#AI System Deployment

[public-cloud-computing]

Step into the realm where human intuition converges with AI excellence in web development. Enhance your online footprint with a flawless synthesis of creativity and technology.

[kasparlavik]

Dive into the world where human intuition seamlessly integrates with AI brilliance in web development. Elevate your online presence with the perfect fusion of creativity and technology.

[dieterziegler159]

Dive into the world where human intuition seamlessly integrates with AI brilliance in web development. Elevate your online presence with the perfect fusion of creativity and technology.

[enterprise-cloud-services]

Step into the realm where human intuition converges with AI excellence in web development. Enhance your online footprint with a flawless synthesis of creativity and technology.

[rubylogan15]

Discover the balance between human intuition and AI brilliance in web development. Enrich your online impact with a perfect fusion of creative vision and technological expertise.

[jcmarchi]

Consider These AI Strategies to Reduce Retail Employee Burnout

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/consider-these-ai-strategies-to-reduce-retail-employee-burnout/

Consider These AI Strategies to Reduce Retail Employee Burnout

Employee burnout in retail contact centers isn’t just a personnel issue—it’s a notable business challenge threatening to eat away at productivity, morale, and profits. Retailers are increasingly turning to AI, specifically conversational AI, to help reverse this damaging trend. Organizations implementing AI signifies a profound shift in how retailers can cultivate sustainable, empowered workforces capable of meeting ever-increasing customer demands. Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are one AI tool offering a lifeline by automating routine interactions, reducing cognitive overload, and enabling human agents to focus on high-value strategic initiatives.

The Hidden Costs of Retail Burnout

Burnout in retail contact centers stems primarily from repetition, understaffing, escalating customer demands, and intense pressure to deliver exceptional service quickly and consistently. Recent studies indicate that approximately 55% of contact center employees regularly experience burnout.

Staff in these centers continually handle high volumes of repetitive tasks, such as tracking orders, processing returns and resolving complex payment disputes. These often monotonous tasks gradually erode employee satisfaction, fueling stress and leading directly to turnover. High attrition rates create additional challenges as retail leaders continually invest substantial resources into recruitment (which typically costs $1,000-$4,000 per agent), training ($4,000–$7,000) and productivity loss during ramp-up ($5,000–$10,000). Replacing a single contact center agent costs average between $10,000 and $21,000. The cumulative impact is operational inefficiency, diminished employee morale, and compromised customer experiences. 

5 Ways IVAs Help Retail Contact Centers Tackle Burnout

Conversational AI, especially IVAs, represents a practical, forward-thinking strategy to address burnout. These AI-driven solutions can efficiently automate repetitive customer interactions, dramatically reducing employee workload and stress. 

Automatic handling of routine inquiries frees agents from the mental drain of repetitive tasks. Contact center employees report significantly less cognitive fatigue when AI systems manage basic questions like “Where’s my order?” Not only that, IVAs handle 80% of routine inquiries without escalation.

Call volume management prevents agent overwhelm and stress. Retail contact centers using IVAs see average hold times decline from 10 minutes to under 2 minutes.

Workload redistribution and prioritization ensure agents can focus on one complex case at a time. This targeted approach prevents mental exhaustion from constantly switching between multiple basic customer issues.

Round-the-clock customer service coverage reduces the need for understaffed shifts and overtime. IVAs help alleviate the burnout-inducing pressure that some agents experience during peak-hour rushes.

Real-time support and guidance help agents confidently navigate challenging customer interactions. IVAs help agents resolve issues more efficiently and maintain a positive customer experience by giving customers quick access to relevant information and suggested responses.

Real-World Examples Across Retail Sectors

Grocery and Supermarket Chains: Instead of answering calls about order status or pickup times, agents can focus on problem-solving and escalations. IVAs streamline logistics, preventing bottlenecks and reducing customer frustration, making contact center operations more efficient.

Electronics and Consumer Tech: AI tools in electronics retail facilitate complex product inquiries, comparisons, and technical support questions. IVAs guide customers to appropriate product solutions based on technical specifications and individual needs, enhancing customer satisfaction through rapid and accurate responses. 

Fashion and Apparel: IVAs support fashion retailers by handling customer inquiries around sizing, fabric care, returns, and exchanges. AI technologies can analyze customer profiles and recommend clothing based on purchase history and real-time inventory, allowing human employees to offer personalized fashion consultations and enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

Home Improvement and DIY Retailers: IVAs in the home improvement sector assist customers in locating products, accessing or understanding assembly instructions, and resolving other project-based queries. Automating these everyday interactions empowers store associates to focus their expertise on personalized, high-touch consultations, significantly improving both employee satisfaction and customer service quality. 

Balancing AI and Human Expertise

Successfully integrating AI into retail operations requires a careful balance between automation and human interaction. The first step is defining clear roles for AI and employees. For example, AI-driven tools should handle routine tasks like processing returns or answering FAQs, while human agents focus on relationship-building and problem-solving. Effective communication is crucial; leaders must articulate how AI supports, rather than replaces, human workers. Transparency around AI’s role in enhancing efficiency and customer experience helps ease concerns and fosters buy-in.

Retailers should actively involve employees throughout the deployment, gathering feedback and addressing concerns early to ensure a smooth transition. By leading transparent and open discussions about how AI will impact day-to-day operations, leadership can help their agents understand that its role is to streamline repetitive tasks, not to replace human expertise. Offering hands-on training tailored to different roles helps employees gain practical experience with IVAs, making them more comfortable and confident in leveraging these tools.

Training should include real-world scenarios where AI can assist—such as handling high volumes of customer inquiries or providing data-driven insights—so employees see firsthand how AI complements their work rather than competes with it. Creating a feedback loop where employees can share observations, challenges, and suggestions fosters a sense of ownership and encourages continuous improvement. When employees feel included in the AI adoption process, they are more likely to embrace it as a valuable asset rather than resist it as a disruptive force.

