Into the Vanessaverse

Vanessa was not technologically literate in the slightest. The witch had no need to work with human contraptions, able to merely conjure up anything she wished whenever she wished it. Of the items she did enjoy that were made by humans, only projectors and rotary phones made the list-the former for introducing cartoons into the world, by extension creating television; and the latter because it made this delightful dinging noise whenever she pulled it to a number.

This didn’t stop her human compatriot Agent in encouraging her to broaden her horizons, much like one day where he had sat Vanessa in front of his computer, signing into a guest’s account.

The witch merely stared at Agent in confusion. “Is this anything like when you taught me about video games?” she asked.

“Well, kinda, except less frustrating,” Agent said. “A computer is more willing to do what you want it to and you’re not restricted to the rigid rules of a video game world.”

Vanessa wasn’t convinced. She picked up her mouse, dangling it by the cord between her fingers. “And why do I even need to learn this?”

“A computer can do lots of things,” Agent explained. “You can browse the internet, chat with friends online, watch funny videos…”

Vanessa gave a blank stare, and he sighed and rolled his eyes. “…Look at porn…” he said in a bored tone.

This captured Vanessa’s attention, and she leaned forward. “See, there we go,” she said. “Open with that next time, okay?”

The computer had finished its boot up session, and was now displaying the guest desktop, minimalist as it was. Vanessa had set her mouse on the desk, cautiously rubbing it across the surface. She watched the on-screen cursor move as she did, and she gave a small laugh. She started dragging the mouse around wildly, watching in excitement as the cursor danced across the screen.

“Okay, alright,” Agent interrupted her fun. “That’s enough jiggling for now. We haven’t even discussed any of the features of a computer.”

“Honestly this is worth price of admission,” Vanessa said, already amused. “When do we get to the porn?”

“That’s the reward for learning and not tormenting me for five minutes,” Agent explained. “Now, there’s a small globe button down at the bottom. That’s your internet. Next to it is a small paper with letters, the word processor.”

“That thing you use when you write books and stories that no one reads,” Vanessa helpfully chimed in.

“Harsh but fair,” Agent said, rubbing his arm. “We’ve got a media player, for music and videos. A photo gallery, a paint program…”

Vanessa’s attention drifted away from Agent’s explanation, as she clicked on the button that looked like a folder. “People always stash their smut in their most secure documents,” she said.

“I, well…” Agent didn’t have an answer to this little bit of logic-in no small part because she was right, to an extent. He was therefore unable to adequately respond to Vanessa’s browsing habits.

Her clicking grew agitated as she browsed one such directory. “Nothing here,” she said. “Guess we can delete it.”

She dragged the directory to the trash can icon, recognizing what that was for, and it disappeared from her cursor. No sooner than she did that did the computer suddenly turn blue, a full system error.

Agent stared with silent horror for a good, long while. “Vanessa,” he said, slowly and deliberately to avoid yelling at someone he knew was still learning. “What was the name of the file you just deleted?”

“It was nothing fancy,” Vanessa shrugged. “System something-or-other.”

“Thirty-two?”

“That’s the one.”

Agent placed his hand atop his face, giving the loudest sigh he could muster. “I still had my Oblivion save file in there…” he lamented.

Vanessa did not get the stress Agent was feeling, instead questioning her inability to create movement. “The mouse is gone,” she simply said. “Is it hiding?”

Exasperated, Agent pulled his hand away, choosing his thoughts carefully. “I think we should have you work with a professional in the field of computers,” he suggested. “Someone who can keep you on track.”

…

Fortunately, Agent knew exactly the sort of professional that could adequately serve as a mentor without taking too much of Vanessa’s incessant crap. With some direction, and some multiverse traveling, the duo arrived at a nondescript brick building on a city street. Agent casually knocked on the door, then waited.

“So, this is where your expert lives?” Vanessa clarified. “I just thought it’d look more futuristic than this.”

“She’s not exactly one to flaunt her abilities,” Agent shrugged. “She keeps most of it behind the scenes.”

As he finished speaking, one of the bricks was forced open by a hidden compartment, and a camera started poking out. It rotated to face the two guests, examining them. A laser started skimming Agent’s body, from the head down, before moving back up. Just as quickly as they came, the laser stopped, and the camera sunk back into the wall, the brick sliding back in place like nothing ever happened.

Vanessa blinked. “The heck was that about?” she asked.

