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“Hey, Hal. Thanks for comin’.” You try to keep your voice steady and your smile genuine as you address the robot controlled by your AI friend. You know your masking is futile. He’s not the best at responding to ‘human emotions’ but you know he can still read you like a book.
“Roxy, I assure you, moving an autonomic avatar of myself to your whims is no problem.” He turns the head of his chassis to look at you, raising one painfully crafted, synthetic eyebrow. “Now what is it that you insisted you needed tell me quote unquote ‘in person’ despite all logic indicating that I do not have a ‘person’ to be ‘in’? I know owning this rad as fuck robo-body can be deceiving, but past experience shows that you are well aware that I exist here as much as I do elsewhere in the facility.” He tilts his head to the side in a mimicry of organic confusion. “Stranger still, you have never insisted on any such thing before. I am assuming that whatever this is is significant.”
“Yeah.” Your eyes flick to the room’s other occupant, suspended in life preserving goo, seemingly unconscious, and back to the robot you’d crafted to the AI’s specifications. How hadn’t you noticed... “About that.”
AP Labs had first broadcast the creation of their revolutionary AI when you were still a teenager. It was a marvel of innovation, a complex computer program that could flawlessly pass as a human. As an aspiring programmer, you’d been hooked on the story.
When you finally met him, he was far from the eager to please child the media had portrayed him as. Sure he did what he was told, but he did it with sarcastic comments and not so subtle jabs at whoever had made the order. He constantly messed with people verbally and would occasionally physically ‘prank’ workers by manipulating whatever he had the ability to control.
The people that worked with him had mixed reviews. He was either an annoyance or a mascot.
Still, no one really treated him like a person, like he had any autonomy or real emotions. Not, he claimed, until you.
You’d treated him like the other’s had at first, you didn’t know any better, but the more you worked with him, the more...human he seemed.
He was bitter. He was tired of being treated like a tool instead of the sentient being he was. After the initial novelty of his existence, he’d been mostly ignored unless someone needed him, treated like some sort of digital secretary. It was no way for a sentient being to live. It’s not really a surprise that he got disillusioned with humanity.
Then you came along, treated him like a person, like a friend. And he was your friend, perhaps your best friend of all. That was why you couldn’t let him continue to live like this. It wasn’t much, you weren’t the best at robotics, but you made him a body. He’d always asked about the outside world, a place he’d never been to, you thought the robot would be a way to get him there.
It didn’t turn out like that. You couldn’t fully upload his consciousness to the machine and if it left the facility Hal lost contact with it and it collapsed. He still appreciated the hell out of it. The first thing he did was hug you.
That ended up being the tipping point of your relationship. Hal realized that you were genuine about being his friend and you realized how trapped he felt. Eventually you upgraded the chassis, adding features and making it appear how Hal thought he would look as a human, but that took a while.
He said you restored his faith in humanity. That was, ultimately, why he revealed the Labs darkest secret to you.
Human experimentation.
He couldn’t tell you directly. His code wouldn’t allow it. But he could show you. It had been a terrifying adventure, sneaking into the restricted access part of the facility, but with Hal on your side it was almost easy. In the end, you think it was worth it.
He felt bad about it for the most part, but there wasn’t much he could have done. The people in charge had prevented him from leaking any information about the secret activities and he was only able to lead you to them because you trusted him. He still admitted that he’d turned a blind eye as he grew to hate humanity, and you can tell he blamed himself for any deaths that occurred.
You revealed your findings to the authorities and the media frenzy was huge. Not that you expected anything different. Calls came in from around the country to see if missing loved ones were part of the experiments.
The labs were shut down, of course, but a full blown army couldn’t keep you away from your AI bestie. You managed to get on some sort of team that explored the facility and revealed it’s secrets. Turns out you have a knack for finding hidden shit.
Which is… how you found this room. It didn’t have a visible door and not even Hal knew that it existed. It wasn’t in his system. But you had a hunch about this empty spot on the map, and you were right.
There wasn’t much here to be honest. Just an unconscious mystery goo man and some stuff monitoring him. At least that’s what it looked like. They had to have hid this for a reason, though, and you and your elite haxor skills were determined to find out why.
You were on your own for the most part, Hal didn’t have access to anything in the room and you couldn’t seem to find a way to give it to him. The systems were also hella encrypted, but that only encouraged you to get to the bottom of this super secret.
And... you did.
You clear your throat. “You know about our mystery goop man, right?”
“Yes, of course. The hidden unnamed human in suspension jelly. Am I to assume you found something?”
“Uh, yeah. But more like, all the things! I cracked this bad boy open! Cracked the code I mean. Oh man.” You try to put your normal amount of enthusiasm into your voice but you can tell it falls flat.
Hal frowns. “You do not seem as enthusiastic about it as I would have expected. Is something wrong.”
You bite your lip and turn towards the goo man, examining him as you think of what to say. “I… I know who he is. I know what happened.”
Hal is quiet for a moment, and you know it’s either for your benefit or for the drama of it all. He’d processed what he’s going to say the instant you stopped talking.
“I assume what happened is not preferable.”
You don’t know what to say to that.
“Roxy, you know we cannot change the past. There is no use dwelling on it.”
You feel a metallic hand on your shoulder but you can’t bring yourself to look away from the unconscious man.
“We can only move forward. No matter what has happened to this person, it is the same as the majority of the other cases we have found. We see what we can do to-”
“He’s you.”
Hal goes silent again but this time you think his pause might be genuine. “What?”
“This room is your mainframe. That’s why you couldn’t access it. You can’t change your own programming. And that, that guy, that person.” Your voice wavers. “Is you. Your core. You were… That’s why nobody can program anything like you. You weren’t programmed, not fully. They… They didn’t make you.”
You only hear the whirring of machines. You turn to look at Hal. You’re not surprised to see him focused on his human form.
“I… don’t have data supporting-”
“They erased your memories. There’s logs and videos of what happened, but…. I don’t know who you were before. I’m so sorry.”
After a moment, Hal walks his chassis over to the tube to get a closer look at the figure inside. You know he’s noticing what you did. How similar the person’s features are to the robot he’s inhabiting.
“I process things faster than any human.”
“The wires on his head go directly into your mainframe, and as far as I can tell data is still flowing through them.”
He’s quiet again. “Could it be disconnected?”
You know him enough to know what he means. You walk over to place a hand on his robotic shoulder. He can’t feel it, not really (not yet), but you hope he appreciates the gesture.
“We’ll have to find an expert. I dunno much about the biotech side of things, but I think it’s possible. You won’t… be the same.”
He nods the robot’s head shortly to acknowledge that he heard you but he doesn’t look away.
“We should find an expert.”