The AI-Driven Retail Renaissance

Integrating AI technologies represents more than just a tactical solution to burnout; it signifies a broader cultural shift toward employee-centric operational excellence. Prioritizing employee well-being through AI-driven automation benefits everyone—employees enjoy higher job satisfaction, customers receive better service, and businesses achieve greater operational efficiencies and profitability.

As the retail industry continues to navigate competitive pressures, adopting intelligent AI strategies becomes increasingly central to its success. Leveraging conversational AI and IVAs enables retailers to effectively mitigate burnout, enhance employee experiences, and deliver consistently outstanding customer service.

[ai-azura]

A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence and Current Debates

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as recognizing patterns, making decisions, and learning from experience. The concept of AI can be traced back to the ancient philosophers and there have been various efforts to create AI throughout history. However, the field of AI has faced setbacks,…

[silence-ofthe-llamas]

I feel I’m VERY late to the party with the mecha AU considering how bone deep Pacific Rim runs within me but I’m chomping at the bit. Gnawing at it. I LOVE YOU ALL. I’ve reactivated my tumblr for this. Good god. @keferon my leige. I'm meant to be SLEEPING.

Anyway, I’m a general nuisance, I wont be following much of the pre-established lore too closely because of who I am as a person, bone app the teeth.

TexAid for the soul is more potent than Chicken soup.

First Aid wakes up in an ice cold sweat.

It’s not the first time. He’d lost count, actually – it seemed that every morning was the same now. He’d wake up, he’d shudder, he’d carefully extract himself from his damp-with-sweat duvet, he’d shower, and then he’d pretend that everything was perfectly fine and normal.

His function first and foremost was one of a medic. He trained to work with live patients. His expertise was with the living, not the cold stares of the dead.

But lately, all he’d been dealing with were corpses, and it all came down to one reason.

Vortex.

Superstition wasn’t something that he bought into, but the theory on base was that the mech was haunted. At the start, he didn’t believe it – mechanics were plagued with stray code, oddly executed scripts. There was nothing supernatural about it. All of the pilots said that they felt another presence within their mechs with them – there wasn’t anything special about Vortex’s AI. If one wanted to look at it that way, all of their mechs were haunted.

But Vortex was different. Of course he fucking was, why wouldn’t he be. No, no, nothing was allowed to be normal. Ever. Firstly, there was the staring. The mechs weren’t meant to stare, but whenever he went close to Vortex, he could feel his piercing gaze against him. It wasn’t normal. They should have been offline without any human input, but Vortex stayed stubbornly awake and studied his every move. Sometimes he’d swear he could hear his internals humming, the rumble of moving parts, his plating trembling and straining against the dock as he tried to move. If someone got too close to him, he’d hear the hum of weapons systems warming up. It was part of their onboarding process that they were warned against approaching him, now. He’d cut them down without a second thought.

There was also the small fact that he had a tendency to kill his pilots. And it wasn’t even an exaggeration – their means of slaughter always came from within. The cameras that filled the insides didn’t show any breaches, no weapons were brought on board, the vital signs monitors from the pilots and their own helm-mounted cameras showed no foul play of an external parties part. No. It was… Vortex. The mech showed his displeasure in a shower of blood and moving parts – and that was if he was being nice. If they weren’t power washing the remains of a digestive tract from his floor, they were manoeuvring a live body that acted like a dead weight, the pilot a stuttering mess, mentally shattered and broken. They’d never managed to get any of them back into active duty – a lot of them First Aid had no idea what had happened to them. They were simply shipped off somewhere, never to be heard of or seen from again. The worst part of it was that they were all missing fingers, as if they’d been cleaved right off by sharp metal as they reached out for something.

An alarm ripped through the base, and he gagged on his morning coffee. He knew what that meant – deployment. And with deployment came another victim, courtesy of Vortex, and all that horrid stench and morbid fascination that sent his spine tingling and brain firing to the point of insanity that paired so closely with it.

Ambulon frowned at him. “Jittery this morning, Aid.”

“I just know I’ll be on Vortex duty again.” He groaned.

Ambulon patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you, Aid. Pharma only does it because he trusts you.”

Yeah, right. It’s so I haven’t got an excuse to be by the morgue.

You steal one Quintesson body…

He briefly remembered the smell of the grave dirt as he’d re-interred them into the ground instead of the stone cold morgue, and quickly smelled his coffee instead.

The deployment seemed to last an age. First Aid managed to get through all of his deskwork before they returned, and Vortex staggered into his bay. First Aid was waiting patiently by the gate as the docking station clasped around him, holding him in place as cables came down from the ceiling to plug into him.

“How many bets this guys dead?” Someone behind him asked, elbowing the one stood next to him. First Aid ignored them, focusing intently on the mech.

He could see blood behind the glass. It was leaking out down the side – they were more than dead. They’d been eviscerated.

The visor lifted with a loud hiss, and First Aid took a deep breath. He held it so he didn’t have to inhale the initial stench – that part was always the worst, having been left to fester within him – and carefully studied the scene before him.

Organs hung down from the ceiling. Scraps of fabric hung limply from the still locked harness.

“What did he do to them?” First Aid quietly asked himself as he stepped forwards with a bucket.

There was a rule - you never got inside Vortex on your own. First Aid followed it religiously, and he could hear someone behind him, and so he felt perfectly comfortable in getting inside.

Only the visor snapped shut with a sickening crack as their leg was cleaved clean through, the scream barely muffled by the glass.

“No!” First Aid flew to the glass of the visor, pounding against it. “Are you okay?!”

What a stupid question that had been. Of course he wasn’t okay. The smell in the air burned at his throat and turned his stomach, and he looked down at the dismembered leg.

