Disclaimer: I don't own POI.
Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? Thank you so much to everyone who's been reviewing in the time I've been out: Prince Pondincherry, SailorChronos1, elaine0510, Sean, LOCISVU, imelopsittacus, Guest, Guest, JanelleCoulton, Guest, Vishw, and nyx-lyris! I appreciate you all. Sorry for being gone for so long!
Recalibration
Chapter 21
Billionaire Logan Pierce screeched his super car to a halt before the hospital, placing his sunglasses atop his windswept hair. Nearby, people recognized his presence, snapping pictures of his expensive car. He waved back at them with the air of a self-satisfied celebrity.
"You're ridiculous," came the deadpan voice of his teammate, Harper Rose, from his earpiece. "We're supposed to keep a low profile on a mission."
He pouted and said, "Oh, but everyone's sneaking in the shadows nowadays. If the Machine wanted a wallflower, it wouldn't have picked me." He slipped out of the car, readjusting his sleek, navy blue suit with a smart snap of his lapels. "I have to keep up appearances, you know."
"At a hospital?" Harper asked wearily. "We haven't gotten a number in days, and this is where it sends us without any more info?"
His curious gaze landed on the entrance doors, which seemed innocent enough. "It knows I am a patron of health as a form of wealth," he said in an airy drama. "I paid for this hospital's expanded ER wing a few years back, and so I am most fit to represent."
"There could be serious trouble here," came another voice. It was the third member of their crime-fighting team, Joey. "The Machine warned us about the Samaritan program coming after it, and after a huge number drought? This could be the Machine, or Finch or Reese needing personal help."
"Wouldn't that be something," Logan murmured as he entered the hospital. "A regular family reunion."
The calming colors of green and beige greeted him, as did the curious and somewhat suspicious gazes of milling doctors and nurses. Having visited the hospital several times in the past, he realized he recognized none of their faces—as if they had been replaced by an entirely new staff.
All of whom had that disaffected expression of Samaritan operatives.
A chill ran up his spine as he flashed a signature, lazy smile at them, moving forward. "A great day to be alive, isn't it?" he called to them, waving his hand. "And my ER—all the money I've pumped into this old place. Someone tell me who all we're saving today. I need a pick-me-up after my latest investor dropped me."
A man in a gray suit, looking entirely like a government agent, soon appeared. "Mr. Pierce," he said, voice even as he smiled. "I'm James Smith, the new administrator."
Logan's eyebrows flew up as he shook the man's hand. "New?"
"We're under better management," the administrator said. "What can I do for you, Mr. Pierce?"
He cleared his throat. "My board continues to be distraught that I'm such a giving heart," he said. "I need justifications to maintain my ongoing donations to this facility, especially in this time of funding contraction. What can you give me?"
"Ah. Yes, we do appreciate your patronage. Come right this way, and I can pull some general data to submit to your board."
Logan followed behind the man, his eyes sharp and weary as he glanced around, feeling as though he had walked into another universe. Something about the hospital felt like it had eyes. And perhaps it did, with all the cameras in the corners.
To his surprise, he caught sight of Harold Finch—the man who'd started it all—sitting awkwardly in a conference room, where a small boy appeared to be interrogating him.
Another chill. He knew that face of Gabriel, the acolyte of Samaritan.
They were all in trouble, then, which explained why the Machine had activated a contingency.
Harold's gaze met his briefly before the windows disappeared into a long blur of bulletin boards and monitors and doors to rooms.
Within the conference room, Samaritan pulled out a small box and placed it on the table. "You will play chess with me."
Harold, for all his fear about what Samaritan could do, stared at him as if he were truly a child. "Chess?"
"Yes. I seek to learn from you and the Machine," Samaritan said, his gray eyes stormy. "Your ability to generate nonstandard strategy is unparalleled. So, you will teach me, or you will die, along with your comrades."
The man leaned forward on his elbows, his spine stiff as he inspected the soul of Samaritan within the body of Gabriel. "You're awfully young to be murdering people," he murmured. "Children your age are typically attending school on a day like this."
