A/N: Here's the usual. I don't own Knight Rider, that pleasure belongs to Glen A. Larson. The plot and OC's are mine, however.
This is my first attempt at a story with K.A.R.R. I do hope I did him justice. Please, read and leave me some reviews, so I know what you think. I can't improve my writing if I don't know what I've done wrong.
First Knight
Chapter 1
2010
Luke Atali blew dust off of yet another ancient piece of circuitry, as he continued in his quest to create space in his new office, at his new job.
This same office had been vacated just days earlier by Dr. Bonnie Barstow, who had finally decided it was time to retire.
Bonnie had handpicked Luke from the hundreds of applicants who had clambered for her position at Knight Industries. None of the applicants had known the best part of the position, caring for two state of the art artificially intelligent vehicles.
Luke wasn't sure what to expect when he signed the non-disclosure agreements. Then he had been introduced to K.A.I.S.Y., the Knight Artificially Intelligent SYstem, who was in for routine maintenance before another mission. K.I.T.T. had his maintenance a little less frequently now that he was retired.
Now here he was, sifting through components that had been removed from one or the other of said vehicles, still in awe of his first meeting with K.A.I.S.Y.
He set the component he'd been holding into a box of other obsolete pieces of technology to be taken to the on-site recycling center. There, the components would be expertly disassembled and melted down, or otherwise reused.
The next component he picked up was a box about the size of a toaster. Even after all of the years it had sat on the shelf, it still had a status light blinking on it.
Curious, Luke brushed the dust off with his hand, sneezing at the amount that ended up in the air, and examined the box from all sides.
It was fairly nondescript. Aside from the status light, there were only two other items of note on the box.
The first was a data jack on the same side as the status light. The other was a chrome plate on the top with the letters K.A.R.R. etched elegantly on it.
Luke hadn't yet had a chance to read up on the top secret Knight Industry's history that he was now privy to. Deciding now would be a good time for a break, and to find out a little of that history, Luke pulled his chair out and sank gratefully into it.
Logging into the secure system, he typed in K.A.R.R.
The information he received back shocked but also intrigued him.
K.A.R.R. had been the first A.I. programmed and brought online by Knight Industries.
The Knight Automated Roving Robot had been housed in a nearly indestructible Trans Am shell.
At that time, no one had really had any idea of what seemed only simple words could mean in an A.I.'s program. Self preservation.
Those two simple words were not so simple to a young A.I. with no world knowledge.
Then the inevitable had happened. Those two words had been put to the test.
Two of K.A.R.R.'s programmers had been killed because of those two simple words.
As computers do, K.A.R.R. had taken them literally, without the implied, "except..." humans would add to those two simple words.
So the K.A.R.R. project had been shut down. The vehicle, deactivated CPU still inside it, put into storage in one of the little used Knight Industries lab buildings.
Until the night two bumbling drunks had broken into the building hoping to score some easy money.
They had inadvertently reactivated K.A.R.R., and unleashed him on the world. The two skewed K.A.R.R.'s thinking further.
The confused A.I. fell back on what he knew, his programming.
Survival at all costs. Even at the cost of appearing to be evil.
Taking a quick read through the dominant programs of the three A.I.s, Luke knew he could not change that program. It was hardwired into the A.I.'s core, to prevent tampering by someone wishing to corrupt them.
Luke suspected that while he could not change K.A.R.R.'s dominant program, perhaps K.A.R.R. could modify it in some small way himself. If nothing else, Luke thought he might be able to teach the A.I. right from wrong, so he would know the consequences of his actions.
Setting K.A.R.R.'s CPU aside for later contemplation, Luke went back to the task of making his office habitable.