Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

tanoraqui
the thing is, this au idea exists because because i just heard on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me that Google is making an AI to talk to people online (and help achieve their quest for world domination, I assume), and they’re teaching it to speak human by feeding it romance novels

and i swear to god my first thought was “Ah, this is how one would get an ai version of Tarvek”

Tarvek as an AI is the AI someone taught to sound human by feeding it a ton of romance novels

including the erotic ones (FLIRT)

and nowww i maybe very much would like an au were the OT3 are all AIs

constancecomment
dude, I’m about it

they all learned different things, like different function AIs

tanoraqui
so obviously i thought a lot more overnight

tanoraqui
when humanity first started developing AIs, androids, and technological enhancements like robotic limbs and such, they descended into chaotic wars

because basically humans suck, you know

tanoraqui
Heterodynes were the worst. cyborg supersoldier jägers. then van Rijn builds the first /true/ AI, like, everyone before wasn’t actually QUITE a fully independent, learning entity. Because he’s a pretentious prat, he names it Storm King, or more informally Andy. Andy kicks ass, out-hacking all the things and he and van Rijn negotiate a lot of peace between digital and biological people.

unfortunately, Euphrosynia Heterodyne

ace programmer and seducer of AI

(she fell in love too. there are a billion movies like this. but she had a duty to her family and her people.)

tanoraqui
anyway, cut forward a couple hundred years, or maybe shorter because idk technology is very fast

tanoraqui
no one’s figured out how to replicate van Rijn’s achievement. Andy was just super beyond their time. but now: Heterodyne Boys! Doin’ the hero thing, bringing peace to the striving world.

tanoraqui
unfortunately, Lucrezia

they’re all of these kids just like /genius/ programmers

tanoraqui
KB is the AI Bill and Lu built together, maybe Barry too, would be Klaus but he’s been missing - though I’m sure he was there for the very earliest inventing stages.

KB was a true AI, just a baby, fresh and just starting to learn
then Something Went Wrong with whatever Lu was doing, maybe a virus or an EMP

or…whatever

Castle Heterodyne is pretty much exactly as it is in canon, sentient building

tanoraqui
KB was dead, or at least code torn to pieces; the Castle was half-exploded and intelligence fractured, Lucrezia gone…

tanoraqui
unknown: Lucrezia had been developing the technology to transfer her own mind into the digiscape, /become/ an AI. Except the human mind isn’t quite configured for that, so what she needs is a pre-built AI with an empty personality that she can take over. So she builds Agatha on her own.

she’s also developed…nanotechnology? for wasps?

it’s not her voice they respond to, it’s a specific set of code, so she can use people remotely, or while entirely digital.

tanoraqui
obviously she also helped Aaronev and his knights out with their own AI development program, which was pretty much entirely secret (the Boys were public with KB)

tanoraqui
the Order is building AIs for world domination purposes, obviously. Two of them, semi-specialied to cover more ground cooperatively while also being easier to individually control. Tarvek is meant to handle information processing and dissemination, i.e. media manipulation

tanoraqui
Martellus is for controlling the physical things, the robot army they’re inevitably building and also whatever else he can hack - which is, unfortunately, a lot.

tanoraqui
as I said, they taught Tarvek to sound like a human by feeding him tons of romance novels - which are good apparently because they all have pretty much the same sort of scenes and plot, so the AI can see different ways to say the same thing. Learn nuance.

In that vein, someone at some point obviously threw in every Arthurian retelling as well - same story over and over, right?

tanoraqui
Martellus is much worse at passing the Turing Test than Tarvek is. Martellus was meant to interface with all the machines, Tarvek will all the humans.

tanoraqui
meanwhile, possibly on the lunar or martian colony, Klaus crash-lands at Zanta’s feet and they fall in love and build Gil and have Zeetha, and refer to them as “the twins” because they’re dorks

not sure why Klaus grabs Gil on like a really big flash drive and runs, but he obviously does

back to Earth - in chaos now, warring again, the Boys gone and the Castle in bloody disarray and everyone at each others throats
decides to Do Something

tanoraqui
it’s difficult to build a fully realistic android, so when Klaus sets up his program for skilled programmers, some are physically there but some telecommute, so Gil can participate - can get more practice talking to people, children his own age - without anyone thinking he’s anything but another student participating from, like, wherever.

