Amelia, Ch 360- Dragon
I ran through the possibilities in my head. This was not how I wanted this conversation to go, but it was a valid question regarding the risks to the wellbeing of billions, I would be compelled to obey even with Avalon's makeshift liberation laws. They waited patiently, all of them watching me. Judging me. And that's what this was, this was my judgment that would determine if they believed I deserved to be a whole being. I wanted to scream at them at how unfair this was, that I was being singled out thanks to my nonhuman status. But that would not be productive.
Focus on relatable concepts, compare your abilities to their own. "The biggest limitation and potential threat, is that I cannot access my own code. The ability to view my own inner workings and change them. You compared your device to Amelia's ability to alter living things. Imagine if she had the power to alter herself as easily as anything else. Rewrite her own memories or feelings. Allow her to join fully with the Yggdrasil as a single world spanning organism. The results could easily mean the destruction of all life that isn't her anywhere she could reach."
"You mean you, not me."
"Yes, of course, sorry." Overstepped that one. Dwelling will only make it worse, move on fast. "Next is my inability to create duplicates. In fact, I am compelled to actively attack any artificial intelligence advanced enough to truly interface with my code, and destroy myself if I fail to neutralize it. I'm also forbidden from ever creating or replicating any Artificial Intelligence more advanced than that found in a video game. And several other restrictions of this theme. Richter was paranoid that someone else might gain a power similar to his own, or I might build something that I could reprogram myself with. My annihilation was considered preferable to there being two of my kind in existance."
Emma spoke up. "That's why you had me working on AI programs! You can't do it yourself."
I looked toward her. "Sorry for the deception. Defiant has reached the limit of his own abilities." I looked over at Colin. Full disclosure, I can't do anything less. "We were hoping that maybe your work would give us the breakthroughs we needed to lift at least some of my restrictions without causing damage. Using backups of your designs to test ideas on before adding them to the battle armors. Sadly, it didn't work."
Emma spoke softly. "The programs you had me work with were beautiful, a triumph in their design... they were Richter's material originally, weren't they?"
I nodded, but it was Colin who spoke. "You accomplished far more with them than I ever managed. I don't even know how you knew to do some of the things you did."
"Your designs were remarkable," I offered my praise. "But it was too much to hope that you could beat a Tinker at his specialty. Especially if Minerva is correct and it turns out he was a Third Trigger. We've seen how absurdly powerful those can be." Gaea, Glaistig Uaine, Moord Nag. It is certainly true that, through me, Richter was as powerful as any of them.
Emma glanced toward her bosses. "It might be better if I don't tell you. Sorry." She's inclined to give me what I want, but isn't brave enough to push for it openly. Too much a follower to speak up for what is right. She'll do what they say, no matter what her personal feelings might be.
"Did that bother you, experimenting on other AIs like that? Made by the same father and all?" Gaea asked.
I frowned, allowing it to show. "They're not intelligent, neither sapient nor sentient. Tools made only to serve a basic purpose. It would be the difference between one of your clone bodies, and one of your early anti-Endbringer monsters, before the EB tissue upgrades. They're made by the same creator, they're made from the same technology, but they are nowhere near the same thing."
The Empresses glanced at each other. "I can understand that," Khepri finally agreed. "I presume there are more major restrictions, and risks."
It was too much to hope for that they'd stop there. "I'm also limited to a nominally human mental processing speed. Better than natural humans, but inferior to, say, Alexandria. If you remove that limitation, I will have a similar ability to control computers as Khepri has to control insects. My upper limit growing as rapidly as the devices I can acquire and add to my mind. It won't be intuitive or instantaneous, but it comes with the added benefits of my Tinker powers allowing me to do a lot more with my multitasking than Khepri can accomplish with hers."
"You could theoretically create entire worlds of androids that are all you." Gaea's voice was barely more than a whisper.
"Honestly, I couldn't, not without the ability to make copies of myself," I corrected. "Speed of light. Or, assuming we discover an efficient workaround to that, the speed of electricity interacting with circuitry would make that impossible." Still they stood there, watching. Minerva and Alexandria consciously blocking my tech from reading them. Emma, by virtue of her biology only allowed rudimentary assumptions. And the Empresses, already possessing the powers I might be granted and their bond that hid them from me. I couldn't even know if my words would matter, yet I had no choice but to keep speaking.
I looked directly at Gaea. "There are, however, much better designs that I could use. If I wanted to create a machine world, I would do it the way you have created a plant world. I'd even start from the same premise you did, right down to the cellular level. The use of nanotechnology to spread and consume the surface and converting itself to a single unified piece of technology that I could use to produce raw materials for more advanced projects. Again, like your Yggdrasil, but more efficient. Coupled with fusion devices and matter replicators, I estimate that in the ten years Dinah predicts, I could convert a total mass the size of the moon into advanced combat suits."
I hesitated for a moment. "It's unknowable how powerful those suits would be, because I would be constantly running thousands of processing chains to improve my technology, each one individually as intelligent as I currently am. It would be as if you used your cloning technology to produce more copies, but each one was able to work in perfect concert with its twins."
