Automatically, Carla framed the memo with her cybereye, did an overall shot, then went to macro-focus and scanned the lines one by one so that they could be assembled later into a scrolling graphic. But even as she performed these mechanical functions, her mind was reeling. She’d jumped to the wrong conclusions not once, but twice. Mitsuhama hadn’t developed the spirit for use as a new form of para-biological weapon. They hadn’t even intended to use it as a virus—although it could certainly be put to that purpose, as Carla had done earlier in the Byte of the Future display. The corporation had instead been after the holy grail of magicians and deckers alike—an "interface" device that used magic as a bridge to the Matrix. They’d intended to use the spirit as an organic, magically based computer—as hardware and software in one. As a program that could ignore ice, enter any system freely, and use its own body to copy any data it found, no matter how much encryption was used to protect it. Had it worked, it would have been the ultimate stealth program and ultra-high-speed master persona control program, rolled into one.