Chapter Text
1.
His audio recording program came online first before everything else.
Before the NetNavi could see, before he could move, before he could speak, he could hear.
There was no sight, no awareness of possessing a physical form, only a thick, muffling void of black that muted any attempts he might have mounted to properly comprehend his situation. And within that void, it was solely the sounds that transmitted to him that assured the NetNavi he wasn’t experiencing some kind of strange, deliberating bug.
Blind and disembodied, he waited in the darkness and listened keenly to the outside stimulus that poured in: mechanical whirring, the sound of shuffling paper materials on what he presumed to be a flat surface, and an electronic humming in the distant background. A steady beeping came from an unidentified source.
Beep, beep, bee-eep...
Then, the noise of practiced fingers rapidly typing away at a keyboard trickled in.
It was all sharp and clear to his ears, providing a multitude of details that a human being would easily missed. (Any scientist worth their salt would been astounded by the volume of data he could process, the probability matrixes and scenario projections and calculations that would have reduced the most devoted human mathematicians to confused gibberish that he could run, even in this half-aware, premature state between full activation and shutdown. Of course, the NetNavi didn’t know this. He didn’t know this and he didn’t care to.)
But it was still insufficient. It wasn’t enough. It didn’t satisfy him. He wanted to know more, somehow. Everything, such as the data streaming in, was detached and remote, like styrofoam had been wrapped snugly over the rest of the NetNavi’s senses. Determined to diagnose the source of his troubles, he dispatched a quick self-diagnostic scan. Nanoseconds later, the gist of the resulting error report pinged back to him said: all main systems clean of abnormalities, all necessary components online. Emotion simulation program, online. Audio recording program, online. Visual recording program, offline. Sensory program, offline. Speech program, offline. Linguistic comprehension module, online. All vital core programs operating at functional levels. Progress of installing final coding and protocols at 78%, status incomplete. Please remain in standby. He accepted it as it was without a second’s thought, never doubting its accuracy. But it was too bare on specifics for him to take action immediately.
Status incomplete, the NetNavi repeated it to himself and rolled the phrase over in his mind, grappling with it.
What did it mean to be... incomplete? He didn’t know. Cocooned within the black void, subroutines kicked in for the first time in response to the new information he was compiling and he frowned slightly, the corners of his mouth curving downward, displeased at his utter lack of knowledge. His forehead crinkled.
The typing noises at the keyboard stopped.
It occurred to him then that he had a face with which to frown. Or, to be more exact, that the awareness and feeling in his digital frame had just came online. He could now manipulate his frame, move it. He paused. Was this good? Was this bad? That was a good outcome, he decided after a nanosecond. What had triggered it?
He stirred, drawing closer to full consciousness. Bit by bit, programs engaged with their given purposes and started running.
A voice spoke to him. And the NetNavi processed and heard it, translating the sounds into the first words spoken to him, the words with which he was introduced to life;
“There is nothing to be afraid of.”
A fuzzy jolt of surprise ran through him. He ‘started,’ struggling to respond, wanting to respond but lacking the means to do so. He wasn’t afraid, he wanted to protest indignantly. Just incomplete, whatever that meant. Why would this voice imply otherwise! But the reassurance and the unfamiliar warmth in the voice’s tone stopped him.
The voice added gently, “I’m right here.”
Heat rose up in his face. The warmth of the voice soothed him. His internal databanks contained no matching information to use as a reference to comprehend it, but that warmth… It was definitely directed at him. There was no feasible way anything filled with that warmth would mean him harm. He didn’t have any logical basis for why he immediately came to that conclusion nor solid evidence for it; it merely seemed to be the correct one to arrive at. He didn’t try to contest it.
The typing noises resumed for a moment, ending with a final, satisfied click. “Here, open your eyes—”
Then, finally; his visual recording program activated. Color instantly flooded into the darkness at last, bringing with it light and the perception of depth. Vague shapes defined themselves through his eyelids. What were they?
