Cody has jinxed herself

For now Alex tried to put Cody out of his mind, as hard as that was. He still had his job to do after all. He's leaning towards just keeping her secret anyway.

Alex returned to his attemps to troubleshoot the Wi-Fi issues. They were annoyingly persitant and not limited to a single area as the conectivity issues would appear in various parts of the school seemingly not following any pattern. He's tried identifying the cause through the network but hasn't been able to find anything. He thought that the cause was probably a malfounctioning Wi-Fi device carried by someone causing interference. With how many intstitution and personal devices there are in a school it's quite difficult to identify which device could be causing the issue though.

Of cause Alexes mind returned to what was becoming his step zero for troubleshooting any technical issue in this school. Determine if the Jinx is at fault and when inevitable turns out that she is look into the underlying cause. Though Alex now had more of an idea of what may actrually be causing all of that.

Alex dug into a little about how Emulated and android worked finding that yes they do use Wi-Fi for the maintenance, or control interface for androids, and resigned himself to checking if Cody is cause of the Wi-Fi problems. He collected everything he needed to find out and went looking for her. With all the times he'd been called to fix an issue involving Cody he knew most of her shedule anyway.

Alex tracked the Jinxed girl down to her math class and settled down in the hallway with his equipment and began to check the local Wi-Fi frequencies. Sure enough he found signs of a malfunctioning Wi-Fi device and, after he asks the class to turn off any Wi-Fi devices they have and checking the local AP he asks Cody to see him after class. Cody's classmates joked at her having broken something else.

While he waited Alex did some more research on Emulated and even played around with installing the maintenance OS on a spare tablet, the school having several. Not that it shows anything but and entry box for a secure key.

"Hey. Alex!" Cody flashed her usual bright smile, perhaps a little nervous after this morning, after entering Alex's office.

"Hello Cody" Alex glanced to check that Cody shut the door "I know you're an Emulated."

"Oh" she froze, eyes locked to Alex. "No, I'm not."

"Don't give me that Cody. I'm not going to tell anyway, I wasn't even going to say anything but it looks like your Wi-Fi modem is acting up, it's causing interfereance all around the school. When was the last time you had a maintenance visit? Do you want me to talk to your guardian?"

As he spoke Cody loosened but was now glancing between Alex, the door and the floor.

"You wont tell anyone? Right?" she asks.

"Of course not, it's not my secret. Doctor, patient privillage." Alex gave a wry smile.

"You're not a doctor" she shared the smile before taking a breath "the truth is I don't have a guardian."

Then she paused for a second.

"I don't have an owner, huh" she says. "I should go straight to an Emulated maintenance center unless do you want to claim me?" Cody's still speaking as normal if anything her nerves improved.

"Cody, are you okay?" Alex asked, concerned.

"Of course it's just I'm an android without an owner unless someone claims me I have to return myself." she calmy spoke the disconcerting scentance.

"This isn't a prank right?"

"No of course not, do you want me then?"

No, he thought, if it was a prank she would probably be acting robotic or something and well he just couldn't see her joking about somehting this serious. Especially with how shocked and nervous she appeared when he dropped this on her. An emulated isn't supposed to ever be without a guardian her admitting that must have triggered a system prompt of some kind. Or even somthing older from the android side with how she started refering to herself as one. Alex decided that he couldn't let anyone else see her like this, let alone let her head off to a maintenance center. He ignored the feeling welling beneath his chest.

Alex took a breath "I guess I don't have a choice. Yes Cody, I claim you."

"Alright Alex! I belong to you now" she frowned slightly "and what did you mean you didn't have a choice? Don't you like me?"

"What? It's nothing, of course I like you. Evan with how much work you make for me."

"Oh, I guess you need a control tablet for me now. You wouldn't happen to have one would you?"

"Actually yes" Alex clumsily passed the tablet over, numb from the events, and Cody passed her hand over the tablets NFC reader before returning it to him.

"There you go, all set up" she handed the tablet back to him then looked thoughtfull. "Actually do you think you could figure out the Wi-Fi thing yourself with that?"

Alex took the tablet and saw that it was set up as an android control tablet not an emulated maintenance one. Every option was fully open and a prompt script named "orphaned android" was running.