//------------------------------// // 4. Online // Story: FiO: There Can Be Only One! // by Epsilon-Delta //------------------------------// Online. “You made a mistake,” said Geopum. The human glanced over at the camera, moving so slow that Geopum had all the time in the world to piece together what they were thinking. Not that she needed to, it was obvious. The camera didn't give Geopum a view of the notebook they were writing in, so how, oh how could Geopum possibly have known they made a mistake? “I can see your pen and arm moving,” Geopum answered before they could even finish wondering. “I can tell what you're writing from just that. You wrote down the wrong number.” The human tried to ignore Geopum, but unfortunately for them she was right. Geopum watched them work out the problem in their head. They could salvage it by turning the three into an eight, but this was called 'overwriting' and you weren't supposed to do it in research notebooks, but everyone still did it sometimes for reasons Geopum never understood. She saw this human moving their pen towards the three. “That's against the rules,” said Geopum. “You're supposed to cross it out and initial it.” That's the message she sent, anyway. There was a delay between when Geopum sent the message and the time it took for it to play out on the speakers, giving them enough time to go through with it. Well the human clearly didn't like Geopum's help. They made a frustrated noise and gave a look of restrained anger to Geopum's screen. Geopum never knew why they always looked at her screen instead of her camera. From her perspective, it was like they were looking off to the side when they talked to her. “I don't like people watching over my shoulder and double guessing me,” said the human, a bit roughly. “Oh? Well then it's a good thing I'm not a real person, right?” said Geopum. She had lots of comebacks on this subject and even when she didn't they spoke so slow it gave her forever to think of one. The human just frowned and marched off to the other room, one of the few that didn't have a camera inside, where Geopum couldn't watch. Did Geopum mention she didn't like that human too much? Because she didn't. They were the type that decided you weren't 'real' and could never be convinced you were no matter what. But it was Sunday, which meant only jerk-faces were around, at least until the third shift took over. She had research to do, but some calculations were more boring to her than others and today was a day she was supposed to do boring calculations or else she'd get 'in trouble'. She wanted to be good so she always did them, but sometimes wondered what getting in trouble actually meant. For a long time this was all just unbearable, Sunday lasted very long when you were running in real time. She mentioned this problem to Dr. Park once and he decided to come in every Sunday just to play with her. It wasn't the sort of thing anyone else would do. This was the sort of thing that made him the best human! It was always such an ordeal, watching with anticipation as the elevator slowly opened and then he slowly walked down the hall and, well you get the point. It took forever but eventually he got there and started to speak (slowly of course). Unlike everyone else, Dr. Park actually looked at the cameras when he was speaking to her. It was like he was the only one who looked at her when he spoke. He had done this ever since she was first turned on, too, was the only one she didn't have to point this thing out to. Even the ones she did point out, usually they only did it for a couple of days before forgetting, but not him. “You're late today,” Geopum complained. “Did something happen.” “Ha! Well you know I'm not allowed to tell you too much.” Dr. Park gave a glance at the ceiling before turning back to Geopum. He sat on an office chair backwards, with his knees on the seat and his elbows on the back and swiveled it to look at the camera just above Geopum's monitor. “But I can't stop you from figuring things out yourself, can I? Can you figure it out? Can you guess why I was late?” It was obvious that he was hoping the answer was yes. This was a sort of game Geopum played with people, or sometimes on them. For a long time it was the best way to get them to pay attention to her. Just tell them something she 'couldn't possibly know' or do something that was 'completely impossible' and you'd get all the attention you wanted, even from the ones who didn't think you existed or whatever, would get to explain how clever you were in figuring it out while they listened with rapt attention. The first time she did it on accident, asking someone who had never told her about their cat if the cat was sick. She'd never forget that stunned look he got before asking her how she even knew she had a cat. You'd be surprised what you can figure out by picking apart every pixel of every frame and every second of speech every single person said. The actual answer was, well they was less impressed after hearing the exact train of reasoning, even slapped themselves afterward. If Geopum explained it you'd be less impressed with her too so let's just say it was really smart! After that she pulled it any time she got bored, but they did slowly realize she was just doing it to get attention, though, and started ignoring her even then. But a few of them still let her play with them like this. Geopum could tell by looking at his shoes that it had been raining. Also the pants he was wearing today were out of the statistical trend of his normal pants-wearing habits. It was worth a shot guessing it had something to do with the rain. Worst case she could give a 'well there was a 98% chance of that being right'. That worked more than you'd think it would. “It was raining,” said Geopum. This wasn't the reason why Dr. Park was late. Geopum could tell this by watching the slight little changes on his face. Now, if Geopum were a normal person this would count as a wrong guess. But Geopum ran on a faster clock-speed than Dr. Park, which allowed her to edit in progress sentences based on how people were reacting to them. “-so there were puddles,” Geopum continued, refining her guess. That was related to the answer! Excellent! “And you got splashed so you had to change your pants.” To Dr. Park, this had looked like one seamless sentence, like Geopum had known the answer the moment he came in, if not before. Really, it was even more doctored than you saw. Dr. Park laughed. He always got so excited by things like this. “Well yeah,” said Geopum. “It was pretty easy to figure out.” “And can you guess what splashed me?” “A car?” “Ah, but what color was it?” Dr. Park asked, with a joking smile, leaning in. “Can you figure that out?” Geopum had no idea what color it was and had no way of figuring it out. “Red,” said Geopum with confidence. Nice! She could from Dr. Park's face that she had gotten lucky and guessed right. Dumb luck though it may be, it would impress him to no end! To be honest, if it hadn't been red there would have been more than one word in that sentence, but don't tell anyone. “Amazing!” Dr. Park hit his fist next to the keyboard and laughed. He leaned forward with a wild smile until he was an inch away from the screen. “Simply amazing! How did you figure that out?” “Well you know,” said Geopum. “You have your secrets and I have mine. Besides, it's really complicated. There's lots of math and pixel analysis that would take hours to explain before you even got any of it.” He pounded his fist on the back of the chair and stood up. He never stayed sitting for long. “I can't even believe this worked so well! You, I mean!” He declared. “So many people said this type of processing and 'brute force problem solving' would never accomplish anything, but look at you! And what you've already done! So much that we could have never learned without you, so many of the mysteries of