Nene Romanova, Paragon's version of the legendary uber-hacker, scowled at the console in a rare fit of indecision. The level of access she currently had was rare - usually by now she'd have been shut down by any number of security cutouts, but she was ahead enough in the eternal dance of security vs. hacker that she had peeled the Crey mainframe used for the Saber project open like a peelifruit. The problem came in, however, with the current direction the Saber project had taken. A splinter group, only loosely associated with the 'mainline' Saber staff, had been pursuing, in parallel, the development of a 'bare' AI engram, that didn't depend on a personality rip from a living brain. They had proceded to the point that they were ready to try booting their system in a Saber system body..
And Nene didn't know what that meant to the Sabers.
-------------------
"Silky Doll lingerie, Sylia speaking, how may I assist you today?"
"Hey boss lady, I have a minor problem I need your advice on."
"Is this business, Nene, or personal?"
"Big business deal, actually. I kinda need to talk to you in person abou- FUCK! SAMMY!"
*Click*
Sylia considered the phone in her hand. Nene wasn't one to use profanity, or to call in without need. This didn't bode well. On her way out the door, she flipped the archaic plasticene sign to 'closed', and punched the lock button.
-------------------
Sylia arrived at Nene's dwelling in good time, and knocked on the door, which nearly immediately opened to reveal a subdued Alice.
"Alice."
"Sylia. Nene's in her room, everyone is OK."
Alice backed aside to allow Sylia into the house, and took her coat without a further word. As Sylia passed the kitchen, she saw the brightly-clad stripey catgirl, Samantha, sitting in a chair in a corner, facing the wall. One eyebrow quirked in puzzlement as she knocked on Nene's door, which drifted open, releasing the smell of smoke. Closing and latching the door behind her, Sylia considered the crumpled form of Nene, face on her arms in her computer chair, smoking wreckage of her terminal in front of her, and a '128 Oz Hero Size' soda cup on the floor as if thrown.
"Nene?" Sylia inquired, reaching out and gently touching the young hacker on the shoulder. Nene twitched, and cringed.
"We might have a Really Freaking Big problem, Sylia." Nene mumbled through her arms. Straightening up and turning to face Sylia, Nene revealed a haunted expression and a serious case of button face.
"Do tell?" Sylia said evenly, and stepped back to settle gracefully into one of the simple wooden chairs provided for guests. Nene took a deep breath, and sighed as she let it out, her shoulders slumping.
"I was in the Crey mainframe - in way deep. I had enough security cutouts going that I don't think there's a chance I got traced, but.. Crey's up to something. They're developing an actual AI, instead of the engram process used with us. And from what I read before the.. accident.. they're about ready to start one up."
"Accident?" Sylia inquired calmly, one eyebrow quirked.
"I was on the phone with you, which I guess you could of guessed, heh.. And Sammy came home. She decided to surprise her Aunt Nene, and, well.. it was a freak thing, there's no way that soda should have gone straight into the machine like that!" Nene finished excitedly, kicking at the soda cup on the floor.
Sylia let her eyebrow sink back to Normal Alert status, and rubbed at her eyes to buy time. Looking up at the flustered Nene, Sylia rose and delicately gathered the young girl into a hug, which Nene returned, sobbing into Sylia's shoulder.
"The worst part is, Sylia, I don't think I'll be able to get back in that deep. I don't know if this new Saber AI is going to be a person, or how tough it's going to be, and that worries me, I mean REALLY worries me. I figured the best thing to do would be to talk to you *sniff* since you always know what to do."
Sylia broke the embrace and held Nene at arm's length. "It'll be OK, Nene. Did you get an address for the activation, or do we find it through other means?"
Nene nodded, pulling a ripped-off corner of notepaper out of her pocket. "Here's the address of the lab they're using, and their best projection of an activation date."
"Well, then, we'll just have to crash the party, won't we?"
-------------------
Hopkins loomed in the observation gallery, as the vaugely humanoid shape on the lab table in front of him lay quiescent and surrounded by lab techs. The project lead, one Roman Vasquez, fluttered around the room as if winged, checking this system and confering with that tech, testing and configuring at a frenetic pace. Roman had been quite argumentative about the last-minute change in venue, but had performed admirably once he'd made his objection, which Hopkins respected.
Checking his cellphone, Hopkins noted a security alert - the Sabers were rapidly and efficiently eliminating the security forces at the original lab. One massive eyebrow twitched, and Hopkins strode across the observation deck to the comm mounted at one side.
"Mr. Vasquez, I just thought you should know, sir, that the Sabers have eliminated nearly seventy five percent of the effective security force at the previous lab."
