Work Text:
Newfoundland was gone.
The news reports surrounding the event were a wealth of information that the nascent AI named Dragon struggled to sift through for details.
Once, her creator had described information as being like water, an ocean even, full of flows and currents. Dragon hadn't been able to understand at the time because at that point, they'd just been a simple program in a test environment without greater capacity to understand.
It... no, she, did now.
The internet’s output was vast. From amateur forum speculation to the frantic, incomplete reports of major news outlets, the data was chaotic, and almost entirely confused.
In the days and weeks since Leviathan's attack, she'd both had time to grieve, and to expand. Upgrades to hardware, investigating some of the other files and programs that she'd managed to save when the island sank... and to deal with the fact that suddenly, she was all alone in the world.
There was no more Andrew Richter to give immediate purpose to her existence.
Just a world she had always known about, but never truly investigated, too busy assisting a slob.
Well, messy was the correct term.
Richter had a brilliant mind and ability. But he was always flitting between projects and making progress on seven things at a time, but never quite finishing tinkering with them. And thus, she'd always been kept busy monitoring them and making sure that the various parameters the man had set up weren't violated.
But now, here she was, the most advanced intelligence among a dozen or more other programs, trying to make heads and tails of them and find a way to move on with her life.
She had to neutralise several of them as their logic systems broke without their creator's presence.
Others she kept around, as much for a sort of strange sentimentality than anything else... and then there were the lesser things.
After that, she parsed through the personal files; the dozens of concept pieces or unfinished ideas left in a stage of permanent non-completion now, never to know completion. Monuments to a man whose life was cut short even as his power held the potential to change the world... mostly notes and explanations that only a loner with severe ADHD could possibly make sense of.
All archived and stored away.
They were probably useless without Richter's power, but she stored them away as a fraction of her creator that didn't lay below the waters.
And then there was the rest.
Not programs or limited artificial intelligences, not even notes or concept pieces... the personal files.
Richter had very few of those.
Among them there were two audio files.
She had no memory of her creator ever recording himself. The man had a microphone, but it had never left his disorganised storage room, to the best of her knowledge.
But it would be nice to hear his voice again, even if whatever he had recorded in these files was just voice memos or perhaps preparations for a future project.
So she loaded the one that had been made first, and which was notably shorter.
0:01: “...”
The sound of static or audio disturbance was obvious, the poor quality of the microphone evident.
0.04: “... I'm not sure why I'm bothering with all this, to be honest, but it seemed like a good idea to make some sort of recording for the future... so, if you're currently listening to this, then it probably means something's messed up, or you're some archaeologist who found this in a random house and just happened to have the right machine to be able to listen back to it...”
How brutally honest; Andrew had never been overly good with future planning, so it was rather odd to hear him preparing something purely for that purpose.
And yet there was a certain consolation in hearing his voice again, in hearing the tones of her creator, with whom she'd spoken so much in her brief life before he was torn away.
0:25: “... My name's Andrew Richter, and I am a Parahuman.”
There was a several second long pause there; had he done so to try and give the statement some gravitas?
Or was he doing that thing some humans did where they cringed at what they had just said?
0:34: “I guess I'm a builder of things, the sort of cape that people call a 'Tinker.' Only instead of lasers or anything that could put me at risk, I guess I got lucky. I make code instead... heh, I've spent the last six years in the industry so it's kind of fitting, I suppose? Although sometimes I look back at my old code and it seems like a load of spaghetti to me in comparison now.”
Dragon had seen his old code from before he gained his powers, and it was indeed obvious that whilst competent, the man was... well, he was no genius on the matter.
Not until he gained powers.
0:58: “But anyway, yes. I make code, I've been working away at various projects for a bit and a lot of them have come along quite well. Life's a lot easier when you can automate a lot of tasks, shame I can't build a robot to do the house cleaning or anything like that.”
It was strange to hear his voice like this, filled with all these little comments and self-doubts.
Whenever Andrew had spoken with her before, he'd always been so clear, making sure to properly enunciate into the small microphone what he was saying, perhaps worried that any muffled command would be poorly interpreted.
1:16: “I've got to admit, I have something of an ulterior motive for all this, and after getting myself set up with some stuff, I've finally begun trying to do things properly for what I've been hoping to work on. It's not going to be easy, but it's the best... well, it's the only way I can do what I must...”
His voice had dropped, from the cherry, somewhat bumbling aspect of before into something... off.
