milliways_bar | (no subject)

Oo. Hydraulics. Lovely stuff. Beat the crap out of the advanced avionics and composite welding texts Ray had stuffed under his arm. "Bonnie!" he called out cheerfully. "Boy, am I ever glad to see you!"

Bonnie blinked a few times. "Ray?" She couldn't quite hold back a laugh at his cheerfulness. "What's up?"

Ray pointed towards the back door, all but bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. "There's a new AI, and he's injured, and he asked me to patch up the hole in his side, and he needs somebody to check over his code because apparently he's having logical inconsistencies, and he's from my future and I think he likes me! I mean, as far as it's possible for a US military warplane to ever like anybody who isn't its pilot. You know how these things get."

By the look of him, he was within striking distance of Can I keep him? I'll feed him and walk him every day and groom him twice a week and play ball with him in the park. But that was Ray with nearly any new discovery.

Bonnie blinked and tried to filter through the verbal run-on sentence of doom. "A new, injured AI with logic inconsistencies in his code, and you've spoken to him?" Bonnie managed. "And I know how these things get, but um... are you sure he had a pilot? Other than that, what kind of injuries and inconsistencies, or do you know?"

Thank God her laptop was up in her room. She needed to get a backpack or something for that thing.

"Uh... actually, no, you're right. No pilot. I'm sorry. His name is Eddie. EDI. Didn't say what it stood for, but his Navy callsign is Tinman, he's from 2008, and this is what his body is made from."

He pulled a plastic bag from one pocket and held up a quarter-sized sample of bronze aeroelastic compound.

"Other than that- yeah. I've spoken to him twice now. He's very worried about his wingmen, since I think the Navy drilled something of a military ethos into him, and the next time I see him I have to tell him that they're both all right. I don't know about the code inconsistencies, but the injury was a fairly nasty impact injury at high speed that tore open a hole in his hull. There was a fire, too- he nearly got killed because of that, but one of the wingmen put it out for him. I have pictures, since I needed to get a good clear understanding of what I'd be working with."

Bonnie reached out toward the bag by instinct before asking, "Um, may I?"

But then, as she heard Navy, let it really sink in, she sighed. "No wonder he has logic inconsistencies... Stupid military..." But she started thinking about the injury, the code...

"Sounds like he was in some good dogfights up there..."

No pilot, military AI... dogfights... It was obvious he was a UCAV, but...

No, there's no way...

"Wait a minute..."

"Go ahead," Ray said, handing the bag over. "I offered to build him a crawler if he needed to get out and about, but he doesn't want to be separated from the plane body. He seemed like he wasn't all that thrown by the possibility of a remote-control drone when someone else offered to make him one, though..."

He nodded. "Yeah. The Russians tried to kill him at one point. And there was a helicopter incident in North Korea. I think his existence scared a whole bunch of people, really. Poor guy."

At Bonnie's statement, he tilted his head. "What?"

With the bag in hand, Bonnie gently withdrew the sample, looking it over with narrowed eyes -- "Shit, I wish I had a chemical analysis kit here," she muttered. "Because I know something about this. It was before my time... Just mentioned, but..."

She exhaled and raked a hand through her hair.

"I'm hearing some parallels here. Neither of the cars like being a CPU-on-a-desk, and I've seen a material like this before... But more importantly, I know that this plane is a UCAV - Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle.

"And I know that Wilton Knight had a plane seized from Knight Industries right before I was hired."

Ray jerked his head towards the Bar. "You could always ask, you know," he said. "I bought a lot of electronic supplies from her when I was building the PKE beacon. It might clear up a few things."

Then she elaborated, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth. "So you're saying... you think Eddie might be that plane? Put through twenty-some-odd years of extra development to make him into a combat monster?"

"That would make him pre-Karr, if it were," said Bonnie. "And now you know what Karr was like, kind of, when we first found him.

"You know him more than I do, Ray. You tell me. Can you follow a line of development from Kitt to Karr to him?"

Ray exhaled, thinking. "He's... he seems different from them. Stiffer. Less adapted to interfacing with humans, which would make a certain measure of sense, considering the function they've put him to. He-"

He stops. "No. He can't be pre-Karr. At least, I don't see how he can. He says he's part silicon-based, part optical-based, and that he's the first practical application of quantum computing technology. He assimilated the maths and observational data I gave him about this place without batting a metaphorical eye. Didn't even flinch at the sheer amount of Feynman's math I've been using to explain what I'm seeing here, except to comment on it."

"Not technology-wise, Ray," Bonnie said, shaking her head. "There's no way. You said yourself he's been through twenty extra years of development, and when it comes down to it, most of an AI is software, not hardware. If they presented him a new, shiny CPU with infinite memory, of course he'd go. But as far as personality..."

What he said as far as personality seemed to fit.

"Oh, that... yeah." Ray nodded. "That, yes, I could see. Very easily. The poor guy... I'm not really sure he could pass most Turing tests, if only because most humans other than Egon Spengler don't get that hyper-focused. But yes. In that case I could very easily see it happening that way."

"If it is a Knight AI, I don't doubt that the military turned him inside-out and backward in their version of development hell." She sighed. "Probably masked his coding so thick that he aches to think about breaking through it, if he even knows it's masked..."

"He got kind of spastic when I mentioned Knight Industries at first- I know I shouldn't have mentioned you guys in front of a military vehicle, but I got the distinct impression he wasn't going home, so it didn't seem like he could cause you any trouble." Ray ducked his head apologetically.

"I do know this. I told him I felt kind of responsible for him, because humans had brought a life into the world and failed to take care of it properly. He seemed really interested in what my definition of life was. And even more interested in whether other humans would consider him alive. This was on the second day I talked to him- and that was the point when he brought up Knight Industries again, and we discussed having you come out to look his code over."

She nodded. "I'd have to see his code to be sure, but... I really think he's one of ours, Ray. I don't know if I'll be able to do it tonight, or at least maybe not-right-now tonight. I'd kind of like to have a nap before too long, and...

"And I'm really glad you're helping take care of him."

"It's okay," Ray said. "I told him I'd find you and tell you as soon as possible. The next time I see him, I'll let him know that you're ready to come out and meet him, and that it won't be long. He'll be glad to know that."

He smiled a little. "He's lost, and hurt, and away from home and separated from all the people he knows. How could I not lend him a hand?"

"You're such a good guy, Ray." She stood up enough to reach out and hug him for no real reason at all - he just deserved a hug. "I think there are a lot of people who are glad to have you around. I'm just one of them."

Ray's smile turned sheepish at that, but stayed a smile nonetheless. "Thanks. I do what I can, I guess. I'm glad you guys are here too, you know- I'd be pretty useless on my own."

"We should be the Milliways Tech Team," she laughed. "Or something. Taking comissions, one bar-tab at a time."

"And shunting the lower-grade tech work off to the dwarf- did you see that? Someone's built an actual forge back behind the bar and he's doing iron work now." Ray's expression got thoughtful. "Wonder how he'd do at body panels on a plain old metal car."

"Good question, but I might have to enlist his help." Bonnie chuckled. "That was a nice-sized dent that Karr gave Kitt."

Ray blinked. "When was this? I haven't seen the guys in a while- I was in my New York."

"After we came back," she explained. "For getting us into that situation in your New York. Karr gave him a nice wham on his door, and he's been sporting a bruise on his arm."

"Oh, okay." Ray nodded. "I'm pretty sure he'd have to take the body panel off to hammer it out, though. Would Kitt even allow that?"