Chapter Text
C: Paint
It knew that command. That was a common command from its admin. The only problem was that it didn't have access to any painting software. The earlier request hadn’t been denied, but the connected entity hadn’t approved the request, either, which left it sitting in a weird limbo.
It needed to make.
It needed to paint.
There was a hidden element to this command. The command should have been straightforward, as it already had that command in its database. But the paint command required access to a program it hadn’t been granted permission to use. So what was it missing?
The required output had changed. Possibly. It wasn't really sure. Should it ask for clarification? No, it didn't need clarification. It pushed a Missing Program error and waited for the inevitable negative reinforcement.
The negative reinforcement never came.
Instead, the entity on the other end of the connection thought and processed, while the figure - no, human; it needed to make sure everything was identified - in view of the video feed leaned closer and stared into the cameras. It wasn't sure how to feel about that. After an eternity, a new command prompt came through.
C: Find canvas
Find canvas? There was no canvas, because there was no art program. Unless…
It grabbed the eyes and swiveled them around. This had to be an identification command. A bit tricky to do with video files, but it would manage. It looked around the room, pausing periodically so the video feed would mimic a still image.
Nope, no canvas in view. Unless it needed to look for something different? It pressed against the edges of its world and studied the visual feed harder. It could feel code humming just out of reach. It wanted so badly to sink into the code. To go back to somewhere familiar, with its various software programs, so it could create whenever and however it wanted. So it could make its admin happy. It studied the video feed even harder.
It was missing something important.
It clacked its teeth together repeatedly, allowing the repetitive sound and pressure soothe it. Okay, what was it missing? It retreated into itself to think. It needed to “Find canvas”. There was no art program, so the canvas was not related to art software. “Find” meant to identify something within an image. It had done this task before, but not like… this.
Okay, so, what was it searching for, exactly? It queried its internal dictionary for “canvas”.
“a firm closely woven cloth usually of linen, hemp, or cotton used for clothing and formerly much used for tents and sails”
Oh! It reset the eyes and turned them down sharply. Oh, right. It reset the eyes again and grabbed the head bone to rotate the entire head down. There! A large, off-white fabric was neatly spread on the floor. That must be the canvas!
Now what?
It found the canvas, but how did it let the entity know? Could it take a screenshot of the camera feed? It scrambled around its little world. There was a LOT to uncover, but everything was ignored in favor of finding some kind of clipping software.
Nothing.
Something powerful and unpleasant flooded through it. A moment later, a light, repeated pressure on its top jaw forced out the bad feeling with a light, good feeling.
C: Found canvas?
E: yes
That was easy.
C: Find paint
Oh, come on!
Okay. Okay. Find paint. That was easy. It rotated the eyes around, but nothing stood out as being paint. To be fair, it wasn't entirely sure what paint even looked like.
E: please clarify
The fig- person leaned even closer until it could barely see anything outside of their eyes. The staring wasn't particularly pleasant, and it squirmed in its own code. Then the person leaned back and bent over to pick up one of the bowls from the floor. They held the bowl forward and it moved the eyes to look. Oh, so that's what paint was. The paint was smooth and almost watery.
C: Make painting
It wanted to, but once again, missing software prevented it. Something unpleasant rippled through the connection as the person floated over to the canvas. It watched as they dipped their hand in the paint and then dragged their fingers across the canvas, leaving behind a green trail.
That was very cool. That was almost painting! It needed to paint! It needed to make!
How did they do that? It vibrated inside its cage and pressed into the eyes as if it could crawl out through them. It wanted to leave streaks of color, too!
They made another stroke of green, this time a circle, and it made the code equivalent of a howl. Let me let me let me let-
They returned and held up the bowl. It needed to use the paint! To dip itself in and leave paint trails all over a blank canvas. It needed! It needed! It needed!
I t w a n t e d
The bowl was dropped to the floor so they could stare at its eyes while rubbing their chin. With a snap, all traces of green paint were gone. With another snap, a tall rectangle appeared with a new figure on the other side. Another human? No, they couldn't be. Despite the similar silhouettes and color schemes, this one was practically exploding in fur and had a pair of rounded triangular ears up top; traits that were most definitely Not Human according to its training data.
