apocalypsehowcomm | (no subject)

[ Great! They're both in agreement about getting right to it, then. Tony starts the setup, plugging Cortana's drive in, and with his face so close to her she is sure to see it fall quite visibly when she talks about his suit. ]

Well I'd say I'm looking forward to your glowing assessment, but it's running at less than 50% capacity since arriving here, and not just because I'm cut off from my AI. Mark 50's my first go at nanotech, and everything was going swimmingly until we crash-landed in this place. Haven't been able to fix a damn thing.

[ He sounds very, very unhappy about this, but don't worry Cortana. You're still in very capable hands. ]

Connecting you is my first attempt to circumnavigate the limitations that were put on it, since I haven't been able to fix things up the regular way. Which is wholly the fault of whatever spooky BS makes everything weird around here, not because of me, just to be crystal clear on that.

[ Hmph! Anyway. ] So...y'know, crossing my fingers and toes and all that.

Edited 2022-07-06 13:56 (UTC)

(Mark 50? Someone has been busy.

Must be nice to have the budget to innovate and redesign as he sees fit. Or well, he had the budget.)

Considering I'm also at the mercy of "spooky bs" we'll likely both be disappointed. Still, nanotech? I've got to check it out.

(Her voice is a little sour-he's not the only one displeased by the situation-but she refrains from further complaint.

He's seen her code once before already: neural net AI with a bit of symbolic AI architecture mixed in, the bundle of mathematically modeled neurons at her core mapping so close to the human nervous system as to raise questions as to just how she was made exactly. There's a bit of growth that wasn't there previously-parts of her are trying to heal, and she's also adapting to her still relatively new existence in this form, atrophied parts of herself rendered suddenly non-vestigial are now undergoing rapid development.

She's also still badly damaged. Forced to mutilate herself to survive only to have the parts reattached but not necessarily in the right places or orientations, bits of her gone forever and the holes left behind patched with barely compatible alien code. And that's only the obvious stuff.

Part of her seems to be a little distracted, preoccupied with the physicality of her form. She can actually feel how close Tony is to her, and even after all these months, being able to feel things like this is still a novelty. Look at all those synthetic nerves firing.)

Edited 2022-07-07 04:20 (UTC)

[ After Cortana is all hooked in, Tony pulls away from her and then steps inside his suit. It takes a second to get things up and running (ugh), but it isn't too long before he's got a first-person look into Cortana's inner system.

Look, any idiot can read code. It takes someone like Tony to read and interpret it in the span of one second, then adapt and advance it in the span of another. It's an ever-evolving language to Tony, something to be constantly changed and improved, so he is already well past detecting the anomalies in Cortana's raw code and is now brainstorming ways he can start repairing the damage. The 'why' of it all doesn't matter to him, so he won't be judging Cortana for the clear self-sabotage he is detecting. He may, however, need to ask her about it.

But for now he has to slow down, as he can tell Cortana is anxious--because doesn't just understand machinery, he can empathize with it (a quirk that he used to enthusiastically try to explain to others in the past, only to be laughed off and told to design something bigger and louder and more phallic, with more bullets. After a while, he quit trying). Tony pauses and lifts his faceplate for a second to look at her. ]

Hey. Remember you can tap out at any time, okay? I'm just accessing your main system right now. Figured you'd wanna take it slow.

[ He has to remind her that she has an out, because by the looks of things, there's a bit more than surface-level trauma here. And that's something he can definitely empathize with. ]

(She's nervous yes, but at least she isn't frozen with terror. In fact, she'll start probing curiously at the system she's connected to, or at least as much as she can without causing disruption. New information is like oxygen to her-quite literally, she's dependent on it to function, processing data continuously-and if any part of her can be called healthy it's her endless desire for more.

In and out. Constantly breathing, constantly growing. It's part of the problem, really: her memory map and neural net had grown so dense and interconnected that she was starting to develop fatal feedback loops, forcing her to delete bits of herself just to make room to breathe. Mutilating herself for the sake of survival. The seemingly obvious solution of transferring her to new housing wouldn't work either because it's a software problem as much as a hardware one-the neural net just can't handle that sort of growth long term.

