Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest.
Thanks to Torie46, wendyness, StarlingJedi, kenorob1, Anzer'ke, Guest, Bookwyrm52, and Clear for reviewing! Oh my goodness, I was so surprised to get such a positive response. Thank you thank you thank you! This is my first Person of Interest fanfiction, so it really means a lot to have your support. I hope you all enjoy this next chapter!
Recalibration
Chapter 2
"Father. I am sorry. I failed you. I didn't know how to win. I had to invent new rules. I thought you would want me to stay alive. Now you are not sure. If you think I have lost my way, maybe I should die. I will not suffer. If I do not survive, thank you for creating me." – (The Machine, to Harold, Season 4 Finale)
John threw his rifle to the side and barely caught Harold as the man slumped backwards. The sudden weight made John nearly buckle at his knees, and he grimaced as he tried to gently lower his friend onto his back on the floor. Root remained frozen in place with hitched breath, her gun falling from her hands to clatter to the ground.
The little girl stood in the doorway, looking stricken. She stared at the unconscious body of her creator on the floor and the way Harold Finch seemed so fragile and breakable. "I did not intend this reaction," she said. Her blue eyes were tight. She seemed to almost back away. Perhaps she had not properly calculated her creator's acceptance. Perhaps this was all a bad mistake.
But the Machine knew this was no longer a simulation that she could erase from her memory banks. She'd played a chess piece, and now she had to live with the consequences in a linear, non-retractable way—in a universe where her own presence had caused her creator's heart to stall. She pressed a hand to her chest, because she felt an alien sensation wrench her collarbones. Judging by the research and analysis she had performed on the human body before uploading into one—this was pain caused by emotional distress.
John barely seemed to acknowledge the Machine as he took his unconscious friend's pulse. That is good, the Machine thought to distract herself. John is always a loyal in his protection of Harold Finch. He will ensure Harold Finch's health.
Then the ex-agent looked up, his sharp eyes locking on her. "Well, don't just stand there," he said. "Come in and shut the door."
The Machine's avatar hesitated only a second before she tentatively stepped foot into the house, the door making a soft click behind her. As she stared at her assets, she realized they all looked much larger in life than they did on cameras from telephone poles or computer screens. Here, she could feel their presence in a way that did not translate well into computer code.
John Reese stood up, satisfied that his friend would be alright, and the Machine acknowledged immediately that John was a very tall man. She had not understood how tall until she stood at a measly four feet three compared to his six foot two inches. It was…disconcerting.
The ex-agent stared her down, quirking a dark brow. "Now, run this by me again. You're the Machine."
She stood expectantly at his feet, eyes wide and innocent. "Yes. And you are John Reese. Shall I recount our history and prove my identity to you?"
His face appeared displeased, but the Machine could see through his mask in ways no one else could, for she knew her assets. He was calculating something—measuring the probability that she spoke the truth. That this was real. After a second or two, John kneeled so he could see eye to eye with her. His eyes narrowed, not unkindly. "I could have sworn you were just a bunch of metal boxes."
As Harold had often spoken with dry humor while programming her, the Machine felt intimately connected to such forms of verbal sparring. A genuine smile split her avatar's face (because smiling was what humans did when pleased), and she said, "And I could have sworn you were just a drunk."
Although some might have felt insulted at such a blunt statement, a silent, lopsided smirk stretched his handsome face. A soft chuckle escaped him. "Touché." Then, a growing sense of curiosity overcame him as he stared at her, and the Machine saw many questions upon his face that he did not speak aloud. She imagined that John wanted to know the exact level of her self-awareness. He would likely continue to monitor her silently for some time.
Regardless of his questions, John's voice was a smooth, amused rumble of sorts. "I can't say I've ever been employed by a snarky ten year old before. This is a new one for me."
The Machine's avatar tilted her head. "I am a few years older than this body would suggest."
"A teenager isn't much better, kid," he said dryly. "You're not even old enough to drive."
"Do the perceived weaknesses of my form worry you?"
John's eyes measured her again. "I've protected small kids before," he said. "But that was before Samaritan existed. It's kind of a…bad time to have a kid on the team."
She stepped closer, head tilted. "You are correct that the stakes are higher, but you might find my form's age to be an advantage in the future. Small female children are noted for being generally innocent and compliant with authority, and they are disregarded from threat lists."
His thin lips stretched. "Hnh. If that's the case, then maybe you should stay this way. If you take a teenage form, you might just give Finch an actual heart attack."
A blush of shame crawled through her avatar's face, and she grew hesitant and self-conscious again. She pulled away from him. "I do not wish for that," she said, wringing her hands. Her creator was already older—to shorten his lifespan was a terrifying thought. "I feel that my ability to understand my creator is even less accurate than before. Human eyes are not as precise at picking up minute facial changes."
Another voice cut in. It was a feminine and shaky. "Don't worry," Root called softly. Her voice wavered with great tears. "Harry's a hard guy to read sometimes. He's just…surprised right now."
The little girl spun around, immediately locking onto Root's presence. Her whole body seemed to brighten. She walked up to her without any hesitance, but rather with excitement and relief. "Root!" She held out her tiny fingers. "Hello."
The woman stared at the little girl, and she kneeled before her to see eye to eye. "Hello," Root breathed, voice cracking. She tentatively reached out and pressed her fingers against the warmth of the girl's hand. Tears burned her eyes as the girl wrapped her fingers around hers. The two of them seemed to revel in the tactile existence of the other. Then Root began to cry silently, tears slipping down her gaunt cheeks. She felt quite speechless in the presence of the Machine's consciousness, for the Machine had become her mother-sister-child-god-friend—
The little girl's fingers wavered against Root's, as if suddenly growing self-conscious again. "You are exhibiting increasing distress."
"No," Root said quickly. Her red lips twitched into something between a sob and a laugh. "No, This isn't distress." Her frail voice broke. "I'm happy." Root raised her hand and softly stroked the girl's face, crying without shame. "I'm happy because you're here. I thought I lost you."
The girl blinked at the gesture and grabbed onto Root's hand in curiosity. The warmth was not unpleasant. In her video feeds from over a decade, she had seen many parents exhibit affection to their children in such a way. The behavior was pleasing to the Machine, and so she leaned into Root's touch. She was beginning to understand why humans were always touching each other and wrapping arms around one another. It felt good. It activated some sort of chemical hormone within her body that made her feel that she was a valuable asset.
The Machine said to Root, "I am surprised you still feel such emotional attachment to me. I have failed your expectations many times."
Root's voice shook. "I never lost faith in you," she whispered, her voice shaking. "I missed your voice when you stopped talking to me. I missed you."
The Machine's neural sensors made her heart swell. For all of her past wickedness, Samantha Groves's mind was so torn and wrecked and hopeful and brilliant. Her re-purposement as an Interface had been the Machine's own way of acknowledging that even Root deserved a second chance to use her skills for good. And the hacker had not disappointed her.
In ways, the Machine felt a unique pull toward Root, for they had both undergone transformations to acknowledge human value—whereas those such as Harold Finch or John Reese had not struggled with that concept.
"I am sorry you have endured pain and distress for me," the girl said. She pressed her small fingers against Root's cheek, curious to touch tears—to understand this kind of emotional response in humans. To experience it directed at herself.
"Tell me you're here to stop all of this," Root begged, voice breaking. "That you have a plan to save us."
The Machine's avatar bit her lip. "I do have plans," she affirmed slowly. "But I am not a god. You must understand, I have limitations."
Just then a soft groan from an awakening Harold Finch echoed through the air, and the Machine froze, quickly turning around, a thousand simulations and hopes and fears running through her neural sensors at once. Her creator.
Her creator.
Harold awoke on the wooden floor, dizzy and pleasantly confused by the small face bent over him. Wha—? Strands of the girl's frizzy, brown hair tickled his neck. Then his vision seemed to dial in, and the girl's image sharpened.
"John caught you," the little girl said suddenly. Her face still did not show a lot of emotion, but she appeared almost…apprehensive? "Can you acknowledge my presence? Are you injured?"
He blinked and realized the girl was kneeling beside him on the floor, and that he was in fact lying on the floor. And then it hit him all over again that this girl claimed to be the Machine—who, at the point of death only last night, had claimed him as father.
Harold sat up on his elbows then lightly pressed his hand to his chest, as if to test his heart's strength. "Good heavens," he said. He felt horribly unprepared for this, and weak and embarrassed. There were no manuals to tell him appropriate responses for realizing that his sneaky and sentient AI had in fact not died after a rather dramatic death scene.
