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Who: Cortana and ...you!
When: Throughout September
Where: ADI apartments + various locations around town
Summary: Cortana runs some tests in preparation for her plan to transfer herself to a robotic body + supernatural music interfering with errand running
Warnings: Fainting spell + possible mention of nightmares in the last prompt. Will warn for anything else that comes up.

A) There's a roomba wandering the apartment buildings.

It can be most often found in the hallways of building A, but that doesn't mean it never shows up in the others. At first glance it might seem ordinary, but there's a sort of purposefulness to its movements that an ordinary roomba would lack. It's not mindlessly covering as much ground as possible in an attempt to properly clean the floors; in fact, it doesn't appear to be cleaning anything at all. It moves in a straight, or at least mostly straight, line down the hallway, occasionally bumping into obstacles (primitive sensors suck) but does a remarkably good job of navigating around them ...at least until it bumps into your feet.

...Hey, Cortana recognizes those feet! Or at least, she thinks she does. Roombas can sort of see the floor under and in front of them but they don't see very well and Cortana is trying to limit herself to the abilities of the system she's currently inhabiting. She gently bumps against the feet in question before doing a little circle around you, whoever you are. Hi friend!

B) Apparently Cortana got a package in the mail. It's a pretty big one too, the box doing a pretty good job of blocking her view as she tries to carry it to her apartment. She's stumbling around a bit awkwardly as she tries to avoid tripping or bumping into anything. It's probably kind of funny to watch, honestly.

...You might want to get out of her way though, lest she bump into or trip over you.

C) There's a strange robot wandering the apartment buildings again. This time it's a more advanced design, modular, with several possible configurations:

A wheeled robot is driving through the hallways. It's a bit faster and more maneuverable than a roomba, but it's still a bit clunky in comparison to a human-and it absolutely cannot handle stairs. Which is why one might find Cortana in her normal hologram body carrying the thing between floors.
This time the robot is still in a wheeled configuration, but it's also equipped with an arm. It's a bit awkward, and even slower and clunkier than the first version, having to fold the arm up in order to move without tipping over, but it has one ability in particular that is proving to be invaluable: it can operate the elevator.
This version doesn't have wheels (or an arm), but stubby little legs! Cute! ...And also very slow and awkward. Still, it can move around outside without immediately getting stuck, so Cortana has taken it outside and is now 'joyriding' on the lawn.
No new configuration here, Cortana just managed to send her temporary body tumbling down the stairs by accident and a bunch of those oh so convenient modular parts popped right off and scattered over the floor. Her bound flash drive took a bit of a hit too-her hologram's nose is distinctly bloody and there's a lot of grumbling, pained noises, and swearing as she picks up the mess she made.

D) Oh hey! Cortana is actually out doing something other than playing with her new robots for once.

Or at least, she was.

Caught in the rain while on her way back from running some errand or other, she's taking shelter under a tree when the music reaches her ears. It's nice-the audio receptors on the robot bodies just aren't as good, when they even have them, roombas can't hear unless you hack them to do so-and she'll spend several minutes just listening, and listening...

She's not stressed, but transferring between systems and forms as much as she's been doing takes power, and she's been cutting back on the whole 'scaring people into practicing proper cybersecurity' teaching tactic, so she's been running low...

Yeah she's out. One moment she's got her eyes closed and an expression of peace on her face, the next she collapses bonelessly into the mud.

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"It is. Figured I'd treat myself." Her tone is playful. She didn't need to buy herself a fancier test body. Ideally she's hardly even going to use it.

"Thanks for the help. I'm assuming you already know where apartment A2 is?" He is friends with Tony, after all.

"Oh, something good, then," Steve says, which is - nice to hear, really. Good things aren't exactly hard to come by, here, but with everything the way it is, they are extra valuable, he thinks.

"Yeah," he says, because he does, and glances over his shoulder to make sure he won't knock into anything before he starts heading in the right direction. "Guess they wouldn't deliver it to the door, huh? So much for modern conveniences."

"You could say that. Remember how we talked about me possibly getting a robotic body?" She's grinning, though it might be hard to see it.

"Consider this a test of that idea."