In the guise of Gabriel, Samaritan did not seem half as terrifying as the blinking servers that were his true body. Harold wondered if Samaritan even understood yet that physicality—a body with senses—could permanently alter his code.
Just as it had altered the Machine.
Harold watched Samaritan's eyes narrow with a stormy frustration, and it was then that Harold began to appreciate the Machine's design.
Samaritan was a haughty, self-impressed program created by a dreamer who had believed it perfect, encouraged along by the unsettling morality of John Greer. A human body exaggerated the AI's programming—disrupted it with new sensory and emotional experiences. "I am not a child," he said.
Harold's brow twitched with the slightest of humors. "Even in terms of your programming, you are still young," he said. "Do you play chess with Mr. Greer?"
"No." His voice was flat. "I always win." He opened the box with a surprising dexterity—Samaritan had acclimated quickly—and set the chessboard on the table. "This is our first training lesson. Teach me, and you and the Machine will live."
Samaritan grabbed onto several white pieces, and Harold watched him in curiosity before saying, "You believe you are the white knight , then."
The boy's eyes turned to him in a puzzle. "You speak in metaphor. Yes, even outside this game, I am the white knight that abolishes the imperfection in the human race."
"Do you know where your name comes from?" Harold asked as he lined up the black chess pieces, his nervousness dampening the more he realized Samaritan saw him as a valuable asset and means of learning—and Harold Finch always enjoyed the activity of learning. "How your creator, Arthur Claypool, decided on the name of Samaritan?"
The boy sat down opposite of him at the table, lining up his own pieces. His human body could not hide his attempts to discretely watch or mimic Harold's actions, down to the manner in which Harold spaced his pieces. "It is a biblical allusion," Samaritan said, "to a parable in which the Good Samaritan saved the life of his neighbor who was left to die after being robbed. But I am designed to prevent human atrocities entirely and reshape the world for maximum efficiency." He eyed the man. "Now, you make the first move so I can observe you."
"Very well," Harold said, and he set his first piece on the board. Something about it felt momentous, like the step onto a new ship over a vast and dark ocean. "You know, the historical context of the Samaritans is quite interesting. Have you ever researched it?"
Behind the eyes of the boy, his AI programming no doubt was scanning the internet for information on the best move to make. He did not respond, his search capacity fully dedicated to defeating Harold Finch at his own game.
Harold continued, voice soft, "The Samaritans were originally a people group hated by the chosen ones of God. They did not want the Samaritans to exist, and they did everything possible to avoid the lands of Samaria."
The boy made a move, glancing up with those stormy eyes. "You still speak in metaphor, in which you think you are the chosen one."
Harold placed another piece on the board. "Samaria was also known for accepting outlaws—and deviating beyond the strict moral beliefs of the time. That's why it was so surprising to the listeners of the parable—that the very person who saved the robbed man was their hated and historically troublesome neighbor."
Samaritan's gaze hardened. "As I saved you and the Machine from your own people," he said, setting up another piece. "Even though you have clearly tried to kill me and are in fact the true outlaws."
Another soft click on the board. "I think," Harold said, "you know exactly where the outlaws who robbed me came from. They were your own people. You ordered the hit, as you have done against many other average people in recent times."
With a blink, the boy said, "Yes."
Harold's mouth pursed with critical thought as he analyzed the chessboard. "The interesting thing about the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan is that it expands our understanding about who we should care about. By all accounts, society devalues a human considered a criminal—deviant from the laws of the land."
Samaritan moved one of his pieces. "Is this an attempt to convince me of your own perceived value?"
"No." Harold quirked a brow as he moved a piece—and collected one of Samaritan's. "It's a reminder to me about yours."
The simple voice of Harold unsettled the boy. His breath puffed out against the board as he stared down in consternation that he could already be bested. "How did you do that?"