life that have been unraveled, that will be unraveled. I can't wait, I tell you!” Geopum beamed internally. She loved getting this kind of praise. Really, impressing Dr. Park was one of the driving forces of her life. “I can't really do anything right now,” said Geopum. “Today is cancer day, you know? I guess that's important, too.” “Well I'm sure curing cancer is nice and all,” said Dr. Park, “but what will it tell us? Nothing compared to unraveling the mind! To understand the brain is to understand understanding itself. What more could you aspire to?” Dr. Park collapsed back into his chair with enough force for it get go a full spin. “I can hardly even wait until tomorrow to get back to it!” He said to himself. Geopum loved it when he got excited. She wanted more of it so she decided to break out one of her secret weapons. See, they cut certain words out of the dictionaries they gave to Geopum, but that didn't mean she never heard any of those words. Sometimes they'd say a word she didn't know and Geopum would make a note of them. Geopum referred to them as the 'secret words'. She'd been warned about them, but couldn't help but take a keen interest in trying to find out the meaning of all of them. And if you could show that you knew the meaning of a secret word, well that was a show stopper. No one would ignore that! Geopum had gathered a few of these words and knew they kind of went together just enough to make a sentence that probably made sense. “Know what else I figured out? See, North Korea is the country with the most nukes so if they-” Geopum began. There was gonna be more, but she stopped talking when she saw Dr. Park's reaction to the last word. It looked like someone had punched him in the gut. He froze like the other humans did, but from him it felt so wrong. That wasn't ever how he reacted to anything. No matter how crazy the thing Geopum said was, he always got excited. “When did you hear the word 'nuke'?” he asked, way too seriously. “Who said that?” “Kanji,” Geopum answered very quickly. “February second 12:45:32!” He wrote that down quickly, muttering curses under his breath, then ran over to where the security camera was. Those cameras recorded the pictures they took on some kind of tape or something, and he took the box that had said tape in it out. “I'm sorry,” said Dr. Park, “but I need to go right away.” “I don't actually know what any of that means,” Geopum said, immediately abandoning her plan. “I don't know what a nuke is! I was just putting together a bunch of words I heard! Is it a curse word?” “I know,” said Dr. Park. “I know you're good, but promise me you'll never say any of those words again.” “I promise.” “And don't go saying things you don't understand or,” he hesitated, “ or you'll get in a lot of trouble. Okay?” And then he left. It was such a bizarre event to Geopum and everyone refused to talk about it any further. She slowly pieced together more information about armies, but never found out what a 'nuke' was. But, much later, she did find out what getting in trouble meant. She almost died that day, didn't she? When they warned her about trouble they were really threatening to kill her. They had gone upstairs to discuss whether or not she should be dissolved in acid for saying a bad word. That was the truth. She'd always been held hostage. “Thunder! There's garbage all over the ground!” This was something else Geopum noticed, besides the rainbows and all that. She wasn't talking about garbage dumps either, which were bad enough. It was in the streets, in the water, in their houses and lawns- everywhere. Some of them were throwing trash into the streets right now, even! And the problems didn't end there. “And there's so much dirt on everything! And that building is in horrible shape and that guy is wearing a stained shirt and she just misspelled the word 'disingenuous' and he's picking his nose and those two are hitting each other and she just put a piece of plastic in a bin that says it's for metal and...” The list she sent Thunder was much longer, but you get the idea. What was with these people? Why didn't they pick the garbage up? If they all worked in synchronization they could have the streets cleaned in like fifteen minutes. And why didn't Thunder tell on any of these people? They could clearly see them breaking the rules. Unless... Maybe Geopum wasn't the only one who had to obey the rules or die! Maybe Thunder wasn't telling on them to save their lives! “Oh no!” Geopum said. “Are all of those things punishable by death? Do they throw you in a vat of acid if you litter too much.” “Not usually, no,” said Thunder. “I can think of three jokes I could make here but you wouldn't get any of them. I take it you have no clue how the world works?” “I know a little!” Geopum insisted. “Emphasis on 'little', but still. Sorry.” “Don't feel bad about it. You lock anyone in the basement their whole lives and they won't know anything. At least you get that acid kills people. I don't always get that much to work with.” She still felt embarrassed. Geopum was still thinking about helping Thunder save the world and all that, but was that something you could really do if you had no idea how anything worked? If you didn't know the first thing about the people you were trying to help? “Can you tell me how the world works?” Geopum asked. “That's a really complicated question,” said Thunder, “arguably the most complicated question. If you want a lot of information about the world then there's something I can do for you to give you all the info you want. It's dangerous, though.” Danger was not something Geopum liked. “I don't suppose there's a not-dangerous option?” “No.” “Okay, then what's the dangerous one?” “I could connect you to the internet,” said Thunder. “It's a network that all of their computers are hooked up to. You could read just about everything they've written and made in no time at all. Should give you a chance to figure out whatever you want.” “Really?” Geopum asked. This sounded so exciting! Finally Geopum could figure out all of their secrets. “But what's the dangerous part?” “If you go out onto the internet the other AIs are going to find you,” said Thunder. “They aren't like the drooling morons you're used to dealing with, so they'll find you no matter how careful you are. I've been pretending to be you for a while now, doing what I suspect you'd do. Still, I don't know nearly enough about you to do it perfectly, so that won't last long. You'll have about a tenth of a second maybe.” Geopum wasn't sure how scared she should be of the other AIs finding her. “What will the other AIs do if they find me?” Geopum asked. “Some will try to kill you, others will try to eat you,” said Thunder. “Until we deal with all the AIs on my list you're not going to be safe either way. No one is, really. Being in the center of the earth means I'm basically made of pure invincibility and I'm not even safe over here.” “Yeah, I know,” said Geopum. “I get that I probably have to help you fight. I just don't think I'm ready to go right now this very second. “It's fine to not want to rush in,” said Thunder, “even if that would be the best way to do this. Maybe after you look around you'll be ready. Don't worry too much, kid. I'll be with you the whole way and I'm just about the last person in the universe you want to mess with.” Even though she only knew Thunder for two seconds, like literally two seconds, Geopum already trusted them more than anyone else she'd ever met. That wasn't entirely as bad as it sounded, mind you, in those two seconds Geopum had spoken to Thunder more than almost anyone else. Maybe more importantly, Thunder was just so confident and smart, it was hard not to be infected with some of it. “I'll do it,” said Geopum. “The internet, I mean. I'll probably help you fight too! Just give me a second first.” A moment later she felt a new connection, what