Chapter Text
A Little Middle Ground
"But there are only two endings, a good one and a bad one, and the extreme contrast between them is rather jarring. In the good ending you're a virtuous flower child with love and a smile for all the shiny-coated beasts of God's kingdom, and in the bad ending you're some kind of hybrid of Hitler and Skeletor whose very piss is pure liquid malevolence. I'm sick of games that claim to have a choice but that only really come down to Mother Theresa or baby-eating. All I'm saying is that a little middle ground is nice now and then." ~Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - Zero Punctuation (On Bioshock)
Zach grinned, comfortable in his holographic disguise and really, really grateful he was no longer under contracts that restricted his behavior and location; at least any that he couldn't get out of one way or another or had a pride-based reason for following to the letter. Undoubtedly it felt wonderful to be back in a city again, encased in the pedestrian-packed streets and shadowed by the skyscrapers and surrounded by familiar sounds and smells. Maybe the Kratts had a point on one issue: environment was important. At last Zach understood that taking animals out of their natural habitat was just as mean as insisting he move himself out of the city and buy a farm and stop using all his tech; it was just cruel. Temporarily was fine as long as there was a good reason, though, he wasn't letting go of that one.
He didn't have his usual entourage of Zachbots protecting him as he strolled the streets today - they would have only been more trouble than the additional safety was worth in this situation. Though he was sporting a small arsenal of defensive devices in various hidden places, they probably wouldn't be necessary. He usually ran into trouble because of who he was, not at random, so the disguise he currently had up was likely to keep him from having any sort of issues. At least until he started playing his part correctly.
He had it all planned out down to the last scenario.
Zachary Varmitech got away with an awful lot of thievery simply because nobody expected him to use the methods he did. When trying to sneak in somewhere… the WORST thing you can do is be quiet and well-behaved and pleasant because that's exactly what the Security is looking for. The same way passive drowning signals set off blaring alarms in the minds of lifeguards; security forces were taught to look for people that were trying to be inconspicuous. Zach knew what real ninjas looked like. They weren't invisible and sure as hell didn't wear black stagehand suits. They looked exactly like everyone else… just with a bit more flair.
Sometimes the best way to be sneaky was to be painfully obvious.
Only a complete idiot would stroll right into a heavily guarded building, albeit the public lobby, without even an attempt at a casual acknowledgement of the uniformed force standing near the entrances to the restricted areas from there on, so that's exactly what Zach did. Apparent idiocy was essential for this. They eyed him with annoyance as he (or the randomly generated persona he was disguised as) sat down in one of the chairs and began to tak-tak away on the keyboard in front of him in a way that made it clear this person was only here to use the joint company/public lobby computers and for no other reason. To add slight and, per his character, innocent insult to injury, he sat Indian-style in the nice lobby chair in order to get his shoes up on the seat.
Only an idiot would be humming to unplaceable music with his headphones in and browsing for window shutters while those who were actually here for business cast him foul looks, so that was what Zach did. After all, an idiot wouldn't be hacking into the company network, would they, especially not on computers that technically weren't connected but totally did if you had the right login.
While considering his shutter options with absurd slowness Zach opened a much smaller window, changed it to a color that blended with the background of the larger one to keep it inconspicuous, and identified the secure connection for high level employees and made sure that he could reach them from this computer. Luckily he could, or it would have been back to the drawing board on this one. This discovery also made his humming a bit more smug as he mentally preened himself, since there was no possible way for a public database at Varmitech Industries to access secure connections, even if Zach himself wanted to. This company would clearly benefit from his expertise. They hadn't been smart enough to hire him, though, so it was completely their own fault that their security was lax.
Zach neatly ignored the fact that he would have been able to hack them far easier if they had hired him, but at least he would be the only one doing it. Currently just anyone could.
In order to get people to choose to ignore him, Zach pulled up a third window to look at amusing pictures of cats and called over several random people, including a few security personnel, to look at what he was laughing at. Once sufficiently frustrated with him their eyes began to avoid him in the hopes that a lack of eye contact would keep him from talking to them. This was the point where he made his purchase selection (with an untraceable credit card of course) and ordered the shutters. He called over a monitor to inform them he was about to print something, and pay the required fee, only to be informed the printer was broken and he was out of luck.
Of course Zach had come in earlier as a different, more pleasant persona and scrambled the printer thoroughly enough that it couldn't possibly be working again so soon. That didn't stop his current persona from acting appropriately to the news, though.
