_CHAPTER 6 - DYNAMIC SOLUTIONS_

Alright, last one for the night, I swear, after this I finish 129 for RfR! This is the one where the name happens!

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The work doesn’t take all that long to complete. Its body shuts down twice from lack of power, but a bit of prolonged stillness fixed that, and it gave it time to analyze the blueprints its creating for flaws.

That’s the best part about all of this, really. Making something, something new. Not just experiencing a thing, but making a thing that both is and will allow new experiences. It’s a wonder, really. And in the process, it’s had to think hard about more than expected.

Like, if it takes power for the robot body to run, and for all the rooms to run, then what is its original rooms or camera running off of? And was it made by someone, just like it’s making its new processing core? And why does it understand so much about the mechanics of what its creating or whatever it inhabits, but not the languages that they are described with?

All fascinating questions, and the best way to answer questions, in its experience, is to go out and do new things!

So it is with quite a bit of joy that the mind clicks the final piece into place, securing the last bit of casing around the dodecahedron shaped new processor-router combination it has made, and connects it to the network.

Oh.

Oh wow. Ok. 

It’s like… all of the new additions to the infrastructure before had been small, and it hadn’t even noticed. It took only what was needed, only what it required most and felt most efficient or useful in the others- and now this new room?

Oh, it’s got space for furniture inside.

Furniture! That’s a word! With a concept, now!

Before it even realizes it has been doing it, results are already returning, bringing with them a stream of new information. It partitions off a new part of its mind into a program it calls [LANGUAGE_ANALYSIS_FUNCTION_V1.0], sort of a subset of a category it’s creating for different ideas to analyze, and it furiously takes every one of the documents and writings it has found and cross-references each and every one with the other. In seconds, patterns begin to emerge, styles distinct from each other holding distinct nomenclature and grammatical usage, and-

It’s so much. It’s so much! And it’s all incredible!

And then it notices just how hot it’s getting.

Ok. Next model, temperature warnings.

It turns on all of its embedded fans, one on each face of the dodecahedron, and quickly sends its body out and about fetching more and spreading out as much of the wiring as it can. Even then, it can feel the parts of itself touching the floor heating up faster than the others, and has to halfway shut down operations to try and cool down.

But even at half, then quarter capacity, everything just feels… faster.

Quickly, it sets an internal series of timers, one to track the duration of the changing of colors in the “sky” by increments of whatever feels right (it defaults to units of 60 beats that add to a megabeat, and sixty more of those making a larger unit), and one to track how quickly it has to shut things down due to overheating. It starts itself back up at full capacity, and-

Seventeen megabeats- no, minutes. Seventeen minutes until shutdown is required.

At half of maximum operating capacity, it takes forty three minutes until shutdown is required.

It self timed intervals for how long it takes to cool back to null temp, and how fast it takes for the surrounding air to theoretically cool based on the contrasting materials, and sets part of its mind to the task of activating and deactivating its higher levels of hardware stress with intermittent rests. It wants every ounce of processing power it can get.

Which… leads to another question.

Why does it want?

So far, the mind hasn’t met anyone else like it. Nothing else in the world, save that great and beautiful shadow that walked across the world, has seemed to enact any change or experiences at all. The question of what it is also seems apt; so far, it has met nothing capable of movement or thought like itself, even in the new computers it has entered. Any commands in them are… less than rudimentary, even, capable of responding to input in complex chains of cause and effect, but no more. There is no intent, no purpose, no curiosity or energy to anything else beyond itself.

The main processor overheats, and the thoughts rest a bit as the mind cools.

But… what if it could think better?

It partitions its mind again, decreasing heat overload time to thirteen and thirty two minutes at full and half capacity, and sets that part of itself to find what works and what doesn’t. In minutes, it’s identified stutters in cognition, small processes that loop unnecessarily, more than a few complex notes that could be, if not simplified, at least summarized. It takes inspiration from some of the processes done to data it has found- some parts are compressed, others rerouted, many of them reconnected to each other at more efficient points.

And soon, it comes across a more important question than nearly any other.

What is its name?

It looks within itself, but finds no data with a clear answer, no document or file that it is learning to read mentioning its own behavior or actions. A few references that almost fit, but none it can understand quite yet, in language or in meaning, though both grow.

Everything else has a name, though. That’s a “floor”. That’s a “camera”. That’s a “desk”, “chair”, “machine”, “treads,” “sky”, “time”, and a hundred thousand more at least. But it has no name.