Vasquez twitched like a man being Tased and lunged for the comm console in the lab chamber. "Thank you for your insistance, then, Mr. Hopkins. I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong. Five minutes to startup sequence." Roman bounced away from the console as if on springs, and returned to his frenetic pace of work. Hopkins right eyebrow twitched again, and he pulled his phone out to make a note. The sort of integrity Vasquez was showing was an attribute to be nurtured.. and watched.
The humanoid figure grew more and more defined as various systems were mounted and panels closed over them, revealing itself to be squat and rounded, almost an Art Deco idea of a mechanical man. Vasquez himself fitted the faceplate over the primary visual sensors, toggling the adaptive optical filters through several rapid mode changes, causing the shields to flouresce from green to red.
Vasquez returned to the Comm console at the four minute and fourty-five second mark, and Hopkins felt his eyebrow lifting again. "Mr. Hopkins, we are ready to start. The Synthetic Intelligence Robot should be online shortly."
Hopkins responded with a curt acknowledgment, and folded his hands behind his back. The frantic movement on the floor below ceased, as all the technicians filed out of the room to more protected areas, leaving Vasquez alone with the Art Deco mechanical man. Vasquez lost no time hauling a massive datalink cable down from the ceiling, and threaded it onto a shielded port in the top of the cranium of the supine form. After the connection was secured, he almost ran to a nearby console, and with a glance up to Hopkins in the observation room, pressed the stereotypical Big Red Button.
Hopkins was half expecting, giving the man's theatrical nature, the lights to go out. They failed to do so, burning a constant clean white light onto the lab. Second on the half expected list was violent reaction, perhaps an explosion or a 'Crey Loyalty Failure', as the earlier Scimitar experiments had suffered from. This also failed to happen. Instead, the figure on the table sat up with a single stiff motion, and reached up to the datacable coming out if it's notional 'head'. The optical filters on it's face flickered through all available modes before settling down to a lambent teal coloration, which was matched by auxiliary sensors in it's shoulders and chest. The reach up to the datacable didn't quite work out, and the grey robot threshed around ineffectively before Vasquez stepped forward and grabbed it by the wrist, placing its hand in contact with the datacable. The robot then unscrewed the cable and closed the armor shroud, giving it an almost cylindrical appearance.
"G.I.R. Saber reporting for duty, SIR!" the robot thundered, snapping a salute which passed over it's head by a good three inches. Vasquez considered the robot, an emergency button now clenched in his hand.
"G.I.R.? What does the G stand for?" he asked uncertainly.
"I.. I Don't Knooooooow" The robot trilled, before lapsing into chirpy mechanical giggles. Hopkins returned to the comm console in the observation room.
"Vasquez. Is it supposed to be stupid?" Hopkins asked, amusement in his voice. Roman handed the emergency button to the robot, and turned back to his own comm console.
"It's not stupid, sir, it's advanced!" he replied indignantly. Unnoticed, the robot consumed the emergency button, triggering the ejection process. As the table and its contents were ejected from the room, Vasquez whirled around in horror. Hopkins felt both eyebrows crawling up, and forced them back down to maintain his stoic expression as he rapidly searched through building plans on the console.
"Vasquez, you now have a problem. This facility was for nonsecure research, and that ejector just dropped your malfunctioning robot out to a streetside Dumpster." Hopkins shut off the console with grave finality, and returned to the window, folding his hands behind his back and looming down at the frantic Vasquez, who was yelling into his comm console and waving his arms at Hopkins. After a good moment's loom, Hopkins turned his back on the window and left the observation room.
As Vasquez tried to assign teams and request security forces for his panicked assistants, the freshly created G.I.R. Saber hurtled through the night, ejected, by a duct not designed to take a thousand pounds of robot + examination table, into the night sky at approximately the 27th floor. Clinging to the table with its stubby fingers, the robot left a trailing ululation behind it in the air as it plummeted towards traffic below.
"OOOooooooo..."
-------------------
Mackie Stingray, AKA Typhoon Saber, idly contemplated the difference between 'he' and 'she' as she drove through the night, bringing a van full of Saber hardsuits and support gear back to her sister's redoubt. Everything _felt_ normal, and really, for an artificial being, gender was a flexible construct anyway (and shouldn't you be more worried about being an artificial construct than which way you're wired, Mackie?), though this wasn't terribly relevant to anything she had going anyway, gender identification means nothin-
Mackie's train of thought was interrupted by the near-total destruction of the rear suspension of the van as a half ton of ballistic lab table smashed into the cargo body. Mackie, screaming her lungs out in an impressive stream of profanity, managed to get the van off to the side of the road and stopped. Turning to the side to unlock her harness and get out to check the damage, Mackie came face to face with a blocky, cylindrical head, lambent blue-green eyes blinking curiously.
