As I blurted out my desire to save the TCC, Uncle and Janus looked at me like I was crazy. But I couldn't help the desire to fix her, since it really wasn't her fault she broke in the first place.

  Uncle scolded me, saying I was being “foolishly empathetic”

  …was he calling me pathetic? How rude!

  “Uncle, you don’t understand..." I stood on my toes and leaned forward with fists clenched in front of me, hoping to show how serious I was about this, "she’s fixable, I can do it.”

  “It’s best to let her be decommissioned,” but he still argued against the idea.

  Decommissioning her would delete her completely. If that happened, she’d be dead for good without a chance of bringing her back.

  Something about that made me anxious, so I didn’t want to let it happen. Broken things needed to be fixed, not destroyed. If we were killed every time we made a mistake, we'd never have a chance to make that mistake right. Machines deserved the same privilege.

  I tugged on Uncle's arm, begging him to let me try just one time to save her.

  “Please please please please…” I pulled out the greatest card I had in my deck. There was no way the 'repeating please' would fail me!

  His annoyed expression was proof of it starting to work.

  “You do understand that this poses a security risk to us all, yes? We’d have to turn the power back on.”

  Actually, I already thought about that. We could just turn back on the systems that run the TCC's AI. Everything else would be disabled.

  He wasn’t happy, but there were some protocols in place to keep a captured, rogue AI from causing trouble. And to add to that, since only her mind would be active, she couldn't hurt me. This plan was very low stakes... Probably....

  Uncle could promise me exactly seven minutes of safety to help out TCC. If I took any more time, he’d have to shut her down again and force me out.

  "Seven minutes…?" I whined out. "Why not more?"

  "Any longer and the power systems will reset on their own, then the tower will be active again."

  I guess seven minutes was fine, given the situation. But still, would it be enough time to save her? I suppose it was going to have to be.

  “Are you really letting her go in?” Janus gave him a shocked scowl. “Who knows what’ll be waiting for her.”

  “It’s much like her future, wouldn’t you say?” Uncle retorted. “One day she will be called to make decisions much harder than this, and I won’t be there to hold her hand." Uncle turned and patted my head. "If her feelings are this strong, I support her." He said, encouraging me.

  "Well, showbiz is full of risks," he shrugged. "Kid, follow your emotions. They'll lead you true."

  "Right," I nodded.

  Okay! Now that I had permission, I needed to preform a similar action as when I intruded on the system. But I really needed to concentrate real hard if I wanted to stay in her head for seven minutes.

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  I sat down on the ground like one of those meditating monks, but I couldn't hold that position very long before my legs fell asleep. It wasn't very comfortable.

  Uncle sat cross legged next to me, then then pulled me in close so I could lean on him for comfort. He held my shoulder tightly, making sure I'd stay put on him. His suit reappearing added a nice layer of cushion to my head.

  "I'll be right here. Remember that you're not alone."

  "Thank you, Uncle. I love you."

  I always said I love you to my family before I went to sleep.

  "I love you too, Young Mistress."

  My eyes started to close. My mind began the sequence to connect with the tower again, putting the rest of me in sleep mode.

  This time, my link to the tower was stronger. I went into a trance like sleep and let my imagination paint the environment.

  ~☆☆☆~

  A dreamscape of lights lit up before me. A grid of red, green, and blue traced out the environment, creating outlines of walls and flooring. Pulses of light raced across them until they were solid lines.

  Walls slowly filled in with silver surfaces like metal, and white fog spread out ahead of me in a long hallway.

  The floors also looked like metal, but it was grey with symmetrical lines of blue and white lights across the borders.

  If I looked close enough to all of the surfaces, faded veins of energy pulsed under a very subtly transparent exterior. That was mana that ran through the whole computer to power it, like blood. Since we were running on emergency power, the veins were hardly visible.

  Above me was an open sky, like a twinkly night to be precise. It was beautiful with its billions of star-like diodes, exactly what I imagined space to look like. I could have looked at it all day (or night?).

  Not to ruin the magic, but it really was just a bunch of diodes that expressed the computer's life and thoughts, kinda’ like how a brain has neurons.

  “One day we’ll see space for real, right Samael?”

  My snake didn’t answer me. He usually responded with a 'hiss.'

  He must not have been here, since this was a digital world and all. Not having him around was weird, like I'd forgotten my favourite accessory back home.

  Speaking of my appearance, something immediately felt off. My whole body felt heavier and taller. One step forward almost made me fall over. Was this place just really small?

  No, I actually was taller, and my hair was like, five times longer for some reason.

  One of the walls had a mirror surface, so I looked and saw my reflection to discover…

  "Oh my gosh, I'm older!"

  I looked like a grown up. I still had a similar dress on, but it looked more detailed and pretty.

  My pony tail was on the back of my head now, as opposed to the left side. It was like, five times bigger too! I also had long, flowing hair coming down my back too.

  Man, I have a lot of hair… Awesome!

  I felt like a princess, I looked so cool! I did a few power poses just to show off how cool I turned out to be in grown up form!

  A feature that didn't change was that I was still an Exceed. My body was clearly still synthetic, and my crystal heart was in its proper place. It was hard to say what caused me to grow up like this, but I thought it was super cool.

  After a few funny faces in the mirror, I got re-focused on the mission at hand, and that was to save the TCC.

  "Let's do this!"

  My determination was challenged by tons of doors to my left and right, all of them had little windows and signs that said something about each room. The only bad part was that the insides of the rooms were pitch-black, so I couldn't see in them. That was probably because the tower wasn’t online. Whatever machines or systems were hidden inside remained dormant, preventing the TCC from fully reactivating the tower.

  These hallways were laid out like spider webs, all interconnecting and merging at the very center core. That was where all the AI code was.

  But there was one big problem…

  “How the heck do I get there?”

  It was a big maze. Super big. I was like a mouse hunting for cheese with a broken nose.

  Luckily I kinda’ knew one way to get around here. By looking up at the diode stars, I could tell where they were converging in on, which would have been above the core. Even from where I was, I could see them swirling down and slowly falling in with a tornado-like twist. At least I knew where the goal was, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be as easy to get there.

  Well, no sense in standing around worrying about it. I had to get to the core before my seven minutes were up.

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