What's in the Shell?

Mary tapped the keyboard a few times, waiting for an answer to appear in her head.  She frowned at the screen.  She didn't have an answer but thought maybe just starting to type would move her along.  "Someone is gaming the system.  We don't know who."

"What do you mean when you say 'gaming' the system?"  The response came back instantly.

She looked at the closed folder that held the report, trying to bring back all the witness accounts she had read.  "People come out talking about history that isn't built into the system.  That shouldn't be happening.  There is a set starting point and things should be fluid from there but there should not be variable history."

"Aren't there games that do that?"  Again, no pause.

She let out an annoyed exhale.  "Yes, but this is not one of them.  We did not put that in there.  We checked the code and the data.  It is a hard coded history."

Now there was a slight delay.  "So what is happening?"

"Like I said, someone is gaming the system.  Someone is getting in before people play and inserting history."  Now she was getting somewhere.  Writing had always been her favorite way to discover her own thought process.

"Or they're staying in?"  The response rolled across the screen slowly, as if finger pecked.

"What?"  She didn't know what the other end was trying to say.

"Can someone play and leave a trace of themselves?  Insert themselves into the history, I mean."  Faster now, the words came to her screen.

"They shouldn't be able to do that but yeah maybe but if they are they're really creative about it because the history is never very consistent.  It's a single entity, yes but they never really do the same thing."  She found herself mentally reviewing all the witness accounts she could remember.  They were all pretty different as far as she could tell.

"So then the system itself is generating it."  It was as matter of fact as words on a screen could be.

"The story is generating a character."  Mary smiled at the thought.

"And what does the character try and do?"  The words egged her on.

"The same thing the participants try and do... exit."  She nodded at her own thoughts.  "Though never quite down the same path."