Welcome to Gaia! ::

Converse to popular conviction, the reactions one exhibits are not founded solely by what one has experienced. Two souls in an identical situation, in an isolated system, will experience minor variances in various instances over their life until, approximately one point zero three six decades later, their lives are scarcely recognizable as having stemmed from the same origin. Of course, factor in the millions of souls that go through this experiment, and few will have truly unique lives—maybe three in a billion, according to the statistics.


Our job is to find those three. Reference number MNB-16497.32, I am one of 500,000 moderators, waiting for a hero to be found. It’s our job… We were brought here…


Connection lost.


“Oh bother,” a girl murmured quietly, nibbling on the end of her fingernail, unsure of how to phrase this. She knew that they weren’t trying to save the world, after all, and she wasn’t sure what to say to try to convince others that this was the case. It was so hard to focus on this nonsense, even though it would save her time if she managed to finish this. As per usual, she knew exactly where to place the blame. “Will you stop making so much noise? I can’t concentrate!” she complained, turning around to glower at one of her workmates, Reference number FCR-34619.10, who was hammering at something in the shape of a head.


“That stupid book is not important to our task, Nibs,” the boy muttered. He hated being told to shut up, especially when he wasn’t talking.


She paused, and then continued with her data stream.
We toil in conjunction with those recognized as Fillers, such as my associate, FCR-34619.10 monitoring all the souls which have surmounted preliminary testing. They go through precisely equivalent lives, identical circumstances with identical bodies and the inherent aptitudes that come along with them. They vary depending solitarily on what the souls have done differently in the course of their life, which is why the Fillers are there—to counter the situations that the souls experience which our coding cannot process as promptly, those which haven’t occurred previously, or aren’t ‘standard.’


“Oh, now you’re just blathering,” he chided her, looking over her shoulder at the data input. “If you’re going to try and write a book, you could at least attempt to make it professional. Here.” He started a new line of thought across the data output, her own data stream going blank as she watched it appear.


Our world is on the brink of disaster- our superiors have been holding chaos at bay for more than three centuries now, searching for a soul that could become a proper hero. That is our job. Each of us has gone through preliminary testing, and come out wanting, so the only dream left is to become a supporting role when a hero is found. We’ve been left with a reference number- which could hardly be called a name- and an area to supervise in order to locate our hero.


Nibs snorted. Typical Cray, overdramatic and ridiculous. He rolled his eyes when he saw this on the data output, but continued.


There are two active duties, Moderators and Fillers. As a Moderator- those whose reference numbers begin with an ‘M’- one’s job is to sort through data to find those who should be pushed further into more difficult tests to discover whether the soul is fit or, like us, not. As a Filler – reference beginning with an ‘F’ – we monitor the soul more directly, responding to them and helping fill in the pieces of their lives that would otherwise be missing.


“I think they should already know that,” Nibs remarked. “This is for Mini-Mods, not amnesiacs.”


“So what’s someone going to do if they lose their memory?” Cray asked, deliberately antagonizing her. Nibs drew breath, but released it as she read the data output. She wasn’t going to waste her time with meaningless quarrelling.


When a hero is found, the Moderator and Filler who discovered the soul stay alongside them; since these two know the soul most thoroughly and how to respond to it, it will be their duty to become the hero’s sidekicks, which is why only qualified souls can be Moderators or Fillers. Along with this, they must be at the peak of responsiveness, which is why they are moved to different positions when they have reached the age of thirty.


“Thanks for reminding me,” Moderator-Nibs grumbled, leaning back in her chair, distracted from his ranting about “heroes with” her age. She was twenty-nine, and in a snit because she didn’t want to become a Watcher instead of a Moderator, said to be much less hands-on and much more boring.


“Old lady,” he taunted. She was twelve years his senior, and he loved pointing it out, along with the fact that he wasn’t nearly done with his active duty.


“Aah!” Nibs squealed, pushing him away as she saw what the data input continued to pick up. “Go away, Cray! Now it’s filling up with nonsense!” Excessive, inane data streams she could ignore and build off of, but she was not going to put up with verbal abuse.


Old hag, he thought with a smirk as he turned around to finish up his duties.


