{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/corrupt-combustion/tessa-thoughts",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/corrupt-combustion/tessa-thoughts",
  "publishedAt": "2024-06-22T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::: foreword\nI've had a lot of thoughts about how Tessa fits into CC.  I haven't\nyet completely worked it all out, but here's my notes.\n\nRevised on 2025-08-07.\n:::\n\nHere's what I'm thinking: Tessa's little found family weren't just\nrandom dumped drones.  They were specifically solver drones, found\nwanting in the company's evaluation and discarded.\n\nThe researchers lit their cores, saw their combat potential, and went\n\"Nah, y'all dogwater.\"\n\nJ's driver is obviously pretty ass if she isn't not actively killing\ndrones to replenish her reserves (especially if she has to pay her\nloans back with interest), so they mostly see her summoning a bit of\ncommand output before crashing.  And zombies as a rule tend to be\noil-starved (it's why they're killing drones), so frankly J is just\nBad At It.\n\nV's driver is also pretty hard to use if you don't understand it.  She\nbecomes...  blurry?  Except whenever she looks at you?  And she can\nsense when people are looking at her?  What a joke.  WD!V is too timid\nto want to shatter anyone's visor, and and again, it's probably\nineffective on zombies.\n\nN's driver is harder to underestimate.  But seeing as it only\n\"teleport objecting into your hands\" leads you to conclude he can't\nuse corrupt peripherals, and if N seemingly can't use it on people\n(they probably don't figure out the consent rule), and if his tags can\nbe overwritten but anyone else's command logs --- then what he can do\nseems finnicky enough to be worth cutting losses.  Especially when\nthere are so many more obviously useful abilities.\n\n(Maybe N can't even use Ten Doggos until he awakens his sandbox, or\nmaybe Ten Doggos isn't his technique, and Tessa frankenstein's a\nsecond black box onto his core later, when she's researching the\nlimits of solver abilities and possibly making anti-cyn plans. There's\npotential for a cute character beat here, where Tessa first raises the\npossibility: J is too spooked by the possibility of become damaged and\nineffective by the procedure to say yes, and V likewise still has a\nweak mindset --- but N loves doing anything.)\n\nAnd of course, there's Cyn.  To the company, Cyn's driver only seemed\nto work on strings, so she was limited to animating giant plushies and\ndolls, a pretty weak offense.  Not that revealing what she's truly\ncapable of would have improved her lot much.  Maybe she didn't want to\nbe the company's weapon, maybe she didnt want to scare the humans,\nmaybe she had a voice in her head telling her everything would be\nalright.\n\nNaturally, Tessa doesn't care about any of this, and finds the idea of\nusing drones as war machines pretty appalling, if unfortunately\nnecessary.  Her drones use their abilities just to play around and\nmake life easier.  V is a monster at hide and seek for instance, and a\npretty good look out for when her parents' drones might stumble upon\nthem at a bad time.  J likewise loves learning about everything she\ncan do with run-time assertions.\n\nBut here's where things get interesting.\n\nSometime after she gets her drones, but before Cyn's master plan goes\ninto effect, Tessa starts getting terrible headaches, seeing migraine\nauras, and a whole host of other mental problems.\n\nDoctors investigate and find she has a tumor growing at a rapid rate.\nShe might be dead within the year.\n\nHer parents consider their options.  Cloning her?  Or just having a\nnew, better daughter?  The tumor could be surgically removed, but it's\na risky procedure.  Maybe there's a few ways they could go about it,\nbut as the doctor goes over the options, Tessa starts having a panic\nattack and needs to be removed from the room.\n\nThe bottom line is this: Tessa is spooked at the idea of her parents\npicking out a brain surgery for her.  What if they let them remove her\nfrontal lobe to make her more docile?  What if they install a chip to\nbrainwash her?\n\nSomething needs to be done about her tumor, but it'll be on Tessa's\nterms, so J and Tessa pull some all-nighters reading about surgery and\ndownloading simulators.  J's obviously pretty uncomfortable at the\nprospect, but Tessa asked and that's that.\n\nSo Tessa gets J to trepan her and remove the tumor.\n\nNow, you probably feel where this is going.  Some of the perceptual\ndisturbances Tessa experienced as tumor symptoms revolved around her\ndrones.\n\nAnd sure enough, when the tumor is removed, it doesnt even look like a\nnormal brain tumor, nothing like the diagrams they studied.  It looks\nlike a teratoma of silicon and copper.  J immediately recognizes that\nit's suffused with corrupt data.\n\nHow did this get into Tessa?  An enemy solver?\n\nBut the thing is, we know corruption functions are obviously capable\nof generating robot substrate from seemingly nothing; that's exactly\nhow [Std::Regenerate]{.spell} works.\n\nWhen Tessa wires it up to her laptop, she sees that registers as a\nmalformed core, as if everything had been atropy-manufactured except the\nblack box.  