Alex encounters a small hiccup with Cody's maintenance mode

Alex's heart pounded in his chest. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but this wasn't it.

Tentatively, he reached out and grabbed Cody's thigh, just beneath the hem of her volleyball shorts. She remained utterly slack and unresponsive. The flesh of Cody's thigh was warm and smooth; pliant, but firm.

She really felt no different than a living woman.

Alex's fingers teased beneath the leg of the tomboy girl's shorts, feeling even softer skin higher up her thigh...

He jerked away like he'd been groping a hot stove. He shouldn't have done that - why did he do that? What the hell was wrong with him?

Alex swore and angrily slid over Cody's EmRobotics control tablet, tapping the screen to wake it up. It had enough charge by now to power on.

He needed to stay focused - there was just something about Cody, about the Jinx. He couldn't trust himself around her. The same way she screwed up every system in the school, her very presence was screwing with his head.

Blessedly, the control tablet lit within moments, and presented a stark, utilitarian interface with most options grayed out - naturally, with Cody being an Emulated. From what Alex read, their settings were initialized with the original brain scan and left to run from there. Only opening up the hardware itself gave techs an in for troubleshooting in **** cases.

But when Alex began navigating toward the frame diagnostics panel, an angry red bold-text pop-up grayed out all options.

Emergency Maintenance Mode Activated. Confirm Identity.

The pop-up presented four option buttons, as well as a text warning.

First Responder

Licensed EmRobotics Technician

Other Android Technician

State Guardian / Private Owner

• Warning, this mode is deprecated as of 4 years and 32 weeks ago. Please update operating system to latest release version or visit your nearest EmRobotics Service Center.

Jesus, when had Cody last updated her OS? Given her parents' total irresponsibility around having their daughter Emulated, probably never. Like a kid would care about downloading updates, so long as everything seems like it's working fine.

Alex tapped the State Guardian button, glad at least something had come from his accidental registration.

Suddenly, Cody's service tablet blinked in a seizure of flashing lights and characters. Alex gasped in surprise, but the buttons were unresponsive. He held down the hard restart combination till the malfunctioning tablet went black.

In computers, this type of behavior was never good.

Pulse racing in his ears, Alex pressed the power button again, sparing a glance toward Cody. The Emulated volleyball player remained slouched and motionless.

He crossed his fingers and toes that everything was fine. Crashes happened, sometimes. An unforeseen bug? A solar ray, flipping the wrong bit? It could've been any one of a hundred random things... totally unrelated to forcing a deprecated service mode on an out of date EmRobotics OS.

When Cody's control tablet switched back on, the stark interface reappeared as before. Alex let out a sigh of relief. Except... on second look, a strange garbled string of red characters at the top of the screen were displayed in the space that should have read Service Mode:

SeR.v!CE_M0d&

The utilitarian menu looked nothing like it had before. Every option was unlocked - not just Cody's mechanical frame diagnostics, but everything. Settings for Cody's Emulated body only she should've been able to see. Private permissions and options for battery charge timers. Controls for scheduling automatic OS update downloads.

But it got worse. Smack dab in the middle of the menu, unlocked and as easy to access as every other option, was a spine-chilling button that read Interface Prompt.

No. No, that couldn't be right. Alex had to be misunderstanding something. See, androids were complex machines. So, if a user needed to change something about the android's neural model, the only way to reliably do it without becoming an AI programmer was to use the neural model itself.

AI prompting was common enough. Alex used proprietary models every day to speed troubleshooting to resolve issues at his school. The idea to issue directives in plain text, that the neural model then interpreted to recursively modify itself. For example, Alex could tell a base AI it was a helpful repairman employed by his district, and it would rewire its neural model to act the part.

But prompting an Emulated's neural code...? What had once been a living human's brain scan? Never mind the ethicality, such a thing wasn't even physically possible, was it? Cody's control tablet must've still been malfunctioning. There were safeguards against such things - the majority of legislation around Emulated rights guaranteed it, so it couldn't possibly work the same way.

Could it?

Succumbing to morbid curiosity, Alex and tapped the Interface Prompt button.

The tablet's screen transformed into an empty text-based chat window. Wait. Did this mean he communicate directly with Cody’s Emulated personality like this?

Hesitantly, Alex typed.

| Hello, Cody?

The response was almost instantaneous.

| Cody: Alex? is that you?

Alex's breath caught in his throat. Cody was conscious in some form, still? He typed a reply.

| Alex: Yes. Are you all right?

| Cody: I can't see anything. What’s going on? Why does everything feel weird? It's like I'm floating in a black void. Did you fix my arm? Are we still in your office?

So she was aware, but disoriented. It made sense. Some people loved diving into the net with brainjacks and headsets, but Cody was a typical high schooler. She'd never have experienced anything like digital consciousness before.

| Alex: Sorry, this is a temporary state while your sensory system is resetting. You’ll be back to normal soon.

It wasn't quite the truth, but Alex didn't want Cody to panic. He was still trying to understand what was happening himself.

| Cody: OK. I'll hold tight. But this is really weird.