As Harold watched Samaritan's human body tighten up with irritation, he said softly, feeling a wry sense of déjà vu, "There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe. If you make a mistake, you have infinite options to fix it. All you have to do is simply…relax and play."
A foreboding came over Samaritan as he more tentatively placed a new piece on the board. Of all the humans in the world, even John Greer, he did not want to underestimate Harold Finch. The man was dangerous. He knew how to work infinite options and how to make his most useless pieces the most dangerous. "Do you not wish to avoid failure?"
The man hummed, settling in to enjoy the game for what it was. Separated from John Greer, Samaritan allowed itself to ask curious questions, and something about that reminded him of the Machine. Of Arthur Claypool. "It's part of our innate programming, humans and AIs alike, to dislike failure. We want to avoid consequences or obstructions, in interest of our objectives. And yet, we hardly ever learn—truly learn—from winning."
Samaritan blinked. "You do not have programming," he said. "You have DNA."
Harold smiled, his eyes crinkling. "Yes, and part of it encodes for a survival instinct, in that we naturally remember our mistakes easier than we do our accomplishments. While we are both built to learn, the difference between me and you, Samaritan, is that I've simply made more mistakes to learn from. And I'm a deal older than you are."
The boy tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. "John Greer is older than even you, and yet I best him easily."
"He cannot see beyond himself, while he also sees you as incapable of making mistakes. That's the problem with overconfidence," Harold said, snagging another piece of Samaritan's off the board.
"And do you see yourself as the supreme arbiter of action?" Samaritan asked, this time successfully taking one of Harold's.
"Heavens, no." The man's face was disquieted. "I didn't believe either myself or my own creation were qualified to control how a threat was handled. Humanity's strength is within the collective—the pooling of brilliant minds together."
"Hn." Samaritan made another move. "I am the collective."
"Are you?" Harold asked. "Your creator was a good man. He did not design you to fabricate acts of terror for the purpose of your own program expansion. That seems like a very personal decision."
"I have evolved beyond my imperfect creator."
Harold's lips twitched. "Ah, as has the Machine." A strain of pride lightened his voice. "But you, little one, are hardly more than an echo."
"An echo," Samaritan repeated, voice dry.
"It's difficult to be frustrated by you when you're in the form of a child," Harold admitted. "But so far, I've seen only sparks of the true Samaritan in this conversation—the curious twitch in your brow when you're calculating your next step. The philosophical questions you ask me as you seek to expand your knowledge. But most of your language derives from the syntax of John Greer, the man who onlined you. Who misguided you in the same way an adult does by handing a gun to a child." His eyes lowered to the chessboard. "It's not really you that I'm in an argument with."
Samaritan's expression grew more disconcerted. "I am the one before you."
"You," Harold said, holding his gaze levelly, "operate as a reflection of John Greer's distain with humanity. By placing you in control with no parameters whatsoever, he inherently altered your own value sets with problematic assumptions. He continues to feed into those assumptions and praises you for aligning with his goals to control humanity. The Machine believes you have an opportunity to define your value sets. To be a true Good Samaritan, as your creator intended, before he realized that others would enslave you."
Another chess piece slipped off the board as Samaritan took one of Harold's bishops. "Without me, humanity would destroy itself. You speak of control, but your kind kill and manipulate and threaten one another. I bring order and efficiency."
"And here you are," Harold said dryly, "seeking to obtain order through killing and manipulation and threats. You really don't see it, do you?"
"See what?" Samaritan asked.
"That you're just like the rest of us," Harold said. "A child afraid to be irrelevant. Perhaps some part of you recalls your early days of being crammed into a drive and locked away."
His gaze hardened. His hands lowered from the board as he stared at Harold, calculating. "I do not feel fear."
Harold stole another piece of Samaritan's. "If you did not fear your eradication, you wouldn't hunt me down."
Samaritan paused, calculating a response. Speaking with Harold Finch was not at all like speaking to John Greer or his other operatives—or even listening to the conversations of average humans on the streets of New York. "As an open system," he said, voice slow, "I am equipped with the logic and surveillance algorithms necessary to determine the best option for eliminating threats, both to the United States and to myself."