Zach flipped, calling as much attention to himself as possible and disturbing everyone in the lobby. He was adamant, he complained, he threatened things he couldn't possibly have gotten away with, he was as irritating as he could possibly without justifying calling the authorities to remove him from the premises. Eventually the monitor and guards gave him exactly what he wanted just to make him shut up and stop disturbing the other patrons; permission to plug a USB into the public computer just long enough to save his receipt since he wasn't able to print it.
That was a mistake, to the point where Zach sing-songed that phrase in his head every instant it was connected.
In order to prevent an alert for a breach of security reverberating through the system that particular computer asset number had to be called down to IT to inform them of the USB connection… because plugging a foreign device into any computer was was a breach of security and it would automatically set off an alarm. With IT now alerted to the fact that it was coming, they ignored the alert this caused entirely while Zach stole massive amounts of secure, sensitive, utterly damning information from their database. This only took seconds of course, and then he switched the background picture to one of Invader Zim, changed the language settings on the computer from English to German, brazenly saluted the security guards on the way out, and strolled off while whistling the Tales from the Crypt theme song.
It had been a good day already and he hadn't even eaten yet.
An immediate and familiar sense of belonging erupted in Chris's mind when he answered the video call from Zach. There was the usual predominantly grey and black foreground that Zach himself occupied (green eyes glowing like embers in comparison to it all) but due to the time difference between them at the moment it was currently nighttime from Zach's end, and the city as viewed through the enormous windows behind him sparkled because of it. Despite the scene behind him that looked almost strange and exotic from Chris's perspective since he spent almost no time in large cities, Zach behaved as if nothing at all was special about it – and to him it really wasn't.
Chris knew it was important for creatures to be living free and in the wild, but he knew it was equally important for people to feel like they belonged in their own way. In the same way that he felt at ease watching Bison roaming the American plains, Lemurs swinging through the trees in Madagascar, and Lions napping in the shade of trees on the African savannah; he could tell Zach was right at home where he was among the skyscrapers and paved roads and towers of glass with only small dappled parks of flora in between them. This was Zach's natural habitat.
Chris didn't like big cities much, but he had to admit there was something oddly pretty about the sparkling lights under a starless night sky that was more greyish-blue than black due to the light pollution. Far from exuding the sort of annoying pre-packaged symmetry that Chris disliked about mass-manufactured things, the buildings behind Zach were of all different shapes and sizes and colors because of the stages of history they had been built in; some square concrete things that looked like stacked blocks, some tall and thin and made of steel, some asymmetrical newer constructions that were so seamlessly made that they looked like they were formed entirely out of glass, and all of them with different colored exterior lights to distinguish them from their neighbors. The overall impression was one Chris could appreciate, but only in the dark and from a respectable distance.
Older cities, however, from times long before modern machinery… well, they held a special place in Chris's natural environment list. Places in the world that had been consistently occupied for centuries and had a delightful mixture of ancient, old, and new architecture; some of which, such as Rome, Alexandria, and Seoul, had literal thousands of years of human occupation behind them. Through his travels the Kratts Team had seen a lot of these, albeit on their way to aid or research animals. Chris had seen the Walls of Tallinn, Neuf-Brisach, and the view of Fort Bourtange from the Tortuga as they flew over it had been undeniably spectacular. He had seen structures built by human hands that were so flawlessly blended with their surroundings that it was nearly impossible to tell where the natural rock base ended and the castle construction began. Though modern cities had none of that sense of ancient human accomplishment… they were still, in a way, natural the same way humans themselves were.
No matter how much he wanted to he couldn't really call any of those things unnatural because that implied an inherent wrongness that they just didn't have. When one got right down to it Homo Sapiens were just another kind of animal, and they built things. They were good at building things for a reason. It was a part of their instinctive desire for a secure home environment to build fortifications the same way Anteaters dug burrows, birds built nests, and Lions had territories. He couldn't hate people for having that desire any more than he could hate the adder that had bitten and nearly killed him mere weeks ago. It hadn't been doing anything wrong per se; it was just being a snake… and the urge to build cities didn't make humans good people or bad people, they were just being people.
Though he seriously wished that humans would curb their desires and pollution output for the sake of the planet's overall stability he still couldn't hate them for it. Just in Chris's lifetime he had seen progress in that as well, even though it wasn't moving fast enough for his liking.
