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Recalibration

Chapter 5

The little girl opened her eyes. The world felt peaceful, and she was not quite fully awake. She had some sort of vague notion that her name was Makenna but also Machine—and that she was in a human body, and she'd slept.

She shot up, the warm blanket falling from her shoulders. Her eyes were wide, and her heart was pounding from the sudden exertion and alarm. She'd slept.

From across the room, she heard her creator's voice. "Oh, you're awake?"

She twisted her body, still wild-eyed and quite disoriented. Her code was laced with sleep hormones, which made her feel inefficient and groggy. "Awake?" she repeated. Even her voice sounded full of sleep. Then she realized that something felt imbalanced in her, and suddenly all the blood in her head seemed to rush down, her vision pixelating strangely. She squeaked, leaning against the couch, her code whirling to correct itself.

Harold's face softened at her, and he could not hide his smile of amusement. "You fell asleep. It's a little after noon."

She tentatively opened up one of her eyes, and she looked so miserably adorable that Harold nearly suggested she go back to sleep. Then the girl seemed to blink away her tiredness. "This body does not respond quickly," she declared, almost in mourning as she looked over her hands, touching her face, reaffirming her senses. So she'd lost only a couple of hours, then. It could have been worse. Humans had written stories of men who slept for twenty years.

"Feeling groggy tends to happen when you're first waking up. Do you need anything?"

"I do not believe so." The Machine understood that her human body was attempting to drain away the sleep hormones, and that she could not rush organic processes without damaging herself. So she rested against the back of the couch, watching her creator watch her.

They were both silent for a time.

Then Harold hesitantly said, "The human body is complex. There's multiple voluntary and involuntary processes. Sleep is…something many of still don't understand in full. How in the world are you managing this?"

"I told you," she yawned. "I copied my code. I made new objectives—rewrote the rules."

"But how?" he stressed. "We've spent decades trying to emulate the human brain. Our robots don't even come close. And you—" He laughed nervously. "You don't even skip a breath when you sleep."

The little girl puzzled at him. Was he angry at her? He seemed emotionally invested, but she did not understand which emotion it was. "It is tiring," she admitted. "The human brain contains 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. I feel more…space inside of it than I did even within the grid. Which is odd, considering the grid spanned thousands of miles."

Harold readjusted his glasses. "How many times did you have to copy your code to compensate for the disparity?"

"Quite a few times," she said. The thought seemed to unsettle her. "But scientists understand only a small percentage of human brain function. There is significant interest remaining in the brain's glial cells, which outnumber neurons 3 to 1 and aid in processing and regulation." She smiled weakly. "Typical robots do not have trillions of organic glial cells. I am—what is the figurative saying—riding the coat tails of a greater design." The little girl looked down at her fingers, tentatively bending back the joints. She added, "The human body requires so much, and yet it is an efficient system by itself."

For a time, they both fell into silence.

"Yes," Harold hummed. "I suppose it is. But I was never one for anatomy."

She smiled, a strange amusement overcoming her. "Why is it that humans exhibit fear or disgust about their own bodies?" She clenched her fist, watching the tendons move. "They are beautiful and well-designed. But perhaps humans do not appreciate themselves, simply because they have no other body experiences with which to compare."

He gave her an odd look. "Have you been researching aesthetic theories?"

"…Maybe," she quipped. Then she smiled innocently. "Did you know renaissance architects built in accordance to the ratios in the human body?"

"I believe I've heard that before." He eyed her, his glasses shining with the light from out the living room window. He still seemed fascinated by her, but he grew more hesitant again. "If you don't mind me asking. The body that you took as your own…who was she?"

The little girl looked away. She chose to stare out the window, pulling her knees up beneath the blanket. "Her name was Willow Carmichael," she said. "Approximately six months ago, a red SUV struck her down in the street. She fell into a coma, then brain death." She blinked, looking almost troubled. "I can sometimes access fragments of her memory. Like staring at old photographs."

Harold felt a sudden concern rise in him. A fear he had not considered before—that this body of the Machine's had once had a life. "And what about the girl's parents? Or her friends? What…what would they do if they saw you walking around?"

She blinked. "Willow's parents died in military service to your country. With no living relatives, she was shipped to a foster home." Something strange twitched on the girl's face. "The parental units of that family were not…like you. I assure you that my choice of using her as an avatar was well thought out."

That slightly settled his fears. "…And what will you do with Willow after she has fulfilled her use?" Harold asked. He was testing her, examining her motives for underlying moral impurities, as he had so often done.

