Legend

Myriad Reality

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Well, I think I can give you a time that it probably didn’t happen before. If that helps.

@GalaxyRaider

All approximations are useful.

Myriad Reality

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Any way to “carbon” date it?

@GalaxyRaider

Not reliably. Memory is a tangled entity, and guessing would introduce unknowns to a system built from derived unknowns.

Myriad Reality

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And to do that, we…?

@GalaxyRaider

Approach the situation delicately. Memory is tricky, but as a hybrid soul, Melody’s is much easier to parse than, say, a human’s. However, I need to determine when the change took place.

Myriad Reality

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Sure. I already had the impression that the ideal solution wasn't going to work out.

@GalaxyRaider

In any case, the optimal solution is likely to target this component.
*Spins and zooms into the large region distributing the malicious data flow across the soul*
If we manipulate her memory to remove all traces of the altered state, we should be able to purge the remainder of her soul without being set back.

Myriad Reality

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Do you really think you can save her..?

@System

There is a much greater than zero chance of success.

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That's great! Impossible is impossible, but I've got a lot of experience working with very difficult.

@GalaxyRaider

*Smiles*
Precisely. I ought to point out some caveats. Namely, that truly rolling a soul back to an earlier state is impractical. So an approximation of our objectives must suffice.

Myriad Reality

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A result of lack of experience in a difficult field? I guess it is understandable, but now I'm afraid of changes to a soul like this being irreversible.

@GalaxyRaider

A result of an unexpected edge case, combined with a domain outside my expertise. However, this is fortunately only very difficult to reverse.

Myriad Reality

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As is the nature of the void, I am not given a reason to care for that reality over this one. I, personally, would still choose to just move on. What matters philosophically other than my own perception anyway? So as long as I continue to live in this world I wouldn't let the other experience bother me. But I could see others not going down that route, absolutely, and I see what you're saying.

@GalaxyRaider

Precisely. Some would fight relentlessly to never return to that void, comforted by the construct of the world. Many others would be discontent with a false reality. In Melody’s case, this effect would be compounded due to the digital nature of her priority trees. When this critical interface to her soul was removed, the new state resulted in sweeping changes to her soul’s makeup, much like exposure to our hypothetical void. This was admittedly an oversight on my part.

Myriad Reality

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Well, I would likely just chalk it up to a dream. Ignorance is bliss and I couldn't necessarily say that brief experience overrides my whole world, and I wouldn't want it to anyway.

@GalaxyRaider

Ah, but the caveat exists that the void was undeniable. In the same way you can dismiss a dream, you are now able to dismiss reality. You could, of course, choose to continue in spite of that knowledge, but it is now forever a part of your experience.

Myriad Reality

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Aaalright, meaning?

@GalaxyRaider

Perhaps best explained via a thought experiment. Consider a scenario where you wake up in an empty void with no body. You’ve discovered, to the satisfaction of whatever brain chemistry or equivalent you possess, that your life to that point had been hallucinated. In fact, you lack many facets attributed to sapient entities, including emotions, goals, etcetera, and remember them as mere descriptors with little more value than text on a screen. In a sense, you are the void itself. Moments later, you return to your normal life. Nothing has changed, except you remember your experience in full, and cannot deny that the void is your true reality. How might you proceed?

Myriad Reality

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So you’re telling me that’s basically compiled code, but a soul, and run with dark magic?

@Techspert

Not quite. Souls are rarely so... detectably deterministic. Which, conveniently, leads us to Isaac’s question.

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So she's like a soul equivalent to a cyborg...
*Shakes my head*
Bizarre. And fascinating, but where does that point us action-wise to fix things?

@GalaxyRaider

That happens to hit on the second issue. Her codebase seems to have mitigated soul rot to some extent, but the absence of the prioritization functionality appears to have spread some form of state-changing message across her soul.
*Points to a now-translucent simulation of the missing component, which is detached from the greater body, leading to errors and minuscule red structures that travel to another component bank, which is restructured and transmits new orange shapes to the rest of the soul*