Part VII - Source Code and Scars
Walking mastery was complete by mid-1978. Mobility was now a tool, and the mission shifted from a war of verticality to a battle for information. The stucco house, once a prison, was transformed into a territory ripe for mapping. The audit began one afternoon in the kitchen, while Maria was at work, with the sound of a dining chair scraping across linoleum, its legs groaning in protest as it was positioned beneath the lofty cabinets.
A small, unlabeled cardboard box perched on the top shelf, beckoning. The ascent proved a clumsy ordeal—flailing limbs, mismatched leverage—until tiptoes on the seat allowed fingertips to graze its dusty underside. Strained muscles in that toddler frame shrieked, the forehead's flame mark throbbing with frustrating heat. The vessel faltered. His fingertips, centimeters from the goal, scraped uselessly against the smooth, painted wood. The box remained unmoved.
He dropped back to the chair, a low, frustrated hiss escaping him. Too small. Too weak. Asset acquisition: stalled. The Titan's mind logged the failure. A pivot was required. He slid down from the chair, his gaze sweeping the living room, past the television, and settling on a new, lower-priority target: the floral sofa.
A crawl commenced into the darkness behind it, the air heavy with dust and aged fabric. Tiny hands probed the floorboards, one creaking under pressure—a structural weakness, a potential cache. He logged the location and moved on to the next zone.
An afternoon vanished in the musty closet. Fingers sifted through a shoebox of faded, meaningless photographs until a different texture emerged: a crumpled letter, ink faded, edges torn as if gripped in rage.
It was a valuable data point, but it was not the primary objective. The audit's focus had always been Maria's bedroom. A wooden dresser hugged the wall, its bottom drawer locked—an anomaly, a deliberate shroud over secrets. This was the target.
Obsession took root. During her brief market trips, a week-long silent campaign unfolded. A bent paperclip, scavenged earlier, met the lock, but dexterity eluded those small hands. Brute force followed, fingers wedged into the top gap, pulling with desperate might. Warped wood scraped knuckles raw, splinters embedding beneath nails. Pain was registered as secondary. On the fourth day, a final tug—agony, jolting up the arm—cracked the lock open.
Within, atop moth-eaten sweaters, lay a bundle of papers. Not documents or letters, but sketches.
Reverence gripped the scene, unfamiliar to this toddler form. Brittle paper, stained with coffee rings, pulsed with raw power. Warriors with wild, spiky hair leapt from the page, dynamic and fierce. Dragons coiled around fighters, scales etched with precision. A sun emblem glowed, a shield adorned with swirling symbols, auras seeming to rise. The Titan mind, honed to spot value, dissected instantly: not art, but source code—a mythology's raw material. An asset of incalculable value.
He quickly, almost reverently, gathered the brittle papers. This was not a find to be logged and left; it was a treasure to be secured. He left the drawer open, the sweaters in disarray, and moved with a new, urgent purpose back to his crib. Only when the sketches were safely tucked deep beneath the mattress did the analytical engine cool. The source code was secure.
The factory's output continued, a silent, methodical grind that consumed the summer months of 1978. The work was a sufficient distraction, but it couldn't fully obscure a recurring gap in the household data: the 'father' variable. The fact of his abandonment was logged—a simple debit on the balance sheet. But the impact of that void remained an unquantified risk, simmering beneath the daily grind until one crisp October afternoon.
Studying sketches on the living room floor, that risk was given a new, jarring data point. A neighbor hoisted his son onto his shoulders, laughter echoing across the courtyard. An illogical, emotional display. The Titan's mind logged it: a paternal interaction producing a high-yield emotional dividend. A dividend is completely absent from his own equation.
The unquantified risk now had a face. A query was required.
A trek to the kitchen found Maria at the counter, dicing peppers for dinner. One sketch—the sun emblem—rose in small, steady hands.
"Who made this?" came the high-pitched, childlike probe.
Maria froze. The rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the knife on the cutting board stopped. Tension tightened her face. She set the knife down carefully and turned away, wiping at her eyes with a corner of her apron. "He's gone, mi amor," she whispered through the silence.
"Gone where?" pressed the innocent tone. "Like… the moon?"
A heavy sigh escaped her, laden with history. She dried her hands on her apron, scooped the small form up from the floor, and walked from the kitchen to the rocking chair in the living room. She sank into it, her arms forming a fortress. "Sí, mi vida, far away. Your daddy… Alexander Lin-Hayashi."
The data point slotted into place. Alexander Lin-Hayashi: the 'abandonment' variable logged in the initial audit. Now, that variable had a new, critical attribute: 'Creator.' The source code was his.
The tale unfolded: a wanderer of British, Japanese, and Chinese descent, a brilliant, restless artist. "He had fire in him," she whispered, her voice cracking as she rocked gently, her tears dampening his hair. "A man who promised to illuminate the world with heroes, only to be swallowed by the road."
Her grief was spiking—a predictable risk. Asset Maria: compromised.
Her finger, trembling, traced the faint warmth on his forehead. "Like your mark here," she whispered. "Maybe... maybe it was his gift to you."
The mark pulsed, a sympathetic echo to her sudden surge of emotional data. Logic dictated a countermeasure to stabilize the asset. He leaned into the embrace, anchoring the moment, his small, solid form offering a calculated, stabilizing comfort.
He held the pose, a silent, steady anchor, until her breathing evened out and the emotional spike receded. She was stable. Gently, he pulled back. Maria, emotionally drained, kissed him on the forehead and set him down on the floor.
"Go play, mi amor. Mama needs a minute."
The data from the encounter was filed: The 'father' variable was now inextricably linked to both the 'source code' and the 'mark' anomaly. The mission, however, remained unchanged. He returned to his work, a relentless, silent campaign of mapping, testing, and mastering every inch of the stucco house.
That relentless grind continued until the final day of the month.
By the second birthday, October 31, 1978, the work was complete, and the stucco house stood fully mapped. A simple cake, edges uneven, met Maria's weary smile—a confirmation of the primary mission: her stability secured. That night, Halloween fireworks crackled over the courtyard, and one of his father's spiky-haired warrior sketches clutched tight. The second year concluded—not mere survival, but strategy. An asset acquired. A foundation laid.