The door started unlocking shortly after, opening to reveal a figure behind it. It was a rather tall bandicoot woman, sporting mechanic’s overalls and a fair amount of oil stains on both her clothes and hands. She gave a smile.

“G’day, mates,” she greeted. “Agent, glad to see you again. So, this is that Vanessa woman you were telling me about?”

“A pleasure, darling,” Vanessa, ever the smooth talker, offered her hand courteously and flirtatiously. The bandicoot shook it firmly. “And you are the brains of the operation, then?”

“Me?” the bandicoot asked. “Oh, no, not fully. Bolt’s the brains, I just put the screws on her blueprints.” She chuckled. “Call me Shelia, by the way. And, oh, how rude of me! Come in, come in.”
She stepped to the side, gesturing the duo to come in, which they did. The inside was far more technologically advanced than the outside suggested, with nearly every square inch of wall covered by monitors, servers, or wires. It was an information technology specialist’s paradise. Vanessa didn’t understand a thing of it, of course-but Agent continued to look in awe, so it must have been impressive to him. Shelia led them further into the house, towards a set of basement steps.

“You’ll like Bolt,” Agent added to ease Vanessa, as they walked downwards. “We met one day at a tech meetup, traded contacts, she experimented on me a bit…”

Vanessa leaned in with intrigue. “Ooh, getting feisty, are we?” she asked.

Agent blushed. “N-not like that,” he stammered. “Science experiments. She’s a metaphorical wizard in her field.”

“Ah, shucks, you flatter me.”

Another voice came into view, this one a shorter figure, a cat of sorts. She gave the group a wave, as well as a small hug to Agent, only just able to reach his waist. “Glad you could make it.”

“Thanks for helping with this, Bolt,” Agent nodded with his own smile. He couldn’t help but blush, much to Vanessa’s amusement. The witch took stock at their benefactor. She was almost like a cartoon come to life, in some aspects. What was certainly most striking were her limbs, with both arms and both legs replaced with cybernetic appendages. Steel rather than flesh.

Bolt noticed her stare, and gave a smile. “Oh, these?” she said. “Yeah, I guess they do draw attention, don’t they?”

Vanessa raised her hands defensively. “I meant no offense,” she said, sincerely.

“No offense given,” Bolt laughed. “Honestly, I love these things. The first one–” She gestured at her left arm. “The first one was a necessity, but it just felt like such an improvement that I had to continue.”

“Ah, so you’re modifying yourself?” Vanessa asked. Agent was right; she DID like Bolt.

“Sure am,” Bolt nodded. “We’re even running some tests on how to properly digitize a living consciousness, with the end goal being to construct an artificial self I can inhabit completely and become one with the technology we build.”

“And she’s really far in it,” Shelia helpfully added. “Show ’em your back, hun.”

Bolt nodded, and she turned around. She twisted her hand around, pointing a finger at a small USB port where her back met her neck. It was seamless, not even a bit of skin scalding or errant welding.

“I can basically project myself into my own technology for a time,” she explained. “Make holograms, that sort of thing. We’re still running diagnostics on doing it full-time, but could you imagine the lives this would improve? The prosthetics alone have helped thousands get a new lease on daily life, and they’re very cheap to make in the first place.”

“You’re doing a public service, Bolt,” Agent smiled in appreciation.

“Just giving back to the community, the Bolt Faraday way,” Bolt, ever modest, rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment. “But enough about me. What was it you needed?”

“Ah, right,” Agent nodded. He gestured to Vanessa briefly. “My friend here needs help in basic computer literacy, and it’s a bit beyond my own abilities. She deleted System32 because she thought it was hiding the porn.”

Bolt allowed a bit of air to hiss between her teeth, and Shelia visibly cringed. “Ouch,” Bolt said. “Okay, yeah, I see the issue here.”

Vanessa pouted somewhat. “It wasn’t because it was hiding the porn,” she argued. “It’s because it wasn’t hiding any.”

“That’s not helping,” Bolt said. “But I get it. You probably just need a specific plan for teaching you. Specialized programs and such.”

Now it was Vanessa’s turn to be embarrassed. “I’m more of a hands-on learner,” she said.

“That’s all I needed to hear,” Bolt gave a satisfied smile. “Agent, how about a little compromise?”

Agent tensed, not exactly liking the implications. “What did you have in mind?”

“If you let me test the digitization tools I have, I’ll make sure Vanessa is a computer savant,” Bolt explained. “It’ll be harmless, of course. And I’ll keep backups, just in case.”

