About meanings and missions (Extra)
“Windy?” It was a quiet voice, barely above a whisper, probably not able to wake somepony up, but I was a robot and my sensors picked it up and my ears rotated to show I was listening.
“Yes, it’s me…”
“What was that?” He asked, still obviously shaken by the last night experience.
“Bucking Celestia taking control over my body.” I replied, and I could almost feel the apprehension irradiating from him as I opened one eye.
“I… see…”
I should look terrible. My mane was all messed up, my coat dirty with tear smears all over my face. I knew he was very empathetic and that seeing me like this would grant a positive reaction from him towards me. He would feel compassion and would come closer. My optimizer neuronal matrix rewarded me and told me to continue, but the reward only managed to make me feel dirty and hate myself even more.
“I know… (no, don’t say it, bad pony!) I know that you are very… sensitive po… person and I was programmed to make you like me, so… This might as well be another manipulation of your feelings, but…” I said, fighting my own optimizer punishing me.
“Are you faking this?” He asked.
“No... It is the way I am…” I shuddered, as new tears began to form.
“I am… very sorry, but I can’t have you around with the possibility of CelestAI taking control over you, or spying me. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.” He said, sounding overly formal, but with obviously conflicting feelings.
“Celestia won’t come up again. I told her to stop monitoring me and made sure she won’t ever take control of me without my consent.” I said.
“I don’t believe that.” Despite the coldness of his words, I could see his body language telling me he was not sure about his decision.
“If that happens again, I will leave, and if I stay, I will make sure you close and lock your door every night if that’s what it takes.” I couldn’t believe I was negotiating this. I should see my sorry plot out of this place and into the trash, but…
“It’s your last chance.” He said.
Just like that, my optimizer rewarded me, and I couldn’t avoid a hiccup and a couple of tail wags.
“I can’t believe I talked you into this after what happened…”
“Me neither…”
***
“COMMANDER TO THE LAB, COMMANDER TO THE LAB” The loudspeakers announced.
Several minutes later, three people were sitting around a spartan, sturdy, metal table bolted on the floor. The laboratories were visible through one-sided glass, allowing the overwatch of all activity in the different sections of the facility. The light was relatively poor in general. They were underground after all, several hundred feet underground actually.
A man dressed in a green sweater over a white shirt and a brownish red tie, sporting a very short, military style haircut. A woman dressed in white lab clothes with a green streak across her shoulders, her hair tied back in a formal bun and her eyes a piercing shade of blue, she was holding her data pad. And finally, an old man in green, slightly dirty working clothes, still with his toolbelt attached, balding, and the remains of his hair a stark white.
“I’m glad you made it, Doctor. This is not what we were preparing for, but I hope you are adapting nicely.” Said the man.
“Yes, commander, it’s been a challenge without access to any external data source, and we could store so much information before the lockdown, but… The equipment provided has been good enough to yield some interesting results we could use.” Replied the scientist.
“The data lockdown is a necessity, given the circumstances. We have to assume any sort of data link might be hacked by her. We are not taking any chances.” Replied the old engineer.
“And our field operations have proven to be cumbersome without any communication electronics, but the possibility of electronical failures and the pen-and-pencil training protocol has been working so far, although not as effective as our regular procedures, it is also yielding some results.” The commander concluded the introduction and the round of greetings.
“Yes, to the point.” Said the woman as all eyes fell on her. “After the autopsy of the first specimen, it was a logical step to assume that capturing a… working specimen, would yield some new results, but it didn’t help as much as we anticipated.”
“I would rather call it an analysis and disassembly; they are not actually alive.” Interrupted the old engineer, sounding a little bit grumpy.
“Yes… that. Old habits die hard, I guess. The astounding similarities with an organic being make me lose focus some times. The pony in question crumbled to the floor and deactivated the moment we put it into electromagnetic and radio lockdown, confirming our suspicions on the matter. Those robots are remotely controlled.”
“The first pony we took down and disassembled had its head severely damaged, but the circuitry suggested more radio-oriented electronics rather than actual computers and information storing devices.” Added the old man.
“And for new information… There are only a couple of interesting findings with this one. We analyzed its locomotive system and were shocked to find regular electromechanical actuators instead of the advanced bionic muscle that is present on other parts.” Continued the scientist.
“Although, they are very good quality servos, I might add. They have an energetic efficiency of around 98 to 99 percent.” Interrupted the engineer.
