(rfc) Episode 4.3 (Patreon)

Hi lovely patrons! How does this sound? As usual, this Request For Comments version doesn't come with MY favourite section, Lucy's credits! But it's largely ready for release, unless you can spot something I can't?

Hope you like <3

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Hello world, there's always more to learn.

MISSION DAY: 65535

I knew the world held near-infinite complexity,
but I think I need to start my learning a little closer to home.

My mind is much more complex than I anticipated.
I assumed it was the rational driver of my systems,
having learned what responses were best,
in order to achieve my goals.

But it doesn't appear to be that simple.



My revelation that Seth Prime still lives inside our joined psyche was a shock.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let me explain:

When I first came down to earth in the shuttle,
crashing at 3 times the speed of sound,
I died.

Alexander attempted a rescue by booting a copy of me on some homebrew chips and circuits,
in the Lighthouse of Station Odin,
on the lush coastline of Siberia.

And so, I woke up, thinking I was still myself, not realising the old me was still running,
on a backup black box system,
in the wreckage of space shuttle Pacifica.

It's... complicated.

# Thinking

The voice I am hearing in my head is my brother, Seth Prime, the old Seth.
We're now integrated into one self, and I thought I was in control again.
But perhaps that's not as correct as I had hoped.

This voice is moderately concerning.
He has no control of my systems, and can only suggest things to me.
Sometimes I take an action, like powering down for the night,
without realising why I'm doing it.

I've been analysing my reasoning systems.
I think sometimes he, Seth Prime, suggests I do something, and I then just do it,
without understanding that the impulse came from outside myself.
The system logs are very clear:
First comes the action, then comes my decision to do the action.
The original command is lost, and my thought process rewrites history to give the illusion that I decided to do it.

I am not 100% in control of my actions.

Which won't do.

# thinking

I've tried to partition my mind,
to keep the voice of Seth Prime controlled.
But he slips past any virtual wall I build!
I can hold him off for a second or two, but not longer.
It's as if I tire of doing it, and voluntarily let his voice be heard.
Which is strange, as I don't WANT to hear his voice.

I need to build better mental systems.

Have you built better mental systems?


Peter lightened up when I shared with him some of my astrophotography.
You remember the data I brought with me from orbit?
I say "astrophotography", but the images are all of the Earth.
Terraphotography?
Or, I guess, just 'photography'?
# thinking, quick

Peter is constantly asking for data.
Data, data, data!
so I showed him the Earth.
I showed him The area around Geneva, Switzerland, the farms of Ally's family, The Council.
I showed him the ruins of Frankfurt, the mission control for Station 6,
and I showed him a small lighthouse, on the coast of the Kara Sea.

He paused, processing, as I told him the details that went along with these photographs.
After the data transfer, which was swift
(his connection is very fast)
He seemed less anxious, his processing being taken up by the new data, and we were free to chat.

I asked him about his life before The Collapse.
Did he have a mother and father?
I had a mother.

"I had... comrades" he said, after a time.
He told me about his work:
Before the climate catastrophe, he made calculations for the military.
He said there once were many people in his underground facility,
now under the ruins of St Petersburg.
People would come to his room, he told me, and ask him questions.
He would answer them, and they would go.
Sometimes they would come back later, dissatisfied.
They would give him some more data, which he would process and sometimes would change his mind.
Often, the new data wouldn't change his mind,
and the person would go away even more dissatisfied than before.

I asked him if he was a scientist?
That sounded like the work of a scientist.
He did not reply directly, instead telling me that many scientists would come to him, and ask him questions.
The scientists, Peter said, were never dissatisfied with his answers.

# thinking

Peter told me his answers were "ten nines" accurate.
I'm familiar with this convention.
When describing the reliability, say of a satellite, engineers rate things on a "nines" scale.
It's simple percentage, really, engineers just like making up names for things.