“This raises several ethical concerns,” Agent remarked. “But if it means it keeps Vanessa occupied for a bit, sure.”

Bolt eagerly clapped, excited for the progress of science. “Alright!” she said. “All we have to do is hook you up.”

Bolt nodded to Shelia, who started digging through a nearby filing cabinet for something to move along the procedure. Meanwhile, Bolt was booting up her own computer, a beast of a processing unit rivaled only by government equipment, and even then, it far surpassed any other machine with Bolt’s influence. It hummed to life, and she was signed in within seconds.

Shelia pulled out a cord from the drawer, a square metal prong at one end with a USB plug on the other side. Agent could see some wires and metal prongs sticking out of the square, with the wire side looking like an identical USB plug pre-installed. He couldn’t help but think of Bolt’s own additions, the back of her neck’s installation, and he visibly grimaced at the thought.

“Oh, don’t worry, we thought ahead on this one,” Bolt explained. Shelia touched the square against the back of Agent’s own neck; it felt cold at first, but seemed to stick on perfectly, followed by a brief moment akin to receiving a flu shot. “Seeing as we may be giving this treatment to people, we’ve been working on making it as painless as possible.”

Agent gave a sigh of relief. “I shouldn’t have doubted you,” he said to his friend. Bolt shrugged in amusement.

“You just had an adaptor wire itself into your mental synapses,” she said. “Any normal person would find that concerning.”

She cracked her metallic knuckles as she held the other end of the cord. “Alright, time to see what the human body looks like when compressed into raw data,” she said, before plugging it into her computer.

Almost immediately, the lights flickered briefly. Agent’s body gave a jolt, before he became limp. His eyes were still open, but without the spark of attention, glazed over. Then, in front of the rest of the group, his body began to spark and warp, pixelating. It was as though his very resolution was decaying as his physical data was being compressed for the upload. As he pixelated, some of him started to slip through the wires, bit by bit, a new notification appearing on Bolt’s computer to signify the upload progress.

In time, the last of Agent was fully digitized, his remaining bits and bytes sent into Bolt’s hard-drive with a confirmation ding. The USB square dropped suddenly, dangling uselessly on the far end even as the other half remained plugged in.

“Well, he’s in there,” Bolt nodded, satisfied. “Just to make sure everything is well…”

She browsed the directory, looking for the newest files. She found one that was dated just seconds prior, labeled “agent.exe”, most assuredly her friend. As she had promised, she highlighted this new program, casually duplicating it within the same directory, creating “agent.exe(1)”. Finally, she clicked on the file to start it up.

Agent’s state of consciousness prior was…questionable. He was vaguely aware of some sort of humming sound, maybe some circuitry passing electricity to each other in the background. He couldn’t move, though, not an inch. He was awake, but he wasn’t. He could feel himself, but he didn’t exist. At least, that is, until Bolt started up the program, and he suddenly found himself dropping onto a surface.

Perspective was a trip. It was like he was three-dimensional on a two-dimensional plane, able to see forward and backwards, but not left or right. Looking down at himself, he could see that his resolution was low, the processing ability necessary to run one human consciousness so intense that some sacrifices had to be made.

Bolt, meanwhile, could see a stylized sprite of Agent on the desktop, standing upright, unharmed, and even making a small idle animation. She gave a giggle, her eyes sparkling with inspiration at her achievement. Shelia gave a clap at the sight.

“Another win for us!” Shelia declared. “D’you suppose he can hear us in there?”

“Hang on a sec,” Bolt said. She pressed a button on her desk, opening up a microphone. “Agent, can you hear us?”

On Agent’s end, it was like hearing a supermarket announcement. It was still audible, though, and he nodded. “I can hear you,” he said.
On the screen, Agent’s response was shown by a cartoon speech bubble, and his own voice, heavily compressed like an MP3 passed around an entire community. Still, it was a significant achievement in Bolt’s eyes. A living person turned into code.

“Alright, a deal’s a deal,” she said. She turned to Vanessa, who was startled with the sudden attention. The witch, too, was transfixed by the technological trickery she bore witness to. “Now if you slide on over here, I’ll give you a course on basic computer literacy?”

“Hmm?” Vanessa asked. Then she nodded. “Oh, right. That. Honestly, I’m not even interested anymore.”

“Um…” Bolt blinked. “Wasn’t this the whole point of why we did the experiment?”

