Lilly laid awake for a while, staring out the window and thinking about what she'd said. I wish I knew how to be a girl sometimes...she hadn't really meant that, had she? Sure, she felt kinda awkward around other girls sometimes, but...did that really mean she wanted to be more like a girl? She knew she wanted to be friends with Jenny and Artemis, though...if she were a boy, would they still be friends with her? They thought boys were silly...
She gazed out the window and thought about Venus. She kinda remembered that it had something to do with girls, sort of...she wondered if it was a good idea to have asked that or not. She didn't really think anybody would've heard her wish, but what if they did? What if there was someone there who was listening, and they were all girly? What if it was like Ms. Violet had said about the "other Artemis," and that someone wanted to turn her into a girly-girl? She didn't wanna be wearing pink all the time, or anything like that!
No, that was a silly thought. She didn't think there was anyone there, and if there was, they were probably nice, like Artemis's mother on the Moon, right? She hoped so. This was all too confusing to be thinking about now; maybe she should leave it for another time. She nestled into the blankets and went to sleep.
Haru listened to the song a few more times. It was a bit exhilarating, reliving the experience of recording it in her mind; if she let herself drift off into reverie, she could feel the way she'd been swept up in a strange sort of trance from which the words had come. It felt like something special to her, even if she didn't understand it.
On the other hand, it irked her that she couldn't divine any sort of meaning from it. Always it danced between simply being partly grammatical and actually seeming like it might mean something, but whenever she tried to fix on one point and figure it out from there, it was just lyrical nonsense. She couldn't even remember if it had meant anything to her at the time, either; she had been too lost in the moment to think about that. She remembered the feelings; sometimes lucid tranquility, sometimes a sense of urgency - but was it urgency from fright, or anticipation? She didn't know.
She sighed. "I rather like mysteries," she said, smiling as she repeated her mother's words to herself. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all; maybe it was simply a random sampling of emotive thought patterns being fired through her speech center. Or if it did, maybe it wasn't meant to be known...maybe not yet. Maybe some day she'd figure it out, when she needed to.
Until then...at least it was a nice song, and she'd had a lot of fun in doing it.
As Hiro slept, the process he'd left going worked its way through the daemon's code. It had been about the limit of what he could manage, but he'd more or less figured out an automated repair algorithm for what seemed like the common types of damage, and set it to use his unconscious mind as a sort of "guess server," analyzing and providing input where the simpler heuristic approach failed. He wasn't at all sure that was a good idea, but...Shi seemed like the kind of person who knew what she was doing; if she wanted him to bring a human element to this project...well, that he could do.
He hadn't really been sure whether this would simply get the job done, or whether there might be unintended side-effects. Would the introduction of what might be seen as a random element have any effect on whatever there was of a person remaining inside this thing? Would aspects of Hiro rub off onto his patient? He hoped it would simply reconstruct the original, but then if the damage was extensive that might not be enough.
Whatever the case, something was taking shape out of the mass of damaged code that he'd been given. Whether it was a person or merely a digital zombie remained to be seen.
Jon sighed as she closed her textbook. It was later than she'd intended to be up, but she'd gotten busy trying to catch up on homework. Besides, she hadn't really been able to sleep, anyway; she was still a bit peeved a Karyn for making light of her situation. She felt a bit bad about that; it wasn't like Karyn was trying to pick on her, and she supposed from a certain perspective it was kind of funny.
Still, it didn't change the fact that she really just didn't need this right now. She had enough on her mind trying to think about how to get through the next four and a half months and how to return the world to...maybe not even normal, but a better state after that. She didn't need to be worrying about what she felt about who because she'd been a girl for five and a half weeks at the moment. Besides, she was going to be a guy again in a few months, anyway, so what did it matter?
She frowned. It was late, she was tired. She needed to sleep, not lie awake worrying about this of all things. She threw on the long flannel shirt that served her for pajamas, slid over to her bed, stretched out, and went to sleep.
