in the squatter lab, Daniel was working on simulating the update to use Tickles for communication, when Tickles uses his ability the technology he consumes turns from matter into energy, and that surge of power seems to be what opens the connection momentarily before the extra energy dissipates and the connection closes again
but it couldn't be this simple, if all it needed was energy, Tickles seemingly infinite supply would be enough to open a channel
both of them started to think about it, but this time it wasn't daniel to figure it out, but Tickles who like usual borrowed Daniel's 'CPU' or better brainpower, as he did in the past, and found out that they were overlooking something, the surge of energy, was accompanied by a surge of informations
when there were too many informations to elaborate, the nanites automatically sought nearby clusters for help increasing their computing speed, and this was exactly what was happening
the newfound communication capabilities had nothing to do with the innate ability Tickles unlocked, it just created the perfect condition to trigger something that had always been there
with the new informations Tickles provided, Daniel managed to find out a possible solution and started to talk to Tickles about it "it's a core function, even if they wiped all data, the hardware it's still there, we just have to create a new software to use it"
Tickles elaborated for a couple of seconds, then said "affirmative, the hardware has now been identified, it's a part of the cluster organization hardware"
Daniel nodded and said "too bad you can't use your ability on one of your nanites, we could find out all you can do immediately"
tickles elaborated and said "it may be possible to consume an external nanite, if we can find it"
Daniel laughed and said "yes but it's been tens of thousands of years, are there really other nanites of the same type? let's get to work"
Daniel and tickles worked all night, and the next morning tickles had a new function
Daniel rubbed his left eye, and while yawning said "let's test it"
Tickles said "affirmative" and started the new program, a couple of seconds later a fake update happened, and all the nanites were temporarily reconnected, but it didn't last long, the consumption of energy was absurd and to keep the channel open for thirty seconds, Tickles almost dried itself
Daniel commented "we discovered something new, apparently your energy reserves aren't infinite, you just charge fast somehow, anyway we can use it half a second every 20 seconds, to send and receive messages, so you won't dry out, that's already good enough, also cultivators may be able to pass you energy so they can probably use it to call"
tickles elaborated for a few seconds then said "affirmative, I can use spiritual energy as a power source since I developed a soul spark"
daniel thought about it and said "strange, soul energy and spiritual energy are two different things, this is something we should study in the future, in the meantime we have a more impellent problem, we can't let copies of you running around in the universe, what if someone hacks them and steals our informations?"
Tickles elaborated and said "I could extrapolate a fake artificial intelligence from myself to serve as an operating system for the new network, and just feed it the necessary data so that even if someone hacks it, no sensitive informations would be lost"
Daniel smiled and said "that's perfect, and we have to find a name for them, . . . since it's your subordinate and you created it, how does Itchy sound, Tickles made me Itchy literally"
Tickles elaborated and said "perfect as always master"
tickles started working on itchy, and extrapolated from himself behavioral and linguistical subroutines, to make Itchy more 'user friendly' it wasn't complicated work and in a day, the first itchy n° 001 was born, every other itchy will be a copy of this one, and each one will be gifted by Daniel to people he wants to stay in touch with, the first one, for example, its for sister chaos
itchy will always be a part of tickles, but it will be partially independent and won't receive sensible information at the same time unlike Tickles he will have a private mode to avoid monitoring his new owner but he will still tag their position as that was inevitable, of course only Daniel and Tickles could see it, since using the same firewall technique as before, two new partitions were created
one only for Tickles main body and Daniel with everything that was deemed sensitive information
and the other called itchy network contained all the information deemed unimportant cataloged by argument, it was also a start, in the future this partition will contain the social networking of the itchy owners, but this was still an idea in Daniel's head at the moment
