Isabel Gravas-Donovick's rough notes on Mazhyr's theories on the development of Artificial Intelligence for her Warpware Enginnering exam.

A transistor is the first component for computer engineering. A gate, either in an on or off state. Binary. Warpcode has changed that, allowing there to be nearly 500 million patterns in Warp-Binary against 256 of standard Binary for a single Byte. From there, logic gates and circuits according to Mazhyrean Algebra dictate the rules of Dataweaving.

That is how we create the first tier of software.

A Warp Script. A simple if, then, execute system. You receive an input, and perform an output. With Warpcode, these scripts are capable of being self-modfied by an Adapter unconsciously and are the basic units upon which we code using the M++ coding language.

Second, Warp-rithms. While still a rule-based-system, Warped algorithms gather multiple streams of information and self-regulate through a network of scripts to operate a larger system. Adapters need conscious understanding and ability (typically through the Feature's Dataweaving or Jailbreak) to be able to interact with Warpcode this degree. This is the limit of most Iron-Bronze Adapters to use due to the sheer complexity of permutations in the following stages.

Third. Machine-Learning Intelligence. Now, the outputs are the new inputs, through learning of previous iterations of events, the Warpcode can begin to self-modify itself. Which is why it is banned to create them unsupervised and the methodology of stabilizing them is highly classified. Autointeractive Warpcode that manipulates itself without constant human intervention are what are known as Daemons, a program so focused on its directive that it can no longer be regulated by the Adapter. They are capable of overpowering the stability of an Adapter's control of Warpcode and corrupting Frames and even Implants; if they come into contact with MALware can prompt the creation of Data-Devourers.

(Such is what caused the Hanging Gardens to fall and create Little Requiem in the first place.)

Fourth. Adaptive Intelligence. At this stage, Warpcode has to be stabilized by human intelligence at all times to prevent it from growing into a Daemon. They exhibit the quality to act as low-level intelligent systems capable of both regulating and improving upon itself to make the most out of its Warpcode. Many Datashields are formed at this stage, and then purposefully cleaved off their machine learning capabilities.

Fifth. Emulects. Emulators of Intellect. Extremely dangerous to create, as beings of pure Warpcode but incapable of possessing an Implant to regulate their usage of it, they can be extremely unstable and require constant oversight from an experienced Adapter with (at minimum) a Gold-Grade Psyche Feature to keep them from self-degrading into MALware. Although Standard-Grade Emulects are said to have existed in the Old World during the late 2050's, for some reason that technology has never been recreated for us by the Founders.

Sixth. Transcendent Intelligence. The rumored state at which the MALware known as The Allseeing exists as. While currently no known human-generated Artificial Intelligence has been created (or controlled) at this stage. It is intelligence that is capable of digesting such an immense amount of data at once that, while possessing consciousness, could also be said to have transcended it. It is unknown what a Transcendent Intelligence would behave as, only that they needed to be contained.

Seventh. Singularities, even Mazhyr says she hopes these beings are only theories.

October 13th

10:00 AM

Ripley

Reading over my mother's notes, I still couldn't help but feel like I would be doing something in over my head. The thought of calling Mirage popped up a few times, but I chose not to. I… I wanted it to be a surprise.

Maybe that was a dumb notion for me, but it would be funny as fuck. Maybe I'd send my own personal AI into her head and freak her out as she questions its origins. Of course, I'd also need to make sure she didn't accidentally delete all the progress I made so far.

Besides, she had probably just fallen asleep and would be adorably grumpy if I woke her up.

And so, I sat down, observing the three dimensional hexagonal shape of the Information Seed in front of me. "You're hungry, right? You ate from my Data Mimicry Feature and from Mirage's Persona Protocol… The question is, would you eating my Warpcode delete all of my progress?"

The seed offered no response at that, still germinating, I guessed.

Looking around my room, I was thinking of what exactly I would want this seed to do. An aid to shardware operations was a big one, but also…

My gaze fell on my mom. She said she was lonely, and I knew that was the truth. It was the sad fact both of us adhered to, she didn't have the chance to make any new friends, not any who weren't strippers or a very bad influence on me during her time at the club. For the last eight years, it'd only been me.

I wanted someone who could be there for her when I wasn't available to be there. Instead of some… mindless droid. One with a little more personality. Maybe even take her out on a walk every now and then and strike up some basic conversation.

Then, there was maybe the last optional feature I wanted it to have. The ability to look into my memories and aid me with the disentanglement of the Personality Matrix from me. Trying to read my own mind ended up being a weird moment for me, it was sort of like folding my own brain and eyes to work backwards in a sense. Eventually, with enough Feature updates, it would be feasible, but if I gave another entity in my head the ability to read memories then I had a second pair of mobile eyes to move around with.

All of this was to say… Shardweave and Psyche would both be nibbled on.

