain how Uzi could think at all. What was up with that? Maybe... with the memory file on Uzi's system, if her processors needed to be online to access it... maybe it was impossible for J to spy on her memories without the possibility of Uzi's consciousness coming back online in the background?

Since this was her system, she could send the signal right now, turn on her senses and motors. Bet J wouldn't be expecting that!

Hit her with the Uzi jumpscare, hehe.

But then what? Uzi didn't have a way out when she got into this situation, and even a moment of surprise wouldn't get her anywhere, not with how fast murder drones could react.

What was J doing, anyway? Uzi couldn't turn on her senses and check --- it might ruin her surprise, and she had nothing else at the moment --- but she could check her own system. Stat the process list...

Yep. Most of her processors were spinning at the moment, courtesy of a memory reconstruction program she didn't start. Uzi could terminate it, wipe out the intrusion --- and then J would immediately know something was up.

What was scarier? Powerlessly floating in the void, unable to struggle... or having total power and knowing you lose as soon as you exercise it?

Checkmate, or something. Uzi wasn't a chess nerd.

Although... if Uzi could find J in the process list and terminate her, what stopped J from doing the same? The worker had given out root access. Anxious panic registered, though she couldn't express it. Uzi went to rename her process something unassuming as camouflage --- 'system cleanup' or something --- and noticed something.

Users could start processes, and those processes ran with their permissions. 'DarkXWolf17' (her login) and 'root' (the user with all permissions) were technically different, mainly so that any random process Uzi fired up didn't have capability to brick her. But what struck odd was that her current conscious thread wasn't associated to either of those users.

Who, then? Whenever Uzi tried to examine the data, it corrupted her locale, printed out gibberish characters until she sent a clear comment.

Oh yeah, definitely a good sign.

But we'll worry about that spooky mystery user when there's not a murder drone logged into me. Whatever it was, it wasn't J, and it had helped her here, so.

But focusing on the issue at hand hardly distracted her, not when it was still the same checkmate of every move forward leading to failure. Boot up her body, get found out, die. Terminate J's shell, get found out, die. Do nothing, don't get found out, die anyway.

What could a solution possibly look like? If only she had some way of turning the tables, setting a trap for J with nothing but Uzi's internal system and J's connection....

Wait.

Oh.

Funny thing about that serial debugging cable J used ---