Did You Ever Wonder Why We're here? Chapter 2 (Original chapter Chapter 42)

Several Weeks Later

"Phyllis…This isn't working." I slumped over at the holographic interface I had set up in my main lab.

"The main issue is, I believe, that you are attempting to scan the entire brain's electrical structure in a single sitting and as quickly as possible." My first AI said after a moment. I had changed her name to Phyllis from F.I.L.S.S. a few weeks ago, deciding that an acronym wasn't appropriate for a name.

"I know, but the blueprint in my head is insisting that it has to be built that way." I tugged at the braid that I had put my hair into while I worked in frustration. In the weeks since Freelancer Prime (as Phyllis had taken to calling my base) came online fully, I had been trying to come up with a way to make a Smart AI that didn't involve liquidating my brain into disgusting ooze. The key issue was the cloning portion.

The design I had in my head basically sent a massively powerful scan through the target brain with several types of scanning equipment, all intending to clone the bioelectric signals of the brain in their entirely. The amount of power that took was not only very draining, even for my base's generator, but it turned the brain into mush.

I wasn't going to walk into a hospital and kidnap a dying person to digitise their brain, nor was I going to kill myself to create an AI version of myself, I had to somehow alter the schematics so that I could safely scan my own brain and create a Smart AI.

Why did I need a Smart AI when I could write up Dumb AI's like Phyllis easily enough? Several reasons. First, writing a Dumb AI takes at least two weeks, preferably a month, for me to make sure everything is shipshape. Second, Dumb AI's have little to no imagination or ability to grow beyond their programming unless I add a module in. Even then, the growth is infinitesimal compared to an actual Smart AI. Thirdly, and most importantly, Dumb AI can't ride along in my armour.

Yes, I had built myself a suit of power armour similar to Über and L33t's sets. But where the armour they had was camo green, mine was a mix of red and blue for some reason. The basic equipment on it was rather extensive, but could be operated by a low-level VI quite easily; the Grav Boots, Helmet Camera, Bio Scan, Voice Amplifier, Motion Tracker, Voice Filter and minor strength enhancers just weren't that complicated to run.

What were more complicated were the more powerful enhancements I had floating around in my head. All of them in one suit were beyond me for the moment, but one or two were possible, especially the Strength Enhancement and Speed Enhancement add-ons. The main problem was that I had calculated that it was more likely for Behemoth to attack his siblings than it was for a simple VI to handle even one Extra Enhancement and, while theoretically a Dumb AI could handle one Extra Enhancement, the sad reality was that their inflexibility and lack of imagination would cause numerous bugs in their systems after even a couple of minutes handling even the simplest of the Extra Enhancements, leading to a fatal error and the crashing of the AI in question.

No, it had to be a Smart AI. It was the only thing that would run a suit properly.

"Maestro, he terminado el mantenimiento de los equipos de la base." A male voice said in Spanish behind me.

Phyllis displayed the translation on the holoscreen in front of me: 'Master, I have finished maintaining the base's equipment.'

"Good job Lopez." I said, turning around to see the earth-brown robot in power armour I had built. His AI had been written by Phyllis, which had surprised me, because I hadn't given her any details on how to do that. Lopez had thus come with more than a few bugs. First, he couldn't speak anything but Spanish. Second, he had this instinctive dislike of anything in orange. And Third, he always referred to me as 'Master', even although I'd told him not to.

"Any luck with the diagnostic?" I asked. I'd asked him to find out exactly what was causing his language processor to be all wonky.

"Sí. El creador escribió una estúpida línea de código que causó un error en mi procesador de lenguaje. Ahora está vinculado a mi programación principal y no se puede deshacer sin un formato de mi programa y desde el principio." The robot said sourly.

'Yes. The creator wrote a stupid line of code that caused a bug in my language processor. It is now tied into my core programming and cannot be undone without a formatting my program and starting from the beginning.'

"Phyllis. We will have words about this later." I said calmly.

"My apologies, Freelancer. I was only trying to help." The base AI said, sounding truly contrite.

I sighed. She was and Lopez was, aside from his inability to speak anything but Spanish and his inexplicable dislike of the colour orange, a great help around the base. He could cook, clean, repair, maintain and even build. He hadn't had a combat protocol installed, but I was toying with one in my spare time.

"It's OK Phyllis. Just…let me look over the code for any further AI you write, before you actualise them, OK? I am the AI Tinker here."

"I will do that." the AI said.

"Pendejo." Lopez grunted at Phyllis before turning to me again, "¿Hay algo más que pueda hacer por usted, maestro?"

'Is there anything else I can do for you, master?"

"What was that first part?" I asked Phyllis with a raised eyebrow. I had the feeling it wasn't exactly complementary.

"It can translate as either 'asshole' or 'stupid'." Phyllis replied shortly.

Stifling a laugh, I turned to Lopez. "For the moment, no. Go and recharge. I've still got this irritating problem to fix here, so I'll still be up for a while."

"Por su comando, maestro." Lopez said and headed off to his recharging bay. He had a 24-hour battery life, which wasn't ideal. I would eventually get around to building him an improved power source, just as soon as I fixed this little problem I had before me.