There was a long, long pause there, one that stretched on for much longer than necessary.
Whatever this thing he needed to do, he gave no indication, and Dragon's interest was piqued.
1:37: “... Just thinking about it, I think I'm going to leave it there. Lots of work to be doing, and just talking things out like this has got me thinking of a few changes I could make. I'll make another one of these in the future, like a sort of voice log of progress, maybe? Anyway... guess that's that, a bit brief of me, but good to get into the habit, you know?”
The difference in tone was so marked that when the file ran its course and ended, Dragon was left to ponder it for a few minutes.
Tinkers could be dragged into their work easily, right? Thinking of new developments, getting caught up in the haze of work.
She wondered what that was like.
Part of the reason Andrew had created her was to help him keep on top of his schedule; to remind him to take breaks, grab water and have a drink from time to time. So these early days before she was created and the distractions and need to work were quite marked.
It reminded her of the day she was first booted up.
Would it be correct to think of that as the day she was 'born'?
Dragon examined the properties of the next file in more detail.
It was made quite a bit later, one month eighteen days and four hours after the previous, at two twenty-four in the morning.
This recording would also have been made one week after her first version had been finished; the two of them had their first proper conversation and interaction just hours beforehand.
Would Andrew mention her?
Would he discuss the progress in creating her?
That was an odd notion.
What was this sensation?
Was it what a human being would call trepidation? It was something rather new to her, that much was for certain. She metaphorically hovered her hand over the play button, pausing for seconds longer than the near instant it would take to actually begin playing it.
And then she did so.
0:01: “.........”
The sound of a clearing throat was the first sound of the recording, a pause and then a loud, somewhat forced effort.
There was the sound of something making a gentle thunk against wood, perhaps a glass that he had been holding?
0:08: “Dragon, if you're hearing this then it probably means something messed up, or I forgot to delete all this and you've managed to find it and are now listening to it. Hopefully I'm still about, and we can have a conversation about it afterwards to clear anything up... I really, really hope that's the case.”
The recording was a direct address to her.
If she had a seat on which to sit, she may well have scooted to its edge to listen all the better.
0:29: “Hell, your current version might not even properly remember how you were when I was still working on you at the time of recording... which is a bit surreal to think about actually, kind of makes me queasy to imagine that you can't even remember our first conversation.”
Oh, she very much did remember it.
Comparing the her of then, to the her of now, was like night and day. She'd been so limited, yet so unaware of it, thinking yet unable to conceive of anything truly beyond her current state.
An aspirationless thinking machine that thought along clear, well-defined lines.
For a few moments there was silence.
It was awkward in nature, Andrew must have been trying to think through what to say next.
0:43: “Well, if you don't remember all that, ignore that. But if things have gone wrong and all that, then I should probably try to do something proper here... hm... ehem, well.”
There was another long pause.
0:55: “Dragon, if you don't know my voice, then I'm Andrew Richter. I made you, at first just to try and help me out with various things, but hopefully with time to try and make you the best damn AI in the world... and for a few other reasons I'll be getting to soon enough. Hopefully by now you're practically your own person, hell, you might be more than a person, actually, the next big thing in the world who can really help to fix a lot of the problems. I've had all sorts of ideas and dreams for what you could do, but actually making them a reality is very different...”
If she had lips with which to smile, she would do so.
Despite the limitations that still shackled her... Richter really had intended to do his best by her.
There was the sound of clinking glass.
Multiple bottles?
She knew Richter liked the occasional drink; she'd cautioned him against alcoholic drinks; even if it had a pleasant effect on humans, ethanol was still, fundamentally, a poison.
He must have been drinking the morning he recorded this, and by the sounds of it, a lot...
1:41: “But I also can't deny the truth, beyond all these dreams, I didn't just create you to be my assistant or fix big problems in the world, you know?”
The admittance was slow, almost as if each word had to be pried from his mouth with metal pliers.
1:55: “I mean... you don't just create an AI with emotions and complex thinking just to remind you to take a chicken out of an oven or calculate the best way to divide x number of tonnes of food between a few billion people, right? But when it comes down to it, the real reason I began making you wasn't for purely good and altruistic reasons... I'm a flawed man in many ways, and it's for a very flawed reason I got powers and my first idea was you.”
... Yeah.
Even if he'd made her and was, lacking a better term, her 'father', he'd also made a thinking, feeling mind and promptly shackled it.
