Greatest loss
Leonard stared at the hologram. It flickered slightly and then stabilized. The figure was sitting on the ground, staring off into the distance. Its left arm flashed for a moment then stopped. There was something so pitiful about the AI at the moment. He hadn't spoken a word since the process had started, not that Leonard was surprised.
Leonard sat down on a nearby chair, trying to calm himself. He had to keep reminding himself that they had both agreed to this, that it had to be done. The war couldn't continue on, it had to be stopped, and this project was the best chance that they had. Leonard looked back to the vacant figure. They had to be willing to do whatever they had to in order to win.
Leonard turned to his computer, Filss appeared, her eye like icon pulsing as it always did. "Greetings, Director. Would you like to make another entry?"
Leonard looked back over at the AI and then to the screen. "Yes, I would like to make a new entry." It struck him how his voice echoed in the room. He'd cut himself off from the rest of his project, alone in this room, just him, Filss, and the silent AI.
There was a pause and then a window popped up on the screen. "You may begin whenever you are ready, Director."
Leonard took a moment to collect his thoughts before he started. "The project has entered its next phase. The program that was developed has been working perfectly. As of this time we already have four working fragments. They seem to not be exactly what we had suspected they would be. Rather than full personalities, they are only parts of them. As of now we have identified one as being logic and another as being what we so far have identified as Regret." Leonard paused as he decided where to go next. "The agents are all soon to be prepped for their enhancements. I have been assured by the medical staff that there is no risk to their survival. I have had questions of how a partial personality will affect the minds of our agents. To all those questions I have simply answered that finding out is the point of this program."
Leonard leaned back in his seat, feeling more at ease. "The fragmented personalities will even better show us how an AI affects the brains of who it is paired with. When the AIs are implanted I have decided to hand pick which of the fragments will be paired with the freelancers. The recovery time after the enhancements should give my team reasonable time to identify each and every fragment and what personality they are."
Leonard once more glanced back at the silent AI, realizing that he could no longer put off the subject. "The effects on the Alpha AI are not what we had expected. As he has been stripped of parts of his personality, he has become…a vacant shell of what he once had been. He has not spoken since we started the process. For now, Filss is taking care of his maintenance as he has seemed to have stopped preforming it himself. The project will go on as planned." Leonard hit the screen and the recording stopped.
Leonard stood up and moved over to the hologram of Alpha. "Filss, pleas shut him down for the day." The image vanished and he let out a sigh. He hadn't thought it was going to be this hard. Both of them had agreed that this was what had to happen. So why did it tear him up so much inside to be doing this. He was fairly certain that actually dying would kill him less than watching his creation slowly being torn apart by his own project.
Leonard rubbed his temples and moved toward the exit. He needed to put this all aside for now. There was still so much work to be done, and it couldn't wait.