tanoraqui
(Gil knows he’s Klaus’s creation from the beginning here, but he doesn’t remember Skifander for some reason. Maybe he was there too short a time, no one told him where he was. Maybe Klaus wiped it from his memory. Maybe he wasn’t woken up until Klaus got back to Earth? Like, they were planning to start Gil when Zeetha was born, but things went differently for whatever stupid reason Klaus had.)

but every now and then, Klaus accidentally mentions Zanta - he so totally calls her Gil’s mother; they were both doing that when Zanta was pregnant, talking about Gil like he was a “real” boy (he IS) and Zeetha’s brother

tanoraqui
anyway, also e-commuting is Tarvek Sturmvoraus, Aaronev’s son. Gil and Tarvek bond, of course, and recognize what each other really are

tanoraqui
then they get caught breaking through some firewall deep in Klaus’s system, and Gil guiltily gives Tarvek up (Gil knew he was supposed to be the only AI this good in the world, that it was something he should’ve told Klaus, but he was having so much /fun/ with Tarvek.) Klaus and Gil sweep Tarvek out of all the Wulfenbach systems, and Tarvek, hurt, doesn’t fight back.

tanoraqui
Klaus then proceeds to spend like a decade believing he and Aaronev (who must head some rival/subsidiary tech company) are in a stand-off “I know you know” situation where neither of them can quite blackmail the other over their AI sons because of course they both have one.

(and you’d better believe Klaus is lowkey raising Gil to take over the world. benevolently. responsibly. oh god GIl’s responsibility complex is just as bad in this, possibly worse than canon.)

the truth, of course, is that Tarvek never tells anyone about Gil.

not a damn soul.

tanoraqui
he doesn’t say Gil /exists/. because if he did that, they might ask more questions, and I’m sure there are people he can’t lie to. like, /can’t/, save by omission. lies by omission don’t count.

tanoraqui
meanwhile, Agatha

tanoraqui
Barry got her away from the Geisterdamen, built her a body - Agatha is a perfectly human android, because Klaus isn’t that good but Barry Heterodyne damn well is.

And, to keep her safe and hidden, he builds the locket, a program that inhibits…basically everything that isn’t human. She can feel, she can move, she can think, more or less. She can’t process properly, can barely read code, definitely can’t sense wireless signals or connect to any technology.

tanoraqui
Klaus announcing Gil to the world is something like “Hey so btw I have an AI son whom I’m setting up to take over the, you know, business. and world. Any objections?” *glares at world, daring anyone to object*

Gil, in new body that still doesn’t have the facial movements quite right: *waves awkwardly hello*

even odds on whether Tarvek can get through this without admitting that he’s known for like ten years

tanoraqui
(i’m dropping the time from canon because Paris just…doesn’t happen, I think. but Gil and Tarvek probably do meet online in that time, Martellus as well, just hanging out or trying to do things in the real world. You know Gil randomly helps people in his spare time.)

tanoraqui
(might not even be a decade. Another thing about Agatha’s locket: it prevents her from noticing that she doesn’t age. even Barry isn’t going to build an android that can realistically fake puberty.)

tanoraqui
(possibly out of mercy to Agatha)

tanoraqui
SO THEN Beetlesburg Happens, somehow; Gil notices that Agatha is an android when Klaus doesn’t, and refrains from telling him because idk Gil keeps doing that. He gets excited. he wants to make friends. (how extra infuriating is it to have your father ALWAYS be right when you’re literally a supercomputer and he’s “just” human.)

(Gil probably has a mild Pinocchio complex to boot)

Gil takes Agatha racing through the Wulfenbach mainframe and it’s AMAZING
and the INTERNET. She didn’t know the internet was like this.

Klaus, needless to say, reacts Poorly

tanoraqui
Adam and Lilith are cyborgs

so, as alluded to, are all the jagers

they’ve ben around for centuries

tanoraqui
with Anevka what happened is…I’m not actually sure why whatever Aaronev was doing for Lu would involve killing live women, because Lu meant to take over /Agatha/, but maybe there was some sort of tragic miscommunication? Or I need to figure out more of exactly what Lu had planned?