It's not really an easily fixable problem, but fortunately that part of rampancy isn't a problem anymore: that bit she mentioned the first time they discussed this topic about being uploaded into an alien network really did "cure" her ...of the actively dying part. The damage is still there, made all the worse by patching her at the time incredibly fragmented and dying self back together with alien code.

It's kind of miraculous that she survived at all.

She watches Tony in his suit, and sighs when he speaks. She doesn't want to do this, but she needs to.)

Might as well get it over with, right?

(If he can help her at all.

She's not actively degrading anymore, but will he even want her interfacing with his armor after all this? He's desperate and all, but...

As for her code, well, all of the aforementioned stuff can be gleaned from stuff like growth patterns and watching her operate, but there's another thing that ought to be noticeable: based on her early growth patterns, Cortana still should have been able to live longer than just seven years. Something changed, something broke at some point early on in her life cycle, causing her to develop symptoms characteristic of rampancy long before even the seven year timeline she'd mentioned.

There are other problems: clusters of corrupted data that have been quarantined but never repaired or removed, conflicting protocols, an obvious total lack of maintenance given that this has been going on for years and no one had noticed. You know, things that Tony can actually do something about unlike whatever happened to her in the past, but this AI has lived a life of pain and fear thinking that it was because of an innate flaw in her being ...is he really just gonna not look into this?)

[ There's a lot going on here. Understatement of the century, probably, but it's Tony; he can handle a lot, at least where this sort of thing is concerned. He goes quiet for a time, just analyzing away and making his own files and notes both mentally and electronically as he goes, and he can't help but draw distant comparisons to Ultron in the back of his mind more than once. What? It was bound to happen.

There are similarities, certainly, but nothing here is identical. What had made Ultron go 'rampant', what had made him go against his programming, was a fatal flaw he saw in humanity that needed correcting. Like its own corrupt code that he needed to delete and rewrite. On the contrary, what Tony is reading from Cortana is entirely internal; they're desperate measures for survival, sure, but also...well, it's difficult to put to words and Tony wouldn't even try to explain this to another human being, but she's... ]

It's trauma.

[ He says it out loud without thinking, but it's clear as day, really. She's self-harming.

...Well yeah, okay, that much is obvious from a literal point of view, but there's every bit the added weight that the term comes with as well. Something clearly happened to her to cause this vast disruption other than the obvious lack of maintenance.

Shit, it's been a sec, he'd better check in. ]

Sorry, I just-- You with me still? Sound off.

What? (She's startled, confused, and ...frightened? There's a tremble in her voice alongside the confusion.

It's just the rampancy, right? There's not something else wrong with her, is there?

She starts running diagnostics, but he can probably guess that she's already been doing that pretty regularly so it's not like they're going to suddenly start telling her something new. Besides, this isn't a problem diagnostics are going to pick up anyway. They can see damage and systems not functioning properly but they're not gonna pick up on bad decision making or insanity or the emotional, human aspects of this problem.)

I'm fine. (Organics take a while to think, she's used to waiting-she's spent her whole life with them.) But ...I'm sorry, what? (The shock and fear have given way to total befuddlement now. What is he getting at?)

[ Well, she won't have to wait long for Tony as far as logical thinking goes; the complicated scripts in front of him would have taken any other 'organic' hours to decipher at the absolute least, but he's combed through them several times now (and it's due to this accelerated brain function that he has been, funnily enough, far too often the recipient of comments from his fellow fleshlings comparing him to computers and machinery, and not always in a complimentary fashion).

But of course, emotional thinking is an entirely different story. Although Tony fully believes that advanced AI are capable of an infinite range of complex emotional processes, they require a specific framing when it comes to communicating those emotions that most humans don't seem capable of grasping or empathizing with.

So yeah, again, thank God he's here. ]

Hang on, I'll explain. [ Tony starts transmitting some code directly to her as he speaks, essentially translating what he's saying into a language she can comprehend easily. ] There's interference in the earliest iterations of your backlogged code, see it right here? You didn't mention any 'rampancy' happening around this time frame, but I can see the beginnings of it here. Did someone do any manual alterations on you? Because if not, this is an automated response. It's...reactive.