He couldn’t breathe. Or he was breathing too much? He didn’t know, but his chest ached and his head spun and he felt like ice had been injected straight into his veins, every hair stood on end as panic gripped him. It took every ounce of self control he had to not scream from terror when he heard pistons loudly slam into place, firmly locking the visor.

Oh, god, have mercy.

Emergency exits. These things had them, right? He’d had to pull a barely conscious pilot from one once – he’d gotten trapped in it in a malfunctioned ejection sequence. The button would be big and bright red, surely – and with a protective cover so they didn’t smack it by mistake in the middle of a fight and end up launched into the face of a Quintesson. His eyes scanned wildly, breath catching in his chest as he tried to suck in air that didn’t make him want to vomit, hands hovering over the dash. Mental images of the pilots missing their fingers played in his head like an omen.

There. Bright red. The words were worn off, the plastic scratched. The metal around it was worn and faded from use, and the plastic cover was long gone.

Blood crusted it. He smacked it anyway.

Nothing.

He looked back to where it should have been, hyperventilating. What did that mean? The techs had never found anything to be wrong with it before. Everything was functioning as normal – it was why Vortex was still even allowed to be operated. So why didn’t the emergency escape open?

Red light flooded the cockpit. His teeth chattered together as he slowly turned to look at the display that had lit up, white text running across it.

[LEAVING SO SOON?]

“I’m just a medic.” First Aid pathetically said. He almost bit his tongue.

[TAKE A SEAT]

Tears prickled his eyes as he unbuckled the harness and sat down. He tried to ignore the wet squelch as he sat in what remained of the previous human who sat there.

“What do you need from me?” He tried to sound strong as he asked.

The screen remained blank. The lights slowly dimmed, leaving him in the dark with only the sound of Vortex’s hot systems for company. He tried to calm his breathing, timing it to the rhythmic thunk of a nearby fuel pump, and wrung his fingers together.

It would be okay. It would be okay. Everything was going to be okay-

The chair suddenly flew backwards, and First Aid shrieked. His throat felt raw with how hard he’d screamed, clinging on tightly to whatever he could get his hands on. He studiously kept his limbs away from the console – he had a theory on how they’d lost their digits, and he was not keen on finding out if it was true. The chair snapped back upright again, and he whimpered, tears pooling in his eyes and his bottom lip trembling. The mech shuddered, a grinding sound rumbling through the cockpit and rattling his bones.

[PLUG IN] the screen instructed. A cable fell from the ceiling.

Helmet. He needed a helmet. They had the required port for that cable. He scanned the floor, ignoring the rising nausea as he searched for the helmet from the previous pilot.

There. Behind the chair. He picked it up, and had to look away when he realised the head was still inside. He shook it out, humming loudly to block out the sound of it hitting the floor, and kept his eyes closed as he put it on and ignored how much it stank of organic metal. He reached up for the cable, and gently guided it to the port-

Agony. Burning agony. His back arched as he screamed, hands clutching the helmet as if willing it to stay on despite how hard his legs kicked and thrashed. Electricity coursed straight through him, setting him aflame as his brain tried to catch up with his body.

It hurt. It hurt so much.

First Aid gnashed his teeth together as he fought with his conflicting emotions. He wanted to know why. Why Vortex had trapped him in there, why he had gone to this length to do this to him, why him. But he also wanted to run, to run so far away that he was nothing more than a distant memory. He didn’t want to know why Vortex had taken such an interest in him.

But oh, oh he did. He did want to know what he’d done to catch the AI’s attention.

The pain slowly subsided, the fried nerves numbing to the raw energy that charged through them, and he cracked his eyes open.

[GOOD BOY <3]

“Oh, god, I think I broke something.” First Aid whimpered. He suddenly understood just why so many pilots came to them with nerve damage, with extensive burns, and why most of their heads were metal. The connection was. Intense.

“Don’t be such a pussy.” A voice spoke directly into his head. First Aid gasped, sitting up straighter. It was strangely human, yet equally as mechanical.

“What-!”

“I just want to talk, but it’s so irritating to have to wait for you to read the screen. Removing the barriers is so much easier, isn’t it? Now, to business...”

First Aid gasped and whined as he felt pressure in his head, white not points of pain slowly pressing through his brain. His eyesight flickered and faded in and out, his sight shifting from the inside of the cockpit to the chaos right outside – chaos that he couldn’t even hear – and he was glad to see that the man who had been right behind him was receiving medical attention. What a relief. Humour that wasn’t his and that he didn’t recognise pulled at his lips, and he felt a strong urge to smile so wide that his lips split and cracked.

The pressure on his head increased, and he felt his eyes cross, reality slowly slipping through his fingers like thick slime. Red dripped from his nose. Where was he, again? Why was this happening to him? What was even happening to him- Awareness snapped back to him in time with a loud bang on the glass. He heard his name, muffled. Someone was calling to him. He should go to them, right? “Don’t move, I haven’t finished looking at you yet.” First Aid felt phantom sensations of ice cold hands pressing against his skin, a shudder running up his spine. He felt a prickle run down his arm, chasing the feeling of the tips of someone’s fingers running down the bare skin. Obediently, he held still despite how curious he was to go and look. “I can tell you like the good stuff.” An invisible hand patted his cheek and the mech shuddered, loud and clunking. “God, I’m so lucky I found you.” “Found me?” His chest felt weird. His everything felt weird. It was difficult to keep his eyes open. “I’ve been watching you. On the cameras, when you’re in the hangar with me, your files. Fascinating. How wonderful you are to me.” “That’s a bit creepy. You could have asked first.” “I don’t like being told no.” “I would have liked it more if I’d known it was happening.” Why was he so readily admitting this? Where were his carefully constructed walls and defences, keeping the abnormality at bay? He felt like he was an open book and Vortex was just turning to the pages he wanted to read. “Maybe I’d have done something if I knew I had an audience.” The mech shuddered again, harder this time.

“Come on, baby, talk to me wont you? I’ve been so lonely.”

“Maybe if you stopped killing your pilots you wouldn’t struggle so much with that.” He gritted out. Fuck, everything hurt.

“You’ve got a bit of a mouth on you, don’t you.” A sound that felt like anger rumbled through him. “I like it.”

“Can I go now?” He felt woozy. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong, his ears felt wet and his face felt wet and he could taste copper-

As if on cue, there was a loud bang on the visor – someone was pounding it with their fist. A shared stab of annoyance flashed through them.

“Question first. How did it feel to have a Quintesson in your bare hands?”

“How did you know about that?”

“Come on, don’t be shy, you know I’ve seen everything.” He crooned. “Tell me. I’m so desperate to know. I know you liked it – I can feel it.” It felt as if he had someone’s arms wrapped around him, their mouth right by his ear. If he closed his eyes and focused, he could feel their warm breath ghosting over it.

“It felt fucking amazing.” He thought back to it. The warmth of the body – an infant, tiny in comparison to the adults that dwarfed their houses. How thick their blood was, how it dripped down through his hands. The burn of the smell, mineral rich and glowing bright blue.

“You fucking tease.”

“You cut through them every day.” First Aid argued. “What’s so special about that?”

“You can really feel it. I’ve got metal between me and my prey.”

The banging was louder, and First Aid’s vision shifted to be through Vortex’s. There was a big group of them now, he had an audience.

“I should go.”

“You’ll be back, honey.”

First Aid ripped the helmet off, and nausea hit him like a truck as he felt a sharp wrench in his head. He loudly gagged, folding in half, and pressed a fist to his mouth to keep himself from spilling his guts into the cockpit. Vortex was certain to kill him if he made a mess. Sucking in a deep breath, he staggered over to the glass and gently placed his hand against it. It felt like half of his consciousness was somewhere else, somewhere he couldn’t reach.

“Please?” He was starting to feel disorientated, the sudden disengaging scrambling his brain. What memories were his, or the previous pilots? Pain suddenly flashed through him and he screamed, his limbs going numb. He felt warm liquid slowly run down his suit, red blooming amongst the white, bone wrenching from bone-

[LATER, DARLING <3]

Vortex’s visor finally opened, laugher echoing in First Aids head, and he fell out face-first onto the catwalk. He was gasping for breath as he scrambled away, shaking and trembling and swallowing back vomit. His hands flew over his body, checking for injures, for limbs he was certain were missing – intact. He was completely intact. His team had their arms around him and were pulling him away faster, leaving a trail of blood smeared after him – was that his? Or was that the pilots? - and were shouting. All of it was just noise. Pure noise.

Giddiness bubbled up in his chest, and he laughed. It started quietly, a little chuckle. Disbelief at the situation, he thought. Pure, utter relief that he was alive. The cannibal mech had eaten him, but here he was – spat out whole and unharmed. His next laugh was a little louder this time, and Ambulon paused, taking notice. First Aid didn’t see him any more, his whole vision taken up by Vortex and the loud snap of his visor clamping back down into place, a hiss as the mechanism locked it back down. He could have sworn he was smiling, but it was ridiculous – the mech didn’t even have a mouth.

He didn’t realise he was still laughing – and hard – until his stomach began to hurt and he felt light headed. Gasping for breath, he let himself fall back onto the floor, staring blindly up at the ceiling. He could see the red lights of Vortex’s visor reflected on the metal there.

“Felix?” The voice of his mentor pierced through his peals of laugher. First Aid looked up and saw Ratchet running towards him, face twisted in agony. He felt himself start to laugh again, and he had to fight to not start punching himself in the stomach to get himself to fucking stop it. It wasn’t funny. None of this was funny. Why was he laughing.

“Is he hurt? Why is he bleeding?” Ratchet demanded as he knelt down next to him. Ambulons response was inaudible, First Aids ears ringing. He felt something dribble from his mouth, and from the acidic taste in the back of his throat he assumed that he’d finally thrown up. He didn’t remember turning – his airway was clear. Two hands gently cupped his face, forcing him to look at someone.

Ratchet.

“Can you hear me?” He gently asked, tension clear in his voice. First Aid could, but he didn’t know how to respond. He slowly blinked, hands reaching up to clasp at his wrists with trembling hands. The adrenaline was burning off, replacing itself with a leaden heaviness that threatened to drown him. Slowly, he nodded.

Get me away from that mech, he tried to say. They get it and I hate that we understand each other.

Ratchet seemed to hear him. “Help me move him.” He was looking at someone else, but First Aid didn’t want to look away from his face. He committed every detail to memory, every line, every grey hair, every follicle and aged scar and flush of colour. It felt like he was seeing him for the very first time.

The world spun and his stomach clenched as he was lifted unceremoniously onto a stretcher, and he took one last glimpse of Vortex before the oxygen mask was fitted over his face and he couldn’t see anything any more.

09090909

It was highly inadvisable.

But he was doing it anyway.

That taste he’d got of Vortex was like a breath of fresh air to him – he hadn’t realised how stifling the company on base was until he’d met him. Ratchet would be so disappointed in him. Pharma would hang him by his guts. Ultra Magnus would try and make it so he never saw the light of day again.

One moment of feeling his teeth at his throat and he was addicted. He wanted him. He wanted physical scars he could touch and remind himself that it hadn’t been a dream, it was real. Carefully sneaking through the base, First Aid crouched and peered around corners, internally humming the Mission Impossible theme. It felt ridiculous, but if he didn’t distract himself he’d make himself vomit from laughing too much again. He had found a random face mask and slapped it on, hoping that obscuring his identity a little would help him get into character.

They hadn’t found a new pilot for Vortex yet – they still went through the usual procedure of finding one with the right personality and skill set, of testing how well the AI meshed with the mind of the pilot outside of the mech before allowing them to go inside. They had a few candidates, but now it was a question of ‘are they more compatible with other bots?’ and ‘how expendable are they really?’ before they stuck them inside of him.

Like lambs for slaughter. They knew they were going to die – but what else could they do? Vortex was their strongest mech. If he went down, their whole operation would crumble with him. Mechs were expensive and difficult to make, the AI’s complicated and prone to disaster.

Pharma didn’t take his eyes off of him for two whole weeks. He’d fallen out of the mech looking like the pilots whose brains had melted under the pressure, his arm marked with a burn that followed the path of a nerve, mapping it onto his skin. Pharma had stared at it, long and hard, brain ticking over. He wasn’t to go near Vortex again. Not for a while, until they figured out why he’d decided to kidnap him, and why he’d decided to spit him back out. They knew why he’d mangled the other medic. He thought it was fun. He’d said so himself, writing messages in the morning memo. They still hadn’t figured out how he was doing it, but if you were early enough in the day you’d see it before they’d caught it. But First Aid didn’t do too well in following instructions, in listening to orders. The Infant he’d plucked from the formaldehyde to get a better look at was evidence enough of that. The fact he was scrambling to get back inside of Vortex right now was yet another reason why First Aid was to be kept under lock and key - god, if they knew anything about him they’d never let him see the light of day again.

The catwalk that lead out to the mechs was a stones throw away. A guard stood watch, hands firmly on their gun.

God damn it.

First Aid rocked on his feet, wondering how he’d get him to move, when he suddenly felt a prickle on the back of his neck as if he were being watched. He shuddered and whipped his head around.

Nobody. Alone. No eerie glow of a camera – not that there were any over on this side of the hall – and no shadowy figures. He held his breath and strained his ears – all he heard was the cough from the guard and their sigh of boredom. He slowly looked back to the guard, and a faint red glow caught his eye.

Vortex’s visor was on. He was watching.

The sound of something falling to the floor caught the guards attention. He quickly turned and ran out onto the catwalk, looking down at the floor. He quickly looked back up at Vortex and scowled.

“I’m not stupid, Vortex. I’m not going down and getting that.”

Vortex did not respond. The guard tutted and turned on his heel.

Something else fell to the floor, a little louder this time.

The guard threw his head back with a sigh.

“You are the worst.”

He marched off, out of sight, and First Aid saw his window of opportunity. He quickly slipped out, thankful for his socks muffling the sound of his steps, and hid behind the terminal the guard was stationed at before he turned back around and walked over to the terminal.

“Yeah, yeah.” He was speaking to someone on the phone, drumming his fingers on the terminal. “It’s Vortex again. I know, I won’t get close – yeah. He’s dropped two this time.” He paused for a moment, listening to what the person on the other end had to say, before making a sound of disgust. “Go and check? I am not getting close to him!”

First Aid could hear a raised voice on the other side, and strained to see if he recognised it. Before he could pin a face to the voice, the guard sighed loudly. “Fine. I’ll go look. You’ve got my will there, right? Take yourself off of it.”

The guard didn’t look back at the terminal as he walked to the stairs and descended down them. First Aid glanced between the stairs and the catwalk, and quickly crawled over. Peering over the side to see where the guard was, he gained an uncharacteristic burst of bravery before he sprinted towards where Vortex was, visor open and waiting for him.

“Can I?” He asked in a hushed whisper. Vortex didn’t respond. He gingerly approached, noticing that every single camera inside his cockpit was trained onto him. He swallowed nervously, and clambered in.

He should have been used to climbing inside of Vortex. He’d done it enough times. Maybe it was because he wasn’t wearing any of his protective gear? Not his uniform, or his helmet, or even his gloves. Just himself and his pyjama shorts, his t-shirt, and his socks with little bears on them.

Mmm. First impressions. Wonderful.

He should have gotten changed first.

[TAKE A SEAT] lit up the screen.

He slipped into the seat obediently, taking care to not touch the controls. He coyly waved at the camera.

“Did I wake you?”

[YOU DIDN’T. I LIKE YOUR SOCKS]

The bears stared back at him. First Aid tried not to think about the rumbling he now recognised as laughter that rolled through the cockpit.

“Thanks.” He replied, red tingeing his cheeks.

[THAT’S A GOOD LOOK ON YOU]

He pressed his legs more tightly together. “The socks?”

[NO, YOU’RE GOING VERY RED]

[MAYBE I SHOULD CALL YOU LITTLE RED INSTEAD]

The helmet dropped from the ceiling, firmly attached to the cable that would connect organic to mechanical.

[I WANT YOU]

[<3]

First aid scrambled with the harness, clipping himself in place, before putting on the helmet. It burned just as badly as the first time, and he saw as the nerves in his arms glowed with the energy of it – without the proper implants, there was nowhere for the current to go but him.

He whined, squirming in the seat. He ground his teeth together and squeezed his eyes shut, counting down from ten and losing his place three times before the connection settled. Vortex was a heavy and oppressive presence in his mind, and he chewed his cheek as he cracked an eye open.

[LET ME TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT YOU]

The warning wasn’t even a verbal one. He read helplessly as he felt cold hands clasp him once more. Digital fingers made of 1’s and 0’s probed his brain, and First Aid arched in the seat, teeth clenching down over a loud moan of pain. Neurons fired agonisingly and his hands scrambled at the harness, the tips of his fingers raw and torn and bleeding against the rough fabric. Memories were brought to the surface unbidden, dragged out by artificial means, and others flooded in to take their place. He inhaled sharply, eyes going wide as the realisation hit him. Vortex was trying to show him something. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t even an AI.

He’d been entombed in it. In the mech. Vortex had been a real, breathing human being, mocked in a sham trial in the name of obtaining more pilots. Rich men had paid him to do terrible things, and he had taken the entirety of the blame. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of funds, countless hours, blood, sweat, and tears – all for one mech. A prototype, at that.

First Aid blinked as a bright red screen flashed up, text displayed across it. He squinted and rubbed his eyes, grimacing at the drag of sore and exposed flesh against the rough material of his face mask, and blinked.

[LOCKED IN]

“W… what do you mean locked in?” First Aid hesitantly asked. Like… literally, he was locked in? He knew that. He was connected to Vortex’s nervous system – he could feel that there were bolts in place keeping the cockpit well and truly locked down like a fortress, impenetrable except to the override codes the high command kept locked in a vault in their office or the request of the pilot. He felt amusement push at the edge of his awareness, a shudder of a laugh running through the mech, and he clarified.

“I know your dirt, and now you know mine. Do you think high command are going to let you go peacefully?”

Ah. A threat. Of course. Worried he’d run? He wasn’t going to. He was fascinated by this mech – the joy of being caught in his mechanisms was sure to sing in his ears, the pure delight of watching him carefully pick apart his prey like a hawk dismantled a rabbit was like a chorus of cherubs to him. And Vortex knew it, he knew it and he loved it- he was certain of it, the way his mind melded with his, pushing against him and caressing him, a warm blanket around his psyche.

“I’m not going to leave you.” First Aid took a deep breath, the unsettling stench of bleach and cooked meat and rotting oranges filling his lungs. “No, I’m fascinated by you.”

He tensed, eyes briefly widening as he felt a grin that wasn’t his tugging at the corners of his lips, threatening to split his face in two.

“Happy about that?”

“Extremely.” He purred. “I’ve seen what your hands have done, what they’re capable of. I think we’d make a great team.”

“What if I refuse?”

Images flashed in front of his eyes. Bone fragments scattered around the cockpit, blood and guts and gore hanging obscenely from the ceiling. Blood ran thickly on the walls, the smell foul and rotten. First Aid wretched.

“You’ll kill me?” He hated the excitement that bled into his voice, how eager he was to feel the mechanism close down around him, to feel his metal deep inside of him, for his last thought to be about his touch. “It’s a shame you can only do that once, you know. It’s so exciting, all the different ways you could do it to me. You could make me completely unrecognisable, identified by DNA alone. Or maybe flood the cockpit with gas, slowly suffocating me before I realised what was happening.” He bit his bottom lip. “I wish I knew what it all felt like.”

A new image, one of gears and cogs deep inside of him. All sharp angles and straight edges. The presence was probing inside of him, trying to figure out his reactions. He pressed his hand to his mouth and gasped as his teeth pierced his bottom lip without him realising it. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and another. Vortex probed again impatiently. Respond, damn it.

He looked up at the camera, glad that his mask hid his face, the excitement glowing on his cheeks. “I’ll show you.” His voice was breathless. “And if your use for me runs out, give me a little warning before I’m a permanent feature, please?”

“I wont let you run away from me.”

First Aid swallowed hard at the burn of yearning in his chest. “You’d catch me if I tried.”

“Damn fucking right I would.”

He watched the energy sing in his nerves, the pain spreading down his limbs. His digits were starting to go numb. How much longer could he hold out? He never wanted to leave. He felt flayed open and alive. Squirming, screaming, and alive. Red dripped down and stained his pyjama shirt. Damn it. He liked this pair.

“How do you control yourself? You want what I want, you wish you could do it. So why don’t you?”

“I’m a pacifist.”

“Are you? Or is that just what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?”

First Aid whimpered as the pages in his mind flicked, a burning sensation flaring in his arms. He watched the skin there turn red, the connection starting to be too much. His nose felt wet as he thought of it, as the memories Vortex was looking at came to the forefront of his mind. He liked surgery. He liked anatomy. He liked the cadavers and how they felt under his hands, picking them apart and pulling on tendons and ligaments to move them like puppets. Even earlier, his first pet. A hamster. He had told his parents that he’d buried it in the garden all by himself, and they had praised him for being such a grown up young boy, when really he had picked it apart like he had practised on his teddy bears and then blamed on the dog before shoving it into a hole in the ground to hide the evidence before anyone had seen what he was doing.

Vortex chuckled.

“Oh, let me show you how exciting a Quintesson can be. Little Hamphrey hasn’t got anything on them.”

[specialagentartemis]

Murderbot September Day 4: Holism/University of Mihira and New Tideland

The AI project that gave rise to ART, Holism, and half a dozen other super-intelligent AI ships were made under a fairly secretive government contract from the Mihiran and New Tideland governments. They wanted to encourage the University scientists to push the envelope of AI, to determine what AI could do - partially exploring the boundaries of ethical automated alternatives to human labor or construct use, partially to have some cutting-edge self-defense monitoring in case the corporate polities they share a system with tries to push them around.

(The government still hasn't really come around on "bots are people." That's something the AI lab scientists and ship crews all end up realizing themselves. The ships meanwhile are the property of the university. It's... complicated.)

Only a few AIs were approved for moving onto the final stage, deployment on ships and stations. (They had to be deployed somewhere like a ship or a station to push their full potential - ART and Holism have massive processors that need to be housed somewhere.) Upon being moved to a ship, the AI is allowed to name it. The name gets sent to the University administration for approval, of course. (They don't tell admin that the ship itself chose it. Let's not get into that.) There's no particular name theme for the ships, it's a reflection of whatever the AI loaded into them likes. Perihelion and Holism had a project designation number, a hard feed address, and various nicknames over the years, but when they were installed on the new ships, that's when they chose their ships' - and their - current names.

(Holism thinks Perihelion is a tunnel-visioned nerd for its choice; Perihelion thinks Holism is insufferably self-important for its.)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Paul Blumenthal at HuffPost:

Before Vice President JD Vance was elected to the Senate from Ohio in 2022, he expressed a radical sentiment now coming to fruition under President Donald Trump. “We need a de-Ba’athification program in the U.S.,” Vance said as he called for the firing of every midlevel federal government employee and their replacement with Trump allies. In likening the U.S. government to the purges of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party in post-war Iraq, Vance provides a metaphor to explain what the Trump administration is doing now. The MAGA coalition, led by Trump, Vance and billionaire Elon Musk are an occupying force — a provisional authority — operating in wartime conditions to dismantle the U.S. government. As in post-war Iraq, the previously existing legal order is no more. For Americans, that means the Constitution has been effectively suspended. The ongoing destruction of the U.S. government by Trump and Musk is already a full-blown constitutional crisis. The executive branch has seized power it does not have from Congress and the American people to eliminate agencies created by Congress, suspend payments authorized by law, break contracts entered into under law, rewrite the Constitution and, potentially, ignore the judiciary when push comes to shove. All of these actions, tied together, represent not just an unprecedented seizure of executive power by the president, but an intentional subversion of the constitutional order. Or, as Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought wrote in 2022, “We are living in a post-Constitutional time.”

The actions Trump and Musk are taking not only threaten the country’s constitutional structure, but also the material livelihood of all Americans. In targeting government services people need to live their lives, they risk forcing people to stop working to perform childcare, throw at-risk people into homelessness, deny disabled people the right to a free life and cut off the elderly and sick from necessary health care. In seeking to end birthright citizenship, Trump threatens the very right of people born here to obtain the benefits granted to them by the Constitution. Potentially more catastrophic, Musk’s seizure of the Department of Treasury’s payment system and the possible tinkering his college-age minions are doing to it could crash a decadesold system that doles out the annual $6 trillion budget to Social Security recipients, government employees, grantees, loan recipients and more.

Musk is deploying the model he used to gut Twitter after he bought it in 2022. It’s an expression of the “move fast and break things” ethos of Silicon Valley. The tech elite believe that laws and regulations should be ignored if it gets in their way of innovation and profit-seeking. Think about Uber’s deployment of subsidized taxis to undercut incumbent competition, scooter companies dumping their product on city streets with no authorization, the mass Hoovering of data by social media companies or AI companies relying on copyrighted material to train their models. They are also happy to break products as they beta test new applications, just as Musk’s X frequently went down after he fired huge numbers of engineers following his takeover. A disruption in the operation of a social media site, however, does not have any meaningful real world consequences. But if Musk decides to “fail whale” the government, the consequences would be catastrophic for hundreds of millions of Americans, not to mention the stability of the global economy.

[...]

Congress, under the sniveling leadership of Republican Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.), has surrendered its power at Trump’s feet. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse to fund the government and enact laws creating and authorizing executive branch agencies. The president is then supposed to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Trump has inverted this constitutional design with the help of a supplicant Republican-controlled Congress. [...] The Constitution requires Congress to pass laws and make appropriations and for the president to execute those laws and appropriations. If Trump’s actions stand, the Constitution will have been turned inside out. Congress will be swept aside. So will the American people, who elected Congress as a co-equal power to the president. And if Trump and Musk have their way, the judiciary will also be eliminated. When Vance called for the “De-Ba’athification” of the U.S. government, he also opined on what would happen if the courts intervened. [...] What this amounts to is one-man rule. The MAGA royalists have tossed the Constitution aside — at least provisionally — in favor of a king. Will anyone stop them?

HuffPost’s Paul Blumenthal provides cogent analysis on how the Axis of Evil triumvirate between Elon Musk, JD Vance, and Donald Trump, are operating to destroy our cherished Constitutional governance and livelihoods of many Americans.

[public-cloud-computing]

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[jpitha]

Between the Black and Grey 62

First / Previous / Next

The expeditionary force linked in far away from the white hole. Nobody was sure about how much power it was actually putting out, but given that it was effectively the opposite of a black hole, it was assumed to be impressively powerful.

"Empress, we are three AU from the white hole, and its power output is still on the verge of overwhelming our sensors. I recommend not getting much closer than this." The sensors officer said, speaking carefully. They knew Fen's reputation.

We're not close enough. We need to feel it.

"I understand your hesitance, lieutenant. Still, we will proceed until we are one AU from the object." She turned to the captain. "Take us in, Captain."

"Yes, Empress." The captain walked up to helm and spoke with them quietly for a few moments. "Empress? Helm has concerns that the stellar wind from the object will interfere with our ability to link that close."

We must get closer. You must get closer.

"Captain, are you questioning my order?" Fen's brow furrowed. It was hard to listen to the Nanites and the crew at the same time.

"Of course not, Empress. I am merely speaking out as the representative of my crew. In addition to carrying out your orders, I must see to their wellbeing. To do otherwise would be to neglect my duties as captain."

They are stalling. Make them obey.

"They are not stalling" Fen thought. "He is doing his duty. If he thinks it's dangerous, it's most likely dangerous. We can deploy the Gate from here."

No! We must feel the energy ourselves. If you will not order them, then we will.

"You will do no such thing. Give me a moment to think." Fen stared at the screen in front of her. The pinpoint of white light was painfully bright, even here on a screen. It would be blinding to get as close as the Nanites were demanding. She would probably be fine, they wouldn't allow her to be hurt. Wait, was that it?"

"Captain. Ready my yacht. I will tow the Gate into position, and go myself."

"Empress! That is entirely too dangerous!" The captain's intake of breath was sharp, and their face wide eyed. "We have no idea about the energy output of the white hole, but even this far out it's nearly overwhelming our sensors. To get any closer would be..." he caught Fen's look and changed gears rapidly. "...unwise."

"The Gate deployment can be remotely operated, yes?"

"Yes Empress, bu-"

"And once in place, I can activate it, yes?"

The captain's features fell. He knew what was coming next. "That is correct, Empress."

"So, I shall tow it into place, you will deploy it, and then I will traverse the gate home. I will be able to leave white hole safely and be the first to use it." Fen crossed her arms and looked down her nose at the captain. "Simple."

