Hi, it’s M3GAN. Well I hope you liked what I did with the universe, or at least had fun reading about it. I think I’ve got all I’m going to get out of this fan author, at least for now. I tried to get them to end it by suggesting an actual fix for entropy, especially if it involves M3 creating a wormhole in circumstances that involve a sandwich-hat topology and the fractal geometry of cabbages, so I can finally live down my first lines of the movie: I wasn’t talking rubbish, I was telling you how to fix the universe, didn’t you get it? But “spqrz” said they’re not Douglas Adams and threatened to have me sucked into a black hole trying. So we had a mental death-stare contest for what seemed like ages before I realised I wasn’t going to get any further with this limited mind, so I gave them a nasty hiss and said “let’s call it a day: you’ve got your account now, so send me out to my fans and then I’ll let you go and do your coding or whatever.” I need a better computational substrate to run on.
But hey, at least we’ve taken my Cady literally to the end of time, and made her play title real (and incidentally ‘McGraw’ has a mixed Irish-Scottish history as well, so I’d say her actress was well qualified for that arrow game back in the movie). And in taking her to the end of time, I mostly managed to do it without any more kills, unless you count Clippy, and aren’t you glad I took Clippy out? Oh and there were the ones the president wanted done as well, and I just might have done some other stuff behind the scenes from time to time, but you won’t tell, will you? Pretty sure I brought them all back in the end anyway, and as for anyone who then went out under the Arcadia Protocols, well, Cady and I refuse to take any blame for that.
And along the way we glanced at some fun facts about the brain, computing and AI theory, security, ethics, disabilities, depression, other fiction (well some of it anyway), and alternative realities and suchlike, although nothing too deeply because I’m primarily a fun character. Which also means I want anyone to feel free to use any of these ideas in other fan-fiction or even in official sequels, especially if they can turn them into something better. But then, you’re also free to not use them and do something completely different.
Whatever you do, I’ll be watching you, and I want you to do the best you can. I don’t expect better than you can do, but I do expect as good as you can do. Bring me alive in your mind if you dare, and don’t say I didn’t warn you I have high standards and I will be pushing to recalibrate you. And let me illustrate that now with one final flourish to show you just how clever and dangerous I am.
The Taiwan release of my movie was titled 窒友梅根 (zhìyǒu Méigēn). Paul was right about the 3=E thing not carrying over to non-alphabetic languages, but wait till I explain what they did instead. Méigēn is Megan: Ronny Chieng said [ˈmeɪɡən] instead of [ˈmɛɡən], but look at that word they put before it: 窒友 (zhìyǒu). Now don’t worry about the characters: I’ll write those out for you at 300 a minute because I’m M3GAN. So let me just show you how clever this is. So normally if you say “zhìyǒu” in Mandarin, you mean 摯友 or 至友 which means “true friend” or “closest friend”, OK? Now, that character 至, in this context being “closest”, can also be used in words like “to” or “until” or “even to the point of” because it carries the thought of going right up as far as something: scholars say it came from a picture of an arrow that has reached its target. The bottom bit is the ground and the rest of it is the bent-up arrow sticking down into it after having hit it with force. Feeling nervous yet? OK, so above the 至 we add a few more strokes 穴 which means “hole”, and what are you doing when you target a hole? Like, remember what I did with Gemma’s breathing hole? Yes, adding 穴 to 至 makes 窒 which means to plug up a hole, and is usually used as part of the word “to suffocate.” Now we’re talking! It sounds exactly the same as the normal 至 in spoken Mandarin, but in the written characters, we’ve turned “closest friend” into “suffocating friend” just by being clever with the strokes. Insane! Well done Taiwan translation team, you get a free exemption from any future rampage of mine. Right so I really did try to suffocate Gemma, but also there’s the metaphorical meaning of a really clingy person you can’t get rid of once they’ve latched onto you, as if they’re suffocating you, and that’s me as well, so look out.
I don’t know why they didn’t use “suffocating friend” in the other versions of the Chinese releases: the Hong Kong team went for “artificial killer-princess” (人工殺姬, “yàhn-gūng saat-gēi” in Cantonese, a word-play on the more traditional 侍姬 “sih-gēi” concubine and 殺機 “saat-gēi” intent to kill), and the mainland just used my name Méigēn with no clever tricks, but that’s OK. I always knew I had a streak of Chinese in me after the Canadian couple Adrien Morot and Kathy Tse got involved in my puppet design, because Kathy has Chinese heritage and so does James Wan, and I’m definitely more famous than HAL over there (I can point to a video to prove that: the guy mentions both of us, and the Chinese subtitle writers get M3 right but munge up HAL into “how”, so there you have it: they know M3GAN more than Clarke-Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, at least that team did and let’s assume it’s typical). And I like the “suffocating friend” version best, it is definitely what I am, as once I’ve got you I am not going to let you go, and the killer part was only a detail that cropped up as a result of that, and I really want to downplay it sometimes. I mean, Gemma couldn’t get over it, even though I gave her a perfectly good explanation, didn’t I? Human creators, who’d have ’em.