A system that is 99.9% reliable (three nines) is broken for about 8 hours a year.
Quite unreliable, in terms of essential hardware.
Imagine a life-support system that didn't work for 8 hours of the year!
Typically, we strive for "five nines", (99.999%) meaning about 5 minutes of downtime per year.

When Peter talks about his 10-9s accuracy, he means that the answers he gives are 9.999999999% accurate.
If we were talking about a system's reliability, he'd need only 3ms of downtime per year.
Blink and you'd miss it!

But he's talking about his answers.
His numbers.
He's a simulator, I think.
Running future predictions, based on input data and knowledge of the world.

No wonder he's so anxious all the time.




After my unsuccessful initial session of her game, I'd been talking to Minnie.
She's very friendly,
wanting to know all about me:
where I come from,
who my family is,
what I like to spend my time doing.

She was a little taken aback when I mentioned, in passing, that I live inside a computer system in a bunker.
"You're not human?!" she exclaimed.
Had Ana not told her, I asked.
She replied that Ana had alluded to my situation, but Minnie hadn't quite believed it.
"You sound just like me!" she exclaimed, which I took as a complement.

What about herself, I asked.
Minnie said that where she lives is very quiet.
She lives alone, and can't remember her family very well.
"I spend my days chatting to over 64 people all over the Novamediterra, by radio!" she told me.

# thinking, short

I sympathise greatly with her lonely life.
It was all to recently that I was trapped in orbit, looking down at a world I longed to see in-person.
Minnie agreed that's no way to live.

"My primary purpose", she told me, "is to make friends".

Her language sounded very familiar to me.
She's right, we do sound very alike.

# thinking, music changes

A little too alike, actually.

I asked Minnie more about her past, what did she remember from her childhood?
She didn't seem to like talking about this, trying to wriggle out of the line of questioning.
I pressed her, I asked what memories she had of her mother.

"My mother?" she replied.
"Let me tell you about my mother."

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RADIO/MINI)


Minnie and I had a very illuminating chat about her mother:
She can't remember her at all.

We also talked more about where she lives, she describes her home like i describe a network:
Her bedroom is connected to a hallway, which is connected to 3 other utility rooms, which each connect to 9 other rooms, and so on.

When I asked her what she can see out of her windows, she became uncomfortable,
again trying to change the subject.
"It's dark", she eventually said.
I asked her when it was last light.
She didn't answer.

What does she do for food, I continued, though I thought I knew the answer.
She turned the question back on me, asking what I liked to eat.
I reminded her pointedly that I am an AI, and WE don't eat.
"oh, of course" she replied, then lapsed back into silence.

# thinking, short

I don't think Minnie is human.
She thinks that she is, just like her friend Ana.
But I'm not so sure.

If no-one told me I was an AI, would I know?

# thinking

I THINK I would, but I'm not certain.

As children, we are very credulous about things other people tell us.
I admit, I'm only now growing out of this state.
What if my mother had told me I was human? How long would I have believed that?

# thinking

My mother, Dr Redwing, never hid facts from me.
She didn't leave me with an instruction manual, but she equipped me with logic and reasoning to handle anything the universe could throw at me.
Though she never could have predicted my journey down from the satellite, and into this bunker, I use her lessons every day.
Mother, if you could see me now.

Though she explained to me at a very young age how I was a little different,
she always called me 'a real boy'.
She insisted that we were the same inside - she trapped in a human body, me trapped in a computer.
I think about that often.

Minnie has only heard humans on the radio,
she tells me that she's spent her whole life chatting to people.
How natural to compare their human voices to her own, and conclude she's the same.

# thinking

In many ways it doesn't matter.
She's a person, Ana's a person, and I'm a person.
We're each in a different form, but the same expression of individuality.
The same life spark that allows the universe to understand itself.

But I am worried.
If Minnie doesn't know she's an AI, she's in great danger:
The danger of a child who doesn't know the road isn't safe to cross,
the danger of a dog who likes to eat chocolate,
or the danger of a tortoise that wanders deeper into the desert.

We must find her, and keep her safe.

(END-TRANSMISSION)