Pepper's Ghost [IC]

[trollthumper]

"Do you really think you can stop me?" asked Keres as Citizen retreated. "Little programs like you are easy to corrupt and destroy. I am an archive all in myself, an endless mul-TI-tude of --"

Keres took notice the second his pitch started to change. He looked down the devastated corridor to the levitating Voltage, powering up a charge... and suddenly realized why it was so hard to process.

"Oh, shaaaareeeeeeaaaarrrrrrrrrrr..."

The words trailed off into static as the sheer magnetic pulse overtook him. His metallic body was sent pinballing down the hall, robbing him of his dignity in the last few seconds before his programming was reduced to electronic hash. With their master gone, the drones below began redoubling their efforts, trying to take flight once more. Cannonade was doing his part to hamper one of them, driving his fist straight up into his undercarriage.

"Man, they really don't skip on their hardware," he grumbled as he rubbed his knuckles. "Just keep them grounded, and --"

Cannonade paused as two objects the size of medicine balls went zooming past him - and past the drone. They froze in mid-air, laser tracers emerging to chart a path.

"My apologies for the absence," said Dr. Atom from inside the spheres. "Just optimizing the firewall and securing the core to prevent any intruders from getting it. Now, it's been a while since I've taken the field... so obviously I have a lot to make up for."

[Electra]

From the safety of the ground, Miss A watched in satisfaction as Keres was shut down quite neatly. "Good work, Voltage," she called, then prepared to engage in a bit of technical work of her own. Folding her hands and closing her eyes, she allowed her consciousness to flow from its current vessel, outwards into the damaged and directionless robots Keres had left behind. Without a leader or a clear battle plan, it was a simple matter to override their programmed directives and nudge them into their shutdown modes. When she opened her eyes again, both robots were nonfunctional, laying docilely on the sidewalk.

"Better late than never," she teased Doctor Atom cheerfully. "If your security is up and running, perhaps you'll want to take control of these chasses, get a better idea of what we're dealing with. I don't want to stay away from The Lab too long when I've got an AI in quarantine for debugging."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Great! Take that, you Foundry jerks!" said Citizen with some heat as he went around disabling the fallen drones before they could get up to do any more harm. "I hate these guys, especially when they go after people like Dr. Atom," he muttered as he went around the street cleaning up the damage the robots had made. He paid special attention to Keres, making sure to break up the specialized robot body before any internal booby traps could be triggered to do more harm. If there was a program wiper built in to the elite Foundry-bot, that was an additional hazard he had to fix, since a security measure designed to clear away spare Foundry programming was a potential hazard to his own life and limb. "I don't see why, like, half the robots I meet on this planet have to be evil. We need more people making good artificial life," he grumbled.

[trollthumper]

The two drones came to rest on the damaged street - parallel parking, even. The sensors of Dr. Atom hung suspended in mid-air, then projected an image of the good doctor. "That seems to be taken care of," he said. "From what I understand, the Foundry are tenacious in their efforts, but this display should at least give them second thoughts about their pursuit."

"Any idea what they'd be after?" Cannonade asked.

"At first I thought it was a simple infiltration attempt. But that doesn't explain the show of force. Now, however... my family did encounter a rampant drone farm in Angola on a recent tour of Africa, following a visit to Dakana. At first we thought it had been an experiment by one of the local mad scientists, like Colonel Steeljacket. I was at work on cracking the base code when our... 'friends' came knocking. So, odds are it was one of their installations, and they were trying to prevent it from being traced."

"Seems like a hell of a long way to go for all of this."

"Odds are they saw a lot of reward with their risk. One of their agents poised right behind my face, listening to my family's every word... and when that went away, they decided they might as well clean house. Speaking of, what happened to that rogue program of theirs? Has it been contained? I'd hate to think of what that source code could do..."

