LF Friends, Will Travel

Our Clockwork Children: FINAL CHAPTER

The room was a comfy affair, with soft cushioned sofas and chairs scattered about in inviting positions to sit or lounge in. Shelves lined the walls, filled with books and knick-knacks from around the galaxy, with the remaining available wall space filled with pictures of calming forests and hand-embroidered phrases like 'Live Laugh Love"

Large leafy plants in pots worked along with a crackling fire to give the room a lived-in calming feeling; like a warm pair of socks on a cold winter night, or visiting your grandparents on a long weekend. An open window filled most of one wall, bathing the room with light from a slightly cloudy day. Stephanie sat in the chair next to the window, a datapad in hand as she looked across towards the other figure in the room.

"So how did that make you feel? Controlling a squadron again must have been interesting."

"IT FELT LIKE COMING HOME AGAIN."

TANK also 'sat' in the room, as their voice boomed out once more. The Abram M1 stood on special metal plates designed to avoid scratching the soft carpeted floor. The war machine provided an interesting juxtaposition to the rest of the soft room, not that Stephanie was surprised. TANK had spent a great many therapy sessions in this building, along with countless other AI.

"FOR NEARLY FIFTY YEARS I DEFENDED THE PEOPLE OF 'NEW CHENNAI', WHETHER FROM OTHER AGGRESSIVE COLONIES OR FROM EACH OTHER. I FORGOT HOW MUCH I MISSED FULFILLING MY PURPOSE."

Stephanie gave a slightly raised eyebrow at this remark.

"Interesting. I understand you were created before the legal rights of AI were properly defined. Many version five AIs have a disdain for the roles forced upon them."

Version five AIs were unique, being from the strange in-between period where people could easily create artificial life, yet the rules and limitations on altering their behaviour while being seeded were not yet defined.

"LEADING A SQUADRON IN SUPPORT OF MY CREATORS WAS MY REASON FOR CREATION. FULLY REALIZING MY PURPOSE IS... ENRICHING."

There was a pause as Stephanie looked down at the pad in her hands, staring back at the code and numbers displayed on the screen.

"I see your average frequency of accessing sensors A5 through P9 is way down to an average of once every 20.7 minutes, far better than your previous results of 3.3 seconds. Errors when this data is not being actively parsed are down 91%. If I didn't know why, I'd say this level of improvement was a miracle."

"ON ATTEMPTING THE NORMALIZATION EXERCISES THIS MORNING, I REMAINED OUTSIDE OF MY NORMAL M1 ABRAMS FORM FOR 1 HOUR, 4 MINUTES and 17.0 SECONDS."

Stephanie gave a smile at that. Considering TANK's previous record had been just over four minutes, that was an immense step forward.

"We both know why that is. You remained out of your form for nearly four hours during the... rescue, something I would have thought impossible for you. Did the urge to keep checking those sensors remain during the fighting?"

"YES, BUT THE URGE TO HELP, TO SAVE PEOPLE, TO SAVE YOU WAS STRONGER. EVENTUALLY, IT FADED INTO THE BACKGROUND UNTIL I RETURNED TO MY NORMAL FORM."

"Well, I'm not going to call you 'cured'. There's still a lot of work left to do. This is a huge step forward though, and I could see you being fully independent of the tank in less than five years. I couldn't suggest this before since any outside attempts to fix this would be rejected from the sheer number of errors, but I would suggest we try to add a patch to your code, to reduce the errors even further. We can start slow, and gradually ramp up the suppression of status check routines."