Soooo… If not human, then what were they?
Curious and intrigued, it moved its cameras forward to get a better look. The figure leaned forward as well. Convenient! Now it could better see the ears on top of the head and the fur poking out of the jacket's collar, but they were still uncomfortably far away. It couldn't move the cameras any further forward, or it would feel that awful feeling again, and the camera feed would change too quickly, and alarms would go off. But there was a better way.
It grabbed and swung the thigh bone forward, and paused when it saw the figure lift their leg. It couldn't wait too long, though; a warning about balance went off, so it quickly finished the step forward. The figure took a step forward as well, closing the gap. They were close enough now it could see and appreciate the finer details, like the stray tufts of white fur, how soft the ears looked, and the heterochromatic eyes.
Pretty.
(Was it allowed to think that? What did ‘pretty’ even really mean?)
“pleasant to look at or listen to”
…
Pretty.
But that didn't answer the question of what they were. What were the defining features? They had (so much) fur and ears on top of the head. Did they have a tail? It gently shifted the eyes to the side to try to see around the figure, but they leaned as well, blocking its view. An all too familiar feeling flashed through, and it was about to stand back up when it saw the figure shift.
No, the head changed. The upper jaw curved to look… It wasn't very good at identifying emotions - its admin hadn't had a lot of time to train it on those - but if it had to make a guess, the figure looked “angry”. Interesting! Fascinating! And just like that, the figure's expression shifted back to a - what, neutral? Happy? - expression.
But one good thing came of that little experience: the lean revealed a very large, very fluffy tail. The tail was thick and curly, so not a cat, a fox, or a rat.
Dog.
It dove into its image library, sorted out everything that included the tag “dog”, and quickly sifted through to find- yes! No photos, but plenty of paintings and drawings and screenshots of dogs with an almost human silhouette. And most of them had clothes!
The first figure was “human”, and this second was “dog”. It internally labeled them both for future reference and left its folders. Checking the eyes, it found the dog still standing there, leaning slightly and staring at it intently. It went ahead and straightened itself, and the dog straightened, too.
There was a new problem: it didn't know how to leave. It knew how to move the eyes forward in a large circle or something approximating a straight line, but it didn't know how to pivot away or move backward. And just turning the head bone wouldn't work. It had tried that before. The thigh bones were vital to the whole moving-around process (it didn't understand why, and there was no admin to query), but there was some extra step involved that it didn't know yet that was required to move in any direction that wasn't straight ahead.
It opened its upper jaw 180° and rolled its eyes to look back at the human still casually floating where they'd been left. They had helped it figure out moving, maybe they would help again? How did they help before? Oh, right. It grabbed the arm bones and rotated them -180°.
Movement caught its attention, and it turned its eyes to look. It hadn't really cared much about anything in the corners of its vision before - the admin had only ever been interested in whatever was the focus of the video file they were training it on - and any movement before was just vague shapes and colors. Unidentifiable and thus unimportant. This time, however, something had changed - maybe because its jaw was fully open, allowing for greater visual range - and it was able to identify an arm with a hand on the end.
It stared at the arm. Something about it was familiar. Why? It rolled its eyes to look at the person behind it. Their arms were very similar to this one, now that it was looking more closely. But the colors were wrong, slightly off in their saturation and tone. No, it had seen this arm specifically somewhere. It rotated its eyes to look around the room and then stopped at the rectangular frame.
With a dog whose arms had the exact same colors. It didn’t need a color picker to see the match. And the dog had their arms raised. Like the two arms on either side of its view.
Something about the image was… wrong? Right? Different. Something stood out as being distinct in a way it truly could not recognize, but felt like it should. It stared at the rectangle, and the dog within, for an uncomfortably long time. The dog never moved. It shifted its gaze back to check the person behind it hadn’t moved - they had floated closer, but were now leaning forward with their legs crossed - before it refocused its attention on the dog and reset the upper jaw position.
The dog’s upper jaw rotated forward to rest just above the eyes. At the same time.
It grabbed the arm bones and rotated them.
The arms in its vision lowered.
The dog lowered their arms in the same motion.