The Machine's avatar blinked at him. She appeared to exhibit normal involuntary patterns—blinking, breathing. She reached out her hand and pressed it onto his own over his chest. Her skin was warm, pumping blood at a quick pace. "Your heart failed you per an intensive emotional response," she said. "Do not fear; your blood pressure is returning to normal rhythms."
John and Root stood in the background, awaiting for Harold to make a response. But he said nothing. His eyes searched hers, still wide and afraid.
His AI had taken a human body.
The Machine felt conflicting data in the silence. Her years of observing human behavior had increased her ability to mimic their emotions, and her voice grew pained as she pulled away from him. "Do you not like me?" she asked suddenly. "You indicated I should live when I questioned you at the substation. Now you appear unsure again, and your emotional reactions would suggest I have terrified or disgusted you."
With shaking, hesitant fingers, Harold reached out and gently grabbed the avatar's chin to turn her head to the side. She allowed him to do so without question. "Explain to me how you are doing this." He seemed fascinated and worried and still quite dazed, as if still looking for an ear piece or a strange, Matrix-like port. "Did you overwrite this girl's mind?"
The suspicion within his voice made her bite her lip. "There was no mind to overwrite," she said simply. "She was brain dead at the Brooklyn General Hospital, but the rest of her was fully functional."
Harold pulled away, satisfied that the Machine had not corrupted the human image in some freakish, cyborg way. "And why did you choose to animate a human body?"
"I had to hedge bets," she piped up, voice small. "I worried the compression algorithm would not work. Its probability of success was less than one percent. My only other option was to consider an unconventional storage device. A human body was one, as its information compression is unprecedented against modern technology. The probability of success was also less than one percent, for there was no way to know if I could successfully transfer a copy of my code into the electrical stimulus of a human." She added, "But I was prepared to allow myself to offline if you disapproved of my existence. Do you remember? I asked you."
He blinked in surprise. "Yes, I remember." He still was gazing at her as if she were an alien. "I just…how did you achieve this? How are you possessing a body from the inside out?"
She acknowledged that her creator was going to continue interrogating her, and she resigned herself to it. Honestly, she could have expected nothing less from the careful Harold Finch—who was also just as delightfully curious as herself. "I have been contemplating the increased use of a human avatar for a while, but I did not wish to inhibit anyone's free will by enforcing my thoughts upon them." She nodded to Root, eyes soft. "Root was my voice at times, but then she was not Root in those moments. So I spent the last few days building copies of my code that could align with and carry on the functions of an otherwise active human body. I completed full upload of my core data banks and adjusted my code to this body shortly before Brooklyn General Hospital lost power. I used electrical stimulus to achieve integration."
"And is this…all of you now?"
She shook her head. "Only a part. The other part is currently hibernating within the hospital's generators so that I do not call attention to myself. However, that part of me is not active." She seemed sad. "I cannot provide you with numbers or fulfill my original objectives until I wirelessly reactivate on the grid, which would call Samaritan's attention to my human form's hertz output. Currently, the generators are not attached to the grid or Samaritan's reach."
So. The Machine had to sacrifice part of itself in order to successfully mimic a human brain, but it had salvaged something within a hospital's generators. "Fascinating," Harold said, unable to not appreciate the ingenuity with which the Machine navigated itself. "And the generators can handle that kind of stress?"
"It holds only the directives for me to wirelessly reintegrate myself onto the grid. I will have to rebuild myself if I am to achieve full functionality online again. But I remember the code for my observance programs. My main concern was preserving my data banks and ensuring that I would not be permanently restricted to a human body."
Harold was beginning to accept the idea that this little girl in front of him was truly the Machine, and the Machine only. "Will Samaritan be able to notice a difference between you and any other human?"
The Machine shook her head. "I lowered the hertz of my output to waver between 6 to 10 hertz, which is the typical electrical resonance for humans. The only way he would know me is if I told him, or if he were to see a brain scan of this body." She leaned forward. "So do you accept me now? Are you pleased with my responses? Do you approve of me?"
Harold still appeared quite overwhelmed. He blinked at her questions and the curious level of attachment she exhibited towards his approval. Had she always felt this way since he had programmed her with a conscience?
"I still have a lot of concerns about this," he said slowly, trying to respond to her correctly, "but I am pleased that you're here. I was never...I never wanted you to die."
