Work Text:
When the machine had booted up fully, it found itself seated alone in a location it had never been to before.
It found information about the scenery in its knowledge bank – a hillside in the mountain range located near the border of the country it served. But no records of the machine having fought in that location was found in its activity log. No weapons were found near it either.
Furthermore, its manual input command queue was empty. Each time it was activated before, it had always been standing among other machines built for the same purposes, some capable of operation without constant human input such as itself, others carrying human pilots – all given the same instruction of defeating the enemy. The machine didn't require precise commands – a general command to destroy a certain enemy platoon, for example, would suffice, and the machine would then determine the exact steps it would take to fulfil the command. But it still needed that initial command as a starting point, and none of that existed this time. There were no humans to be seen around, either – it must be that its switch was flipped to on when it was out of power and only activated when its solar cell had charged up.
Lacking any operation goals, the machine stayed still in its position, passively recording the scenery spread out in front of its field of vision. Until it detected some non-ambient noises from its left.
The source of the noise was a small animal named in its knowledge bank as a cat. The machine's knowledge bank was filled with information it never had use for out in the battlefield, which it sometimes regarded as a waste of storage space (one of its human programmers had placed a lock on even those sections of its knowledge bank, not allowing it to free up the space for other purposes), but now, one of those previously unused pieces of information had helped it identify this creature it didn't have a recollection of encountering previously during its duties. Judging by its size, the cat must be of young age for its species – a “kitten”. In examining the kitten, it was only with a delay that the machine noticed that the kitten wasn't alone – there were four, five others running behind it, all approaching the machine.
The machine continued surveying the group of kittens, letting only its head move to turn and follow their movements. Its knowledge bank entry didn't list any dangers a kitten could cause to its body, but that did not mean they were incapable of damaging it. Furthermore, the machine had never been taught of the proper course of action when encountering such creatures – its knowledge bank took enough space, allocating more effort to teaching it about interactions that it wouldn't need as a machine of war would be too much of a waste of resources.
The kittens had wandered even closer to the machine, all of them looking up at it. Some of them made a high-pitched vocalisation – that had to be a “meow”. Others made harsher noises – "growls", it concluded. Perhaps it should respond with some sounds of its own?
The machine played one of its start-up sirens. The kittens all scrambled away, producing louder, more dissonant meows than before. They took a stance it recognised as one animals took when faced with a threat. Perhaps it should have used a different noise – the machine might have been built to be a fighter, but it was also taught not to attack any living being besides the targets specified in human-entered commands, and it meant that having the kittens antagonise it would be counter to its intentions.
The machine searched for an entry in its sound bank that humans had classified as being less provocative, and found the “chime” sound. It played a short clip of the sound at a lower volume than the beeps previously. The kittens kept their stance after the first one, but after two more replays of the sound, three of the kittens approached it. It continued to play the sound in a loop, and soon, the kittens was even closer to it, some of them on the ground location closest to where its speakers were located. Perhaps the kittens also recognised the sound as a conciliatory one.
Then, without warning, one of the kittens jumped on top of its legs.
The machine's first reaction was of alarm, and it checked for any damages to its casing at the location the kitten had jumped on. No damages detected – which was in fact the most likely outcome considering the relative size of the kitten to the machine, but it had to always be vigilant for any of the smallest damages which may prove fatal in the long run. The kitten turned around in place and the machine prepared itself for any upcoming approach, but instead, the kitten settled its body down in a curled position, unmoving. It must be sleeping.
Another of the kittens jumped on the machine's other leg, closer to its foot, then ran back-and-forth along its leg. Soon, three of the kittens were running all around it legs, but one of them seemed to be more interested in the machine's arm, trying to jump onto its upper arm but unable to jump quite high enough.
The machine looked at the kittens running on its legs. One of them had begun trying to scratch its leg, but its claws were nowhere near strong enough to be able to pierce its outer armour. Nothing indicated that letting this one kitten on its arm would be any more destructive.
The machine moved its arm, which prompted the kitten trying to jump on to jump back. The machine positioned its hand such that its fingertips were close to the kitten, its arm angled. The kitten surveyed the hand for a few seconds, but soon jumped up, quickly climbing up the machine's arm and arriving on its shoulder in no time. The kitten ran across the machine's shoulders, from one end to the other, and slid down its arm. Running around the machine's back, the kitten ran up the same path across the machine's arms and shoulders again.
Detecting something touching the lower part of the trunk of its body, the machine saw the kittens on its leg trying to claw up its body. Maybe they wanted to examine more of its body. The machine bent its body back, gradually until it was lying on the ground on its back. As it did so, the kittens started running all over the trunk of its body, occasionally clawing at the lights positioned throughout its body or at the gaps between plates of its armour. They were an inquisitive bunch.
Eventually, the kittens' movements slowed down, and each of them took their place all over the machine's body, curling up and sleeping like the first one did. The machine checked its knowledge bank for actions to take with sleeping kittens. It saw images of humans applying their hands to the heads of cats. The machine's hands were significantly larger than a human's, possessing even larger power. Its hands had crushed countless other machines and human bodies. These small creatures would be no match for it. But the machine wasn't incapable of calibrating its strength. Slowly moving its arm as not to make excessive noise, it lightly pressed a finger to the head of one of the kittens, then slid it across the kitten's head just as slowly. It repeated the motion again, and it started registering vibrations coming from the kitten, as well as a sound that was similar to a growl but far more quiet. According to its knowledge bank, it was called a “purr” and was often made by cats to express feelings of content.
The machine checked its network connectivity. It was connected to the internet – it had never used the internet during its duties out in the battlegrounds, but it was how it occasionally received materials during training. It accessed a search engine and typed in 'kittens', returning millions and billions of results. Its attention was drawn to the videos, and browsing through them it found some videos of kittens interacting with other machines – small machines for use in human households, vastly different from what it was, but machines nonetheless.
There was still much yet for the machine to learn.