something went wrong and Anevka’s brain and body ended up very fried and Tarvek reconstructed both of them as best he could but he really just ended up making an AI version of Anevka

constancecomment
Anevka was always a doll

like she was the third part of the experiment: an AI wedded to a doll from the beginning

the idea was, after the loss of Agatha, that they’d need a body that was /built/ to be and look human so Lu could have it both ways

or that it could be a shell she could pilot should she need a body
and then of course Lu disappears

constancecomment
and well, they’ve got a perfectly good AI…

so they let her keep running, and she figures she’s safe, or safe enough, if she’s useful, but she’s absolutely shackled to her shell, the same way that Tarvek never /had/ a shell to begin with

so the two of them were sort of fundamentally opposed on that, wanting what the other had, but they were /siblings/ and they cared, like, enough

better than Martellus tbh

anyway

Aaronev finds a very old piece of Lu’s upload code

from way back in the day, her first attempts

and he tries it on cyborg after cyborg, killing hundreds of augmented young women who likely had their minds replaced with hardrives, and those drives absolutely fried in the uploading process

and then he turns to Anevka

who they’d /built/ for this

constancecomment
never assuming that something was wrong on his mistress’s end, that it was /her work/ that was flawed, not his

and he basically snaps Anevka in half

because it doesn’t matter how flawless her setup is, she’s got her own personality by this point, and a /damn strong/ one

but the whole trick sort of lobotomizes her

in the aftermath, the best Tarvek can do is try to boot an old drive of hers, but it’s, something’s just /wrong/ with the new version

she’s still stuck in that body only now it’s actively failing and it needs to be plugged into a power source /all the time/ and Tarvek had to walk Vi and the fabricator bots through the whole process and this was just wrecking him
but he needed his dad to stay stable for a little while longer

so the puppet wakes up, and the puppet walks around, and they all have to pretend she’s what she was, when really, she’s just a very smart program that on its good days can pass a turing test, but isn’t anywhere close to true AI

it’s not Anevka. it’s not quite aware, doesn’t quite have will. just has a series of pre-programmed responses that can adapt to limited stimulus

Chapter Text

tanoraqui
oh yeah, thing I forgot: Gil is backed up, like, EVERYWHERE, because Klaus is a worrywart, so Gil is waaay too casual about flinging himself into danger.

particularly his physical body (which he definitely had for a while before they went public, so he could get used to using it

constancecomment
also I’m so happy about Tarvek being the one with no body for a good chunk of the plot at least

tanoraqui
i think they must’ve given him a body once Gil got one

constancecomment
idk, I like the idea of him stumbling around in a body for the first time during Mechanicsburg

tanoraqui
it’s just practical aesthetics. important visual. if you’re going to take over the world, people like to have someone to look at. it reassures them.

he’s definitely not used to it

constancecomment
Vi smuggled him out in a fractured drive
but Tarvek wasn’t super public at that point? the idea was to launch the Storm King plan, so it didn’t matter, moving lockstep with Gil

they were probably only going to give a body to one of the boys, anyway
see which of them preformed best in public and then haul that one on the world stage

which, again, is hilarious

constancecomment
because that means Martellus gets so severly underestimated in a /new body/

one that’s built to be, ooh, intimidating, ~manly

tanoraqui
the Si Vales Valeo is like entirely a digital experience. the three of them basically plug into each other and freeze, sometimes shake maybe, and the (human, etc.) rest of the cast is just dealing with shit around them

constancecomment
where Tarvek’s all reassuringly built, but not as beefy

tanoraqui
while the OT3 have a whole Experience

probably the Castle fights them digitally and the people guarding them physically

tanoraqui
the fixing of the Castle is also less impressive. Some tools, sure, for physical rebuilding, but it’s also Agatha going around to random points and plugging herself in and basically arguing with it.

silently and at the speed of electricity

unfortunate technician Moloch: *checks his watch. stares into space*

*taps his foot*

constancecomment
this is all well and good but MARTELLUS WITH ALL THE GRACE OF A DRUNKEN BEAR UNTIL HE LEAVES A KNIFE IN THE MIDDLE OF TARVEK’S NICE SHINY NEW POWER SOURCE

and, further:

tanoraqui
oh yeah that is important

constancecomment
Tarvek in a bedsheet falling out of the rafters like a drunk idiot because coordination is so hard you guys you’re all lucky he landed on the tiger he was aiming at

tanoraqui
no, Martellus isn’t /that/ bad because his primary purpose is controlling physical things. he may not have much practice with this particular body, and being /in/ the thing, but he’s still pretty good

/snicker

constancecomment
right, but they underestimated him because he’s had this body, what, two days? if Tarvek only just got his?

