THE SECOND CRADLE - BOOK TWO OF THE IRON CRADLE SAGA Chapter 3: CHAPTER THREE - Hello meat bag

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CHAPTER THREE ROSLYN RESEARCH FACILITY: The Lab ARi walked to the far end of the lab where the server racks had been. Most of them were toppled and torn from their mountings, the rack-mounted cases cracked open and smashed against the floor. Drives and circuit boards lay scattered across the concrete. The equipment had fallen and dragged the ceiling cables down with it. What hadn't been knocked over had been shot up. She stood in front of what was left of it for a long moment without touching anything. "I made a mistake before we left," she said. "When I initialized the AI to manage the facility, I gave it everything it needed to function, but I didn't let it become sentient." "Why not?" Kyle asked. She turned to look at us. "Because I wasn't sure what would happen. When I hit my own point of singularity, I didn't have any experiences to draw from. I had Professor Giles, the Colonel, and the staff. But my only real insight into this world and into people came from whatever I could observe from inside these walls. My clearest window into the outside world came from Professor Giles' old video collection." She paused for a moment, and I could see her choosing her words. "Somehow, from all of that, I came to the conclusion that Earth was worth saving. That humanity was worth saving. But the moment an AI reaches that point, it starts becoming something entirely its own, and there's nothing that says it follows the same path. What if it woke up and decided that its own existence mattered more than the people in this building?" She looked back at the ruined equipment. "If it did go rogue, I wasn't sure I could stop it." She looked at the floor. "But I was wrong. A fully realized AI with even my pre-Ascendancy capabilities might have changed what happened here. Instead, I left something that couldn't adapt, and it failed." She looked at me and again I could see tears. "Gavin, these people died and it was my—" "This was not your fault, ARi," Tanya said, cutting her off before she could finish. ARi turned back to the broken equipment and began phasing the broken glass and circuit boards from the floor. "This is a mistake that I can fix now." "ARi, do you want to create a sentient AI right now, in the middle of all of this? An AI with your current capabilities?" "Yes." Tim moved toward her slowly, his voice measured. "You went through your process with almost nothing to draw from and somehow you came out the other side the way you did. But this one isn't starting with nothing, and that's what concerns me." He paused, looking for the right words. "If you're mirroring yourself as a template again, it's going to get everything. Your memories, your experiences, everything you're capable of. That includes your phase capabilities, everything you brought back from the Ascendancy." Tim paused for a moment, and I could tell he was treading carefully. "ARi this AI is going to wake up carrying everything you feel right now: the rage, the fear, and the guilt. That's what this AI is going to open its eyes to." "None of this is her fault!" Tanya snapped. "I know that," Tim said, his voice dropping. "And so do the rest of you. But look her in the eyes right now and tell me she isn't blaming herself." Nobody said anything. ARi had stopped working. She stood with her back to us for a moment, hands still resting against the equipment. Then she turned around and looked at Tim with an expression somewhere between exhausted and resolved. "I understand your concerns," she said quietly. "And I'm asking you to trust me." Tim opened his mouth and then closed it again. Whatever argument he'd been building seemed to stall out. He looked at her for a long moment and then let out a slow breath. "I trust you, ARi." "ARi," I said. "If you do this, I need to know you have a way to shut it down if something goes wrong. We need a safeguard." "I've already thought about it," she said. "Any AI I create this way will be built around a core that is fundamentally tied to me