I Love Bees: 09/26/2004 - 10/03/2004

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

success

You rescued the Sleeping Princess!

Mission accomplished. Is there anything you guys can't do?

(Besides fix my aunt's web site, I mean.)

(Just kidding!)

It's so weird... I feel so incredibly relieved, knowing that the princess is back to sneaking around the server. The new happy ending to her Perdita story made me — well, happy. Really happy. Dazzlingly happy!

That's strange, right? I heart an A.I.?!

Well, anyway — thanks for bringing her home. Even though I'm still on the other side of the world, I kind of feel like a little part of me came home today, too.

I need to say one more thing. I know some of you helped the Operator last week when she wanted to track down her "rogue process." You gave her the information she needed to find and lock up the princess.

I just want to say — I understand. Even though my instincts would have been to protect the princess, I do understand. Talking to a brilliant, ruthless, intimidating A.I. from half a millennium in the future — well, it can be just a little mind-blowing. Who am I to tell anyone how to react to that?

I think when it comes down to it, we're all on the same side. Even if we have different ways of going about it, we all want to figure out why Melissa is here in 2004, and what we're supposed to do about it. We all want to save the world. That makes us a team, as far as I'm concerned.

In other news, I've been having my own payphone adventure of sorts today. Just spent an hour hogging a phone booth! Can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone as to why my ATM card won't work all of sudden. Everything was fine when I paid for a late sushi breakfast down at Tsukiji Fish Market. Then, the clock struck twelve, and my cash flow turned into a pumpkin. Kind of scary — Tokyo is no place to be alone and penniless...

: Name: Dana; Location: San Francisco, California, United States

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Days investigating: 50

In early July, an AI named Melissa crash landed, badly damaged, onto the server that hosts my aunt's website. The AI tried to orient and repair itself. The result: It turned 'I Love Bees' into a holy mess.

Now we're investigating the mess. We need all the help we can get.

*

Here's what we know so far:

Melissa, a.k.a. "The Operator," used to run communications on a ship. The ship's purpose: to spy on an enemy known as "the Covenant."

The Operator has started communicating again. It's constructing hundreds of "roads" out of the 'I Love Bees' server. The roads all lead to payphones. And the phones are ringing.

We don't know why it's broadcasting, but the Operator is giving us GPS coordinates for the phones, and times to show up. So we are. We're collecting its fragmented messages and trying to put them back together.

So far, the Operator's communications seem to be following three different targets:

Jersey Morelli, an ordinary guy whose computer has been taken over by an eavesdropping AI he nicknames Durga;

Jan James, a 17-year-old girl tricked out with genetic enhancements who along with her military dad is hiding some pretty serious secrets;

and Kamal, a med student who immigrated to Earth and is now willing to trade his elite hacking skills for help bringing his parents over — and maybe improve his flatlined lovelife.

We also know that these targets are connected: Durga is spying on Jan for Jersey. (He lives in the same building as the James family and has a thing for Jan.) Durga is listening to Kamal for herself... but she doesn't know why she finds him so interesting. Durga also tells Jersey she has been thinking a lot about bees lately. Hmm...

*

Here's what else we know:

When the Operator crashed on the 'I Love Bees' server, it didn't come alone.

It came with two autonomous programs:
1) the SPDR, designed to repair damage to the Operator, and
2) the Pious Flea, designed to... well, we're not sure yet.

The SPDR brought the Operator back to life. But now the Operator is taking orders from the Pious Flea. So when the SPDR tried to eliminate the Flea, the Operator killed it.

We don't know much about the Flea, except that it wants "to seek, behold, and reveal the truth."

There is one other voice we've found on the site: The Sleeping Princess.

The Sleeping Princess uses Aunt Margaret's email account and error pages to share secrets and play games with us. She also likes to hide text in images. We're not sure where she came from. She has been spying a lot on the Queen lately and fending off the Flea's advances. She is trying to remember who she was before she became the Sleeping Princess.

That's what we know so far.

We don't know what's going to happen next.