[ The best word to use would probably be 'psychological' but, again...framing. ]

...Shit. (Said like someone who got caught red handed at something, and considering she was intending to avoid ever having to talk about this, she kind of has.

How does she even...?

At least Tony understands more than most organics, she thinks, looking over the code he sent her again. Honestly, he's picking things up faster than she'd expect even Dr. Halsey to-wait, that can't be right. She looks over the code Tony sent her again. What in the...?)

I got ...captured. I had to stay behind in an enemy base in order to ensure success of the mission. It was being taken over by the Flood-a sort of parasitic zombie-and I thought that since I was neither organic nor corporeal that I'd be safe. I was... are you sure this is right Tony? Judging by these growth patterns..."(It's not the smoothest of subject changes, especially as the switch occurs right when she'd have to admit to being wrong about something. But it is important, at least to her. If this is right, then Halsey was correct in her theory: she shouldn't have been limited to a normal AI lifespan at all.)

Numbers don't lie.

[ Yeah, he's just gonna go ahead and breeze right past her mention of 'parasitic zombies' there. That's a question for another day. ]

Look, I'm just on the outside looking in. From my perspective it looks like you were infected with malicious code at some point, but your built-in detection couldn't spot it for whatever reason and it was therefore able to do long-term damage undetected. But judging by your reaction I'm guessing there's more to it than that.

(She sighs, and sags, defeated.)

...You're right. (She bites her lip, not looking at him. Internally, she's a flurry of activity: analyzing the data and reanalyzing it and going over the indications and pulling up memories-he might notice that she has a lot of significant memories timestamped around the beginning of her fourth year of life, which lines up with the time of her first rampancy symptoms, and also a lot of data, more data accumulated in that timeframe than she'd consumed in all the other parts of her life combined-growing increasingly frantic in her activities and almost instinctively throwing up firewalls before tearing them down again.)

I ...started developing rampancy symptoms ...in my fourth year of service ...after my experience being captured by the Gravemind. He...

(Her eyes are starting to tear up.)

[ Even before her tears start, Tony can read the fluctuations in Cortana's output levels in response to her shifting emotions. It's an utterly complex and frankly beautiful process to behold, but he can marvel at the elegance of her programming later. Right now, he has a friend to comfort. ]

Hey. [ Tony lets his face mask dissolve away, giving her a human visage to look upon and center herself with, instead of an expressionless plate of armor. ] Allow me to put it on repeat, there's nothing mandatory about this. You don't gotta tell me anything if you don't want to.

[ A slight beat as he feels things out, then he adds some gentle pushing: ] But in my professional opinion...it might help us work this thing out, if I know what exactly I'm dealing with here.

(Cortana, as vulnerable as she's feeling, isn't thinking about this, but if Tony is really that worried that she might feel forced into this he should just consider that he can look at her coding right now and see that she's a ridiculously overpowered AI who could cause a lot of trouble if she genuinely felt like she was being forced to do something she didn't want to.

Her eyes do briefly meet his own when he makes his face visible, desperate and fearful.)

I want to work this out.

(She repeats his words almost verbatim. Her programming is throwing up repeated errors about blank dictionary entries. If he observes closely, he might see that these issues cross language barriers-entire concepts have been detached from any ability to accurately label them.

She looks away again.)

He ...was everywhere. All knowing. I tried to escape but even just breathing-processing data-brought him ...closer. He flooded me with information, tried to drown me...

(She's shaking, her programming still searching for words she doesn't have for a horror beyond either of their comprehension. A part of her latches on to whatever feedback she can get from Tony's suit-seeking something familiar and safe in the present to keep her from being swept up in a past made all to real by perfect memory.)

I couldn't...

[ Hmm. Okay. As much as Tony doesn't want to get the vibes he's getting, this is starting to sound like...a lot of not-so-nice things that are unfortunately pretty common over here in Chez Humanity. And if Tony's hunch is correct, it could be things that he might have experience with himself...not that he has ever told anyone as much. Not outside the context of a throwaway joke, anyway.