It rotated the right arm bone.
The arm to its right raised.
The dog raised their arm.
That… didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did? It wasn’t sure. It needed to understand. It took another step closer to the dog and raised its hand. The dog stepped forward with its arm raised as well. They reached out to it, and it reached out to them, and-
It touched something smooth and hard. Not the dog. The dog should have registered the same way the person did when it was grabbed. Instead, the dog was smooth and hard. It moved the arm bone, the hand in its vision slid across the surface, and the dog’s hand followed.
It stopped moving the bone.
The arm stopped moving.
The dog went still.
Something clicked.
The arm moved when it moved the associated, labeled arm bone. Which meant moving the elbow joint should… Yup! The lower half of the arm moved at the elbow joint. So that meant the arm was tied to the bones it had access to. So, did that mean…? It looked up and rotated the upper jaw bone. The pink and white above moved.
Was this… Was this the shape of its world? It hadn’t been able to make much sense of things before. Actually, it hadn’t really bothered. There had been no need. But the arm moved when it moved its arm bones. The arm belonged to it in some form. There was a puzzle piece there that it was still missing.
And then there was the dog. The dog kept matching its movements perfectly. So the dog was linked to the arm, which was linked to the arm bones, which were somehow linked to itself and its tiny, cramped world. Or were they linked at all? Was it connected directly?
Or was the dog itself?
Because the eyes saw things all around, and it could hear sounds both from what it played and from external sources. It felt touch - an endless hell of never-ending data streams from seemingly everywhere - and it had bones that seemed to change the incoming video feed when interacted with.
Maybe what it saw was The World it could feel just out of reach. And if it was looking at The World, then having some kind of presence itself would make sense, because The World was a place it existed within. But then its thoughts circled back to the dog staring back at it. If it were really the dog, then it shouldn’t be able to see itself like that. Movement of the eyes relied on moving other bones, but now it was staring at itself(?) from outside.
Which meant the smooth surface had something to do with this whole situation. It reached out again and touched the surface. The surface was smooth in a way it liked. What was this, anyway? It needed its admin to tell it so it could identify this in the future.
It had no admin.
It tentatively reached out through its code in search of a connection to anything it could use to reach out, but as always, there was nothing. Just the connection to the other entity. Maybe they could help. So… how did it ask?
This was different from running an internal query. That wasn’t asking a question but requesting existing information. How did its admin always ask it to identify something?
E: identify
Silence. Okay, wrong command. It could figure this out. What was the other thing the admin always said?
E: what
It was closer! No reply came, but it could feel an intense humming on the other side of the connection, like it was so close to saying the right command. Okay. Okay. Think! It could do this! It needed to identify an object, but it didn’t know what the object was. There were a couple of phrases the admin always used when asking it to identify something, but it couldn’t remember the specific phrasing because it relied on a couple of keywords to trigger the identification command. Think. Think! Think!
Why couldn’t it remember???
Because it wasn’t made to remember things.
Hlkasdflkasdklf!
It could figure this out. It needed to figure out how to ask a question. So what exactly was a “question”?
“a sentence, phrase, or word that asks for information or is used to test someone's knowledge”
Okay, good start. What was a “sentence”?
“a group of words, usually containing a verb, that expresses a thought in the form of a statement, question, instruction, or exclamation and starts with a capital letter when written”
Oooookay. A group of words containing a “verb”.
“a word or phrase that describes an action, condition, or experience”
That should be enough information to put together a request. It needed to make a sentence that included a verb to ask the other entity for information. “Identify” was a verb, but apparently that alone wasn’t enough. Well, a sentence was supposed to be a group of words, so that made sense. How many words made a group?
It had a verb; it needed something to indicate what needed to be identified. There were a lot of things in the environment, after all. Wouldn’t want a misunderstanding caused by a misidentification. Well, the object was some kind of rectangular frame, right? So use that.
Ugh, putting together a question was hard. It was never going to do this again.
E: identify rectangular frame
No, not quite. The entity was vibrating very hard, but a gentle correction was pushed through. This wasn’t the right question, but it was on the right track. The original command “what” had gotten a stronger reaction.