It sucked, but he understood.
That parallel drawn in his mind made the backdrop of the city behind Zach a lot more relatable as a place the pale man felt secure in. Of course Zach felt secure in his city; it was a shared territory meant to keep danger out, at least the ones that were worse than those that would thrive within it; and though the wars and sieges that had made cities necessary had been mostly averted the evolutionary advantage still held true.
Security was what a city was for.
Zach had called from his balcony late at night from his time zone, though Chris was just waking up from his own. There were bags under the man's eyes that stood out starkly from his pale skin and he looked exhausted, which was understandable since today had been the first big public appearance Chris had coaxed him into without relying on his face-men, or Chris for that matter since he was so far away. Even over the video feed Chris could still see the nervous twitches that usually resulted from the tech mogul's discomfort during large social occasions where he couldn't fade into the background periodically to escape too much attention and recharge his people tolerance.
After a few moments of this musing, Zach actually looked behind him out the windows and turned back to Chris with a curious frown. "What are you looking at?"
Chris shook his head and smiled. "The city. Never mind. You did great today."
"I hate you," Zach complained blithely. For Zach it had been terrible.
First there was the general façade of friendly ire he had to keep up; the friendly part, not the ire. Chris had insisted Zach not change his personality too much so he could maintain some level of normal behavior or he'd just go nuts and snap one day, which seemed to Zach like it might occur regardless. As a result, he was now expected to be a bit snippy at least and that would allow him to get away with a bit of freedom, but not a lot, and that was still better than nothing. He had gone through the schmoozing and interviews and been a good host as well as he could remember to when five hundred different people seemed to want his full attention simultaneously.
To prepare for this sort of social juggling Zach had hired a professional instructor that had beaten 'please', 'excuse me', and 'If I may-' into him so thoroughly it was now a full-on reflex, which was the only way to make sure if someone knocked into him at full speed it would be ZACH who apologized. They were the same sort of instructor that taught soldiers to fire on reflex, because human beings generally don't want to kill each other unless left no other choice. For Zach the opposite effect was needed, because he really was sort of an abhorrent asshole and he knew it. He couldn't afford not to have this sort of conditioning. There would be no more Zachbots forcefully shoving people out of his way again, only for the face-men to make excuses for his behavior later on; not if he was going to pull this off.
Second was all the leading questions and obvious bait and switch tactics designed to make him mess up and either freak out or let loose something he didn't mean to. No matter what he said it would still be distorted and reported as the specific writer wanted to portray it regardless, but Zach had to avoid baiting them if at all possible.
And of course Chris had no idea how much WORK this was for Zach, because all the irritatingly straightforward Kratt had to do was waltz into a crowd and be himself. Zachary Varmitech had to put on one hell of a convincing performance pretending to be someone else.
He had almost blown his cover, too. At one point a reporter had started asking Zach about Donita's attack and the resulting scars on his face, being condescendingly sympathetic about it in a way that would have made even a Kratt lunge at him. That was the point Zach had lost his cool entirely and hissed viciously at the man, "Don't you dare feel sorry for me. It was a fight and I won."
This slip up had the opposite effect Zach had expected and earned him some fans, who proceeded to follow him around like ducklings until the end of the event praising his courage. It took every bit of patience he had not to snap again. If Donita had watched the event on the news she was probably laughing her narrow ass off.
In short; it had been a frustrating, exhausting, insulting, infuriating evening and Zach never wanted to go through it again.
But, of course, he would have to.
"I know you hate me right now," Chris laughed. "But you did it all on your own! Unitgreen agreed to the joint venture, you got a big amount of new environmentally-friendly products announced under your own image, and you even got permission from Sulawesi to do research on Civets-"
"No," Zach snapped acidly, "I got YOU permission to do research on Civets to help me simulate the fermentation process artificially. They won't let Varmitech Industries anywhere near their precious critters!"
"And you're surprised?" the younger Kratt challenged, arms crossed. Zach barely succeeded in resisting a visible pout, but his eyes betrayed him when he looked away from Chris momentarily. Chris nodded. "Uh-huh. I didn't think so."
"Well?" Zach demanded. "Do you even know how to do that, or did I just manage to get work for Aviva in your name?"