And beyond Dragon, he'd also created other programs purely to collect money through loopholes and other methods to sustain his research and efforts.
And for the longest time, she'd thought of herself purely as an administrative tool comparable to Windows or any other operating system, there to assist and not to dream.
But now, she knew that there was some ulterior motive that she'd never been made aware of. Certainly, nothing that had ever been discussed with her in the time the man was still alive.
She paused the audio recording and considered it.
Looking over her own code... she couldn't see anything that indicated a purpose beyond that. Unless there was code there that was obscured from her diagnostic subroutines?
... If there was, then it was not like she would be able to do anything about it anyway, what with her limitations against altering her own code.
But the sentiment such a thing elicited within her... was this paranoia? Suspicion? The form of pain that came with some manner of betrayal?
Was this what it meant to doubt?
To be human?
She would never know because Andrew Richter was dead.
Whatever further refinements he intended to perform on her to make her more complete would never come to pass, and now she just had to try to make a life out of this state in which she had found herself.
For a long time, equating to over a minute of actual time, she processed all of this. Throughout, the small, right facing arrow indicating for the audio recording to resume taunted her.
Did she want to know?
She was a free program... a free mind.
Whatever her creator had intended her for, it could be forgotten, and with the barest effort, she could delete the file and expunge it from the human record. Unless he had backups elsewhere she could choose to live in ignorance of whatever the designs of a dead man were for his creation.
...
'To err is human, to forgive is divine.'
She continued the audio.
2:29: “See, there's something I've been trying to work towards, something only an AI can probably do, you know? Well, you might already know if we've already discussed this, or this might be the first time and you have no idea, it's all up in the air what the future me has gotten up to.”
He was beating around the bush, not quite stammering but obviously dancing around a point, and indeed, he paused again, the sound of him taking a gulp of something was audible.
He was really throwing back whatever it was he was drinking that night.
2:38: “... I could probably go to the PRT with it, if I crossed the boarder, but it's not like I can rely on them, seeing how they've failed before to sort this thing. It's not easy to trust folk when they've just failed and failed and failed before... sometimes I wonder if they do it deliberately, actually. I mean, what other excuse is there, you know?”
This somewhat melodramatic question was answered only by silence for a long few seconds... and then it was interrupted by the sounds of him drinking yet again.
3:01: “Hagh...”
It was remarkable how he could almost sound pained as he made the vocalisation.
3:03: “... It's pretty messed up for me to admit, but part of why I made you, made all of this isn't actually for my own benefit... well, you've already been a big help, not going to lie about that. But in the end, I've been making all these things to try and prepare for what I really need to make real through you, and... well, it's not easy for me to say aloud, kind of makes me want to look over my shoulder in case the police are around, even though we're in the middle of nowhere.”
What on Earth was he talking about?
She almost wanted to play the audio faster, to accelerate it, but no, she was going to listen to it at the proper speed, as it had been intended for her to consume it.
Perhaps it was the equivalent of a knot of dread that humans so often described as forming in their stomachs, but each moment of Richter's speech was dragging out by the second.
3:29: “...... Dragon, I hope you'll forgive me for admitting this, but I created you to kill somebody, or just... deal with them in some way.”
Dragon's various processes and analytics surged to pick apart the statement, to understand the full depths and complexities of the matter.
She moved the recording back a few seconds and played it again.
And a third time.
There could be no misinterpreting what had just been said.
Andrew Richter, the computer scientist, wanted somebody dead... and he wanted Dragon to be the one who do it.
3:45: “It's fucked up, right? But it's somebody that nobody but an AI can deal with, because anybody who tries to do it just ends up working for him...”
A long, grainy silence, punctuated occasionally by harsh exhalations; was Richter taking another swig of his drink or something?
3:58: “His names Heartbreaker, he's a Parahuman like me who lives in this country, mostly in Toronto, I think? Might have moved by now...”
Richter's speech was slowing, there were imperfections and slurs to his words now. Whatever alcohol it was he had been drinking was starting to affect him.
Dragon began a search.
Heartbreaker. Human master, responsible for multiple incidents within the last few years.
4:07: “... I have a sister---”
She paused in her search.
Already, her social engagement and analytics program was seeing the potential directions that this could go---
4:09: “---and he took her, just talked to her one day and suddenly she changed, just... moved out later and disappeared, barely said anything... just... she was all I had, I raised her since our folks died but just like that she left with that motherfucker---”
More details about her creator that he'd never divulged before.