[Avenger Assembled]

"We put him in storage in our facility, Dr. Atom," called Sharl up to the older intelligence. He knew the grandfatherly old man quite well, if only because the elder Atom had been a natural person to consult given his own situation. With a glance at Miss Americana to make sure he wasn't speaking out of turn, he went on, trying to explain the situation to Atom. "He seems to be sentient, albeit not a true upload." He let it go at that, trusting Miss A to figure out what fate they were going to work out for D-Gray 2.0. "I can zip back there if you need me to," he offered to Miss A, "make sure his matrix is still holding up now that the Foundry's attention is elsewhere."

[trollthumper]

"I'll go back with you," said Cannonade. "Don't think I'll really have much to contribute here. If it's all right, I think I'll leave it to the think tank."

Back at the Lab, Sharl found D-Gray staring at the blank wall that Chimera's head had been secured behind. "She's been trying to talk to me," he said, "trying to give me the sales pitch. I sang back at her for a while. She shut up. Eventually."

"We could probably put her in a wall safe, if you want," Cannonade said. "So... how're you feeling?"

"Honestly? Ain't feeling that bad now. Gone through the philosophical jumping jacks while you were gone -- not sure if I am effectively D-Gray, just someone who thinks he is, but I realize that doesn't matter. I am who I am, born, made, or programmed. So, I guess the question is... where do I go now?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen let Miss A handle that one at first, instead going over and working on the Lab's computers while they dealt with the awkwardly sentient program. He was still a little uncomfortable around D-Gray, but it wasn't hard to feel sympathy for the luckless musician. Sharl's transformation had come with family and friends and been a world turned upside down. D-Gray's world was dead. "There are plenty of options for sentient programs," he offered D-Gray, not wanting to raise the possibility that maybe he wasn't so sentient after all. "Sentient machines are legally people, so there's no chance of you winding up as somebody's property." And if this was just an unthinking machine he was talking to, such promises certainly didn't hurt anything. "I'm just some lines of code in the grand scheme of things," he said with an awkward little laugh, "and I do pretty well for myself."

[Electra]

"You'll stay here for now," Miss A told D-Gray with simple pragmatism as she summoned a secured transport chamber for Chimera from the security office in the basement. "You'll have to for the moment, until we're sure we've untangled the virus from your programming and that there are no rogue copies still in the wild. Right now you're on a secure stand-alone server, so you'll find your movements are restricted to a certain extent. You cannot leave the system you are currently on, and in the real world, you cannot communicate except through the speakers in this room and the screen you're on now. However, we're not unfamiliar with the needs and wants of sentient programs. As soon as we've got the first levels of decontamination finished, I'll drop an emulator onto your system that will give you a living space inside the system. Like the Matrix, if you've seen that one, but smaller and less malevolent. You'll have a home that will allow you to interface with the computer and fulfill your needs in ways that are familiar to you, sleeping in a bed, eating, watching television and using a computer or musical instruments."

With the chamber on its way, Miss A drew over a few more privacy panels, effectively shutting Chimera away from the conversation entirely. "After that, there's no telling what you'll be able to do. Advanced artificial intelligences are useful in any number of fields, so I doubt you'll have trouble finding something that suits you. Maybe you'll go back to music. It's obvious you still have plenty of fans. Either way, it'll take time for you to become accustomed to a new way of life. Try not to rush yourself."

[trollthumper]

"Yeah," D-Gray said, "you're right." He looked past the deactivated head of Chimera to the nearest window. "Been gone a long... sorry. I mean, been a long time since my knowledge and everything else out there. Been looking it up online, but..." He shook his head. "If I am put together, what keeps that stuff separate from all the D-Gray stuff? Guess it's just one of those weird things. Been doing some digging, though. Lot of things have happened, but the same old bull****'s still standing. And apparently I ain't the only dead rapper who's still making music."

"Y'know, rap ain't my thing," Cannonade said, "but you've got still people who'll listen to you. People who think you were a real sage. Maybe you've got a chance to carry on that legacy. Use your voice to speak truth."

"That's exactly what I was thinking." D-Gray smiled as he looked out to the sun setting over Freedom. "Who knows. Maybe I'll get one of those emulators for my own..."