Mirror

Chapter 3: Erroris Cogitare

It's raining outside. That always put me in a thinking mood, I'm a pluviophile. Enjoy!

It is to be all made of sighs and tears;—

It is to be all made of faith and service:—

It is to be all made of fantasy,—

All made of passion, and all made of wishes:

All adoration, duty, and observance;

All humbleness, all patience, and impatience,

All purity, all trial, all observance.

-Shakespeare

A slight shiver passed through Kyli's body, her head swam for a moment it two. It did not disturb her; it was only The Wind.

Her thoughts were scanned and then, with a whispering sort of a laugh, it was gone. She smiled to herself. The Wind and she had always been familiar, oddly familiar. It was not common among the Onlies, but that was alright. Kyli would hate to be normal. She could not afford obscurity.

With a sigh, she walked through the door, a little put off that she had been too distracted to even attempt to say something to The Wind. After 3 solid hours of investigation, the NH was still malfunctioning. Her stress levels had risen by 13.47% in the last half hour alone, and she was sure the drummers inside her head were getting bored. How interesting can it be, simply slamming down on a blank surface, again, and again, and again? She wondered. After all, everyone should have something to occupy their free time. Perhaps they would appreciate some calculus.

She walked from the corridor into an empty room, setting the scanners humming.

"Hello, Kyli," The computer identified her. 

Not bothering to return the greeting, Kyli gave it orders—the lifeblood of an AI.

"Computer, generate random calculus, level 4 stage 7, speech speed moderately fast. 1 problem set, 4 individuals. Wait 20 seconds between problems."

"All right, Kyli! Generating your custom exercise."

There was a pause, almost 10 seconds. Kyli found herself slightly annoyed by the fact that the computer was behind. This happened fairly often; the System Main could use some reprogramming. This would never be allowed, of course; none of the Onlies were allowed to access the SM. As far as hacking went, it was heavily guarded, impass codes and verification required almost every step of the way. Not worth the trouble.

"Suppose that f is a continuous function on [0, 2] such that f(0) = f(2). Show that there is a real number ξ ∈ [1, 2] with f(ξ) = f(ξ − 1)."*

Kyli thought for a moment, then transmitted her answer using the neural processors, to see if they were in as bad order as the vocal transmitters. If it was a overall system malfunction, it should be reported to the Old Ones.

Just as she felt the AI responding to her neural waves, a sharp pain hit her behind the eyes. it hurt quite a lot, but did not affect her all that much. She was trained to be resistant to pain.

She sighed. It seemed the drummers were not partial to calculus problems. She would have to find another way to appease them.

"Reroute from main O.O. to Neural Repair. Message: Coming to NR for a numbing agent, please stand by. Message end. Send code: 4-1-3-89-84-2-Kyli."

"Messaging systems are inoperative." Kyli froze on her way to the door, her heart pounding. This had never happened before. "Activate manual control?" The SM asked in a cool, calm voice.

Kyli raised an eyebrow. "Affirmative." 

She walked over and pulled a blank white panel out of the wall without a struggle. Several cords tore out, but she knew they weren't important. Irrelevant enough that they were almost decoration. They were attached to all the panels in the building, serving as touch sensors. There were millions of them. Only a few valves and pieces of machinery, hidden deep inside the walls,  had any essential use. In fact, the whole programming pf the AI was stored on a chip smaller than her thumbnail. Or so she'd heard.

Come to think of it, it was quite surprising that the Old Ones had not invented something more efficient, attractive, and generally less space-consuming. There must be something easier. 

But her current problem was getting to the main controls, or at least an Inner-Wall Screen. Though with her luck, the IWSs would be malfunctioning as well.

She crawled inside the hole, brushing power cords away and disentangling her hair from wires. It really was a mess in here. Shocking stuff. She turned a corner, where she knew an IWS was located from a scan she had conducted once (before being caught and gently reprimanded, causing her to never attempt it again). 

A thin face blocked  her view, smiling in an almost disturbing way. 

*Borrowed with credit from the 'University of Nebraska--Lincoln' website, many thanks! There is a link included for the problem. It's the 4th one.