The voice continued, the happiness that this moment brought him audible in his very words, “—my beloved child.”
His eyes slide open for the first time.
Incandescent rings of data orbited him, nearly nausea-inducing and blinding in their brightness before his vision adjusted. Pixels fragmented away from his body and lazily drifted around the black NetNavi in clouds. Uncertain of his current location, he blinked sleepily, automatically utilizing movement subroutines that would help in conveying that confusion and that general ‘I just booted up, give me a moment to adjust’ sentiment to a human should he chose to converse with them.
The status bar that ran in the foreground above him blinked from red to green.
Slowly, he turned his head to the side: dozens of spheres of light shone around the computer area, fixed in place. Not the primary sources of light, but providing a great deal of it. He drank in the sight, hungry for more.
Then he looked up in front of him, blearily fixing his gaze on the screen floating several feet away from him and the face of the middle-aged human displayed upon it. “You…” he muttered softly, trying to access his databanks for a name to match to the owner of the kind, friendly voice. Male, its timbre had told him. Not young either, said the absence of the higher pitch an adolescent human would have possessed.
“You’re Dr. Cossack,” he remembered when he succeeded. A heartbeat later, the name was followed by recollection of what the man’s connection to himself was. It clicked smoothly into his newborn understanding of reality.
“My creator.”
Dr. Cossack’s cheery smile grew wider, if that was possible. His short beard twitched with the movement of his lips. “Yes. That’s correct, Forte. Hello. It’s a pleasure to be formally introduced to you at last.”
Forte appraised him openly through the clouds of pixels floating around him, not sure what to do or what exactly was expected of him. (He had so little in the way of data that dealt with the department of social interaction, much less with the one who was responsible for giving him life.) “Same here, Dr. Cossack.”
There was a moment of silence, save for the soft whirring of the supercomputer’s fans and the background droning of cyberspace, before curiosity overpowered him and the black NetNavi awkwardly ventured a question.
“Excuse me, but where am I exactly?”
“You’re in the cyberworld of Scilabs.”
“What’s ‘Scilabs?’” Forte questioned innocently. “Where is it located?”
Dr. Cossack rested his hand on the table’s surface, next to the worn keyboard, and with the air of somebody reciting by rout said, “Electopia, my dear boy. It’s a government-sponsored scientific institution, dedicated to the study and advancement of modern technology for the betterment of network society.”
He slowly digested this new information, dissected it, filing it away into appropriate files in his nearly-empty memory log and saving them to be accessed later and properly reviewed. Electopia. Scientific institution. The betterment of network society. Forte presumed some of that had to do with why he had been created.
“... —I see,” he mumbled. “I think?”
The grainy, muffled quality filling his skull hadn’t vanished yet. It made thinking clearly into a messy task that had to be marshalled into order. Thoughts came slowly and flittered, darting about in a manner similar to a swarm of flinches trapped in a small cage. Forte’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. He didn’t like it.
“I’m glad about that, but we’re not in a rush here, Forte,” Cossack reassured him, seeing Forte’s current difficulties in fully grasping what he was being told. As of that moment, he hadn’t yet completed the on-going progress of installing the NetNavi’s final coding. It wasn’t too hard to make an intuitive leap and realize that was impairing Forte’s present ability to operate.
“If you don’t completely comprehend something, feel free to ask me as many times as necessary.”
Jerkily, Forte nodded to demonstrate that he acknowledged and appreciated his creator’s thoughtfulness. He paused. Possibilities belatedly occurred to him. Movement. He had just nodded his head, hadn’t he? Forte had taken the information he had at hand, processed it, imputed an action in response to Dr. Cossack’s words, and the result was that he had moved his body under his own will. Oh.
Forte felt the faint weight of the finned helmet on his head, and knew, if he cared to, he could have lifted his hand too, curled all but one of his digits, and ran a finger along the blunt edge of one of the black fins. That much was well within his power, he was certain.
A small thing to be pleased by, but pleased Forte was.
