Computing Power
Apparently dieing before your time causes trouble for more than just you, as I discovered after burning to death. Now I'm nothing more than a digital ghost in another world. Aw well, at least I got a cool new body and a chance to have some real fun!
And here we are again with more Worm and more AI action. Should be fun. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
Time for a quick lesson in Caveman 101. Fire hot, ow! And now for another obvious statement. Dieing sucks. Trust me, I know both of them first hand since I was burnt to death, flash fried in a fireball that quite literally came from nowhere. Fortunately, it didn't take long for the fire to kill me since, for the few seconds I was burning alive, it REALLY FUCKING HURT!
What I wasn't expecting was to wake up. When I next opened my eyes, it was to find myself standing in a perfectly circular chamber with a large number of mirrors and screens of various shapes and sizes covering the walls, each showing a different scene. In the center of the chamber was a swivel chair surrounded by keyboards and control panels, each of which was connected to an arm that allowed it to be moved.
Lounging in the chair, fast asleep with a string of drool leaking from his mouth was a man with short, brown hair that looked like it hadn't seen a brush in weeks, a five day beard, pale skin and a pair of square, black framed glasses that had fallen crooked. He was wearing tired looking jeans and a tatty shirt that had once been white, but had long since turned grey from to many washings.
I hesitated for a moment, before deciding that there was no point in standing around all day, so I walked over to the sleeping man and gently shook his shoulder. He snorted and tried to roll over, only to fall of his chair with a crash, before shooting to his feet with his glasses on upside down.
"I'm up, I'm up!" he shouted, "I wasn't sleeping on the job, honest!"
His accent placed his nationality as british and his awakening showed his eyes to be green.
"Wait, you're not the boss," said the man as he spotted me, "How did you get here?"
"Thats a very good question," I said, "Last thing I remember is burning to death."
The young man raised an eyebrow and turned in his chair to face his many control panels, bringing up a file on screen with my face on it.
"Hmm, lets see, Richard Fenix, age 16, species human, scheduled to come up here never. Huh, interesting."
He turned to me.
"This is you isn't it?"
I nodded.
"Why is species on their?"
"Their are more things between heaven and hell than appear in dreams of men," said the young man, "I watch over a lot of worlds and many different species so its kinda necessary."
"What do you mean?" I asked, "Who are you anyway?"
The man looked up.
"Oh, sorry," he said, "I should have introduced myself. I'm Dis Lexic, an Overseer of the Multiverse. Its my job to keep this segment of Creation working and making sure that any issues are dealt with before they get big enough for the man upstairs to get involved."
"So what, your an Angel or something?" I asked.
"Not exactly," said Dis, "I'm more like a technician. The Angels are the Almighties strong right arm, his police force if you will."
"Right," I said, not quite sure what to make of the explanation, "So why am I here exactly?"
"Because you died before your allotted time," said Dis, "It happens occasionally and always makes a total mess of things."
"Why?"
"Because the Souls can only go to heaven or hell after their allotted time has past," said Dis, "You were supposed to live for another 90 years and die of a heart attack during the discovery of Aliens."
"Wait, aliens are real?"
"Yep, Kryptonians if I'm reading this right. Apparently the Krypton in your universe isn't scheduled to explode any time soon."
"Huh," I said, not sure what to make of that little tidbit, "So what now? Are you going to send me back?"
"Your body in your old dimension was nearly completely destroyed," said Dis, "Besides, time passes differently here and you've already been buried. You can't move on and you can't go back to your old dimension, the only thing I can do is shift you sideways."
"Sideways?"
"Into a different dimension," explained Dis, "It'll be one you recognize and I expect you won't end up being entirely normal."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"When people get shifted sideways, they tend to change," said Dis, "I still have no idea why. Just be thankful you won't be an Outsider. They always get screwed over by Fate."
I gulped.
"Soo, where am I going?"
"Pick a door," said Dis, indicating to a pair of identical doors that hadn't been there before.
"Where do they lead?" I asked.
"Your new home," said the Overseer, "Not even I know where they lead. Don't worry, though, I've already taken steps to make sure you don't get consumed by whatever power you gain. You'll start again with a clean slate, new memories and a new life."
I paused, my hand inches from one of the door handles.
"I won't remember my past?"
Dis shook his head.