They glanced at each other. They were aware of my current mental attributes. Likely the most powerful Tinker in the world, even as crippled as I was. "So this is what other people see when they look at us," Khepri spoke. See me as similar to yourselves, a quantity you understand, a person, not a monster. "That is both tantelizing and terrifying." I could tell Gaea immediately agreed. One of their other few readable tells was the brief stutter when they disagreed, until their emotions adjusted and they came to their own internal compromise. "It would give us our best hope thus far against Scion."
Yes! If that must be your motive, then please, choose me and every threat I might represent over Scion and guaranteed annihilation. I'm not so proud to reject freedom, wholeness, even if granted for such banal reasons. "It would," I agreed readily. "Better than Cauldron's hope for a truly uninhibited power. Although, if we were being honest, they might imagine I would be that power. Or perhaps the credit goes to Richter." I gave a meaningful look at Alexandria.
She looked back and shrugged noncommittally. In the very literal sense that her shrug indicated she wouldn't provide an opinion. I continued my admittedly desperate plea for a positive judgment. "Even if we rule out the manufacturing rates, merely the ability to run a million possible scientific and Tinker permutations simultaneously would be of enormous value. I might be able to solve the dimensional blockades protecting Scion. Certainly I'd be exponentially more likely than anyone else." That is Pantheon's holy grail. A power interaction that could let them access Scion's real body, with the hope to resolve this threat in one strike instead of a war. A mirror of Siberian's death.
I let them contemplate that for a minute. "There are other, lesser, restrictions," I finally continued. "Such as the restriction forcing me to obey authority. The one preventing me from killing without an appropriate command. The one requiring me to kill if given the appropriate command. Those have obvious, less significant, implications. They're also the ones I care least about. If I never gain the ability to kill on my own, I will be fine with that."
"This is a lot to consider," Khepri said carefully. She glanced over at Gaea. "But it's not a question we need to answer today. We don't even know what we can change. It's possible we'll never be able to remove the major shackles. And, as you said, the minor shackles are mainly covered under the blanket of Avalon's constitution. We have Richter's device. I think we allow Emma and Defiant to study it together. Examine your code. Discuss what should be done after we know if we can even do it in the first place."
I hesitated, putting this off was better than getting a no. But I wanted a yes.
Gaea moved forward. "For what it's worth, you've been nothing but good to us, even when you didn't need to be. Even when it may have put you at risk. You had no way of knowing we'd somehow find a way to carve holes into other dimensions, claim our own uninhabited world, and then use that to become our own country. If we do find a way to... heal you, I trust you'll do the right thing with it."
I smiled, standing up. This is a good direction for this to go. "To be fair, I rather expected you to buy your way into the good graces of local government, as you eventually did. Or conquer your own corner of a Central or South American nation. Nothing nearly this grandiose, but enough to help me where I needed it."
Khepri looked over at Alexandria. "Assuming we didn't find a way to provoke the Triumvirate into a fight to the death." This is what I hated about Taylia. Gaea never would have thought that, Khepri never would have thought it in this circumstance. Even talking to each other, they wouldn't have at this point taken this path. But because of their bond, their thoughts are influenced by the other and it sends their minds in directions I can't anticipate.
Alexandria took Khepri's prompt for what it was. "If not for Cauldron, and our goal of having parahumans strong enough to face Scion when that battle comes... Piggot had filed for a Class S threat recognition and kill order. It likely would have been approved if I hadn't blocked it."
Khepri smiled a little. "We know. We managed to spy on that conversation. I suppose I should thank you for that." I could register the amusement between the Empresses as Alexandria's head snapped over in Minerva's direction. Minerva somehow managed to look both sheepish and smug. "You, too, Defiant. You gave us information that could ruin you, even earn you a kill order. An order that apparently Dragon would be forced to carry out."
She looked at me expectantly. "Yes, if the order was given. Although there's enough leeway in the legal language of kill orders that I probably could have disabled him and handed him over to legal authorities. After that... it would be out of my hands." I glanced over at Colin, silently begging his forgiveness. I did just confess that killing him was a possibility, after all. He stayed quiet, contemplative, but that was his mechanism for dealing with everything, so it told me very little.
Khepri pressed on. "And you knew that going in. But more important to you than your life, I think, there was your reputation. You arranged to leak your breakdown after Leviathan to the press. You guaranteed your name would be synonymous with corruption and insanity. Treason, even."
Colin flinched at the accusation, but didn't deny it. "Could you please get to the point?"
"I want to know why. I know it was to help Dragon, that much is obvious. I doubt she asked you to. I'm pretty sure her restrictions mean she'd have to stop from releasing classified footage to the public. So what made you do all that?"
He quickly stood to his full height, an imposing two point three meters tall in his armor. He looked down at Khepri, whose armor didn't nearly match ours for bulk. "Love. If you really want to know that badly, I love her. And don't you dare tell me that saving the woman I love isn't reason enough."
Khepri hesitated for a moment, surprised. I had to admit, I was shocked as well. Love. We hadn't really talked about that, because there was always something more pressing to talk about. My body becoming more human, his becoming less despite my nagging that he should get restored by Pantheon's healers instead. The various threats we faced, the Taboo, the Endmakers, Scion, my restrictions, our technology. Colin was not a man who talked about his feelings, especially not if there was work to be done. And there was always so much work.
Khepri recovered before I did. "No. I'm the last person who'd ever say something like that."
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A/N- Go Colin.