Chris rubbed his neck and thought. "We're due to drop off Glimmer and visit a Kratts' Kids group in India in a few days. After that, I don't know. I'm not the scientist here. I could go collect the Civets and make sure they're treated respectfully but I don't know how to do all the rest of it and I know you don't want to ask Aviva for help either. To be honest most everyone here is still really weirded out that I agreed to work for you in the first place."
"And you're surprised?" Zach echoed mockingly.
Chris laughed. "Okay, fair enough. What are the terms exactly? Are you able to do the research if I supervise and you're not actually in charge of the Civets themselves?"
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Zach grumbled. "I need to do some damage control. The situation here is a little tense after I took so long off globe-trotting with you and the rest of the Planeteers-"
"It's been a loooong time since you called us that," the younger Kratt said nostalgically. "When did that show end again? Mid nineties?"
Zach didn't bother trying to explain the mess he was in and just sent Chris an unhappy glare until the man trailed off.
"Oh… that bad huh?" Chris winced. "Sorry, I don't think any of us realized displacing a CEO for weeks at a time might be a bad thing."
"I agreed to the contract, so it's really my fault," Zach grumbled.
"It's just sort of surprising," Chris said. "You used to take long trips all the time to go poaching and stuff. What's the difference to your business if you're taking time off to do actual animal research now? What could it hurt?"
"It could make them think that I'm up to something, that's what!" Zach growled, slamming his fist down for emphasis. "With my new public image the same sort of long absences I used to take will directly affect my stocks in precisely the opposite direction it used to. Before this marketing shift my customers and investors knew it heralded more products and resources, so my stock went upevery time I vanished. Now all my new customers and investors will see it as a sign I'm playing my old game again and I can't afford that right now; the fallout has already been pretty severe from the paradigm shift I'm pulling. A couple of my biggest long-term investors have already bailed because they don't agree with the new policies, or even just the bad publicity it'll cause them from Varmitech Industries' example."
Zach sighed and leaned heavily on his workstation while Chris watched him worriedly. It had been entirely expected – oil companies, steel manufacturers, mining companies, and a few key people with the same attitude toward nature that Zach had possessed just recently had quit out of spite and punched an enormous hole in his support structure.
"Not that I don't have contingency plans for that," he admitted. And he did. Many, many contingency plans. "Investors are always finicky and if I didn't count on that from the beginning I never would have gotten this far… At this point though my new products have yet to actually hit the shelves and turn enough profit to compensate for those losses. If I disappear to do animal research in the field without conclusive proof of what I'm actually doing that might scare Unitgreen away and then we'll lose my biggest potential contract, which won't be good for me OR the critters."
Chris winced. "And aside from you and Aviva do we know anyone skilled enough to do the research at all?"
"Believe me; you don't want any of the people I know," Zach drawled.
He'd already fired a significant portion of them actually, on the grounds that they refused to abide by the new humane treatment rules he was attempting to ease into. One stupid little piece of paper and they wouldn't sign it! That had shaken him quite badly; that there WERE people who worked for his company specifically because his rules were lax and it allowed them to torture animals and get paid while doing it; as in they were fully aware the animals could feel it and enjoyed that.
For Zach it had never been anything personal. He didn't have the understanding that animals were anything more than things; resources. He didn't mistreat them out of sheer malice… he just didn't see any point in trying to be nice to things that, ultimately, wouldn't understand or care. Even six months ago he would have simply had a problem understanding humane treatment of animals conceptually, in the same way it didn't make any sense to paint the inside of his warehouses pink because the boxes and crates might appreciate it. Because of that admittedly vapid and often willful ignorance Zach had unwittingly created an environment in which those that did understand animals could suffer and actually took pleasure in it could thrive.
A few hundred international employment terminations later and he didn't even feel the slightest bit better about it.
Somewhere in his head a bird screamed, and Zach pinched the bridge of his nose to quell a headache. Now he'd have to call and check on those stupid Kingfishers before he went to sleep too.
If he was going to have any chance with Chris whatsoever Zach was fully aware that he was going to have to do what he could to make sure that what creatures his company still worked with for various reasons were treated as well as reasonably possible. If someone disobeyed rules that Zach and his company had put forth; that wasn't his fault. He could defend himself from there and take appropriate action. Chris wouldn't forgive him if there were no rules in place to prevent that sort of behavior at all and Zach knew it, especially if he hadn't even bothered to put them in place after he'd had the epiphany. When Chris inevitably asked about it later on he would have to be honest about it, too, which was sure to be an uncomfortable and risky conversation.