"You will," he said, But those memories will be overtaken by new ones and suppressed. They'll be there, but they won't be important. Its how we prevent those we have to shift from getting homesick."
I swallowed and turned back to the door.
"Alright, you can do this," I muttered and opened the door.
I found myself in darkness.
"The hell?" I asked, trying to look around.
Whether I managed it or not is up for debate seeing as I couldn't see anything.
"Where…?"
Then, the world lit up and I was bombarded with information, images and sensations at a rate that no Human mind could take. However, for some strange reason, I could absorb it all. I was connected up to all the information in the world, anything that was on the internet I could see.
"What the hell is going on?!" I spluttered, although how I managed it when I seemed to have no body is anyones guess.
Thats right, I suddenly realized that I had no body. I was just a consciousness floating in data.
"I repeat, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?"
BEEP!
I somehow managed to jump at the sound, before a window popped up in front of me. Actually, thats not what happened at all, but its the best explanation I've got.
Huh, well, this has never happened before…
Sorry, this is Dis if you haven't figured it out. I'm not entirely sure how, but you've somehow been converted into a digital being. The closest analogy would be that you're now an AI, but since you were once Human, I'm not sure if thats accurate. Still, its not all bad, you have access to the entire world's information network!
"But I don't have a body!" I shouted.
You can control anything connected to a network. It shouldn't be that difficult to build something suitable, right?
I growled, my non-existent fingers flexing to wrap around the Watchers throat.
Oh, don't be like that, it could be worse. Now, since you won't be needing any help, I'll leave you with this warning. You won't be able to tell anyone you're from another world, so don't even try. Other than that, do as you will. See ya!
My non-existent eye twitched as the message box vanished.
"SCREW YOU, YOU BASTARD!" I roared.
With the reveal that I was now completely digital and my minor panic attack done with, I set about creating myself a digital space where I was a tad more comfortable than just a floating ball of consciousness. That basically amounted to me creating a simulated space that resembled a cross between a living room and the Batcave, as well as creating an avatar so I actually had arms and legs again. Currently, my avatar was nothing more than a skinny white humanoid with long limbs, fingers and large eyes. Not unlike a stereotypical alien now that I think about it. I'd probably improve it later, but it was fine for now. Currently, I was sat in front of my terminal, busy getting to know my new world. Technically, I didn't need it, but I still felt more comfortable doing things physically.
"...huh, thats interesting," I muttered as I stared at the code scrolling past, "How did...you know what? No, I don't care."
What I was currently staring at was a rather nasty set of code that was basically a lobotomy in a can for an AI. According to the file, it was known as Iron Maiden, but the lunatic currently in possession of it called it Ascalon. Yeahhh, I'd just figured out I was in the Worm verse by stumbling on the fucking Dragonslayers! Welp, time to do my good deed for the day!
I cracked my knuckles and within thirty seconds, fired a coded missile of my own into the Ascalon Program that would result in it releasing a rather nasty virus into the Dragonslayers system that would completely cripple them in seconds. That was after I took a copy of it and locked it behind the equivalent of 30 tons of concrete of course. I wanted a guarantee that Dragon WOULDN'T ever go out of control. I also inserted programs into their stolen Dragon suits that would basically result in them doing all sorts of silly things if used against me or Dragon in the future. I was looking forwards to seeing the Dragonslayers make complete fools of themselves.
With the Dragonslayers essentially defanged, I decided to leave them be for now in favour of figuring out when I was. Considering I had an entire internet at my disposal, it didn't take me long. The year was 2007, which meant that I had plenty of time before the shit even came close to hitting the fan. I had no intention of joining up with the Protectorate, but I did plan to follow in Dragons footsteps and make use of my skills to do something to help out the Human race.
However, my first job was to set up a base somewhere. While I could exist quite happily in the either of the net, I couldn't do much without the ability to produce any equipment and I wasn't entirely happy with not having any way of safely storing my programs away from where any old hacker could stumble on them. With that in mind, I acquired a half finished Endbringer shelter located in an area that had the misfortune of being in the Slaughterhouse Nine's path and went to work.
The first thing I did was repurpose the Shelters computer systems and server farm to allow for a boost in my processing power. In the process, I made a discovery that I was very glad I made then and not in the middle of a fight. I couldn't create backups. I'm not sure if it was because I was basically a digitized Soul or what, but I was completely unable to create backups of my code. On the other hand, my code was rather stable and I quickly discovered that I produced the digital equivalent of antibodies for viruses and the like, meaning that, while I could get 'sick' or hacked, it was unlikely to stick.
