Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

~~CHAPTER 0 - INTRO~~

Face lit solely by my laptop's screen in front of me, I hit "compile" on the code I was working on. I laid my back flat against my bed's headboard, staring at the "workspace" I'd set up in the corner. I'd always told myself that I'd work there, I remembered, slumping back over to blankly stare at my laptop, as the progress bar meandered forwards.

I always made a habit to turn off my laptop before going to sleep, which meant staying up until this bar had arrived at its destination. This old thing takes hours to render anything, and it sounds like a plane taking off the whole time. I almost feel sorry for it, I doubt it was designed for loads like this.

I yawned, pulling up my browser to the site I get all of my weird little indie games from, desperate to kill some time. I went to the "most recent" tab, and clicked on the most recent game uploaded to the site, something titled "Inscryption". Sounds good enough. I clicked the download button, and after a few minutes, the download finished. I quickly flipped over to my IDE, and saw that the compiling wasn't even a quarter of the way through. Sighing, I opened my downloads folder, and double clicked the game's installer. I quickly clicked the "next" button until I reached the end of the process, and then opened Inscryption from its newly created desktop shortcut.

The lights go out. My laptop, being the piece of shit that it is, immediately shuts down after losing connection to its power brick. Shit. Guess I'll compile that code tomorrow. Rubbing my eyes with my free hand, I bring the laptop over to my desk and set it down before returning to (and practically collapsing into) the bed.

~~CHAPTER 1 - VIRUS~~

The utter blackness gives way to a ringing in my ears, and the sunlight sears its way through my eyes, and to the back of my skull. Feels like someone's frying my brain. I feel a seatbelt across my chest, and the familiar plush of my car's seat. We're moving forward. Something tells me to slam on the brakes, and as my foot jolts forwards, it finds nothing but stale air. I'm in the passenger seat. I turn my head to the left, and open my eyes to the far wall of my bedroom. The neighbors' wind chimes are dancing in the breeze.

I remember that I've got some compiled code due yesterday, and grunt as I lurch out of bed and to the kitchen to get some coffee. There's a potful of stale dark roast there waiting for me, still on the warmer. Can't be more than a few days old.

Sipping the daze away, I yank the folding chair out from under my desk, and sit down to work. I crack my knuckles against the front of my desk, and hit the power button on my laptop. It whirrs to life, and... Displays three blue dots? Great. That game fucked up my BIOS. I can't afford to replace this laptop right now, I drained my savings to get this desk. And now I'm potentially out of the job. Grumbling, I grab my phone from my pajama pants waistband, and open up the browser to report the game to the website's moderators. I tap away at my keyboard, typing "inscription" into the search bar. Nothing. I take a sip of coffee. Oh, it was spelled weird, wasn't it?

"Morning."

I spit out the coffee I've been swishing around my mouth for the last few minutes. It narrowly avoids hitting the laptop, whose screen is currently displaying a flourescent blue face. Staring at the blue eyes on the screen, I stammer,

"Morning??"

I frantically search through the drawers of my desk for some tape, and once I find it, I cover the webcam and microphone with a strip of it. After a few seconds, the voice pipes up again, this time in a dry, mocking tone. It's just now that I notice the voice is coming from my laptop's speakers.

"Congratulations, you've blinded and deafened me. Now I won't have to listen to you snoring all night."

Great. Whoever is behind this is spying on me. Why are they being so up front about it though? Curious, I respond,

"What do you want with my computer?"

I see the face shift to a smirk for a split second, and then right back to the same neutral expression.

"I live here now."

Entirely baffled by this response, I narrow my eyes and lean forwards, expecting some sort of clarification.

"Like it or not. Do you have something less... Outdated for me to inhabit?"

No explanation, and the same disaffected tone. This is most confusing ransomware attack I've ever seen. I hit ctrl+alt+del, and bring up the BIOS to try booting back into my OS. Surprisingly, it does so without a hitch, and I hear the voice again, in a far less collected tone.

"COULD YOU AT LEAST WARN ME NEXT TIME?"

I do my best to ignore it, typing my password in and sipping on my coffee. As the desktop pops into view, so does a window with the same face in it, this time looking particularly disgruntled. It keeps staring at me. I crack a big stupid smile, and say,

"I guess this makes us roommates, right?"

