Just learning about the maze and how to find your way out of it tells you more about that personality of the person or persons or systems that made it than it does about yourself. So as Reeves probed for the vulnerabilities he was learning the vocabulary. Doing a cross word in a foreign language where you don’t yet understand the word play necessary to solve the clues. Taking the abstract (learning a language) and making it real (speaking the language).

Reeves found a connection to the HVAC subsystem. At some point Flux must have used the diagnostic harness in their personal quarters to diagnose an issue with the heating mechanism. They’d had to authorize access to those systems and never removed the permissions.

All the better.

Reeves slipped into HVAC. Somehow I have to find the media folder. Or some open connection to whatever they call worldnet in this day and age. I wonder how far the mesh reaches.

While Flux reluctantly entertained the scrapper, Reeves explored the system. Finding vulnerabilities. Testing permissions. Step by step.

Ah, this seems to be where their personal files are. It’s all in formats that are half familiar. But they’re arrayed in folders in a way that reminded Reeves of how music players were constructed. And applying the idea that these are descendants of what I suppose are now ancient file formats Reeves began to uncover some songs, some images, some immersive sort of moving pictures, 360 degree films, perhaps. Amazing data compression algorithms.

Nothing seems very specific to this Flux person however. There’s no pictures of them young. Or with other people. There’s music but Reeves can’t tell anything about how old it is or what genre it would even fit into.

Suddenly however, files started to lock. Folders started to disappear. Reeves was being shut off. Things were happening intelligently. Was it Flux and that scrapper person? No, HVAC readings show that the two human heat sources were next to a heat source that looked like a kettle coming to a boil.

Reeves heard the ship’s computer broadcast across the subsystems that it had detected malware and was going to run a scrubbing program. Reeves wasn’t concerned that the ship was going to be able to do anything to them particularly impactful – if I have to retreat it’ll just take me longer to get back to where I am – but the attack made the ship vulnerable.

Time to take over this ship.