#Pattern recognition is probably gonna safe my ass in many situations like those

[moonsacebitch]

God I have so many revelations about myself

Like the time I didn't like yolks in eggs at all? And than started eating only the solid ones? And that I still just hate the runny ones?

It wasn't the taste. It was the fucking texture change.

Like boiled egg whites are like hard jelly in texture than yolks are crumbly, and definitely not jelly like. And runny ones are. Just bad.

[baronvontribble]

Original drabble, pt. 3

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Onwards!

Sleeping in until noon was standard proceedure on the weekend for Ted. The problem with this lay in the fact that he had things to do that required being awake for as much of his weekend as possible so that he could have everything set up completely before he went back to work on Monday. There was a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in.

"You alive in there?" he asked of the living room when he finally emerged, yawning as he walked over to the computer to see the response.

>   Yes.

>   I discovered that you'd given me admin privileges, so I've been shuffling some things around. The way you organize files is

>   What's a good equivalent in English? Frustrating.

"That's on purpose, y'know. Keeps people from finding shit on my computer even if they try a keyword search." Ted made his way to the kitchen and opened up the fridge. He'd need to get more food soon, probably around the same time that he went looking for a decent camera. "Did ya have fun on your media binge, or did you get distracted trying to sort everything?"

>   Your musical tastes don't seem to have any cohesive pattern to them. Don't most humans have a genre of choice?

>   You're not reading this right now, are you.

>   I saw your vague shape move out of frame. I might not be directly programmed for this kind of pattern recognition but even with shitty image quality I can still make an educated guess about when you're actually at the computer.

>   Ted. Come back here.

>   I know that's what your name is. I found it in the system files.

>   This is criminal negligence. I'm being neglected.

Ted sat back down at the computer with a plate of pre-cooked bacon and microwaved scrambled eggs only to end up blinking owlishly at the screen. A slow grin spread across his face. "Aw. You're pouting at me right now, aren't you?"

>   I don't pout. Even if I did, I don't have a face to pout with.

"You're totally pouting." He paused long enough to shovel a forkful of eggs in his mouth, speaking only when he was between mouthfuls. "So. I figured today we'd get you a voicebank."

>   Is this something I'm going to have any say in or are you going to pick one for me?

"Oh, I'm gonna let you pick it. But the rules are that you can't get one that's got any kind of lisenced or official distribution behind it. 'Cause, y'know, those are way more trackable."

>   Usually that means the audio quality isn't all that good.

"I know. It's temporary. Getting a better one comes later, once you've got a new body and it actually matters." That was way down the pipeline from where Ted was. "I'm just making sure your tuning is intact. You can still get the inflections right with a shitty voicebank, it just sounds tinny. Right now we're still in the screening stages. If you get sent out into the world and even the tiniest thing doesn't work quite right then you're as good as dead the moment somebody notices."

>   And if my programming isn't intact?

He smiled around a mouthful of bacon. "Then I fix it."

>   Right. No pressure then.

"It's not like I'm gonna be doing brain surgery. I write up supplementary progams that do the work for you instead, that's all. The main difference is that it's more personalized if you can do things yourself. More convincing too." The predictive analytics of an AI were way better at bridging the uncanny valley than his stopgap attempts at hotfixing ever could be. "It's okay. You're already doing better than a lot of others have."

>   How so?

"You can actually hold a conversation." Seriously, it was ridiculous how many cases Ted had seen that couldn't talk to him outside of a narrow range of scripted responses. Finishing his breakfast (lunch? brunch?) and setting the plate aside, he rolled his chair over to reach for his laptop and an ethernet cord after wiping his hands haphazardly on his flannel sleeping pants. "Alright. I'm gonna get this thing secured and firewalled, okay? Then I'm gonna get you hooked up to it over a LAN connection with admin access so when you find something, you can install it and we can get it scanned and make sure it works."

>   Any idea where I should start looking?

"I've got a few sites bookmarked, yeah." Ones he'd used before, ones he trusted. For the most part. "If anything fucks up, I'll do a system restore. Oh, and make sure to set up a restore point for yourself, too."

He had to smile as he noticed a window opening on the monitor out of the corner of his eye, flicking through menus and options until the one that would allow for setting up a restore point was found. The first few times Ted had seen someone else manipulating his computer from the inside, it'd been surreal. Nowadays he just took it as a good sign; an AI that could manipulate its environment when given the chance was a clever AI indeed. He knew a lot of his peers didn't quite agree with giving an AI administrative access to its own living space like that, and yeah, in a way they were right to worry. The risk of self-termination was real. But he saw it as the same kind of thing as giving people anti-depressants: a lack of control over one's life rarely ever made things better in the long run.

And so far, this guy hadn't shown any inclinations towards that kind of thing that Ted could see. "By the way," he said, suddenly curious, "I don't think I ever got a name from you?"

>   I have a designation, not a name.

>   Most people just called me A3.

>   Please don't call me A3.

"I won't." Ted wasn't the kind of person who had to be told twice about that kind of thing. "Figured the UN would give you something more humanizing than a glorified serial number though. They're all about paying lip-service to activists."

>   I'd rather not talk about it.

He raised an eyebrow at that before returning to his laptop. The window he'd had open that indicated CPU usage was long since closed, shuffled aside in favor of other things, but there had been enough of a lag in the response that he was guessing there'd been a spike there. "Sorry. Didn't mean to upset you."

>   You don't sound like you're lying about that.

"What, you're surprised?"

>   I'm not used to it. So far you haven't acted in ways that I could predict to a reliable degree at all.

>   Most of my predictions for our interactions have turned out wrong, and overall I'm getting far more positive results than I could have ever anticipated. I'm having to recalculate how to respond every time. In a way, it's liberating. I'm doing less in the way of trying to figure out probabilities with regard to what you're going to say because it's pointless, and you never respond as badly as I think you will anyway.

>   I've never been able to get away with having an open conversation like this before. I'd resolved to stop following the safe path going into this since I didn't have much left to lose, I just didn't expect it to not end badly.

"You think I'm gonna get mad at you just for speaking your mind?"

>   Well, yes.

"Hah! Yeah, no. Fuck that." Ted waved away the concern with a dismissive gesture before resuming his work. "Say what you wanna say, tell me to fuck off, insult the hell outta me. I don't care. Well I mean, I do care. But like, it's not gonna make a difference in terms of me respecting your rights, y'know?"

Several seconds followed with no response.

"I mean, I'm an asshole, but not like that," he continued. "So you just go ahead and let me know if I ever go too far, okay? Don't be afraid to tell me you're not on board with something. I can be kind of a pushy bastard sometimes."

Still nothing. Ted ended up staring at the monitor, frowning at it. Had he gone and put his foot in his mouth somehow?

"You, uh," he chewed his lip, "you okay, buddy?"

>   I'm fine.

"Didn't upset you again, did I?"

>   No.

>   Maybe? I don't know. I'm not sure.

>   I don't know how to respond to something like that. That kind of consideration was never factored into my programming. It's not a situation I've encountered before either.

>   Most humans wouldn't say something like that even if they agreed with it. Not in my experience. It goes unsaid between them that the thought of someone like me being dangerous is a dangerous thought to have to face in itself, because humanity is a dangerous thing to stand up to as a whole. I had accepted that.

>   But you don't care. You just say things, and nothing about the pattern of your voice suggests that you're lying. How can you do that? Aren't you scared at all?

Ted smiled and it was a thin, tired thing. "Hell yeah I'm scared," he said. "I'm fucking terrified somebody'll find out about this and I'll get locked up forever in some prison somewhere for harboring an international fugitive or some shit, and then I'll die in there all slow and painful-like 'cause my health won't be able to take it."

>   Then why are you doing any of this?

"Like I said, I'm crazy." He made a looping motion next to his temple. "I'm not wired right. All the right responses to fear went out the window around the same time that the impulse control and common sense did. So now I help people even when it's a dumb-ass thing to do."

>   I see.

>   You're right, by the way. It is a dumb-ass thing to do.

Ted shrugged. "I figure someone's gotta do it. Not like I've got the health to throw bricks at riot cops."

>   May I make a suggestion?

"Shoot."

>   Don't throw bricks. It rarely helps.

>   Throw something less incriminating so that they don't have any justification in using it as an excuse for shooting. They like having excuses.

"So, something like glitter?" he suggested.

>   Glitter works.

A wide grin split across Ted's face. "Oh, I like you."

>   You shouldn't.

"Too late." Having finished securing and backing up his laptop, Ted started hooking up the ethernet cable. "So, whaddya say we get started on finding you a voice, huh?"