Hardwired

[Fairchild]

Chapter 05: Constellation

It was six days since their arrival on Crete. She didn't speak to the Professor since they finished the mapping. He was clearly very absorbed working on the Constellation and she did not want to disturb him. However on the evening of the sixth day he finally contacted her.

"I think I've got the Constellation working. Would you like to see?"

"Go on."

The Professor sent her two files. One was called one.cst, she presumed it was some kind of data or save. The other labelled simply as constellation and was clearly a program.Without much thinking she added execution privileges and ran it, pointing at the data.

The world around her faded instantly. She was where they started mapping, near the hangars on Cayambe. She could freely move around around the square and she saw herself, her own body moving through the simulation.

But the constellation was not perfect. She clearly saw most of the square lacked detail. Faces of the people in the simulation did not look real, neither did the buildings around the square. She asked the Professor why that was.

"The constellation was generated from your memory. You do not remember some things, you don't remember the face of everyone you saw. You do not remember every architectural detail of the buildings around you. The program tries to fill in the missing pieces but it will never be perfect if you don't remember what you saw."

"That's quite impressive."

"And, what's more, each simulation takes up an absolutely tiny amount of space, so you can fit in pretty much your entire life inside the internal storage of the q-chip."

She continued to look through the simulation, walking behind her own simulacrum, in awe of how everything looked. The Professor outdid himself once again.