"Hi! I'm GIR! Do you know you have a lab table in your van?"
~Fin~
Editor's note: *snrk* If I didn't have Reverse Altitis, I'd make me a Gir Saber, and use costume change macros for the color shift..
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
And Nene didn't know what that meant to the Sabers.
-------------------
"Silky Doll lingerie, Sylia speaking, how may I assist you today?"
"Hey boss lady, I have a minor problem I need your advice on."
"Is this business, Nene, or personal?"
"Big business deal, actually. I kinda need to talk to you in person abou- FUCK! SAMMY!"
*Click*
Sylia considered the phone in her hand. Nene wasn't one to use profanity, or to call in without need. This didn't bode well. On her way out the door, she flipped the archaic plasticene sign to 'closed', and punched the lock button.
-------------------
Sylia arrived at Nene's dwelling in good time, and knocked on the door, which nearly immediately opened to reveal a subdued Alice.
"Alice."
"Sylia. Nene's in her room, everyone is OK."
Alice backed aside to allow Sylia into the house, and took her coat without a further word. As Sylia passed the kitchen, she saw the brightly-clad stripey catgirl, Samantha, sitting in a chair in a corner, facing the wall. One eyebrow quirked in puzzlement as she knocked on Nene's door, which drifted open, releasing the smell of smoke. Closing and latching the door behind her, Sylia considered the crumpled form of Nene, face on her arms in her computer chair, smoking wreckage of her terminal in front of her, and a '128 Oz Hero Size' soda cup on the floor as if thrown.
"Nene?" Sylia inquired, reaching out and gently touching the young hacker on the shoulder. Nene twitched, and cringed.
"We might have a Really Freaking Big problem, Sylia." Nene mumbled through her arms. Straightening up and turning to face Sylia, Nene revealed a haunted expression and a serious case of button face.
"Do tell?" Sylia said evenly, and stepped back to settle gracefully into one of the simple wooden chairs provided for guests. Nene took a deep breath, and sighed as she let it out, her shoulders slumping.
"I was in the Crey mainframe - in way deep. I had enough security cutouts going that I don't think there's a chance I got traced, but.. Crey's up to something. They're developing an actual AI, instead of the engram process used with us. And from what I read before the.. accident.. they're about ready to start one up."
"Accident?" Sylia inquired calmly, one eyebrow quirked.
"I was on the phone with you, which I guess you could of guessed, heh.. And Sammy came home. She decided to surprise her Aunt Nene, and, well.. it was a freak thing, there's no way that soda should have gone straight into the machine like that!" Nene finished excitedly, kicking at the soda cup on the floor.
Sylia let her eyebrow sink back to Normal Alert status, and rubbed at her eyes to buy time. Looking up at the flustered Nene, Sylia rose and delicately gathered the young girl into a hug, which Nene returned, sobbing into Sylia's shoulder.
"The worst part is, Sylia, I don't think I'll be able to get back in that deep. I don't know if this new Saber AI is going to be a person, or how tough it's going to be, and that worries me, I mean REALLY worries me. I figured the best thing to do would be to talk to you *sniff* since you always know what to do."
Sylia broke the embrace and held Nene at arm's length. "It'll be OK, Nene. Did you get an address for the activation, or do we find it through other means?"
Nene nodded, pulling a ripped-off corner of notepaper out of her pocket. "Here's the address of the lab they're using, and their best projection of an activation date."
"Well, then, we'll just have to crash the party, won't we?"
-------------------
Hopkins loomed in the observation gallery, as the vaugely humanoid shape on the lab table in front of him lay quiescent and surrounded by lab techs. The project lead, one Roman Vasquez, fluttered around the room as if winged, checking this system and confering with that tech, testing and configuring at a frenetic pace. Roman had been quite argumentative about the last-minute change in venue, but had performed admirably once he'd made his objection, which Hopkins respected.
Checking his cellphone, Hopkins noted a security alert - the Sabers were rapidly and efficiently eliminating the security forces at the original lab. One massive eyebrow twitched, and Hopkins strode across the observation deck to the comm mounted at one side.
"Mr. Vasquez, I just thought you should know, sir, that the Sabers have eliminated nearly seventy five percent of the effective security force at the previous lab."
Vasquez twitched like a man being Tased and lunged for the comm console in the lab chamber. "Thank you for your insistance, then, Mr. Hopkins. I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong. Five minutes to startup sequence." Roman bounced away from the console as if on springs, and returned to his frenetic pace of work. Hopkins right eyebrow twitched again, and he pulled his phone out to make a note. The sort of integrity Vasquez was showing was an attribute to be nurtured.. and watched.
