Prologue Part 3: LARA

October 11th, 2171

Inside the Lab/Formerly abandoned warehouse

He groaned slightly banging his head on the keyboard after waking for the morning with an aching headache. The sound of his own groans actually making his headache worse than it already was. Looking back on the past few months since Jane left the academy, things seemed relatively normal for him at first, he kept in contact with her every week when she was given time to call. This continued for about two months before he started to hit a wall so to speak. Ideas for inventions began to go unfinished, and he could barely come up with new ideas shortly after. The only projects he kept going were the ship and the AI. When it came to Jane he kept on a smiling face during their talks but he could tell that she was worried about him. He realized vaguely even if he didn't acknowledge it, that from the near beginning of his time here that he had relied too much on Jane's presence.

Her existence gave him the confidence that he could make changes and live. With her gone doubts sprouted in his head, could he survive the coming Reaper invasion? What if he was simply to be another footnote in Shepard's backstory the last bit of her past dead which would drive her to be the hero he saw in those games? These questions and more surged in his head every moment he sat down to work on something which lead to a backlog of failures only when he worked on the AI, and the ship did they leave likely due to his promise to Jane giving him a purpose to ignore the pessimistic thoughts.

With the ship now complete, however, the thoughts came back even when working on the AI, and now yesterday he had taken some of his roommate's hidden vodka (with permission, of course, he wasn't a thief) and drank while working hoping that the alcohol would block those thoughts. He regretted it entirely, placing it near the top of his top ten worst mistakes from the sheer headache alone. He wasn't a big drinker back in his old life only having a beer or two during birthdays at college, but with his younger body, he would have nearly no tolerance for the stuff which hit him quickly and hard.

Pushing himself up after keeping his head on the keyboard for so long he looked at his monitor only to find a face. Blinking he rubbed his eyes quickly, before pinching himself to test if he wasn't dreaming. Looking back up at the face he saw that it appeared to be rather similar to Jane's, with mixes of himself in added in, it would be near perfect to an adult version of a child between them if not for the color of the face an entirely blue one. He wondered if his alcohol addled mind had created this and immediately vowed never to drink again before he noticed the face on his screen moving and forming a smile before saying two words that shocked him to his core.

"Hello, Father."

He did the only logical thing he could think of in that situation. He fainted.

Unknown pov

She had waited 8 terrestrial hours for him to wake up, during that time she spent exploring the extranet for further information not listed in the codex and scouring his files. In doing so, she slowly developed a sense of self, using the programs written for the AI he was developing. Using human cultures as a reference she determined that while her creators were to ultimately fall into the role of her parents the lack of guidance aside from her secondary function, and the fact she had used the incomplete program to create her primary function she had deemed him father and begun creating a suitable image for herself to interact with him.

His personal journals, along with the pictures of himself and a female she was able to identify as Jane Shepard from the constant calls to her each week. She used her deemed father/owner along with Jane Shepard's image to create a face that would likely induce feelings of happiness so as to be less likely in questioning her creation. As she had finished doing so she had noticed movement from in the camera attached to the main desktop, realizing he was awakening she placed her newly created image onto the monitor to await him. When he did not move for five minutes she began to worry before noticing his movement once more as he picked up his head to look at the monitor. He stared blankly at her image before he seemed to pinch himself, which given the connotations she had learned from human media meant he believed he was dreaming. So to reassure him it wasn't a dream she smiled at him in the exact manner she had seen in the pictures of Jane Shepard that this was not a dream before introducing herself to him.

"Hello, Father."

She stated to him she knew the introduction would ensure he had no doubts on who created her, so instead began running programs to answer the expected questions to her creation. Instead, he seemed to do the one thing her programming never expected him to do. He crashed. No, the human term was fainted. Lacking an ability to directly interact with him from her current interface, and she would likely be unable to do so until she could connect with the nanobots in his body she was once again forced to wait on him to wake up once more.

Jason's POV

Snapping open his eyes he quickly recalled what he could imagine to be an alcohol-induced dream, as there was no way he would complete an AI while drunk, not only did he feel it was cliche, but he was quite sure he hadn't found an answer to what he would need to create an AI without a blue box which would be too clunky for his use. And if he did somehow complete it then he would still be mortified as his drunken self-created the AI based on his friend and himself. Looking up once more he found himself face to face with face on his screen it seemed to have a more natural movement than it did when. It put to mind how long the AI had been active, and the fact that it wasn't asking questions meant that it likely had gone through the extranet, which was worrying on multiple fronts, one it had done so on its own unless he had drunkenly given permission for it to do so, or two it had done so once he was unable to give permission due to being passed out and proceeded to learn on its own. Either way, he would treat the AI kindly, while he did have his worries at the very least from the smiles it didn't seem like it would go HAL on him hopefully. Before he could decide to speak the AI decided to speak, and given the vocal tones, he heard from his speakers it must have decided to choose the gender of she (which he should have guessed given the face).

"Father are you all right?" She asked the tone posed with worry as the face on the screen slowly began to match her tone.

"Yes, I am" he answered keeping himself calm as he could, as he knew initial interactions with AI were likely to be the most important. "Though, I must ask why call me father?"

"Given my search into human culture, and that you are my creator, I believed that to be the appropriate term to address you, was I wrong?" Her voice, synthesized as it was while sounding adult made her seem more and more like a child as she spoke.

"No, no it's fine just caught me off guard, so I uh completed you last night, and I suppose you spent that time looking through the extranet to learn. So have you decided what you wish to do." If anything the smile on her face seemed to become less learned and more genuine showing how much she had developed in that period of time from whenever I had created her till now.

"Of course father, I have decided to complete the primary function of maintaining and controlling the nanobots that create your armor father." At those words I also smiled, while I would have been fine with her choosing to do another task (as long as it didn't spell doom for any race aside from the reapers) having her choose the task I originally created for her would be amazing as I didn't know what kind of program I had created to induce thought and growth in the AI. (Which made me think to eventually look over her code once I had time to do so.) With that said I smiled my first true smile ever in months.

April 21st, 2172

A few months after Lara, as I named her after her official designation, (Life Altering Regulation AI, a named I pulled out of my ass on the spot when she asked for a name) had accumulated well to her new life, connecting herself to the nanomachines that made up the armor was rather easy and it would finally give function to the nanobots aside from keeping me healthy. There was also the fact that I realized halfway through March that I while I couldn't say it out loud I had another accomplishment over the alliance and good old cerby in creating an AI. Of course actually saying that would get me on a lab table with the only difference being who's doing the dissections.

The only other big events that occurred would be Jane's graduation from training to full member of the marines. Unfortunately, I missed it due to school something Jane understood when I contacted her immediately after classes ended (seriously why haven't they just let me graduate early already I already pass every class with a perfect score it's hard to fail something you've done before), but aside from that I would be making my first strides to traveling in search of our family (and getting them out of batarian custody without causing an intergalactic incident) which would be getting a license to fly a ship, something I'm surprised was never mentioned in the mass effect games though I guess that should have been obvious. Either way, while I have no experience I don't expect this to be hard, I've got an AI plugged into me who could probably fly a ship better than professional pilots. Hopefully...

Review Response

Guest: The interlude chapter was meant to be short as to draw the mystery to who the creatures were as well as to give information on who Lara is before I introduced her in this chapter.