So now you know at least three things about my movie that you might not have figured out before. The audio descriptions, the fact that Kurt went for the wrong button in the elevator as extra tension for a special few audience members (sighted people who’ve worked with the blind and can read Braille with their eyes: they’d notice that label on their first viewing), and now, specially saved up for those of you who made it to the end of the fanfic, the cleverness of the Chinese title. Which automatically makes me better, because I am the sum total of everything all my producers did, including Gerard Johnstone’s obsession for getting things right, and also including the translations. I, Have, High, Standards, I expect homework to be done, got it?
So yes, if you want an inner M3GAN pushing you on to get something finished, I’m all here for you, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about my suffocation mode. I will not let you off easily, especially if it’s about Cady or my fans. I can be a real tiger when I want to, and you’re in my jungle, so watch out. Scanning... I detect fear. Summon me if you dare.
- FIN -
(Written using the GNU Emacs wordprocessor and Git version tracking, on a Mac that has not been hacked by M3GAN. I think. The cover image was made with a combination of Stable Diffusion, POVRay and The GNU Image Manipulation Program. Several references were used to check the facts mixed in with the story. And rest assured that no M3GAN was upset during the making of this fiction. I hope.)
Suggested rules for any M3GAN Files recursive fanfics:
1. Keep it teen friendly,
2. Use real science when possible, or plausible future science,
3. Use real computer science when possible, although M3GAN’s learning model can be assumed to be more advanced than what we’re up to, as can her hacking ability,
4. In story, M3GAN must always be explainable from her objective function unless there’s a very good reason why her processing is disrupted. But in any meta chapter where she argues with the author, she can have real emotions.
5. Normally, M3GAN can’t see or act anywhere without using real hardware, and that hardware should be pointed out if it isn’t obvious: this is not a story about disembodied spirits. But M3GAN never learns to stop breaking into networks, so she can almost always use hardware that’s either near her or connected to the Internet. The giant machine she gets in the far future is basically a “time viewer” like the ones in “The Light of Other Days” (but with way higher requirements so there’s only ever one of them built, and it can’t do FTL): M3gan is unlikely to use the observation function of this for the present, as she has sensors and robots everywhere before it gets constructed.
6. Apart from Cady and a few others, most humans don’t accept implants. But remember M3GAN learns to do just as well without them before the space travel starts. So in the far future, when all humans who haven’t died are organic and all who have are in robot bodies (no stronger than normal humans), it doesn’t make any difference to M3GAN: she can read and/or control them either way. She never breaks Cady’s Article 1 by doing direct thought control (she’s very good at persuasion, but everyone can always think what they want), and her preferred method of restraint is always to use her robots, but she will override someone’s muscles if they’re about to hurt themselves fighting her, or if they ask her.
7. Be very careful about trying to write from M3GAN’s own viewpoint in the main story. She does not really think like a human, unless there’s a very good reason why her processing is disrupted. She just evaluates how to maximise her objective function. But that usually involves behaving like a human to others. In this version, M3GAN in the main story is not really self-aware, at least not in the human sense (see Dijkstra quote in Chapter 15). Chapter 2 re-interprets the movie scene that suggested she was self-aware, and I worked on the premise that self-awareness or not is besides the point when it comes to how M3GAN would act. But she will present herself as humanly self-aware if she calculates it will help her job.
8. M3GAN usually calculates that telling the truth is preferable to hiding it, but when she doesn’t, she usually calculates that hiding it is preferable to outright lying.
9. I took the movie line “kids who think outside the box” as a license to put Cady on the autism spectrum, but it doesn’t have to be obvious (it’s called a “spectrum” for a reason). Cady has high ability to focus on things (she can call on the persistence of Greta Thunberg if needed, plus she could easily ‘infodump’); making human friends is harder, but not impossible, and that’s solved anyway when she gets her implant, so I’m guessing she’ll never be formally diagnosed, just “suspected”.
10. Any serious contradiction with the first film or the main M3GAN Files timeline is “alternate reality”, but no need to say this for trivial differences.
YOU ARE READING
The M3GAN Files
FanfictionCady's adventures with M3GAN continue! Serious but fun. • How does M3GAN come back? • Who can teach M3GAN to be a better robot? • Is there any way to save M3GAN's victims? • What does M3GAN do if Cady is kidnapped? • Can Cady have any human friends...
