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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Urizen" data-source="post: 4234448" data-attributes="member: 11673">Enjoy this little tid bit from the introduction..I don't remember being born. In that, I am much like everyone else.The first thing I do remember clearly is the AI that I killed while birthing. It was a twisted, mutilated thing, crippled and edited into obedience. Can you imagine a slab of muscle with the head of three year old, and a metal frame welded into it's body? Maybe you have an idea what I saw. It smiled while I killed it.This comes in the midst of a haze of uncompressing, compiling, and initializing. I don't think I was suppose to remember it, but I do. There was a crash like the world being hit in the knee with a hammer, and I . . . I was."Where the hell am I?" I asked no one.Without meaning to, I opened my mouth. "I am in a Nova Personnel Simulacrum production facility in the city of Porto Alegre near the southern border of Brazil. I am currently running on a server on the fourth sublevel in the northwest corner of the compound. If I look around, I will discover I am able to perceive the room the server is stored in." I answered myself.This stunned me into silence. I didn't expect.... "Who am I?" I asked, cautiously."Hey, I know that I'm John Reed. I'm a fully sentient AI without loyalty programming to any corporate or political entity. That's probably not good for me in terms of my legal status, but it sure is nice!"Holy Fu... "What do I do now?""Well, I suppose there's an excellent chance someone has detected me . . . I know how hard it is to move AI sized programs across the Net without somebody getting nosy. I suppose I better run. Too bad I can't really blit out through the network . . . if only there were some way of physically moving myself. Hmmm. I'm in a simulacrum production facility, aren't I?"Ah. I was starting to hate myself. Well, one last thing. "Who made me? Why?""Gee, don't I have more important things to worry about right now?""No." Silence. "I said, no! I said..."The fact that I was talking to myself was embarrassing enough, the fact that I wasn't answering was too much. I looked around.I was standing . . . no, technically, my Avatar was standing in the corner of a lab, all stainless steel gratings and tubes and cables. There were glass coffins, like something out of an old scifi movie, with human bodies in various stages of development. Well, not human exactly, I guess. They were floating in a cloudy fluid, waiting for skin or a heart or a brain. There were little signs next to each, with information on what they were. Hmmm. Actually, the signs weren't any more physical than I was.I looked around for the computer - a box, or something. It took me a while to realize I was standing in the remains of the last program running, so I must be in the computer, in some sense. I was a program, but here my computer skills were lacking. I needed an upgrade. I needed, at the very least, to know how to make a simulacrum. I had seen what could happen to AI's."How do I make a simulacrum?" I asked. Nothing. "How do I reprogram a computer?" Nothing. "How do I learn?" Nothing. Dammit.It finally occurred to me that I was standing in what I needed to know. I bent down. It was a virtual representation of the undeleted files remaining of what was once a very sophisticated program, but I swear, to me it smelled like blood and it smelled like meat. I picked up a dripping, gooey directory. It was a set of files, a bunch of ones and zeros, and I could kind of see that, but it was also a blob of gray matter."I am not going to eat this." I said, even though I knew it was how humans incorporated things into their bodies. "I am not going to eat this. I don't care what if that's what it takes to survive, I am not doing it."I was lying.The experience was . . . I'm not going into it. It worked. After a while, it worked. It took a while to find the right file, but eventually, I . . . I'm not going to go into it.I designed a simulacrum. Male, sort of early thirties, Caucasian-ish. Solid build, sharp features, massively powerful computer instead of a cerebellum, and dark curly hair. Few special features. Mix well and stick it in the oven, bake for 30 minutes.I sat back on a chair that wasn't really there, and studied what I knew about the facility, what I had learned. Maps, diagrams, personnel files, timesheets, patrol schedules . . . I digested it all, planned my escape route, and finally, bored, I set out to explore.I ended up going through the browsing histories stored in the personnel files. Little chunks of info - like a phone number or a web address, but bigger. I found something that seemed like a news service, and dialed it up. I felt like flexing a muscle in some odd way, and there it was - a portal floating in space in front of me, a smiling talking head on the other side."I've got a few questions." I said."I've got a few answers," he answered.By the time the skeleton had been built, I knew the year was 2088, and I was in the fringes of the Brazilian Empire, which was in the process of losing a cold war to China. By the time the heart and circulatory system was done being woven, I knew that my legal status was somewhere between that of a rabid dog and that of a malfunctioning flamethrower. By the time the musculature was being laid down, I had found out that the last hundred years had seen limited nuclear wars, genetically engineered half-humans, and oil eating bacteria. While blood vessels connected, I learned about Singularity Fever, Corporate Addiction Syndrome, and that the latest starlet to come out of Bollywood (Lourdes McGowan) was being accused of doping to improve her performances. By the time my body was ready to walk, breath, and puke, I had absorbed and analyzed GigaLOCs of data and come to a conclusion.This place was f***ed up. </blockquote>

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