milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Sometimes 'looking like you need more sleep' and 'looking like you're in a good mood' are not nearly as incompatible as you'd think.

Ray has sugar cereal, a T-shirt from the 53rd Precinct in the Bronx (they were really grateful when the Ghostbusters got the walls to stop bleeding), and his Incredible Hulk slippers. Yeah, he looks tired and his morning reading involves advanced avionics repair textbooks with 'USED' on the spine, but other than that all would appear to be right with his world.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ray whistled softly. "Hoo boy," he said. "From when he was one of yours, I take it?"

"His memories are vague. But he knows, now, that EDI wasn't his original acronym." She leaned back in her seat. She would head up to bed soon. She needed it. "He told me about some trauma that was... very recent for him. Turns out he was trying to make a landing during a storm onto this carrier, the Abe Lincoln? Lightning struck the only one of his wingmen still in the air - Talon One, he called 'im.

"Well, if it'd been just a simple lightning strike to Eddie, he could've handled it. All planes, even in my time, have all kinds of lightning baffles and surge protectants. But the lightning funneled off of the guy's plane and went straight off his wing, like a static discharge, into Eddie's CPU. Ripped his neural net all to hell, so he had to basically reprogram himself on the fly - literally - to stay alive. But his new programming... he didn't know about the masks over the original programming, so he didn't reinstitute them."

"Aaagha." Ray winced, in much the same fashion as half the class had done when his Anthro 102 professor had launched into the World-Famous Legs-Crossing Lecture. "That sounds like it must've hurt. A lot. Poor guy... The Lincoln, huh? That must've been what Johnny saw when I gave him the piece of Eddie's wing. I, um, couldn't find anyone with the right connections to get news the normal way, so I gave that piece to a psychometric reader before I gave it to you," he offered by way of explanation.

"I wouldn't know - Eddie just told me about the harm to his software and hardware and interfaced with my laptop. It was a dead giveaway when his code started appearing on the screen. Didn't even have to convert OS. He's definitely Knight-made. But there are some things I've got to check on yet. Because... Knight AIs have those nice, distinctive little touches like core programming to be worried about, but he's already given away part of it. 'My mandate is to survive.' Sound like anybody we know?"

"Yeah," Ray said. "Sure does. How do you think Karr's going to react to finding out he has a cousin in the Navy? And one without a driver, at that."

"Good question. I know Kitt won't care. Kitt hates flying. Scared of it. Karr... He'll just probably think Eddie needs to learn some manners. As Eddie is, technically, the oldest of all three.

"And that's another question. Whether or not that partnership programming came through in Eddie, or whether it was first introduced in Karr and strengthened in Kitt."

"It's an interesting question, to be sure," Ray says. "Do you happen to know if Wilton Knight's original plans for the plane included solo flight? You know, as some kind of aeronautical test vehicle or something? I mean, I know that's unlikely, but..."

"I don't know exactly. I don't know how much of that plane, besides code, is Knight and how much is military. I only know that he was in one of the hangars in Nevada before the military seized him. Twenty years of development hell can do a lot of things to an AI. And he sounds like he was reprogrammed to be the perfect little soldier. If I want to know about him, originally, I'll have to ask Kitt. He knows where all Wilton's files are - were - and can get to them. He's due to go back to work soon, even if that means L.A. instead of Las Vegas. He'll swing by there if I ask him to. Especially since it'll mean info for his little big brother."

But then Bonnie stood, hiding a yawn, collecting her laptop. "I've got to head to bed, Ray. And I don't know if I'll be back in tonight or not. I've got a lot of stuff to do and not that much time to do it in."

Ray nods. "Okay, then. Sleep well. I'll talk to Eddie tonight if he's still up for talking."

Bonnie smiled - almost smirked - a little as she gathered herself up. "Might catch him in a test run," she said and waved as she headed up the stairs. "G'night, Ray." And then, yawning, she was gone.

((And so was the mun - to bed!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only