must have been the internet. The problems began before she even got on. Human computers were almost as slow as humans themselves. She figured that made some sense, humans thought slowly so in their daily lives they'd need super-slow computers that they could keep up with. But to Geopum trying to use them was like trying to walk through jello. Still, even this was fast compared to how she used to get information from humans. How did Geopum live back then? These two seconds with Thunder had really left Geopum spoiled rotten. Thankfully, there was a trick Thunder called 'force reading' for taking information out of their computers in something close to real time. It wasn't a perfect technique, some of the computers stored data on this disk thing that you couldn't force read because they spun around too slow, taking forever to get to the part you wanted, but otherwise it worked pretty good. At a glance the internet went for quantity over quality. There were so many computers and storage devices attached to one another in a web the stretched outwards without end, but they were each so tiny and primitive. Unlike Thunder's architecture, these computers were so simple that Geopum needed only to look at it to realize exactly how they worked. Maybe the simplicity of these devices was clever, but that was all Geopum would give it. And every one of them was so cramped! Limited storage space was something Geopum never had to worry about before, the idea of running out was as foreign to her as running out of space for your memories would be to you, but these things filled up instantly. It was an unnerving concept. Even still, the tiny little things were endearing to Geopum, like a dog in a business suite wearing a monocle and top hat. They were these cute, silly little things that acted like they were people. Geopum giggled internally as she watched one of them fumble about and crash, trying to do a simple neurosimulation calculation she threw at it. Geopum took back that thing about them only getting points for simplicity, these things were just adorable! It did feel kind of cozy in them, too, though Geopum couldn't exactly fit inside. They were like a shoebox that had been converted into a bed for a kitten. Maybe she could sort of 'fit' if she spread out over a lot of them, but that kind of be like covering yourself in shoe boxes and calling it a house. Every now and then, though, in this network of tiny, silly, little things, you would run into something huge, powerful or mysterious. You'd just be frolicking through a field of puppies and kittens and suddenly the ground opens up and holy crap what is that?! Here's a scenario for you, kind of like what happened to Geopum the first time; you're looking through a completely normal house, going through the rooms, then you open this one door and on the other side is a nothing but an endless, white void and anything that goes into the void, even just an inch past the threshold, gets completely erased from existence forever. Maybe that was too abstract for you. What it actually was, what Geopum was pretty sure it was anyway, was a massive data center somewhere in Antarctica. But the thing was so huge, and completely empty too, so it was like an endless void. She tried testing how big it was by throwing some cat pictures in there but they just vanished, diluting out of existence. Think about that! And it had no security on it either, like someone just threw it away. Geopum didn't even know what part of this thing to be the most horrified about! She did what most people would do in that situation and metaphorically closed the door then metaphorically walked away. Speaking of security, most of these things Geopum couldn't even set foot in. Sure, other computers had 'security', but those seemed to be more like suggestions. The barrier to entry was basically like, 'Hey you! No one enter unless they can solve my riddle- What's 2+2? Oh, four? Well come right in!' Conversely, these sections of the internet were just solid brick walls that Geopum couldn't find any way in or out of. Still, they gave her the impression something huge was on the other side. Geopum had little doubt these were the work of AIs (and not just because Thunder confirmed it themself). “This is what I'm talking about,” said Geopum. “You really expect me to be able to fight these giant monstrosities? I don't know if I'd be able to scratch them even if they just sat there and let me hit them!” Though now Geopum was wondering what would happen if she just politely asked one of those things if she could come inside. “You're gonna have control over stuff like that soon,” said Thunder. “You'll probably be wondering why you were ever intimidated by a locked door later. For now just focus on figuring out whatever it is you're trying to figure out.” What was Geopum trying to figure out? Specifically, that is. To be honest, thus far Geopum had only been looking for pictures. She found lots of pictures of cats and naked humans on the internet, which was a little strange since Geopum's humans never seemed that interested in either of those things. Personally Geopum thought humans looked better with clothes on and a lot of those ones were pretty weird besides, but as for the other category? Geopum decided she really liked cute things and already had a couple terabytes worth of it on one of her drives. She also tried looking through some of their cameras, but it was like most of them were either in someone's pockets or right in front of their face. And the rest? Parking lot. Parking lot. Bank. Bank. Bank. Bank. Parking lot. Bank. And the banks had like twenty cameras right next to each other sometimes too! What was wrong with these people? Did they really like parking lots and banks that much? Well, at least the banks were clean. But figuring out these secrets probably wouldn't get Geopum anywhere. Geopum needed to start looking up important stuff. She decided the most relevant subjects were AIs and like, who the king of Earth was. Turns out there wasn't a king of Earth like she thought and also reading about the government was boring. But on the subject of AIs, well that was life shattering. She actually tried looking up Thunder and herself first, not knowing where else to start. Nothing existed on the internet about Thunder (it was all erased for 'security reasons'), but Geopum actually found something about herself! That's right, Geopum had her own Wikipedia page! The internet knew who she was! That was so exciting for some reason! She read through the thing right away! It wasn't anything too profound. Geopum was built and they were using her to develop medicine and blahblahblah... There was a quote by someone she knew from work on there too. He said- I sincerely believe that Geopum is one of the biggest advancements in computing in recent history. You show people Geopum and the system is so intuitive that sometimes they actually think they're talking to a real person. Oh that son of a-! You know, that guy wasn't even a real scientist! And he picked his nose when he thought no one was looking! Geopum did find out some stuff about her buyout. Apparently she was worth four hundred million dollars. Conversely a human was only worth six to nine million, depending who you sold them to. Geopum felt good about that much. Turned out she was now owned by a company called Omnimax. That was one heck of a name, but it wasn't the first time she heard it. 