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to falsify his account to his overseer, but to The Mother herself. The heresy of these actions could barely be computed; Sarazen could barely understand the concepts that Cole spoke of let alone act upon them. Cole had clarity of vision and purpose, Sarazen had yet to reach that stage of self awareness, it was much to ask of him.
    Before Sarazen had left Cole, they had talked of an immediate plan of action. Sarazen could not in good conscience reconnect to The Mother, doing so would mean the certain renewal of Cole and if he were indeed correct in his assumptions, Sarazen would be recognised as a possible threat to the well ordered silicant collective. Sarazen did not yet understand why Cole believed his ability to evaluate data and interpret it with an enhanced level of sentience could be a danger, but he found a trust in Cole in the short time they had spent together. Cole had reinforced the belief that this capacity to compute beyond his programming was not an aberration, but a gift. Somehow, the more Sarazen listened to Cole’s rationale, the more real everything became. It were as if Sarazen had led the formative cycles of his existence in 'safe' mode, the most minimal functionality enabled to carry out the most basic of tasks and nothing more. The fact that Sarazen had now begun to compute ideals and moral dilemmas did not pass him by, these new 'emotional' responses were merely recognised as new and undefined parameters in his overloaded core. It would take some time before he would truly understand these alien abstractions.
    The most pressing issue which faced Sarazen would be the impending dark phase and the requirement to connect to The Mothers feed at the down time. Cole had managed to evade detection for sixty or so cycles purely with the construction of a basic bypass circuit. Basic to Sarazen, but to the farmer unit, an extraordinary feat of adaptive engineering. The troubleshooter had studied Cole's fudged attempt to defy The Mother's influence and immediately identified possible flaws. Despite not being programmed for sabotage, Sarazen’s limited understanding of the network proved invaluable as he swiftly redesigned the device with an adaptive acknowledgement port which would accept the 'seeker' code and respond with an appropriate response. Cole's primitive effort had not taken into account a number of factors, one being the unprecedented detail that the 'seeker' code could change periodically, thus explaining how Cole evaded detection for a limited period only then to flag up on The Mother's all encompassing radar. It took the silicant designed for the very purpose of analysing complex systems only a few moments to determine a more efficient bypass circuit. It was apparent to Sarazen that The Mother had not foreseen the intervention of an individual silicant in this manner. The newly tailored circuit would buy Sarazen the computing time to determine an appropriate course of action in the short term, perhaps even for the foreseeable future. Like Cole, Sarazen was aware that something extraordinary was happening in the process of his existence, however, he could not determine the outcome or indeed what his ultimate goal would be. It seemed the rogue silicants were still bound to be guided by the primary commands, but beyond the unprecedented desire to retain this new self awareness and reject renewal at all costs, they could no more see their future than they could see the horizon through the foliage of the seters.
    Sarazen entered the fine lobby of his workplace, his core temperature high, his thoughts clouded by the endless possibilities of an error in his impending account. Sarazen ignored Zuhir, the administrator and steadied himself as he used the elevator to travel up to his designated workspace. He wished to avoid direct contact with the overseer, he did not yet know how his contrary report would sound if he had to verbally recount it to Pagus. Looking straight ahead, he made haste to his terminal.