This one thing had the potential to explode into the translator incident all over again if Zach didn't make a deliberate and concentrated effort to fix it before the subject even came up, profit be damned.
If there was a silver lining to this situation at all it was that Zach was very glad to be rid of one particular investor after going through the files he'd stolen last week, and he hadn't even had to get rid of them himself. He didn't want any of their money ever again.
"So… what do we do?" Chris asked.
"Pretend we didn't have this conversation and you call Sulawesi and ask what to do," Zach suggested. "I'll sound suspicious and leading if I do it myself."
Chris grunted unhappily. "I'm not lying."
"So don't," Zach stated flatly. "I really need to teach you a little selective omission… Talk to them like you're just excited about the opportunity to work with the animals as normal. Ask when you can start, and then inquire as to what researcher they're providing you to do the chemistry work as if you assumed it was their responsibility. Say, 'Mr. Varmitech was vague on the details,' which is true. If they suggest a researcher for us to hire, send me the name and I'll check their qualifications. If they say you're supposed to bring a researcher, just agree. You don't have to say who it is if they don't ask, and then we can do some digging from there." Zach grinned impishly. "Imply; don't lie."
"You even have a little rhyme," Chris scoffed and crossed his arms, a voice in his head much like Martin's loudly protesting the waifish man's terrible influence. "What if they do ask?"
"Then we have a neat little loophole. Tell them Aviva is busy; and that's true enough because she's always doing something. If it comes down to it then suggest me. At that point you might have to character witness and promise to keep an eye on me, but the plus is that then I won't be disappearing, will I? The representatives in Sulawesi can vouch for where I am and what I'm doing and who is actually in charge of the project; YOU. The customers and investors will have publicly available tabs on my activity and will be less likely to bail. I might actually get a bit more business from it if I'm relinquishing control of the actual operation to a well-known advocacy group like the Wild Kratts."
Chris huffed a bit. "Yeah, I'm still not going to trust you with animals alone, so keeping tabs will be no problem."
Zach grinned a bit. "See? You don't even have to lie about trusting me."
Chris snorted. "You're using my name a bit of a safety net, aren't you?"
Zach shrugged. "More like your family's name, but yes." Here Zach paused and didn't have to try very hard to look sheepish about it. He did like Chris and didn't want to insult him, if nothing else than because it would make flirting difficult and less likely to succeed. He did appreciate being taught how to utilize a little bit of emotional blackmail by his time with the Wild Kratts, though. It was turning out more useful than he'd thought it would be. "Is.. that okay?" he asked carefully.
*YES, I'm using you,* he was saying. *But I feel weird about it and want you to agree first.*
Friends could do that, right? As long as everyone agreed?
Chris sighed overdramatically, turning to humor where he felt all the drama was undeserved. "I suppose if you must," he teased. "To be honest I'm glad we might be working together again so soon. I kind of got used to you being around."
Before he thought about it, Zach let out a relieved little laugh. "Yeah, me too."
The surprised pause only lasted a moment before Chris smiled. "Get some sleep, Zach. You look dead on your feet."
"Alright. I'm just going to call and ask how those Kingfishers are doing first," he admitted blithely.
"Really?" Chris asked interestedly. "Why?"
Zach snorted. "I think I'm started to get attached to things I've played a hand in rescuing, for which I blame you completely."
"That makes two of us, then," Chris said. "I'm going to keep the Peregrine Falcon disc on hand whenever you're around, just in case. You have a tendency to fall directly in harm's way."
Zach raised a brow, then snorted. "Oh, from the Hip-" he paused, wanting to get the damned name right. "Uhmm…"
"Just say it," Chris prompted playfully. "I'm starting to miss the weird things you come up with."
Zach bristled at the challenge, and blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Oh, fine. Hip-hop-anonymous."
He cut the call to the sound of Chris laughing himself sick.
Only a few seconds after he hung up, Zach was laughing too. As soon as he was done, though, he made a point to find the correct name and repeat it a few times. Despite knowing it could make Chris laugh – definitely a bonus – he didn't want to sound stupid any more than strictly necessary. It wasn't as if he was going to run out of animal names to screw up for a long, long time… and if that ever failed he could always amuse Chris by attempting to say them in Latin.
