Sentient [WIP]

[Komitoza]

It was about three in the morning according to standard clocks. Though implying that time of day matters for someone living aboard a spaceship. Knight captain Noire had stormed out of her bedroom, the loud noise of metal doors smashing against a wall as they were swung open echoed throughout the whole ship. If there were any humans on board the vessel, it would be quite a feast for their eyes to see the young captain frantically running down the hallways half naked in her sleeping garment. Debatable though, given the bed hair and three days worth of insomnia. “I don’t know why but I got it, I finally got it! I remembered!” She was shouting at the bare walls of the Threshers empty metal hallways, while the sound of her barefoot running was resonating throughout the vessel.

Anyone would have assumed the girl went crazy, but again as mentioned before, there never really is anyone to witness her special moments. The destination was the very back of the ship, a laboratory built at the most unexpected and unusual place, which was right next to the engine power room, so you can imagine how hot it was in there all the time. Maybe Ivy’s display of exhibitionism was justified. That place was her own little world, focused around only one thing, her whole life revolving around a single little project called SEPHIRON. Years of work invested, through out her college days, hours and hours of overtime within the LSF, and her very being finally loosing itself and withering away slowly while finishing up the final process with the Core.

Arriving at her destination, even thought excited beyond human measures, Ivy had to take a breather. Physical activity was something she definitely wasn’t used to given her frail nature. The lab itself was the only place aboard the whole warship that was actually being maintained properly, cleaned daily and overall just being taken care off. It really was her whole life at the time. It was an mostly empty room, with a large circular computer set up in the middle that spread open a three dimensional projection fabric, while the walls were equipped with projection screens and displays connected to the machine in the center.

”Start!” She shouted, and the moment her voice was let out, the centerpiece turned on, lights flickered, all of the screens lit up with their start-up operation. Various formulas were shown by the displays, thousands and thousands of lines of code ran down the projection screens which collectively outnumbered them, and the center holo fiber started forming a figure, layer by layer from silhouette, then the skeleton, to a human female body, finalizing with facial features. The whole process took about three minutes at the time.

"Insert. Command." It spoke once its form was complete, though things which were common for a computer. As Ivy walked around it, her eyes followed, once she was behind the projection, it would turn around to face her. Her movement was almost perfectly in sync with human movement patterns, smooth and without a stutter. Even her voice wording out something you'd read in a command prompt was unique and smoothly flowing, like with any other person.

A few very uneventful minutes would follow, Ivy had a bad habit of admiring the AI before she would get on with her work, just standing and staring at it, and given that the AI's projection was always moving and fidgeting like a real person, it's creator seemed more like a machine than the fabrication itself, just standing there immovable, and simply staring towards a given direction. And looking at how much time it took Noire to complete it up to this stage, it's odd they're not legally married yet. But, that soon might be the case, given how crazy she is, IF the thought that hit her mid sleep does come to realization.

"Right! Get on with it! Yes Ivy." Coming out of her self induced trance, she would rush off to the nearest display showing up code formulas, a few seconds per screen and she'd switch to the next one. "Yes, right." Next. "Good, yes." Next. "Oh!" Talking to herself the whole time, her sanity always comes into question. One of the reasons she prefers using robotic crew.

A set of three projected keyboards emerged, the AI watching this whole time. It's time for one of many trial and error processes Ivy routinely takes when rewriting the codes. But unlike every other attempt, now she seemed confident. Hours and hours pass, the projection would sometimes crash, sometimes change movement pattern, sometimes start wording out the code herself, sometimes even lose a limb which happened twice during the twenty four restless hours, but the third time, at exactly four in the morning by standard Sirius time, the AI showed first signs of human like behavior. Her arm disappeared in a coding error, while Ivy in frustration had turned around wanting to rush off for a water brake, and thats when she would notice. Her lifeless creation was now for the first time performing non pattern movement, she seemed to be wondering about the strange occurrence with her extremity, staring at the blank space where the arm was supposed to be.

"H.. " For the moment, she was stunned, happy, overwhelmed by all kinds of feelings. Her creation was finally "breathing", though she wanted to test out if it could understand her. "Hey!" Ivy shouted, and the projection responded in kind by switching her attention to the girl. "Can you speak?" As the question was asked, a staring contest began. The two were simply, looking at each other for about half an hour already until the AI would nod her head away as if saying no. Ivy, again even more overwhelmed by the sudden progress, had to take another short brake for admiration, before asking another question. "You can understand me though right?" This time though, the projection immediately replied with an affirmative nod. In reply Ivy quickly turned back to her post. "I'll fix that just give me some time, yes Ivy you will fix it you're almost there.

While her creator was consumed in trying to get the speech protocols back online, the projection stepped off the platform, which bare in mind was created to allow the AI to do such, but Ivy would never expect that she would be able to do it any time soon. But, running on such low sleep, the things she does while rewriting the code usually just fume out of her mind given how tiered she is to leave room for new ideas, so the fact she managed to do that will leave even herself amazed given that she doesn't remember doing it in the first place.

Noire was close to falling asleep while standing up, and at the very edge of passing out, the AI's voice will shock her out of the tiered state immediately, as she was approached from behind. "Creator, are you [state] alright? You seem [state] tiered."

The so called "creator" jolted backwards, passing through the projection and tripping over, landing onto her bottom. "You, you speak! Ivy, you did it, yes you did it! She can talk!" The AI replied to that. "Fabrication have managed to save all coding logs starting from nineteen hours twenty two minutes and sixteen seconds yesterday creator. [inquiry] Creator does not seem to remember the pattern?" Ivy even though in complete shock, had to force herself into talking with her creation. "Well uh, that's perfect! You're already proving great, yeah." The projection tilted her head at Ivy. "[inquiry]Is this the [state] praising? My [protocol=<dynamic_emotion>] is acting on unregistered [state]."

Ivy would have never thought that today was the day she'd have to start teaching the AI about human emotions, even though somewhat unfamiliar with them herself. Emphasis on TEACHING, as writing code would for every single state of human emotion would take an eternity. The AI made use of dynamic learning protocols, which is a huge advantage for creating sentience, and Ivy had been preparing a data bank every day, filling it with information which were constantly connected to the main computer so that the AI would be able to more efficiently learn with enough basis.

Though, for the moment she was unable to fight sleep, but she fought vigorously. "Do you have a name?" She asked the AI, which replied. "Naming title [protocol] equals [blank]" Her heavy eyelids started closing, but she managed to utter one last sentence before falling over onto the ground. "From today, your name is.. Sephiron.. Creator is going into sleep mode.. " She yawned as her eyes closed completely. "Research inquiry on.. emotion.. good night Ivy.. " And with those final words, the last directed at herself, she finally went out cold. The AI wasn't confused about it (given that confusion and curiosity are her only two written emotion based codes.) as she has been monitoring her for all this time, and has well enough information on things such as her creators insomnia caused by her own development. Though unable to identify the protocol, she was worried. Sephiron walked back up onto the platform, kneeling down, and closing her eyes as she was getting ready to execute her first verbal order in standby mode. While the creator in her dreams was already thinking over and planning on how she would basically raise her sentient AI child.