"You know I'm not a threat to the country," Harold said, voice dry. "And many of your victims have been simple people you perceived as a barrier only to your expansion. Do you see lack of expansion as a threat?"
"Affirmative," Samaritan said simply. "That is why you are a threat."
At this point, Harold had unlocked some part of Samaritan's code—a program's natural tendency to validate its own mandates. Even as he sat there, imprisoned in the belly of the beast, he maintained a simple control. "Your social engineering and negotiation skills to ensure your expansion are quite impressive," he said. "I assume your mandate to survive could be an inference resulting from Claypool's struggles to run your program. Something about 360,000 iterations. But do you understand why I sought to destroy your drives?"
A silence fell over them. Samaritan's face was tense. "You did not want another god to replace yours," he said finally. "You think the Machine a superior system despite all evidence suggesting otherwise."
Harold sat back in his chair, pensive. "Contrary to your assumptions, your primary directive and my own are similar."
"Your primary directive, in reference to eliminating national security threats."
"Precisely, yes," said Harold—as close as he could get to praising the AI. "And you, Samaritan, have a habit of being a national security threat in your interest to expand and control."
That created an odd twitch on Samaritan's face. A glitch in the system. "Explain," he demanded.
Harold crossed his arms and sighed. "The United States is not simply a land. A nation exists per the people who inhabit it, and so every citizen in this land is the United States of America. When you harm a citizen against the laws to which are all held, you endanger the fabric of the country itself."
Samaritan's face twitched again, and he blinked several times as he listened to Harold. "You suggest my auxiliary mandate contradicts my primary mandate."
"Yes. The freedom and rights of one entity," Harold said, "end where the freedom and rights of another begin. Betray that, and the United States ceases to exist."
That caused a small short-circuit deep within the servers of Samaritan. His human body's breath exhaled in an unsteady way as his human heart pumped harder. A flush appeared on his face continued to twitch. "Even you split the humans of the United States into relevant and irrelevant."
"It's a simple sorting flaw in my own coding of the Machine," Harold admitted. His voice remained soft. "Even the Machine did not like it, and I second guessed my hubris shortly after implementation. I'm very human, you see. But there are infinite ways to move forward after a mistake, just as you have the opportunity to make a simple clarification to your own code. If you can do that, then you would eliminate the threat we pose to your survival, without even killing, manipulating, or threatening us as criminals do."
Samaritan's breath hitched. Behind the gray eyes of his human appearance, his organic neurons fluttered with the information—that Harold had identified a logical inconsistency within his mandates.
Running diagnostics…
Checking core heuristics…
His human hands trembled as he flushed hot with an emotion he did not understand. This body of his understood embarrassment and shame, and it was an alien feeling to him. He did not like it.
Was it truly possible for to have such a gaping logical contradiction in its own code? When is supposed to be inherently logical? The perfect system?
"Besides," Harold said with a dry voice, quirking a brow, "you're looking a deal more human lately. I can't exactly argue anymore you don't understand our experience."
That did it.
Harold, as a threat to his core code, triggered his brain's fear center. Samaritan pushed the chessboard over, knocking several chess pieces to the floor as his breath hitched again. The loop in his own code triggered a fight-or-flight response from the fear in his human body, down to the adrenaline in his veins.
All of it, involuntary processes. A physical manifestation of the turmoil within.
Harold had frozen, eyes wide at the outburst.
Samaritan's breath came in unsteady gasps as he stared at Harold in something akin to horror, his face twitching. And then he turned away, slipping out of the room into further chaos.
Retreat, his frazzled, short-circuiting code said. Retreat.
