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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 6743495" data-attributes="member: 4936">Death Otter glanced at the card distractedly, but didn't take it. Ideas were coming together in her head, accreting like vast vortexes of dust and hydrogen around the behemoth singularity at the center of the galaxy. She couldn't see IT yet, but she could infer the presence of something huge...something she was rocketing towards with reckless abandon."SETI...right...but these things can't just be from another planet. I mean, they may be from another planet as well, but that's not the end of it. It can't be. Other planets would still be subject to the same physical laws as Earth. Leverage is wrong, losing mass without releasing energy is wrong. And if it's alien why is it so close to an octopus?" She paced away, no longer really paying attention to Bukowski or anyone else."You know what it feels like? Looking at it? Like...if you want to get access to a system, you...you look at it. You snag a few packets, see how the system codes data, and work up a worm or something that works the same way. Sort of the same way. Something that can integrate itself without causing too many errors."Death Otter dropped to a hunker, getting closer to the remains of the acidpus. "But that's not THIS," she went on. "This is too big, too obvious. Because what the worm DOES, once it's in, is start generating bits of code for specific purposes. Spiders that look for information and collect it and send it. Or purge data. Or alter it randomly. Or whatever you want to do to mess stuff up. They are sorta kinda camouflaged but not really because they're pretty stupid, and obvious and they are going to make noise. Generate errors. And the system response will find them and destroy them, but it's FINE because the SOURCE is hidden in the deep code...the system registry or root...and it just keeps making more until mission accomplished."Otter looked at the container the professor had put into her hands. She felt dizzy. Passing the event horizon, stretched by the immense tidal forces...the point of no return. The octopus was small potatoes now, she could see...trivial, really. The important part...the VITAL part was what it implied. Not a fact or a speculation, but a paradigm. A way for her brain to grasp the concepts unfolding in front of her. And the vistas that opened were breathtaking. All she needed was to learn...a new programming language. But it wasn't impossible. She had samples of code right here. But she needed..."More," Otter said, and looked around at Charles, her eyes wide and suddenly extremely focused. "There's more of these things. You've seen them before. How many? Where?"</blockquote>

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