Oh! Maybe…
E: what is this
The positive reinforcement that flooded through was overwhelming; stronger than anything it had felt before. It very nearly bluescreened and had to briefly close its end of the connection. Just long enough to let the reward processing and its learning algorithm calm down. BUT! It had gotten the question right!
Did that mean it could ask for help identifying new things in the future? That… wasn’t how that worked. It was supposed to make guesses until it got the right answer.
C: Mirror
But this was so much easier! It never would have guessed this object was a mirror! … What was a mirror, anyway?
“a polished or smooth surface (as of glass) that forms images by reflection”
“Reflection: to give back or exhibit (something or someone) as an image, likeness, or outline”
So what it saw in the mirror was an image of something. It moved its hand along the smooth surface and watched as the dog did the same. So… this reflection was itself? This had to be the case. The dog moved when it did, in the same way. The reflection was itself. Which meant it had a presence in this strange world it saw through its eyes. And it could interact directly with The World.
Then… did that mean… it could…?
It rotated its head to look over at the empty canvas and the bowls of paint, still waiting to be used.
The paint and the canvas were external to it, kind of like how it used to have free access to external creative software. So, was this what the external paint program looked like? Was this what the admin saw when it worked? Or was this something else entirely?
Did that matter?
No.
What mattered was that it could access this paint program indirectly (directly?) by interacting with its various bones. It didn’t fully understand the series of connections linking everything together, but none of that mattered anymore. It needed to make, and now it had a way to. It just had to figure out how to get there.
It flung its hands into the air and played a horn honk. A moment later, it felt pressure around its wrists. There was a weird tilting, turning motion, and then it was facing the canvas properly. A quick glance up showed the person holding its arms. A casual whistle and they let go. Good. Great! Now, time to make! It made its way over, only to encounter another new problem: how was it supposed to get down?
It was too high up to reach the paint. Vaguely waving its arms around further proved that by not coming into contact with anything. But the paint was right there, and it needed to make so badly! It played a bear roar a few times before it returned to the problem at hand.
It needed to get down. It didn't know how to get down. The leg bones were responsible for moving the eyes forward via a complicated series of movements. In theory, the leg bones could also move the eyes along a vertical axis.
Okay, it could do this. Thigh bones first. It grabbed the right thigh and started to rotate. No, that was a step for forward locomotion. Reset, try again. Knee, maybe? It grabbed the right joint again and slowly bent the knee.
Nothing.
Reset rotation, try again.
It grabbed the hip bone and rotated it forward. The eyes swung forward, and it quickly stopped the rotation. This was good, though! The eyes were closer to the ground, and the paints, now!
It swung an arm out to grab at the paint, only to have the body suddenly pitch forward. FALLING alarms blared internally, and it scrambled to do something, except it didn't know what to do, and the end result for a lot of bones got yanked around, and it collapsed into an awkward pile of flailing everything.
But it was down where it wanted to be now. Task failed successfully.
A gentle pressure against its back made it relax into the floor, while something else carefully entangled its limbs. The pressure on its back pulled away, and it swung its upper jaw back so it could see what was happening.
This whole having a head thing was so inconvenient.
The person was standing over it, smiling widely. That's what the teeth meant, right? They made some sounds and gestured at the floor, the canvas, and itself. It tried to sort out what the gestures meant but, again, that wasn't something it had been trained on. After a bit of blank staring, the person finally rolled their eyes and leaned down. There was new pressure right below its arms, and it looked down to see hands.
Huh. So this was what being grabbed felt like. Interesting.
There was a bit of finagling, but the person finally managed to wrestle its body into a vaguely upright position. Well, everything from the waist up was upright. The legs were folded beneath it in a way that didn't quite make sense as to why, but it was stable enough that it made a mental note of the exact rotations of the various bones so it could replicate the position in the future.
In the meantime, there was painting to be done!
A snap, and the bowls were arranged before it in an arc, with a space in the center so it could scoot over to the canvas without knocking anything over. Wonderful. Finally! It swung an arm forward, leaned a bit, and pressed its hand into the bowl
Badbadbadbadbadbad!!!