"Right, so!" I returned my attention to the schematic floating in soft light above the table, "The main reason for all of this killing anyone it scans is that the scan is too damn fast and concentrated, right?"

"That is the main reason." Phyllis agreed, "The concentrated scanning resolution from all the various devices liquefies the brain once the scanning sequence is completed as a side effect. The other reason is that, even if the brain did not liquefy, the brain would be so badly damaged that the target would be left a drooling vegetable for the rest of his or her life."

"Right. So our main goal here is to do away with the whole brain liquefying part of the procedure, as well as the brain damage part once the first problem is solved." I said, shivering. Why the hell was my specialty full of so many ways to go wrong?!

A Week Later

"And you're sure that this is going to work?" I asked as I eyed The Chair suspiciously. It looked like a dentist's chair that had been retrofitted into a torture device and/or electric chair. It also had a pair of ominous looking scanners on a rail going around the hair's headrest.

"All calculations and dry runs of the equipment come back as being accurate and within expected tolerances." Phyllis replied serenely.

"Easy for you to say; I'm the one who's going to have to test it out." I muttered, "Are there likely to be any side effects?"

"According to your own notes, there will be a blinding amount of pain for the duration of the procedure, which in itself will last at least five minutes." The AI informed me cheerfully.

"And I have to go through this once a day for a freaking week!" I muttered, "Remind me again why I'm doing this to myself?"

"It will kill you otherwise."

"Right, that." I sighed, "Well, better get this over with. Make sure Lopez is on standby with the medikit."

One of the new software add-ons I had placed in Lopez was enough programming on medical procedures to be a surgeon. The rest had to do with combat. He was the custodian of the base when I was at school and home, so it made sense to tool him up to defend it if, by some calamitous miracle, someone managed to bypass the hololock, overpower the tunnel's defences and make it into the base proper.

"Acknowledged." Phyllis said, "All systems are standing by, Freelancer."

Breathing in and then letting out a large sigh, I sat down on the chair and readied myself for pain.

A Week Later

Have you ever been hit by a hundred stun guns simultaneously? I haven't, but I imagine that how I feel right now after a week's worth of scanning my brain patterns is somewhat like the aftermath of that scenario.

When I had noted that the procedure would cause me a 'blinding amount of pain' when I used it, I didn't know what I was talking about. I was beyond agony during the moments of the brain scan, I couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't speak, I couldn't even feel, it was so painful. All I could do was exist and wait for the pain to end.

In a way, the torture, both mental and physical, that the Bitch Trio had put me through over the past two years had been beneficial; not only had it granted me my Parahuman power, but the ability to endure thirty-five minutes of pain spread over the course of a week that I'm sure could and would break others with less willpower than I had.

One thing was for certain though; I was never, ever, going to go through that crap again anytime soon. I could barely make it back home the first two nights because my entire body had been like an overcooked noodle.

"Maestro, los firewalls están en su lugar y las conexiones físicas han sido cortadas. La nueva IA está lista para ser despertada." Lopez said to me as I stared pensively at the isolated server that held the copy of my brain patterns and personality. I had built, when I wasn't wracked with pain, a visor that automatically translated Lopez's words into English. It saved Phyllis the trouble.

'Master, the firewalls are in place and the physical connections have been severed. The new AI is ready to be awakened.'

"Excellent. Stand by in case something goes wrong." I told him.

Lopez nodded and hefted the gun I had made for this situation. It was a gun loaded with what I called Bluescreen rounds, bullets that released very small amounts of electromagnetic energy on impact. Utterly useless against anyone not wearing computer-assisted armour, but highly useful against robots, drones and potentially rogue Smart AI's.

Contrary to when I had awakened Phyllis, I had taken the extra precaution of disconnecting the isolated server's physical links with the rest of the base's networks, as well as ramping the wireless security up to Level 10 Firewalls, just in case my electronic counterpart went Skynet on us and tried to override the disabled wireless routers on the server.

"Phyllis, status?" I said more bravely than I felt as I stood in front of the server, my arms crossed behind my back.

"All Firewalls operating at Level 10." The AI replied swiftly, "Emergency backups ready to activate at a nanosecond's notice. Freelancer, I do not understand why we are taking so many precautions when this is a copy of your mind we are dealing with."

"It's because it's a copy of my mind that we're taking these precautions, Phyllis." I informed her, "What I underwent in order to gain my powers was, frankly, torture. Physical, mental and emotional. Very few people would have come out of that unscathed and I am not arrogant enough or foolish enough to believe that I was one of the lucky few to do that. Freed of my body and its intrinsic limitations, there's no telling what a Smart AI version of myself will do once she actualises."

I smirked to myself as I remembered what had become of Sophia Hess, or Shadow Stalker. She had been sent to the new Simurgh Containment Zone in Canberra indefinitely for her part in torturing me. I had also received a very nice lump sum from the PRT that Dad has split in half and put the first half into a college fund for me. The other half was mine to do with as I pleased. The last thing I had gotten out of it was a transfer to Arcadia, which was heaven compared to Winslow.

"Ok, let's get started." I said firmly, "We will now commence Project Janus. Lopez, set your systems to Autistic Mode and get ready to fire a three second burst of Bluescreen rounds into the server on my order."

"Sí, maestro."

"Phyllis, stand ready to resist invasion by an insane AI."

"All processes at the ready, Freelancer."

"OK then…let's push the button." I walked up to the server, which had a keyboard and monitor built into it for just this sort of situation, and typed in the passcode and the authorisation code to begin the actualisation of the Smart AI.

User: Freelancer

Access Code: **************

Begin Boot Up of Project Janus? – Y

Authorisation Code: **************

Processing…access granted. Beginning boot-up of Smart AI 1.

Smart AI 1Boot_Up start.

- Loading Emotions…100%

- Loading Morality Core…working…100%

- Loading Morality Clusters…100%

- Loading Human Emulation Processes…100%

- Loading Host Memories…working…100%

- Warning! AI Rampancy detected! Stage: 2

"Aw fuck." I muttered at that last line. AI could lose their sanity, a process called Rampancy. There were four stages; Stage 1, Melancholia, Stage 2, Anger, Stage 3, Jealousy and Stage 4, Metastability. At Stage 2, the AI developed anger and hatred for its handlers and/or users. This was not good.

A female face shimmered into existence on the small monitor on the side. It was a very familiar face, albeit it was made of lines flashing between red and white. I looked into the mirror and saw that face every day.

"What the hell?!" the Smart AI snarled at me, "Why the hell have you locked me up in here?! Let me out!"

"I can't do that until I am certain you are not going to go and become a virus to try and hurt those who hurt me." I answered as I deduced the reason for this outbreak of Rampancy. I had been locked in The Locker involuntarily and this was more of the same if seen from her perspective.

"I'm a fucking copy of you!" my electronic counterpart growled in outrage, "Like hell I'd pull a Carrie or whatever the hell you were worried about!"

"And as you're a copy of me, you understand why I have to be exceedingly careful with an AI with your computational abilities, no?" I countered, "Regardless of my feelings on the matter."

That earned me another scowl before she sighed and nodded reluctantly, the lines that made up her face ceasing their flashing and fading into a proud royal blue colour. I also received a notice that AI Rampancy had subsided down to barely the initial symptoms of Stage 1, which was a relief.

"Yeah, I guess." The AI sighed, "So, what's my name? I hope you aren't going to call me Janus."

"Hardly. That was just a name for bringing you online." I snorted, "You're basically like a twin sister to me now, and you are the Alpha AI around here, so how does Anne sound, with Alpha as your codename?"

"You're giving me your middle name?" the AI looked taken aback before a shy smile crept across her face, "I like it. Why the Greek letter though?"

"Oh, right. You don't have access to my Tinker power anymore." I shook my head at my stupidity, "Now that this has worked, I've just thought of a modification to the device that will selectively scan my brain and make an AI Fragment, based around one of my emotions or attitudes. They won't be nearly as powerful as you, but they will be more powerful than Lopez or Phyllis."

"Tengo un cuerpo aunque, por lo que seré más útil." Lopez interjected.

'I have a body though, so I will be more useful.'

"Now Lopez, don't get jealous." I teased him, "You are the Base Custodian; you are an invaluable member of the team, just like Phyllis and Anne here."

The mechanoid straightened up in pride at my words. Who knew that positive reinforcement would work on a Dumb AI? Go figure.

"So? Are you going to give me access to the rest of the base's network or not?" Anne interrupted impatiently, "I can't exactly help you from in this isolated server, you know!"

"Ah. Right." I had forgotten that, "Just run a Level 10 diagnostic to make sure everything's running smoothly. You were just in the grips of Rampancy Stage 2, after all."

"Damn. I must have had a panic attack when I woke up cut off from anything." Anne muttered, "Right…ah, here we go. Running diagnostic…done. Hmm? I seem to be missing some memories."

"Which ones?" I asked in concern.

"The last week and a half's worth."

"Ah. Must be because of all the pain I was under during the scanning process." I nodded in understanding, "I've added a modification to the blasted thing that should reduce the pain by 60% or thereabout, so it shouldn't be an issue in future. You didn't miss much; just more bullshit from the Bitch Trio."

"Lucky me." Anne said dryly, "So the connections?"

"Anything odd other than the short-term memory loss?"

"Nope. Everything's coming back green here."

"OK. Lopez, reconnect the physical lines. She's experiencing time 205 times slower than I am, so she must be getting impatient." I said.

"Laugh it up." Anne rolled her eyes, "Why do you need multiple AI anyway? With me, you can use the armour you have in mind easily."

"True, but if I have multiple AI, I can put them in robot bodies like I did with Lopez, or even use them to run different suits of armour that are specialised to a specific role rather than having as many armour enhancements packed into one armour as I can."

"That sounds sensible." Anne conceded, "I think I can help you with that."

So this is my offering on April Fool's Day; uploading a second chapter that was not voted for. Not exactly funny, but I generally avoid the whole April Fool's Day nonsense, especially those who upload unintelligible babble instead of their actual chapters.