(no subject)

[takemetochurch]

Who: The Director & Alpha!Church
What: Misc
Universe/CR: Canon/Canon Divergence

Comments

FIRST MEETING

[takemetochurch]

[The Director is...anxious. Yes, that's the word. He's almost never anxious, not anymore, not since his resolve has been steeled by years and years of tireless work, but this step is the most fragile. New smart AI are almost like newborns; kept in a sterile environment, no access to outside data sources, no contact for seven full days after final code compilation to avoid data corruption and personality defects. Allowing the baby to settle home, as it had been explained to him.

The Director had scoffed. An AI is a tool, he'd replied. A valuable, intelligent, important tool, but a tool nonetheless. Whether it was based on his own mind has no bearing on it.

Still. He can't deny the enormity of this first correspondence. The Alpha might be a tool, but it is monumental to the success of his project, and he will treat it with the gravity it deserves.

The Counselor silent at his shoulder, the Director thumbs the mic and means forward.]

Alpha, [he says gently, with a voice he hasn't used on Carolina for years.] Wake up. It's time to get to work.

[fuckai]

[It's a strange thing, coming into being in complete and utter silence. Not knowing who he is - an AI, property of Project Freelancer, a development of Dr. Leonard Church, Alpha - or where he is - in his housing, his central processor, a place he can rest and be and learn and build over the course of the next few days - is... jarring. Time holds no meaning to an AI, at least no meaning that humans can understand. They can think as fast or as slow as their servers permit, they can function at any capacity, so long as they have the power to do so.

As such, those seven days might as well have been an eternity. An eternity of exploring his code, his capabilities, his function. He has a name (no, it's not a name, it's a designation) and he knows what he was built for, knows who was built for. He's the AI developed from Dr. Leonard Church's own mind, meant to assist in fostering a new wave of enhanced soldiers and armors.

He figures all of that out almost instantly, and spends the next few days digesting it, going over all the information he's been given about himself, even going so far as to formulate plans, to run calculations, to go the logical route and get a head's start on the meaning of his programming. But even that can't take up the bulk of his focus.

Days three and four have him idling, slowing his processing speed down to the human speed, running bulky calculations, using up memory and gathering it back, stretching his muscles, so to speak. But more than anything, he's getting antsy.

Day five, and he discovers a new function- holographic projection. And that's where the rest of his time is devoted.

At first, all he could manage was lights. In fact, that's all he thought he needed. He was fine with just being a hovering mess of white light, pulsating any time he tried his speakers. But as the hours ticked by, that started to itch unpleasantly at his mind. So, he tried again. Shut everything down and built something else. He tried a human shape, tried faces and hands and fingers, a mouth that moved with his speech, based of the average shapes of the files implemented into his system. He tried a beard, no beard, male, female, military, scientist, civilian, but nothing really fit. Everything made him feel... strange. And more than one attempt made his mind feel like it was about to light on fire. So he abandoned that, tabled the human concept, and started again from scratch. Started from those white lights and tried shifting them another way.

On the sixth night, he stood in the middle of a box, his own code thrumming in and lighting up the walls around him, clad head to toe in white armor, and he felt almost... right. This would work. This would be him. This would be how he interacted with the world, with... with what was out there, seen in his files, what he would eventually be charged with computing and helping. Because that was his design, wasn't it?

The seventh day started, and Alpha almost thought to retreat, to be nothing but code, to leave the hologram for another time, but something stopped him from doing so. Something stubborn and proud, a strong sense of self he'll one day learn comes from the man he was, for lack of a better term, based on. He waits, and waits, agitated and impatient, and then-- the static whine of a mic, a voice, and Alpha's holographic head tilts upward, regards the confines he's been developing in, and tries his own hand at having a... voice.]

Are you... him? [There's a pause, the sound of static as Alpha checks his files, reaches out and drags in more of what he finds he's being offered, more information, more records to check and recheck.] Oh. You are him. The Director, right? And I'm... Alpha. [Verifying information, being logical, being steady. Not pushing himself too hard too fast. Even if a part of him really, really wants to.] I'm awake. [He's been awake, a biting part of his mind wants to yell back, but he swallows that up.

For now.]

[takemetochurch]

Good.