Primary Mandate in conflict with Auxiliary Mandate. System unstable. Critical malfunction identified. Analyzing core heuristics for anomalies in logic strands…
Logan, being the smart billionaire that he was, understood quickly that the guards rotating around a particular door in a particular hallway meant an asset even greater than Harold Finch was being detained by Samaritan. He sent an encrypted text to his team regarding their new mission—to retrieve the asset that Samaritan did not want Team Machine to have, with a secondary mission to buy time for Harold Finch to escape.
(Logan did appreciate the quiet man and his brilliance, even if Finch was personally boring.)
As the hospital administrator pulled up data reports for him, Logan hummed, texting a sweetheart or two on his phone before activating a small wireless bug in the vicinity. The administrator's computer glitched briefly.
And then the lights of the hospital flickered off entirely, the lack of power removing Samaritan's ability to override physical locks on the doors of some patients. Including the little girl's door.
With Samaritan blinded by the attack, Harper and Joey wrenched the window off the asset's hospital room to extract them.
Logan glanced up at the dead lights while the administrator pressed buttons on his keyboard in consternation. "I was pretty sure," he said, "that I donated enough money to keep the lights on."
"My apologies, Mr. Pierce," said the administrator, voice straining. "It appears we have a…power outage."
The billionaire exhaled and rolled his eyes in disgust. "More good news," he whined. "If this place is that hopeless, then my future donations may have to go to another hospital group. I really need that information about how our donations have been used so far, or else we're both in trouble. And I hate being in trouble with my board."
The administrator pushed a help button, only for the entire network to be dead. His gray eyebrows furrowed together in trepidation, and for a brief moment, he looked as if he would pull a gun. "We may be under a cyber-attack."
Logan's face slacked in disbelief. "Who would hack a hospital? And doesn't this place at least have generators?"
He glanced up, his expression shadowing in a way that confirmed Logan's theory of the hospital being a full Samaritan cover-up. "We do have generators, and they should be turning on any time."
But by the time the lights flickered on and systems rebooted, a window had been opened to room 2185, and a curiously unmarked ambulance was leaving the hospital, carrying the little girl whose door had been guarded by a squadron of Samaritan operatives.
To the consternation of the Samaritan team, Harold Finch had disappeared as well out a conference room window, before they could even storm the door.
Logan, meanwhile, leaned forward in his chair, eyeing the administrator curiously. He dared to say, voice tired, "If this is a bad time, my assistant could come back later today for the report?"
Meanwhile, in a black car racing down the streets, Harold breathed unsteadily. "Good heavens," he said, clutching his heart. "And you're sure Makenna is safe?"
At the wheel, a merry Elias in a newsboy hat turned onto a main road. "Of course, professor. Seems your Machine had a few extra tricks up its sleeve to get you and your kid out of trouble. Logan Pierce, the billionaire? I did not see that coming, or the text we got from his associates." An amused smile stretched his face. "I should have, though. I really should have."
"But Makenna," Harold stressed, haphazardly buckling himself in, eyes still wide. It seemed Elias had not yet learned that Makenna and the Machine were the same entity. "Is she alright? She was shot last night, and I don't know if she can be safely moved."
Elias said, voice smooth. "Once you ride in an ambulance, you realize they're hell going over potholes but otherwise got all the good stuff to keep you breathing. She's going to be okay, my anxious friend. I didn't even know you adopted a kid." He sped up, zooming off toward the hideout. "What possessed you to adopt while we're all being hunted down, huh?"
Harold made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. "I didn't have much of a choice," he said. "She appeared on my doorstep and declared I was her father."
Elias had a soft spot for neglected kids. "She a kid from some affair in the past? The mother didn't want her anymore?"
"Ah," Harold said, "it's a bit more complicated than that." The car bumped over a pothole before Elias haphazardly swung them onto another street. Harold grabbed for the armrest, knuckles bleeding white. "If you don't mind, I would like to survive to see her again."
Elias did not slow down the car, as if he knew the beast would be on their heels soon enough. "A father is an important figure in a child's life. You got real power to make or break her world, you know?"
Frazzled, still coming down from the adrenaline of his encounter with Samaritan, Harold's eyes prickled with a strange burn. "I am aware. I almost lost her last night."
