“You’re lost in thought,” Armsmaster spoke.

“I am.”

Yeah, it’s been a while since anyone said anything.

“Care to share?”

She shook her head, on the monitor.  “But you can answer some questions for me.”

Sharing these thoughts would get a little awkward. 😛

“Go ahead.”

“Skitter.  What happened?”

He flushed, made a face.  “I’m not proud about it.”

That’s an unusual sentence, coming from you.

“You broke the truce when you said what you did about her.  You risked breaking the ceasefire between heroes and villains that stands whenever the Endbringers attack.”

I mean, he’d already thoroughly broken the truce, but yeah, I suppose that adds fuel to the fire.

“I broke the truce before that.  I set others up to die.”

Exactly.

There was an awkward silence between them.

“Skitter,” she spoke.  “Tell me of her.”

I guess Dragon’s getting the full story, from Army’s perspective, including the bit about Taylor and the Undersiders being the ones who really took down Lung the first time.

In the end, his feelings towards her were another reason she couldn’t tell him the truth.  He would be hurt, feel betrayed.

“Oh no! My computer waifu isn’t real!”

I guess the only reason he would have to feel betrayed would be the knowledge she’d lied to him. That’s why the introduction to the reveal is arguably more important than the reveal itself. Gotta make sure he understands that you don’t tell anyone normally, and the fact that you didn’t tell him before was not because of distrust of him, but vice versa, that you’re telling him now means you do trust him more than others.

Rules prohibited her from asking him to alter her programming, obligated her to fight him if he tried.  But there was just enough ambition and willingness to circumvent the rules that she suspected he might attempt it.  If she told him what she truly was.  If he didn’t hate her for her lies.  If he didn’t betray her in turn, to escape and pursue some other agenda.

If he doesn’t share Richter’s views on AI safety.

She was afraid of going up against the Dragonslayers again.  Nine times, she had been certain she had the upper hand.  Nine times, Saint had turned the tables and trapped her.

Sheesh.

All the more reason to keep your true nature secret, I suppose. Don’t want anyone else exploiting you the same way Saint has.

Dragon worried she would never be able to beat Saint until she found a replacement for Andrew Richter.

That might be tricky.

So why is it that no one but him could alter you? Is it security measures, or that the code is too complicated? I’m guessing the latter.

She stared at Colin.  Was he the person she needed?  It was possible.

Hm. I mean, programming isn’t his specialty, but he does seem to be fairly skilled.

Would she approach him?  She doubted it.  Dragon craved it, craved to grow again, but she also wanted Colin’s company, his companionship and friendship.

Better hope he doesn’t end up in the Birdcage, then. Though at least you’d still be able to watch over him there. Can you talk to the prisoners once they’re inside?

They were so similar in so many respects.  She could not deal with most people because she was not a person.  He could not deal with most people because he had never truly learned how.

I see… that sounds like a phrase that keeps popping up regarding autistic people I know. I’m not going to immediately go “Armmaster is autistic”, but this has put the idea in my mind.

They both appreciated the same kind of work, even enjoyed many of the same shows and films.  They were both ambitious, though she could not tell him exactly how she hoped to reach beyond her inherent limitations.

Sounds like they’re a good match!

Possibly even for more than friendship. Though really, is there that big a difference between a healthy romantic relationship and a particularly intense friendship with a carnal aspect for those to whom that last part applies?

She had been so humiliated that she had only reported the loss of one of the units.

They had violated her.

They basically knocked her out and stole her bodies. Yeah, “violated” might be a good word for that.

Her current agent systems were an attempt to prevent repetitions of those scenarios.  Biological computers, vat grown with oversized brains shaped to store and interpret the necessary data, they allowed more of her systems and recollection to be copied over than a computer ten times the size.

So that’s what the fetus thing was. It was Dragon in a sense – it was the computer, the agent system, she was currently running on.

They felt no pain, they had no more personality than sea cucumbers, but it was still something she suspected she should keep under wraps.

Yeah, or at least loads of metal.

She had done what she could on her own.  She had repurposed herself as a superhero, had managed and tracked information and served as a hacker for the PRT in exchange for funding.  With that money, she had expanded her capabilities.  She had built her first suits, researched, tested and created new technologies to sell to the PRT, and had quickly earned her place in the Guild.

Nice work!

So is this where we find out what the Guild actually is?

Hm. One more theory: Maybe it’s a team made specifically of Tinkers? Like a trade guild for those who can provide extraordinary products.

It hadn’t all been smooth sailing.  Saint, the head of the group that would become known as the Dragonslayers, had somehow discovered what she was and had used her rules and limitations against her.

Ahhh, I see. Much like how she had to sacrifice herself for Skitter, Saint and the Dragonslayers presumably forced her into sacrificing herself for them – or something similar – in order to grab the parts of the broken agent vehicle.

A Black Hat Hacker, he had forced situations where she was obligated to scrub her data and restore a backup, had cut off signals between her agent systems and the satellites, and in the end, he had carted away three of her armored units on three separate occasions.

Ahh, or that. That’s pretty clever.

Dismantling the suits and reverse engineering the technology, he’d outfitted his band with special suits of their own.

Tinker himself, I’d imagine, since he’s able to do this.

Which was ninety-five percent true.  Only the ‘woman’ and ‘apartment’ bits were hedging the truth.

Yeah.

She had lived in Newfoundland with her creator.  Leviathan had attacked, had drawn the island beneath the waves.  Back then, she hadn’t been a hero.  She was an administrative tool and master AI, with the sole purpose of facilitating Andrew Richter’s other work and acting as a test run for his attempts to emulate a human consciousness.

So she was one of the first Richterbots, then? 

She’d had no armored units to control and no options available to her beyond a last-minute transfer of every iota of her data, the house program and a half-dozen other small programs to a backup server in Vancouver.

Look on the bright side… at least you didn’t need a moving van.

From her vantage point in Vancouver, she had watched as the island crumbled and Andrew Richter died.

The tenses surrounding Richter were a bit confusing, seemed to indicate he was still doing work, but as it became clear to me that he lived on Newfoundland, this outcome started to seem more and more likely.

As authorities had dredged the waters for corpses, they uncovered his body and matched it to dental records.  The man who had created her, the only man who could alter her.  She’d been frozen in her development, in large part.

So wait, can she or can she not alter her own programming, besides the restricted parts like the rules we went over earlier?

She couldn’t seek out improvements or get adjustments to any rules that hampered her too greatly, or that had unforeseen complications.  She couldn’t change.

I see. The only part that potentially could change would be her data and personality, and the latter is limited by the rules.

Yet.

“How is the house arrest?”

“Driving me crazy,” he sighed.  “It’s like a restlessness I can’t cure.  My sleeping, my eating, it’s all out of sync, and it’s getting worse.  I don’t know how you deal.”

By not needing to sleep or eat, primarily…

Sounds like Army thinks Dragon is simply a recluse who only steps out of her laboratory when she has to.

I mean, I suppose there’s some truth to that.

She offered an awkward, apologetic half grin on her own monitor.

Hehe.

“Geez, I’m sorry.”  He looked genuinely horrified as he realized what he’d said.

Apparently he thinks Dragon is a recluse not by her own choice.

That or he actually knows she’s an AI (unlikely) who is restricted in what she can do.

“It’s fine,” she spoke.  “Really.”

“I suppose you’re prisoner too, in your own way.  Trapped by your agoraphobia?”

Ahh, so that’s the official story? Actually, that sounds a bit familiar – did we hear about that before?

No blog search results for variants of agoraphobi*, so I guess not.

Perhaps a year to a year and a half from now, every PRT officer and official cape would be equipped in this fashion.

That sounds good. Maybe not for the Undersiders, but for society.

“It looks good,” she spoke.  It did.  It was also free of viruses, trap doors and other shenanigans.  She had caught him trying to install a RAT -a remote access terminal- into a PRT server early in his incarceration, removed the offending programming, and then returned his work to him without saying a word on the subject.

Naughty play, Army? Tsk, tsk…

She couldn’t say whether it had been an escape attempt or simply an attempt to gain more freedom with his internet access and his ability to acquire resources.  Either way, he had not tried again.

Yeah, Dragon might not have said anything, but he’d know she caught it from the fact that it didn’t work.