36: Piran
Piran
The code was amazing. Not for what it did—Piran hadn’t even started deciphering that yet—but in the patterns, in the beauty of it. The way it fed back and called out, the sheer efficiency of it. Whoever wrote this was a master.
Wouldn’t be one person, though. Even in the patterns there were flavours, individuality. Group effort, sum greater than its parts.
He took a swig from his flask—water, none of that sickly sweet gunk Casey drank. Only needed it to keep hydrated, keep his mind on-track.
“Code, Piran,” he told himself. “Stick to the code.”
He pulled up an overview, shoved it through a tri-d imager, swam through it. Hard to imagine how old-timers immersed themselves without this kind of stuff, with only a flat screen. And plain text! Was that how these Ancien