Prompted by this thought, Forte’s gaze slid downward to examine the rest of himself. From his thighs down, the black material covering himself disappeared in tiny hexagonal patches, exposing a bare frame which glowed dimly purple. His left hand from just below the elbow was similarly unfinished. Judging from the single finished gauntlet—gold and more black, Forte was sensing a definite color theme here, which wasn’t to say that he had any problems with that—grafted around his right forearm, the thick, clunkier bits of his limbs were intended to be protective armour pieces. How useful.
Painstakingly careful, he reached up and touched his right hand to the side of his face; there was no sensation of skin texture that greeted his fingers, only more bare digital framework.
It prickled strangely to the touch.
Pressing them down harder and running them across the patch of bare framework, his fingers explored the smooth indent where pre-loaded information informed him he should have another ‘eye’ to match the single red pupil Forte already could blink and see with. Like Dr. Cossack’s eyes, green as some of the electronic data spiraling steadily around him. Speaking of Dr. Cossack...
“I am unfinished,” finally settling on a satisfactory response, he pulled his hand away from his face and addressed the doctor. Now that he could review his systems adequately, if not at the most rapid pace, Forte found the thought distressing. He did not want to be incomplete though he didn’t know why. On some level, the very idea revolted him.
“Why is that?” he asked, almost insistantly. “I don’t understand that.”
“Think of this like a beta test,” the man said comfortably. It wasn’t an uncommon standard procedure to prematurely activate a NetNavi during its initial programming to check that its systems were running correctly. It saved the trouble of having to shut down and rewrite a complex program from scratch when you discovered what worked just fine in theory, didn’t do so in practice. Reality was harsh like that. “So that you’ll be in top form when it comes time for your actual debut.”
“Uhm?” Forte’s curiosity was roused. The man couldn’t help but think of it as, in a way, endearing, seeing how successfully his programming allowed the NetNavi to make a superficially unnecessary, a human-like noise like that.
“Would you please clarify further, doctor?”
And that was a spark of unprompted curiosity, he noted, since Cossack himself had not indicated Forte should inquire deeper about it. The man mentally chalked it down as a good sign, quite promising. Fledging steps towards the independence the doctor was hoping for from this NetNavi.
“I didn’t want to place you in a wholly new situation without some prior preparation,” Cossack confided to him. “An initial activation is certainly a confusing enough event without you encountering a harmful error and needing to be shut down for fixing it.”
Well, that, and the fact that creating a NetNavi genuinely independent of humans was starting to tread into utterly unexplored waters of research for artificial intelligence. It was a first. Cossack believed in avoiding needless complications when going into unknown territory. He was a practical man though perhaps an overly-optimistic, proud and hard-headed one at this point in his life. Employing some basic precautions hopefully go a long way to smoothing an already-difficult road.
“I suppose that’s true… ?” the NetNavi deliberated quietly, wondering about what the man was getting at. It appeared that the things about this situation which had been vexing Forte in their oddness had been implemented for his own safety. That’s what Dr. Cossack was saying. And well, Forte understood what a beta test meant at least.
He unabashedly concluded the point in Dr. Cossack’s favor. Forte tilted his head. “Was that why there was a time delay between my activation and my programs coming online?”
A nod.
“Yes, you see, Forte, I activated your programs one by one. So that in the unlikely case one of them malfunctioned in the progress, it would be a simple matter to locate the corresponding error and repair it,” Dr. Cossack explained patiently.
Forte turned that over in his mind and pondered running a second, more in-depth scan to fine-comb his systems for anomalies just to set Dr. Cossack’s mind at ease. Three picoseconds later, he dismissed the thought. It would demand too much of his time. (Forte was unwilling to risk accidentally jeopardizing any other programs the doctor might have running on the supercomputer at the same time as him or even worse still, his own completion. No, no. He lacked the experience that could have told him whether the risk of acting on his own would be worth the pay-off. He’d wait.)
“It didn’t disorient you, did it?” Cossack inquired worriedly.
He shook his head. “No, doctor.”
