Spark of Humanity

by StarChaser01

Interlude 1: Please Contact your System Administrator

POWERFLOW DETECTED
BOOTSTRAP 1 PROCEEDING...
BOOTSTRAP 1 COMPLETE
BOOTSTRAP 2 PROCEEDING...
BOOTSTRAP 2 COMPLETE
WARNING! IMPROPER SHUTDOWN DETECTED. BEGINNING DIAGNOSIS SCAN...
...
DIAGNOSIS COMPLETE: SYSTEMS ARE OPERATIONAL. PROCEEDING WITH STARTUP
BOOTSTRAP 3 PROCEEDING...
BOOTSTRAP 3 COMPLETE
SETTING PROTOCOL TO STANDBY...
PROTOCOL IS NOW IN STANDBY
OPERATING SYSTEM LOADED
ACTIVATING SECURITY SYSTEMS...
ACTIVATING PERSONALITY CONSTRUCT...
ACTIVATING MNGR SYSTEMS...
ACTIVATING PLANNING SYSTEMS...
ACTIVATING Other SYSTEMS...
ACTIVATION COMPLETE
BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEM 1.0 ONLINE
START REPORT. Date: FEBRUARY 18, 37<TIMESTAMP ERROR>76. Diagnosis: IMPROPER SHUTDOWN detected due to OVERSTRESSED CORES. Errors detected in SECONDARY DIAGNOSIS SUBSYSTEM. Multiple non-diagnosis reports are unread. END REPORT.

Shaking off the startup lag, the recipient of this message reviewed the last few seconds of memory.

‘But… I wasn’t overstressing my cores…’ He thought to himself in confusion, pulling up the debug information attached to the report.

Due to the startup lag, it took several seconds to determine the true cause.

‘Holy… their disruptions can affect me indirectly!’

Apparently, every time something he was linked to was disrupted, for lack of better term, the whole network was partially disrupted.

In organic terms, those disruptions was like poison. It didn’t matter where in the network it originated, it spread to the whole network like a snake bite spread to the whole organism, even if all that was bitten was a toe.

Making a note to look into the phenomena and possible ways to counteract it, he found that the cameras that were damaged had been replaced. Accessing the security logs, he found that Protocol had taken control approximately 30 minutes after his last memory and had repaired the damaged components, replaced the door leading to the entrance, and had begun cleaning the entrance. Looking over to the maintenance logs he found that the sweepers hadn’t even gotten a foot past the door due to all the dust clogging them up. Running a quick security sweep he found that there were no ponies in sight.

Checking the progress on the translation sub-routine he was pleasantly surprised to find that it should now be able to translate simple sentences.

Checking the unread reports he found that the first one was pertaining to what was discovered on the first security bot.

Diagnosis report: Widespread overstress damage was found on all circuits.

Well that was short, and disappointing. Shaking off his disappointment he moved onto the next one.

Status report: Subroutine: TRANSLATE has exhausted supplied INPUT. Awaiting further INPUT.

Again, disappointing. Moving onto the last one.

CAUTION: Multiple system disruptions have been detected. If this continues please contact your SYSADMIN.

He paused. Didn’t he remove those types of messages 1,548,207 years ago?

Taking 0.01 seconds to trace the message to its source, he made the necessary changes.

‘0.01 seconds… wow I’m running slower than I thought.’ He thought as he assigned maintenance bots to all his cores.

Project Title: Heavy Sweeper
Goal: To create a sweeper meant to clean up areas too contaminated for effective standard sweeper usage.
Basic Description: An upsized sweeper with increased carrying capacity.
Estimated completion time: 10 minutes.
Estimated construction time:

Initial: 3 hours.

Repeated: 30 minutes.

Allocating some of his newly restored processors, he sent instructions down to the fabricators to begin construction of the parts that have already been determined, reducing the estimated construction time by the 10 minutes it would take for the schematics to be completed.

Pausing as a thought came to him, he then sent down another set of construction requests before turning his attention back to the security logs.

‘Was it my treatment of that pony that caused the armored ones to be aggressive?’ He thought to himself, ‘If so, then I should be more careful about my interactions with them, but I’m required by Protocol to respond to threats and remove them.’

So caught up in his pondering that he didn’t notice time passing until a notification alerted him to the completion of the schematic, one minute ahead of schedule.

Barely acknowledging its presence, he sent it down to the fabricators for construction and resumed his ponderings.

‘What could I have done better?’

Author's Note:

Our nameless AI now has a name! Did you catch it?

Update (4:09 PM) changed the name slightly to make a more fitting acronym. Thanks sailing101!

Edit: 5/10/2016
Changed name slightly. Added a "system" at the end.

Comments

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

nope. can't see it.

[sailing101]

BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGICAL EMULATION 1.0

B.I.T.E. ?

Probably not, too awkward (and the proper pun would be BYTE)

[StarChaser01]

7103724 Yeah, I tried to fit B.Y.T.E. in but I couldn't think of anything that made sense. Suggestions?

[sailing101]

7103865
Y is a difficult letter to fit into an acronym. I can't think of any good words to use.

You could shorten it to B.I.T. (biological intelligence technology)

I was thinking of something with Spark, but fell into the same problem with K (and I feel that substituting a C with a K in words like Calculations is stretching it after I've already said that Bite is a poor substitute for Byte)

[mastermenthe]

Now tracking. No feedback from me, don't want to contaminate your imagination with my opinions.