literature

Reverse Engineering

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Literature Text

On the eve of our seventh wedding anniversary, I got home almost an hour late; I'd gotten two days off work, Friday and Monday, but then, of course, some crisis would just *have* to happen on Thursday afternoon and keep me at the office an extra hour.  I drove a bit faster to make up for it, and the traffic was lighter at that time of day.

"Honey, I'm home," I called out as I walked in the door.

"I'm in the lab," came Jenny's muffled voice.  Still working on our anniversary present, apparently.

I opened the basement door and said "I'll change clothes and come down in a bit."

"It's almost done," Jenny called out a few minutes later as I walked down the basement stairs.  "Go ahead and undress and climb into the chamber on the left.  You haven't eaten or drunk anything for the last six hours, right?"

"No, I remembered what you told me this morning.  It's not going to mess anything up if I get in before you're quite finished, is it?" I asked, stalling.

"No, it's fine.  I tested it with a couple of rats earlier."  She stepped out from behind one of the large pieces of interconnected machinery, holding something like a multitool the size of a lug wrench and wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers.

"Yeah... you were monitoring the process then, though.  This one is going to put us both out of commission for hours... are you sure we shouldn't get one of your inventor friends to monitor it?"

"It's fine.  It will make backups of both of us, and restore us from backup after forty-eight hours if I don't turn it off.  And it will send a message to Dr. Bedloe first thing tomorrow morning if I don't disable *that* -- which I will as soon as the transformations are complete.  Now," she said, making one final adjustment, "undress and get in!  I can't wait to be you!"

"And I can't wait to be you," I said, giving in.  We undressed and paused momentarily to appreciate the view before we each climbed into the two big chambers of the Interchangeatron.

The chamber was warm and comfortable, and I felt myself growing drowsy as soon as I laid down and closed the door above me.  In about eight or nine hours, I'd wake up with a copy of Jenny's body, with a little bit of her mind; I'd still be me, with my memories and personality, but I'd have parts of Jenny's mind too...

-----

I'm not sure how long I laid there after the transformation finished, drifting in and out of pleasantly weird dreams, before I was startled into full wakefulness by a quiet *pop* and a soft *whoosh* as the door of the chamber opened.  The warm air of the chamber mixed with the cooler air of the basement, and the nipples of Jenny's breasts stood at attention on my chest.  I lay there taking it all in for a few moments, running my hands gently over my new body, but I was getting cold and wanted to get dressed.  Or go upstairs with Jenny in my body and get under the covers...

So I climbed out.  I looked around and saw the door of the other chamber already popped open... and then Jenny climbed out.  Still looking like herself.  Something had gone wrong.

"Uh..." I said, "it looks like you didn't change..."  Uncannily, she said the same thing almost in unison with me.

"Of course I changed," she added, looking dismayed.  "But you didn't."

We looked at each other, panicking, and both said almost simultaneously, "I'm Anthony... who are you?"

"Damn," I said, "where's Jenny?"  I was starting to panic.

"Gone," she said, and stared straight ahead, numb with shock.  "She's dead... it turned her into a copy of me.  One of us..."

For a while we just stared at each other, horrified.  I saw Jenny's wonderful body, but knew that her even more wonderful personality was gone.  Then I remembered what she'd said, and grasped at a straw of hope.

"No, wait," I said, putting on Jenny's bathrobe and slippers.  "She said the system was going to back us up before it transformed us.  We can restore her from backup, and tell it not to restore me so we don't wind up with yet another copy of me."

"Can we?  If this went wrong, how do we know the backup process worked, or that the automatic restore will?  How much do you know about the system?"  She started putting on my T-shirt and sweats, which were way too big on her.

We both went quiet, introspecting about how much of Jenny's knowledge and skills we'd gotten.  I had her general knowledge of physics, computer science, electrical engineering, biology, cosmology, ontology, psychology, and more ologies than I could shake a multitool at.  But I couldn't remember anything specific about how the Interchangeatron worked.  I'd have to reverse engineer it... and possibly mess it up in the process, accidentally erasing the backups of Jenny's mind and my body.  Or wait for the forty-eight hours to pass and hope it would automatically restore us from those backups... leaving two extra copies of me in Jenny's body.

We shared what we'd figured out, and she was pretty much the same.  Lots of general knowledge and skills, nothing specific enough to figure this system out quickly.

I'd been looking around, taking in my orientation relative to the room.  "I guess you're the original Anthony, and I'm the modified version of Jenny with your mind?"

"We're both modified versions of the original Anthony," she said.  "Not just physically."

"Yeah.  We should call Dr. Bedloe for help," I said.

"Right.  It'll automatically call him in a few hours if we don't tell it not to.  She didn't say exactly when, but..."  We both glanced at the clock; it was 4:13am.

"Let's see what we can figure out," I said.  "But look, don't touch."

