Data Persistence

When an object is brought down inside the Instance and has not been fully terminated, the system will sometimes run a procedure on its own: Data Persistence. Nobody gives the order; the procedure starts by itself, runs a snapshot on the fallen object, and captures its complete data structure.

The progress bar starts at 4%. When it reaches 100%, one more line of query appears on the panel:

Data Persistence · snapshot 100%
This object may be retained as —— Shadow
Bind?

Once bound, that object belongs to you. Its render priority drops below yours, it obeys your commands, and a counter is hung in the lower right of the panel: Added to your Shadow sequence · current sequence 1 / ∞. The Instance gives no upper limit and attaches no explanation—the logic of copying a dead program and hanging it on your own side to run for you is something a hacker's instincts have to recognise unaided.

The procedure has two prerequisites: the object must have been brought down inside the Instance, and must not have been fully terminated. A faint life signal that hasn't yet cut out counts as retainable. As for what it takes for a stretch of code to be considered killed, the Instance offers no definition.

Binding is not the same as getting all of it. The first shadow taken carries several fragments whose source is unmarked—a row of backs bent over beneath the ice, a mark turned half a rotation the wrong way, a sound in a woman's voice that cannot be read out—and even its owner is blocked from reading them; the system returns only "cannot read · source unauthorised." The source of those fragments stands outside the authority of whoever wrote the Instance.

When the taking finished, a faint line surfaced on the Instance wall: Trial · Contact —— passed. The entire fight, start to finish, had been a gate laid out in advance.

Nobody taught the Instance the word "Shadow." It knows it anyway. As if a long time ago someone had already picked a name for this kind of thing, and left it waiting to be claimed.