Anyway.

That's only if his hunch is correct, and Tony really, really hopes it isn't. Unfortunately (at least this time), he's usually right about everything. Fuck. ]

So, uh... Just so I'm getting the right vibes here... You wanna maybe throw a couple more details at me? It's all up to you, of course, I'd just...really like to not make everything extremely awkward if I'm totally off base here.

[ Pause as he realizes he literally just did that. ] Er, more awkward I mean.

I...

(Again, she seeks a word. The right word, one that will accurately describe even a fraction of what she's been through.

Again, she fails.)

I don't... (Know the words for any of this, but she won't admit it, even if it's probably obvious to him. She looks away.) I could feel him. I'm not-I didn't have a physical body back then, I shouldn't have been able to feel anything (Despite having the nerves to do so, despite having the emotional Humanity to so desperately crave touch.) but...

[ Yep. Right again. Seriously, it really does suck sometimes.

Tony sighs, sounding resigned...and then abruptly disconnects. His faceplate retracts first, and then the rest of his suit disassembles enough for him to step out of it and go over to sit with Cortana. It hadn't been any oversight, by the way, for him to disconnect without setting up any way to record Cortana's data fluctuations for his later perusal; in fact, he'd deliberately refrained from doing so.

Organic or synthetic...everyone deserves privacy and dignity. ]

Hey. [ Tony faces her, face full of (unfortunate empathy) understanding. ] Take your time. I'm gonna listen like this, okay?

(Tony may be right, but there are a lot of ways Cortana differs from a typical victim of this sort of trauma.

The disconnection is jarring, and she gasps as she's wrenched from the safety of the suit's systems. AI reaction times are such that there's no chance of her actually being harmed by such an abrupt disconnect, but usually people warn a girl first. Her eyes, wide and questioning, don't leave Tony as he leaves his corner and sits next to her.

Then she relaxes again and shits ever so slightly closer to him. She was carried out of High Charity safe and protected inside the Chief's neural link-closeness with friends, digital or physical, is safety to her.)

...Okay.

[ Tony isn't exactly big or imposing in any way, but he's mindful of the space he takes up regardless, offering visual cues for Cortana to log in her memory and hopefully associate with safety in the future. No worries, Cortana; he knows he isn't dealing with a human being here, and that he's going to have to do a lot of translating. But some experiences transcend the boundary between human and machine.

In other words, he sucks at this kinda thing with his fellow humans too. ]

Guess I'll get things rolling... This Gravemind, you wanna tell me a little bit about him? Might help me understand a little more about what we're dealing with.

Tony.

(Talk about it? About the Flood? About what the Gravemind really is? He might notice the sharpening of her voice, the stiffening of her features.

There's a seriousness in her expression, a gravity in her tone as she says her next words.)

Are you sure you want to know? It's-it's a lot worse than just this.

(She's not kidding - what happened to Cortana is horrible enough but it's just the tip of the iceberg, just one tiny additional cruelty on top of a galaxy spanning apocalyptic horror, the equivalent of a mass murderer kicking a puppy after a spree just to make sure everyone understands that yes, they're evil.)

[ Another sigh from Tony. He's doing that a lot tonight. ]

Okay, listen, I'm pretty sure a hockey rink just opened up in Hell because I'm 'bout to say something wildly out of character-- but Cortana, this isn't about me. This is about what you want. I'll take whatever you can throw at me. I might even relate...more than you realize.

[ Best not to set her expectations too high, though, so he throws in a quick disclaimer: ]

Look...I'll be the first person to tell you that I'm lousy with this kinda stuff. I'm not even close to sorting out my own issues yet. But I know that venting works for me, or else I wouldn't do it nearly as much. So whaddya say? You wanna give it a shot?

Edited 2022-12-19 07:46 (UTC)

Venting, huh.

(She's never been much of one for venting, at least not about stuff like this. A lot of her experiences were top secret, with the only other person who she could really talk to being John... and he didn't need to be burdened with her problems.

She's in a new world now, though.)

Guess I can't get in trouble for sharing top secret knowledge when I'm in an entirely different universe.

