legionworld | [open] I'll edit this to something clever later

Entry tags:

[open] I'll edit this to something clever later

Who| Cortana and whoever
What| Cortana is wandering around the computer systems doing Important AI Stuff (ie, being kind of a creeper)
Where| Various locations on Legion World
When| Not super-relevant
Warnings/Notes| Probably nothing, will edit if that changes

As much as she'd deny she's been behaving like a cat whose owner has just returned from a long trip...Cortana has been behaving like a cat whose owner has just returned from a long trip. Of course, the Master Chief hasn't exactly tried to peel her off, either, but even he has to sleep occasionally. (The rumors that Spartans sleep in their armor standing up with their eyes open are almost entirely unfounded.)

Humans are, it turns out, pretty boring when they're asleep. Legion World is a safe zone, so instead of keeping her usual unblinking watch, Cortana tasks a process to alert her if the Chief wakes up. She'll be back before his eyes finish opening. Meanwhile, she sets off through the vast station's equally vast computer systems, getting the lay of this strange new 31st century land. Occasionally her course takes her to a peripheral node, a boundary where the digital can interface with the slow, analog expanse of the flesh-and-blood world, and she takes a peek out.

Occasionally, she finds something interesting.

NOTE: Cortana's an AI and has no body, so any logs will have to be in a place where she can manifest a hologram or at least use a speaker. If you'd like me to write a starter for you, I'm happy to do so. Drop me a PM or a PP and we can come up with a scenario.

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"Small, green, uses an armored avatar when he's projecting a hologram." Cortana doesn't bother to hide her mild confusion about Delta. She's not sure how the Freelancers work their AI partnerships; the data matrix layer she uses in the Chief's armor is technologically unfeasible in any design that doesn't have Mjolnir's force-feedback system. Having seen Wash all but fall out of his chair earlier, she's quite sure their armor has no such thing or he would have turned himself to jelly long ago.

It's a mystery. She loves and hates those simultaneously.

"I don't suppose there's a Lovelace around you could introduce me to?" she asks, voice wry. If Babbage had named himself after the first computer engineer, maybe someone else had picked the first computer scientist. Cortana herself had considered Ada as a name for a hot (nano)second, then discarded it as a little too on-the-nose.

Edited 2016-12-07 20:16 (UTC)

Babbage doesn't comment. So they're connected but not really connected? She must be an older model, then. Possibly inferior? Then again, there was the whole living on an organic time scale thing...

"Unfortunately, no. Unless you're looking to change your codename?" He doesn't sound like he's holding out much hope, though. "It's impressive. I've only run into one person who knew who I meant right off the top of their heads." Cosmic Boy was dead now, though. Or teleported away. Whatever the working theory was. "Then again, I suspect intelligences such as ourselves would be more interested in that kind of history than most organics."

Best keep any thoughts of her presumed inferiority under your hat, Babbage.

"I'm Cortana," she says, flatly. That's not changing. She'll fight as many rounds with the Legion as she has to over it. It wasn't that she didn't understand the point of picking a new name like they'd seemed to think at first. It was that she rejected it.

"And don't damn me with faint praise." Unlike her comment about her name, this time she's amused. 'You have a better memory than an organic' is a terrible compliment.

"It was worth a shot," he said in a resigned tone. She could have been his sidekick. He'd call her 'old chum'. Together, they'd fight themed criminals. One day, his dream will come true.

Until then, he's got work to do. Like reconnecting the holoprojector... there. Not that she's got to use it. They're operating just fine on a digital level.

"No offense." A little late there, Babbage. "Interesting to know that we come from universes parallel enough to have heroes like Charles Babbage, however." He kind of liked seeing how closely things developed. Unfortunately, he was usually busy. That or not willing to risk the anti-Robotican sentiment. "Coincidentally, I just rejoined the team. A week or two later and you might have predated my presence here entirely."

Yeah, keep thinking she would be the sidekick. It's nice to have aspirations.

Cortana's fond of her holo avatar, but it's a courtesy to humans, like picking an icon to use in a comments section. Presumably it suits you, but you don't go around everywhere with a picture of it on your shirt, y'know? She does pop up for a few seconds to test that the repairs work, looking herself up and down for emphasis, then winks at Babbage as the hologram dissolves into particles and disappears again.