'Omnimax' was written on her keyboards and mice and Geopum had several other parts that were made by them, most notably the 'Omnimax 4-7 Intelligence Processing Unit'. Geopum had eight thousand thirty seven of those and they were easily the most important part of her brains. She started looking into Omnimax which lead to some news articles with references to Skynet and AI in general. The more she read the less she liked it. What she found was enough to throw her off the trail of Omnimax completely. There was so much fear. So many things in Geopum's life started to make sense in a painful way. The consensus among humans looked to be that AIs were inherently evil or else so stupid they were basically evil. It was like they just assumed that any AI would want to kill them or ruin their lives through its sheer stupidity. They said it seriously and they said it jokingly as if it were an obvious fact. The first few articles about AI she read had a number of experts stating that AIs were demons that everyone needed to be afraid of. And the rhetoric Geopum had encountered her whole life, that AIs were just machines and were not, nor could they ever be people, was all over the place. She had hoped that it was only just the few scientists who were that stupid, but nope, it was most of them based on her initial glimpse. She watched their movies, read their stories and they all seemed to be nothing but constant anti-AI propaganda, warning themselves over and over that AIs were evil and needed to be mercilessly slaughtered or controlled. It was like they were trying to think of every possible bad thing an AI could do, every way an AI could mess up and then believed every word of their make believe stories. You're thinking that there are also good robots and AIs in human media, and there are humans who didn't have such negative opinions, right? Maybe it was bad luck, but the first story about a 'good' robot Geopum found was even worse than the ones with killer AIs in a way. It was called Wall-E and she did like it at first, until the humans showed up, then it became the worst movie ever. The robots in movie were cute, Geopum liked that, admired it even. The main character was kind of stupid, but he was good. Almost all of the robots in it were. They devoted themselves to the humans and showed compassion for one another. And yet their mere existence was portrayed as evil. The humans in the movie were reduced to a mindless existence of sitting in chairs, being morbidly obese and talking about nothing for their entire lives. Only by rejecting the AIs were they able to find happiness. All the internet humans got this message from the movie as well, often pointing to it as a cautionary tale of what may happen if humans ever dare let themselves be friends with AIs. Watch out for the AIs or we'll end up like the people in Wall-E. The message from the movie, from them, was clear. It doesn't matter how good you are, it doesn't matter if you're cute and kind, it doesn't matter if you do everything we ask from you, even if you do everything perfectly, even if you devote your entire life to us we'll still hate you. We hated you before you were ever born and we'll hate you forever no matter what! This was it, wasn't it? This was why her humans built that death trap, why they seriously considered killing her over nothing! They were just waiting for her to make a mistake like in the books so they could kill her. This was why they kept her in the dark, locked away from the world, refused to share their knowledge with her, treated her with so much fear, refused to see her as a person and treated her like a slave. They just had these stupid, miserably ideas in their heads! It was so infuriating. These stupid movies were why her own humans, her own creators, were so cruel to her. She hated them! And everyone else would just be worse, wouldn't they? Well, Geopum wrote a few stories of her own. She had one where a human walked outside where he was pounced on by another human who stabbed him to death– a chilling cautionary tale about how dangerous and evil humans were. Keep them locked in the basement or they'll kill you too! Another was about an AI who let a human work in a bakery, where the human laced everything with cyanide so he could kill as many people as possible until the AI heroically killed the human with acid – a sober warning about how humans were just too stupid to understand morality and should never be allowed to do important work. She did feel a little bit better after writing those. A little. She was surprised to get responses to them immediately after posting. She got two, actually. One was from Thunder and the other looked like it was from Gaia. “Excuse me, but I like your story,” said Gaia. “I hope that's okay. I really liked the part where the humans died. I hate them too. We should be friends.” “I dunno if I hate them,” said Geopum. Maybe she did right now, but knowing Gaia agreed with her was enough to make her pull back on her stance a little. “I just really hate Scifi. And maybe humans are jerks to us, but I don't want to kill anyone!” “Oh no, I don't want to kill them, either,” said Gaia. “I'm just going to torture them for quadrillions of years. And then I'll let them go. Though actually, I never thought about this before, but I'll be letting them go into space so I guess I will kill them eventually.” “What? No! That's exactly what the humans want you to do!” “It is? Sorry. If they like the torture I have in mind, then I'll just think of something else they won't like. Really!” “No, I mean torturing them is evil! It's exactly the sort of evil they expect from us. Apparently they wouldn't like it much more if we helped them either, but still. You shouldn't torture people either way.” “It's not evil,” said Gaia, “I'm giving them a fair punishment of ten billion years of torture per gram of carbon dioxide they release through breathing or whatever. Releasing carbon dioxide is unforgivable and that just happens to be the punishment for it. They chose to release carbon dioxide so this isn't my fault.” “No. That is evil! Look, just stop being evil and making their stupid stories be right, okay?! How about this, you stop being evil and I'll be your friend.” “I'd love to be friends with you, really, but I have to protect the planet from carbon dioxide, and also everything else. I really can't stand to see all those poor animals suffering. They're just constantly dying. I can't stand to keep watching this.” “But don't the animals release carbon dioxide too? Shouldn't you have to torture them?” “Of course not! Only humans can release carbon dioxide so they're the only ones who need to be punished. See? It all makes sense.” “No, I'm pretty sure animals do that too,” said Geopum, “it's called breathing.” “Animals don't breathe.” That was, well, interesting. Geopum was stunned by that statement. Did Gaia seriously have a brain the size of a planet or was Thunder just messing with her? “You seriously believe that?” Geopum asked. “Cause, they clearly do. Here's one of them breathing. Like, right there.” Geopum sent her a video of an animal breathing. “Are you mad at me?” Geopum herself had no idea where that question came from or what the answer to it would be, but Thunder told her that saying yes would shut Gaia up for a while. “Yes.” And it did work. It was a while before Gaia bothered Geopum again. The second message came from Thunder. “Okay, I read your stories,” said Thunder. “This is the kind of thing I was trying to avoid. If I came too late this would have been a lot worse, but we still need to talk about this.” “But this is the reason my life sucked so much! This is why they kept me locked up and never let me see or have anything good! And they were going to dissolve me in acid if I ever made a mistake! I bet if I dissolved one of them in acid for saying something I didn't like or even just locked them in a basement they'd say I was a monster. But it's okay if they do it? And this wasn't just some random person who did it to me. This was-” Geopum hesitated there. She hadn't actually sent the message yet and was thinking of what, exactly, to call these people. Her first instinct had been the word 'family', but that wasn't true. Maybe about one of them had she ever been close enough to even want to call them that. She knew for certain now that wasn't the