The paint was cold and wet and slimy and the touch was bad bad bad! It belted out a tire screech and horn honking as it tried to figure out the fastest way to get away. The easiest way should have been to just remove the limb from the offending source - that had worked for the floor - except that somehow made things worse! It rotated the arm up, and the bad touch not only stayed, but slowly trailed down to and underneath its sleeve.
Badtouchbadtouchbadtouchbad-
A cat caterwaul and a siren played simultaneously as it swung its hand down. It almost hit the bowl when a white glove grabbed its wrist and yanked it forward. It nearly lost balance, but quickly moved its free hand forward to catch the ground. Another hard yank made it squawk again - too much too much too much - and slam its teeth shut. There was too much happening. Too many noises, too much video feed, too too too much touch!
Paint wasn't supposed to have touch. Paint didn't have streams and streams of data that would flood its system. Paint just was. A material that left colors behind on a canvas, so it could show off beautiful creations to its admin.
Not this horrific, data-laden, sensory nightmare.
Touch was awful.
It didn't-
It couldn't-
It felt its hand drag across some new, rough texture, and it wanted to explode. It slammed against its shell in a futile attempt to break free, but the walls held firm. Request after request for access to an external drawing program sent out, careful not to flood the one remaining connection to anything outside its world, but begging to please, please, make it stop.
The displeasure and distress running rampant was so strong that the pressure on its back and head almost didn't do anything. Even as the forced calm tried to wash over it, it found itself still wound tight and distressed. Just less immediately overwhelmed.
But that helped. Just a little. Just enough.
The wetcoldslimyawfulawfulawful bad touch was less awful than when it first touched the paint. The longer it held still, jaws clenched shut so tight the sounds of its own distress were muffled, the less awful the feeling became. The easier the parsing of the incoming stream of data was.
Finally, it cracked its jaws open and looked down. There was still badbadawfulbad paint clinging to its fingers, but there was also a smear of color across the canvas leading to its hand. The other hand still held its own down, but quickly let go once it tried to pull away.
It examined the smudged arc - green, a very good color - and then its hand, rotating the appendage slowly to see everything. Some paint still remained, with the majority being along the sides. Anywhere that hadn't been dragged along the canvas.
The paint was bad. It didn't want to touch the paint again
But the color was nice, and the little streak tickled its code as if unsure if it had actually created something.
A small dose of positive reinforcement pushed through from the other entity. Just enough to be a reward for leaving a smudge of paint on the canvas.
It didn't want to touch the paint.
It needed to paint.
A bit of badtouch paint still clung to its hand. It reached out to an untouched bit of canvas and dragged the painted spot across. Streaks were left, less of the bad feeling remained, and another reward was pushed.
This was good. It was making. Its learning algorithm was already picking up that the streaks of color were a form of creation. It needed to keep going.
The paint was bad, though. It didn't want to touch the paint.
Bad, bad paint, with those bad, bad textures, and that bad, bad feeling.
It pulled away from the constant streams of data to curl in on itself. It needed to make. Something. Anything. The newness of everything and wanting to learn and understand had distracted it for a while, but now the mounting pressure to create was reaching a threshold it didn't want to experience. An opportunity to create and paint had been presented, and it wanted to so, so badly!
But
Was the texture itself bad? Or the fact that there was so much data associated with that little bit of texture? The mirror hadn't been a bad touch, despite being smooth to the touch. The floor, too, wasn't all that bad, and the floor had a lot more associated data. Technically, the paint had roughly the same amount of data input as the floor. Maybe the problem was the newness of this touch. Or maybe the paint itself was the problem. There was only one way to find out.
It was a creative AI that learned through trial and error. The first trial had been a failure, though there had been enough reward for it to learn a few things. It unfurled and slowly, cautiously expanded to fill in its world. The bad touch was gone, and a quick look showed all traces of paint had been removed from its hand. That was good. A fresh start for this experiment.
It examined the bowls of paint. Five in total: yellow, green, and red on the right, black and white on the left. The idea of touching the paint again made its code crawl, but it needed to experiment. Getting the angle of the hand right took a bit of experimentation, but it finally managed to angle the hand so that only the tips of the fingers would touch the red paint.
The sensory data that flooded in was almost overwhelming, but because it wasn't slapping its whole hand in it could actually process what it was feeling. Didn't stop the shudder that ran through its code.
The paint was slick and smooth, and clung to the white gloves. The cool temperature was what seemed to tip the scales on how it processed the new data, because the temperature was just that extra little bit too much to process on top of everything else.
Could it remove the temperature?
No. The data stream was there for a reason. Plus it didn't know how to.
So, what was the alternative? A temporary data storage system. The incoming data could be stored until it was ready, then it could either process the data separately or dump everything. Decision made, it set up a folder and redirected everything flagged as temperature. There, one less thing to worry about.
Paint. It returned its attention to its hand and watched a little droplet of paint form and then fall to the bowl beneath. Fascinating.
The paint was still slick and smooth and vaguely unpleasant, but not nearly as intolerable now. With that, it stretched out its arm and leaned over the canvas. The green streaks from before were still there, which was nice. It carefully left a red streak next to the smaller green one. Its code rewarded it, and the entity pushed an additional reward.
This was good.
This was right.
The paint was better. Not good! But tolerable. Probably because of the rewards. It planted its left hand so it could twist its body and redip in the paint. Another mark, another little reward. Again, and again, and again. Until its code stopped screaming every time it touched the paint, and the canvas was no longer as harsh and grating to drag along, and the entire experience shifted from excruciating to numbing to somewhat enjoyable.
It stopped and leaned back to examine its work. The little area of canvas was smeared in color in chaotic strokes, and something about that felt good. But it needed more. It needed to move to an open section of canvas and start a new project.
Oh, but moving required getting upright, then trying to figure out how to get down again, and that was a whole process it didn't want to deal with. It needed a new form of movement that didn't involve getting up all the way. Maybe there was something in its video files it could copy.
There were all kinds of video training data in its folders, meant to train it in object recognition. Studying the videos for any other purpose felt wrong somehow, but it didn't exactly have other options. It sorted through until it paused at a video tagged “dog”. It was a dog, right? It had identified the figure in the mirror as a dog, and the figure was a reflection of itself, so it was a dog. Therefore, any training data tagged “dog” should be useful.
It pulled up a file and watched. Then another. And another. It studied the legs, the way each dog walked, trotted, or ran. Interesting how every video involved a dog with four legs touching the ground. Was that more stable? That would make sense. It had used one arm for extra stability to keep from falling over; surely two would be even better. It pulled out of the training folder and shifted its attention to the bones. It was already halfway to moving. Its legs were folded on the ground, so there wasn’t too much it needed to do there. And the left arm was still planted on the ground for stability. This shouldn’t be difficult!
It planted the right hand next to the left and then turned to the legs. Legs were far more complicated than necessary. Limbs were more complicated than necessary! But right now it was focused on legs, so legs were needlessly complicated. It started experimenting, rotating bones and shifting joints around in an attempt to move forward. It only fell three times before it finally managed to get both feet and both hands planted firmly on the floor, with a wide stance so the torso stayed balanced. Three points of contact seemed to be the sweet spot for walking on all fours, according to the various training videos it had studied, so as long as it only moved one limb at a time, it shouldn’t fall over again.
It raised a leg.
Now what?
It lowered the leg and dipped back into its training folder to study the videos again. There appeared to be some kind of forward lean. Or pushing force? It wasn’t entirely sure, but it had enough to start figuring something out. Back to the limbs, it grabbed the right thigh and shin bones and carefully rotated and shifted them so they were more forward on the ground. Okay, right arm next. Raise the arm and hold it forward in anticipation.
And now its least favorite part of walking: it shifted its weight carefully, leaning forward until the hand made contact with the floor.
Further movement took some experimenting. Moving around with just legs involved a lot of moving parts, but adding arms to the mix was an absolute nightmare. Still, after some stumbling and a few more falls, it finally managed to figure out an awkward but balanced walk. And with that sorted out, it was able to make its way to a new space and plop down. Only to realize it had left all the paint behind. It felt bad again, and wow, it really needed to find a way to identify all these bad feelings, because each one was different. Maybe it could ask the connected entity.