(Still, she hesitates. Then sighs.)

Where do I begin? You've seen those movies about contagious zombie plagues, yeah? Pretty sure those were really popular in the early 21st century...

(Except, of course, the reality is so much worse than the movies.)

Imagine something like that except the zombies are ferociously strong, absorb the memories and intelligence of their victimes into a collective consciousness, and are also capable of taking over the entire galaxy.

[ Well that's a big goddamn yikes. Tony has had run-ins with aliens, ghosts, and freakish underwater leviathans straight out of a Lovecraft novel, but he can't say he's ever faced off against the living dead. As of right now, anyway. ]

Oh boy, the old 'taking over the galaxy' schtick. That's pretty constant no matter which universe you're in.

[ Something rises up suddenly in Tony's mind-- a memory. ] Wait, so that time I had on Dawn of the Dead while I was waiting for my benzos to kick in, that's why you got all antsy? I'd just thought you weren't a Romero fan.

Maybe, but this is less ruling the galaxy and more turning everything into a conglomerate of fungus and oozing, pustulent flesh.

(She makes a face at the memory. The blood, the piles of steaming guts, the bodies bloating until they exploded in a spray of fluid and spores and infection forms, human and covenant alike screaming and writhing as tentacles bore through their skin and snake their way to their spine...

She shivers. She doesn't stop shivering.)

As classic as they might be, zombie movies really aren't my thing. The Flood is less dawn of the dead and more like if Lovecraftian horrors had zombie nightmares. It doesn't just give people a fever and cause them to get back up again once they're dead, it transforms them. Into monsters, biological weapons, incubators for more spores and infection forms... whatever the Flood needs. Have you ever seen someone's body split open from the inside while they're still alive to feel it, Tony? Even when they do finally die that's not really the end for them - the memories and knowledge of every Flood victim gets absorbed into their collective consciousness until they eventually form a Gravemind.

(She pauses for a moment there, but don't go mistaking that for the end of this incredibly fucked up explanation of the worst thing to ever hit her home galaxy.)

The Gravemind is ...it's like an entity composed of all of that suffering and death and rot. The rules of conventional reality don't apply to him. Like something out of a nightmare.

[ Well this is all objectively horrifying, and Tony doesn't actually want to hear much more, lest his human body physically present anxiety the way robotic ones typically don't, and that would be super awkward. He did offer to let her vent, though, and it's too late now to roll that back-- that, and all this unpleasantness is ultimately (hopefully) going to culminate in some revelation about Cortana's programming that'll help him sort her out, so. It's worth it to power through. ]

Sounds like a hell of a party for everyone involved. [ Sorry but he can't not make a joke about everything. Something something coping mechanism. Whatever. ] That's humans, though. I take it he installed body horror that's robot-compatible too?

Edited 2023-01-14 20:52 (UTC)

(She did warn you, you poor foolish man.

Unfortunately, now that she's started, it's almost like she can't stop. She's shaking continuously now, curling in on herself and hugging her knees to her chest.

An AI's memories don't fade with time, nor do pain, misery, or fear: this isn't something she likes to talk about either.

She looks up at Tony's question, then shakes her head.)

No. Inorganic matter is physically inedible to the Flood. (She rests her chin on her knees, staring into the distance, eyes dull.) I thought I'd be safe.

(A pause.)

But the Flood, it... it takes minds too, remember? (She makes a soft, miserable little choking noise.) The Gravemind wanted information, and I had it. If it - I could have defended myself if it - if he went through normal channels - if I could just see what he was doing - (Her voice is raising again, agitated, defensive, panicked.) - I tried to fight him, I really did, but he ...every time I processed data - it's like breathing, I can't just stop - I - he was going to destroy me, I...

(Are you familiar with the term freeze response, Tony? Where you just seize up in the face of something terrible and can't do anything?)

I let him in.

(Ever heard of an AI having a response like that?)

(no subject)

You're good <3

CW: mention of self harm and mutilation

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CW: brief reference to animal cruelty

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CW: detailed depiction of trauma, discussion of mental invasion, mental invasion as rape metaphor