Daniel wasn't wasting time either, after a good morning of sleep, while tickles was creating the first itchy, he created different blueprints and a ball made of the necessary materials, so that when he gifts an itchy, if that person doesn't want it inside his own personal device or doesn't have one, he or she will be able to have a personalized one for Itchy to live in, for now, there will only be 6 options bracer, bracelet, earring, book, ring, and necklace, with different colors and styles, in the future, Daniel will be able to add more when they will update itchy
also since itchy it's made of nanites, he will be able to build some stuff like Tickles, but on a much smaller scale, the only downside it's that each itchy will have to be made of 10 grams of tickles nanites to be able to keep its charge and update every 20 seconds, without drying up its energy reserves, the supply will be limited for a while, and every time daniel makes one, tickles will lose in efficiency since there's only 1.020 kg of nanites in total so he can only make two at the moment
but Daniel was also sure that he will not meet that many people he will want to keep in touch with, and anyway Tickles grows every time he uses his ability
in time he will be able to satisfy the demand, Daniel already knew that the family will want one each as soon as they discover it, and after giving it to them he will have to give it to the people that are like family, Andrea, Obelix, uncle white
the next morning sister chaos arrived back, and after approaching the squatter lab she knocked on the door and said "Daniel it's me, . . . sister chaos" giggling a bit
the population on retak was once again panicking but much less than before, her extremely good mood dampened the madness of the empress of chaos aura
Daniel came to open the door and said "welcome back, you are just in time, I finished my side projects, for now, I also have something for you, come in"
then while walking Daniel took a sphere, and giving it to her said "you said that you wanted to keep in touch, this is itchy using him you will always be able to contact me, or at least I still haven't found a distance limit yet, and honestly I doubt there is one"
sister chaos looked at the sphere that was now in her hand and said "how do I use it?"
Daniel explained it to her and she started looking at the various options, she made it change tens of times, but seeing the bracer on Daniel's arm she ended up making it similar, the only difference was that it had red hexagons that were kept together with a white polymer
daniel looked at it and said "nice choice"
sister chaos nodded satisfied and said "yes I like this design and red is my favorite color, thanks Daniel for both this and the good suggestion you gave me"
Daniel looked at her and said "it worked out then?"
sister chaos smiled and said "almost, I went to a planet I inoculated when it was still prehistorical, at that time I was desperate and just wanted to have a bigger chance of success, but I didn't believe it would work so I never went back to check, but you were right, there were a male and a female with 80% of the necessary level of genetic purity, so I made some adjustments, and now we wait, but I'm closer than ever"
Daniel nodded and said "I'm happy I could help, even if I didn't really do anything"
sister chaos shook her head and said "you did plenty, if I didn't go to check how probable was that those two who live on different continents would end up together? or didn't die before having a chance to reproduce? it's thanks to you if they are now protected"
Daniel smiled and said "I'm happy it worked out, we have plenty to do here I waited for you, and since I had the time I prepared some machinery to work on the purifying jellyfish"
sister chaos nodded, then said "let's get to it then, it's been a while, since the last time I had a fun side project like this one"
Daniel smiled and said "follow me, this way" while escorting her in front of the geneticists' toybox 2.0
Daniel and Sister chaos arrived at the box and with one thought from Daniel Tickles activated it
various instruments started to appear in front of them and Daniel explained to her each one of them, and how they were used
even if they were beneath her, sister chaos was impressed with how much Daniel created in such a little time, after all, he didn't know anything about genetics, and what she gave to him even if transferable was based on spiritual energy, not technology, so she was curious how he did it and asked "how did you put all this together?"
Daniel smiled and said "it's all thanks to tickles, I don't know what I would do without him, we went to gather some basic data from the retakians and developed the equipment they use, well I made it all in one for easy transport, but it all started from them, you can use itchy in a similar manner, he is made of nanites too, so he can hack inside most systems and if you feed it a blueprint and the materials he will build almost anything for you"
sister chaos looked at the bracer on her arm and said "that's very handy" even if she didn't know on what occasion she would use it, but it was still impressive
Daniel took out some samples and said "these are some of the samples I got, I thought we could start from here" while showing the fishes and aquatic plants to her