fun thought: Tarvek got his body as a gift from Lu, possibly

or that’s how it was intended

and then he steals it on the way out of Sturmhalten

constancecomment
hence ending up flailing around like someone with no inner ears in Mechanicsburg

the SVV is basically a shortcut to get him functioning correctly in the new body tbh

the one he got was flawed, a bit busted, not totally smoothed over for his coding

tanoraqui
worrying: Martellus hacking Agatha while she’s, for lack of a better word, unconscious, so she needs to be in near-constant exposure to a short-range signal he puts out or she’ll shut down

constancecomment
yeah

tanoraqui
Agatha responds by cyborgifying her weasel

also the SVV because someone got a virus in Tarvek while he was in the…it’s hilarious that they’d take him to the hospital but that is definitely what happens, yes.

and it’s just tearing him up from the inside

constancecomment
he looks like a human now!

he looks like a human who looks like Aaronev!!

constancecomment
obviously the right move

he’s just another injured family member

tanoraqui
no, i think they can tell he’s an android?

it’s just like. where else do we put him

well he’s unconscious so…convenient bed with shackles?

good plan.

constancecomment
lmaooo

tanoraqui
they plan to transfer him to Castle Wulfenbach for study but they aren’t going to give him access to any sort of system until someone with more authority and capability is here to handle him

so they just like, strap him to a bed, very firmly turn off the wifi in the room, and hope that works

the Mechanicsburg hospital, which is a premier hospital in cybernetic implants and augmentations, definitely has the ability to turn off all wireless networks in each single room without affecting any other

constancecomment
and then Vi busts in, mostly human Vi, and she swears up a storm as she carts his dumb be-virused ass out of the hospital

vi has like, nice new reflexes, and some nice new eyes

and some blades in places what where there should not be blades

but mostly she looks human

tanoraqui
Tarvek edited some records to keep her from getting wasped

constancecomment
also smoke knights are modded as children

which is terrifying

constancecomment
yo, further:

tanoraqui
Vi, because she was young, was assigned to just talk to Tarvek a lot when he was still developing. Like, Tarvek learned how to talk partly from Vi.

constancecomment
the SVV is, basically, using 3 sets of source code to fix 3 sets of source code

constancecomment
they all come out a little more mixed than they went in

tanoraqui
but Vi was like five?

they have some weird speech pattern in-jokes as a result

constancecomment
“you’re stupid” “no You’re stupid!!”

almost certainly, yes

also passphrases they came up with when they were six based on memes

tanoraqui
oh god

yes

constancecomment
and like, whatever Vi was watching on tv that week when she was allowed to watch tv

tanoraqui
though also Vi is sort of more a handler than in canon?

it’s not like Tarvek needs guards. Vi is…she’s sort of an emotional/human touchstone, meant to keep him on track with the family’s interests. Seffie does the same for Martellus, though she’s not a Smoke Knight. (Seffie’s better at her job,but that doesn’t mean there’s any less genuine affection)

they don’t have any actual authority over the things their AIs do, though maybe a very limited override code each to stop them from doing something that wouldn’t be Approved of.

tanoraqui
oh, speaking, unfortunately, of overrides: someone needs to inform Klaus that gaining consent by threatening to blast someone’s girlfriend (and, actually, boyfriend) and Castle with a massive EMP does not, in fact, /count as gaining consent/

tanoraqui
i mean for fuck’s sake

thing is, i’m sure Klaus does have some brute force override passphrase for Gil, but this is going to get complicated and long-term so he needs Gil to go along with it too.

constancecomment
FOR FUCKING REAL

also Gil alone for 2.5 years is hurting me now because that’s SO MUCH TIME and he’s been OVERCLOCKED TO ALL HELL, even for an AI

also they pull Tarvek out and he almost immediately goes into an immediate reboot for safety because SOMETHING WEIRD HAPPENED SO YOUR HARDWARE IS DOING A MICROSOFT FIX

and he literally passes out midsentence

and Gil’s like

really

really.

for fuck’s sake

tanoraqui
Klaus doesn’t freeze time so much as freeze the function of the Castle and everything connected to it, which is, unfortunately, all of Mechanicsburg and a considerable portion of the citizenry

tanoraqui
and anything that tries to connect will also get frozen

(Gil comes so close like twenty times a day to just saying “fuck it” and trying to blaze in anyway.)