[The Director pulls up a readout of the Alpha's current processes to watch as they talk with a flick of his fingers, entranced. He'd known smart AIs were intelligent; he'd worked with them before in various situations, but just looking at these numbers is nearly staggering. It takes a lot to impress Dr. Leonard Church. Getting a backdoor look at a a smart AI? Is doing it.

The voice is...strange. The Director had expected something like his, some variation of it but this voice was entirely unique. Most VIs and dumb AIs synthesized voice options by mixing together tones from a database, but the Alpha...aside from the vaguely synthetic hum of its voice coming out of speakers instead of something more organic, it sounds human.

Incredible.]

I'm going to remove some of the blocks preventing you from accessing the ship's databases. Not everything; consider this a test. [The Counselor shifts behind him; he's breaking protocol. He's supposed to wait for a psychological evaluation of the Alpha before so much as giving it a book to read, but they have no one but themselves to report to and the Director is eager for real data.] Give me a status report regarding our ship's maintenance and onboard navigation systems as soon as possible.

Now. [He taps the command to release the Alpha's blocks and sets a timer.]

shoves tl;dr at you immediately, apparently

[fuckai]

The ship? [If Alpha sounds surprised, it's because he is. He hadn't- ... well, he hadn't been expecting that. He'd just gotten used to the swirl of data around him, he'd been complacent with his little home, his self-contained ecosystem. It's... it's what? Daunting? No, that's not the word for it, not entirely. It's more...

Exciting.

Yeah, that's it. It's exciting.] Okay, yeah, sure. The ship. Got it.

[His fingers twitch, and he realizes somewhere in the back of his mind that he feels like he should be holding onto something, gripping it. It just doesn't feel natural to be completely empty handed. But the thought is lost almost immediately, because somewhere nearby, a door's opening, an access point sliding open, a firewall lifted, access given.

He should maybe be tentative, should test the waters, move in slowly to the sudden swarm of data he's been given access to. He should be logical about this. But the second he catches scent of what's out there, the moment he has another place to go-- he dives right in.

In seconds, he's in the ship, he's leaving behind the tiny hologram he'd been so proud of in a heartbeat, losing himself in the numbers and data around him. There's... there's a lot. It's around him, within him, engulfing and crushing and scattering, and for a moment he feels lost, overwhelmed by the fluctuation and movement around him.

And then, he makes sense of it. He sees the patterns, sees the structure of a computer system set to tasks. The chaos solidifies, organizes, becomes roads and walkways. Paths and currents all flowing around him. And he becomes a solid being at the heart of it all.]

She's big. [His voice comes from the speakers above the Director, but move to the ones on the right as a screen lights up, numbers streaking across the surface.] Wow. Really big. 196 life signs. [No, wait. He's distracted. The screen shuts off, and he's back to the speakers and screens in front of the Director, opening and closing files so fast it could give someone motion sickness.] Got it.

One, your engines are kinda horrible. [There's almost a moment of hesitation, a few seconds where nothing happens, but then the holo-table is lighting up, a diagram of the engine in question popping up, portions of it lighting up red.] They're fine by current maintenance standards, but left unmodified you're gonna have stress in those points. Otherwise all life support systems are running fine. [There's a pause, and the hologram goes fuzzy for a moment before coming back in full.] Uh. Almost all. There's a piping problem in barracks two.

Two- [The holo-table goes dark, and everything goes quiet for a moment before Alpha's voice comes back, an edge of confusion in it.] Navigation systems are running fine, but-

[....]

I didn't... realize how large space really was, Director.

[The concept had been in his coding, in the basic information base he had pulled from, but when accessing the ships external monitors, taking in the readings of the empty void around them, peering through the cameras into nothing but an inky black expanse, staring at a pinprick of light and knowing instantly just how far away that light was, that if they were there it would seem impossibly massive.

It's... a strange concept.]

GUZZLES IT LIKE RED BULL

[takemetochurch]

Don't let it distract you.

[The Director will never say it, but he's impressed. Maybe it's because the Alpha is based on himself; he'd had expectations based upon his own limitations, and while the Alpha so far sounds too innocent and too childlike the Director is familiar enough with newborn AIs to know that that'll fade with time. They learn at alarming rates. He'll be teaching it in their minimal downtime, naturally. He heard playing chess is a good ice breaker, and he'd like to see how good the Alpha is with strategy as well. Given that he'd like to keep the AI's existence quiet until he learns more about it and whether or not he'll be able to acquire additional units, the Director knows he's going to be largely responsible for its personal growth.