"Right, let's not mess with anything until and unless the automatic restore doesn't kick in when it's supposed to... or until we're both sure we understand it well enough to fix it."

"Exactly.  Let's get to work."

We'd gotten enough of Jenny's inventor-ness that we worked on the Interchangeatron for several hours before we realized we were hungry -- that we'd been hungry already, even before we climbed into the chamber.  When our stomachs started growling, we went upstairs and fixed breakfast a little after dawn, and ate while we talked more about what we'd learned so far and how much more we had to learn.

"I'm confident we've identified the bit of code that will call Dr. Bedloe at nine," she said.  "Do we want to disable that and call him ourselves?"

"Let's leave it alone, and call him just before that," I said.  "We can definitely use some help with this."

So when we finished breakfast, she said: "Do you want to call him, or shall I?"

I'd been about to ask her the same thing.  "I'll do it," I said, and patted down the pockets of the bathrobe looking for my phone.  I found Jenny's.  I called Dr. Bedloe, and it rang several times before he answered.  Meanwhile, the other me told the cleaning bot we were done with breakfast, and it cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher.  Seeing it in operation started two different trains of thought -- figuring out how it worked, how I could make it better, how I could build something similar... and also, a pang of loss, because the bot reminded me of Jenny and how excited she'd been when she first showed it to me a couple of years ago.

"Hello, Dr. Wolcott.  What's up?"

"I'm not Dr. Wolcott," I said, putting it on speakerphone.  "I know I sound like her, but I'm her husband, Anthony.  She built what she calls an Interchangeatron for our anniversary --"

"Is something wrong?  Why isn't she calling me?"

"She's gone," I said, choking back a sob.  "I -- the machine is supposed to have made backups before it transformed us, and I hope we can get it to restore her from backup, but it's already gone wrong once, and --"

"What went wrong?"

"I'm not sure.  It was supposed to transform us into each other, and... give us each other's skills and knowledge.  But it made us into two copies of my mind in Jenny's body.  We've been trying to figure out what went wrong, but we haven't gotten very far yet."

"I'll be right there.  Don't mess with anything."  He hung up.

The other me put a sympathetic hand on my shoulder.  "We'd better shower and get dressed before he gets here," she said.  "I'll take the guest bathroom."

-----

Since Jenny told me about her plan, and talked me into it, I'd been looking forward to this: taking a shower in Jenny's body.  I'd expected she would be with me in my body, and that it would be an extremely interesting and enjoyable experience.  Now, though... I was showering alone, thinking about how little we'd figured out so far, wondering if I would ever see Jenny again, and being constantly reminded of her by every bit of me I washed.  I got it over with as fast as possible and put on a pant suit and lab coat, something professional-looking to greet Dr. Bedloe in.

The other me was still in the shower when I got done, but soon emerged from the guest bathroom in a similar pant suit and labcoat combination.  We had time to go downstairs and get a little work done on the Interchangeatron before the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," we both said, and then paused.  "Paper, rock, scissors?" I suggested.

"Never mind, I'll go," she said, and went.  I kept looking through the source code for the Interchangeatron, and a minute or two later she came back downstairs with Dr. Bedloe, who was wearing a labcoat and carrying a large toolbox.

"So," he said, "she was telling me you've both got a lot of Dr. Wolcott's skills and knowledge, but not specifics about this device?"

"That's right.  We've identified its source code and started studying it..."

We spent a few minutes telling and showing him what we'd figured out so far, and what we could remember Jenny saying about it in the days leading up to our anniversary.  The Interchangeatron consisted of two transformation chambers, each connected by bundles of wires to a rack of computers.  The computers, in turn, were running an enormously complex device driver for the chambers; each instance of the device driver talked via the network to the other instances and to a similarly complex piece of application software running on one computer that told the device driver instances what to do and when.

"So there are two questions," he said.  "Why did it go wrong and create two of you and none of Dr. Wolcott, and how can we restore Dr. Wolcott from backup?  I think we can focus on the latter question for now, and save the former for after we recover Dr. Wolcott."

We concentrated on the source code, not wanting to take the transformation chambers apart until and unless we were sure the problem was at the hardware level, which seemed unlikely, Dr. Bedloe said.  He copied the source code we'd identified to his custom 256-core laptop, where he started studying it, while the other me and I continued working on Jenny's main desktop machine.  After a few hours, Dr. Bedloe announced: "No worries about accidentally messing up the backups.  She's backed your bodies and minds up in five different places, three of them offsite."

"Good," both of us said, and then glanced at each other; after a moment of silent negotiation, I said: "So she -- and the original me -- will be back in two days.  Well, a day and a half now.  How do we get it to restore her sooner than that, and not make an extra copy of me?"

"That's the question, isn't it?  Let's continue.  Have either of you looked at this Catastrophe module yet?"