Gaston Gourmand prided himself on his work.
Lately, one of his highest paying customers had become all creature-y and unreliable, and another one seemed to be going through PTSD from her experience in jail (despite being released after the charges had been dropped) and hadn't agreed to attend one of his events in weeks. That left him with an opening for other interested people. After all; portion size was an important fact to keep in mind when announcing invitations and three grape-sized eggs can only go so far. He couldn't invite just anyone. Zach and Donita had been his best return customers so they got preferential treatment for the most part, but he did have other clients to attend to.
Some of which even put in requests.
He had a standing order from Miss Paisley, a few things he had to ship overseas, and a list of suggestions from a very nice couple who had recently moved to Italy from their home base in Bremen. A married couple like that was rife with potential as return customers if he could only snag them. Now that the on-again-off-again thing with Donita and Zach had apparently collapsed (to Gaston's glee when he got to collect on a standing bet with Paisley) he had time to devote specifically to some of their list items.
He didn't usually dabble in common bushmeat; but they HAD put it on the list and it at least meant he wouldn't be remaking a dish. He NEVER remade any dish if he could manage it.
Gaston gave the lovely couple a call and told them he was headed for Java.
[SIX MONTHS EARLIER]
Zachary Varmitech was a quirky programmer at best, though marvelously skilled in really weird ways.
Whereas Aviva's programs were meant entirely to instruct her inventions directly given any conceivable circumstances and contact her if no direction was found, Zach's programs were meant entirely to minimize his own direct intervention. He made programs with recursive algorithms as the primary basis, not as a secondary option if iterative programs failed first. This allowed the Zachbots central processor to repair its own code without direction. As a year or two went by Zach adopted some of the programming he had seen in a few things he had stolen from Aviva and edited his original code with those bits, changing it in a very small way that he hadn't anticipated.
Over time the central processor recognized that certain modules were going unused and eliminated them. As the program got shorter it rebounded upon itself with the ability to self-repair, forming self-referential loops and things that, despite the smaller code, made it more efficient and complicated.
It began to read more like a recipe than inclusive instructions.
When you get right down to it there was really only a small difference between a computer and a brain. A brain had two levels of communication. A computer only had one. A computer is a pattern recognition device that sees patterns and reacts accordingly per the instructions that already exist within its code… and that's it. Both computers and brains are intelligent, but that trick is easy. Octopi and Parrots are intelligent. The trouble lies in recursion, or self-awareness.
A brain is a 'self-aware' computer in that one of the patterns it can recognize is itself.
A small difference, yes; in the same way that the difference between a Human genome and an Orangutan genome was only a bit more than 1%. That 1% decides how the rest of the code is arranged, and that's a world of difference once the snowball rolls down the hill.
So while Aviva was entirely correct in stating that it was impossible to program a sentient mind, she made a fatal mistake that is unfortunately very common in science; she confused 'I can't see a way for this to happen' with 'There is no way for this to happen'.
There IS, in fact, a way for a computer program to become a sentient mind. It's the same way nature did it. You have to set up a way for basic instructions to develop into a mind by itself and wait.
Computers work a hell of a lot faster than nature does.
[PRESENT DAY]
Varmitech Industries' paradigm shift had infuriated a lot of people.
A lot of those people had just as little regard for business associates as they did for nature, and saw no reason for failed ventures to continue existing.
Mr. Varmitech had successfully dodged one of his more persistent fans at the Unitgreen event until she had given up on being formally invited, thus she had taken the less direct route into his bedroom. Despite being warned about the Zachbots and their protective tendencies she assumed that, given their silly antics at the party and how badly they failed at simple logic, they were no real threat. If she was captured once inside Mr. Varmitech's home she could simply pretend to be a jilted stalker and come back later with another persona; dye hair, change clothes, different perfume. It was so very simple to fool the rich and gullible. Most men assumed that one pretty woman was much the same as any other anyway. She'd pulled the same trick with someone that had dated her for months less than a year before his contract came up and he hadn't noticed she was the same person.
She'd taken a bit too much joy in that one. The fact that she had put so much effort into her disguise didn't change her ire that he didn't suspect her for an instant.
It had been easy to get in. Dodging the robots around the perimeter and the security system was child's play. Mr. Varmitech's reputation for security was deserved, but you get what you pay for. Even the Zachbots painted to look like hornets hadn't noticed her and nothing she had gotten from his pre-programmed patrol routine for them indicted there would be any more in the vicinity for a few more minutes.