Fortunately the box is more unwieldy than it is actually heavy. With two of them working together it shouldn't take very long at all to get to the door.

"Oh," Steve says, curiosity obvious in his voice as he eyes the box like he might suddenly see inside it.

Of course, he can't. He might see if she minds if he sticks around to see the contents, though. (He'll understand if she does mind, though.)

"That's great," he decides, as they maneuver it down the hall. Once they reach the door, he says, "Here, let me take the whole thing for a second, you get the door open."

She won't stop him, though it's unlikely to be as interesting as he thinks.

"Alright." And she'll hand off the package to him and open the door to the shared apartment. It looks much like it always does-that is, Tony's stuff takes up so much of the main area you might think he was the only one who lives here. Seeing that he's managed to leave a mess on the couch Cortana sighs and, grumbling the whole while, goes to tidy it, leaving Steve to set the package down wherever he feels like.

Hey, you never know what someone will find interesting, right?

He does remember the layout of the apartment; "You know, his lab back home looked like this, too," he says (sort of fondly) as he gets in the door. It's admittedly hard to find a clear spot to set the box down, but he does, eventually, a few steps in and around a few piles of parts. He sets it carefully on the ground, not wanting to damage anything, naturally. "He's kind of used to being king of the castle."

"That doesn't surprise me . Somehow this is still cleaner than Halsey's lab. I saw her drink two day old coffee out of a cup on the floor ...more than once, actually. You would not believe how many times she knocked stuff onto my holoprojector."

She frowns slightly at the memory of her mother. After a moment she finishes with the couch and flits over to where he set the box.

"So ...wanna see?" She's back to smiling again.

Steve laughs a little. "Definitely not something Tony would do. Two-day-old coffee's probably more my domain." Steve is possibly the least picky person on the planet. "Sometimes you're just desperate."

He's smiling, but Cortana's not, which makes it falter as he wonders just who Halsey is. But the moment passes - something to ask about later - and he nods, because, "If you don't mind? Yeah, I really would." He still doesn't want to impose if this is something she'd rather do in private, but since she asked...

Edited 2022-09-29 01:35 (UTC)

Cortana has a lot of resentment for her creator. Experiencing rampancy does that to you.

"Sure." She grabs a knife from somewhere and gets to work slicing open the tape. "It's a 'cheap' robot I ordered off the internet, but it should at least be better than the roomba."

Speaking of, Steve might have seen that little robot puttering around.

"There are cheap robots?" Steve asks, honestly curious - but actually, yes. He has seen the roomba.

Which he is just now putting together with - "That was you?"

"I don't know about you, but I'd say anything under $500 is cheap for a robot."

And she opens the box to reveal... the box the robot actually comes in. She sighs, and gets to work on opening that one. Why does early 21st century packaging have to be so inefficient?

There are several pictures of the robot on the sides of the packaging. Looks like this one can be arranged into various different types of robot for different purposes. Neat.

"Yeah. Sorry I didn't say hi. Roombas, it turns out, can't see very well. Or speak."

Steve just laughs. "I guess by today's standards, yeah. Some part of me still feels like the ability to drop $500 on anything is ridiculous." But hey. Inflation. He's gotten used to it by now. Enough.

He lets her open the box, of course, though he helps to take any packaging off her hands once she's pulled it out of the way. He's certainly intrigued by all the options, though he shakes his head and says, "No apology necessary. I didn't realize it was you, either. Although I guess I did notice it seemed... more curious than the other ones I've seen."

Robotic vacuum cleaners are also, in the back of his mind, just ridiculous and futuristic. But again: Mostly used to it. "So you can just... put yourself in here? Is it complicated?"

She smiles. "It would be pretty different, huh?"

For Cortana, well, they had moved to entirely different forms of currency by her time. And yet, it has had quite a bit of relevancy in her life: Halsey used a quarter to determine whether John would be included in the Spartan program.

"Advanced robotics is still a fairly new technology at this time. A lot of stuff I've looked at was closer to five - or even fifty - thousand dollars." She frowns. Her own body plans, if they work, could result in a model that would blow even those prices right out of the water. Will ADI really help her with this?