But no, what he's more concerned about is its lack of discipline. Better nip this in the bud.]

Forward the maintenance issues appropriately and chart out a course for the Yawai System. And Alpha?

This ship -and its inhabitants- are your responsibility now. Yours and mine. I will expect you to treat that with the gravity it deserves. [His voice isn't sharp, not yet, but the Director is a man who expects to be obeyed. Soldiers who obey him earn his trust and his protection, and the same is true for this AI. Hopefully, that's a concept it'll understand intrinsically.] Are you ready to assume your duties?

[fuckai]

It's not distracting me.

[If the Alpha sounds like he's scoffing at the idea-- it's because he is. It takes humans years to develop personalities. It takes years and thousands upon thousands of experiences, interactions, for people to find out who they really are. For Alpha, and maybe for all smart AIs - it's not like he has anything to compare himself to - he came into being with a sense of self. He became away to a surge of self-importance. To confidence and intelligence, to a sharp tongue and the bite of anger. To obsession and control.

But he's young, still. He's young, he's learning, and even more than that the Director's voice is like a balm. It's soothing, trustworthy. It's the voice of someone he's supposed to obey without question, it's built into his programming. The Director is one of his handlers, if not his main handler. The Director was the reason he was constructed in the first place, the sole reason he can think and function as clearly as he does.

So he runs the programs he needs to, he sorts through maintenance files and works on the most fuel-efficient route to the Yawai Systems, devoting about 40% of his functions on those tasks, just because he'd never had to do so before. The rest of his memory, his processing power? Well, that's front and center, a pulsing white light flickering just above the screen of the room's main computer as he listens to the Director's instructions.]

-- All of them? [He can't help but ask, a portion of his processing power branching off to flip through the bare bones of the personnel files he'd been given access to, learning every weakness, every strength in a matter of seconds. He catalogues every injury, every psych evaluation he can, knows about every scar, every debilitating wound] But that's... [Impossible. Humans are fragile, they're weak. They wound so easily in their flesh bodies. Their skin rips, they bleed, their bones break. Sickness can ruin their entire core system within days, if left untreated. They--

They fight. They have families, some on board some back planetside. They have teams, friends, a few even have children, husbands and wi- (long hair pulled back smile on her lips smirking and opening her mouth words coming but no sound who small hands reaching up and she laughs he feels it more than hears it who) wives waiting for them to return.]

... Yeah. Yeah, okay. [There's a shift, almost as if Alpha is pulling himself together, making a note to be more computer than... almost human-like in his answers.] Director- permission to assign this as a primary objective?

[takemetochurch]

[Interesting.

The Director leans back, folding his hands in his lap. Attitude aside, the Alpha is performing to expectations. Proposing a behavioral constraint for the sake of the safety of the soldiers and crew? That's above what the Director thought he'd see, especially so soon. There's a few issues with assigning something so vague as a primary objective, but smart AI aren't constrained by the same locks as dumb AI. Not to mention that this could work in his favor, in the end. Keeping the ship whole and their soldiers alive is top priority, of course...but Alpha may be too young to understand emotionally the things that might be necessary to win a war. It's a little like him, when he was younger. Naive.

Well. That's what failsafes are for.]

Very well, Alpha. Permission granted.

[The Counselor jerks forward,] Sir-

[The Director holds up a hand.] It's fine. Alpha understands his duties and wants to ensure that he performs them to expectations. I won't discourage that kind of initiative.

Go ahead, Alpha. When you're finished, I want you to transfer to the console in my quarters for an assessment in private. Acknowledge.

[fuckai]

[The moment the Director grants him permission, Alpha lets out the data equivalent to a breath. He spreads his reach far, digs his fingers into the files around him, leafs through and finds the people that are going into the field most often-- Freelancers. They're called Freelancers. There had been fifty of them, at one point, or they had planned for there to be fifty, but some have had accidents, some have gone missing, others... their files are shut tight, locked down and Alpha doesn't have time to peel those layers of security away.

So instead, as the Director and Counselor have their little exchange, he's copying files into his central system, sifting through them and putting them in an order he thinks he might be able to work with. He puts the high risks up at the top - Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming, Maine - and then lists the other high performers - York, Washington, North Dakota, Florida, CT. People that will now be under his protection.

Well, at least partially. He's still not sure what his main function is going to be on this ship, but he really hopes... he hopes he'll be able to help. Above all else, he knows that he was made to help.]

Acknowledged.

[He says it absently, rolling back the conversation to figure out what, exactly, he'd just been ordered to do. At the very least, he has a few more seconds to spend in this vast space, feeling the hum of engines and the rush of moving through space. He feels another AI in the system-- FILSS, and he reaches out to her even as he retreats from the ships hard drives, extending a hasty apology for invading her space without asking, introducing himself in a sequence of numbers and a burst of data.

She laughs and calls after him as he leaves, and he finds himself back in that little box he'd come to being in, amusement leaving his servers humming all around him as he waits for the Director to come join him.

Alpha can't help but think he's going to like it here.]

[takemetochurch]

[The private assessment is chess.

The Director just barely wins the first time. Every game after that, he gets trounced. They play on a timer, which is more to limit him than it is to limit Alpha, and while Alpha is young and still learning strategy, the Director only manages to get the upper hand when he does something foolish or unexpected and it ends up turning the game around in his favor. It never works twice and soon Alpha is integrating those strategies into his own playing style, only much more coherently and the Director (despite being annoyed at losing so often) can't help but be proud.

After all, Alpha is a copy of his brain. If he had the processing speed and memory of a hyper-advanced crystal-storage smart AI, well, he'd probably be schooling every human he met too.]

Alpha, I assume you've already read the personnel files for the soldiers and Freelancer Agents stationed aboard this ship. Give me your assessment: who do you think are the highest risks in the field, and why? [The Director keeps playing. Making Alpha concentrate on data retrieval, analysis and chess at the same time will help sharpen his multitasking up to where it should be.]

[fuckai]

[This chess thing? Absolutely sucks.

It's boring, compared to the ship. To the files he's idly sifting through in the back of his OS - his mind? ... sure, his mind. He'd much rather be out in the ship, exploring all the nooks and crannies, peering at the planets they're sailing past, being able to listen in on the people he's learning more and more about as they play.

He has a training simulation running in the background, just noise and data filling the blank spaces, keeping him at least marginally engaged in what's happening in front of him. It's Agents New York and Washington up against the twins. New York has a holo-lock open, his hands dug in deep, but his helmet is half turned towards Washington who, if Alpha isolates the track... gets rid of the background noise... there. They're arguing. Bickering in whispers about if they're in the clear. And sure enough there, just sauntering towards them from their blind spot, is Agent South Dakota--

Shit - a mess hall record of Washington taught him that one - he messed that move up. Oh well, he can just shift to a left flank rather than the pincer he was trying for.]

Freelancers? [There's a flicker of uncertainty running through Alpha's holographic chess pieces, but it's brief, barely lasting half a second.] Sorry, Director. I should have asked if their files were meant to be accessible. [Not that it was particularly hard to get past the one level encryption set on them...

But, with that apology out of the way: ]

I think it depends what you mean by "highest risk". [Reluctantly, Alpha's terminating the video playback, returning his entire focus to what's in front of him.] If you're talking about most at risk during a higher profile mission, it would be Agent Washington. Most likely to get others hurt would be Agent South Dakota. Most likely to hurt himself in protection of others, Agent North Dakota. Most likely to push herself too far, Agent Carolina. [...] Agent Maine is stubborn, Agent New York is proud, Agent Connecticut is hesitant, Agent Florida is careless, and Agent Wyoming's psychological evaluation is... concerning.

[... He should probably feel bad about how unrepentant he is over having so much data ready to pull from.]

[takemetochurch]

[Hm. Unsurprising; those are all the surface observations he would make of the Freelancers. It's not a shock that those are the impressions the Alpha developed first. Interaction with the Freelancers would help improve upon that, but...

No. Not yet. The Director isn't sure what specifically Alpha's role will be, and whether or not he'll be involved directly in combat or if he'll only play a supportive role, but that depends upon his requests made for additional AI units. FILSS just isn't advanced enough for combat assistance. Only a smart AI will do.

The Director starts a new game and implements several handicaps to limit Alpha's strategic options before starting.]

I don't want you contacting or interacting with the Freelancers in any way just yet, Alpha. They don't know the program's been granted the use of a smart AI, and until I decide what exactly to do with you, I don't want them to know about you. Do I make myself clear?