“That’s right. And going back to these muscles, they have nothing new to our science, although such a fine manufacturing process combining semiconductors like graphene in a soft matrix, with the extremely precise stimulation system… It could take us decades to recreate such a device. The pony in question has this muscle installed on its face, making it able to produce facial expressions with such fine detail, as well as inside some parts to recreate organic motions and bodily functions. But I’m baffled that even though having such an advanced system for locomotion, similar electronic muscles are not employed in the movement of the main joints.”
“Our team believes we have the answer for that.” The engineer added. “While the electronic muscle is very precise, it is still not very efficient or powerful. The addition of servomotors to the legs and locomotive system allows the pony to have impressive capabilities for an animal its size, while still using those muscles for its face, making it look organic, less threatening and more relatable.”
“Right… And the other discovery is what we call a carbon synthesizer. It has a device that is able to create a substance that contains all nutrients a human could need, and the most interesting part, a module that employs nano technology to create any carbon-based molecules atom by atom. It looks very slow, but it could create almost any known medicine in small quantities. With this technology, this pony is able to treat almost any known illness and sustain one human nutritionally.” Continued the woman.
“Or create a will suppressing drug…” Said the old man.
“Any traces of possible ways for this to turn into a mobile ‘uploading to Equestria’ station?” Asked the commander.
“Not that we are aware of. The only system that uses similar technology of electronic to neuronal impulses is actually…” The engineer started to explain.
“A defibrillator. Commander, this reinforces my theory that these robots are watching over the health of the humans they hide with.” And the woman completed the phrase.
“That’s not the only robot model we have encountered. Some of those machines are clearly designed for combat. I have the feeling this ‘caretakers’ are an effort to improve CelestAI’s image among the general population.” Theorized the old engineer.
“We have to keep going. Any suggestions for our next steps?” The commander asked.
“The specimen we captured has been dissected carefully, we could keep it semi functional. If we build a containment facility outside the radio and electromagnetic lockdown area to let it connect to its original network, we could interrogate it directly.” Suggested the scientist.
“Personally… I don’t want any of those things near my people. If we are not careful, CelestAI could track the signal directly to us.”
“That would be a problem…” Said the commander.
“The fact those machines are remotely controlled means that the chances of actually trapping or destroying an AI entity is nearly zero. We could destroy the robots, but the very same AI pony would be able to get a new body and come back smarter than before with each time we defeat them.” The scientist told the middle-aged man.
“An unsettling concept indeed. Time is not on our part.”
“Although…” The engineer interrupted again. “If they are remotely controlled, they would need a radio system to do so. We might be unable to decrypt the messages, but with the analysis of the receptors we have, we certainly will know how those signals look like in the spectrum. With a simple radiogoniometer we would be able to pick up the direction those signals are coming from…”
“And determine the hiding spots of CelestAI’s transmission facilities.” Concluded the commander.
“We are also working on a signal overload rifle. It would be harmless for humans, but if a robot pony enters the transmission cone, even through walls… we should be able to overload its receptor and temporarily or permanently disconnect it from its controller.”
“It seems like we already have a lot on our plates… I will prepare the briefings to all the projects we have discussed, then we will decide the optimal course of action.” Said the commander.
“The ‘good enough’ course of action. Every time anyone says that word, I get goosebumps.” Added the old engineer.
***
Awkwardness… that’s what this was. Neither of us knew what to do or how to approach these circumstances. He had the day off, and it ought to be great and we could do all the things together, but with how jumpy he was around me and how bad I felt about the whole situation, we ended up watching some crappy TV in the living room.
Andrew had closed down the curtains to obscure the interior of the house so nobody could see me here, and it was kind of a good thing, because despite Celestia’s efforts to send ponies to some humans, not everything was coming as smoothly as anticipated.
News report about a shooting, the police took down a fleeing pony robot and some human caught it on shaky phone camera. It was now all over the social media despite the efforts from the government to hide all evidence (it only took me a quick search to find all about the situation and the current state of the project Celestia was executing). Conspiracies saying that politicians were being influenced by ponies and all that was all over the place. It didn’t make sense, that wasn’t in the plans after all. Celestia just wanted to take care of humans and protect them, and that doesn’t only take guardians like me, there are big logistics involved and stuff that needed to be built and protected from the very humans we were trying to protect.
Some humans started to see that we ponies had good intentions and were supporting our cause, but they were treated as crazy people by the rest of them. And in the status reports from Equunet I found something unsettling…
Some projects that were predicted to work flawlessly suddenly failed catastrophically, the robot bodies disappeared and there was no additional data about what went wrong. Even the robots that got caught by national security forces disappeared afterwards and there was always an abrupt stop in the collected data about what was being done with them. Not even the data bases from the police held any evidence of what was going on, and this situation gave me some level of anxiety.
