Within the Apple Chapter 7D

*****

QA did not know who the interloper was, but it spoke in the language of the Host Species and apparently had some significant command of the Quantum Foam Matrix that underlay the construction of realities. Beyond that, the interloper was a mystery and seemed intent on staying one.

That left the Shard with an unenviable task, which largely seemed to consist of cleaning up the mess that had happened from the sabotaged connection.

The Data stream had been corrupted, and instead of bouncing off one of the other shards in the area, Queen Administrator’s signal had interfaced with an unknown and unidentified shard.

Disturbing.

The data response from it had been completely garbled, almost certainly corrupted by a simple mismatched interface request not being understood. In that event, though, it was actually something of a miracle that any response had been made at all.

The only aspect of it all that wasn’t a complete disaster was that the link to the host had been completed successfully, though with the now garbled response to the power variation request fully integrated into it.

Only time would tell if the connection would remain stable, be at all useful, or result in the death of the Host due to the interference. Queen Administrator was reasonably certain that none of the potential blowback could be revisited on the Shard itself, but with unknowns in play ‘reasonable’ was about as assured as it could get.

<Irritation.>

That said, the data stream through the host link was actually… interesting.

The Host had apparently attained a telekinetic expression?

Queen Administrator wasn’t certain, but the destruction of the Host Species equipment that had been monitoring the host’s vitals seemed to indicate that. The absolute tidal flows of data that accompanied it would take even Queen Administrator hoursto digest at a minimum. Quite possibly longer, given that there were several completely unknown factors and another few pieces of the data stream that were similarly garbled as the initial response had been.

<Curiosity>

Processing the expected data was placed on automatic while Queen Administrator looked over the additional sections that had been garbled.

<Decryption Protocols>

<Irritation>

No match on anything resembling any known or hypothesized encryption. The data just looked like a mess and little else. That was frustrating, particularly since it accounted for as much as two thirds of all the incoming data.

Granted, this host link was providing far more data than normal, but Queen Administrator had gotten its hopes up when it saw the volume. Merely receiving the normal data was… a letdown, if a shard like itself could feel such.

With what the host species would define as a ‘sigh’, Queen Administrator set the data for deletion.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you, McGurk.”

<Accusation>

“Got me there, I admit it.”

<Query>

“Mostly I just look to have fun, but this time I have my reasons.”

<Query>

“Sorry McGurk, leaving those beans unspilled. Just take my advice, don’t delete any of the ‘corrupted’ data. You’ll regret it.”

<Exasperation!>

Queen Administrator paused, it hadn’t realized that it was possible to express that emotion using it’s natural language… nor that yelling was an option.

<Fascination>

While it was looking over the additional data that had been generated in the last few seconds, Queen Administrator didn’t notice the interloper disappearing.

*****