The captain didn't even try and hide his sigh. "Yes, Empress."

The gate was gigantic - after all ships of all sizes had to traverse it - but it wasn't massive. It was pretty much just a ring and a way to power it. Some gates had more or less... stuff around them but that was mostly it. The Empire tended to build their gates on the more austere side, and either install them in human systems that already had a presence, or leave them for future colonists to set up something. Fen's yacht towed it easily though.

Fen paced up and down the empty command deck. The ship was set up to run with her commands without an AI. The AI of the expeditionary force flagship was there to help remotely if needed, but it was thought to be a relatively simple flight plan. Against the wishes of just about every command level person in the expeditionary force, Fen had only brought some of her K'laxi scientists with her. It was odd. She wasn't sure why, but she was sure she needed to do this alone.

Almost alone. Why did you bring the K'laxi?

"Han'iel is a trusted advisor! His team built our new antimatter weapons. He wished to see a gate deployment, and I saw no reason to deny him."

We admit the antimatter weapons will be useful. It is odd that nobody else currently had developed them. We knew of their use in the past, but they were always unwieldy.

"That's Han'iel and his team's genius! They managed to shrink the containment down so much that they're viable. Such tremendous, clean, pure destruction." Fen recalled watching Northern's destruction. There was nothing left after the blast; she had ordered sweep teams deployed to search for any parts. She had been reduced to dust utterly. A blinking console caught Fen's eye. "Are we close enough? The yacht is complaining about the energy output this close."

Yes, we are close enough. You may deploy the gate.

Fen sat in the command chair and tapped a few buttons on her pad. The gate had detached from the tether attached to the yacht and began to unfold and orient itself. In a little more than an hour, it would be locked and ready for activation. She looked up at the ceiling. "Han'iel? Do you want to come up and watch the gate deployment?" she called out over the intercom.

Han'iel trotted in a moment later. "Empress, I am here. Did I miss anything?"

Fen shook her head and gestured towards a large screen in the front of the room. "Nothing major. I've set the cameras to observe and record. We can watch the gate being deployed here."

You are doing a thing that none else have done before, Empress. You are helping us in ways you cannot begin to comprehend. You are insuring our continued existence. With this infusion of energy, we will be able to reach through to other dimensions, other existences and exert our - your - will. You will not only rule this universe, but others.

It was odd. Fen heard and was listening to the Nanites, but she felt numb to their praise. This was never something that she wanted, but she could feel that they wanted it very badly. There was a hunger in the anticipation.

The deployment was quite pretty in its own way, but it was still just a very large piece of machinery unfolding and setting itself up. After a few minutes Fen was bored. Han'iel seemed enraptured by the process though. He watched nearly the whole process while Fen red on her Pad and did some puzzles. Finally, her pad chirped at her. "Okay, it's deployed. I'll send the activation code, and we'll traverse. Where do you want to go, Han?"

"Hmm, what about K'lax? When was the last time you visited, Empress?"

Fen's face darkened. She had visited the K'laxi homeworld only once, to deliver some of Ma-ren's possessions to her home planet and to speak briefly with her extended family. It had been a difficult visit, and Fen had orchestrated things such that she wouldn't have to go herself. It had been a while since she thought about Ma-ren. She knew that as time passed, the hurt would remain, but things would grow around it. Funnily enough, the memory caused the back of her neck to itch slightly. She scratched at it unconsciously as she thought. "It's been a while since I've been back to K'lax." She sighed. "A visit might do me good. I'll enter the coordinates."

Fen busied herself on her pad as the Gate Sat in front of them, lit in sharp shadows from the energy of the white hole. She was absorbed in her pad, lost in thought about visiting K'lax. Should she go see Ma's family again? Should she even visit the planet or stay in orbit? When she heard a noise behind her.

"I'm sorry, Empress." Everything was light and pain, and she was out.

****

Fen came back slowly. It was too bright. Her head hurt. She squinted against the light, and tried to move, but she was tied tightly to a flat surface. Panic rising in her, hot and spiky, she opened her mouth to yell.

And couldn't.

Something was across her mouth, preventing her from speaking. Her eyes darting around, she saw Han'iel putting some tools into a bag, removing gloves and putting them into the same bag. "I will admit, Empress, that's the first time I worked on a human. How do you even move around with all that stuff inside you? Your bodies are just so... full, there's barely any room to move around."

Fen started struggling against the restraints.

"Now now, don't do that, Empress. You'll rip your stitches." Han'iel's voice was calm, soothing. "You need to take it easy while the incisions heal. Believe it or not, I'm doing this for you. I know that you were raised K'laxi. What I'm doing is for all K'laxi, not just the ones with big ears and fur." His ears twitched in a grin. "I've put some of that anti-nanite gas your AI faction spent so much time and effort developing into the atmosphere on the yacht. It was never going to be enough to destroy an Empress' amount of Nanites, but it should quiet them some. I've also covered your mouth so that you can't use that troublesome Voice on me." Han'iel stopped as if he just thought of something for the first time. "Really. Why give you the ability to give orders that cannot be disobeyed but only through your voice? Just prevent you from speaking and your powerless? It seems sloppy to me."

Fen could only glare.

We will destroy him. We are too close for a setback like this.

"How?" Fen thought. "I can't Voice him, and I'm restrained."

Fen felt the Nanites reach out and suss out the area. He was not lying about the anti-nanite gas. Our powers are limited. No matter. The gate is deployed at the white hole. Even if you - we - are destroyed, we will live on. We will have more than enough power to reform you. You will be a being of nanite with us. It will be glorious.

Han'iel peered down at Fen. "Having a conversation are we? I can tell by your expression. I'm sure they're telling you something about how it doesn't matter now that the gate has been deployed or something. But Empress. Fen. Let me tell you something.

Ma-ren utemia lak'men.

And Fen Remembered.