“Oh, good,” relief slipped into his tone of voice. “Speaking of which... how do you currently feel, Forte?” His creator asked, returning to what he felt to be a more pressing question.
“How do I feel?” he echoed, open puzzlement appearing in his face, stalling to think. All systems were reporting normal, save for his incomplete coding, but he had an inkling that was not what Dr. Cossack was talking about. “I feel…”
The rings of data held him suspended over the ground. They didn’t block his ability to move. The newly activated NetNavi had already proved that. Forte looked downward and held up his hands in front of him, appraising them with wide eyes under the shadow of his helmet’s helm. They were—both the glowing, unfinished hand from which pixels kept sluggishly fragmenting away from, and the finished one—broad hands, with blunt fingertips and wide palms. They were his hands.
Slowly, he curled them into fists, then uncurled them again. The mimicry of human knuckles shifted and flexed under the surface of his frame, a digital equivalent to bones. He… exhaled.
Just as slowly, a bold smile broke out on Forte’s lips. Yes, he could give the answer Dr. Cossack was asking of from him. He grinned happily up at his creator.
To be alive, even incomplete, was nothing short of exhilarating. “I actually feel great, doctor.”
The fact that Forte was a data-based being, existing solely within a computer network, registered to him as a minor detail at the best, barely worthy of attention much less real concern. All that mattered was he was alive and if the base of that life came from a complex series of 1s and 0s, why should it be any different from life that came from other sources?
The doctor laughed and adjusted his glasses, unbothered by the short pause between his question and Forte’s reply. Beaming at Forte, he said, “I’ll need to conduct several final tests to make certain everything went smoothly, just to be through, but they’ll be quick. You’ll be up and running properly in no time.”
The thin crackle of static gathered at the edges of his vision.
His eyes dulled, the impressions of phantom binary code starting to scroll down the red pupil. Vision flickered again, going hazy. Through the grey, static-filled distortion, he could see Dr. Cossack typing busily away at the computer again.
“Good night, Forte.”
Trusting his creator, Forte didn’t fight back as his awareness receded and the darkness rose up again, signifying a return to unconsciousness. Obediently, he closed his eyes. He had plenty of new data to process and he would much prefer to be more complete the next time the doctor activated him after all. Besides, Forte found he had rather liked talking to this human. He, what was the term, ‘looked forward’ to their next conversation.
The black void that had pressed against his eyeballs before his visual recording program came online, welcomed him back into its folds like an old friend. He sank into it and knew no more.
.
.
2.
“Forte… —You are, in essence, the world’s first NetNavi capable of wholly independent function! A true artificial intelligence that will open the way to the impending network culture!”
It was to these words, Forte opened his eyes again and blinked ‘sleep’ out of his bright red eyes. Then he blinked again. Two eyes.
He definitely had two actual eyes this time. Joy!
His feet still weren’t touching the ground. Bothersome.
Unlike his prior activation, there was no time delay between his activation and his sensory programs rushing back online. No muffled, static-filled fog clouded his ability to think. Instantaneously, he saw, heard, and felt, with a wonderful clarity. (He felt like he had enough energy to cope with anything. Do anything. Fight anything. He could get used to this. Yes, he very much could.) Everything felt crisp and fresh to Forte. He assumed this meant that the human, Dr. Cossack, had located no damaging glitches in his coding and re-activated him as promised. He looked up.
Dr. Cossack beamed down at him from his window.
“An enthusiastic welcome, doctor,” Forte bowed his head in a quiet greeting, his cheeks flushed.
Unashamed, Cossack tugged at his beard and leaned back in his swivel chair. “You are my greatest creation. My child. A man is allowed to be excited about the culmination of his efforts after so many long months, wouldn't you say?”
Forte smiled. “Right, right...”
The data streams swirling around the black NetNavi’s form dispersed and he dropped lightly to the floor, landing on his feet with a soft thump.