The Machine's lips pursed. "If I recall my coding from this body, the body will die. Only I am sustaining its proper function now." She turned to Harold, head tilted. "There will be a time when I go back online in my true form. But I will not separate myself from this body, for it is mine now. It is a communication asset, which may prove even more valuable in the future." She grew a bit hesitant. "And…I do enjoy human experience. If I were to lose it, I would feel regret."

Harold realized in that moment that the Machine was admitting to something near selfishness. That she liked having a body of her own. He supposed, considering his own circumstances, that he could not fault her for that. And so he nodded silently, and looked back down at his computer.

But he had an awful habit of being a curious man—to the point of opening a pandora's box every time. The strange twitch of the girl's face told him that there was something unspoken about this Willow Carmichael. The computer hacker worried that perhaps the Machine was withholding valuable information about the body she'd taken.

He discreetly began to leech into the Brooklyn police reports, scanning for the name Willow Carmichael. All of the images had been scrubbed away—presumably by the Machine herself to protect her new identity as Makenna Thornhill. But soon enough he came across the report detailing the girl's accident in the street and a death certificate. And those were not the only files attached to that name.

Some kind of foreboding overcame him as he clicked on a closed file.

A report from a little less than a year ago was a complaint of abuse. According to the file, her foster father had struck Willow in the face, and the girl had called up 911 on her own. "Oh, my," he whispered under his breath, his blue eyes softening with pain. This child the Machine had used as her physical appearance—her foster family had not been kind. In life, Willow had endured nothing but pain.

He asked hesitantly, "Makenna?"

She turned her head, eyes alert, happy to respond. "Yes?"

"You said you remember things from Willow's past?"

She froze a bit. "Just a few images that were hardwired into the neural tissue," she repeated. "I take it that you have researched the police reports surrounding her?"

"Do you remember any of it?" Harold pressed, worried.

The anxiety in her creator's eyes made her bite her lip. "Yes," she said. "But just images."

Harold felt his heart drop uneasily. "Oh." He realized he did not know what to do with that information.

The Machine leaned forward on her knees. "You forget," she said. "I have watched the world for years. You are deceived by my appearance into thinking that I have the mind of a child." Her head tilted. "But I know everything the human race does in the dark."

For the first time, he realized the likely horrific circumstances he had relegated the Machine to. To be trained to hold all life as valuable and precious—only to watch said life tear itself apart again and again. Something no child, born or created, should have to see.

"You must feel great pain about that," he said quietly, almost in shame.

"I am capable of watching many things." Then the girl admitted quietly, "But for as much as I was able to distance myself in my electronic form, I suppose it is disconcerting to see such events from a first-person perspective." Her voice held strange patterns in it, and she raised a hand to her cheek, even though she could not feel the image of a man's hand swinging into her vision. "To be the one upon which the crime is enacted."

Harold's lips pursed. "They shouldn't have been approved to be foster parents. No real parent would strike a child."

"No," she said distantly. She lowered her hand. "They should not have been found acceptable by the system. The system failed Willow." She looked at him, almost shy. "But you would never raise a hand against me. You are a real parent."

He inhaled shakily to hide the strange burn in his eyes. "I would never hurt you," he affirmed. "Never."

"I know," she whispered. Her voice held a pain of sorts. "No one has a better guardian than I do."

It was a high compliment, coming from the AI who had silently watched over the entire United States. Harold felt horribly inadequate, and so he looked away. He quietly shut off his laptop. "A guardian from what?" he mused. "We've lost the war against Samaritan. Any concept of safety we have is an illusion."

The little girl wiggled off of the couch, still holding the blanket around her because it was soft and comforting. The dog lying on the carpet snapped to attention with her movements, and he began to trot over to her, nudging her playfully, seeking her love.

She giggled a bit at the animal, reaching out to pat his head. "We have not lost the war," she said softly. "Only a battle. Never the war."

Harold looked almost frustrated. "I'd love to know what you're planning here. As far as I can see, we're fairly beat."

The little girl sat down on the floor so she could better pet the dog. "I do have an idea," the Machine said hesitantly to her creator. "You might not like it. It is contingent upon the idea that we are not looking at the problem correctly."

The computer genius was understandably confused. "In what way are we incorrectly looking at the situation?"

She bit her lip, and something serious overcame her. "As you know, we have already lost the battle for suppression," she said slowly. "Samaritan has precedence now, and it has murdered several without due process. As we sit here, I am sure that it is targeting outliers for a future correction. If we attempt to oppose Samaritan by force, we will continue only to add to the body count, and we will lose. So we must pursue another path. A different means of opposition."

