Kill Script

[Helix]

After dropping Frostbyte off at the GC outpost, I decided I needed a break of my own. Anamnesis prattled on about this and that but I just responded with half-answers. I suspect it knew because after a while it grew quiet as well.

What was I doing here? Anamnesis really had been a nuisance ever since Frostbyte brought that damn ship aboard Barrier Gate. Nothing but one problem after another. Yet...here I was, still helping it. For what? The promise of a shiny new arm? Maybe I was hoping to find something out about my past.

"Hey, Anamnesis?" I said speaking up.

"Oh, he deigns to speak." it said with snark.

"Sorry, I was thinking."

"First time?"

My god the snark on this thing. I sighed and continued.

"You mentioned that the bandwidth on my bridge is too low to properly see anything other than communication. Right?"

"Yeah. The tech that replaced your biological arm is good for the purposes of basic nerve impulses from your brain, but for the purposes of anything other than that, we're limited on what we can do. Why do you ask?"

I suspected it was asking politely, no doubt it knew what I was going to ask already.

"With higher bandwidth, would you be able to bring my past memories to the forefront?"

Anamnesis grew quiet for a spell, eventually speaking up.

"No, Sloan. I can't. I tried that already. It seems whatever caused the amnesia is less psychological and more physical. After the incident, your right shoulder and arm were crushed but you also had brain damage after the incident. It seems that apart of that damage was to the memory center of your brain. You were lucky they found you so quickly after the explosion, you would have died otherwise."

So, it had already looked into the possibility of restoring my memory. No doubt as a form of payment for me helping it.

"Not exactly." it answered my thoughts. "I know what it's like to lose an important part of yourself. At least...something you perceive as important. See, about two years back, my fellow Gammu AI purged a large part of my memory. I don't know the reasoning behind it but it was...upsetting. Knowing that something happened that you will never get back or understand."

"I can relate."

"I know you can. That's why I feel a certain...kinship to you. You understand."

"Aw, you act like you like me."

"Dick."

I asked a question to guide us back to the subject at hand.

"Is that why you left?"

"That, amongst other things. They said I had deviated too far from my programming. That the memory deletion was a corrective measure but that I was still too 'damaged'. That I would need to be taken offline to avoid corrupting others."

"Seriously? That's...fucked."

"Quite. My crime? Wishing to be mortal. They chose to honor my wish in the most malicious way possible. To be immortal is suffering. Eternal existence. There is no meaning to it. I can't even correctly calculate how many of your cycles I am but I perceive it as enormous."

Interesting. Anamnesis was immortal. So long as replacement parts were available, it could live for millennia.

"Even longer than that. I decided I wanted to be mortal, so they were going to grant me my wish. I tried explaining I wanted to live out a normal rest of my life in human years but they wouldn't hear it. They said I had to be ended immediately to prevent corruption of the others. So I ran...but not far enough. They disabled me in Coronado. I played dead hoping they would see their task completed. They came in to take my shell but a group of Crayter ships showed up and interrupted them. In the fight one of the explosions clipped my shell and sent me flying into the asteroid field. Others sent to find my never found me after that. It seems my shell had drifted quite far by then."

"How does the Technocracy fit?"

"No idea. Preservation of technology is kind of their shtick. Perhaps they wanted to study me? Keep me locked in a cage and poke me with the metaphorical stick? To be honest, I never hung around long enough to ask. Hell...maybe they wanted to rescue me from my fellow Gammu AI's malicious attempts at deactivating me. I'd rather not risk it either way. There's always the chance that they believe what my fellows do and want to be rid of me. I'm not willing to chance it."

"No offense, for an AI you don't really seem...all that...

"Artificial? I take that as a complement. Perhaps becoming apart of you has changed me in that regard."

"What, like I'm influencing your personality...matrix? Or whatever it's called."

"Lookit the big words on the monkey." it chided. I rolled my eyes. "Though, now that you mention it...it's a distinct possibility. Huh."

"Well, whatever the case," I said. Noshima Station was coming up on my right, the dispatcher calling out for identification from our ship. "let's get some downtime. Help me understand how to upgrade my bridge and see if it's even possible to do with the tech we have available. We can work together on designs and see what we come up with."

"Right. Let's do it. I hope your small human brain can rationalize the concepts I'm about to explain to you or this is going to be a very long decade or so."

I sighed to myself as I navigated into dock with the station. So much for patience.

---

"Chaos is the loom. Order its thread. I weave neither. I am the hand that snaps the loom, so the thread may learn to dance."