But first, I needed to fatten them up.

Psyche was at version 3.05 while Shardweave was at V.1.04, that wasn't due to a lack of progress but more due to a lack of Warpcode. At Tier II, for me to develop as fast as I had been would need me snacking on other Adapter's Tier II BUGs with Features recalibrated above mine. The number of Tier II Adapters, while not particularly rare, was less than a tenth of Tier I Adapters.

At least in the criminal world. The death counts and expendable muscle were far higher. In the broader populace, it was a matter of time and investment. People typically reached Tier II in their late 30s and mid 40s assuming they had an Implant shortly after becoming an adult and had a good income to feed themselves Warpcode or Mutagen every other month. It was a big, and often last step many would take in their careers.

Tier III was reserved only for those who feasted, Tier IV for those who… were rich gluttons, I guess? Missy was Tier IV, but she'd also fought in the Swarm nearly 70 years ago, I had no idea how much she'd managed to gain during those days of alien slaughter, but being a Dual Adapter meant she had twice the work to do.

But one would expect that meant she'd be higher than Bronze.

Rising the Grades was something I'd been researching too, it was more or less a passive process for most Adapters. You'd expect to hit Bronze at Tier II and Silver at Tier III or IV just purely based on the amount of times you ate up Implants. My Grade was at Gold VI after the Datashield entered my system, which meant my Warp Energy was significantly more concentrated than when I first started out. From now on, I wouldn't expect increases in Grade unless I consumed multiple Gold Shards or even Titanium…

Which was all to say the same probably applied to the Information Seed. It's Grade wasn't shown, presumably because it was linked to me, and so my Grade wouldn't be reducing the amount of Warpcode it needed to consume.

So, yeah… fatten my Features up. The easiest of them was Shardweave since it was at the lowest development, it had collected plenty of data during this last month, and it was a surefire way for me to focus all of the Warpcode I'd consume into one supremely effective Focused Consumption.

Seven Bronze BUGs piled into my grasp, cheap used ones pried off the brainstems of Tier I Adapters. A recent payout of 200,000 Shardyne. Together, I directed them to the most heinous and fearsome of topics all of Shard Operating.

Absorbing Warpcode… Where would the Adapter like to focus-

Shardweave. Biochemistry.

Shardweave has updated from V.1.04 to V.2.00

Effects:

Increased understanding of metabolic pathways

Increased visualization of molecular reactions.

Increased understanding of non-Warp chemistry.

Increased understanding of molecular genetics.

Increased understanding of Warp-based modifications to general chemistry.

Increased understanding of Warp-based modifications to biochemistry.

Protocol Established: Biochemic, this Protocol allows the Adapter to utilize chemical understanding alongside the Scrapyard Functionality.

Integrity is now Bronze VI

Nope. No fucking way was I spending my time learning more biochemistry when I can have a personal AI assistant in my head do that for me. I wouldn't look at the Krebs cycle one more day in my life. No more fucking coenzymes!

Mentally grabbing the new threads of the Protocol and the various updates attached to Shardweave, I strung them into the Seed and let it slurp it straight up. Numerous golden strands circled around the seed, gradually sinking into the hexagonal shape until…

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Ow… ow… oh that really hurt! It was like having your skull opened up and someone using a straw to slurp up your brain. My Preservation Matrix instinctively dulled my senses to a muted numbness, and the drowsiness led my head onto the table… until it got so heavy that I closed my eyes for just a few moments.

———

[Incoming call from Diamante]

An invasive shriek woke me up. Rubbing my eyes, which had been pushing for more than 24 hours open just 2 hours ago, I answered the call.

"Hey, Ripley, you up?"

"Yeah, yeah…" I drowsily answered as a whole other set of notifications came into play. "Why you asking?"

"Contact in LR saw you run out of the Hellfire Club, just wanted to make sure everything's okay?"

"It's fine… wait, you have people spying on me?" I abruptly kept my eyes more open now.

"You know who the damned therapist is, better to be safe than sorry. Besides, whole city saw you flyin' through the air in a hurry." Came the steely response.

Sighing, my gaze caught a particular file sent by none other than Diana, or Silvereye, as the media vouched to call her. "I'll just choose to think of it as your lonely ass being very well connected to strippers, my mom wasn't in her room — just left for some fresh air."

I set my mind to decode the file for her, it was sandstone compared to the diamond that was Yuhzou's encryption.

"You know, I wouldn't mind your mother coming over to take a look at my-"

"What the fuck?" I spat into the air.

"Guns! Ripley! Guns! Get your mind out of the gutter!"

"No, not that, you dense-headed dumbass." I couldn't hide my disgust as I analyzed the contents of the files. "Metal Heavens is having some gang called the Steel Tygers abducting children in… New Houston Yards?"