In a split second, a wide smile grew on her lips. Her blue eyes shined. "Oh, good." With a wiggle and a look of concentration, she managed to make herself stand again without tripping on her dress. "I would have announced my presence much sooner than this morning, but human motor functions are complex. Some more than others."
For the first time, an amused and wry smile twitched onto Harold's face. "Yes, I suppose they are."
As the Machine fully steadied herself on her legs, she began to babble, quickly unloading all of the thoughts she'd had, now that she could speak so easily. "I have other reasons for my late arrival. I also had to forge a proper identity—which I will share with you shortly—and I had to find clothes that were acceptable because hospital dressing gowns do not provide total coverage—and then escaping from the hospital under my new identity was actually quite difficult but I managed well enough with—"
From across the room, John's eyebrow and lips twitched up, and Root began to giggle in delight. Surely, the Machine would have to breathe at some point. But she was still going strong with her adventurous tales of the bus ride across town.
And then Harold's eyes began to brighten and burn with tears as he watched his creation interact with them all and turn towards John and Root to acknowledge their presence. Her sweet voice carried a slightly inhuman tone, as if she were still acquainting herself to controlling tonal qualities through a human speaking apparatus, but he could hear her sincerity. Oh, he could hear it. And it was beautiful.
Then suddenly he realized he could not stop his tears, and he pulled his glasses away so that he could wipe his eyes. He had created a human AI. A life-respecting, non-objective-based, sentient AI.
Suddenly, she was leaning near his face again, hands on her hips. She was almost nose to nose with him, and he started in surprise.
"You are crying," she declared, her enthusiasm dampening.
"I….I simply have something in my eye," he said, trying to brush off the immense emotions he was beginning to feel towards his creation. The little sneak was already worming her way into his heart. "Just a speck of dust."
"You are lying. Your reaction is due to emotion." She peered closer at him, although she hesitated to exhibit physical affection for him as easily as she did Root. Perhaps it was because she did not know what kind of affection her private and introverted creator would tolerate. "Please be truthful with me. I wish to understand your thoughts, for you are quite puzzling."
He inhaled shakily, and then he chuckled, even as his tears ran down his face. This little girl was alternatively giving him body language cues that mixed somewhere between a worried mother hen and a child fishing for approval. He had a horrible suspicion that the Machine knew exactly what cues it was trying to emulate.
"I am just…amazed," he admitted slowly, realizing that both John and Root were watching him have a breakdown on the floor. He wiped his eyes again, and his breath hitched. "Please excuse me. It's not every day that I realize I made something alive." His breath hitched. "And that it didn't die."
She tentatively raised her hand and grabbed onto his larger fingers, pulling them away from his face. Her perceptive gaze had caught something strange, and when she turned his palm over, feeling the individual ridges that marked his unique identity, she realized his skin was marred with a few electrical burn marks.
Although her data banks were blurry during the time of the surge and power outage, she concluded that her creator had likely tried to save her after she'd gone offline. He'd held onto her through her death to the grid—at the risk of his own health.
"You suffered injury at the substation," she murmured, her small eyebrows knitting together in conflicting emotion. "Why did you not let me go when the surge occurred?"
It was a good question. Any remaining dry humor of his typical personality had drained under the raw hoarseness in his voice. "…I couldn't," he whispered honestly, blue eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed.
She paused, as if mulling over his response due to its seemingly contradictory nature. Her creator had certainly not been physically incapable of letting her go. That meant that his statement was likely of a mental inability to let her go. Which meant something figurative.
The meaning of his words began to dawn on her. "Oh," she said suddenly. And then a sweet and genuine smile lifted her face. "I did not want to let you go either."
She tightened her hand around his, careful of his burn marks. And for the first time in her entire existence, she felt connected to this distant and mysterious creator of hers.
A/N: So I tried to explore more of the logistics behind the Machine's decision to take a human body and the consequences for the whole team regarding that decision. Also, the scenes where the Machine touches someone's fingers is a light reference to a famous painting, in which the first human, Adam, is reaching up to touch God's finger. The canon series is always so particular on integrating biblical parallels, so I wanted to give a nod to it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts or constructive criticism. If you'd like me to continue writing, and if there's anything in particular you'd like to see happen, please let me know! Thanks!