2022-08-11: Pathfinding Error
- Cutscene: Pathfinding Error
- Cast: Azoth, Erica Axton
- Where: Etrenank
- Date: August 11, 2022
- Summary: Control over the machine can only be achieved once you truly understand and accept what drives it.
"What a mess."
Erica Axton sighed at the android in front of her, rubbing her temple and letting her glasses fall lopsided off of her nose.
"You've certainly become hell and a half to operate reliably. And here I thought we had gotten off to such a good start. Unexpected reaction to new data..."
She chewed on her pen, alone in the lab in at guess-we-sleep-at-dawn o'clock. Things had been more difficult without being able to question Ovelia Metalspeaker directly on these matters. But the newest notes Erica had received -- willingly and unprompted -- were more comprehensive than anything Ovelia had been willing to give before. Erica, stubbornly, was going to use them as a last resort.
"What is this database?"
The silent automaton, once empty, still, and inert, looked up at her with light in its eyes.
Erica shrieked, leaping out of her chair with such force that it clattered to the ground and rolled aside. The Azoth looked back down again. She heaved out a sigh and leaned back against the wall, letting feeling crawl back into her shaking legs.
"Query," the Azoth asked, "Which database?"
Erica hesitated. She learned it was best not to react once it started trying to respond to her. Say nothing. Do nothing. Give the machine no additional material to work with. After several painful minutes, its lights dimmed to nothing as it went silent. She should mute it.
But if it were alive... If it were alive...
The only person who could make this machine work seemed to believe, with her whole fuzzy little heart, that the Azoth was alive.
Erica lifted her chair upright and slid into it, looking back over lines of programming occasionally punctured by that rabbit's handiwork. Pawsiwork? Glitches needed to be minimized, but why was Erica trusting Ovelia's notes if it would only lead to more problems going forward...? The Azoth wasn't done collecting data, and the overrides were not the only source of errors.
Her pen found its way back into her mouth, unnoticed until she bit down hard enough to break the clip.
"Hey," Erica said in the newly broken silence. "Funny question for you, Azoth..."
She didn't take her eyes off the screen, lines of nigh unfathomable code reflected in her glasses.
"How would you define... loyalty?"
It did not have to answer her out loud, though it did produce a series of beeps that Erica did not want to acknowledge as 'confused'. The overrides ensured it made calculations toward her given prompt, the data put on rapidly scrolling display beside the database she could not parse.
"Obedience?"
...
"Commitment?"
...
"Devotion?"
...
Erica tapped her desk with her nails. One, two, three, four... One, two, three, four.
"Love?"
...
...
...
If it were alive, if this thing were alive, then that would mean...
With a mechanical hiss, the Azoth's shackles released.
"It'll take a few more hours of work before we can get started on your maintenance in earnest. Could you get me a cup of coffee? ...Please."
It looked at her as emotionless as before, but there was a new intensity to the light of its eyes as it rose to its feet. A full minute might have passed before it spoke.
"Request received."
She stayed quiet until it left the room, then knocked over her old mug and a few pens scrambling to snatch up a regular, physical notebook to furiously pen her findings into. Something it could not, in any way, scan or hack or whatever else it might learn to do. The overrides were a glitched mess. An imperfect control method. A system that let them give the Azoth commands, but prone to error and robbing it of most of its functions outside of combat.
Because that infernal rabbit programmed the overrides as a diversion.