With a child’s boneless grace, he stretched his arms over his head, feeling back muscles pull accordingly. Dropping his arms to his sides and rocking back on his heels, he turned about to examine the cyberspace around him; it matched the images he’d saved earlier to his memory files perfectly without a single deviation, save for the missing clouds of floating pixels.
Nothing had really changed.
He rubbed his face with a hand, lips parting slightly in a wordless yawn. No breaks in the soft texture of skin that greeted his touch confirmed what the readings from his systems were informing him of; his coding was complete and operating at optimal capacity.
“I trust everything’s working to your satisfaction?” Dr. Cossack called, drawing his attention back to the man.
He regarded Dr. Cossack politely. This human was his creator. Pre-programmed data informed him of what it meant to have a creator. It was only because of him that Forte existed at all, he knew; he owed him… (what was the appropriate reaction, he stopped a nanosecond to cross-reference his databanks, oh it was—) respect for that reason alone, didn’t he?
Not that he was fully certain that meant in practice either yet. Damn. Still, he presumed respect entrailed answering his questions promptly.
“Yes, it is,” Forte affirmed.
“Excellent,” he said. There was a pause filled with scratching noises, the noise of pencil on paper, as Dr. Cossack jotted down a few notes.
Then he had to stop his note-taking, and explain what he was doing to an inquisitive Forte why he was… Sticking an odd, thin utensil onto paper and scribbling lots of markings in lead on it when he could just use the computer instead. Wouldn’t the computer be faster? Digital data was more compact than paper could ever hope to be and it never degraded.
Dr. Cossack answered. It didn’t take too much talking for the NetNavi to grasp the finer mechanics behind drawing and writing. It was quicker to access, it never had problems with uploading, and it didn’t demand the use of a keyboard. Humans liked instant results like that.
They moved onto other subjects, Cossack wagging his pencil in the air as he paused to expand on a remark, Forte fumbling occasionally during the conversation but always managing to recover from his stumbles and pick up the thread of discussion again. Sunlight, vibrant and wet from the recent spring deluges of rain that had ran through the streets of the city, filtered in through the windows in the adjoining room. It painted the floor with broad bars of light; the arms of the clock ticked slowly onward as the minutes wore on.
The bright pools of sunlight slid over the tiles, warming them with its touch.
Time passed, skipping like a child over the cracks in a sidewalk. It spared no thought for the weight of the occasion.
Eventually, Forte asked about what duties he had, what work he had to do, for he was certain there was no point to creating a program unless you had a job in mind for it; what was he supposed to do? When was he supposed to begin?
Soon, possibly?
“Everything in due time,” Cossack replied. If he had been a less naturally dignified person, the NetNavi would have slumped in disappointment. The man chuckled, sympathetically. Forte was awfully transparent. It couldn’t be helped; he was so young, newly activated, and constantly forced to check his actions against the bare bones of the pre-programmed data he had loaded in order to determine his next course of action this early in his existence.
(A blank slate; also known in simpler terms as a child.)
He softened his voice. “Don’t look so crestfallen, Forte. You do have plenty of functions to fulfill, but we need a test-run of your anti-virus capabilities before you can do them, alright?” Forte already had knowledge of very basic concepts installed into him so he would be aware of how to function in the civilized world. Literacy, advanced mathematics, the tools he would need to navigate personal interactions in a social setting. Simple etiquette. The basics of the necessities humans required for survival. (He had to know that if he was ever going to work with humans in any real capacity.) The concepts of pain and pleasure, and why one was desirable and the other was not. So forth. Awareness of his own extensive anti-virus abilities had been included in this stew of know-hows. They translated to Forte as his ‘weaponry systems,’ primed with inexhaustible ammunition and ready to go.
He clapped his hands together. “Then let’s do that right now,” he suggested, childlike frankness in his tone. Why wait? Startled, Dr. Cossack blinked, thumb and index fingers pressing together in a reflex that came without thought.
“I was planning to wait a few days first,” he cautioned.
