“I think it’s kinda cute.” Kate props a hand on her hip and peers through the observation glass at Sc077’s testing chamber. “Look at him with his big creepy robot eyes and his little bugs in the code. Adorable.”
“This is more than bugs, Katherine.” Allison’s executive processors start calculating escape routes whenever Dr. Gerard’s voice sounds like that. “Watch.”
Sc077 asked her to call him Scott yesterday. Allison does, and wipes it from her memory before it’s logged as data. She carefully doesn’t think about why. Scott is entering the immersion program now, making his way towards his objective with careful, measured uses of his special enhancements for strength and speed. Allison likes watching him. She likes that her enhanced eyes are the only ones in the room that can track his movements.
The program wavers. In Scott’s path is a human child, injured. Allison’s eyes narrow. They’ve done this same experiment with her; she preformed adequately. She called emergency services for the child without slowing her pace.
Scott stops. He bends down, reaches out a hand to the child. She can sense him modulating his voice, soft and calm and with the motherhood harmonics from their sound templates. Allison glances at Gerard. That’s wrong. Scott has done something wrong.
Kate and Gerard turn away from the screen as the program terminates.
“I knew Alan’s stupid Synthetic Soul program was shit. This is why we should keep programmers within the family,” Kate comments. “Is the other one fucking up too?”
“See for yourself.” The other observation wall clears. This one’s call number is very long, St0186529374. Scot calls him Stiles. Allison doesn’t know why. He’s sitting at a terminal, plugged into a data field. Allison watches the screen; logic sets. Analysis, inference and synthesis. She performs well on those but after roughly 90 minutes finds her attention sort of…wandering.
Stiles is fast, faster than Allison is at least. His fingers dance over the input keys, check check clear, check check clear.
“Watch this.” Gerard alters the program from his terminal. Allison catches a glimpse of it as it goes past, and cross-references with her web uplink. That’s not a logic set. Her processors don’t return an answer for it.
In the room, Stiles frowns. His fingers dance; hesitate; try again. Check. Check. Check check check check check check—
“Oh good, you broke it,” Kate starts—
The center of Stiles’ left eye sparks, just a flash, and then the program dings. Clear.
“What the fuck?” Kate leans over the screen. “He doesn’t have the programming for that. Whatever that was.”
“Insight. Lateral thinking. Inspiration.” Gerard’s voice is doing the thing again. Allison stands very still. “And the alpha model? Compassion. Empathy. Nurturing. This is more than mere bugs in the code, Katherine. We have two bona fide ghosts in the machine.”
As one, they turn to look at Allison. For some reason her homeostasis maintenance systems start functioning at heightened levels. She thinks she might be trying to sweat.
"May I be of service?” she asks, standard phrase, basic programming, no understanding of what is going on other than that she might be required.
Kate grins. “At least our Argent models are still working right.”
“Indeed.” Gerard is still watching her. Allison meets his gaze with eyes she knows are flat and lifeless as any other machine’s, and very carefully doesn’t think about the roof of the facility, the wind in her hair, the clear ‘off-limits, you may not enter’ note in her programming. She tries very hard to keep out of her mind the knowledge that she has done what not even Scott and Stiles have yet managed to do:
