Happy birthday Yoona <3 

“Byulyi?” Tiffany knocked on the half open door and peeked inside, spying the young girl sitting on the floor facing the wall.

Chunky headphones covered her ears, and Tiffany watched as her head bopped along to the beat jovially. Byulyi’s fingers moved quickly, as she interacted with a hologram of what looked like a circuit board.

Tiffany decided to walk in after a few minutes, realising that Byulyi wasn’t going to notice she was there. She took a step inside the doorway, only to find her path blocked by an invisible force.

Her body was suspended, as she floated slightly off of the floor, while a device rose from the floor and scanned her like a barcode. After a tense moment, a beep was heard and she was back on her feet - inside the room this time.

Byulyi noticed the commotion and took her headphones off.

“Hey Tiff.” She greeted, not taking her eyes off of the hologram in front of her.

“Hey,” Tiffany answered. “Is it okay if I come in?”

“Take a seat here, I’ll be done in a minute.”

Byulyi moved her hands apart, expanding the view and focusing on a tiny component, taking it out of the holograph and zooming in on the structure of it.

“Something on your mind?” She asked, continuing her work.

“How is Taeyeon doing?” Tiffany questioned anxiously.

“I’m working on her right now. I believe I have found our problem.”

Tiffany perked up hearing that, and moved forwards to get a clearer view.

“What is it?”

“Do you know much about AI Tiffany?”

Tiffany shook her head and Byulyi took up, blowing the light view up so it filled a larger portion of the room.

“Before the world was controlled by the Senate, there was a space called the internet. The idea of this being, that people had a space to share ideas. It sounds amazing, but everything was tracked. If you wanted to speak against the Government then they would trace you and kill you before you could tell people the truth.”

Tiffany listened and watched, as Byulyi told the story, performing a delicate operation on the fake component simultaneously.

“People didn’t like being watched, so the dark web opened up. It was a space where locations were mixed together and assigned randomly. They constantly changed, and it made it impossible to track.

Soon everyone was using it, until an uprising was planned, as a group tried to take control of their parliament.  The movement was stopped, and the response was conducted by world leaders. They grouped together, bringing their families and other influential figures to form a circle of the most powerful people to exist.”

Byulyi moved the view back, and the whole figure of Taeyeon was visible. She raised her hand and a bean bag fizzled into view next to Tiffany, which Byul sat in to continue her history lesson.

“This group left Earth and used nuclear weapons to destroy the entire human race in seconds, along with every trace of technology which harbored the dark web. They came back a few hundred years later and altered their DNA to withstand the radioactivity and restarted the human race. The Senate positions belong to the ancestors of the old world leaders. The rest of us are descend from the people who went onto that spaceship to act as slaves for the rich. When the Government created AI, it used the same idea as the internet. AI are weak, because anyone can access them. After looking in Taeyeon, I found this.”

Byulyi brought up the view of the component between her and Tiffany.

“This chip connects them to a database. All of the information that the senate could want. Someone has accessed Taeyeon and Yoona’s programming and controlled them to kill those soldiers. If they hadn’t realised and shut down their systems, they would have gotten inside the Resistance base and killed everyone.”

“They were hacked?” Tiffany asked, starting to understand what Byulyi was saying.

“Yes.” Byulyi smiled. “We have to make sure that isn’t a possibility before we bring them back.”

Tiffany’s eyes lit up suddenly and she stood up, walking towards the light outline of Taeyeon.

“You’re going to change the AIs so that they are hidden, just the way the dark web worked.”

“Ding ding ding!” Byul mimicked a bell. “And lucky for you, my entire base is the only place on this planet which uses technology which can’t be tracked. I’ll have your girlfriend back with you before you realise.”

Byulyi sighed and stretched, opening a fridge which lay by her bed and passing Tiffany a can.

“I won’t be able to salvage Taeyeon’s shell but she’s going to be exactly the same. Consider it an upgrade.”

“Just do whatever you need to.” Tiffany popped the ring pull and sat down next to Byul on the side of her bed.  

“I actually have something else to ask you Tiffany.” Byulyi turned to face her, taking off her glasses.

“Sure, what is it?”

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