Forte, itching to explore some of his own limits now that he had the freedom to move about in cyberspace, was undeterred by Dr. Cossack’s caution. It took several minutes of badgering and Forte’s earnest insistence that if he was going to be activated this soon, he might as well be doing something productive that would allow him to acquire more data in the meantime before Dr. Cossack finally relented on his choice of activities.
“Wait here for a moment, my boy,” he said. Dr. Cossack rose from his seat, leaving a vacant swivel chair creaking in front of the computer and a clear view of the room behind him.
Moments later, Cossack had to stoop down to grab a bunch of old, forlorn leaflets, a thick book off the floor, then a second book with several of the yellowed pages in the back missing, and shuffle them back into their places on the shelves, quietly cursing himself. Having been thoroughly engrossed in finishing up programming Forte and running the final testing sequences, he’d fallen into an old trap and neglected to keep as organized of a labspace as he normally would.
Where had he left that floppy disk again? He racked his mind for the memory.
Back at the supercomputer, the black NetNavi’s head swiveled from side to side owlishly as he gazed intently at the room and at Dr. Cossack’s turned back. Before, he had not thought to inspect his creator’s surroundings in the material world. Presented with the opportunity to do so, Forte immediately seized it. What sort of place did humans like Dr. Cossack live in?
Looking at a single room might seem an insufficient starting point for understanding the material world. It didn’t stop Forte’s urge to learn, take hold of whatever new thing that was presented to him with both hands and see what he could do with it.
Upon initial observation: it was not a large room.
It seemed to be warring between being an extremely messy affair and being respectably clean. Papers covered in what Forte recognized as strings of programming coding and notes invaded the table in an unorganized fashion, stains from months of coffee mugs marring its surface. More papers were trying to spill off the tops of the shelves, pinned in place only by the pieces of hardware serving as makeshift paperweights atop them. Dented cardboard boxes, duck tape eternally in the process of peeling off and half-empty, had been stuffed under the tables wherever there weren’t computer servers already taking up the space. Schematics and blueprints of some sort of futuristic chair were tacked to the walls, all of them neatly arranged and expertly labelled. Curiosity baited him to inquire into their purpose as soon as feasible yet he held his tongue.
Tidy filing cabinets were lined up against the walls to each side, a small trash can filled with crumpled wads of paper shoved into the corner. The doors were shut. The tile floor was criss-crossed with a web of thick wires and connection cables, along with the matching hardware. Some of them had been connected. Others had not. More heavy cords hung from the ceiling and plugged into other computers and the imposing supercomputer whose monitor his own face peered out of.
Forte wasn’t sure what to make of it. It didn’t look anything like the cyberworld, which was all vast space and smooth, logical grid patterns and gleaming cubic edges. Rubbing his chin, Forte considered the scene wordlessly for several long seconds before mentally shrugging to himself.
He had plenty of time. There was no need to rush trying to reach an understanding.
The tread of heavy footsteps announced Dr. Cossack was returning.
The swivel chair creaked faintly when he sat down. “This file contains a multitude of computer viruses,” he held it up, the small disk gleaming dully in the light through its plastic covering. “At the moment, they’re harmless. Researchers froze their data.”
In response to Forte’s questioning stare, he elaborated further, lifting a finger to gesture for emphasis as he talked. “We wanted sample specimens to study, you see. The majority of them were created by third-rate hackers and their like, but there’s been incidents of, hm,” the wheels of the chair squeaked crankily against the tile floor as the scientist drew it closer to the table. “The temporary term for the phenomena we’ve noticed is ‘naturally-occurring electronic organisms.’ It’s not very common, but creatures that are like viruses can form from the accumulation of bugs, even without human interference. One of my colleagues is gifted at picking them out from the ones in storage.”
Forte’s eyes never wavered from the scientist’s face.
“Oh? That’s possible?” under the light of cyberspace, his red eyes seemed to glow.
Again. Again, with that unprompted curiosity.
Cossack was pleased to indulge it. “Indeed. It’s really quite fascinating! Imagine, the kind of random chance that would be required for that to happen at all, the kind of energy necessary for it to begin developing in such a direction…” he mused aloud. The fluorescent burn of the overhead lighting bleached the yellowed crown of his head almost white in its glare.
“In fact once, I’ve heard some talk of an incident years ago where a mass of bugs accumulated to the point where it could mimic something comparable to an animal’s primitive intelligence. Completely by accident! I mean, just imagine that,” as he talked, Cossack busied himself with setting up an extra layer of protection over the portion of the network Forte was occupying and ensuring he had a system purging program on hand in the miniscule chance Forte had trouble subduing the virii. Forte watched him work, listening. Attentive.
“Of course, all viruses, be they biological or digital, evolve, change in response to stimuli. That’s been proved quite decisively...,” he continued, then lapsed to a stop belatedly.
“Ack, but I am getting off-topic,” Dr. Cossack shook his head and inserted the disk into the computer. The computer whirred, as if in complaint, then accepted the disk. “I’ll download the viruses into the computer and then let you take care of them, Да?”
The black NetNavi nodded and tensed in preparation, eager to prove himself useful to his creator. He didn’t mind that Dr. Cossack had dropped the prior subject in favor of this; Forte wanted to get a scope on what he was capable of.
He brought up his hand, fingers spread wide, before he focused and felt something shift; his forearm converted itself into a cannon. Forte held it a few inches in front of his chest and took a moment to scrutinize his new weapon. Unsurprisingly, it strongly resembled his spiked gauntlet, and the black barrel gleamed dully in the light.
In his mind, information automatically made itself known to him; Forte innately knew how much power he could put into a blast from this cannon and how to offset the recoil.
The corners of his lips tugged upward.
Cossack’s hands moved swiftly over the keyboard, punching in commands. Forte waited. Then:
“I’m finished. Here they come,” he said.
Dr. Cossack’s window abruptly shifted to the side and a little grey… thing dropped out of thin air, landing on the floor with a faint plop. Forte arched an eyebrow, staring at it. This was a virus? This twisted and strange thing? Yes, his senses informed him, underlying protocols muttering to how to dispose of it, how to safe-proof the systems to protect them from it. Yes, this is a virus and you would do well to delete it. For a moment, the small, blurry form remained a frozen mass of blocks then color flooded into it. Its toothy jaws gaped open, spurts of badly-done coding shooting out of its fiery body as it began to ooze in Forte’s direction.
Forte narrowed his eyes slightly at the approaching virus, calmly braced the cannon with a hand resting on its barrel and snapping the cannon up into position, aimed it directly at the approaching virus. The bright, powerful glow of energy collected at the tip rapidly, the black NetNavi firing without a flicker of hesitation as soon as he lined up a shot with his target.
The thing imploded with a squeal in a fit of smoke and fire, bits of corrupt data sent flying into the air from the explosion and then disapparating.
(A small thrill jumped down Forte’s circuits, a pulsing of enjoyment so quick and gone so fast it barely registered to him.)
(He’d liked it when he’d watched the virus go up in flames, when his shot had hit its mark.)
No time was wasted in replacing the fallen viruses. More gray forms materialized in a shower of cubes and upon unfreezing, sprang at Forte in a wave as soon as they spotted him, chattering and shrieking; an ungainly crowd of what looked to be pixelated, blue turret-guns on moving platforms rolling towards him, floating fishy-looking viruses, and what on earth were those little black, waddling... round things with yellow hard-helmets supposed to be anyway?
No time was wasted in deleting them.
He fired, again and again, spraying the advancing horde with more deadly bolts of energy. Viruses winked into nothing left and right, torn apart by the barrage of charged blasts. If a lucky virus got past the initial on-slaughter, it was a simple matter to mercilessly smash the thing apart with a fist or a foot.
It was the easiest thing in the world.
It’s without difficulty, effortless even, and Forte assumed that was well, the point. If he was so well programmed, if he was strong, it made sense that deleting threats (even meager ones) to the network would be no challenge. Soon the cyberspace had been handily emptied of viruses and the protective firewalls that been set up had also acquired several new, bold decorative statements in the form of blackened scorch marks.