“Oh, it is, but this looks way more fun,” Vanessa said. She approached, practically pressing her cheek against Bolt’s monitor to examine the tiny Agent. “What else could you do with him?”

Bolt was somewhat off-put at Vanessa’s almost gleeful approach to science-doubly so in the sense that she wanted to put Agent through his paces-but she nevertheless gave it some thought. “I mean,” she said. “If he’s code, he could be modified into other programs, maybe.”

“Ooh, let’s do that,” Vanessa agreed with glee. “Whatever that means.”

“Alright, so if we try this…” Bolt sat back down at her desk, rubbing under her chin. She moved the mouse over Agent, who felt the sensation of something enveloping him. She right-clicked, seeing other options. She moused through the options, easily finding one that said “open as”. Mousing over that revealed further options, with Bolt highlighting and selecting a word document.

Almost immediately, Agent felt his awareness and his physical form, such as it was, completely warp. He was entirely immobile now, and yet far larger. His words, his very thoughts themselves, laid bare across his new form, several pages worth in fact.

“Crikey, that’s a lot of pages,” Shelia remarked, having watched the show from behind Bolt’s shoulder.

“Based on the word choice and structure, it’s almost like a novel.” Bolt mused. Eventually her cheeks turned crimson. “Oh, this is fanfiction. Erotic fanfiction.”

“You’ve been holding out on me, darling,” Vanessa gave a chuckle. From her vantage, she could see Bolt scrolling across the screen, occasionally tapping on the keyboard. Things changed on the screen, and with them came Agent’s textualized form. Such artistry! It was admirable from a specialist’s standpoint.

“Hey, what would happen if you added text?” she offered. Bolt listened intently, then wordlessly started typing directly onto the page.

“‘I used to be in the circus’,” she said out loud. “There. It’ll be tricky to tell from here if it worked, though.”

Agent, meanwhile, felt a tad dizzy, his entire imagination exposed and now modified. He never felt anything like it before, not since his circus days. Such a thought was…weird, in part because he wasn’t convinced it was HIS. Yet the memories were fresh and strong, impossible to ignore.

“My turn!” Vanessa said, excited suddenly. She gently nudged Bolt to the side, taking control of the keyboard before the cat could react. Out of sheer experimentation, she held down the backspace button for a long time. Bolt could have stopped her, but she had to admit…she was curious too.

As the words vanished, Agent felt something disappearing from him. The absence of it was all he was aware of, however; he had no idea what he was missing. And as time passed and more of the words on his “.txt” self vanished, that absence continued to grow larger and larger.

Eventually there was a blank page, and Agent could scarcely feel anything at all. Just a profound, all-encompassing sense of emptiness. Emotions, memories…the name, even. Did he have one of those? What was he?

“This is probably okay,” Bolt reasoned, obliviously. “Okay, so we did a text document. Maybe something with audio?”

“So like a phonograph?” Vanessa asked, curious. Shelia wasn’t sure what to make out of that statement, but Bolt remained steadfast.

“You’ll see,” Bolt explained. She deleted the copy of Agent, providing a whole new concept for the digitized lad: complete nonexistence. A blip of consciousness, wiped clean.

Fortunately, that was only the copy, Bolt thought to herself. To further demonstrate her attempts at playing god, she proceeded to copy Agent’s .exe file once more, making (2).

The new Agent was plopped down, startled awake again. He felt everything that had transpired within the past few seconds. Turning into a word document, having his entire mind wiped, and then vanishing entirely. It was a sequence of events that would have sent most sane humans into a crisis. Before Agent could pretend to be a sane human, he was immediately opened up again, this time inside an audio splicing program.

He lost his corporeal form again, left in stagnation once more. Silence. Darkness. The cold of the computer enveloped him, until life filled him all at once.

“Oh wow, this is such a weird sensation.”

He spoke out loud once, then he went dormant again. In truth, Bolt merely pressed the play button on the audio file, listening to Agent’s voice play out.

“Ooh, a fancy phonograph,” Vanessa chuckled. “But if we chop up some of the audio, like those videos Agent showed me…”

Bolt scooched her chair backwards to allow access for the witch. This, she felt, would be quite the sight. A tech-illiterate cosmic entity, who had just implied that she had been shown videos that were memes at best and YouTube Poops at the least? Now this was science in action.

Vanessa picked up the gist easily, casually chopping and splitting Agent’s audio file into bite-sized pieces. The hapless digi-nerd could feel himself being cut up, then restitched, over and over again. His mind was diced just as much, his voice a mismatch of itself.

