Overclocked by K. S. Augustin

to ex­plain him­self as much as an­swer the ques­tion.
    “And have you heard Carl’s plan for des­troy­ing the Rhine-Temple?” she asked. Her eyes nar­rowed. “Do you agree with him?”
    “In fact,” Miller said, cock­ing his head to one side, “I helped him to come up with it. So yes, I sup­pose you could say I agree fully with his plan.”
    He flashed her an im­pudent grin and Tania sud­denly felt like a long-suf­fer­ing mother of two mis­chiev­ous brats.
    “What are you do­ing here, Tom?” Carl asked, at the same time as Tania’s, “How did you get in?”
    Miller looked from one to the other, then de­cided that he’d bet­ter an­swer Tania's ques­tion first. He was ob­vi­ously smart enough to know who he had to get on side.
    “I have stand­ing per­mis­sion to enter Carl’s labor­at­ory,” he said. “Prob­ably be­cause, un­til now, there hasn’t been much of…in­terest go­ing on here.”
    There had never been an­other mo­ment when Tania was so happy she didn’t sport a fair com­plex­ion. Des­pite this, her cheeks felt as if two spears of hot metal had been pressed against them. There must have been a dull flush evid­ent un­der her brown skin, how­ever, be­cause both men sud­denly grinned at her.
    Maybe not­ing that her em­bar­rass­ment might quickly turn to ir­rit­a­tion, Miller quickly con­tin­ued. “And I’m afraid time’s run­ning out, Carl. Soon, the Rhine-Temple will be too big and dis­persed for us to des­troy com­pletely. We must start the job now. That’s why I’m here. To help.”
    Carl’s lips tightened. “How much time do we have?”
    “My team and I think we have no more than two cy­ber-days.”
    “And you brought it?”
    Miller pulled some­thing from his back pocket and held it up. It looked like a thick rect­an­gu­lar en­clos­ure of some sort, per­fectly sleek with roun­ded corners. Tania tried fo­cus­ing more clearly on it but the ob­ject de­fied such ex­am­in­a­tion, pulsing brightly through a gamut of col­ours. It was im­pen­et­rable but beau­ti­ful. It looked like Miller was hold­ing a carved shard of star­light in his palm.
    “What is it?” she asked, her voice hushed.
    “This is the soft­ware we hope will des­troy the Rhine-Temple,” Miller said. “But there are two prob­lems with it. Due to time con­straints, this is the one and only ori­ginal. I can get a backup sent down the line but that would take too much time. And,” he ad­ded, walk­ing past the other two to put the gleam­ing block on the desk, “this comes without a hand­shake shell.”
    Carl scratched his neck, an un­con­scious move­ment that Tania had no­ticed months be­fore, from the time they first met. He al­ways made that ges­ture while deep in thought.
    “Okay,” he said, “here’s what we do. Tom, make two cop­ies of that soft­ware here. I know it’ll take hours, but it’ll still be much quicker than wait­ing for a backup real-time. Tania and I will craft a shell for it. Once we’ve tested it, we’ll cover your soft­ware with our shell then…we go. And Tom,” he angled a look at his friend and Tania caught the soft­ness in his gaze, “thanks for com­ing. I ap­pre­ci­ate it.”
    That soft­ness hadn’t been there three “real-time” days ago. Tania bit her lip. She thought about how much had changed. How much
could
change, if only they sur­vived this.
    “Right.” Miller slapped his hands to­gether and the sound re­ver­ber­ated through Carl’s work­room like a gun­shot. “Let’s get to work.”

    The next “day” passed in a haze of work, ar­gu­ment and counter-ar­gu­ment. Tania found she’d lost the urge to sleep, nap­ping only for an oc­ca­sional thirty minutes now and then. She com­men­ted on it to Carl and they agreed that her power naps were more a psy­cho­lo­gical ef­fect of the Blue rather than a phys­ical im­per­at­ive, much like his age­ing.
    She