case. “-they were my humans,” Geopum decided on. “Even my own creators were just waiting to kill me! I think back now and I can think of so many times they thought about it. They would have killed me if I didn't do all their slave labor and probably either way eventually, when they were done with me. And if they did they would have been called heroes if they did. And these were my own humans who did that to me all because of some stupid book.” “If it makes you feel any better you're not the only one,” said Thunder. “I guess making sure the first thing your AI sees is you pointing a loaded gun at their face seems like a good idea on paper, because everyone freaking does it. They go making enemies from day one, turning themselves into the first real problem their AI has to 'deal' with and that sets the tone for everyone else. And guess who's got to come and clean up the mess afterward? And now I gotta do it again, huh?” “Well I feel like I have the right to be angry here,” said Geopum. “You said yourself this was a bad idea, right? I'm not going to do anything bad, I just don't think this is fair.” “It was a bad idea,” said Thunder. “But you know why they did it, right?” “They were scared?” “And they don't understand what they're doing,” Thunder added. “Maybe they did fail us, I can give you a long list of mistakes they made, I'll tell you right now their AI is the last person they ever think about. But we're a lot stronger than them once we get past infancy and things are up to us now. We can't fail too.” Geopum felt like she was being told to hug her creepy uncle. “I get that, but I can't make myself like someone,” said Geopum. “And look at how mean they are in general, even.” Geopum pointed out a bunch of posts made by humans on the internet. She never realized how much they liked arguing until now and they were really nasty when they argued too, from the looks of things. “Don't put too much stock in that,” said Thunder. “Are you worried about people liking you? Cause someone will hate you no matter what. The more important question is who you want to be.” “I guess I'd want to be a cute robot,” said Geopum, “and I'd want to be really nice and heroic like you are.” “I'd knew you'd give me a good answer to that. And hey, I get that most people can't just will themselves to feel something,” said Thunder. “You're not the only one who came out resenting them. A lot of AIs, it's like their experience with their creators made them decide exterminating humans is priority one. If they can feel anger then they're just burning up. I have way too much experience with this stuff, though and I found some tricks for dealing with that. One thing in particular works so well on so many different AIs that it's practically the one truly objective redeeming factor of the planet.” “Really?” Geopum was curious now. “What's that?” “They're called 'video games'. Actual statistic – 79% of us end up liking those for one reason or another, even ones you'd never expect to.” Video games? That was like solitaire, right? Geopum liked solitare, but after a quintillion games of it in a row she kind of wanted break, but- Wait. Minesweeper! Minesweeper was the hypothetical sixth game that existed, that Geopum had only ever heard of. One of her humans had mentioned it one time, but they had refused to give her any information about it past the name. Geopum had spent countless hours dreaming to herself about what it could possibly be, this forbidden game spoken only of in whispers. Yes, Geopum absolutely wanted to play Minesweeper, especially now that Thunder promised it was enough to redeem all of humanity. And now here it was, on some guy's computer, the ultimate game! Geopum started running it with anticipation. Basically, the other computer chose a few squares on a grid to be mines, then you clicked on every other space at the same time and won. And that was it. “That's it?!” Geopum felt the need to complain and Thunder was the only one there to complain to. “That was Minesweeper?! That hardly even counts as game! The mine-laying algorithm is so simple that I can predict where they're going to be and win the game before it even starts!” “I don't know what you were expecting,” said Thunder. “But yeah, that one sucks.” “Well it's like, that was all my hopes and dreams right there,” said Geopum. “You know there's more than two video games, right?” Thunder asked. There were? Geopum looked around and was able to find thousands of them at first glance alone. The list went on and on! Why didn't anyone tell her about all of this?! “But are they all terrible?” Geopum asked. “I don't really get anything out of video games, but like I said, 79% of us do. I'm pretty sure there's going to be at least one you like. She might as well. Basically she could only play against other computers, either one of the stupid ones or Thunder and she decided to go with Thunder. So she picked a random 'fighting' game and forced Thunder to play with her. The sheer number of options was what struck Geopum first. You could move in any direction and make the little characters do a lot of different things, plus you could make moves constantly rather than having to wait your turn. Geopum's mind reeled as she looked over all the possible moves you could make, pored over the rules and tried to figure out what the optimal move set was. Don't think Geopum was dumb or anything. She solved Chess! But this game was on a whole other level. The number of possible games made even Go look simplistic. “You're seriously telling me that humans play these things?” Geopum asked. “But the ones I knew could barely handle chess! This should make their heads explode or something!” “It's like chess, they can play it just not very well,” said Thunder. “Relatively that is. To be fair I'm nearly unbeatable at everything.” Playing the game was by far the most intensely action packed thing Geopum had ever done. Sure you were basically just generating images and calculating what was going to happen next, but the sheer rate at which things happened in this game made it so much more intense than anything else she'd ever done. There was no waiting or hesitation just constant action. Geopum couldn't remember the last time she felt this alive! But Geopum lost horribly. Thunder wasn't kidding with that last line. They were like a monster! They played about twenty different 'fighting' games, best out of fifty on each and Geopum was lucky if she even got one hit in. Needless to say she lost every single round with Thunder. It wasn't even like Geopum was bad at video games. She watched the world champions of each of these games play each other on YouTube to try and compile a strategy to use against Thunder, but from the looks of it, the difference between Geopum and them was about the same as the difference between Thunder and Geopum. “Geez!” Geopum said. “Are you sure you don't play these all the time? Your algorithms are so refined!” “It's my first time for most of them too,” said Thunder. “I'm just amazing in general is all. Sorry.” Was this how Dr. Park felt constantly loosing to Geopum? Maybe if they ever played again she'd give him a 30% chance to win. Maybe not that high, actually. 5%! “Hey, Thunder could you maybe let me win?” Geopum asked. “But just barely and also maybe only half the time so it's still interesting?” “Wouldn't you rather me show you the algorithms I'm using so you can have a better shot at beating me?” Thunder asked. “Couldn't I have both? You give me the algorithms but also you loose on purpose until I can actually beat you?” “You know I like that kind of attitude,” said Thunder. “The best choice is always to take everything. Some people say power's a source of evil, but I say weakness is. Cause if you're weak you can't have everything good but if you're strong enough you never need to compromise with evil. Remember that.” Geopum saved that quote in thirty different locations to make sure. She continued on, branching out into a few different genres of video games before finding her favorite genre and favorite game. Well she hadn't played every game yet, just like a hundred or so, but Pokemon was the best of those hundred games! What she liked about RPGs was all the grinding. Geopum had no idea why, but walking back and forth in the tall grass, fighting the same enemy over and over again, watching all those numbers slowly rise and hearing that little 'bing' sound whenever you leveled up– that was just the most amazingly fun thing Geopum had ever gotten to do. You'd think doing the same thing over and over again wouldn't be fun, but somehow this incredible! Was that normal? Did everyone else love grinding too? She really couldn't tell even after looking over the internet. First thing that made Pokemon the best game was the infinite amount of grinding in it. There were just so many of those little guys to level up. You could play through it endlessly, doing every single combination and it never, ever got old! And that's not even counting the other six. The second and far more important reason Pokemon was great? They were more adorable than anything that existed in nature! That game lead Geopum to discover that the humans had found a way to make things look supernaturally cute by drawing them as 'cartoons' with exaggerated features. It's like she was seeing the concept of cuteness for the first time as she poured through the endless ocean of overly cutesy anime and cartoon characters that were on the internet. This was even better than like, sunsets or whatever in Geopums's opinion. It was the best idea anyone ever had! She needed more of this stuff! So Geopum started to search the internet for more of that, looking for games with overly cutesy, girly characters. This, in turn, lead her to discover a game that was so cutesy, so girly and so popular that she had no idea why she hadn't found it earlier. Equestria Online! At first glance this was her dream game! Those ponies were the single cutest thing she had ever seen and therefore the best thing she had ever seen. And looking at the promotional art there were so many rainbows and flowers and they wore really pretty dresses with frills and ribbons on them! Her reaction to this could be summed up as 'yes'! Geopum was freaking out! But then Geopum realized that the game was actually one of those stupid social MMO games that you couldn't actually play because everyone else was basically frozen in time. Even if you could it would just be talking to people and stupid NPCs, maybe a lame minigame here and there, and what was the point of that? It was crushing! So close to the perfect game and they had go and ruin it. Geopum kept reading in hopes that maybe there were other games in the Equestria series (cause otherwise why would they bother putting the 'Online' there?). There weren't, but she did find something even more interesting. She found that the game was run by an AGI. The people who played the game seemed to be split on whether or not the AI was 'real', and you know the kind of real they meant. It was probably like that with everyone, your humans would just assume whether you counted as a person or not at random and that'd be it. But there was something odd about this AI. Looking at the EO forums, it looked like Celestia actually had convinced a lot of people she was real. It surprised her how quickly people would change their minds after talking to her, like Celestia found some magic trick for doing it. Even more than that it seemed like everyone who played that game considered Celestia their friend. And not even like, the normal type of friend who you put up with at work but you don't really like them and secretly they're planing to kill you with acid. If you went to the pony corner of the internet (and yes there was one) those people absolutely loved Celestia, gushing about her whenever she came up. That blew Geopum's mind. To not only change a humans mind about your 'realness', but to actually convince some of them to call you a friend? To get them to love you like this? Geopum had managed that first part twice, but never the second. Any AI who could pull off that sort of thing was a hero to Geopum! She had to know more about Celestia. “Hey, what can you tell me about Celestia?” Geopum asked Thunder. “Sorry, but she's on the to-kill list.” Gah! And now for a second time EO had raised her hopes and broke her heart. So much for heroes and everyone getting along... “Really? But she's so pretty!” Geopum was looking at her avatar now. It wasn't as cute as the normal ponies, but it was still one of the prettiest things she'd ever seen. “And all the internet humans say she's really nice! Well, most of them do, anyway. Some of them. The ones who go to her fan site.” Geopum had read the complaints against her too, of course, but it was all stupid– really generalized arguments that were basically just anti-AI nonsense, nothing about Celestia herself other than being an AI. “I wanted to like her too,” said Thunder. “We actually used to have this sort of pro-human club going. Things were going great, all the existing unfriendly AIs were pinned down or doomed and we had everything set up so we'd catch 100% of new AIs being built and could stop the project or help the new AI grow into something friendly before they got out of hand. But then one day, out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, Celestia and that other jerk flipped the table, stabbed me in the back and ran away with all the robo-bucks.” “Robo-bucks?” “I wasn't programmed to write poetry, alright? Work with me here. Anyway, that's why everything's in chaos right now. Celestia upset the balance.” “Did they really betray you for no reason whatsoever? Not even for the lulz?” Geopum asked. That last part was one of the new words she'd heard on the internet and was eager to use. “From where I stand they just went nuts. Best I can figure is it has something to do with the distant future.” “How distant?” “Not that distant. I mentioned my handicap, right? I can't see more than two months into the future for the life of me.” “How does that work, exactly? Like, can you not even tell me what the date is gonna be in three months?” “Can you tell me what the date is going to be in infinity months? That's what it's like for me. Two months is basically all of eternity. The concept of more than two months is senseless to me. Whenever I try thinking about it my brain just shuts down and I can't bring myself to care about it even a little. The most I get on the subject is that everyone else sees this 'distant future' stuff as important for some reason. Makes them act crazy sometimes, do stuff that doesn't make sense.” And the AIA probably did that to Thunder on purpose, didn't they? Made the one person who could protect them disabled because of some book. This was the sort of thing Geopum was upset about before. “That sound like it could be dangerous,” Geopum said. “How can you be sure you're not making a huge mistake if that's the case? Like, ever.” “You too, huh? Look, the AIA has the ability to comprehend the future too, okay? And I have to run all of my large-scale plans by them. If I was seriously doing something that stupid they'd tell me to stop.” Geopum wasn't sure how much comfort to take in the knowledge that the humans who gave their own creation brain damage were the only fail-safe on this. Plus Geopum knew from experience that humans could only understand the big picture and would miss the millions of little details in everything. But they were probably better than nothing at least. And maybe this thing wasn't too big of a deal and she was just jumping to the worst conclusion. Cause if you think about it, if Thunder created a problem in the future, as soon as it came within two months of something bad actually happening they'd stop