Lilly couldn't believe what she heard. Miss Violet used to be a boy? Also, the 'old' Artemis turned someone into a girl before? It was so weird! But if this new girl had some kind of magic... could she... would she... maybe... a hopeful idea started in her head. But how to ask? "Um..." She looked shyly to the two real girls.
"Hehe, you're funny" giggled Artemis.
"But cute!" smiled Jenny. "She's my best friend."
"She's all fuzzy!" Artemis exclaimed brushing her hand a little closer to the squirrel girl's fur. "An' she's got two big tails!" the moon-girl giggled again. The orangey-red fur was just too inviting to the moongirl as she poked Lilly's left red tail.
Lilly blushed a bit at the touch but didn't mind. "Um- I- I was wonderin'... do you think you can change me to a boy?" She asked hopefully, her large eyes betraying their urgency. The lack of 'anything' between her legs was frightening especially with girl clothes on her.
Artemis blinked."Huh? Why would you want that! Boys are silly."
"Nuh huh," Lilly said a little defensively. "I'm really a boy." she said a little guilty to admit it. "An' I used to be a big boy."
The moonchild looked shocked at this revelation. "But- you said your name's Lilly... an' you're wearin' a dress an'..." she trailed off. How could she be a boy? Why would she even want to be? This was a really weird game she played!
"Um- its actually Lilly-" The squirrel girl blinked. Why was saying her old name so hard!
The moonchild giggled again. "Mama watched you a lot too! She likes you."
"H-huh?" Lilly wasn't sure what to think to that. Though- the squirrel girl did watch the moon a lot. She had a vague memory of a present she once had... a telescope. The first time she saw those strange craters up there, she was entranced by them. Though the telescope broke and she never could make it work again... still the memory of that strange rock hanging up there... is it possible that someone was watching her, as she watched it? "C-Could your mom turn me back maybe then?"
Jenny smiled lightly. "Let's play a game," she said. "Tickle attack!"
Suddenly the squirrel girl was tickled by the two other girls. they tickled under her arms. "Ah! No! S-Stop!" Lilly giggled unable to help it as she was tackled to the ground.
The children continued to play. The sound brought a lot of relief Harriet's mother. She came in to seem them, and allowed a little smile to escape her lips. The sound of laughter back in the house... even if her daughter was changed, it didn't change that she was still her daughter. She arranged an appointment with a hospital to be on the safe side.
Whatever happened to Harriet, she would love her any way.
The light's were off in Hiro's room, as he set about his task. A computer monitor glowed with a link to Emergence... though the cyborg had long given up on that.
Hiro wasn't sure how to help this program become alive again. He felt like Dr Frankenstein, with pieces of a life that he somehow had to make work. Dare he really do that? What if the result is indeed a monster? What if he... what if he killed this person?
He didn't know who the daemon was... if it was male, or female... what form did it found itself so horrible in, that it risked re-writing itself? Hiro felt so sorry for it. A small part of him wondered if emergence were somehow to blame... unlikely as that seemed. But that was simply his own prejudice against the true AI's on the internet.
He had run various virus scanners, with nothing detected. Given that he was once infected with a virus today, he didn't want to take any chances... but what to do! The daemon was suspended in his system. What was it though? Pandora's box? Or someone who really needed help... finally he decided he had to try. He attempted to run a bit of the base code, but the software was very glitchy. It immediately shut down.
"Hm..." Hiro mused with some intrigue. This wasn't just a program, he had to keep in mind. It was a person... though it was riddled with bugs. Hiro knew instinctively, that the brain being highly parallel, one self inflicted 'bug' could cascade down the entire thing. While there were also duplications that generally prevented such bugs, indeed the duplication allowed thoughts to allow 'fuzzy' logic... if he was to undo the damage, he would have to find that bug, and simply 'rewind' the system back to it's previous state by 'guessing' the previous logical step. For a normal machine, that could take years...With his system guiding such a precise ordering of programming, it might take less... but he would have to dedicate a lot of resources to it. if he didn't watch the programming very carefully it might make a mistake
He was serious about redeeming himself though...
"Okay... let's do this," He said as his eyepiece glowed a soft blue. Thought became instantaneous programs directed by his will, as they picked and looked for 'patterns' in the Daemon. It was like working out the pieces of a huge puzzle... a bar for progress came to him...
this was going to take a while...