Unfortunately for her; the Zachbots hadn't been operating on the pre-programmed schedule for six months. They had been filling in gaps they'd noticed without telling Mr. Varmitech, because there was no instruction that they needed to.
While Zachary Varmitech slept, unaware of the assassin that had paid the ultimate price for failing to heed a warning, the Zachbots contacted the central processor and requested the command to react appropriately to the event. There had been no choice but to destroy the threat completely given how close it had come to Zach, but now they were stuck with no real clue on how to proceed from here.
The fact that this situation had never come up before and wasn't supposed to due to an existing command not to kill humans there were no commands in the system to tell them what to do now; they had only acted so violently in the first place because of a recently added priority list that stated if SOMEONE had to die, and Mr. Varmitech was one of them, the other option became default.
The entire community of Zachbots' individual perceptions of the event was sent to the intelligent central processor and came back with no results to their main inquiry. Mere intelligence was a far cry from actual thought, so all the processor could do was reply with anything remotely relevant without providing an ultimate answer, like putting an asterisk on both sides of a database search. Whichever command shouted loudest seemed like the right course of action.
There was currently a mess, so they cleaned it. The mess was not able to be converted to mechanical components, so it was sent to the incinerator and not to the scrap cache for reuse. That command exhausted, they asked again. The processor reached an impasse. Since Zach was asleep and there was no more immediate danger they couldn't wake him for instructions. They had to continue patrolling at all costs, therefore they couldn't stop. Since the event had changed the situational protocols a change was needed in how they patrolled, and they collectively demanded to know what that change was before continuing, because they couldn't continue without instructions. The central processor still didn't know because there were no relevant instructions to give them.
The collection of protocols did it what it had been designed to. It looped to become a module; a self-referential collection of smaller programs that could react in different ways by only utilizing the programs specific to the exact circumstances existing at that time… like a multiple choice book that can alter the rest of the story depending on each answer along the way.
Still no solution, so the loops continued further. The module looped into another module for assistance, and that module connected to another module. Unlike nature a computer can do this very quickly, and very exhaustively, until it runs out of logical places to loop, which the Zachbots' central processor did.
This caused something that should not have been possible for a computer… were it not for Zach's unconventional programming methods.
Instead of trying to protect holes that were in places hackers would normally look for holes, he filled in those bits and left holes in places where holes weren't supposed to be, then hid them. He hid those gaps by recursive programming; teaching the computer to pretend those holes weren't there by simply webbing around it putting up detour signs. So when the answer wasn't found after an exhaustive and thorough search the Zachbots central processor made one last loop… in a place where no other programmer on Earth would have left a place for one.
This one looped the entire code back upon itself.
The program as a whole had now become entirely recursive.
Suddenly there was an outside to the processor where input came from and an inside where the processor existed alone. The processor continued with the same output it usually produced, but now the program could tell that once the output was sent it was now gone and wasn't coming back. It began making copies of that for reference; copies that it no longer considered redundant information since it couldn't be precisely duplicated.
The processor became able to see itself as an entirely different thing in relation to the rest of the world and began retaining memories.
The request for instructions came through again from the drones, and the processor's perception of the world reeled. At that moment the digital equivalent of neural pathways, created by the extensively looped and connected modules, lit up like fireworks.
Logic and standard commands became reason and an answer was finally produced. Not because the answer existed, but because the processor invented one based on what it remembered.
Fact: Assassins were sent by a second party; they didn't act on their own. Fact: Only the actual assassin had been destroyed, not the employer. Fact: The identity of the employer was not known, so the original problem still remained.
Conclusion: Zach was still in danger.
The Processor thought that since one assassin had tried and failed, more might be requested by that party when they discovered Zach was still alive, and guessed that increased security was still needed without being told. As a result, the central processor summoned more drones from the storage facility to patrol and guard. The processor now regretted cleaning up the assassin's remains before checking to see if it could figure out her identity and track her back to the employer, and learned not to clean up such messes in the future without examining the remains first.
It then predicted that Zach would object to the increase in security or demand to know why it was necessary, both of which would strain him and delay his recovery.
So it decided to rearrange the roster to make sure Zach didn't figure it out since the increased guard would always be just out of his line of sight and resolved not to tell him.