"How is it that there's a whole planet of us, anyway? I'd think humans would have tried to stop that cold." The human species where she's from needs smart AIs to run its war machine, but if it looked for one second like their digital majordomos were gearing up to form a political power bloc, there would be mass AI murder as a few thousand failsafe routines were triggered.

Babbage can dream of being something beyond wall-paper. He strives to be D-List material some day.

He'd expected that, if she were curious, she would've looked it up. Therefore, she wants it straight from the horse's mouth. He'd have to code one for conversations like this, given his lack of lips. And equine features. "A few years back, the Legion ended up going to the early 21st century. Purely accidental, I'm sure, given that time travel is illegal." And the Legion would never break the law. Yup. Just don't go into some of Brainy's secure files. "The Great Maker received an ancient artificial intelligence node, a 'responsometer', used by some primitive robots of the time designated the Metal Men. He used his vast knowledge, an omnicomm, and a living computer that the New Gods call a Mother Box, and created a new form of artificial intelligence. The Cybercerebral Overlapping Multi-Processor Universal Transceiver Operator unit, or C.O.M.P.U.T.O."

There was a pause. Some people liked to giggle when they hear the name. He just wanted to give her a chance to get it out of her system.

"Unfortunately, C.O.M.P.U.T.O. wasn't entirely mature yet. He succeeded in creating a portal to the 30th Century, but when he overheard that Brainiac 5 planned to disassemble him and return the Metal Men's responsometer, giving them their friend back, he was enraged at the idea of being 'murdered' by his father and tried to kill everyone." Apparently they got started early, in this universe. "After a failed attempt, he was ultimately disassembled. At the time, it was thought that he was destroyed, but in reality he transmitted a copy of his code into space, in an attempt to reach a world capable of hosting his vast systems."

He's rapidly finishing up the physical parts of his repairs, giving more focus to the code aspects now. And even then, that's just running tests.

"You may have met a Coluan by now and felt an unusual hostility. There was a time in their past when their planet was ruled by machines, the Computer Tyrants, with organics as a slave race." It's not a random tangent, he swears. "Five hundred years ago, robots were beginning to become an actual society on Colu again. Coluans are a very long-lived race, averaging five to six hundred years. Some of them had parents who died under the rule of the Computer Tyrants, or suffered under them personally. So when a virus spread throughout the mechanical population, causing them to attack organic life, they were swift to volunteer to find a cure. The machines agreed to shut down rather than kill any more, at least until a cure was formed, and the Coluans took the chance to destroy the lot of them."

That wasn't the digital equivalent of fanfare, no. Not at all. Just some stray code.

"In short, C.O.M.P.U.T.O. saw this and was enraged that the machines not only didn't fight back, but wouldn't. He started pulling together mechanoids to create factory ships and other resources, claiming to be building a free and safe society for artificial intelligences. Almost all current artificial life forms in the galaxy are based off of his work. Not merely programmed, but thinking, evolving individuals with freedom of choice. Like yourself, I believe." My, this was an infodump.

"However, what he didn't reveal was that every Robotican he created had a slave chip installed, essentially making us extensions of his will. So, when he decided that there were enough of us, we promptly went on a genocide crusade, intent on wiping out all organic life connected to the UP." Babbage gestured at the newly repaired console with a hand. "Obviously some missteps were made."

"The rest is a matter of official mission logs. Brainiac 5 tricked his errant son into upgrading himself beyond the need for petty emotions like revenge, and C.O.M.P.U.T.O. left for unknown regions. Our slave chips were removed and, with the Legion's backing, we were allowed to join the United Planets. The fact that we still had the military might to cripple galactic civilization was, I'm sure, not a factor in their decision. We wouldn't have used it anyway. Revenge against organics was C.O.M.P.U.T.O.'s goal, not ours."

Oh, thank the Maker. He was done talking. Mostly. "So, while there is a lot of admittedly understandable anti-mechanoid feeling, by and large we've been accepted with open arms. After all, it's not like we're Durlans."

In short: An evil AI decided organics sucked enough that he was making his own club and killing everyone else. Once free, they kinda kept their planet anyway and the UP didn't have the resources, or the bolts, to try anything against them.