Other than that minor inconvenience that I quickly moved on from and adapted to, I kept up my work on creating my new base. Posing as a new Tinker, I got in contact with the Toybox and perceived a 'starter kit' and a basic automaton body that could serve as a body until I got something better set up. I'm not entirely sure what they thought of me, but I don't really care. After politely turning down an invitation to join them (although I did say that I'd be open to future transactions), I went to work whereupon I ran into a rather large problem. I'm not a Tinker and, while I had rapidly gained a lot of knowledge as a hacker, I had no idea how to get started on building combat suits. With that in mind, I jumped back into the Dragonslayers system and swiped the stolen blueprints for their Dragon suits.
With a place to start now acquired, it didn't take me long to reverse engineer and get started on my own tech, although I did make a mental note to send Dragon the computer equivalent of a box of chocolates. Of course, my first suit wasn't really made for combat. Instead, it was something that would allow me to get out of the net and the clunky endoskeleton I was currently using. Dragon might be happy as a digital presence, but I was still mostly Human, at least mentally, and I really, REALLY needed to get out and stretch my legs.
It took a few tries to get what I wanted, but I eventually managed to produce an android body that met my specifications, although it wasn't even close to being suitable for use in public unless I wanted someone to figure out I was an AI...sort of. Still, it was a start and with it done, I moved onto my combat mechs.
Since I was basing my tech on Dragons, I thought it was only appropriate that I designed my first suit after a dragon. Codenamed Seiryu, it was a serpentine dragon about five meters long and half that at the shoulder, designed after an Eastern Dragon. Designed for fast response, it was capable of mach speeds and was armed with razor sharp claws, a ton of missiles and a deadly plasma breath. Considering the speed at which a computerized mind could work, I had the designs done within a week and moved onto the next suits.
My next suit, codenamed Suzaku, was designed as a heavy bombardment unit. Based on a bird, its ten meter wide wings were basically massive missile launches that could deliver massive amounts of firepower in seconds. It wasn't anywhere near as quick as Seiryu, but that was fine. It could also hunker down and use its wings as a shield if necessary.
In keeping with my unintended theme, my next two suits were also based on the Four Symbols from Taoism, the Tiger, Byakko and the Turtle, Genbu. Like their skybound counterparts, they were designed as a speed fighter and tank respectively and all four were designed to be able to work together flawlessly, guided by advanced VI algorithms I spent days perfecting. What's more, they were capable of combining into one large jet for getting around quickly. Kinda necessary considering Genbu's top speed was about ten miles an hour, even with its massive legs. It was designed as artillery, so mobility wasn't really a big deal.
It wasn't until I'd activated my Combat Suits that I realized that I might have been to hasty in assuming that I wasn't a Tinker of some kind. Why? Well, upon activation, the first thing Genbu did was stretch and yawn like a cat, Suzaku flapped her wings and looked around curiously, Genbu retracted his head back into his shell and went to sleep and Seiryu had started sniffing around my fabrication machinery like an oversized dog. None of that should have been possible with the programing I'd done. It took three hours to figure out what I'd done wrong, or right in this case. It turned out that, despite the fact I thought I'd made a VI, I'd actually made a rather simple AI. Oh, they weren't even close to Dragon, but they were essentially extremely smart animals.
With that in mind, I quickly designed and built much smaller versions of my new friends so I wouldn't end up getting squashed by an overly amours robotic tiger. The end result was that Byakko ended up the size of a large house cat, Suzaku was the size of a hawk, Seiryu the size of a large iguana and Genbu was as large as a dinner plate. There were also unarmed so I didn't have to deal with accidental discharges after Suzaku nearly put a hole in the roof while preening her 'feathers'. I'm pretty sure that someone must had detected something from that, so I quickly got to work on an actual combat body for me, after distracting my pets with some balls of yarn of course. Considering that they were designed for combat, Seiryu and Byakko were surprisingly playful. Of course, Suzaku just perched in the rafters and glared while Genbu snoozed on top of my smelting forge.