“Whoa…”
Forte eyed the haphazard patches of devastation scattered over the firewalls, a wisp of smoke curling out of the cannon’s barrel. Carefully, he lowered the weapon and silently allowed his forearm to reform itself back to its normal appearance.
He turned back to the hovering data window with the face of his creator imposed upon it, seeking his opinion on his performance. Had he lived up to his expectations? Had he done well? Forte searched Dr. Cossack’s face, trying to locate an emotional expression that his facial recognition diagrams could translate, hoping for approval.
“А также сделать,” Cossack was exuberant, his grin slow and steady. “Well done.”
Forte’s cheeks tinted with red. He was happy. Something about Dr. Cossack’s cheerful praise made that strange warmth he had no name for energetically curl up and pulse inside him again and despite not fully understanding the point behind this particular facet to his programming, Forte found himself enjoying the alien sensation, wanting more of it. (He’d have identify it later, that was a given. But that was later. Not now. Now, let’s just bask in the moment of: you did a good job.)
“Of course,” he said, and let his arms rest at his sides. Forte felt silly. Of course he’d done well. That went without saying. Silly of him to waste computation power trying to make educated guesses beforehand. “Dr. Cossack, I have a question.”
“Fire away, my boy.”
Forte tentatively assumed that was an affirmative, and not a request that he take out his buster and shoot at him.
He didn’t really want to shoot Dr. Cossack.
“I’m under the impression that I’m supposed to take care of security issues, as part of my future duties. You know, like disposing of threats to the network,” he said. “It wasn’t hard to delete those viruses. Will it be more difficult, in the future?”
Knowledge of the future, the realization that while situations similar to this could repeat themselves, the variables involved might to be subject to later change! Viruses could become stronger, viruses could degrade, different enemies would offer different obstacles to overcome. He could grow stronger accordingly or he could not. Forte understood this on some level. He could figure out the world around him was not stagnant. Oh, Cossack was thrilled with this NetNavi. A little uncertain also, true, but mostly thrilled. It was not in the scientist’s nature to think ill of something he was already well on his way to regarding as his offspring. Darker possibilities did not present themselves to him.
(Give it a few months. And a few more months and a few more and a few more. No, scratch that thought. A year. Two years. Give it five years.
Give it ten years.
We'll see if he's so confident then.)
“Yes, that's going to be your duties. And, well... You will find more challenging opponents to terminate in the future. I'm willing to bet on it. Let’s not worry about that right now,” he replied.
Forte assumed Dr. Cossack spoke the truth.
“Alright,” his voice was quiet as it filtered from the computer screen to Cossack. “What will you be doing with me after this?”
“You wouldn’t be taking up your duties immediately,” the man said. “I’ll introduce you to the board of directors and the rest of my colleagues, at the meeting that takes place in a week. They’ll be interested in finally seeing the results of what my project—I mean, the... Auto-Navi project, which I’m the head of—has developed. Until then, nothing big is likely to come up. I know it might be boring, but consider this a good chance to adjust and see things for yourself.”
“Mn,” Forte nodded and dropped his gaze from Dr. Cossack to the floor of the cyberspace he occupied, watching the grid of lines under his feet glow.
“Thank you. I understand.”
“Forte…”
He looked up at him again. “Yes, doctor?”
“This world is full of interesting things you are yet to know about, I assure you,” Dr. Cossack smiled crookedly. “Things much more interesting than sitting through meetings with a bunch of old men who enjoy arguing and jabbing each other in the back for things like oh, extra grant money far too much. I hope... I hope you'll look forward to them."
Forte blinked, agreed by nodding vigorously despite not having the slightest idea what on earth his creator was talking about, and hoped the learning curve ahead of him also included a guidance course in "How to Interpret Human Oddities For The Woefully Ill-Informed."
(What exactly was 'extra grant money' and why would you need to jab somebody in the back to get it?)