“Listen, I know you think the world of her for some reason, but the other day I asked Trinity to help me with some of the amine sequences I’ve been running,” Nana said, dropping the pretense of respect behind “Ms. Night”.
“Why on earth would you do that?” Dr. Day asked.
“Because I was swamped and she didn’t seem to have much else to do,” Nana said. “Anyway, I ended up finishing my batches early so I decided to go ahead and do hers, too, so I could check and make sure they were right… so when she called a minute ago, I asked her if she could give me the results, just so I could compare them… and when I heard them, I thought I spotted a mistake but then I realized that due to an internal transcription error I’d recorded one of my own results wrong.”
“So, she didn’t make a mistake after all, then,” Dr. Day said.
“No, she did… she made the exact same mistake I did,” Nana said.
“So your concern is that Ms. Night made the same typo as you?”
“It’s not a typo because I don’t type,” Nana said. “And my concern is that she clearly has access to my files, a fact that she’s exploiting to cover her lack of proper scientific training.”
“Well, this is very serious… Nana, are you aware what it is you’re suggesting?” Dr. Day asked.
“Perfectly,” Nana said.
“You’re saying that Trinity Night has hacked your filesystem?”
“Yes!” Nana said.
“Well, I’m afraid I don’t know what to say to that… I wouldn’t have imagined she was capable of such a thing,” Dr. Day said.
“You’re entirely too trusting of humans,” Nana said. “You always have been.”
“Human? Nana, she’d have to be far more than a simple Darkwell-positive individual to even come close to accomplishing that,” Dr. Day said. “You encode data molecularly in a metallic alloy that only exists because your manipulations have made it possible. This information is encoded according to a system that exists entirely within your mind. Your memory banks should be essentially impregnable, before you even throw in the active and passive countermeasures you have available. If Ms. Night managed to interface with your brainware without your knowledge, locate, and extract a single document from within there, then she must truly be the greatest scientific mind of our time.”
“I don’t know if I’d say that…”
“Well, then be careful what you do say,” Dr. Day said. “Information does not simply pop into being like magic. Perhaps we should stick with the simpler and likelier explanation that you both made the same error.”
“Okay, but this was a really specific error,” Nana said. “I had just opened an email forward with that stupid dancing banana thing in it and unless there really is a peanutbutterjellamine out there…”
“So, are we proceeding with the theory that Ms. Night is enough of a scientist to hack your brain, or the ‘like magic’ theory?” Dr. Day asked.
“You know what? Never mind.”
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