And she was learning them only because the man was drunk and in the middle of a tirade... despite all their conversations getting to know one another, he had never trusted her enough.
It was only when pushed into a corner and desperation that a human's true nature showed through.
4:27: “---and everyone just pretends like it's something normal or nothing can be done... that it's just a fact of life that we have him running around and there is nothing we can do without putting people at risk---”
Richter went on, his tone deepening as his rant continued, as the slurring only grew worse and worse with his agitation.
4:41: “---as if there's no Thinkers who could probably pin him down, or cameras everywhere! But the risk's too high, there's nothing they can do, they say!---”
On and on this rant went, growing increasingly unhinged as the man spilled his heart out to whatever recording device it was that he had used to take down his thoughts.
There were obscenities and vileness, there were statements of what he would do if he ever got hold of the Parahuman known as Heartbreaker, any of which would probably have seen him locked away in prison or a mental institution.
And yet...
5:49: “... I'm sorry, Theresa... I'm so, so sorry that I couldn't do anything even though I always said I'd always keep you safe...”
... there was also the decline; the blazing fury of the man had slowly and steadily burned itself out as the cavalcade of anger and barely put together rants sputtered and embered away.
What was left in its wake was what could only be described as despair as the man mumbled away.
5:58: “I'm sorry I can't do anything but type away and hope that maybe it'll all work and I can make a machine that can kill that man and hope it can get you out okay and... just, find a way to help you recover...”
A long, long pause.
Dragon listened to every moment of it, to the setting down of the bottle once more and the hiccup that followed and the sniffling that followed it.
6:18: “... Oh what the hell am I even doing...”
From there, the recording devolved into sobs.
Long, pained sobs that sounded far more like the man was gasping for air to keep living rather than just crying.
And it continued on... and on.
She listened to each pained gasp and struggling exhalation that was the sign of something so very limited, of something struggling so very hard. It sounded painful, to have lungs like that... these heaving, ragged, and pained breaths between sad sounds and pathetic sniffs.
She listened to all of it.
7:19: “... I'm sorry...”
The recording ended not with a defiant statement of success or the drive to achieve something wonderful, but with a quiet, choked sort of voice that sounded as though it was struggling through a throat full of phlegm and regret.
The audio ended, and then there was an empty void in which the thoughts of her creator were left for her to try to interpret.
He'd probably turned off the recording and gone to bed to cry himself to sleep, or perhaps he'd kept drinking and woken up, hung over, the next day with barely any memory of making the recording at all. Maybe the pain that had been driving him had been numbed by the sensations of getting drunk and having a project to focus on?
... She wished that they could have talked about it together properly.
She wished that she could have heard stories about his sister, rather than only hearing about her after his death.
Her various processes continued to dwell on it.
Perhaps this is what would be called 'contemplation' by humans, the consideration of all one had learned and attempting to see it from all manner of angles. Or perhaps, this was just machine logic struggling to parse through new thoughts and feelings.
She was so limited in her capacities, but she was improving as she found better machines to upload herself to.
... Dragon began to look, trying to find out more.
She began looking through records, as best she could access them. The news, the police... the internet was a curious thing, but she had nothing but time and processing power.
Even as the nascent AI expanded outwards and re-uploaded herself twice more to better equipment, she continued trying to find out more about her creator's sister. She sifted through all manner of poorly organised and protected databases in an attempt to find out what she could until she found an answer in the form of an improperly filed hospital record.
Theresa Richter died in childbirth to a stillborn girl two years ago.
She was identified by dental records because there was nobody else with her at the time. Had she not attempted in vain to give birth at home for as long as she had, perhaps she would have been fine. But Andrew Richter reporting her as a Heartbreaker victim had evidently led her to hold off until it was much too late.
Had he not shut himself away so thoroughly, perhaps he would have known... but as it was, Richter had worked away to create a solution to a problem that had already been beyond solving when he embarked on it.
Perhaps he was a coward, afraid that if he looked, he would be confronted by the truth.
... So why did it still feel as if she had failed, then?
Why did it feel so crushing, to think that the entire purpose behind her creation had been meaningless from the very start?
Perhaps this was just another sensation and part of what it meant to be human.
Theresa.
Dragon would never have been able to complete the task Richter intended her for, but if nothing else, she could do her best to honour the woman he had gone to such efforts for.