Twisted immortality

VI - No going back...

The next day Songkarn was introducing the two new members to the rest of the team. It seemed to go as Songkarn had predicted. Nichkhun was an easy distraction for Jira. Every time Songkarn watched her, he had to suppress a sigh. Girl's eyes were like two gleaming pools of light as if she'd seen a god. Songkarn really hoped that she would be an asset for success and not for trouble. Though at times when Songkarn looked toward them he saw Nichkhun more interestedly looking at someone across the room, he wasn't sure who. At those times he sensed some deeper thought behind his look than just his usual flirty self.

With the new members coming into the team, New seemed to become almost as quiet as a mouse. Somehow his newfound self-confidence with the other team members was disappearing rapidly. Songkarn wanted to give him a chance to take matters into his own hands so he backed off. Letting the team get used to the atmosphere the new members were creating. With relief, he noticed how Beauty involved New discussing the more complex, analytical data. Songkarn didn't concentrate on them much after that, though someday he might wish, he had looked at them a little closer.

As he watched over yesterday's work, he heard a notification on his messenger. "Hello, Songkarn. I saw a problem with the program. Can I show it to you?" New had resorted to sending such short messages. If one didn't know him, they would think he was occasionally impolite. Truth is that he was just timid and shy. It was good that he even trusted himself as much as to say anything about the problems he saw. Though Songkarn had noticed that inside the group he had started to react to jokes and made some jabs of his own too. For reasons still unknown to himself, Songkarn felt really protective of New.

"I'll be done soon. I'll come and see what you have found." Songkarn had to finish his weekly report of the team's progress and delegate responsibilities in order to take the Friday off. This job was actually so much more difficult than he had ever imagined. He had underrated his role as the team leader. Obviously, he wouldn't say this to anyone but he felt a little scared to know if he really was up for the job.

Songkarn was reading the messages from Henry with mixed feelings of surprise. "Morning. Please send me the conclusion of the first week by tonight." "How the team's settling in?" "How're the new members, and whatever else you can think about, that's relevant."

Songkarn was a bit overwhelmed seeing these questions all at once. He processed the messages for a while before replying, "Why by tonight? The last workday is tomorrow. Shouldn't the report include tomorrow's progress as well? Or if you want to read it a bit earlier, I'll send it to you by lunch."

"You are off tomorrow. Don't stress about it. It's not like it has to be something big or fancy. You are just starting and I want a brief summary of what you thought of the first week."

Songkarn truly didn't get Henry. Was he really thinking of Songkarn? Was this consideration on a personal level? Or was he just getting as much from him as he could? Which one was it? Also, weren't they talking about 'the progress' every night anyway? It really mattered to Songkarn because the feelings he was trying to kill kept searching for a chance to survive and Henry, again and again, gave them a reason to keep surfacing. Probably not even noticing that Songkarn was curious and on edge most of the time.

When Songkarn talked to New, he discovered that the young guy's observations were once again on point. There was a whole section of the program that had to be redone. The assumptions needed to be updated and the variables redefined. Which meant that the revised section will have to be integrated carefully with the total system. This section was the most critical in developing the robot's unsupervised learning unit. Unlike the primary systems, this particular program allowed the system to independently learn and make decisions. Which essentially meant that we are creating a very unique artificial intelligence very similar to that of a human brain. And everybody knows what happens if that particular organ is programmed wrong. Hence the program should be meticulously checked over and over again.