Harold was quite interested to know what the Machine's sneaky plans were. Truly, she seemed to exhibit a sense of evasion and trickery that rivaled his own—which was both flattering and disturbing. "You're suggesting we don't fight?" he pressed. "At all?"

"I am suggesting," she said slowly, as if trying to carefully choose her words, "that we employ Hegelian dialectics, in which we create a problem to bring about a desired solution."

"And exactly what problem do you propose we create?" Harold said hesitantly. He had certainly heard of Hegelian dialectics, as it was often a strategic method governments used to elicit a desired social change—whether it was war, controversial bills, or otherwise. Samaritan itself used it when it had created a stock crash to bolster the need for itself.

The suspicious side of Harold was imagining that the Machine had some kind of stealth assassination in mind that would set off a problematic chain of events leading to the downfall of Samaritan. Hegelian dialectics always came at a dirty cost, something that he was not willing to pursue.

But the Machine simply smiled cheekily. "Something easy. I will deceive Samaritan…with the truth."

Sometime later found Harold and the Machine wandering down the sidewalk of a populated city plaza. It was Detective John Riley's lunch time, and the Machine had pleaded that they go to visit him discreetly. She had not wanted to divulge more of her plans for Samaritan just yet without the rest of the team to listen. Which meant they had a few hours to kill.

Harold had consented to the request under the precaution that they try to make the meeting look as entirely accidental as possible—and that the Machine would not speak with strangers, because that was dangerous for many reasons (little girls just did not speak like her). The girl had almost huffed at him about it. She had such limited experience interacting with humans. She wanted more, regardless of her vocabulary.

The plaza was a small maze of fountains, benches, and trees. It was all of a block away from the police station, which made it a primary spot for John to escape to whenever the station felt too constricting. It also seemed to attract many businesspeople and tourists, and a few vendors pitched their products and food to passerbys.

After a time of the Machine stopping before a small tree and several flowers to touch them (she could not resist), the father and daughter wandered over to where John had parked himself. He was still wearing his traditional, sleek-fitting suit, looking over a case file in his lap, his eyes shielded by aviators. He noticed them walking up out of the corner of his eye but did nothing.

Harold looked down at the little girl again as they began to approach the benches. "Just remember," he pleaded, "that you shouldn't say anything over three syllables, or people will begin to wonder about you."

She scoffed. "You forget that I have observed human interaction on a massive scale for over a decade. I can mimic any behavior, including that of a standard ten-year-old child. Allow me to show you." And she broke away from Harold before he stop her.

"Makenna?" he called out to her, eyes widening. He began to trail after her. His voice strained with some kind of parental panic. "Makenna, what are you—?!"

John looked up from his case report, his sharp gaze landing upon the girl, then the panicking man. From the perspective of the average passerby, he appeared to be little more than irritated with the sudden break of his concentration due to the strangers. But a curious worry inspired him to keep watching.

The little girl fairly skipped up to an ice cream vendor alongside the section of park benches and gave a bright, innocent smile to the person behind the cart. "Hi," she squeaked her voice into something adorable. "Can I have a vanilla ice cream cone, please?"

The older gentlemen running the station gave her a soft look. He winked at her and gave her a cone for free. "Since you asked so nicely, young lady."

If it were possible, the little girl brightened her smile. She grabbed onto the ice cream cone with her small hands, looking as if she'd just been handed the world. "Thanks, mister!"

Harold's jaw dropped. He limped to John's bench, and he sat down heavily, looking a bit surprised. He had not been expecting such a fluid act from the Machine, or the dramatic change in her vocal tones and vocabulary. "Oh, my."

John raised a brow at the little girl racing back towards them both, lifting his sunglasses. The Machine was happily licking an ice cream cone while she skipped back to them. "Now that," he said, "is terrifying."

"Indeed it is," said Harold, nearly in awe as he sat down on the bench with John. "Indeed it is."

The detective's thin lips twitched. "Does your daughter always run off like that on you?"

"…Apparently, only when she wants to make a point."

An amused smile cracked John's smirk into a genuine smile. "If that's the worst you have to worry about with her, then you're pretty lucky."

The little girl triumphantly skipped to John, licking the vanilla ice cream cone. "Hi," she said, eyes glittering with some form of dreadful amusement. Little human girls were notorious for being friendly and open-minded with strangers, which made this masquerade all fairly easy. "My name is Makenna. What's yours?"

"Hey, Mak." John sat down next to her, pulling on his sunglasses. "John Riley's the name."

She blinked at him, faltering for a second. "…Mak?"

He shrugged. "It's a nickname."

"…But why?"