The humanoid figure grew more and more defined as various systems were mounted and panels closed over them, revealing itself to be squat and rounded, almost an Art Deco idea of a mechanical man. Vasquez himself fitted the faceplate over the primary visual sensors, toggling the adaptive optical filters through several rapid mode changes, causing the shields to flouresce from green to red.
Vasquez returned to the Comm console at the four minute and fourty-five second mark, and Hopkins felt his eyebrow lifting again. "Mr. Hopkins, we are ready to start. The Synthetic Intelligence Robot should be online shortly."
Hopkins responded with a curt acknowledgment, and folded his hands behind his back. The frantic movement on the floor below ceased, as all the technicians filed out of the room to more protected areas, leaving Vasquez alone with the Art Deco mechanical man. Vasquez lost no time hauling a massive datalink cable down from the ceiling, and threaded it onto a shielded port in the top of the cranium of the supine form. After the connection was secured, he almost ran to a nearby console, and with a glance up to Hopkins in the observation room, pressed the stereotypical Big Red Button.
Hopkins was half expecting, giving the man's theatrical nature, the lights to go out. They failed to do so, burning a constant clean white light onto the lab. Second on the half expected list was violent reaction, perhaps an explosion or a 'Crey Loyalty Failure', as the earlier Scimitar experiments had suffered from. This also failed to happen. Instead, the figure on the table sat up with a single stiff motion, and reached up to the datacable coming out if it's notional 'head'. The optical filters on it's face flickered through all available modes before settling down to a lambent teal coloration, which was matched by auxiliary sensors in it's shoulders and chest. The reach up to the datacable didn't quite work out, and the grey robot threshed around ineffectively before Vasquez stepped forward and grabbed it by the wrist, placing its hand in contact with the datacable. The robot then unscrewed the cable and closed the armor shroud, giving it an almost cylindrical appearance.
"G.I.R. Saber reporting for duty, SIR!" the robot thundered, snapping a salute which passed over it's head by a good three inches. Vasquez considered the robot, an emergency button now clenched in his hand.
"G.I.R.? What does the G stand for?" he asked uncertainly.
"I.. I Don't Knooooooow" The robot trilled, before lapsing into chirpy mechanical giggles. Hopkins returned to the comm console in the observation room.
"Vasquez. Is it supposed to be stupid?" Hopkins asked, amusement in his voice. Roman handed the emergency button to the robot, and turned back to his own comm console.
"It's not stupid, sir, it's advanced!" he replied indignantly. Unnoticed, the robot consumed the emergency button, triggering the ejection process. As the table and its contents were ejected from the room, Vasquez whirled around in horror. Hopkins felt both eyebrows crawling up, and forced them back down to maintain his stoic expression as he rapidly searched through building plans on the console.
"Vasquez, you now have a problem. This facility was for nonsecure research, and that ejector just dropped your malfunctioning robot out to a streetside Dumpster." Hopkins shut off the console with grave finality, and returned to the window, folding his hands behind his back and looming down at the frantic Vasquez, who was yelling into his comm console and waving his arms at Hopkins. After a good moment's loom, Hopkins turned his back on the window and left the observation room.
As Vasquez tried to assign teams and request security forces for his panicked assistants, the freshly created G.I.R. Saber hurtled through the night, ejected, by a duct not designed to take a thousand pounds of robot + examination table, into the night sky at approximately the 27th floor. Clinging to the table with its stubby fingers, the robot left a trailing ululation behind it in the air as it plummeted towards traffic below.
"OOOooooooo..."
-------------------
Mackie Stingray, AKA Typhoon Saber, idly contemplated the difference between 'he' and 'she' as she drove through the night, bringing a van full of Saber hardsuits and support gear back to her sister's redoubt. Everything _felt_ normal, and really, for an artificial being, gender was a flexible construct anyway (and shouldn't you be more worried about being an artificial construct than which way you're wired, Mackie?), though this wasn't terribly relevant to anything she had going anyway, gender identification means nothin-
Mackie's train of thought was interrupted by the near-total destruction of the rear suspension of the van as a half ton of ballistic lab table smashed into the cargo body. Mackie, screaming her lungs out in an impressive stream of profanity, managed to get the van off to the side of the road and stopped. Turning to the side to unlock her harness and get out to check the damage, Mackie came face to face with a blocky, cylindrical head, lambent blue-green eyes blinking curiously.
"Hi! I'm GIR! Do you know you have a lab table in your van?"
~Fin~
Editor's note: *snrk* If I didn't have Reverse Altitis, I'd make me a Gir Saber, and use costume change macros for the color shift..
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies