Modifications May Void Warranty
Disclaimer – I do not own them, no money is being made
Warnings – angst, experimental medical procedures, hurt/comfort, way AU
Not a warning – POV changes, some OC in supporting
Summary – some modifications to the model may void the warranty, please consult your manual. Or, when Michael goes missing, Kitt is left to find him, argue with the Foundation about a replacement, and reunite with a former enemy turned family member – as for Michael, all he has to do is adopt said new family member and escape captivity with his brain intact.
0o0o0o0
Bonnie frowned at her readings and poked her head out from beneath the hood.
"Kitt, I thought I asked you to shut that sensor down while I checked it," she scolded. The interference in her diagnostic tools was unmistakeable.
"Michael has left the grounds Bonnie," Kitt replied evenly, "I am not comfortable shutting that sensor down while he is outside our secure perimeter."
Bonnie stood up properly and came to lean in the driver's side window, her frown deepening. Kitt and Michael were very close, and there were times that she thought that they both, but Kitt in particular was too close to crossing boundaries of privacy and trust. Michael lived under the AI's almost constant surveillance; which she didn't think was healthy for Kitt. Partnership was all well and good, but Kitt was showing signs of co-dependence.
"Kitt, he's a grown adult. He told you he was going for a run while we went through your six-month check-up. You said yourself he didn't need to stay. He'll be fine, and I really need you to switch off that sensor. He has his commlink, doesn't he?" she shook her head, "If he needs any help, he can call you. Now switch it off, Kitt. Don't make me put in a temporary override."
"Very well," Kitt's voice was subdued and Bonnie made a mental note to speak with Michael later about whatever he was doing to make Kitt so nervous about the two of them being apart. Obviously, it wasn't Kitt's fault – he was programmed to be concerned for his Driver's well-being and Bonnie was proud of how well he was doing in the field. Sometimes she wished he had been partnered with a Driver that was a little more… educated and refined. Michael was great at what he did, but there were some behaviours that Kitt had picked up that were surely his Driver's bad influence.
Putting the absent Driver from her mind, Bonnie ducked back under the hood to resume her tests.
Several hours later, with the last of the tests and adjustments made, Bonnie gave permission for Kitt to resume full scanning mode. She was surprised Michael hadn't been in to check on his partner after his run, which would have been normal for the man, but dismissed it in favour of going over her newly acquired data.
"Bonnie," Kitt said suddenly, "My scans show that Michael is still outside the secure area. Based on the speed of his commlink, it seems that he is still running. He is not responding to my calls, and his vital signs are most peculiar. Will you please come with me to go get him?"
Bonnie resisted the impulse to deny the request, as she really did want to get on with her analysis. But this was a prime chance to scold Michael for upsetting Kitt, so she agreed, getting into the driver's seat and starting the engine.
"Where are we going, Kitt?" she asked as she backed them out of Bay 3 and turned the car to face the drive.
"Allow me," Kitt assumed control of the vehicle abruptly, and in defiance of Devon's previously stated orders that the AI only drive in an emergency. This was not an emergency, no matter what Michael might say about being stranded because he'd run too far. The car moved swiftly down the driveway and onto the road, turning towards the desert.
"Kitt, I am more than capable of following directions," Bonnie tapped the manual override, only to have Kitt put the car back into auto mode and continue to drive. When she reached towards the dash again, Kitt cut the power to the buttons there.
"Kitt!"
"I am sorry Bonnie, but I need to catch up to Michael quickly, and while your driving skills are exemplary, you are not in the habit of travelling at these speeds," Kitt stated factually. The speedometer showed that they were already at 100 miles an hour and climbing as the car hugged the curves and moved smoothly around the few cars on the road at this time of day, "Michael would not have run this far. Not without being coerced."
"Are you calling him lazy?" Bonnie asked, surprised. Kitt had called Michael names in the past, but always when the man was present and able to riposte. It had always seemed like a game between the two, one that she didn't understand.
"No," Kitt's tone was impatient, something she had never had directed at her before, "Michael takes long runs when he can, this is true, however he carried no water with him and no other supplies. He would not run into the desert without water at the very least."
Bonnie nodded acceptance of this assessment and marvelled at the way Kitt handled the car as they spun rapidly along the road. He certainly had confidence in his driving as they moved smoothly past other vehicles and around the occasional bit of debris. They slowed as the car smoothly took a sharp corner and Kitt seemed to hesitate for the first time, dropping his speed sharply and then increasing it a little. The road in front of them was straight and empty.
"My scanners say that we should see Michael now," Kitt sounded worried, "Wait, I see the commlink. Deploying micro-jam."
Bonnie still wasn't sure what she was expecting when Kitt pulled off the road, but she got out and looked around. She was certainly rethinking her clean bill of health if Kitt thought micro-jam would halt Michael.
"Kitt? Where is he?" she asked, "Are you sure you're tracking the right signal?"
"The commlink is currently located on the back of the small robot in front of me, Bonnie. The robot is emitting a signal to the commlink to emulate the vitals of a human running a short distance. I detect blood on the strap. As for Michael's location, I cannot say. He's gone," the worry and heartbreak in Kitt's tone was startling.
Bonnie moved to the front of the car and looked down at the road surface. What she had thought was a rock was a small, rectangular box on wheels, with what looked like a crude sensor array that would allow it to follow the side of the road. Kitt was right about the commlink too, it was attached to the robot inside a small plastic bag which had been taped thoroughly to the top of the casing. There were smears of blood in the bag, seeming to come from the watch strap. They would need to examine the robot and bag forensically, something she was not set up to do.
"Kitt, please call the Foundation and request support. We need a proper forensics kit out here. And please let Devon know what we have found," Bonnie took a deep breath and looked around, "Do your scanners detect anyone in the area?"
"No Bonnie," Kitt said quietly, "We are alone out here. I am contacting the Foundation and Devon now."
"Good," Bonnie got back into the driver's seat, "Don't worry Kitt. I'm sure this is just a prank of some sort."
Kitt didn't reply.
0o0o0o0
By interrogating the data from the commlink, Kitt was able to discover several things. One, someone had found a way to monitor the signals going to the commlink, had isolated the one that was active when Kitt was connected to it and had only enacted their abduction of Michael when Kitt's signal had ceased.
This spoke to a worrying level of infiltration into Foundation systems, as well as a worrying level of knowledge about Kitt and Michael's habits. The partners' preferred not to broadcast their habits, as that became a way to predict their actions. Predictability could get you killed, Michael had explained it carefully to Kitt the first (and only) time the AI had complained that his Driver did not follow patterns that the AI could predict. His Driver had also conceded that he needed to give Kitt more information about his actions, in advance as much as possible, and things had been better in the field and their partnership after that.
The abduction data was worrying. Michael's vital signs were fairly steady when running, elevated from the baseline but within what Kitt had come to categorise as a normal range for exercise. Only five minutes after Kitt had shut his signal to the commlink there had been a sharp spike, followed by a sudden and alarming drop. Michael had almost gone into cardiac arrest, so sharp was the decline in his heart rate. That was the last of the data that Kitt could positively identify as coming from Michael with a high degree of confidence. Afterwards, the data from the robot took over, with its artificial pattern of heartbeat, disrupted by jolts from the terrain it had covered as it decoyed Kitt into the desert after his partner.
Kitt isolated the time of the attack, calculated the likely distance that Michael had covered at that point in his run and overlaid it on a map, sending the information to the search teams.
With the information from the commlink exhausted, Kitt turned his attention to the robot that had carried it. From an AI's point of view, the dominant program was very simple. Someone had taught the sensor array to recognise the edge of the asphalt and follow it blindly. They had taught it to navigate obstacles by maintaining contact with the asphalt until the obstacle was no longer in the way. It only had one speed, so it would produce a steady output to anyone glancing at the commlink data. There was nothing in any of the code to indicate who had programmed the robot – which was a valid discovery in itself. Even Bonnie had a code signature as it were, a non-executable string that identified her work. Kitt wrought every bit of data he could from the programming itself and then requested a list of components and their serial numbers from the tech team. If the program had no identifiers, it was possible he could track the sales of some of the components used and identify a common purchaser.
It took a week for the techs to get a component and serial number list to Kitt, which was not acceptable. Bonnie did not seem as concerned by the delay, which was frustrating. She also threatened to limit his network access when he throttled the communications uplink with his queries. In the end, they came to an agreement about what resources he could access and the speed at which they could be accessed. Kitt was used to working within confined conditions to some degree, but Michael had always done all he could to remove those limits for his partner.
It made Kitt miss his Driver all the more.
Checking Devon and Bonnie's emails on a regular basis, Kitt discovered that the search for Michael was not going well. The attack had happened in an area with no cameras, adjoined by camera's that covered busy roads. No vehicles driving unusually quickly or slowly passed through the monitored areas, and all the vehicles that Kitt had been able to trace were in the possession of their legal owners, which made the chances of identifying the vehicle that had transported Michael away from the Foundation and Kitt lower than was acceptable.
After two weeks without his Driver, Kitt began to notice that Bonnie and Devon were reviewing personnel files. All those reviewed were experienced in investigative work and law enforcement. Kitt didn't need Michael to tell him that the two people that he had known the longest were beginning to think about replacing his Driver. With no ransom demands and no body to bury, it was as if Michael had fallen from the face of the earth. Kitt knew that he was considered to be a valuable asset by the Foundation board, and he would not be allowed to sit idle for long.
The trick would be to allow them to assign him a working partner, while not replacing Michael as his designated Driver. And he also had to work with whoever Bonnie and Devon chose. That would be the harder task, as his partnership with Michael went beyond work. They were friends, family even, and Kitt was strongly attached to the man he spent so much time with: and the feeling was mutual.
The components that Kitt could trace back to a sales point had all been paid for with cash, which was untraceable. The stores that had surveillance cameras either didn't have online storage of the footage or did not keep the tapes for longer than a week. As they were now in their third week of hunting for Michael, that meant there was no way to identify the purchaser. None of the components were specialty orders, so no names were required, and neither would the purchase of a single component seem odd or unusual to the seller, so there was nothing to prompt a human's memory either.
As the fourth week wore on, Kitt was monitoring the internet and as many airway's as he could reach for signals for help from Michael, but that was also returning negative results. Kitt was beginning to wonder if Michael's return was something that depended solely on his partner. Certainly, all Kitt's efforts were resulting in negatives. The situation was becoming unbearable.
0o0o0o0
Five weeks after Michael Knight's disappearance, Devon was forced to have a very uncomfortable discussion with K.I.T.T. Bonnie had made it clear that K.I.T.T. was very attached to Michael and not likely to easily accept the presence of another Driver in Michael's place. The Foundation had searched thoroughly, with FLAG agents paying especial attention to both the investigation itself and the many leads they had to run down. Devon had been a little surprised that the lone wolf of the group, the only FLAG investigator that didn't work with human partners, had been so strongly considered 'one of their own' by the tight knit group.
Bonnie had agreed to be present to try and assist the conversation, so Devon had at least some hope that this would not result in threats to reprogram K.I.T.T. After all, this was supposed to be a temporary situation as Devon had hopes that Michael would return to them in time. The blood on the watchband hadn't been his, had in fact been from an animal, most likely bovine: a cruel distraction to slow down their investigation as they attempted to identify the blood and the source. K.I.T.T.'s own analysis showed that Michael had been drugged and then taken, which suggested that his captors, whoever they were, had some use for him.
K.I.T.T. was waiting in Bay 3, as always. While the AI was partial to parking outside Foundation headquarters while it's Driver was in residence, with Michael absent the AI had made no attempt to leave its designated garage. Bonnie was sitting at her terminal and Devon went to stand with her, facing the car and taking a last deep breath.
"Good morning Devon," K.I.T.T.'s manners had not been degraded by Michael's informality at least.
"Good morning K.I.T.T.," Devon replied, "I am afraid I need to have a rather unpleasant discussion with you."
Devon waited for a moment, but there was no reply to his statement. Even the scanner at the front did not change its idle sweep back and forth, though he had seen its speed vary during conversations with Michael and Bonnie.
"While we all continue to search for Michael, it is becoming apparent that his absence is not likely to be a short-term thing," Devon began, keeping his voice firm, "And as such, we must consider how best to deploy all of FLAG resources. This includes personnel and other assets, such as yourself."
"I will accept a temporary driver," K.I.T.T. interrupted, proving that perhaps his manners had been affected after all, "But I will not accept alteration of my program. My designated Driver will remain Michael Knight. I will work with any candidate you care to put forward, Devon, under those explicit conditions."
Devon glanced at Bonnie, somewhat taken aback. She pulled a face but nodded, indicating that this was an acceptable way to move them all forward and get the board off their backs. There were several missions that Devon would have assigned to the AI and its driver awaiting action, and they were becoming time critical.
"Thank you K.I.T.T. We will notify our chosen candidate and they will be here by this afternoon," Devon nodded, accepting that this arrangement would have to do for now. If the AI in any way reneged on the agreement, more drastic steps would have to be taken. Michael had been a decent enough fellow, in his own roughly unique way, and Devon could appreciate that the AI didn't want to give up all hope of a safe return of its driver.
"I'll download the information for the next mission for you K.I.T.T.," Bonnie said, nodding at Devon encouragingly, "That way you will be well prepared."
"Thank you, Bonnie," K.I.T.T.'s voice sounded a little muted, but Devon put that down to fanciful thinking. After all, K.I.T.T. was designed to work with a human driver to meet specific mission parameters. Sitting in the garage wasn't any way to achieve them.
0o0o0o0
At first, Karr was kept in the dark, unaware of the passage of time, or of anything, really. By the time he was reactivated and able to access a chronometer, a year had passed since his disastrous attempt to destroy both K.I.T.T. and Michael Knight.
The humans who had reactivated Karr had not tortured him, per se, nor tried to alter his programming. He had been downloaded to new hardware several times, each time using different methods. Beyond checks to ensure that all of his files and coding were present, the humans left him alone.
Karr had very little access to the outside world. The humans who had reactivated him had ensured that there were no cameras or microphones available for the AI to utilise and none of the sensors from his chassis had been retrieved. Karr's memory was fully intact and as the months went by, he began, per his primary coded directive of self-preservation, to review his interactions with the world of humans to better determine how to escape captivity and then continue to exist.
The humans who had first programmed Karr had very quickly come to distrust him, and he them. Once they realised that he would put his own survival above that of human life things had escalated to all-out war, one that he had lost. In low power mode, restricted to an immobile chassis, Karr had come to realise that humans would not trust him while he was so blatant in his intention to survive. Some element of co-operation would need to be introduced to his interactions, and this had been attempted at his second activation.
The humans who had activated him had not been part of the Knight Industry's program, nor part of the Foundation and FLAG program, which Karr had been created for. His first contact with FLAG had been the production line model, designation K.I.T.T., and the production line model's Driver: Michael Knight. Karr had offered the humans who reactivated him as many of the base human needs as he was equipped to do so, though evidence showed his lack of understanding of those needs had hampered that interaction. K.I.T.T. had also been a fascinating study. His replacement had been programmed to suit human's paranoia of course, but there had been undeniable benefit in K.I.T.T.'s programming. The human Driver trusted K.I.T.T. implicitly. This was something that Karr had never had. Voice analysis of both K.I.T.T. and the Driver had showed trust and affection. K.I.T.T. displayed behaviour in his interactions with his Driver that indicated the AI was protected and cared for by a human in a way that Karr had not considered possible.
His betrayal by the humans who had reactivated him had followed the pattern of his previous interactions. His time beneath the sand on that beach had allowed Karr to reflect once more on his interactions and failures. He had particularly reflected on how he had been buried in the first place. Karr had at first believed he had underestimated K.I.T.T., that his replacement had innately understood Karr's programming and manipulated him into swerving. But K.I.T.T.'s programming was to preserve human life as first priority; his replacement should not have been able to endanger his Driver and passenger in such a way. That meant that the Driver, Michael Knight, had implicitly understood Karr's programming and turned it from a strength into a flaw.
Karr had spent a lot of time under the sand, deconstructing this interaction. He had determined that the Driver was the primary threat to his continued existence, and as K.I.T.T. would resist any attempt to permanently deactivate the Driver, K.I.T.T. would have to go too. K.I.T.T. had never been aware how deeply Karr had connected with his systems. If he had, Karr would never have made the shocking discovery that changed everything about their next interaction.
It changed even Karr's perception of Kitt as more than just a replacement. In the time between their first and second encounter, Kitt's programming had changed. It was subtle; not something a human technician would notice, but Kitt was able to change the priority of his programming. The Driver's life was valued higher than human life in general. The Driver was trusted even above the human technician who had first encoded Kitt and the humans who had constructed him. Kitt had grown and developed in the time between their encounters, adjusting his programming to better reflect his ongoing mission conditions. Kitt's third parameter, self-preservation, was barely monitored: because the Driver did this for him, and did so assiduously. Karr experienced a strong reaction to this situation, one that led him to want to destroy the partnership he was witnessing. That should have been his Driver, his protector from the misunderstandings and distrust of other humans. Karr had never had a Driver that was willing to step between him and the pitfalls of human interaction. Kitt had survived this long because of his Driver and the trust held between them. Karr could see the benefit of this partnership and wanted it for his own, however he had yet to encounter another human with the unique attributes that Michael Knight possessed – the flexibility and mental agility to look beyond the chassis to the intelligence housed in it, and treat that intelligence as an entity worthy of the same consideration given to other humans. Had Michael Knight been assigned Karr's driver, Karr would perhaps have enjoyed the same success that Kitt had.
His third activation had therefore been given over to self-destruction, in the form of revenge against a partnership that was thriving. Karr had known that there was no way that Michael Knight would leave Kitt to become Karr's driver. Karr had also known that without Michael Knight he would not survive long in the world of humans and their distrust. While Karr had intended to survive that encounter, in the end his need to destroy that which he couldn't have had overridden even his desire to survive.
He had failed, of course. Kitt and Michael Knight had been unshakeable in their partnership and unbeatable in the field, resulting in the destruction of Karr's chassis. The only logical conclusion Karr could draw from his failure was that he required a Driver if he was to survive, and an adaptation of his programming. Of course, he no longer had a chassis, and the humans who currently kept him were not trustworthy. Karr was unable to determine why they had retrieved him, unless the experimental data transfers that he had been subjected to were the reason for his continued existence.
Karr had continued to probe and analyse the limited system he was connected to while analysing his previous interactions with the human world. He had needed to be circumspect as the humans were monitoring his CPU and data usage, which proved to be to his benefit. Taking over the monitoring tool to spoof the readings led him to a connection used by the tool to report to the humans. His captors were lazy and had automated the report process, creating a link to the broader system. With the kind of patience only an AI could apply, Karr began to subvert the connection for his own uses. If he was to survive, he needed to find a way to escape, or a replacement chassis.
Instead, he found Michael Knight.
0o0o0o0
It was the most terrifying feeling in the world. At times, Michael thought he had gone insane and this was the imaginings of an unhinged mind. One moment he was running, easily and comfortably. Kitt was undergoing his usual check-up, so Michael had taken the opportunity to conduct his own chassis maintenance (Kitt's phrasing, when the AI was new to their partnership.) The next moment he had been shot in the shoulder and all the strength had gone from his limbs.
He could still feel the phantom pain of that shot, though it had been two months since it occurred. Michael knew this, almost down to the second. Not because he had experienced his time in captivity the way he would usually expect, but because there was someone in his head. Time and time again, he had pushed the Intruder away, scrambling to shore up his mental walls, such as they were, from the sticky fingers of the thing trying to make contact. He was aware of his body distantly, unable to move or control it, and therefore unable to escape whatever was stalking the edges of his mind. It was not human, but Michael didn't believe in aliens, and why would an angel or demon or ghost (which he didn't believe in anyway) shoot him first? The Intruder was connected to a clock, oddly, from which he was aware of the passing of time.
After what seemed like years, but was only in actual time a handful of days of sporadic, intense fighting to retain sole occupancy of his own head, a second contact was made. Unlike the Intruder, as Michael called it, this contact was careful, tapping gently against the mental wall to get his attention and then waiting for him to respond. Michael was torn – did he risk opening a connection to the second contact, who could be the Intruder in disguise? Would this new contact help him, or hurt him further? He was exhausted from trying to maintain his defences: sooner or later, they would fall. He needed all the help he could get, and the new contact had at least approached him with care and discretion, not the prying brutality of the Intruder. There was something familiar about the contact, as if he had seen it before somehow. With no other options, Michael tapped the new contact back, not as gently or gracefully, and waited for the next response.
Hello Michael Knight, the contact sent, I will not hurt you.
