The Seventeeth Trial

[catcophonous]

Who: trialgoers
When: Day 39, evening
Where: The Cat's Zone

[Have you enjoyed your day playing in your new train cars? Great! Because now it's Trial Time.

With the usual alert, the Cat's bar appears in the clearing. There's no "come hither" -- instead, just the pounding of bass from the speakers as the door cracks open. Inside there's flashing party lights, upbeat club music, and high-top tables surrounding a wide dance floor. The stage in the corner is empty except for a single microphone.

At the bar you can get free drinks, but you'll have to contend with the bartender -- a black cat curled up on the shelf between the bottles.

On the bar, and on every table, is a sign showing the rules of this game, titled:

Kiss or Dare

If you want to dress up for the club, or want costumes for daring purposes, there's a dressing room behind the stage with a magic closet. You'll find whatever you like in it, but when the trial ends you can only take home what you're wearing!

Good luck!]

RULES | TURN-IN | THE CAT / DISQUALIFICATION

Comments

[schrodingerscockroach]

I do seem to just kind of do that when it seems necessary. I didn't strictly have to train Tucker and Caboose since we were in a shipwreck. Just seemed better to have them in shape while we were in a survival situation.

And I do seem to get pulled into drama when I'm not isolated in a canyon somewhere.

[bluediligence]

And we know for sure that you're the kind of guy who'd adopt random teenagers.

Honestly ... it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out I'd somehow time-travelled to the future and ended up stranded on a planet full of hostile aliens or something, and you were in the right place at the right time to swoop in and rescue me.

[schrodingerscockroach]

....yeah, that's pretty true. [He's already adopted like half the train in his head S O]

I mean.

Yeah, that sounds about right with everything that's been going on so far. Was already fighting aliens after ancient artifacts, why not time machines.

[bluediligence]

"Pretty true" is an understatement. [ She can't wait for Twilight to call him Mama Dusk-obaasan, okay. ]

[ She cannot wait ]

See? It fits. Uhm, mostly.

[schrodingerscockroach]

I may have a thing about adopting people. I wanted to throttle the Reds and Blues at first and I still adopted them.

One of Blues may or may not be a literal ghost, I've dealt with alien artifacts, and there may be some weird things that just happen with machines around us, it works as well as anything else.

[bluediligence]

[ ... ... ... ... ]

Weird ... things? With machines? [ Ghost? ]

[schrodingerscockroach]

Yes. There are two kinds of AI's, smart and dumb AI's. Smart AI's are, without question, a person. They have thoughts and feelings and grow and adapt. They're also rare because the way to make them is highly dubious at best and extremely desperate at worst, and pretty much horrifying at all levels.

Dumb AI's are ones that are programmed. They can be programmed really well, they can seem like a person almost. But they're always going to have limitations. They can't really grow, they can't break their programming, they will always have walls they can't overcome like a smart AI.

Except....Lopez is a smarky asshole and if he was a smart AI, you wouldn't throw him in the trash. And Freckles was apparently 'malfunctioning' according to the guy we were fighting and I felt it was important to get his programming back and he was just a battle droid.

They should both be dumb AI's. But they were acting out of any programming they should have had. And the fact two were being odd starts to sound like a pattern.

So weird.

[bluediligence]

Smart AI … [ Hummmmm. ] They're … based on people, right? Something along those lines-?

[ HmmmMMMMMMM. ]

I don't know if that's really weird, anyway. I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? Even if you call them "dumb" AI, they're still extraordinarily complex; they still have the capacity to make judgements and decide on the correct response. Going from that to having opinions and self-awareness isn't too huge of a leap.

[schrodingerscockroach]

They require copying a human mind to create. Which....kills the brain. Usually they flashclone the subject because that's bad, but that's still serious ethical grounds.

That's the thing, they don't 'make judgements.' They go through a check list of never self changing priorities. Even then, there's a difference between getting self awareness and being a sarcastic, insulting asshole whose also still sticking around.

[bluediligence]

Oh, wow. Yeah. [ That sure is something. Winces ... ]

[ Rubs her chin. ]

Still ... [ How to put this into words?? ] It still doesn't seem surprising to me. I mean, yeah, machine learning is machine learning, not true intelligence, and it's got limitations. It just ... doesn't seem unreasonable that someday, some computers will overcome that, even if the people who built them didn't intend for it to happen.

[schrodingerscockroach]

Yeah.

Whether or not that's true, its not a recognized possibility. Its not something that should be happening. Something that's still seen as a malfunction. Which makes it weird when it does, especially around the weird group of soldiers who had someone who was probably a ghost in their number.

[bluediligence]

Aahh, good point ...

[ She's not sure how much she likes the idea of the possible development of sentience being considered a malfunction, BUT, ]

Well, all I can say is, it's a good thing they've got you as a friend.

[schrodingerscockroach]

[Really its all about how its still weird!!!!]

I'm trying, at least. Was not happy at how Locus was treating them.

[bluediligence]

Locus...?

[schrodingerscockroach]

Guy who set off every danger instinct in me. Captured us before a semi-incompetent army kind of hired us.

Also I dare you to tell me what obaasan means.

[bluediligence]

[ ...?? ]

Did the semi-incompetent army rescue you from him, or something?

[ Her lips twitch. ]

Obaa-san means grandma.

[schrodingerscockroach]

So, he works for the semi-incompetent army and probably why they lasted as long as they did with a leader who faints after simply having a gun pointed at him. Its a whole stupid thing where my men are split on both sides and they're going to try and indoctrinate us and we kind of need to go along until we find the others. And hope they haven't bought into the narrative too much.

It sounds like a war where no side is really right.

....ah. Definitely need to bully him.