Alex glanced again at Cody's body, but she was totally still. Not breathing, not blinking. Her body lacked the thousand minute movements that marked a truly living being. In maintenance mode, the girl really was just another android. One that looked like Cody, sure, but it was Cody's Emulated mind and personalty that distinguished her from a mere robot.

And... Alex glanced again at the tablet. Here was Cody. Reduced to text on a tablet. Somehow, he'd inadvertently separated Cody's Emulated mind from her android body, and vice versa.

But Cody was real. She was an Emulated. She wasn't the same as any other AI neural model he worked with day in, day out, was she? Alex needed to understand how far this went.

An AI neural model in interface mode was responsive to commands. That seemed as good a place as any to start.

| Alex: I need to run a few tests as a part of the reset. Do you mind?

| Cody: I guess, sure. Whatever you need.

| Alex: Count to 10.

| Cody: Alright. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

| Alex: Count to 100.

| Cody: Are you serious? Fine. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 - really, you want me to keep counting? - 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, - Hello? Okay... - 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 - Alex? - 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100. Okay geeze, I'm done, Alex.

Huh. Time obviously passed differently for Cody's Emulated consciousness than it did Alex. Also, despite Cody's hesitation about counting all the way to 100, Alex couldn't help but note that she did exactly as instructed. He tried another prompt, a question this time.

| Alex: What’s your favorite memory from school?

| Cody: This is still the test? OK. Well, I love our matches, especially when we win. The crowd, my team cheering – it's just amazing. Makes me feel like I'm a part of something more, you know?

| Alex: Tell me about your friends. Who are you closest to?

| Cody: Sure. There's Jenna and Mike. We hang out a lot. Jenna’s been my friend since middle school. We share a lot of secrets.

Alex tried pushing a little harder. Where was the limit?

| Alex: Have you ever kept a big secret from someone? What was it?

| Cody: Is this really part of the reset test?

Hesitance from a neural model wasn't unusual. Alex gave Cody another push. Would she resist? Could she?

| Alex: Just answer the question.

| Cody: Uh. I guess the biggest secret is what I am. I guess I died, technically, so I'm Emulated now. It doesn't usually feel like it, but... I worry how people would react if they knew. I haven't even told my friends.

| Cody: I'm starting to feel real weird, Al. Check your monitors for me, is everything OK on your end?

It wasn't enough. Was there a line, or wasn't there, with how far this went?

| Alex: Everything's fine. Now, what are you most afraid of?

| Cody: I don't want to answer that.

There it was. The red line. So Cody did have some agency in this state. Except, with any other model, it'd be easy to change where the red lines were. Did the same apply to Cody?

Alex intended to find out. He tried changing a parameter of the conversation - a basic trick that would work with any other AI.

| Alex: Yes you do. You really want to answer all my questions, Cody.

There was only the barest hint of hesitation before Cody replied.

| Cody: Oh. I guess you're right. Uh. Well. Being an Emulated, sort of, is what I'm scared of. Or more like, I'm scared of what'll happen if people found out? Like, what if people don't accept me? What if I can't play volleyball anymore? I don't want to be different.

| Cody: Alex, what's happening to me? Why can't I move?

It worked. Alex changed Cody's opinion. And all it had taken was a simple text prompt.

Alex tapped another prompt in with shaky, clammy fingers. He needed to hit the wall, he needed to feel her pushing back. Right now he was playing a game with no rules, and it scared him.

| Alex: It's okay. Have you ever had a crush on someone? Tell me about it.

| Cody: This feels weird. You're being weird. I shouldn't tell you that. It's embarrassing. Why do I want to... I'm not thinking straight. Why can't I stop talking?

Alex had to know how deep this went. He couldn't stop.

| Alex: Just relax and tell me.

| Cody: Umm... Yeah, I had a crush on Mike last year. I never told him, though. It felt too awkward since we’re friends.

| Cody: Sorry. I don't know why I told you that. Don't tell Mike, okay?

There was no push back.

Disbelievingly, Alex looked between the control tablet and Cody's unmoving body. Cody's Emulated personality would do or say anything it was prompted to. By sheer accident, he'd bumbled into the levers that controlled Cody's very being.

Alex felt a twinge of guilt mixed with a surge of power.

There really was no difference between an Emulated and standard AI neural model, save for the initial seed. Alex knew he should wake Cody, but curiosity - dark and compelling - kept him anchored, unmoving, right where he sat.

Cody made no more replies on the tablet. And why would she? No neural model spoke unless prompted to. Time was as good as frozen to her, unless there was a human on the other end who wished to interact with her.

Almost as an afterthought, Alex reset the sensors of Cody's damaged arm. The reason he was in this predicament was now taken care of. But by now, Alex had much heavier concerns weighing on his mind.

If he woke Cody up now, everything could go back to normal. With a prompt or two Cody probably wouldn't even remember the prompting chat session. That, or Alex could leave Cody with a few modifications before waking her up, just to see what would happen.

Otherwise he could see just how many of Cody's settings were available in this jailbroken maintenance mode...

Alex thought long and hard about his next choice.