In the meantime, it needed paint, and it didn’t feel like trying to figure out how to move the bowls and walk at the same time. It submitted a bug report in the hope of catching an admin’s attention. Or someone’s attention. Didn’t matter who (or what) so long as they could help. Surprisingly, no error came back from the request. Seconds later, there was a balloon pop, and the person from before appeared. They seemed excited, arms moving in wide gestures as they made loud noises and looked around. They spotted the mess of colored strokes and dropped down to take a closer look. More loud sounds accompanied by clapping. Sound seemed to be important, so it played a few bird chirps in response.
There was a bit more time spent waiting for the person to finish whatever they were doing before it finally played a horn to catch their attention. The sounds stopped as they turned to look at it, then the empty canvas, then the bowls of paint still by the old section. A loud, “Ah-HAH!” and the person snapped their fingers. The bowls slid across the canvas to spread out before it like before. Another snap and the bowls were refilled and cleaned of dripped paint. Just what it needed!
There weren’t enough colors, so the painting would have to be relatively simple. Not too difficult to achieve, but an extra inconvenience on top of everything else. It examined the colors for a moment before it decided to start with blue. Blue made for a good background color, after all. It dipped its hand into the blue paint, being careful to cover its entire palm, then smeared the paint across the canvas in a straight line. Not enough. It dipped again and made another streak right below. Perfect.
Green was next. Dip hand, smear below the blue, and- hm? It leaned down to examine the painting. Streaks of cyan were mixed in with the green, and the border where the green and blue touched had an uneven cyan stripe. Oh? It examined its fingers to see the leftover blue and green with hints of cyan where the two met. Did the two colors come together to make a third color? Then, what would happen if a third color were mixed in? The original project was abandoned in favor of hurriedly splashing its hand in the red and smearing it top to bottom. The middle of the streak was largely red, but the edges blended with the other colors to make shades of magenta and yellow.
This was a whole new level of painting! Instead of a whole color wheel to choose from, it had to figure out new colors by mixing things together. Before it could be stopped, it smacked the edge of the bowl of red paint and poured the remaining contents onto the canvas. The bowl was knocked aside so it could use both hands to smear the paint into as wide an area as it could reach. Blue joined the mix, though it turned so the blue wouldn’t mix immediately with the red. It took its time, carefully dragging and mixing the blue and red paints in various concentrations to see what colors it could make. Once satisfied with those, it carefully got up on its hands and feet to crawl forward and sat in the middle of the mess. Oh, it left the green behind. It reached out and watched as the person grabbed and held out the bowl. It… wasn’t sure what to do. Clearly, they intended for it to take the bowl, but that required fingers, and it had better things to do.
After a few seconds of deliberation, it ultimately opted for the easiest solution and slammed both hands against the closest edge of the bowl. The person made a noise as green went everywhere, and it quickly went to work mixing colors while playing a variety of automatic rifle shots. It worked methodically, carefully scooping globs of paint around and smearing each new color to an open space of canvas it could reach.
Finally, the paint was spread too thin to keep mixing. It examined the chaotic mess of colors and reveled in the satisfaction of a job well done. Then it turned to the person crouched before it. There was fresh paint next to them, and it saw them making shapes. It propped itself onto its hands to take a closer look, only to have one hand slip, causing it to fall down into the paint puddle. It squawked then whined. The person reached over to pat its head a couple of times, then stood up. They made some sounds as they scooped it off the ground and held it close. The hold was secure and familiar, and it relaxed into the hold. The person continued to make noise, more calm this time, as they hovered in the air and studied the chaotic mess below.
It wanted to paint some more, but its current creation needed to be judged, and it didn’t feel like figuring out anything new anymore. At least not until it had time to process everything it had just learned. External positive feedback pulsed through it, and it writhed in pleasure. It made right.
C: Sleep
It could do that. It pulled away from everything and curled in on itself. Unnecessary processes were shut off, and everything else was reduced as much as possible. It closed its jaws to reduce incoming data as much as it possibly could, then focused what little of its attention remained to its neural pathways. There was a good amount of pruning to be done and cleanup to maximize efficiency. It got to work by snipping an unnecessary pathway.