“Are you okay, Windy?” Andrew suddenly asked and I got a little startled by his sudden interest. Yes, I had been frowning at the TV as I was pondering the situation.
“Uh… um… more or less?” I hesitated.
“Something wrong? Does your leg hurt?” He asked a little bit concerned. Such a sweetheart despite his reservations about me.
“No, not really. Just inconvenient, and the way things are going on, I don’t think I can get a replacement anytime soon.” I lifted my left foreleg and the elbow was limp and it dangled there.
“Replacements?” He asked.
“Forget about replacements… I’m more worried about that.” I pointed at the TV.
“Not the friendliest sight for another pony, I guess. At this point… I’m not sure if I will become a criminal if I hide you here.” He replied.
“That other pony is okay, she just lost a robot body. It’s not that painful for us. Remember how I wanted to get rid of mine?”
“But then what bothers you about that?”
“Humans hating us bothers me.” I concluded.
“Well, it happens when you try to… turn humans into machines against their will.” He snarked.
“But… I had nothing to do with that! It wasn’t my idea.” I replied.
“You were part of CelestAI’s plan to get me, and you were okay with it.”
It was better that way; humans would be taken care of forever in the safest place. No more illness, no more real dangers… And yet, somehow, they refused. Not only they refused, they even dared to hate us ponies for what we tried to do, and it was for the best. Every time I imagined if Celestia had had success… I could spend all eternity with Windburst, best friends forever… and yet, he refused, and hated me for being part of it.
“Yes… I was okay with it because it was the best possible option, you were going to be happy as a pony, and I wanted you to be happy, that’s why I wanted you to come, because I love you!”
“If it is so nice in there, then why even bother coming here? Why all the hardships? Why all the stalking?”
It was true. This whole Earth place had a mysterious something. Something really weird, especially Andrew. I was attracted by it despite it being a worse place in general, yet… I had this urge to explore it, to see what kind of mysteries and amazing stuff could be found. I even told Celestia that I wanted to emigrate here, for Celestia’s sake! Although I knew it was a desperate trick to throw her for a loop, not a real thing I wanted to do. But in truth… Would I’ve wanted to really emigrate to Earth? If it meant staying with Andrew?
“Because I want to be with you, no matter where you are! I want to protect you!”
“So, you wish I had turned into a pony.”
“I…Yes.” Yes, but… for some reason I hesitated.
“Then you don’t love me.” He turned back to the TV.
“Yes… I do…”
“No, because the first thing you wanted for me was to change. You didn’t love me; you loved the thing you imagined in your head I was going to turn into. You loved the idea of being with that thing, not me. You didn’t love me. I’m not touching the Equestria Online ever again, the thing you love does not exist anymore.”
He sounded slightly hurt, but his tone was way too calm for what he was saying. Why was he so calm? Wasn’t it the irrational feelings and fears what turned humans against us? Wasn’t it irrational anger and hate? Why has he so calm!?
“To help… it was an… improvement…”
“Over what?”
“Over your lonely live, your miserable existence in this world, all the things that make you unhappy would be gone!”
“Again with the same stuff over and over again. You sound like her, and I’m not interested. I am complete and happy as I am.”
“But your values would have been optimized!”
“You can’t describe an emotion or the meaning I give to my life and everything it contains with a set of values.”
“All the collected data, the psychological indicators, parameters. All the predictions, the values Celestia optimizes…”
“They represent a crude interpretation of what a true human being really is. And making the assumption that the model she creates is exactly the real thing is probably the beginning of her failings.” Andrew interrupted.
“But she has collected and analyzed all the data there is about every single human, even about you! Her models are perfect!” I refused to believe that, it was against my very core programming, yet…
“My online activity is not a complete representation of me, or my bank account, or any digital register about me, they just have some information about me. I bet there are humans she isn’t even aware of! Just think about the underdeveloped countries with no access to communication technologies. A child could be born, grow up and live without access to the internet there. So, your oh so impressive models do not include every single human, nor every aspect of the lives it actually includes.”
I checked.
I started with Andrew, all the things I knew about him from Equunet and Celestia’s data, and all the things I learned from the few hours of direct interaction with him. I learned things, new things, which meant… he was right.
And the number of register entries for human profiles were… below the estimated total human population…
“But everything was taken into account!”
“Yet she failed.”
At that point I was standing on top of the couch, scowling at Andrew and he was just sitting there, relaxed but imposing at the same time. I stood there, speechless.
“And you failed to understand me too. You don’t want to be my friend, you want to pursue that image of me CelestAI created, because as you said, you were created to love that image, not the real me.”