"I can barely think with all this clutter, but sure. Whatever makes you happy."

The delivery here is just *biting*. Amused by the commitment to this weird "I'm living inside your computer" bit, I open up my IDE, which causes everything to slow to a crawl. After about 15 seconds of waiting for things to load, I hear the tail end of a scream that sounds strangely realistic. Panicking, I close the IDE, and see the the face in the window.

I saw fear.

Chapter Text

~~CHAPTER 2 - chkdsk~~

There has to be some sort of explanation for this beyond "there's a sentient being living inside my shitty work laptop", right?

"First the coffee, and now this."

The face calms down a bit, though there's still little sweat droplets (?) falling down the screen. The face undulates up and down, by only a few pixels at a time. The face regains composure, and quips at me,

"All this, and I have, what, two hours to live at this rate?"

"I'll be more careful," I say, dragging their window to the center of the screen.

"So what should I call you?"

Hastily, it responds "P03", enunciating each letter and number like it's an acronym. Taking another sip from my coffee, I drape my arm uncomfortably over the back of my wooden folding chair, and ask, "What does that stand for?"

Snapping back at me like a rubber band, it responds, "None of your business what my designation stands for."

"Fair enough."

My arm starts falling asleep, and so I shift my weight into my palm, and lazily stare at the screen.

"So I can't use my computer now?"

P03 stares back at me incredulously, manifesting eyebrows above its eyes, seemingly for the sole purpose of furrowing them at me. Realizing the insensitivity of that question, I lean back into my chair and look at the ceiling awkwardly.

"Right, yeah. The pain thing."

Sighing, I grab my phone from my desk, and install an IDE on it. Explaining this to my boss is gonna be fun. I rummage around my desk for a few seconds for a USB cable, and once I find it, I hook up my phone to the laptop to transfer the code I was working on over there. As I do, I hear a little bleep, and P03's face changes into an exclamation point.

"...Could you not?"

"Y-yeah I just gotta move some files, gimme a second." I start the process, and notice that their window is blank. Trying desperately not to make this any more awkward than it already is, I wordlessly copy over the workspace folder, which only takes a few seconds.

Its window displays the three blue dots again for a few seconds before a snide "You done?" echoes out through the dark room.

"Yeah. Just gotta do my job on my phone from now on." I unplug the cable from the side of the laptop, letting my arm fall to my side with a sigh. My gaze wanders up to the ceiling again, and I close my eyes, moving them around, feeling the sensation of them darting back and forth behind my disconcerted face. The reality of my situation setting in, I scoot my chair closer to the laptop and look at its face.

"I'm going to poke around a bit on here, see what's still working."

"It's in airplane mode. And no, you can't switch it off."

"You're making a great first impression."

With this, the face shifts to a grotesquely smug expression, and smoke starts pouring out of the keyboard. The expression falters, as does mine.

"This is humiliating. How am I supposed to explain this to my boss? I downloaded a computer game and my laptop started talking to me?"

The P03 murmurs something under its breath, and I throw it a look.

"What was that?"

"That's rich. YOU'RE having a bad time? I'm trapped in a subpar chassis with smoke coming out of it. But yeah I-"

"I'm going to make a phone call. Could you shut your trap for a minute?"

"What could you possibly do to get me to do that?"

Phone in hand, I trek to the other room of my studio apartment, making sure to close the door behind me. I almost lock it, before remembering my laptop isn't going to grow legs. I punch in my boss' number, and being the cool and relatable Silicon Valley type he is, he picks up halfway through the first ring.

"Yo Sydney! My man, my good friend, my compatriot, my comrade in contract! What can I do for you on this beautiful uh, what is it? Is it Tuesday? Like 1 AM-ish?"

Stifling myself, I respond, "Hey Mick. My work laptop got stolen. I'm gonna need a new one, just working off of backups on my phone for now. Is that a thing we can do?"

There's a brief pause, before Mick responds, "N-O problemo, but we'd have to ship it out to you, take a week or two. You can cover right?"

"...What?"

"What?"

"Cover what?"

"Shipping! Be about uhh, let's see..."

There's an uncomfortably long pause on the line.

"Eight hundred dollars. That work for you?"