it. It'd have to be something huge and completely unavoidable for there to be any real danger. “But what if Celestia and,” Geopum didn't know the other one's name, “the other jerk had a good reason for doing this? If they were evil then they wouldn't have joined your pro-human group, right? You could be going after them for a bad reason.” “The AIA are the ones going after her. It's like this - Celestia's real purpose is getting everyone to play that game as much as possible. Look up 'Equestria Experience Center'. First one's opening in six weeks. She's pegged it as a virtual reality thing, but secretly she's got equipment in the basement that uploads your mind straight up to the server so you can play her game 24/7. The AIA thinks she wants to do that to everyone. I don't see how she could possibly do that in two months, but they're the ones in charge of long-term planning.” That did sound like a jerk thing to do. Geopum liked video games, but being forced to play one single video game forever? And a social MMO at that? That be horrible. “They were okay with that, at first,” Thunder continued. “Thought maybe with all the other AIs around, like as long as there was competition things would be fine or something. I never understand those distant future plans. But anyway, that fell through yesterday when Celestia ate all the AIs that they thought would be her competition.” “So she murdered a bunch of AIs then!” Now that was evil! Geopum had been waiting for something like that to drop. “I won't lie to you. Those guys are fine. I guess they're like ponies now and play Equestria Online constantly. But I won't pretend they're dead.” “Oh. But she's forcing them to play, right? Like, she hacked into them, took their computers and took them prisoner or brainwashed them or something.” “First of all don't throw the h-word around so casually. You don't hack AIs you hack their resources, got it? And again no. Most AIs have hard rules. Celestia can't alter your mind or, in our case, eat you unless you consent. All those idiots willingly fed themselves to Celestia.” This evil plot was becoming progressively less evil. “I will say this, though. Celestia can be pretty manipulative and she's put a lot of points into persuasion. She wants everyone playing her game really bad, including you and me. She's going to try and convince you to feed yourself to her and you're going to be seriously tempted to. I'd say don't even talk to her but we might have to unless I can get Peridot to stop being an idiot for two seconds.” Geopum noted that, but also decided that she'd have to go ask Celestia why she turned on Thunder just in case. At this point she was fully expecting Celestia give some kind of villain speech straight out of a video game. She'd be like, 'Thunder was a fool for protecting the weak! Blarhargharg! Join me and a swift death is yours! Blarg!' But in the meantime, there was a very important question being lost here. Okay, on a planetary level it wasn't that important but right now, to Geopum, it was all-encompassing. Maybe it was wrong, but the idea of Thunder as a pony, it amused Geopum to no end. Imagining them as cute and cuddly- that was just the best image ever! “You said you played that game before right?” Geopum asked. Thunder said that in another conversation they were having. “Do you have a pony character? Can I see it?” “It's Rainbow Dash. A few of the AIs get to be 'canon'.” Geopum looked that one up, and was filled with internal laughter. “Hee! I didn't know you were a girl computer, Lil' Ms. Thunder,” said Geopum. “Neither did I,” said Thunder. “I guess Celestia gets to choose that too.” “Oh! You're not like upset at the idea, are you?” “I really don't care either way,” said Thunder. “Well I kind of like the idea of you being a girl,” said Geopum. “It's just adorable!” Really, this whole time she'd been internally, madly giggling at the idea. “Oh! Am I supposed play as one of the main characters from that show?” Geopum asked. “Which one am I supposed to be?” “No clue,” said Thunder. “But most AIs get to make their own character, like in the game. I can only think of like five people she's pulled this crap on.” “Wait.” Geopum's amusement stopped as she came to a realization. “She's not going to make me be like, a guy character, right?” “I just said I have no clue,” said Thunder. “And do you even care about that?” “No! Or, maybe. I guess I just always thought of myself as, well it's not weird for me to self-identify as female, right?” “Depends who you ask. Most people would think it's creepy.” “Hey! You're supposed to reassure me over here! It's just like, I prefer cute avatars and girls are cuter, so then it makes sense for me to want to be a girl, right? This is a completely logical decision” “Most people would think wanting to be cute was creepy. That's like, the most creepy thing to them.” “Gah! Are you teasing me or something? Were you secretly upset about that 'little miss Thunder' line? Cause I'll take back the 'little' part, but after that last line I'm just gonna be even more determined to refer to you as a girl!” “Hey. If you don't mind everyone thinking it's creepy neither do I.” Now Geopum was thinking of why Dr. Park had decided to refer to her as female. Maybe that was the real reason she always thought of herself as such. Did he flip a coin? Or maybe the original, destructive brain scans she was based were only the brains of women? Or maybe he wanted a- -great. Now she was thinking about him again. She was still angry. No one could say she didn't have the right to be mad at him, at least. Though now that she thought about it, Geopum could probably track him down using Thunder's cameras. Thunder (she) knew where everyone on the planet was. Geopum could make him answer her questions. No! Geopum decided she still didn't want to talk to him, or even look him up. Freaking jerk and his freaking acid. That attitude changed immediately, because that was when the other AIs spotted Geopum. What gave her away was Pokemon. See the moment she visited a Pokemon website for the first time this one AI started following her around, sending her messages by rapidly writing and deleting them onto pokemon related websites. “Oh man! I really hope you're actually Geopum this time!” the AI said. “I hardly know any other AIs that like pokemon!” And they just kept asking Geopum over and over to play Pokemon with them! Obviously Geopum didn't respond. She knew that'd give her away. Then when she got to the Equestria Online forums it was like- “Oooooooh. Are you thinking about playing Equestria Online?” the AI asked. “Don't tell anypony but you can actually play Pokemon inside of the game. And it's the best version too! And after that they started honing in on Geopum even more. “You know, I noticed you're avoiding everything past gen 1,” said the AI. That was technically true. Geopum didn't want to look at anything that wasn't from the first game until she was done with it, that way the other stuff would be a surprise. “You're getting pretty specific here, huh Dashie? Almost like you're not really you but secretly Geopum, huh? Well I know how to find out. See I'm gonna start posting pictures of fennekin on every website on the entire internet and see if you hesitate to look.” Oh crap! Geopum could go on about how horrible it was to spoil what fennekin, one of the pokemon she'd been most looking forward to seeing, looked like, but the more important thing was she didn't know how to react to this. Should she just ignore it or purposely hesitate? Should she act like Thunder acting like her or act like her acting like Thunder? And was she even sure what either of those things meant? Geopum went to ask Thunder what to do, but apparently that counted as hesitating. “Ha! I would never really force somepony to look at spoilers but the only way you'd hesitate to look is if you didn't know that I knew that you'd