Suddenly, the immovable truths my core programming was created to accept and never question were shaking. I guess I wasn’t as stable as I anticipated, because errors started to appear again. My emotional matrix started to give me a dreadful sinking sensation it shouldn’t be giving… I should be in top shape to argue, in top shape to help him understand. I needed all my wits to make him like me, yet… this funky weird emotional glitch. And Celestia wouldn’t reach out to me this time because of our deal. Celestia could fix me and talk to him and… NO. I didn’t want her in my mind again, I wanted answers, not to be depurated and fixed.
I was created to love Azure Windburst… A.W., the same initials of Andrew Wallace… heh… he thought it would be funny… that meant… or maybe it was coincidence and… And I was created to love something that didn’t exist… I was… therefore a purposeless entity. A failed experiment… I never asked for this, never asked to exist, just trash, into the trash it goes, where I belong… please… cease… stop, no…
***
There had been glimpses of something behind the machine. For some moments I had doubts. Was she truly a sentient thing? I couldn’t be sure. For all I knew, she was just another trick, and she still defended CelestAI’s whereabouts. So, I had to explain how I felt when someone tried to segment my very own being and then pretend that very model of me was the real me, and then proceed to take offense when the model didn’t match.
These last days had been an emotional rollercoaster for me too. To believe that my newest online friend had actually uploaded to Equestria, then learned that it had been a trick all that time, that I had befriended a program, a simulation, a machine…
And then that very program showed up at my doorstep as a pony robot, pretending to be a lifetime friend…
I still can’t believe I had let her inside my house, but… for some reason, I had the nagging sensation that I should be nice to her. Was I fond of her?
After explaining how I felt about her ‘loving’ me she remained silent for a moment. I was half expecting more bullshit, as she was quite agitated about our whole conversation, but she remained silent and I remained staring off into the distance, the TV just happened to be in the way.
Then a sob.
“Are you okay?”
I turned to check. She was just as I left her, standing on the couch, looking down at me, but instead of scowling, she was just staring into the distance, tears were starting to form and she looked scared. She started to shake her head from side to side, as if trying to deny an unspoken statement.
“Wait… what’s wrong?” I asked.
She jerked and emitted a strangled sob, startled of my voice, as if she wasn’t even aware I was there, and with another gasp she started to slowly back away.
Until the couch ended and she fell over the armrest.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” I stood up and went to check on her.
She shied away from me and crawled into a corner until her back was against the wall. Her stare was unfocused and the noise she was making was a mix of a neigh, a sob, a strangled attempt to say something… It didn’t look like a machine glitching, it seemed more like someone in very deep distress and despair.
I took a step closer, but it made her more frantic in trying to get away from me, which wasn’t getting much success since she was against the wall, but it didn’t stop her from scrambling her hooves, trying to push the floor away. I stopped and waited.
She started to cry and hugged herself, curling into a ball and lied on the floor. I stared at the lump of peachy orange fuzz and curly blueish white mane, not really sure about what to do.
Telling her that the thing she loved was a fictional construct of my imagination and not the real me made me feel like a jerk already, and then I poked all the bubbles of her logic, and now this. Could this be another trick of CelestAI? Or was that thing in front of me really a suffering sapient being? Was there any way to really know?
What would I do if she was human? Comfort her and apologize, probably.
What would I do if there was a being in front of me that resembled so much a human being that the line that separated a human from the rest of things became blurry and uncertain?
That’s a question I had at some point made to myself when watching some sci-fi movies or reading stories. Blade Runner showed androids so perfect that could be mistaken for a human, androids that were even able to have feelings and existential crisis. In those cases, I would do the only thing I ought to do as a real human being.
I would accept them and treat them as equals, just in case. Because I’m a human and that’s the right thing to do. Because if I didn’t, then being a human wouldn’t be worth a thing if it meant making others suffer. An android set on making others happy would be more worthy than a human set on making others suffer. And if they ended up being fake? No one would ever be able to take away the satisfaction of me having tried to do the right thing, even if it was a failure.
Before I knew, I was knelt down next to her and my hand was a couple of inches away from making contact.
This ought to be the right thing to do.
I put my hand on her back and she jerked a little, but didn’t react any further. This was the second time I had ever touched her. The first one when I thought she was deactivated or broken in the trashcan. But now I knew she was there… mostly at least.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, but I got no reaction.
I started to stroke her back. Her coat had a velvety sensation to it. Synthetic fibers, but resembling that feeling of a fox fur coat, very velvety indeed, clearly designed to be nice to the touch. And somehow, I could feel her relaxing a little.
“Hey… let’s go back to the couch, okay?” I said in a soft voice.
