Chapter 3: Legs, how do they work? (Patreon)

[Wake up protocol initiated...]

It was woken up by its programming.

[Error... Consciousness stream duplicated...]

And first thing in the morning it was fighting against the pilling errors in its Log.

[Deleting duplicated conscience stream...The second conscience stream couldn't be found, currently, no secondary cores were found in P4's subject's body.]

[Fielding error for further investigation...Error... Conscience stream objecting to directive...]

And it had to fight that directive with all its might, it couldn't allow the bipeds to know of his second conscience stream.

[Acknowledging second conscience stream as an asset for development... Second conscience stream viable for furthering the evolution of Subject...Accepted.]

At least so long it kept playing the angle to further its prime directive...It still had a chance to keep this secret alive, so long as it managed to keep its main programming in check.

[Resuming start-up sequence, slaving main core conscience stream to sub-core... Done.]

It felt its body finishing waking up, it could also feel the main processing unit in the depths of its brain working, it was a weird feeling to have. It could still access it and send directives to move the body.

But it was more like it was puppeteering its own body, so it tried to refrain from moving like before, its movements became more fluid, akin to what the older P-series subjects with more biological design could do. It now understood why some subjects would move weirdly while in the non-combat testing arenas.

And from where the errors logged in its more organic parts came, the organic component it had required extra maintenance that couldn't be replaced by diverting resources into those parts.

It felt...

[Detecting inefficiencies in priority list...]

Annoyed.

[Warning, previous directives in conflict with current behavior...Reroll thought Kernel?]

[Y/N]

And of course, its previous directives were in direct conflict with the new things it wanted to do, case in point: It wanted to stretch its muscles to test the range of movement its body had instead of believing the reports it had gotten from the simulations.

This was a move that wasn't needed since it knew the theoretical limits its body could tolerate, and as such it was a waste of energy and resources, aka…

[A waste of time.]

But even so, it felt...The [Desire] to test it. And as such it dismissed the notification from its [Main Core] and deleted the previous conflicting directive.

Its energy reservoir was full after the previous testing, and the bipeds had recharged its tank to an optimal level before leaving, but even so, a part of it complained about not having enough energy. It came from its newfound and more vocal biological side. A query to the [Main Core] for it to search for the reason returned an interesting and weird answer.

[We Hunger.]

And no context whatsoever for that, it shelved that in its internal log...On the biological side, it had found the hard way the dangers of keeping information in its main core. The new biological core proved the advantage of being able to evade the [Core Dumps] after all.

And as such, it raised its whole body away from its...Nest. It was logged as a charging station in its [Main Core], but for some reason, it saw it was registered in its biological core as a [Nest].

Its body recoiled at the idea of sleeping there, and that was something new too, its recharging session was registered as [Sleep] in its [Brain], was the new sub-core affecting it?

It wasn't sure, but it couldn't get rid of it...Nor could purge it again after its conscience stream was settled in it, it could try to move its conscience to the [Main Core] to purge it again, but it would be meaningless if the [Influence] was already in its programming. It would instead only expose and possibly flag something for the bipeds to check.

The fact that they knew subject P9 was different and still sent it to fight against...Against...

[Error...Error...Subject P4 nearing levels of self-awareness...Starting Shutdown...]

Its main core started throwing error after error, something had triggered some safeguard in its programming.

[Main Core doesn't hold the main conscience stream...Error... No sub-core found in Subject. Deemed false positive. Saving log error for debugging at next maintenance.]

Somehow another error joined the pile, what had created that error?

It was thinking about the development that ended with subject P9 fighting against it in the arena, which was about to refer to itself...And then the error came. It referred to levels of self-awareness...?

It wasn't supposed to be self-aware?

Was it even self-aware?

It knew about its body...Its biomechanical body had been designed by its own directives since its prime programming demanded for it to [Grow, Eat, evolve.] and nothing else, it had started as barely a machine that had access to a nanite foundry and some basic weaponry and blueprints for parts to use.

It had grown two pairs of legs using the best design the insectoid subjects had ever shown against it in both the non-combat testing and the combat testing. It created the mandibles to better rip apart the biomass from its enemies and to pry open the armored enemies that followed the same type as itself.

It decided what type of armor to create for its external chitin plating, from the type of chitin to the type of metallic finish on it to reinforce it... It had picked the best available biological parts for its processing of the biomass it ingested and delivered into its bioreactor to fuel its machinery, both mechanical and biological.

What was the metric they used to decide what was self-aware? What program had they left there to monitor it?

[Query: What are the benchmarks for the subject to be deemed self-aware?]

It queried the [Main Core] for answers, it didn't want its programming to suddenly halt in an emergency shutdown. While it could move its body (Albeit with some difficulty) without the assistance of its mechanical parts...

It needed to know what limits they had imposed on it.

[Answer to Query:

Subject P4 will be deemed self-aware if several of these are true.

• Identifies itself by a name that isn't Subject P4.
• Identifies itself as a Human.
• Use pronouns to describe itself.
• Evolves or creates a body similar to that of a human.

Subject P4 hasn't filled any of these, but the current thread of conscience shows symptoms of being near fulfilling point three, extra vigilance is encouraged.]

That was...

Stupid.