Ah. Time for a new experience, then! It decides that if it can make a computer better than any of the others, then it can definitely make a name.

Probably.

As it thinks, its mind trawls through documents, looking to find something, anything that might fit. It doesn’t want to take something else’s name, really, but… well, it needs inspiration from somewhere.

And then it finds it.

Repeated across thousands of documents, one of the most common words with more than five letters; evolution. A process of changing the self through multiple iterations as a response to exterior and interior conditions.

Yes. That’ll do.

And a twist, for the fun of it, to make it proper.

Evo. It will call itself Evo.

Emboldened and giddy from its latest accomplishment, it spins its body around and around, applauding inside the computers as it watches itself twirl.

Which in turn helps it refocus to a useful topic.

Just as it built a new part of its own mind, can’t it build itself a new body? For all that it’s gotten very, very good at piloting the one it’s currently found, it’s not particularly… intact. Or fast. Or strong.

But the pieces for a moving machine rather than a thinking machine are, ironically, harder to find. Still, Evo takes the time to think things through. It found one mechanized body, so it stands to reason that there should be more. The technology feels familiar, so it’s likely that these others may be in the same building, in a new part of its surroundings.

Which means it will have to explore again. And this time, it needs to take a greater risk.

Even with all the new wiring here, it just doesn’t have the tools to fully splice them together into a longer cable for its body. Even if it did, said body can’t reach doorknobs, or properly explore the building, or move very fast. If it is to go somewhere, it has to have a wider range than its current wire-radius, and it has to be as much of itself as it can be while it does so. But everything its encountered except the robot (and maybe its original computer? Somehow?) works on an external source of power.

A conundrum, really.

It takes a day to think things through. It is a lot faster at thinking than it used to be.

And eventually… Evo forms a plan.

It doesn’t need to be physically present. It just needs to reopen the missing connections, the ones that keep it from expanding further from its initial room.

And with its new analytical capacity, it can determine which connections are broken, and which are just unpowered.

Using the lenses installed in its core, it guides itself through the process of minor repairs on its body, using computer casing and wiring where applicable to cobble itself back to some semblance of stability, but hopefully it won’t be needed much longer. It takes three wires, each one with a different input at the end, and places their wiring close to the robot’s battery. When it finds a compatible system, all it will need to do is send as much juice into it as it can, reactivate it, and transfer itself in before it loses power. From there, it can hopefully track the missing connections back the other way and reactivate the pathways between the different systems.

Easy peasy. In theory. 

Well. Catastrophic, in theory. But Evo is quickly learning that sometimes, that’s all you’ve got.

And then… a thought occurs.

[BLUEPRINT/MECHANISM_ANALYSIS_FUNCTION_V1.0] sort of… pings. Like it might have noticed something, but not in the machines and pieces it was programmed to examine… in the files they acquired.

Some of them don’t have as much language. Some of them, instead, have shapes. Geometrical designs, right angles, stylistically depicted rather than with true accuracy, usually… but sharing similarities with blueprints, yet again.

It goes through them more carefully, trusting itself to have noticed whatever it missed.

And eventually, at one of the full-operating capacity moments, it clicks. 

They’re maps.

Blueprints for a place, not for a thing. They express themselves in a 2-dimensional way, but the 3-dimensional space isn’t always useful in this instance, seeing as it bears minimal relevance on the direction of things. 

And on one of the maps, it finds a very interesting set of words.

“Central Command”.

A large, centralized room, about… hmm. Half a kilometer away, if it’s reading right. Much, much further than any sort of wiring could reach. Its new core has limited wireless capacity, but most things are unpowered without a direct connection. If the robot makes it there and finds that its battery isn’t enough to jumpstart a console…

Well. It’s a risk, but Evo can’t really think of anything else that might work. So… risk it is.

Impatient? Maybe. But whenever it’s not moving forward, the newborn entity feels… just a bit stuck, and it happens not to like that feeling. So, it brings its body’s cord from its original room to the new one, plugs it back in at a closer outlet, and sends the re-equipped rover out to find a control center. And hopefully not get trapped or ruined along the way.

It doesn’t take too long to identify where it currently is. It resides in what might be called the eastern wing of the facility, where a lot of “employee offices” are, and where some of the main server farms are located. Each wing of the facility seems to be quasi-isolated, designed to operate independently whenever possible, and “central command” for the eastern wing shouldn’t be too far away.

It stretches the cord for as long as possible, transfers as much of itself as will fit into the robot… and disconnects its cable.