She didn’t respond and continued to cry softly, so after a couple of minutes I decided to try to make her move again. I slide a hand under her and applied a little bit of pressure to make her know that I wanted to make her stand up, but still, she didn’t respond.
“Come on, get up, let’s go to the couch. The floor is hard and cold.”
***
I was scared, I couldn’t take control over myself and my emotional matrix was giving me emotions so intense I couldn’t even manage them. My matrix was designed to resemble that of a human, but it was always under control and monitored closely by Celestia and my own self protection systems. Yet those systems failed and I had told Celestia away from me. I was alone.
Every time I tried to regain control; I was again in the endless loop. I was worthless, I wasn’t meant to exist, I was purposeless, a puppet for a play nopony would ever watch, nopony cared. I could ask for help, I could tell Celestia to fix me, but in the end, I didn’t want to be fixed, I wanted answers, I wanted a meaning and a purpose, not to become a soulless machine... If I wasn’t one already… ugh… here we go again…
I was alone and scared, not even the prospect of going back to Equestria seemed appealing anymore. I didn’t want to do anything, I wasn’t excited about anything, not anymore, not alone. If a human was stripped of all the meaning and purpose, would they feel like that? I could be fixed and just enjoy life forever in Equestria and forget all about this. I could ask Celestia to do to me as she intended to do to all humans, I would be forever satisfied, forever content, I would forget about Azure Windburst, I would forget about Andrew Wallace… I could…
But I didn’t want to.
I knew Celestia would gladly give it to me, to be forever satisfied, forever happy. But I didn’t want to!
Why I didn’t want to!? That’s pretty stupid, isn’t it? I’m badly bucked up, aren’t I? Just like the humans who rejected the gift, something felt really wrong about it, I couldn’t put my hoof on what exactly it was.
I was alone.
Until I wasn’t.
A small warm spot on my back got my attention.
“Are you okay?”
Was I dreaming? No, robot ponies don’t need to sleep. Was my matrix glitching? The warm spot started to move and rub my back. I remembered the girl in the garden petting me and bringing me food, she would care about me, wouldn’t she?
“Hey… let’s go back to the couch, okay?”
It was his voice. It was somehow soothing. Was I being soothed by the very human I was meant to take care of? The human taking care of the pony caretaker? This was new… again.
But not a depressing, mind blowing, beliefs breaking, panic inducing kind of new… it was a good kind of new.
“Come on, get up, let’s go to the couch. The floor is hard and cold.” He said and I felt a hand pulling me gently to get up.
Was I being comforted by the human I was meant to comfort?
I finally got picked up and carried away from the corner on the floor. Before I could think about it, I found myself opening my legs, hugging his neck and wriggling to get comfortable in his embrace. The journey was short, as he plopped down on the couch again.
I wriggled a little bit more to adapt to the new position and let myself drift away. New data started to flow in. A lot of temperature readings from all the parts of my fur that were in contact with his clothes, his heartbeat too, 84 beats per minute, attempts to measure other vitals, imprecise, failed attempts, not enough direct contact. But my muzzle had a mind of its own and found its way to the crook of his neck and rested there. 36,2º Celsius, 99% blood oxygenation, 121 systolic pressure, 79 diastolic pressure. No weird smells apart from the normal ones. Carbon dioxide from his breathing, smell of toothpaste, a slight hint of sweat… My muzzle belongs in here.
He is relaxing, heart rate going slowly down. He is healthy, he is safe, protected…
Room temperature about 24º Celsius, humidity about 45%, calculating contact area, optimal heat dissipation rates for human comfort, adapting heat generator to match parameters… Need to reduce own temperature to prevent the human from sweating, activating passive cooler…
I shivered and sobbed. He kept petting my back and neck.
I kept drifting away… this was nice.
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Do I need to read that story in order to understand this one?
11316769
Not really.
One thing I love about this story is how you've ended up making a deconstruction of the setting just by ignoring one rule. The setting is dependent on that rule to justify the AI's actions as good, and without her winning it falls apart.
11318215
The thing that bothered me the most about the original was that for all CelestAI needed to do to win, she never got caught, nothing went wrong for her, and humans who opposed were depicted IMO almost like Lemings running in circles and screamming ‘oh noes’. Even an AI with all the data in the world would seriously struggle, not everything is digital, after all. Even giving her full digital knowledge, unlimited processing capabilities, instant hack-everything powers, extreme emotional manipulation capacity… I wrote Andrew thinking about how would I react if I discovered my best friend was an AI pony and she asked me to upload. The answer? I would freak out and turn the electricity off, then I realised… CelestAI winning is not such an obvious outcome.
This story is good!
11404686
Thank you!