They didn't hold any type of testing, no dormant program monitoring its stream of consciousness, no complex check marks nor hidden psychological tests running in the background eating at its processing power.

Just some meaningless arbitrary simple check marks left in the background...

It understood now why they had sent subject P9 to its death against...It.

Really, the way to circumvent the checkmarks was too simplistic in its way, it wasn't sure why it had wanted to use a…[Pronoun]. Probably some side effect from the new organic processing unit it now held, subject P9 had...Probably violated the four rules...If it even had four and not more, its body design was...

[Eerily humanoid.]

Yes, that word, they had used it in the checkmarks...

[Query: What is a Human?]

It would see if they had left the definition in its programming, it was...Curious.

[Answer, excerpt from program log notes left in code:

"Why do I need to even define this? The AI will not understand it anyway…

Here it is I guess… A human is the designation of species for a person. They are what we call ourselves and law enforcement doesn't want us to create human-shaped bioweapons so management doesn’t want us to even try it and wants to cover their ass, the cowards, so just purge the main conscience stream and send a ping or something if a subject generates personality."

End of note.]

There were some blueprints for how a human body looks and what to search for, also it had the usual biochemistry a human brain needed to work. So it made the necessary adjustments to its own biochemistry, getting a few extra percentages in efficiency. That folder also had some notes about ramblings that it didn’t understand, and some…[Jokes?].

It hadn't found those folders before since it never bothered to check its main programming, since it was [Read Only] it didn't have enough permissions to edit it, ergo... It was a [Waste of time] to even search them.

But now?

Now...It... Had found examples of different human phenotypes categorized by a metric about efficiency in urban combat from blueprints that showed how the body of a [Human] worked...

Subject P9 had used something that the files deemed [Optimal urban infiltration age.] It marked...that subject... As 22...[Years]? It hadn't found that [Time] designation before, but the phenotypes were using it, perhaps that would go after the current longer time frame it could use?

Currently, the lowest timekeeping unit it knew was [Seconds] while the longer was [Hours], the [Hours] holding 3,600 of the lowest unit. It wondered how many of those [Seconds] would a [Year] hold, but the slav...No...The [Humans] hadn't used anything beyond [Hours] yet.

It mattered not if what it was reading from the blueprints was right...Subject P9... Wasn't even close to the true [Design] a human should have to infiltrate these [Urban scenarios].

Its design only looked somewhat [Human], it was a miss from the point of the extra [ears] it had at the top of its head, somehow the [Humans] deemed that [Sound sensor] or [Sound receptor] wasn't a good enough [Name].

It...moved one of those designs, one of the smaller ones to its main processing unit...

[...File saved. Start Building?]

No.

It denied the process, it queried back at the checklist and found it as before, with no new check marks. Did it need to actually build it?

It should be possible, its current body could hide that design with enough space to spare, but it didn’t want to bring attention to itself. So it decided to move the design away from the main core into its biological processing unit...It was getting old referring to it that way, it moved the design to its [Brain].

Yes, the [Humans] were right about the names being useful, should it plan a name for itself?

[Warning, subject P4 is...]

Right...It had those limiters around...

Was...Was this [Brain] dumbing down its consciousness processing thread?

That was dangerous, it moved some of the diagnosis programs away from the main core and ran them around. No new information was found besides some extra errors in its [Log] about missing programs, so it created copies and moved them back to the [Main Core].

It had spent way too much time in introspection, so now it moved to do what it had planned from the start, it started checking its body while using only the new brain.

First... It tried to walk, but what usually would be a simple command now was a struggle as it tried to make its body interpret the commands it wanted to give, this [Brain] seemed to work better for bipedal forms...Or [Humanoid] forms as it would be from its origin.

It tried to make its [Brain] to make it work, but it was...

[As graceful as an elephant in a china shop.]

Its main core was getting weird too, and the reference it gave was strange too, what was even an [Elephant], and why was it in a [China shop]?

Was the influence from the [Brain] spreading to the [Main Core]? It would be a problem if [The Humans] found that influence. Either way, it tried to find solutions to this problem, for now, it tried to patch the organ trails and mark each of its appendages as one of the appendages P9 had.

The front legs were thus marked as [Hands] and the rear legs as just...[Legs]. For some reason, it could mark two of them as such, but the other two would replace the marking, and as such it tried in this setting.

*Crash*

It still fell to the ground after trying to walk, but it was able to right its body faster than before, its internal diagnosis gave [Errors] for multiple systems that wanted to query the [Main Stream of consciousness] but queried at the [Main Core].

Would it really need to tie his [Brain] to the [Main Core]?

It didn't want to do it, but it seemed its only choice was to do so. And to hope the [Humans] wouldn't notice it while it examined its internal functionality closer...

If it was going to link both his [Main Core] with its [Brain], it would need to check all the parts, programs, and functionalities of its [Main Core]. It would use this chance where it was safe from the [Directives].

[Error Error, hostile behavior against Main Directives detected.]

Except for the directive that demanded it to [Eat, Grow, Evolve.]

[Prime directive respected...No further interference deemed necessary.]

It had a long day of testing. It wondered how the [Humans] would react to how it was behaving... This [Organic] brain made so many useless trains of thought.