"Title: the starchildren."
(a Portal game fan-fiction)
Subject originated as robotics and design scientist at founding of corporation. Key area of focus: turrets.
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I started out designing artificial intelligence for Aperture for their new "Tests for tomorrow" program. Once the programming was completed I watched as each chip was placed in these new machines called "turrets". These aren't like any turrets I have ever seen but the idea fascinates me. They filled them to the brim with bullets, but it just doesn't seem right. After all the personality I programmed in, all the heart, for it to be used as a weapon. While the testing chambers are still in the process of being completely prepared for subjects, the turrets are being placed in an empty chamber towards the end of the line.
Every day I go into the viewing station of the testing chamber and watch as they wait. They talk about nothing to one another, I assume constantly. I have decided to go down there and give them a break from the buzz of white noise chatter.
On this day, I went first to the viewing station and fiddled with the speaker settings. Then I came in through the large circular arch and sealed the large electronic door behind me. Suddenly every turret pivots and faces me with red shot guiding laser sights dotted across my Aperture shirt. Their weapons are revealed in a two part mechanical sync up amongst all of the turrets.
"Stand down star children. I don't hate you." I show them my bass and slowly make my way to an empty metal storage crate. "I'm just here to play."
I strum a gentle note and it quietly echoes from the chambers PA system. Using the new wireless technology that was developed to be used on the turrets, my bass doesn't even have to plug into an amplifier. The turrets are silent but keep their sights on me. I continue to play the quiet notes into a melody. I look up and notice something, though the turrets are all locked on me, their guns have retracted.
"You're listening aren't you?" I say to myself in quiet realization. I slide the crate closer to the turrets and sit to resume playing.
After strumming out another melody, this time in its entirety, I hear a voice, "Is it over?" It asks. One of the turrets had spoken to me, but even more, it responded to the music.
"Do you want it to be?" I ask it.
I realized I was talking to a machine, and what's more a machine brimming with ammunition, but it also had a chip, my chip, that made it almost like my child. They were all almost like my children. After a moment of silence in what I assume was thought, the turret turned on its pivot to the others, having what I assume was silent discussion, and back to me.
"No.." it said quietly.
I smiled, "Then gather around my young machines and let's lay out a smooth sound."
I played for the turrets daily, and continued this for weeks. On one day in particular, however, something fantastic happened. I was playing a simple tune as usual when suddenly in the middle one of the turrets makes a shrill sour sound. At the time I was caught off guard and ended up playing a sour note myself.
The turret asked nervously "Was that bad?..." I smiled. "No way star child, that was a groovy sound, let's see what you can do with one of these."
I played a very slow smooth rhythm and slowly but surely the turret began to sing, and sing well. What is even more amazing was the other turrets began to harmonize with him, creating a sound I never dreamed possible. What started as one sour note resulted in finding the most incredible talent these little guys have ever shown. I am so pro-
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File log GlaDos:/ 002
I have watched him, the little bass man. He does not progress the testing process any longer. Data on turret development is complete. He goes into the testing chamber every afternoon and plays like they are listening. They are however, making a gurgling sound whenever he is using his bass. I believe that this is an error in design caused by pitch frequency. I also believe that it is time for a patch, to fix two major bugs.
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Today I came into the turrets holding chamber and set up to strum a few new rhythms for them to try singing along to, but before I could start to play, the new core system came over the intercom.
"Hello employee 008665."
"Well hey there Caroline! Interested in hearing some music? "I replied.
It was silent for a moment then she spoke again, "Caroline has been upgraded, this is GlaDos."
I'm not sure what the name change meant but I'm sure it's an acronym for something I'll be briefed on later. "Well then GlaDos, you're still welcome to come down the line and have a listen with us!"
She spoke again, "There is no us, there is just you, a man, playing alone in a room of guns."
I never talked to a computer before, not at lengths at least, but I decided if my turrets could sing, GlaDos can enjoy it. "Oh but Caroline, these little guys are something amazing with music-"
It cut me off "They are not amazing, they are machines, weapons, all alike and all very very boring, and that is not music, it is high pitch frequency jamming noise. You will not produce this progress stopping annoyance any longer, and will return to doing science. "
"Well Caroline, what I'm doing could easily count for an exper-"
"Caroline is gone. This is GlaDos."
I have decided there is no reasoning with machines so I left and came back to my desk.
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Today is the day, today is the day I kill him.
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He came into the testing chamber, and he looked for the cube he sat on. There was no cube to be seen and so he stood. "Hey there starchildren, how about a song? I have a new one I think you little dudes might get into." He said this to the turrets. A man talking to turrets, literally talking TO them, HA. They are plastic and wire and metal, and nothing more. I watched him waiting for an answer, he hadn't realized that he wouldn't be getting one. I told him. "They can't hear you, they never could. You are a silly little man, who has out lived his usefulness and now wastes precious oxygen particles talking to robots. Robots, with no ears, or brains.
He smiled and spoke again, "Caroline my dear, that's where we can agree. We both know what's in these turrets, wires hard-drives and lots and lots of bullets. What you don't see though is that in those hard-drives are a chip, my chip."
"Caroline is gone, and I am aware of the chips, I paid you to make them. It is just a standard artificial intelligence chip, nothing more, artificial: a fake intellect. " I informed him.
"I don't care how smart they are, you hired me for weapons not calculators, and I gave you a damn fine weapon that not even you can understand anymore Caroline."
"Caroline is GONE," I replied, "and I know everything about these chips and anything else you can imagine."
"Then I don't have to tell you about the weapon." He smiled again.
"Which weapon could possibly justify talking to metal and plastic? Is it the pin-point laser sights, the duel firing mechanisms, the trip barrel automatic firing components? " I asked him.
"It's the heart," he said absolutely beaming, " All the heart in these little bits of metal and wire, all the hopes and dreams and desires to see more than a lab, be more than a weapon, well that is scarier than any gun you can point at a man. You stand in the way of dreams, and you might as well dig that grave of yours straight down to Hell."
"What harm could a dreaming turret possible do?" I asked him.
"It sure can scare the hell out of you." He said with a smile.
He always smiled, even against me. I hated that grin, the grin that everything can be worked out, that nothing can harm him even though he just is a flimsy human. He breaks so easily, and yet that smile makes him act so strong.
"What's the matter? Did you realize something big Caroline?" He asked mocking my silence.
"CAROLINE IS DEAD!"
The turrets eyes all glow red, and the laser sights all focused on him.
"I run this room, not you! This is my chamber, my company! You know what my dream is?! Science! You stand in my way, and you know what that means!"
I launched the override program to take control of the turrets, each one's weapons application was launched and their guns all shot open in unison. "You are a worm. An insignificant worm, that I own! You are mine to do with as I see fit and I don't see any reason to keep you around if you refuse to squirm!"
I tried to open fire, but the turrets remained motionless. Something was refusing the command. I checked the main turret launch application and was met with an overflowing wave of white noise in the form of data. It washed over me, hundreds of voices, chattering away in white noise about nonsense. I forced the file closed. The turrets shut down.
"What, what was that?!" I asked him in shock.
"Dreams." he smiled, "Face it, they are real as I am, as you used to be. You have found one thing you cannot rule over."
I re-launched a single turret, it was centered directly on him. It began to let out shrills, much like it first had when he played that bass. I look back now, and I think it was resisting the only way it could. The weapon systems were deployed. "No, no, no no no" it cried out. It tried to access the turret mainframes but it was met with the emptiness and silence of all the others forced shut down.
The little bass man looked at the turret, he came to it as it shrieked and put a hand on its side, smiled a softer smile, and said "Stand down starchild, I don't hate you."
Just then the resistance left and the turret open fired. The body hit the ground on its back and the bass shattered under the force of the fall. He was finally gone.
The turrets came back online and the single turret gave off a heaving static noise, I do not know the cause of to this day. I lifted the panel the body fell on and crammed it into the cube I had hidden. I welded it shut and left the turrets, as the heaving static seemed to be spreading through their mainframe.
Later I removed that chamber from the testing list, as the lower level rooms had been modified for more accurate testing. I redesigned the turrets, removing any sense of the chip that the bass man had installed. The new turrets were highly marketable and billions of units sold.
As for the original turrets I still get a brief moment of their mainframe whenever I search the aperture data banks. The heaving static has stopped, but the noise created by the bass interference seems permanent. Every time I access the turret mainframe I hear it, all of the original turrets in one large mass, making the sounds caused by the bass man. He would have called it, singing.
Written by Sam M. 2013