The Child of Many Worlds

Chapter 16

Natasha was lounging on a grey suede couch, sprawled out like a cat in the sun. She barely even looked up after a quick glance to make sure it was me. Passing her, I walked to the kitchen to grab an apple and a few blue cookies.

With food in hand and school bag thrown somewhere, I went back out to the couch and pushed Nat's legs out of the way. "Unless your bones have vaporized, stop hogging the couch." I gruffly said. She just groaned quietly and barely shifted her legs. I rolled my eyes at her antics, but secretly I was happy. I had been with Nat enough to know she absolutely never acted like this, childish and unguarded. So seeing her so relaxed was heartwarming.

Taking a bite of my sour green apple, I scrunched my nose at the sudden taste, but after I threw a cookie into my mouth, the two flavors mixed beautifully. When I had finished my snack I checked to see if Nat was awake, but she had fallen asleep. Instead of being mean and depriving her of some much needed sleep, I told the AI to start brewing some coffee for Nat, then quietly crept to my room to grab a laptop and headphones. I went back out to the living room so when Nat woke up she could tell me why she was here. While I was waiting I tinkered around with a project for my Professor, Cora.

When I finished the project and Nat still hadn't moved I started on an idea I'd had for a while. Quinn was the AI I had created, but I hadn't created it as a complex system, rather just a placeholder. So today I decided to evolve it.

I started with safety parameters. For me this was a must, because I wasn't intending to just create a stagnant AI. No, I was creating a being that could learn and grow, but to keep Quinn from being the next Hal 9000, I needed to give it a base of unbreakable code. The first was that it could not harm myself, Nat or my mom, and any others I might one day think of as family. The second was that it could not kill or permanently maim without explicit statement from my family. It also could not open or share specific files without express permission from us three.

With these limitations firmly in place I started on the intelligence part of the AI. For the most part I left the personality blank, but gave it a strong ability to learn, so hopefully a personality would develop on it's own.

I was halfway through my base programing when Nat woke up. Instead of waking up alert and on edge, she slowly opened sleep tired eyes and snuggled into a throw pillow before deciding to actually wake up.

She stood up from the couch and got up on her toes to do a full body stretch, eyes scrunched closed and body stiff, before she relaxed and went in search of coffee. I let her go, knowing she was always grumpy when she woke up, and here where she didn't have a character to play, she wouldn't hold back.

After grabbing the already brewed coffee, she shambled back and plopped down onto the couch, nursing her drink like it was her lifeline. I set my laptop aside and waited patiently for her to regain her higher thinking skills. After two cups of hot coffee she was finally able to talk civilly.

"So Nat, as much as I love to see you, you don't usually drop by unannounced incase someone's following you. So what's up?"

Still sounding a bit tired, she replied "I have a mission and I'm going to need your help."

This was rather astonishing, and brought the whole of my attention to this conversation. Sure I had been on plenty of missions with Nat, but she had never said she actually needed my help. On every mission where I'd been brought along, the missions certainly weren't safe, but I had been an assistance, not a necessity. So I was understandably confused as to why Nat would need me.

Natasha apparently wasn't quite as tired as she looked, because she saw my confusion and quickly elaborated. "With you coming along with me so often on my solo missions, my supposed performance has risen and I've been getting sent on harder and harder assignments with less assistance."