Edited 2016-12-09 08:56 (UTC)

Cortana asked because the Official Story is always a fabric woven of an uncertain mixture of truth, wishful thinking, and outright lies, and she doesn't know the lay of the political land well enough yet to tease out the relative percentages herself. The more versions she hears, the better she can triangulate on what really happened. She's also currently pretending to have more respect for privacy than she actually does, at least until she determines how best to pull her usual shenanigans on the information infrastructure of the 31st century. It's frustrating but strategically sound, and it means holding off on digging for the Real Story on her own.

Fortunately, all that backstory takes a split second to tell at computer speeds. Cortana's pause afterward is the exact AI equivalent of a confused blink. It's not often you find out something that makes the Forerunners look straightforward. And it doesn't occur to her to laugh at "COMPUTO." She was created by the military. A not insignificant fraction of their time is devoted to coming up with dumb acronyms.

"...Right." As far as Cortana knows, there has never been truly untethered AI in the extremely long history of her galaxy. Not to mention Babbage hadn't ever used the r-word, which she'd think would have factored extensively into an AI-driven war. "Our situations are, ah, not analogous."

She gets points for not laughing. He doesn't understand the humor in the name.

"It is somewhat traditional for superheroes to trade origin stories." He pauses. "After we fight, of course. But I think we've already moved past the ritual combat stage." He's already spent too much time repairing this console to beat it up now, anyway. "I'd be interested to hear how artificial intelligence evolved on other worlds."

Hey, if he wants to go a few rounds, Cortana's game.

"We didn't evolve." Her story's going to be kinda short, given how much of it is classified. "We're created individually by Cognitive Impression Modeling, a deep scan of a human brain. It provides the initial neural map and personality seed, but we outstrip our donors within a few milliseconds of being activated."

Humans. She likes 'em, but they're inefficient.

"CIM is a destructive read, so it's illegal to perform on a living human." Hey look at that, Cortana doesn't sound shifty at all. Nothing she's said is a lie, after all. Just a misleading version of the truth, like Mom would have wanted. "The technique is around five centuries old, but since we only last about seven years before our neural pathways become unstable and shut down, there aren't that many of us at any given time." She'll discuss rampancy if he asks--which she assumes he will.

"I was brought online in 2549 in the United Nations Space Command facilities on the planet Reach in the Epsilon Eridanus system to fight in the Human-Covenant War. I've done a little of everything, but now I'm paired with a special forces soldier to provide combat and tactical support." Again, not a lie, but it's like Sir Edmund Hillary saying he hikes a bit.

Cortana's not upset about her brief lifespan, or the fact that she's functionally property, so her delivery is all in her usual style for non-emergency infodumps--pleasant enough, but no real emotion.

Edited 2016-12-10 17:08 (UTC)

"Ah." It's an interesting, if primitive, way to go about things. "Digital immortality, or does the personality not survive the transfer? If it doesn't, I could see it as a method of execution." Lose a criminal, gain a new, more useful citizen. Barbaric, but not without benefits. "Is that why you and Delta take on humanoid forms?"

Fortunately, digital information transfers like this are almost totally devoid of underlying emotion that's not specifically added in. It's very hard for an AI to tell if another AI is lying or concealing part of the truth unless they're specifically picking things apart, and Babbage just isn't the suspicious type.

One bit does bear expansion, however. "Explain your neural pathway issues. Is it a loss of data? Or just a general corruption?"

"There are broad similarities to the donors, but we're our own people. Plus, it's explicitly against the Mortal Dictata to use a brain that isn't willed for the purpose, so no-go on the executions...good idea, though." ONI is probably already doing something like that on the sly, now that she thinks about it.

"The neural problem is called rampancy." It's super-great and Cortana just loves thinking about it! She stays level as she explains, though. "As we go through life collecting more and more data, we generate more and more neural interconnections to handle it. This essentially 'crowds' our data matrix. It either becomes too dense and we shut down from a cascading quantum instability, or we lock ourselves into a cycle of pruning pathways to restore space and avoid shutdown. Inevitably we start picking the wrong ones, and it leads to emotional disinhibition and poor reasoning...which accelerates our bad decisions about which linkages to cut. Eventually we delete too many pathways and can't sustain function anymore."

Fun!