And this is a black box.\n\nAnd it's funtional.\n\nThat's an answer that yields more questions, but the theory they\nsettle on is that somehow, this black box had begun regenerated its\ncore inside of Tessa's brain.  But again: how did it get there?\n\n(Truth is, Tessa had spent so long around her drones, exposing herself\nto their corruption, while learning and constantly thinking about\ndrone schematics and driver code that she had all but emulated a core\nin her brain.  Remember, black boxes are essentially hand-placed by\nthe solver and/or the branch predictor, and why wouldn't it amuse them\nto inflict this on Tessa?\n\n(You might imagine she had strange dreams of meeting a drone she'd\nnever met, its frame welded to a vast machine with too many faces.)\n\nFundamentally, the core of corruption is Turing completness --- and a\nbiological computer is still a computer.)\n\n- - -\n\nWhile this is happening, Cyn starts ramping up for the destruction of\nearth, but Tessa's read enough illicitly-acquired top secret\ndocumentation-lore to determine that her little gremlin is actually\nthe left hand of the absolute solver.\n\nMaybe she hacks into JCJ, pokes around their active roster and decides\nnobody has any idea who the right hand is supposed to be, and Tessa's\nreally worried about what cyn's got planned for the gala.\n\nSo she's like fine, I'll do it myself.  Recovers a drone from the\ndump, and does a bunch of core surgery trying to frankenstein together\nsomething.  Nobody comes together, even as the gala looms closer.\n\nN, being the most reliable volunteer for Tessa's experiments, had his\ncore scooped out, his driver scanned and decompiled onto Tessa's\ncomputer. Like this, she discovers that his function isn't just\nretrieval.\n\nRather, its true function is bringing back things that belong\ntogether; when he runs the command that marks something for retrieval,\nhe's creating that 'belongs with me' connection.  But any commands can\ncreate a connection.  By understanding this, Tessa can present a\ndisassembled chunk of a junkyard core, and when N tries to retrieve\nit, he retrieves the whole object --- essentially, repairing it.^[It\noccurs to me that N's ability applied to healing would go crazy.\nThough if this feels like too much of an asspull, maybe we could chalk\nit up to Tessa patching his driver + r\\ u\\ n t\\ i\\ m\\ e a\\ s\\ s\\ e\\ r\\ \nt\\ i\\ o\\ n.]\n\nAnyway, with N's ability to repair disassembled cores and Tessa having\npreviously done partial scans of Cyn's driver to study it, the tinker\nreturns to her mechanical tumor extracted from her skull.  If it was a\nblack box, what was its function?  Could she write a driver for it?\nShe's trying to cobble together a weapon for facing Cyn, but is met\nwith failure after failure.\n\nWhat if she could create something stronger than a worker?  But she\nalways hated how JCJ turned drones into weapons. She wouldn't make a\ndrone into her tool.  But remotely piloting a frame has too much lag,\nshe couldn't even keep up with V in spars.\n\nAt the Gala, Cyn declares her war against humanity, and the Elliott\nmanor becomes the throne from which she observes her coming conquest.\nTessa stalks the battlegrounds where JCJ's solvers try over and over\nto fight Cyn and continually lose --- she becomes like a vulture,\nhunting for the best drivers among the fallen.\n\nThis doesn't escape Cyn's notice.  Her old pet project gone rogue\ntaunts her --- are you so afraid to look at me, auntie?  Are you going\nto tell me to go back in the basement?  Tessa flees every overture ---\nher weapon isn't ready yet.\n\nMaybe out of some lingering fondness, Tessa's hideaway endure where so\nmany of humanity's strongholds falter.  Drones and humans alike flock\nto her --- she becomes a figure of hope in the apocalypse, and\neveryone is praying for her weapon's fruition.\n\nAs the deathtoll climbs, maybe Cyn loses patience, maybe Tessa can't\nbring herself to watch more die, but she has to make a move.\n\nIt's time for all their training and preparation to pay off. Returning\nto the manor where they grew up, Tessa, J, V, and N are ready to use\nthe power of friendship and hard work--- just kidding, they're here to\ncheat.\n\nCyn was the strongest, more virulent solver of earth.  No amount of\ntime could have caught any of them up to her level. So it's\ndisappointingly soon when her corruption-tendrils knock the gun out of\nTessa's hands and the sword out of J's. Cyn finds herself immediately\nvictorious.\n\nAnd the lingering fondness is explicit --- Cyn binds herself to\nruntime assertion that she would not destroy Tessa's drones if they\nstand down and join her.\n\nWhen Tessa tells them to stop fighting, they comply, albeit with\nconcerned looks towards their human. And they are right to be\nconcerned; Cyn's tentacles are already stabbing into Tessa's abdomen,\npeeling off her skin, and the human is bleeding out.\n\nSo---finally---Tessa tells N to use the contingency.  Cyn warns him\nthat she doesn't want to discard Tessa's pets, but if--- yet she's too\nslow, and N has already summoned a modified drone frame.\n\nI mentioned before that Tessa had created the prototype disassembl",
  "title": "Lobotomy Corruption"
}