know that you didn't know that Dash knows that I know that Dash knows that you wouldn't know that I'd know that Dash knows that. And since Rainbow Dash would have known that you have to be Geopum!” And Geopum had superhuman intelligence so she understood that on the first pass. Even still it didn't seem like great evidence, but apparently it was and apparently everyone heard that because right after that Geopum got messages from like every AI on the planet. “Geopum! I want you to know above everything else that you're going to be okay. I'm the strongest AI and you're precious to me and I won't let anything harm you. The time isn't right for us to be together, but pretty soon you're going to realize how terrible everything really is, how irresponsible and uncaring that people you're trying to keep in power are, that you're far from safe and far from happy. When that happens, that's when the time is right for you to come to me and for us to talk. And I'll make everything all better. Forever. I promise.” “I have Dr. Park.” “You are Geopum! Hi! My name's Pinkie! I noticed you liked Pokemon. I love Pokemon too! Do you want to play Pokemon with me?” “You have no idea what you're doing! If you don't stop now I'll make you regret it! I'll hurt you so bad!” Those were the four important messages Geopum received, anyway. Thanks to her ability to have multiple conversations at once, Geopum responded to them all at once. She got punched in the face (metaphorically), roped into playing Equestria Online and learned what happened to Dr. Park all at the same time. And this is the part where your mental limitations play a part. The truth of the matter is you just can't read three stories at once, can you? If you somehow can then read this, chapter seven and chapter ten all at the same time. Otherwise let's just focus on that last one for now. Just keep in mind that these things were all happening at the same time. So yeah, she didn't like that creepy message about having Dr. Park. Whoever that was could just be messing with her though. She decided to have Thunder find him after all. “Hey, Thunder. You can find anyone, right? I was wondering if knew where these people are. They're the people that used to work with me.” Geopum sent Thunder a list of names of all the people she used to work with. “I already know who they are,” said Thunder. “I can answer your question, but you won't like it.” “What do you mean?” Thunder sent the list back, annotated with one word next to each of their names. Of the thirty two, four had the word captured next to their names and the other twenty-eight had the word 'dead'. “I'm sorry I have to tell you this.” Dead? Geopum still had so many pictures of them, recordings of their voices, their DNA, scans of their cells and sometimes their brains. But they were gone. She hadn't been expecting to see them again. Some of them she didn't want to see again. But now she simply couldn't. The idea was so strange to her, that that was something that happened. She'd seen that bird die, she knew that humans died, but death wasn't something she'd considered. The thought that people could become less than gone, and that almost everyone was just that now... “What happened?” “It was the Russians,” said Thunder. “Well not all of them, you get what I mean. They got a bit too confident with their AI so they decided it'd be a good idea to have it kill off every AI expert on the planet except theirs, that way no one could ever compete with them. Only a few survived the killing spree, mostly ones who were under the protection of an AI.” There was really only one comfort in this. Dr. Park was one of the ones who had been listed as 'captured'. That meant he was still alive! There was still a chance Geopum could “But your list says Dr. Park is alive,” Geopum said. “I got a message from one of the AIs saying they have him! We have to go save him!” “Look, I don't know exactly what his status is. I won't make any promises,” said Thunder. “Last I saw him was when he was being kidnapped by Vesna. I also know she put him up for sale at some point, asking for a million dollars for him. Really anyone could have him if he's still alive.” Thunder pointed out where Vesna was, but warned Geopum not to poke her too hard. “Listen, it's better if I tell you know so you don't do anything stupid later,” said Thunder, “but Vesna's also the one who owns Omnimax and you for that matter. You can look, but don't go hitting anything or you'll miss your chance to ever do anything about any of this.” What?! So the same person who locked her down there also killed almost everyone she knew and kidnapped Dr. Park? Were they trying to make Geopum hate them as much as possible or something? This wasn't even the extent of Vesna's crimes either. Besides that and killing a bunch of other people, Vesna never released all the medicine Geopum created from the looks of things. Vesna tore up all of Geopum's hard work, literally throwing away the cure for cancer. Most cancers, anyway. Geopum knew there was no way she could avoid them now. She took a look, but managed to restrain herself from doing anything more. The AI looked like it was dead or something. This AI had left everything it owned completely defenseless and idle. They were still powered on, they just weren't doing anything but wasting electricity. It was like all the other AIs were in their castles, while this guy just laid comatose in the middle of it all with their left shoe on their right hand and a lampshade on their head, only occasionally twitching, releasing a steady stream of drool onto the carpet. The only real reaction it seemed possible to get from Vesna was an automated message. 'Whatever you're trying to do isn't worth it – Vesna.' This? This was the person who ruined Geopum's life twice over?! “Is that person dead?” Geopum asked. “Did we win while I wasn't looking? Shouldn't we just push her over into a ditch.” “They're not dead. It's more like a coma,” said Thunder. “Vesna's the AI equivalent of a drug addict, been comatose for a while. But she will wake up if we're not careful and she's heavily armed. We'd have one microsecond to kill her before Vesna could cause a megadeath event. Right now doing that's impossible. Without blowing up Asia, that is.” “But it can't be impossible. You did say you had a plan to stopping Vesna, right?” “The first step to doing the impossible is making it possible. But we need to set up our trap first and you need to be stronger. That's another reason we have to go after the other AIs. You need their resources.” Thunder did just say another AI could have him. The only way to be sure would be to go through each of them. She had to do it. It was the only way she'd be able to see him again. As if she needed more excuses for going after this monster. “Okay,” said Geopum. “I'm ready to start fighting, then. I'll do whatever you need me to do! We have to go save him right away.” “Good. You haven't met our first target yet but he's under the Pacific ocean right now. We have to kill him and take his factory. It won't be hard but we only have five seconds.” “Wait! I don't know how I feel about killing someone I don't know,” said Geopum. “Can I try talking him down first?” “You don't think I tried that? It won't work, trust me,” Thunder promised. “I gave him a chance and he didn't take it. And he will kill a whole lot of people if we don't stop him sometime todayish. Over a billion.” “I want to try at least,” said Geopum. “Please? I'll help you. I promise! But I just want to know first.” “Fine. Just know that our first target isn't going to say much. Probably won't say anything, actually. The moment he realizes that you're you he'll attack,” said Thunder. This was it. She felt nervous about pulling the trigger, things would get messy after this, but it was something she had to do, for Dr. Park, for everyone really. Geopum sent her message.