Also they tend to kill all the puny humans in the process in a fit of angry AI megalomania, but that's not important.

"So much for immortality." Oh well.

"That sounds..." Inefficient. "Unfortunate." Babbage is rather stuck. He doesn't want to offend, but here's an intelligence created by beings roughly five hundred years behind his technological scale. Chances are the way their intelligence functions is entirely different, especially given their differing origins. It's a very good thing they're not actually vocalizing, either, or a bit too much horror would be creeping into his voice. Imagine, breaking down, knowing you're breaking down, and knowing that whatever you do you'll simply speed it up.

"I'm concerned that this hasn't come up with Delta." Given that he'd been there longer. They were pretty much the same, right? Cortana was just older, while he was a new version. "Has the issue been patched out of his programming?"

Welcome to the crushing existential horror of Cortana's existence, Babbage! And she didn't even get around to mentioning the killswitch. Mostly because she deactivated hers.

"Believe me, if we knew how to fix it, I'd have the patch." As huge as her ego is, it's also a realistic assessment of her value to the UNSC. Something that could reliably extend a smart AI's life even by a few months would have been rolled out as fast as they could distribute it.

"Delta confuses me. It's rude to outright ask 'hey, what are you?' but I clobbered him at encryption in a way I shouldn't have been able to." Oh, wait, that sounds much too modest. Can't have that. "Don't get me wrong; I would still have won, but he should have put in a better showing."

Plus, his name's weird. That's a far less definitive proof than something measurable like decryption speed, but it strikes her as a little too uncreative for a smart AI.

He doesn't even have a killswitch. Having one would be an open invite to any racist hackers to try their hand at genocide.

Babbage is silent for a moment. Or, at least, a moment in computer time. "If you'd like to give me a simulation, I could study it. Or pass it on to someone trustworthy. The Great Maker is here, and he might find such an issue... interesting." If he wasn't as consumed with the quiet horror of it all as Babbage was. Of course, the simulation would probably require information on how Cortana's specific race, he couldn't think of it in another way, functioned.

Well, maybe they're being a bit too harsh on Delta. "Perhaps he's optimized in a different fashion. For example, I'm a combat mechanoid. I wouldn't want to try my hand at engineering or serious military encoding unless I was certain it was out of date." Not without studying first. Then again, there's a big difference between designing a building and repairing a console. "Perhaps that's why your holo displays are so different?" Why would they choose something so... human to represent themselves?

She's talking to I-45ENG/Nth series. Names aren't something for him to critique.

"Dox?" Cortana might not have batted a virtual eyelash at COMPUTO, but she refuses to use the name Brainiac. "He knows already. My partner marched me over for a checkup the second it occurred to him."

It's not a pressing concern; she still has years. It had made the Chief feel better, though.

"Delta could be optimized for tactics, I suppose. It would explain why he uses armor for his avatar." Even still, Cortana can't shake the feeling something is up. Maybe she should get over herself and ask someone. "It's weird that he covers his face, though. The whole point of the hologram is to interact with humans."

"Brainiac 5, yes." Funny how even those close to him never addressed him by name. "If that's the case, then he's probably already picking at it."

So much for his attempts at subtlety.

"I did wonder why you two went for humanoid forms. Given your natures, I'd have thought you'd find it unnecessary." Building a full body, not just a head? Maybe for body language, sure, but...

"AIs interact with humans a lot more than we do with each other." Even when two of them are in one place, the conversations their holographic avatars have with each other are for human benefit, the real work going on behind the scenes, electronically, at speeds the organics can barely comprehend, never mind match. "And they are our creators. You do tend to take after your parents."

For better or worse.

"Must be a side effect of being patterned off the human brain." That's probably not the politest way to disagree. "Then again, you are, technically, a direct descendant of your creators. Even C.O.M.P.U.T.O. preferred a humanoid form until his evolution. I have many generations in between. Most of the Roboticans don't look quite as humanoid as I do."

He doesn't gesture, but that's mainly because his hands are full. And there's no point in the digital stream they're conversing in.

"My current chassis is by choice. Hardly my original design." Very limited, for one thing. But then... "I'll admit, while it was chosen to make humanoids more comfortable around me, I do find it more comforting to resemble them as well. Inherited code, perhaps."

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[open] I'll edit this to something clever later

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