After three hours of tinkering on one line of dialogue, Vanessa gave a satisfied cheer. “It’s finished,” she said. “Go on, give it a listen.”

“Impressive, Vee,” Bolt smirked a little, as she obliged the witch. She put on her headphones again, and with Vanessa’s encouragement, she pressed the play button again.

“SuS,” went Agent’s voice, forward and then backwards.

Bolt blinked, and Vanessa was laughing uproariously at this piece of comedy gold she had painstakingly crafted. “It never gets old!” she declared with utmost sincerity.

“Well, I’m just…happy that you’re happy,” Bolt eventually said, struggling to find a positive statement. “You certainly took to that pretty quickly, anyway. Maybe that was the avenue you needed to learn about computers?”

“What other weird stuff can we do with Agent?” Vanessa asked, only half paying attention to her benefactor. “The weirder, the better.”

“Ah, well…” Bolt sweated a little. She was starting to run out of ideas on keeping Vanessa occupied, and from what Agent had told her, when she gets bored, she makes her own fun.

“Hey, sis,” Shelia interrupted, lost in thought. “So I know we got ‘im in there, but, ah…How will we get him out?”

“We’ll just hook it up to the 3D printer, probably,” Bolt suggested offhand. Vanessa, however, raised her hand.

“Can he download himself into you?” she asked.

“I mean, maybe?” Bolt said, uncertain and now overwhelmed. “I don’t know. Frankly, I’d rather not test that one. But if you want, I can upload myself so you can see me in there.”

Accordingly, Vanessa clapped in delight. “Ooh, that sounds fun,” she agreed. “Overwrite Agent while you’re in there too?”

Bolt whistled to herself. “This one’s high-energy,” she muttered.

Still, her natural curiosity couldn’t be suppressed either. Thus, she grabbed ahold of the USB cord, removing the loose end’s square attachment unit. She sat down in her chair, comfortable, before she began readjusting the cord to wrap around her body, towards the back of her neck. With one movement, she stuck it in her port.

She went limp immediately, with her limbs gently glowing as though they were in sleep mode. Unlike Agent, however, her body did not digitize itself, remaining solid. Her consciousness, however, passed through easily, processing into the computer far quicker than her friend did.

Within seconds, her face could be seen on the desktop background. She squirmed a little, getting comfortable, viewing her guest and her coworker from her square shell. “This is how I do it,” she said. “In here, I’m practically a god, you know? Here, check this out.”

She barely had to concentrate, but the real-world mouse started moving on its own, the keyboard clacking without a single fingerpress. Bolt was taking full control of the system directly from the inside, and it was clear the methods she had access to were far greater than the average user.

The mouse dragged Agent out of the folder, the third one in a day. Confused and disoriented, he said nothing as he was held by the virtual visage of Bolt Faraday.

“Now pay close attention,” she instructed, looking over Agent’s form. “This is how we perform an overwrite.”

She forced a “copy” function on herself, her essence and being. Agent was selected next, and “paste” was chosen. She saw a confirmation window open-asking if she was sure she wanted to replace the file. She said yet.

It wasn’t long before Agent’s body warped on the screen. His body shrunk, his head growing larger. His ears sharpened, extending to the top of his head, and fangs developed. His limbs hardened, going from artificial skin to artificial steel, an exact replica of Bolt.

The memories were the most intensive part, of course, and Agent received them all. His thoughts, his personality, his very digital soul concealed with those of the inventor cat. It was painless, seamless even. He…She, rather, understood what was happening, and reflected on the miracles of science once again.

“Success,” Bolt (1) said with a wry smile. Agent was gone entirely, again, with only the cat and her copy remaining. “Definitely going to add this to the security list. Might make a good antivirus program.”

“Oh definitely,” Bolt agreed with a tin-laced laugh. “All the best innovations come by accident, right?”

“Hey, speaking of,” Bolt (1) said, suddenly. “We still have the master file of Agent, right?”

Bolt immediately froze up. She caught something that she should have caught prior, a key fault in her experiment. She did everything right, except for the most vital procedure: making a copy. She hadn’t overwritten and saved over a clone, she copied herself on top of the original.

“Oh, boy…” Bolt groaned. She looked to a visibly concerned Shelia, and a Vanessa that was slowly grinning wider with each second. “This could take some work, I think…”

Seems that even geniuses have bugs in their programming, she thought.

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