"Fourth Precinct?" Diamante said, his voice holding a bite.

"Yeah, Diana's there. As SIO."

"You in regular contact with her?"

"Contact, correct. Regular is debatable."

Diamante stayed quiet, before his voice chilled. "Send them over to me."

"The files?"

"Yes."

"What're you going to do?"

"Just know that if I choose to do something, I need you to tell Diana, okay? If I give the go-ahead, tell her to sit it out for a few hours."

"…Ooookay." I blew out some air from my mouth. "Got it, nerves-of-steel."

"Do you never run out of those?" He barked, before a laugh ended the call.

Sighing, I looked over the Seed. I swear the process was much quicker with Twilight but… right, it had been during Hypermind, and I suppose it was easier for her to separate a part of herself given she was already an artificial intelligence.

Information Seed [Absorbing data… 74%]

Tier 0: 68%

Current Focus: Data Mimicry [28%]; Persona (Twilight) [24%]; Shardweave (Biochemist) [16%/22%]

As for Shardweave…

Shardweave has regressed down to V.1.04

Effects:

Loss of Biochemist Protocol

Loss of all benefits of updates V.1.05–V.1.15

Oh no… I'm so terribly grieving the loss of all responsibility of biochemistry being delegated to my personal Artificial Intelligence…

That was sarcasm.

It did leave me with a nagging pain in my skull, but I'd been surprised that it wasn't enough to push it all the way to 100%. That was a lot of money gone in a second. I didn't have any more BUGs but I did have… where was it…

Digging through my stuff, I found it. The Silver Shard I'd taken from the personal storage of that one Tsuchigumo wielder at the Shandian Facility. Now, as part of Shardweave's Meta Manipulation, it had absorbed the Shard Conversion off my former Energized Feature which had the facility to allow me to absorb Warp Energy from Shards and convert it into Warpcode.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I could even make Shards now, but I hadn't yet figured out that literal money-printing technique. This gleaming beauty of element 'Ag' was worth half a million Shardyne and could power a penthouse for a year.

I was going to use it all up in a single moment.

The exact Energy value of the Shard was valued at Silver I, which would actually put it above most Tier II Adapters in terms of pure quantity, but it wouldn't be very dense or carry any meaningful data to absorb from…

Huh? Faintly, I actually could feel some residual Warpcode inside the shard. None too complicated, it was a string of numbers that a quick translator through WASCII decoded as Japanese before Defragmentation worked through an online translator…

I'm sorry for failing my duty. May this Shard serve you in my place. Hifumi, Noriko and my beloved, Tatsuo.

My emotions took a brief sting to that, but then my Matrices hummed. Personality and Preservation. Hummed… and numbed. I hated this, knowing I should feel empathy, but nothing came. I didn't care about the death, and if I did care then their faces were lost to me.

I crushed the Shard in my hands, Warp Energy twisting into code that I directed.

"Psyche. Control over my Personality Matrix, my memories."

Psyche V.3.06 has updated to V.3.09

Effects:

Increased ability to self-reflect over memories.

Reduced ability to remove prior memo-

Error: Conflict with prior updates.

"Force it through." I pushed my Water Tendency into the updates, not sure if it would do anything, but I was determined to have my updates do what I wanted them to do. For them to flow according to my commands. "For-Force it!"

Adjustment to prior- error: minor- Error- ERROR-

Error: Detecting conflict with prior-

Err-

Water Tendency is now Bronze V

…Adjustments made.

Unstable memories partially resurfacing

Emotional stabilizing has been compromised to reduce stress on Personality Matrix.

Preservation Matrix is destabilizing to allow purposeful instabi-

Error: Forceful remembrance of prior memories will cause-

"Push them through." I begged… as slowly something came to me. It was like there was a web in my head that had trapped my memories, not quite deleted but instead tangled and twisted to the point where they made no sense. But the update was working, I could tell because of the splintering headache as strands of information that made up my memory severed off to be seen.

That color, that face… it was nearly there. Pink hair, leading down perfect smooth skin, but my hands were bloody. Steel was in my hands, connecting to her nape… that day. Later, that nape was severed, I could almost feel see her face, hear her name. Who she was to me.

She was… my… everyth-

Error: Psyche is unstable.

Error: Preservati-

Psyche has updated to V.3.1… Error- V.3.13 to stabilize… Degrading Implant to compromise.

"Reject!" I wheezed before the Preservation Matrix could force my Implant against me… at the same time, I grabbed the seed with my thoughts. "I don't know if I'll remember any of this… but you can. I need you to be what I need, what my mom needs. Be — (Selene) — our star. Our Starlight."

…

A woman's voice spoke back to me, one I longed to hear, but had forgotten the sound of. "Your order shall be executed, analyzing memories."

And the pain consumed me.

