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“…And there’s the route we’ll take,” Taion finished, highlighting a yellow path through Maktha on the Iris map.
He, Noah, Mio, and Alexandria were standing in a circle – well, more of a half-circle, as if leaving space for an invisible cameraman, but that was just proper Kevesi and Agnian conduct – discussing their plans for helping out Colony Tau with an issue that had come up. It looked like they’d need to take a meandering path through the Wildwood to find everything they needed, but they had the time for it. Alexandria had tagged along to see Tau’s supply situation for herself, and probably also to distance herself from the Consul Q mess that had just gone down last week.
A wince from Mio drew Noah’s eye. She squinted, like that would somehow make her Iris clearer. “Taion, can you send that file again? I can’t open it for some reason.”
“What? That’s odd, but okay.”
“No, that’s – augh!” Mio threw her arms up. “It keeps uncompressing the snuffing .path file before I can load it on the map!”
Alexandria tapped off her own Iris and gave Mio a quizzical look. “Didn’t they fix that bug ages ago? I read about some file incompatibility issues affecting one of Iota’s old commanders, but that must have been a long time ago now.”
“I don’t know, I just – stop it! It keeps doing this even when I’m redownloading the .path outside the map program’s folder, too!” Mio was clutching at her hair now, her ears flattened sideways against her head.
Taion adjusted his glasses. “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
“It’s my eye, Taion!” Mio snapped. “Please tell me how to turn off my eye and turn it on again. I’m listening.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, wilting.
“Um.” Noah glanced around, looking over at Tau’s command tents. “Maybe we could see if they have a printer here? Print out the map, draw the route on it? Or you can just follow everyone else.”
Mio glared at him and made a low, grumbling sound which sent him wincing. Okay, maybe not, sue him for trying. Apparently Mio just wanted to be frustrated about this right now, and Noah wasn’t sure how he could help.
Oh, sparks, now he had to make sure not to think about this memory next time they Interlinked. And trying not to would inevitably make him think about it, and then Mio would see him watching her get frustrated, and… well, better start planning the apology now. At least seeing Mio’s memories usually wasn’t bad – it was either trauma, Noah with his shirt off, or the occasional memory of M’s. Those were the weird ones.
Nothing would top last week, at least. Somehow a memory of M’s had been dredged up, which itself wasn’t too bad, except that this had been an old memory of M’s. One involving N. And, tangentially, involving Ghondor nine months later. Noah and Mio had both cancelled the Interlink on the spot and hadn’t been able to look each other in the face for a whole day.
Wait a second. M.
“Mio,” Noah said gently, trying to ignore the way she sparking hissed at him. “When was the last time you had your Iris firmware updated?”
“Eight months ago!” she snarled. “Like usual! Just like –”
“And,” he cut in, “when was the last time M had her Iris firmware updated?”
She stopped and stood still for a moment, and then deflated like some kind of angry, defeated cat balloon. “Sparks. Uh, let me check the version.”
“Good thinking, Noah,” Taion said, adjusting his glasses again. It was a miracle they hadn’t fallen off in combat. “I’d forgotten about that.”
Mio mumbled something and slapped her forehead before letting out a keening whine. “This thing is eight versions behind! Eight! No wonder my maps have a bunch of weird inaccuracies. I thought I was going crazy.”
Alexandria’s eyebrows shot up. “Eight main versions? As in, the leading version number, not the trailing ones? That’s ancient – we’re talking in the league of almost a hundred terms.”
“How do I even fix this? I can’t get updates from a Colony anymore, can I?”
“Why are your automatic updates off, anyways?” Noah asked. “M was Moebius. Shouldn’t they all have the latest patch?”
“Turned it off to spite N, I think. He was always on her about beta branch versions and new features and redesigning the UI for a ‘wholistic user experience’. He did dev work on the side.”
“I knew he was evil,” Taion muttered.
“Anyways,” Mio said uncertainly, “I guess I’ll… go to the City and ask the doctors there? They probably deal with this kind of thing, with people there aging so much, right?”
Noah shrugged. “Seems like a safe bet. We can go there after –”
Mio disappeared into purple motes.
“I’d forgotten about that, too,” Taion remarked. “It’s deeply unfair that she’s the only one of us who can do that.”