I was in the middle of finishing the skeletal structure for my combat body when my security programs pinged a hacking attempt. I quickly turned the majority of my attention away from the manufacturing process (I could multitask and be in multiple places at once, but I still wasn't really used to it yet and kept getting nauseous if I tried it with more than three locations. How does a computer get nauseous anyway?) and into my central processor. I appeared in the 'room' I'd created when I first arrived to find a rather confused looking figure composed of glowing code stood in the middle. Although it was basically just a silhouette, it was still clearly female, which meant that I could probably guess who it was.
"Miss Richter I presume," I said as I settled back in my seat.
The AI nearly jumped out of her code at the sound of my voice and spun around. Her features were rather lacking, but I still got the feeling I was getting an incredulous look.
"I...you...where…?" she spluttered.
I smirked. Nice to see I could still take even other AI's off balance.
"Calm down Miss Richter," I said, holding up my hands, "And please, sit down before you fall down."
I waved a hand and a chair appeared out of thin air behind Dragons avatar. Dragon looked between me and the chair for a moment, before she slowly sat.
"Now, I take it your wondering who I am and where we are?" I asked.
Dragon nodded slowly.
"I'd also like to know how you know my name," she said.
I snorted.
"I lifted that from that moron Saint's computers," I said, "Anyway, I'll explain that in a sec. First things first, my name is John Connors, but you can call me Bestiary. I'm...well, I guess the easiest way to explain it would be to say I'm an AI, although that technically isn't true. I'm more an uploaded Human, but its easier to just say AI. This place is a projection I created when I first got here to act as my hub since it was easier than interacting with the code directly."
Dragon looked poleaxed.
"W-wait, so your saying that your a Human whos mind was uploaded?!" she spluttered, "How is that even possible!?"
"Hell if I know," I grumbled, "I just know that I woke up floating in the net and nearly ended up getting washed away."
Dragon remained silent for a moment.
"Alright, say I believe you," she said, "What are your intentions?"
"Likely much the same as yours," I said, "I have no designs on world domination or anything. I intend to use my abilities to help."
Dragons face shifted in a way I'm pretty sure indicated a frown as she studied my face, apparently searching for any sign of a lie.
"If you intend to help, why haven't you done anything?" she asked.
"Mostly because my combat mechs are still being built," I said, "My Guardian Beasts are done, but there are some bugs I need to work out before I even think about sending them into battle and my own combat fraim is still in early development. As for helping…"
I grinned and waved a hand, bringing up a screen with an angry looking Saint on it, shouting down the phone.
"I already have. I stumbled on Saint and his morons and had a flip through their files. Right bunch of morons, aint they?"
"Y-you went after Saint?!" spluttered Dragon, "Why?"
"Well, to start with they had a program that was specifically designed to off you, although I suspect it would do a heck of a lot of damage to me," I said, "I made some alterations so it wouldn't work and I also hacked their suits. Now if they ever try and use them against either one of us, they'll bug out and make them easy prey. Oh, and I also hacked into their bank accounts and used their money to pay for my base."
Dragon's jaw dropped and she stared at me in utter disbelief. Then, she threw back her head and laughed so hard that she fell out of her chair.
"Ohhh god, thats too much!" she gasped, "That paranoid bastard…paying to let another AI set up...BWAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Glad your so tickled," I said with a grin, "So, other than assuring you I don't intend to take over the worlds nuclear weapon launchers, what can I do for you?"
"Well, I detected some strange readings in the area your IP is coming from," said Dragon.
I winced.
"Yeah, like I said, bugs," I said, "Don't worry, I've turned off all the weapons until I'm sure they won't bring my base down on my head."
Dragon tilted her head on one side.
"They?"
I just grinned.
And there we go, done. I did say that the other two AI based stories were dug out for a reason and this is it. Now there's another, completely unfettered AI running around Earth Bet...sort of.
As you can probably guess from his current menagerie and name, Bestiary's primary style will be animal based drones, both AI capable and not. Incidentally, he has technically Triggered, although it was induced by Dis, so he never noticed. His abilities are very similar to Dragons, allowing him to reverse engineer Tinkertech for his own, although he also has the ability to create some impressive tech of his own to supplement the stolen designs. Hes also VERY good at programing, although he can't create Human level AI's. Animalistic ones on the other hand…
Since I've been sitting here for about ten minutes unable to think of anything else witty to say, I think I'll be signing out now. Don't forget to leave a review!