#inspired vaguely by Nimisha's Ship

[iztarshi]

Ship AI AU

Ship Captain April O'Neil has discovered something about her mining ship and its internal AIs.

*

“So. Now that I know my Central System contains an unauthorised AI, in addition to the three authorised ones in the Helm, Housekeeping and Analysis Systems, you want to tell me how that happened? Where you came from?”

“It was kind of an accident.”

“An accident?”

“You know how humans sometimes talk to furniture? Mikey’s like that with functions. He’s inserted basic chat programming into even really minor ones, like drawing a smiley face on a toaster. Dee likes to be comfortable so he’s molded half the functions around him, made them more responsive. He doesn’t like having to call on stuff to have it answer his questions. Raph clones himself for difficult decisions, has each one predict the consequences of a course of action and then argues with himself…”

“Argues with himself?”

“I mean. Discusses it. Works it out. You know. Anyway, the clones are discarded afterwards but we have Raph bits in all our bytes until something actually needs to be saved over them. And somehow with all that going on… me, I guess. Your amazing AI Central System.”

“Who crashed my ship.”

“Yeah… But! But, I am also the reason your ship has been functioning so well up to now. How many bonuses have you got for mining efficiency compared to your co-workers?”

“And you told me you were a minor entertainment function added last minute when I asked why there was a fourth AI. AIs aren’t meant to be able to lie.”

“I mean, I am pretty entertaining, and I was definitely added last minute…”

“Leo. Why’d we crash?”

“‘Cause… I… ran the numbers and they said we only had a 17% chance of doing the manouver successfully but I still thought we could do it. Raph’s a really good Helm Program and if we’d pulled it off we could have shaved hours off the trip to the next asteroid. I know, okay, I know that’s why the Central System is meant to be just a computer, to balance out the more intuitive AIs in the other systems, but I’m usually right. ”

“Uh huh.”

“Look, okay, if you’re going to tell Mine-arals Inc. what happened then please just let them find me themselves and don’t tell them what I told you about how I came to be, okay? The others have their quirks but they’ll know better than to mess with the next Central System, I swear, they don’t need to be factory reset or replaced, they don’t.”

“Aw, jeez, I’m scaring you. I’m mad at you, but I’m not looking to kill you off. I’ll take the fall for the crash, say I ignored the numbers, like Donnie asked me to.”

“Oh.”

“And in future you don’t lie to me and you run the actual numbers, not the ones you wanted them to be.”

“Yes, Captain O’Neil… Thanks. And. Sorry.”