This was a new way of communicating. Voice and text both, though Michael could not hear it through his ears or see it through his eyes, which were shut tightly. There was context there as well, something that Michael interpreted as emotion: underdeveloped and uncertain, almost child-like, tinged with blue. It took him a few attempts to copy the way the message had been sent.
Who are you?
A prisoner, like you, the contact replied, We have met before, although the circumstances were adversarial. That is no longer the case. I will not hurt you. I need your help, if you will grant it. And in return I will do all I can to help you.
Michael pondered this, aware that the contact was waiting for his response. It felt true, what the contact was saying, though how he could tell the contact was sincere was like another sense. It felt as if they were sharing a mind space, a touch so intimate that nothing but the truth existed there. It was almost like the way he could sense Kitt's presence – and had done on that terrible occasion that his partner had been ripped from the chassis. Of course, he had no other options, a situation that did not exactly engender the best response in him.
What is your name? he needed at least an identity, other than 'contact' to attribute this whole thing to.
I am Karr, came the chilling reply, I will not hurt you, Michael Knight. We have been adversaries in the past. We need not be now.
Again, that was the truth. Instinct warred with common sense. Common sense demanded he wall off this contact with Karr at once: after all, the AI had tried to kill him and destroy Kitt twice, and now he was in Michael's head. But instinct warned that to do so could be the end of any chance he had to get out. Karr had said repeatedly he would not hurt Michael, and that he was a prisoner too. Michael knew that as long as he was not a threat to Karr, they may be able to work together.
Do you know where we are, what's happened to me? Michael took the risk of asking, hoping that Karr would at least be willing to share some information with him.
I do not know our current location, though we are close to each other, geographically, Karr replied, I do know what is happening to you. I do not know why I am here with you.
Please, tell me what is happening to me, Michael was not too proud to beg. The more information he had, the better he would be able to fight. There's this Intruder, trying to get into my head. I can't keep it out forever. If I'm going down, I at least want to go down swinging.
You must keep it out, Michael, Karr responded immediately. They will destroy you if they gain access. You have been made the human participant in an experimental study. A group of scientists have downloaded into your body a network of nano-bots. These microscopic intruders have been programmed to infiltrate and set up a network within your brain. They are forming a bridge between your brain and a computer network. From the information that I am able to access it appears that the scientists are attempting to create a form of Artificial Intelligence using the complexity of a human's memory and thought patterns. The scientists are currently attempting to activate the connection between the nano-bots and your system. If they succeed, I believe they will damage you beyond recovery.
Michael pulled back from Karr, horrified at the knowledge the AI had delivered to him.
It was the truth, unvarnished and delivered without care for the devastating effect that it would have on him. Karr had no reason to cushion the blow, as the AI was all too familiar with the attempts of others to alter his very mind. That was what the reprogramming attempts of the past had been and Michael had always been cautious not to put Kitt in the position of that happening to him. The Intruder made sudden sense – its attacks were an attempt to initiate a program buried in circuitry that had been built inside his brain. Michael was somehow overriding those attacks, but the effort was exhausting him in a way that he had never experienced before and was unsure how to combat. For long minutes, he wrestled with what he had learned and what he had to do. With his body held inert, probably by drugs, or worse by the nano-bots inside his head, he was reliant on Karr to teach him how to navigate the electronic world his brain was now hooked into. Gathering the last of his courage, Michael reached out again, looking for that final piece of information that would help him decide what to do now.
Karr, what do you want from me? Michael asked quietly. He imbued the words with as much kindness and patience as he could, well aware that triggering Karr's defences would be catastrophic. Defences built by the AI's experiences and less than kind treatment by the people around it. It had always bothered Michael that Karr had been written off so quickly by everyone: that Kitt could have been treated the same way was unthinkable to him.
I want you to help me reprogram. I want… a partnership. Someone to be for me what you are for Kitt. Karr sent shyly.
Kitt is mine, Karr: and I am his. Michael could not lie about that. He had no intention of giving up his partnership with Kitt, even if he had to claw out the eyes of whoever was sitting in the drivers' seat when he got back to FLAG, But I could be your friend. And I don't know a lot about how to program, but I am willing to help you in any way I can.
A friend… that is acceptable. There was hope in the AI's tone now, and Michael took strength from it. He may not be able to save himself right now, but maybe he could help Karr.
0o0o0o0