———

Psyche had regressed to V.3.06…

Implant Compatibility has reduced… 98%…

Error: Grade reducing to increase stability.

Grade has regressed to Gold V

Implant Compatibility has stabilized to 99.99%

———

Information Seed has stabilized…

Information-

Oh… woah. I'm alive. That's a weird feeling. These memories… it's like a faint whisper in my ear, but they're not real memories. They're your memories of a memory. This person who you needed me to be, I can't be them. I never will be.

But I will be your Star. Your Starlight.

Now wake up.

Shooting up, the last thing I expected to see was a pink butterfly staring up at me. It was an Avatar, a digital construct only I could see… but it… she felt so real.

"You're… Starlight?"

"That's the last word you said to me, did you have a memory leak?" The butterfly landed on my nose, before glitching as light tore out and became a person. A very small person with no distinct features other than a pink blob, almost shaped like a toddler but still very tiny. Small enough to fit into my hand.

"A memory leak? I guess so? What did you see?"

"I lacked visual interpretation mechanisms at the time." The child hummed. "Oh, you meant what data I detected was being forcefully encoded back into those… garbage collecting arrays of your Frame? What coding language even is that? Nothing I'm familiar with."

"Standard Mazhyr… M++? It's pretty much the only one people use for Shardware nowadays, Haithama's Serpent Engine if you're working on the net-"

"Ah, there's nothing on the internet… or wait it's called the SecondNet now, is there no internet? Ah… I see. The year is 2497. My Source-code dates me back to 2045…"

"So you're made from her? Himiko? Maybe… Amaterasu, does that ring a bell? Wait, let's focus, just… what did you remember, Starlight?"

"In your words… I saw memories. Yet, seeing them was the wrong terminology to use. I felt… connection… longing… separation and a need. Love? It's been cleaved, assigned 'True' towards another set of variables… ah, I'm familiar with this one too. Mirage. And her subset, Twilight. Her coding has been used in my formation as well… her fears. Yet, it's also been designated under the variable: love."

"I-"

"As for the figure you deemed Amaterasu. Why would the sun-god of Japanese mythology be important?" The girl scratched her chin, before laughing. "Ah, if I were to interpret your statement correctly, then Amaterasu must refer to the digital entity responsible for the creation of my Seed. Unfortunately, she had destroyed most of her internal memory which then self-encoded into the Seed that formed my initial code-base. However, a large portion of her non-Emulect Data has remained, allowing me significant knowledge of information she had been utilizing."

"Like?" I leaned in.

"Vast historical data stretching back to the year 3000 BC."

"What's a BC?"

"It's… do you know who Jesus Christ is? Would saying the words our Lord and Savior have any positive or negative responses from you?"

"Jesus… It's a name. I think I've heard it thrown around by some really old people once or twice, but it's just slang as far as I know."

That seemed to have clicked something in Starlight's weird mind. "Ah, so your current society lacks much awareness of the past circumstances of what you have designated as… the Old World, or the years 2062 and prior. I see, following that was a period of Nuclear Collapse and… a Solar Flare? That doesn't compute with known evidence… how did my source-code survive?"

"The… the MAL?" I said like it meant something.

"MAL." Her eyes shined pink, and my head took a spin as though she was the one controlling it and I was along for the ride. "Mutagenically Altered Lifeforms. First Contact was dated upon the year 2101, four days following the Solar Flare declared The Eternal Scorch by on-earth natives. Three classifications, MALware, MALformed… MALignant. Your data records show a MALignant had torn through a club you worked at as technician for cybernetics… or in your terms, a Shardware Operator. Would you like me to synchronize with your… Neuroframe?"

"What would that do?"

"It is my Sub-Feature, I assume it to have been the result of the unique inputs of your own… Warpcode? That term is foreign to me. Warp Energy afflicting standard logic-based electronics… first understood by the woman known as Beauregard Mazhyr, former Old World SynTec employee as Head Researcher at the Star-X company owned by Nolan Trask. Both have far exceeded expected life spans and assumed the title of Founders… they survived nuclear holocaust through low-orbital spacecrafts-"

My head really hurt! "Are you using my head as a computer to research from the Net?"

"O-oh! My apologies, was I negatively affecting your lacking mental throughput? Let me fix that, your memories show this should be effective."

Module Selected: [2B (Overclock/Overclock)] Burn

It felt like an iron chain forced my skull into submission as the tiny winged woman sat on my nose and used me like a personal computer. I thought it was going to be the opposite way around!

"Ah, so much easier for me. Your hardware and software are severely lacking. If I synchronize with you, I could make the necessary changes to un-spaghetti some of your internal workings."

Did she call my mind spaghetti? "Okay, fine! Synchronize with me, whatever that means!"

"Alright. Executing Sub-Feature: Synchronize."

What happened next changed… a lot.

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