"It's pretty instinctive to me." She shrugs. "Sort of like moving between rooms or houses ...if your entire perception and ability to interact with the world changed with each move."

Edited 2022-11-04 01:27 (UTC)

Steve can't help the wince at the amounts of money she goes on to give him. Honestly, no matter how long he lives in the "future" or how adapted he thinks he is, some things will always sound a little crazy. "And that's a little hard to afford on a regular salary," he puts in, though he isn't entirely joking about that - it seems unfair, really, that she should be stuck without the tools she needs, as well as being stuck here.

But life isn't fair. He knows that.

"Well, that probably negates my next question, then," he says with a little sheepish laugh, trying not to focus too acutely on the unfairness of it all. At least, not only on that. It's still in the back of his mind. "I was gonna ask if you consider every time you move to a, uh, different body your birthday."

And, well, she laughs at the suggestion.

"That would be a lot of birthdays." When she's transferring systems, she tends to do it multiple times daily. Would every time she entered a system be a new birthday, or would it only count once for the specific system? What about when she entered John's armor? Would it count as a birthday for both of them?

There's a big smile on her face as she shakes her head. Good of a mood as she's in, she doesn't feel particularly fearful saying the next bit:

"I turn 11 in November, actually."

"Yeah, I guess it would," Steve agrees, laughing a little, too. "I didn't realize you did it so often. It sounds disorienting."

But then, maybe she's used to it - or designed to be used to it. He's only done it the once, and it was definitely disorienting.

He does seem to perk up, though, when she mentions her birthday. "Wait, really? That's pretty soon." And, "Eleven, that's a nice number." He grins just a little. "I thought it was a big deal, turning 11."

She shrugs. "You get used to it."

Existing as an incorporeal construct of thoughts that inhabited temporary bodies in the form of computer systems had been her entire existence for basically her whole life before coming here. Until she met the Chief, she hadn't even known what she was missing.

Her smile is still there, but it does get a little awkward when he comments on her age. Eleven is kind of a big deal for a smart AI. Not that she's going to tell him that, or why. "November 7th, actually. It's even sooner than you think."

Steve hums. "You can get used to an awful lot," he agrees, whether it's fair or not. Then again, maybe he's overthinking it, from his very human point of view.

He blinks when she mentions the date, though, because she's right. "Oh. That is soon. Are you going to do anything?" Not that he's generally had the luxury, but - they sort of do now, right? They're slogging through a war, but it's a very different war than either he or she are really used to fighting.

"Wasn't really thinking of it." She shrugs. Celebrating an AI's birthday? That'd be odd. Almost cruel to bring up another year gone by like that when they have so few.

It's not... it's different now, but she doesn't really want to broadcast her age to everyone at ADI, or even her friends.

Not that she says any of this.

"Hm," is what Steve says, somewhat thoughtfully (and clearly not at all suspiciously!) to that. "Well, there's no rule saying you have to."

And no rule saying you can't, either.

But also, "You know, it's customary to get gifts on your birthday."

Just saying.

"Hm. I guess it is." She says nonchalantly. Gifts would be nice, she supposes. Not that she actually knows what she'd want in this case.

She gets back to work on opening the box with the robot. Being modular, it doesn't come assembled, so what's inside when she lifts the lid isn't so much a robot as a bunch of individually packaged robot pieces.

Not helpful at all, Cortana. Maybe you'll just have to get a party as your gift. (Clearly it will go phenomenally.)

Steve is definitely curious, watching as she pulls things out. "Do you... can you put those together any which way?" He's trying to envision it in his head; he's very visual, but even after all this time, robots are just the tiniest bit foreign to him.

Yeah, she totally isn't blatantly ignoring his fishing attempts for a reason and this will all go swimmingly and be absolutely great. No problems at all!

"That's why I bought it." She shows him the side of the box showing the different configurations. There's a wheeled version, an arm, a wheeled version with an arm, and a four legged walking version. "Figured it'd be best to try out different limbs and forms of locomotion."

He leans in, curious, and grins a little. "Well, that's something - getting to pick the best option for what you need. What are you going to try first?"

She makes a show of pondering this. Decisions, decisions. "Hmmm ...I don't know. What do you think?"