“Cray!” Nibs shrieked in anger upon seeing the data output. “You’re toast! Just wait and see what I modify for your life today!” It was quite a threat, and one she would be hard-put to carry-out without being discovered, but the Moderator knew what she was doing, and didn’t plan on getting caught. She reached forwards and


Connection Lost

turned off the data input machine, leaning back to relax for her last few free moments before the day’s work began.


“Reference MNB-1649... oh, bother! Moderator Nibs! Nibs!” The door exploded in a series of loud knocks. “Nibs! Nibs, I need help!”


“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Nibs murmured to herself with a soft sigh, although she didn’t bother getting up.


“I know you’re in there, Nibs!” the girl screeched, banging harder on the door.


“You’re going to have to answer it sometime,” Cray pointed out.


“If you’re so enthralled at the prospect, why don’t you go help her?” Nibs suggested.


“I’m not a Moderator,” he said, which turned out to be a valid excuse in most cases. Nibs was the best Moderator ever since Sain got ‘promoted’ and she would probably continue to hold the position until she herself was moved. This was both an incredible accomplishment, and a major problem, seeing as all the young Moderators came crying to his partner for help when something didn’t go the way they’d planned.


“And neither am I,” Nibs smirked. “At least not for another… 5, 4, 3, 2,…”


“NIBS!” the young girl outside screamed at the top of her lungs just as the door opened in her face.


“Yes?” she asked, running a hand through her short hair and looking the girl up and down. “Reference Number MVC-26195.48, isn’t it? Vic for short, 18 years old, second year as a Moderator, partnered with Reference Number FPR-28149.71, Perry, age 24. I’m jealous; your Partner’s more experienced than my own, and probably more sensible.” Cray ignored the comment. Nibs was showing off, asserting her authority through tricks of the trade. In this case it was a small implant located just above her iris that senior Moderators got when they had to monitor more than 10 souls a day, and which they often manipulated to show details of the other Moderators and Fillers they ran into. Nibs claimed it was easy, but it was all a bunch of nonsense to a Filler.


“Um… yes,” the girl stuttered. “Yes, that’s correct.” She was calm now, and a little off-balance from all the knowledge Nibs had rattled off. “I’m having a bit of a problem at the moment. The soul I was monitoring just attempted to commit suicide.”


That was hardly out of the ordinary. Nibs was surprised the girl hadn’t seen it before. On her level, it happened to one out of every couple hundred souls. Her implant displayed Vic as having monitored a total of 171 souls by now- oh, that was the problem. “First off, calm down. This isn’t a problem, at least not as far as you’re concerned. Did the data input display any skepticism of the soul’s belief in his surroundings? No? Then it’s automatically disqualified; type in the proper access codes, and that will be the end to its monitoring. Anyone that tries to get rid of their own life doesn’t have what it takes to be a hero. This happens quite often, believe it or not- it’s not your fault. Now just go back to your seat and prepare…” she waited for the implant to show her partner’s name again, already having forgotten. “Prepare Perry, for his newest best friend!”


The girl nodded and dashed down the hall.


“Sometimes I wish my ‘newest best friend’ would try to kill herself,” Cray commented from the doorway, with an exaggerated sigh. “Wasn’t she the only one you called that when talking to me?” He was provoking her again; they both already knew the answer.


“You were nine! How was I supposed to know that would happen? Regardless, I have no intention of jinxing us again,” Nibs said, pursing her lips as she led the way to their own monitoring bay. “That one is by far the weirdest soul I ever want to put up with.” She didn’t mention her greatest fury, that her partner had been replaced in the first place by this idiotic amateur. He knew it, and he didn’t care.

ahhhhh you stoped!!! keep going! scream NOW! i wanna know what happens!! gonk


I really like that, especially cuz them not being best friends is much more realistic........ keep it going!

VERY well done, the characters a very lovable and well developed, their personalities are very clear. The story is certainly interesting, and definitely one I'd like to hear more of. Nice description too. Keep writing!

Wow, this is really good XD

The start kinda reminded me a lot of The Matrix, but it's since diverged from that. You may want to, at some point, do a better job of explaining the premise and such of the story, I mean, I only half way get the whole Moderators and Fillers thing.

I'm assuming this is more of a "making it up as I go" piece anyway, but so far it's really good biggrin

Take over for me, Mat. Nibs stood up and started towards the door, leaving her layers open, and the Mini-Mods talking rather loudly.

"Eh?" Mat said aloud, causing the Mini-Mods to look at her strangely. The message popped up in front of Nibs' iris as she walked into the hallway. What? I can't do that! Nibs-

Nibs scowled. They weren't supposed to pass messages from a Monitoring room to somewhere outside, and the timing began to lag when they did it too often. There were several theories here, the foremost being that the Watchers manipulated it to discourage such behavior. Lay off, Mat. Nibs passed a few other monitors, several of whom tried to get her attention. Nibs brushed them off, activating one portion of her specialized data input that would only gather crystal-clear thoughts, letting Mat have access to her response. Get Yates’ help if necessary, I've got to do something.

Nibs- the Mini-Mods!

Get rid of them.

This had better be important. Also, Cray wants to know what's going on.

Sluff the energy.

Nibs! Mat hated being told to be quiet.

Sorry. You know how data streams work. In any case, tell him I said that. I'll see him after the shift's over. He should be able to last until then. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he had a nervous breakdown.

Isn't that somewhat rude? Nibs turned off the data input, and refused to respond to Mat. Entering the records basin, she yelled at all the other Mods to get out and locked the door behind her. There were several protests, but nobody was going to refuse to do her bidding, although several sent angry and confused messages to her iris-receptor. Nibs shut down the link, pushing away the messages.

Nibs picked up the central ball that the records basin drew its energy from, spinning it between her fingers before setting it down again. The lights brightened as the power level surged, and layers began cropping up before several of the more researched parts of the room. Nibs sent up a search going in each of the layers for words pertaining to her theory.

She found millions of results, but as she continued typing parameters and looking through the descriptions, they quickly vanished. By the time the lights had dimmed, merely two minutes later, she was down to 39 records. Of course, each were records of raw data, and most of them did not have the proper logarithms to make sense of them, so Nibs found herself looking at streams of nonsense. No big deal, she told herself, settling down into a chair.

Someone began pounding on the door. "Nibs! Electrons and protons alike-"

"No such thing," Nibs mouthed.

"That's the point, and you know it!" Nibs paused, looking up from her work. She'd been researching for nearly two hours now, and had turned up nothing of importance. How had Cray heard her? Her link was still disabled. "Either turn on your receiver or let me in, Nibs! I've got a right to know what's going on."

"You've got a right to remain silent," Nibs told him, scowling as her eyes drifted back to the layers before her.

"Ha, ha, very funny." Cray rolled his eyes, annoyed, although he relaxed. At least she was listening to him, this time. "Watcher's witness, why'd you leave me to the others? They had their own work to do, and I kept getting sent from one soul to the next at the most random moments. Not to mention, without getting immediate updates on what had been going on. I felt like a novice!"

"You are a novice. You're only seventeen, after all." Nibs rubbed her eyes, which had started to blur. The normal shift she could handle, but she didn't have to focus as carefully on the souls' layers to understand them.

"At least I'm not a Watcher-in-waiting," Cray growled. He was an old hand at this, and she knew it. Filling without a Mod was next to impossible, and although it had been done, the record was four layers at a time; the expert Filler had also managed to transfer to one soul's layer with the appearance of a character from one of the others, and had gotten into quite a bit of trouble. It was no wonder Cray was stressed after handling all 27 of their layers with virtually no help, and his partner wasn't giving him enough credit.

Insulting her like that, though, was not something Nibs was about to put up with. In a flurry of anger, she turned on her receiver and manipulated the data input so that Cray's gauntlet, the only bit of technology he dared to wear, began acting up and pulling his arm in an attempt to smack Cray in the face. Suppressing a shriek, he caught his arm, forcing the gauntlet back. He would have been in trouble if Nibs weren't immediately smothered by messages and data streams.

For several moments, both of them fought their own battles, until Nibs gave up and turned the receiver back off, letting Cray's arm fall to his side, limp. Cray cursed. Any other Filler could wear multiple handy technological constructs without fear that their partner would lose their temper and try to assault them.

The door opened, and Nibs let Cray into the records basin, closing once again after him. “Don’t touch anything,” Nibs instructed. Cray was shocked; she hadn’t threatened him. This must have been serious.

“What are you searching for?”

“I’m looking to see if it’s happened before.”

“What?”

Nibs pursed her lips, trying to decide how to phrase this, without giving it away. It sounded crazy, after all. “What’s the most annoying thing about the Aggravation?” she finally asked.

“That’s easy. Thing never shuts up, and you never have responses built in, so I’m always having to come up with them. You yourself said that developing new-”

“Do you know why that’s strange?” Nibs asked.

Ah. It was crazy. His face said so. “Lots of souls chatter. It’s not strange. Just annoying. You know, because we don’t have the responses.”

“It is strange,” Nibs insisted. “You never noticed? The Aggravation is shy.”

“No it’s not.”

“No…” Nibs drawled this out. “I don’t suppose you brought me a control panel, did you?”

“What? No. You mean you’ve been working without one?” Cray said in shock.

Nibs rolled her eyes. “Never mind. Give me your gauntlet.”

“But it’s not synchronized to-”

“Give it.” Nibs shot him a glare, and he undid the bindings. Gauntlets were built for Fillers, not Mods, and they didn’t have all the necessary keys to manipulate all the codes Nibs dealt with. She snatched it from him, twisting parts here and there as she overrode its normal functions. After several moments of furious hand movements, a layer (a flat one, but a layer nonetheless) sprung to life before Cray.

“How’d you-”

“These are excerpts from the Aggravation’s file folder.”

“I thought you couldn’t access specialty cases outside-”

“Sluff the energy, Cray!” He shut up. “These all have a common theme. Please note that the Aggravation is avoiding contact with all the other characters at the beginning. I’ve compiled its data stream to correlate it with a log of which layer you were in. Notice anything?”

Cray took almost a minute to look it over, as Nibs tapped her foot impatiently. Leave it to a Filler to take forever to see the most obvious things! “They’re within half a minute. Every time it starts talking, it’s within half a minute of when I’ve appeared in the layer.”

“Exactly.”

“How is that strange? You’re supposed to put me into the layer when it’s about to talk. It’s to be expected that they would match.”

“That’s why I never noticed before. I’d always been looking for abnormalities, and that’s normal. With the Aggravation, though, you’ll notice there’s never a heads up. Regardless of the logarithms I compiled, I could never find any pattern, and she doesn’t think about it before hand. I thought I was just really good at predicting its actions, but what if that’s not the case?”

“You mean… she knows when I’m in the layer?” Cray asked. “Impossible!”

“The character I gave to FST-whoever-he-was.”

“Trevor, right? The really annoying character it avoids like the plague.”

Nibs nodded. “Has it ever willingly spoken to him?”

“No, of course not.”

“But today, as soon as I let the Mini-Mod put him in, he struck its interest. Doesn’t that strike you as a little bit strange?”

“So it’s a coincidence. They happen.”

“It happened seven years ago as well.” Cray blanched. “We can test it, if you like. We wouldn’t even have to use an apprentice. Just switch up which characters you are.”

“I thought everything that happened was just in their minds. How would they be able to tell when a real person is controlling a specific character?”

“I don’t know,” Nibs told him honestly. “But I’m pretty sure that’s the case with this one. My biggest question is what we should do with it now. That’s what I’m looking for here.”

“You think it’s happened before?”

“There’s a chance.”

“If it had, wouldn’t we have heard of it by now?” Nibs gave him a look. “All right, wouldn’t you have heard of it by now?”

“There’s only so much information that gets passed down directly,” Nibs said, scoffing at the matter.

“Don’t you hear about all specialty cases, though?”

“Well, yes, but-”

“Then it’s a moot point. It can’t happen, it never has happened, Nibs. You’re reading too much into this. You’re jumping to ridiculous conclusions. You yourself said that there was probably some form of subliminal message you were catching, without really picking up on it. I’m guessing you’re just getting caught up in this theory because you want to solve your famous specialty case before you’re trapped in Watcherville.”

“I’m not making this up!” Nibs steamed.

Cray paused. He always did, before he responded, waiting for the correct words to be supplied to him, but he wasn’t fazed when they didn’t appear. “Not on purpose, maybe. But don’t drag me into your fantasyland, Nibs.”

“Out.” Cray looked at her. She wasn’t threatening him again. He was never sure if that was good or bad. “Get out now, Cray.” He opened his mouth. “Out!” Nibs barked, pointing furiously to the door. Sparks started flickering around her outstretched arm, although he hadn’t seen her type in access codes to make it happen. Cray jumped, and walked slowly to the door. Nibs never raised her head, sitting motionless in her chair.

Cray closed the door behind himself, and after a moment, he heard it lock. Nibs was being ridiculous. She would realize that, sooner or later.
Several Mods caught him in the halls, asking what had his partner in a frenzy. He didn’t know half of them, and suspected Nibs wouldn’t know their names without her implant. Funny that they cared so much. They were probably all just interested in gossip, which meant that it didn’t matter if he told them anything or not. Cray made perfunctory remarks, with knowing smirks, and managed to get rid of them. He ran into Yates, Dari, and several of the older pairs just inside the eating area – it was more like an arena than anything else, with huge walls and an elliptical shape, tables scattered throughout the center – and sat down with them, focusing on his food, as usual.

They all welcomed him before returning to their conversation, and he was left to the company of his tray. He always forgot how lonely it was without Nibs. Not that he felt more comfortable with her there; she tried to ignore him most of the time, after all, but at least he felt like he was supposed to be there. Most Fillers and Mods hung out with those in their age group, people they had known all the way back through training, people who they had been with for ages, played with during childhood.

Cray’s age group had only entered the main eating area the last couple of years, after graduating to their real work. Cray had recognized several of them, and tried sitting with them once or twice, but it was awkward on several levels. The most obvious one being that he wasn’t with his partner. He and Nibs weren’t the only pair that didn’t get along, but partners were always together, if not physically, than the Filler was doubtless being monitored, and having comments passed into their ear all the time. Second, he’d been apart from his age group too long. They knew him, vaguely, and they certainly knew the rumors about him, but there was an invisible wall between them, one he didn’t know how to cross. He was a mystery, no longer one of the group.

What really got him, though, were their conversation topics. They were always talking about techniques used when monitoring a soul, about something they’d said or done that was wrong, asking for advice in a certain area. Cray hated hearing them talk about that. He knew all the answers to the Mods’ problems, strange, since he could seldom understand Nibs’ coding, but when he tried to tell the others how to fix things, they were skeptical, and told him to mind his own business. A Filler obviously had no idea what he was talking about. As for the other Fillers, well, the things they were doing were second-nature to him, and he was always appalled when he heard of their errors.

His age group was all novices, amateurs. Even though he knew the reasoning – they hadn’t been doing real work near as long as he had – he couldn’t handle listening to it. It just was one more thing to prove he didn’t belong.

In any case, he’d been sitting with Nibs and her friends since he was ten. No reason to change now. So Cray ate silently, listening to Yates and Mat tell the other two Ad-Mods and some of the lesser Mods about how Nibs had freaked out when all the Minis came in and she’d discovered she had to take care of them. They could all imagine her reaction, even the Fillers, and Cray smiled as they roared with laughter. Then they passed on the information about the eye-zapper code Nibs had used, and they started sharing theories on how she’d done it.

Cray could have helped them, if he’d wanted. He’d seen Nibs constructing that coding, and thought about warning them about his partner’s blocks. He wouldn’t, though. Nobody expected him to. He was her partner, after all, and betrayal between the two was taboo.

Halfway through his meal, Mat and Yates turned to him, and brought him into the conversation, asking what was up with Nibs, if he was allowed to tell. Cray considered it, trying to decide if it really mattered whether they knew or not. “Some theory on the Aggravation,” he told them. “Waste of energy, if you ask me.”

One of Nibs’ fans, a girl who was 26 and still a mediocre Mod, glared at him. “If Nibs thinks something, it must be right,” she informed him. Cray rolled his eyes. None of the Ad-Mods said anything, trying to stay away from the issue. If Nibs did act a little strange, well, since it had to do with the Aggravation, none of them were surprised. Nibs’ staunch supporter continued harping at Cray until Dari, Yates’ partner, lured her away with the prospect of desert.

“What is her hypothesis this time?” Mat asked quietly. “If you can tell, of course.”

Cray wrinkled his nose. “This is all taking place in their head, right? Or pretty much, anyways. Everything that we do is just a whole bunch of electrical transmissions, just like you guys do with the layers and the data input and stuff.”

They exchanged looks. “Oh, this is going to be interesting,” Evvi, Ad-Mod rank 5, said with a smile. “What was her last hypothesis, again? That there had been some flaw in the coding built in back in pre-monitoring stage?”

“No, that was a few back,” Wes, rank 3, said, flapping his hand. “Nibs’ last hype was that it had managed to figure out how the Data Input worked and was manipulating it to its own advantage.”

Yates laughed. “Didn’t she prove that one possible, though?”

“That doesn’t mean it makes sense,” Evvi chortled.

Mat hushed them, urging Cray to continue. He paused, waiting for the right information to be supplied. Nothing. Either Nibs wasn’t watching or, more likely, she still had her receiver disconnected. “Would it be possible for a soul to know when a Filler is, well, filling?”

The Ad-Mods exchanged curious looks. Obviously, none of them thought it was possible, but nobody shot down the idea immediately.

----
One of my friends at school is urging me to work on this, so... yeah. If I should wait until there's more to put it up, tell me. Also, all comments sincerely appreciated! heart Thank you!

I'm pretty sure it's an alternate dimension, although they wouldn't view it that way. As far as they're concerned, some place like Earth is just made up, a fantasy made for the use of comprehending the behavior of souls, and it only exists in their heads, or as data in the layers the Mods watch.

Eheh. Is it that hard to follow? sweatdrop

Hmm...
The book was supposed to just be a way to start the story. I never actually intended to go back to it. Nibs was trying to write a book of information to help Mini-Mods, or amateurs, or just people who didn't seem to get it (so they would stop harassing her all the time). But writing isn't something she was so good at, so Cray kind of took over at the beginning.
They're not actually looking for a hero, which everybody except for Cray seems to know. (He's really stubborn on this point) I was planning on kind of bringing that into the story later, but woud it make more sense for Nibs to get angry and wipe away the "book" from the records after she turns off the data input and yell at Cray?

The Ad-Mods exchanged curious looks. Obviously, none of them thought it was possible, but nobody shot down the idea immediately. “I take it the consensus is no?”


The other three looked to Yates, who shook his head. “It just doesn’t make sense. It would be like a Filler knowing that their Mod is watching – you can generally guess when they are, but there’s no way to tell. And if you had no Mod, and you didn’t know anyone who had a Mod, why would you think that someone was doing so? There’s nothing physical to identify. It’s completely electrical impulses, which the brain can’t register consciously or subconsciously.”


“Not to mention,” Cray added, “she seems to think that it can tell which person is controlled by the Filler. That would make it completely impossible, wouldn’t it?”


All four of them nodded at once. “I respect Nibs’ talent,” Evvi said hesitantly, “but sometimes she can be a little out there. The Fillers aren’t actually in the scene; they’re just creating the proper charges to be sent to the soul’s scenario.”


“Like a blind man noticing when a layer had popped up,” Yates noted. You could neither feel, hear, or smell layers, so without your eyes it would be impossible. “Let Nibs figure it out on her own. It’ll take less time than trying to convince her she’s wrong.”


Cray sighed, and nodded, finishing his food as the conversation went somewhere else. He went back to their room, Nibs and his, and sprawled out on his cot, staring at the ceiling. This was the sixth time in their seven years together, yes, Cray had counted, that they weren’t discussing the souls in the hour or so after the meal. It was the only time during the day when Nibs was guaranteed not to tell him to shut up.


Since she wasn’t there, though, Cray was unsure of what to do with himself. There was probably something else he could do. Some of the other Fillers were doubtless organizing something from the records basin to act out and discuss, one of those obscure scenes that happen during a soul’s monitoring that seems to make no sense or catch you by surprise, no matter how many times you see it. One of Nibs’ year-mates had dragged him to one of those back when he was ten, and he’d been fawned over by all the older girls and given small parts that were cooed over when he pronounced the lines awkwardly.


Cray made a face. He’d rather stay in the room. They wouldn’t treat him like that any more, of course (they’d better not), but he had enough Filling to last a lifetime without that sort of thing. It’s not that he didn’t like his job. It suited him, after all. It was just…


Cray sighed. He didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Nobody did anything else, except the Mods, and he could never be one of them. Their brains worked differently, for one, and their training was different and, well, they were just plain different from Fillers.


Fillers and Mods were supposed to fit together, like the protons and neutrons of the nucleus, not opposites of one another, but still nothing alike. Their work structured their life, much like the electrons of an atom.
Nibs and Cray were too unstable to be a proper atom. They were an isotope that could not exist in nature, and were bound to spontaneously combust sooner or later.


Yates’ analogies were always a laugh.


Cray took out the head he’d been working on that morning, and finished shaping it with his hammer, frowning as he puzzled over the expression it wore. It was easy enough for Nibs to process the proper coding to shape the physical appearances of the people the souls saw, but Cray, along with several other Fillers, took the expressions they were supposed to display somewhat more seriously, and kept a large cabinet of ever-changing manikins. Being able to see with your own eyes the mask you wore helped when adding quirks and cadences that coding often lacked.
Cray worked on this particular head until his eyes began to water, and he went to bed. Nibs still wasn’t back.







“Yates! I know you’re in there, Yates!” Cray yelled, banging on the pair’s door. This scene was familiar. When had that idiot Moderator harassed Nibs in this manner? Two days ago. It seemed like longer.


“This noise is similar to… Mmm, Dari, I can’t think of a good simile. Any suggestions?”


“An alarm clock?”


“But we don’t use those, love.” Typical. Mods hated items exclusively from the Filling world.


“A yowling cat, then?” Cray smiled at her second suggestion. Another thing Yates would never have seen. The girl was being stubborn.


“Do you even know what a cat looks like?”


“It’s small and fluffy, that’s all that matters,” Dari remarked. Fillers saw things like that, but since you were always changing layers, and were told everything that you needed to take care of, it wasn’t the sort of thing one bothered to look at. The souls were, after all, much more important.


“Ah, then it fits our friend outside perfectly,” Yates noted, chuckling as he opened the door. Cray frowned. How exactly was he small and fluffy? “Well, 19.10?”


Cray glared at the Moderator. All the Ad-Mods were Nibs’ friends, so it wasn’t like he had never been called by his last four digits before, but it was still annoying. “I need help. Nibs was absent all of yesterday, and when I got up this morning she still wasn’t back. I got Evvi to check the stats for me, and she said that yesterday we backlined forty-seven souls, not counting the four we backlined the day before when Nibs left early. Today we’re lined up for forty-four, and tomorrow for fifty-two, and if Nibs is back by then – which she had better be! – then she’s going to insist that we do all of them at once to catch up properly, which means I’ll have one hundred fifty souls in one day!”


“Actually, that makes only one hundred forty-seven,” Yates noted. Leave it to a Mod to care about the three soul approximation. Cray ignored it, continuing.


“Last time I only had seventy-five-”


“Seventy-seven.”


The Filler wanted to scream at Yates, tell the Ad-Mod to sluff the energy, like everyone was always telling him, but it wasn’t something one should do when asking for help. “In any case, I thought I was going to turn into a fission reaction!”


“Don’t you mean fusion?” Dari asked curiously, coming into the doorway to drape herself about Yates’ neck.


“Does it matter? Look, Yates, I just need some help. Maybe get rid of half of today’s line. I figured I’d ask Wes to do the other half in second-shift, and maybe I won’t go absolutely bonkers come tomorrow!”


“You’d have more luck with Evvi, you know,” Dari suggested. “She thinks you’re adorable, after all.”


“She also treats me like a twelve-year-old,” Cray scowled. “I’ll take my chances with the ice-demon.”


“The what?” Yates asked.


“It’s a phrase from the Filling world,” Dari informed him, patting him absentmindedly on the head. “Means, well, someone with the aura of a Watcher, I’d say.”


“Please, Yates?” Cray pleaded.


Yates thought about it, and Dari helped coerce him to be good, to Cray’s relief. “All right. But get Nibs out of the records-basin. Today. She’s backlining more than just your list, you know.” Backlining was a big deal. All pairs had assignments at the level they could handle, and not getting it taken care of meant that you were being inefficient. And since you couldn’t pass off any of the souls you watched to another pair, it meant it getting overrun and behind schedule. Not only that, but if backlining clogged up too many souls, the Watchers would get angry.


“Why don’t you just override her?” Dari asked.


Yates winced. “You have to be Head Mod to override. That tricky little-”


“Weasel?” Cray suggested when Yates paused, flustered. Clever as Mods were, their vocabulary was always scientifically based.


“A what?” Never heard of that either? Cray smirked. “No, I don’t care,” Yates waved him off, continuing his thought. “Nibs entered some codes blocking access to changing Head Mod. I didn’t even notice until yesterday afternoon, and I tried some coding, with no success. I set Mat on it, but I doubt this is going to be something we can crack today.”


“You didn’t notice?” Cray asked, in shock. “I thought you guys were alerted when Head Mod changed.”


“We are. She didn’t change it; I did. Made her Head in time for the Mini-Mods. Never thought she’d place her own coding to prevent the change.”


“Isn’t that cheating?” Dari asked.


“No. It’s just… let’s say we have something that detects when an electron is picked up by an atom. Now, would a helium atom ever take an extra electron under normal circumstances?”


“No, of course not. The shell or whatever is full.”


“That’s right. Now, let’s say we took an electron away from the helium atom. Would it take an electron then?”


“We’re not stupid, Yates,” Cray growled. “Yes, it would take an electron. So what?”


“Exactly. But it’s not an extra electron, for a normal helium atom, so we’re not alerted. And because it’s a helium atom, and they don’t take electrons, we’re not watching for it.”


“Took you completely by surprise,” Dari said, shaking her head. “That’s not good.”


“Even worse, I just asked Mat how she’s doing with the coding. We’ll be lucky if we can break it before she sets a record.”


“What? But you have more than five days!”


Yates took a defensive position. “I’m telling you what Mat said. She’s probably exaggerating.” Cray new she wasn’t; Mat was the best at breaking down coding, and if she was having issues, there must be a good reason. “If we backlined for three days, and all worked together, I’m sure we could solve it.”


“All the Ad-Mods? Backlined?” Dari asked in shock. “Yates, do you realize what you’re saying?” The five Ad-Mods together managed as many souls as fifteen normal Moderators, and they ran extra programs, codings, and processing checks that prevented the entire system from clogging up. The Watchers would never stand for all of them to backline even one day.


“That’s why she might set a record. If she weren’t in the records basin, we’d only have four backlining, and Nibs could manage almost all the extra stuff, if we could trick her into it, and if we pressed, worked during both shifts, it’d only be a half-backline.”


“So that’s why you want her out of the records basin,” Cray said. “You don’t want her to set a record.”


“Yes, well, that’s just part of it,” Yates said, waving him off, averting his eyes. “Now come on, you have work to do, don’t you? Dari, we should get to work as well.”


Yates wasn’t as good as Nibs. Cray had been expecting that. Yates was ranked second, but Nibs was obsessive when it came to coding. She’d come into the title of Head Mod at age 26, two years younger than any Mod before her. Besides which, Yates had to watch Dari as well as Cray. He had a feeling the pair would be backlining at least half a dozen souls for the day, but they wouldn’t mention it, so long as he kept his end of the deal.


That was going to be difficult, though. Cray had to concentrate so hard on his work, even in comparison to usual, that he barely had any time to think about what he’d say to Nibs. She’d been livid when she kicked him out the other day, and he wasn’t sure how to even get her to let him inside the place.


If he had time. It occurred to the Filler that he would get less than an hour between feeding and second shift in order to coerce her from the records basin. He was doomed.


Cray ate as quickly as he could manage, at a table by himself, then rushed through the hallways, past the stragglers who were invariably late to the meal. He stopped at the records basin, pounding against the door. “Nibs!”


~~~~

Not certain whether or not I'm satisfied with this last part. The transition's a bit awkward, but... neutral
Also, I updated the first post to what my saved document currently holds. I think it's somewhat easier to understand, although you don't have to read it or anything. sweatdrop