"Just barely," she said.  I shook my head.

"Well, let's see what we can figure out about it," and we all started to do so.  The other me and Dr. Bedloe looked into the module itself, and I looked at the other places in the code that called one or more of its routines.  Most of those places involved some kind of test to make sure things were going according to plan.  If certain tests failed, one or more of the routines in the Catastrophe module would be called.

Was there a way to find out if what had happened to us had been detected by one of those tests and caused the Catastrophe module to be called?  Some of those tests wrote something to a log file, but not all.  I started grepping for their error messages in the log file we'd found earlier, and didn't find any instances of this one, or that one, or... no, none of them.

Which made sense, actually, if it were "restore backups in case of catastrophe."  Whatever had gone wrong with us had been something Jenny hadn't anticipated, or, when it hit one of these error checks, it would have canceled the transformation partway through and restored us from backup instead... assuming Dr. Bedloe was right about the "Catastrophe" module being intended to restore from backup.

I told them what I'd figured out, and the other me said: "Yeah, the Catastrophe module seems to do at least two different things, and probably more.  One is to abort or reverse a transformation that's going wrong, in various ways at various stages and depending on what's wrong with it.  And we're pretty sure the last resort is to restore us from backup.  But that's calling another module we've just barely started looking into."

"Of course.  Shall I look at that as well?"

So we all started looking into that, and still hadn't verified that that was what it did by the time we got hungry, late in the afternoon.  Dr. Bedloe drank a perfectly-balanced nutritious sludge from a large bottle in his toolbox, while the other me and I went upstairs and made sandwiches.  I noticed that she made hers with horseradish as well as mustard -- we were already starting to diverge noticeably, or maybe that had been a difference in us from the beginning, one of us getting a little more of my tastes and the other a little more of Jenny's.  But which was which?  I couldn't be sure whether I'd liked horseradish before all this.

Dr. Bedloe joined us, sipping from his bottle, and questioned us further about our transformation.  About our memories, our command of Jenny's skills, our tastes, our desires... trying, I soon realized, to figure out how much we differed, and how much of that difference postdated the transformation -- whether we were really identical when we got out of the transformation chambers, or just very similar.

I mentioned the thing with the horseradish sauce, and the other me nodded.  "Yeah... I don't remember if I liked horseradish before or not."

Dr. Bedloe sighed.  "The fact that there's a difference could be from two sources: one of you got an aspect of Dr. Wolcott's personality, and the other, the corresponding aspect of, ah, Anthony's.  Or else it's simply a defect in the Interchangeatron.  We know it's not flawless, or I wouldn't be here, but if there were numerous small defects of that kind, we would expect to see problems on the physical level as well.  And you both appear healthy.  So it's more likely to be the former."

"Makes sense," we both said.

"Now, about your sexuality..."

We both blushed.  "I'm into guys," the other me said, and I nodded.

"Especially my old body, which Jenny was supposed to have," I added.  "Sort of the whole point.  Or, no, not the whole point, but a big part of it."

Dr. Bedloe sighed again.

-----

After lunch, we got back to work.  We continued looking into parts of the code we thought might be involved in restoring backups, and managed to identify the main routines.  Then we had some difficulty in figuring out *which* backup files were for which of us.  They weren't obviously labeled "Jenny" and "Anthony," but with long filenames that seemed to be a date and time followed by an A or B.

"Either A refers to the transformation chamber on the left, and B the one on the right --" I said.

"Or vice versa," the other me interrupted before I could say that.

"Let's try the diagnostic mode for testing the transformation chambers," Dr. Bedloe suggested.

So we started another instance of the control software in diagnostic mode, after studying the source to figure out how to test one chamber at a time instead of both at once.

First some lights on the left-hand transformation chamber came on, and we looked closely at the monitors, where we saw messages about "Testing transformation chamber A".  Then, when the lights on that chamber went off, the lights on the other came on, and we saw messages about "Testing transformation chamber B."

"So," the other me said, "I remember climbing in the chamber on the left -- chamber A.  That means that Dr. Wolcott was in chamber B, and her backup is under 20180607192442B."

From there, it wasn't too hard to get the system to restore Jenny from that backup.  One monitor started displaying a basic popup window with the message "Restoring backup 20180607192442B... 1%," while another showed much more detailed messages about reading in the backup file, piping in a nutrient mix, organizing it, and so forth.  Even after studying the source code all day, I wasn't sure how to interpret all of the progress messages.

"That will take several hours," Dr. Bedloe said, "based on what you told me and what I've seen here.  We may as well take a break for supper."

"Oh, yeah," the other me said.  "I *am* getting a bit hungry."  We looked at the clock and saw it had been over seven hours since we ate lunch.

"I'll get a change of her clothes and leave them outside the transformation chamber," I said.  "Then help you with supper."

