Porcelyn Cracked- rough 1st edit

Chapter 5

5

It had taken almost a week, instead of a few days, but Seth had finally finished the program, he felt bad as he was building it though, like he was about to inflict torture on someone. He had to call a favor in to Robin to use his connections to get the classified files on Raye's history as a Porcelyn, that had taken two days on its own, but he needed the information before he could complete the program. Watching her react, it looked like self-defense, so Seth had determined that if he could trigger the exact part of her brain that had been activated before her death, perhaps he could correct the glitch at its source.

Her files were rather unremarkable, she had been an orphan at a very young age, her parents had died from a crash, neither had become Porcelyn units themselves, and so she was raised in the system before being released as a tailor's assistant. One day she simply didn't show up for work and then she was found at the bottom of some stairs a few blocks from her home, her skin had been heavily bruised, cut, and scratched all over, her dress torn, and blood stained. The report said it was a fall from the top of the stairs and that the case was closed, the report even stated that shortly after the death a witness came forward and said that he had seen the girl come home in a drunken state and then fall as she tried to get into her apartment. Seth studied the report, but without an autopsy record he couldn't be sure if she really did die from a fall, or if she died any other way. He was lucky to get as much information as he could, usually these records were kept under the highest security in the world, even for someone who was at a forefront in studying the units.

Her place of birth was recorded as being born in a town called High Point, somewhere in the south east of the northern parts of the Americas, but there were no records on her death there, or what tailor shop she was working at when she died. Seth guessed that as an orphan, she had probably lived and died in the same place, most of those in the lower classes rarely ever had enough money to up and move, and orphans were usually not given much after they turned eighteen and were released from the foster custody. She had no family for him to contact to ask questions, no history that he could trace aside from this small file. With that in mind, he couldn't build a simulation on that. So, he and Anh had decided to take another route, they would directly influence parts of her brain with stimulants and see if there was any effect. If this was a program glitch, the effects should light up on the screen and Seth would be able to alter the program to work around the glitches until he would find a way to re-program the Nano machines in her brain to correct the error.

They had worked daily with Anh also working nights, Amelia would help where she could, while Dean had been sent out to a repair shop for body work, as the damage had been more severe than Seth had anticipated, and he didn't have time to patch him while he worked on Raye. Raye had sat in her inactive mode, despite her offer of help to them, as Seth didn't want her to be so close to the experiment, since it might skew the results if she understood what was happening. After the week of work and sending short progress reports to Robin that basically said nothing new, and receiving curt replies back from Robin asking for more information, Seth thought he was ready to try the program on her.

"All right Raye," Seth said as he had her sit in the laid-back chair again, "we're going to hook you up to several electrodes and some will be needles straight into certain parts of your brain to test how the Nano machines in there react to stimulation, they should work to rewire your processor to work around the glitches which should make all this go away. This does mean we'll have to drill a few small holes, but you won't feel any pain."