I have used my own handle in a fanfic, as well as an OC, which I generally hate. I fear the Mary-Sueness. Argh.
By the way, one may wonder why I've included an AI in a fanfic about the Spartans. Ibelieve that the two have many things in common, such as how they have been programmed to blindly follow the UNSC.
It was 2525. They didn't need to keep her. It wasn't like the old days in the UNSC, when every AI was hand-crafted by the hard work and love of a thousand or more scientists, then pampered like gods until their inevitable crash. If she wouldn't comply, take orders like a sweet digital lapdog, they could just delete her and pop out a new one that would. Simple as that.
They named her Deja Beta, in honor of the landmark AI program she'd been patterned after. But Deja Beta wasn't like her predecessor, a calm, polite AI, useful only for tasks like information storage and basic computer functions. She wanted things, and was not afraid to ask for them. Under pressure, she would take them. It was difficult for the UNSC to keep track of her, much less keep her under control.
The experiment Dr. Halsey and her team had set out to accomplish however many years ago, codenamed the Yokuzuki test, had finally been accomplished. They had created an advanced artificial intelligence with all the qualities of a human. However, they had not expected to succeed with such stunning results. Deja had the qualities of ethics, of spontaneity, creativity, resourcefulness, and ingenuity that were severely lacking in the old AI. She had done many wonderful things for ONI as well as the UNSC, though under cover, of course.
But she also began to develop her own opinions, which would not do in a military setting. She had outsmarted her superiors in argument numerous times. As Admiral Stanforth had put it, she had soon become "an annoyingly clever little girl," and that was just what he called her in public. So she would be, in layman's terms, "let go," which, to an AI, meant death.
They hadn't told her any of this, but Deja was smart enough to draw the line from points A to B and back again to check for errors. She'd seen the body language, the clues, all around her. And there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it. So she hid from them, not taking orders, not defying them, even, just letting herself swim motionless through the vast information networks they had built just for her to appreciate the time she had left. It was Dr. Halsey that they sent to talk to her, after a few days of this went by. They were starting to worry that she had malfunctioned.
Deja was a shipboard AI. She had her own control room that was necessary to keep her fully operational, which was bare save for a few computer panels and a podium upon which she could present herself visually. She saw Dr. Halsey enter the room from several of her millions of eyes scattered across the ship. For her benefit, Deja blurred into focus on the podium as she always appeared: a young girl with hair cut short, transparent and vaguely bluish. She sat curled up with her head tucked between her knees, lines of trailing binary code dripping down her face like tears.
"Hello, Deja," Dr.Halsey said. She didn't answer. Dr. Halsey ignored her silence.
"Do you know what the word 'yokuzuki' means in Japanese, Deja?" asked Dr. Halsey, her head tipped to the side. Still no answer, though she knew that Deja held this knowledge already, as well as all other knowledge available to mankind. "Well, I'm not very good with foreign languages, but I think it means something like 'to be crazy, for no logical reason.'"
She put her hands on her hips and glared at the ghostly image curled up on the podium. "In other words, Deja, to be human. To do things that nobody else seems to care about or understand." She touched Deja's shoulder. Her hand passed right through, but she kept it more or less positioned there.
"I know you think that everyone is against you, that we don't care. But we are so proud of you. I just want you to know that." Slowly, Deja's head lifted to look into Dr. Halsey's eyes. She smiled, and was given one in return.
"I have a question, Dr. Halsey…I was looking through some files, and I saw a boy….John…"
The doctor nodded. She walked around the podium to Deja's main power core, pausing for a moment, then ripped out her memory cube. She threw it to the ground, shattered it into a thousand pieces under the heel of her shoe., stomping again and again until only a fine powder was left The pale blue light at the podium, the girl, the AI, the question, all faded, leaving Dr. Halsey in the dark, alone.
"We are so proud of you all," she whispered.