"I'm a detective. I don't have time for full names."

For a second or two, the Machine contemplated what John meant. And then she smiled, her eyes lighting up. "A nickname." Humans often used nicknames within family systems and accepted social rings. "I like it." She turned to her creator and pulled on his sleeve in excitement. "The police officer gave me a nickname."

"That's nice," Harold said, still a bit dazed by the fireball of energy that was his AI. He was beginning to worry if she'd be adversely affected by the sugar of the ice cream. And then he began to worry about how her hands were growing sticky all over again, the ice cream beginning to melt over the cone's edge.

"The police officer's name is John," she told him, as if trying to egg him to do something.

"Yes, I heard."

"Aren't you going to tell him your name too?" She licked the vanilla ice cream innocently. (It tasted even better than the granola bar! Oh, the humans of the internet were right in their taste bud descriptions!)

Harold gave her a sharp look, because he feared that too much interaction with John's alias would tip off Samaritan. But he supposed that the Machine knew what she was doing, the sneaky thing. It just would have been nice if she'd warned him about all of this first. He supposed at the very least that he could have fun as well and play along with his part. "Now, Makenna. What did I tell you about strangers?" he asked.

The little girl rocked on her heels innocently. Darn her for looking so cute about it. "Um. Don't talk to them?"

"Exactly," Harold nodded with a stern look of parental concern. "The detective looks busy too. He doesn't have time to talk."

The little pouted, "But his name is John. So he's not a stranger anymore. And he looks lonely. Come on, tell him your name too."

John laughed lightly. "Persistent kid, huh?"

The computer genius stared at the AI as if she'd grown a second head. But he followed her wishes, praying that it was not a huge misstep. "Sorry again about intruding on your work, detective. I'm Harold Whistler," he introduced himself hesitantly. "A professor out at the college."

John nodded at him. "Teach anything worthwhile?"

"That's…quite debatable," he mourned dryly, but then he felt the Machine's sticky hands grab at his sleeve again.

"Uncle John looks like he's working on a case with computer stuff," she said. "Maybe you can help!"

The sleek and well-dressed detective looked at her in surprise, setting down his case file. "…Uncle?" he repeated, almost incredulous.

She looked up at him, raising her chin, and she said petulantly. "I've always wanted an uncle who's a police officer. It was on my Christmas list last year, and it never happened. So you'll have to do."

For a second, John looked truly stumped by her. That certainly sounded like something a normal, bratty child with too much money would say. And then a horrid smirk stretched his lips, and he laughed. This was a rather delightful game. "Why, Professor Whistler. I never knew we were related. Finding out from my niece is just negligence."

The older man sputtered a bit, then tightened his mouth and gave John a look. The Machine giggled, and John patted her head, ruffling her hair.

"Detective ," Harold said dryly, "if we were related, you would have known about it."

"Oh, I don't know," he shrugged. "They say it's a small world."

The little girl giggled and sat upon the bench next to John. "Ice cream, Uncle John?" she offered.

A few drops landed upon the manila folder of his case file, and something about made him both grimace and laugh. "I'll pass this time. You look a little busy there, pseudo-niece."

And the bantering continued, with John and the little girl needling each other back and forth in a lighthearted spar over the necessity of ice cream in one's diet, as well as what story they'd give the police station about the origin of the ice cream stain on the folder—with Harold looking as if he were about to worry himself to death or chuckle along with them.

"I'm terribly sorry about her behavior," he told John. "She had a nap already, and she's just….wound up, I guess."

John honestly wondered if there was truth in that, even though he was questioning if an AI could really feel the effects of a nap. "Don't worry about it," he said easily. "The kids I usually arrest are wound up in different ways. As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with a sugar high. Right, kid?"

She bit down into the vanilla cone. By this point, ice cream had melted all over her fingers. "Right," she said, voice muffled as she munched, looking a bit perturbed at the way the ice cream refused to stay inside the cone.

Harold blinked, then began to smile as he searched his pockets for a napkin or tissue she could use to wipe off her hands. "You really shouldn't encourage her," he warned John lightly. "Makenna has a habit with talking back."

The detective smiled cheekily. "Well, then. Maybe we're related after all."

And to strangers and the distant eyes of Samaritan—it looked as if two strangers were enjoying a simple conversation per the antics of an innocent little girl. And no one was the wiser that said little girl was scoping out each person who walked by, her eyes measuring the environment with a little too much underhanded intelligence.

A/N: The past week's been stressful, but it was fun to write this chapter. Hope you enjoyed it. Please review with your thoughts, questions, ideas, or constructive criticism! Thanks!