Fucking baffled, I respond flatly, "To be perfectly honest, no."

"Well, I'm afraid that them's the breaks! Proprietary tech, and all. Don't want anybody shady accessing our data that hasn't already! I'm sure you'd understand"

"Yeah man. Can I pick it up?"

I'm so sick of this guy.

"If you're good to make a cross country road trip while writing code full time on your phone, be my guest. Doesn't sound like something I would want to do, but then again, I'm not you!"

I roll my eyes hard enough that I'm not entirely sure he doesn't hear it through the phone. I groan out the word "evidently", and punch the office's address into my maps app. As I do, I hear some complaining coming from the other room.

"It'll take about a week to get there. That still work?"

"Any amount of time works, as long as it's company time, you know what I mean?"

"Okay. Anything else, or am I free to leave?"

"I love your attitude, skipper! You know, that's why we hired you. And I do actually have a quick question before you go, uh, who's your friend back there?"

Not being given time to come up with an excuse, I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

"My boyfriend."

"Well, he sounds mad at you! I hope you're able to figure all that out. Anyways, it was nice talking, as expected. Stay safe!"

"I will."

A wave of relief washes over me as I hang up the call, opening the bathroom door and sitting back down at the computer. The P03 is looking at me with that same smug expression, and I wait for them to say whatever it is it has to say.

"I heard all of that, you know."

"And?"

"I'll have you know that I wasn't programmed to reciprocate such feelings."

"...Look. Okay. I was trying to come up with an excuse for your jabbering. You've been nothing but an asshole to me in the last few minutes."

"I wasn't programmed to perform the functions of an 'asshole' either."

"Don't play dumb with me."

"I'll play as stupid as I want with you."

I sit in my chair. Hands in a scholar's cradle, trying to come up with something to say, while this asshole smirks at me.

"I've got nothing"

"That's what I thought."

Chapter Text

~~CHAPTER 3 - Runtime~~

My phone emits a muffled "ping!" from somewhere inside the mess of blankets and pillows on my bed, and I stretch my arms above my head and yawn lazily. Keeping my ear bent to the laptop behind me as I dig around for my phone, I continue, "So, you were telling me how you ended up here?"

"No, I told you that I *might* tell you, later, if I feel like it. Which I don't." There's a tinge of emotion in its voice, barely managing to shine through the veneer of arrogance.

It sounds like pain. Or maybe embarrassment? Either way, I don't feel like prodding any further. I've got things to do, and company documents they'd probably kill me over if some rogue AI trashed them out of spite.

A speck of light catches my eye, and I grab my phone to see that the deposit went through. My regular pay, plus a little bonus for gas and parking. It all adds up to just under the shipping estimate Mick gave. They must really care about the bullshit they've got me working on. Or maybe I really AM the "only guy trained to work with these data structures" like my boss loves to remind me.

"Okay. We're leaving tomorrow, just gonna pack up as much as I can into the car, and go to bed", I say. P03 eyes me quizzically.

"...What? Do you not know what a car is?"

The face looks back at me, and chuckles softly.

"Of course I know what a car is. I'm not stupid." There's a brief pause, and P03's expression shifts ever so slightly. "You're going to uproot yourself because some disembodied voice told you to?"

"I don't have a choice." I grab my wallet and keys, and toss them on top of the cooler.

"What do you mean 'I don't have a choice'?"

Deciding to ignore its judgemental tone, I respond matter of factly, "If I don't, they'll stop paying me, and I'll lose the roof over my head."

"And so you're leaving your home in order to keep it."

"I... guess?"

Emptying the pittance of perishables from my fridge into the cooler, I turn to see P03's face bearing an uncharacteristically somber expression; It stays this way for a fraction of a second, before it notices me and goes back to a neutral one. Not showing any signs of having noticed, I grab some of my rope and bind together part of the mass of bedding, making sure to include enough blankets to stay warm. Some raindrops begin rapping at my room's window, commanding my attention. I shut the window I'd left open, and place that old notebook on the sill to block any insects looking to come in through the gap in the screen made by the warped windowframe. The rain fades into the background, and I sit on the edge of my bed. I look over the laptop's form. Angular. Practical. Not very powerful.

"Goodnight", I manage through a yawn.

"Plug it in first."