-----

Dr. Bedloe brusquely declined our offer of supper, choosing instead to drink his perfectly-balanced liquid diet.  He sat with us while we ate, though, and said: "So, once the new Dr. Wolcott is decanted, we'll need to decide what to do next.  I suspect that Dr. Wolcott and I, between us, can figure out how to merge you two back into one person; you've only got a day or so of divergence in your memories and personalities, and will only have a few days by the time we figure out how to do the merge.  But is that what you want?"

I looked at the other me and she looked back at me.  "I guess?" I said.  "I'm not sure what else we would do."

"How would that work?" the other me asked.  "We'd wake up and remember all this stuff from both perspectives?"

"I expect so, yes," Dr. Bedloe said.  "Of course there are risks, as there are with any such procedure -- such as the one that resulted in your duplication.  Your memories, either of the time since you were twinned or of earlier times in your life, could be garbled or partially missing, or the physical transformation into your usual body could go wrong in some way -- but the risks are slight, I think, especially with both of us working together."

"And with us helping," I said, "though I'm not sure how much help we'll be."

"Let us think about it," the other me said, "and talk about it with Jenny when she wakes up."

-----

It was the middle of the night when Jenny emerged from her transformation chamber.  We'd been taking turns sleeping and watching the progress of Jenny's restore.  The percent completed crept up over the hours on one monitor and detailed progress messages scrolled down another.  "Constructing skeletal structure... Constructing soft tissues... Imposing neural matrix..."  And finally "Adding scars and tattoos..." as I came downstairs to take the other me's place on watch.

"This looks like it's almost done," she said.  "I'll stay and watch with you."

"Sure," I said.  I drew up a chair and we watched the monitor together in silence for a while.  Finally the last progress message appeared: "Restore complete, waiting for subject to awaken naturally," and on the other monitor, the progress bar reached 100%.

"How long do you think it will take for her to wake up?" she asked.

"I don't know.  Not long, I think.  When we transformed, we both woke up around the same time, which suggests she'd wake up pretty soon after the restore is finished."

"Yeah, I was just thinking that."  We smiled nervously at each other.

After a bit, I asked: "So what do you think?  About merging or trying something else?"

She frowned.  "I don't know.  I think...  Let's talk about it with Jenny.  See what she thinks."

As if on cue, we heard a pop and a whoosh of air, and turned to look at the transformation chamber.  Jenny climbed out, saying: "Anthony...?  Sorry, hon, but it didn't transform me..."  She stopped when she saw us looking at her.

"Oh, Jenny," I said, "we missed you so much," I said, going over and hugging her.

"I'm Anthony," the other me said, approaching and joining the hug, "and so is she."

I didn't know if she was going to be able to merge me with my other self, or if we'd go on being twins.  Triplets.  Part of me was leery of going through another transformation, but maybe it would be safe enough if Jenny just tweaked our brains slightly to make us sexually compatible with each other.  But for now, I was just glad to have Jenny back.
This story was published for the first time here on DeviantArt as a submission for the Twinning Contest in the category "written entry that includes mental change".  It's 3,692 words.

A much longer version (9,766 words) appears under the title "Anniversary Present" in my new ebook short fiction collection, Unforgotten and Other Stories.  It continues past the point where this version ends and fleshes out the setting and characters more.  That collection also includes two other stories that are expanded from their original appearance and thirteen that have never appeared before online.

Thanks to Rellawing, Misaania, and Silver for beta-reading earlier drafts.

My other free stories can be found at:

My earlier ebooks are available here:
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charoset's avatar
So the writing is top notch technically and besides some formatting quirks that were probably from whichever program you wrote this on, but clearly you do your work in proofreading as I couldn't find more than one mistake and since I forgot to note down that one mistake, it honestly might just be me misremembering it. I also did like the technobabble and thought you made your scientist characters actually feel like scientists(grepping was a nice choice). 

Now for the issues I had, I feel the plot has some gaping problems and you set up a great philosophical conundrum that wasn't just glossed over, but solved in a way that is not just absurd, but severely ruins my suspension of disbelief. So when she mentioned having backups and that they'd be restored in 48 hours, it sets up the interesting philosophical quandary that one of them has to turn back into her and whether they want to or not. You even have them figure out who was in which pod originally near the end which would be the perfect time to have them debate before they enter their pod on who becomes who. But her backup system is not to fix them, but instead to make clones of them. Now clearly this society still requires you to have to work which means there is probably an income involved with them and while they are well off, adding two new people to the family(since I doubt they'd start killing their copies) would add financial strain and not fix the original problem. It's like if a vet said that their backup if your pet suffered a complication was to buy you a new one. I mean you still got a high score from me because it was original, fit the theme and was technically great, but it just feels disappointing after a great first part for it to end with a machine called the exchangeatron to create entire new humans and not actually fix their problem. Thank you for entering though.