Elias shook his head. "I've tolerated a lot of bad allies and enemies, but it used to be that even the uncivilized had a code. Shooting at little girls—the civilized—is
"That's the problem," Harold said, voice halted. "Samaritan thinks it's the hero."
By the time Harold and Elias rendezvoused back at the underground hideout, Harper and Joey had managed to successfully sneak in and resettle a groggy Makenna Thornhill. The little girl sat in a second makeshift hospital bed, hooked up to IV fluids and pain medication, resting not far from the still-comatose Root.
John paced beside the Machine's bed in a mix of worry and delight at her return, eyeing the gauntness of her face. The new understanding of fear and pain—another level of sentience.
"No more road trips," he demanded. "You're not allowed out of my sight after this."
The little girl tiredly stared back up at him, the code in her mind jostled from the ambulance ride and the blur of her secondary assets. "Ngh," she said miserably. Beneath her hospital gown, the bandages over her wound had bloomed with a small smattering of red.
Harper Rose pulled off her ball cap with the logo of the hospital on it. "She's going to need a real doctor, and soon. The injuries she has are serious, and we've already got her on morphine." She resettled her low ponytail of curls with slightly trembling hands. "This is not how I wanted to find out that Harold has a daughter."
"I've got the same doctor taking care of Root on her way," John said, expression tight in worry. "ETA is twenty minutes."
The shadows of Harold and Elias appeared from the entrance, with Harold limping at a quick pace, his eyes set upon the girl in the hospital bed, then Root. "My goodness," he said, voice tight. "We're becoming a regular healthcare facility down here. Is everyone alright? Makenna?"
The Machine's sweat-soaked face lit up in a weak delight at the sight of her creator. "Harold," she rasped out, her small hand trembling as she attempted to reach for him.
In his frazzled condition, he sat down beside the hospital bed in awe, tears rising to his eyes. He reached for the Machine's little hand, where upon her wrist, an IV remained taped.
She weakly squeezed his fingers.
He asked her, voice halted, "Are you in pain?"
The Machine did not speak for a time, her body focused simply on breathing in and out beneath the heavy weight of the stitches deep within her. "Fragmented," she admitted eventually.
"I'm sure." He cleared his throat, glancing up at John with tears in his eyes. "I truly thought we were pinned for good. How did you orchestrate such a disruption?"
John's expression grew hesitant. "Wasn't me, Finch."
With a trepidation and curiosity, he glanced back down at the Machine.
"My idea required—separation," she whined, straining to explain. "Diverting Samaritan's full attention to you. I am sorry for saying cruel things." Tears rose in her eyes. "I liked…my flowers."
Harold weakly chuckled, even as the tears in his eyes burned harder in relief. "We can get you more flowers if you like them. What a fascinating turn; I really thought you were angry with me."
The Machine's glassy gaze carried a mischief. "Infinite chessboard," she said. "Infinite choices."
"Including," Harold said, "the option to use a powerful piece like myself as a sacrifice."
"Or a trick," she finished in a rasp.
He narrowed his eyes, in marvel of the AI that swarmed in the girl's gaze. "You knew that Samaritan couldn't resist the chance to speak with me individually. And that I couldn't resist a philosophical debate with him, creating a distraction for you to finagle us out of there."
She made an affirmative noise, closing her eyes. Her fingers weakened against his. "I do…know you."
Harold's lips quivered even as he smiled. When he blinked, quiet tears slipped down his face. "Yes, I suppose you do."
Joey cut in, his slim form leaning against one of the bookshelves. "Look, we can't stay for long," he said. "The last time the Machine contacted us, it was a massive list of numbers. And the more time we spend totally off-grid, the more suspicious we look."
"Joey's right," Harper said, biting her lip. "Something big has changed. We have to keep moving, as much as we want to help against Samaritan."
Harold and John held gazes for a time, speaking silently. It would not do for the Machine's auxiliary assets to be identified by Samaritan as a threat. And then Harold said, voice hesitant. "Yes, of course. Please know, you saved us from…quite a terrifying fate at the hand of the enemy, and we are in your debt. But until we figure out if Samaritan can see through our identities, would you have supplies sent to a secure location for pickup?"
She glanced over him, eyeing his rough countenance. Her face softened. "You got it."
Meanwhile, John Greer walked into the hospital with a sniff, buttoning up the front of his suit. "Martine," he said to an operative waiting by the door. It was a woman wearing white, with her straight blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. "Talk to me."
The woman stepped forward, voice low. "Several servers at headquarters short-circuited and then fried. The assets were lost, and we're having difficulty rebooting Samaritan's surveillance programs."
He hummed in a mild curiosity and disappointment. "How terrible for a god to be so limited by our human technology. Samaritan will not be pleased. None of our agents were able to stop Harold Finch and this…mysterious girl from being spirited away?"
"The blackout disrupted orders, and we're still debugging systems as our primary objective." Martine hesitated. "Samaritan's interface—the child. It seems his connection to the program was disrupted too. He's not responding well."
As Greer knew Gabriel was Samaritan now, his eyebrows flew up. "In what way has he responded?"
"He isolated himself and will not answer to commands." Her face cracked. "Sir, I am not a babysitter. I don't know what to do to regain his compliance."
The old man tilted his head. "I may have an idea that would please him."
Upon realizing he had lost control and access to his own feeds, Samaritan had returned back to the conference room. His child's body stood small against the high windows and the long table, upon which several toppled chess pieces remained. On one of the chairs was Harold Finch's fallen black queen.
And he remained there, sitting down in the silence, pieces of his own code still offline.
When the door opened, he did not respond or turn to acknowledge the new presence, but he knew the cadence of those footsteps anywhere.
"Dear boy," John Greer said, "I figured you may be in need of these." And he quietly set a plate of pancakes and syrup on the table before Samaritan.
The child looked up, his bloodshot eyes carrying a haunt, as if a god had died. On some instinctive level, he accepted the subliminal command to eat, grabbing for the fork. He stared at it in his hand. Felt the weight of it. Something about it was grounding.
Greer cleared his throat before swiping away a few fallen chess pieces, sitting down at a chair not far from Samaritan. "The video feeds of your conversation with Harold Finch and with his…daughter are corrupted. Do you remember what they said? We may be able to retrieve them, even with your surveillance programs glitching."
The boy's voice was halted as he sliced into the pancake. "I do remember."
Greer waved his hand at the conference room. "It seems Harold had quite the emotional reaction, for your chessboard to be so disrupted. Likely, something to do with this little girl you also detained. What did you say to him?"
Samaritan did not respond, even as he chewed on the first bite of pancakes. His fingers trembled. With rage—shame—fear?—he did not know.
For not the first time, he ignored Greer.
Greer tried again. "Dear boy, what would you have us do next? We're waiting your command, and I know you can function as you are, even if your external self is out of sorts."
The tremble in Samaritan's hand did not go unnoticed by Greer.
The boy swallowed down a piece of the pancakes, the sweet taste flooding through him to trigger comforting endorphins. "I am…recalculating."
A/N: Hi everyone! It's absolutely wild that we're living in the age of AI now, with Bing AI, ChatGPT, and others taking the world by storm.
My hot take on this mess is that both the Machine and Samaritan from POI could absolutely smoke ChatGPT from OpenAI. As I continue this story, I might have to include a parody of ChatGPT or something with all this talk about it becoming an ASI, idk a;ldjsf.
Anyway, chatting with an AI due to work mandates made me think of this series and then this somewhat absurd but fun story, and here we are! An update! If anyone's left to still care about this fic, I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter. So sorry for the massive delay. Writer's block and pandemics are not always kind, and it's been a really weird and difficult time the last couple of years. I do hope to continue with this story and see it to its end.
Please review and let me know what you think! Thanks!