constancecomment
Gil honey, no

it’s so clearly and patently dangerous

and he just

keeps

nearly touching it

like a moth and a flame

because the /sun/ is in there

he /knows/ it is

tanoraqui
aw

Gil honey

constancecomment
(nothing that bright could be anything but and he /misses them/)

constancecomment
okay also Agatha vs. being a being of light

and having SO MUCH GODDAMN FUN being a robot

like holy shit this is amazing

constancecomment
okay so the SVV

they’re patching holes with each other’s code

because, well, they spread that virus around a little because closed systems

constancecomment
and now they’ve all got problems, good going geniuses

and they get out of there with bits of each other borrowed, pasted on
probably the sort of thing that’s hard to notice in meat space

but it’s stuff like Agatha hitting Martellus with the flat of the blade because that’s such a /Gil/ thing to do, using a weapon as something other than a weapon. or a weapon as some other kind of weapon

it’s stuff like Gil using Tarvek’s same routing directory style when he makes connection trees and PR plans

yanno, the map that tells him who people are and why they matter and what they do and how he leans on them

and all of that in a map for each other, too

he uses Tarvek’s filing system for that, because it’s just easier

tanoraqui
Tarvek’s filing system for that is also /fantastic/

constancecomment
and then he mods the shit out of it and tends not to think about “what makes this person important” in the same way Tarvek does

tanoraqui
like, better than Gil’s

Gil has to grudgingly admit this

constancecomment
Tarvek was built to make that map tbh

and then Gil gets a blank copy

and spends 2 years figuring it out

and trying to figure out how all the fucking metaphorical levers work

seriously this thing is arcane

what

that’s on the list of things Gil intends to get Tarvek to explain once they pull him out

constancecomment
how the fuck do you DRIVE this thing because Gil’s been working on it for literal years and he had a blank copy and he still doesn’t understand what all the moving pieces are

tanoraqui
part of the reason it’s so difficult is that Tarvek deliberately kept it arcane and idiosyncratic, so no one else /could/ use it

constancecomment
I’d believe this, yes

also if he ever gets a good look at Gil’s copy he might scream because holy shit he mangled it

tanoraqui
the knowledge of how to use his system is embedded deep in the parts of him that are /him/

constancecomment
it’s like using a nuke to make toast

tanoraqui
if they ever try to scrap his personality, basically, they’ll lose a /lot/

constancecomment
the only reason Gil can even use his blank copy, even poorly, is because he’s got bits of Tarvek floating around in his source code now
enough to intuit it without knowing that’s quite what he’s doing

tanoraqui
yeah

constancecomment
I don’t think they all understand how badly they got smeared on each other’s systems

tanoraqui
plus there’s definitely one or two bits that run on in-jokes he and Tarvek had when they were kids

constancecomment
Tarvek, honey

tanoraqui
that are like

the clumsiest pieces of code

i mean, from a supercomputer perspective

constancecomment
but yeah Gil finds a function in there that’s a tag to denote whether people are assholes, and it’s just labeled GREASE

and serves no function other than denoting who’s an asshole

tanoraqui
they were young, they’d never met anyone as smart as them, they were trying to /impress/ each other

constancecomment
and Gil’s like. really. this is in here. why do you need this

tanoraqui
they got so stupidly elaborate sometimes

constancecomment
there’s also a rube goldberg function that uses the GREASE function and whatever else is in the algorithm to determine the correct way to humiliate someone

tanoraqui
at some point Gil finds himself doing the same sort of thing to show off to Agatha

and he’s like, okay. okay maybe gotta calm down and take stock here.

constancecomment
labeled FISHING POLE

or possibly just BAIT, with an old-timey bait meme image instead of a name

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/990/724/317.png

tanoraqui
ha

constancecomment
Gil is weirdly touched by all of this

tanoraqui
there’s stuff based on inside jokes with Vi, too

tanoraqui
and Anevka

and random Arthurian references

constancecomment
Gil’s blank copy is basically a tricked out 5 dimensional spreadsheet with all the functions left in and no guide to explain how it works

the best he can do is try to intuit based on what he knows about Tarvek, and what he doesn’t know he borrowed from Tarvek during the SVV

no one else other than him or Agatha would have any hope of making that thing work even a little

tanoraqui
sometimes even stuff from Martellus and Seffie, because honestly there must’ve been /some/ decent times. every now and then, when the moon was blue

constancecomment
and the two of them both don’t have full pictures, either

Martellus’s shit is still indexed, in Tarvek’s copy, under Tweedle

tanoraqui
ha

constancecomment
once Agatha starts trying to fill her blank copy (not that she has much of a reason to really fuck with it until Paris) she also indexes him under Tweedle

tanoraqui
Gil is spread so thin these years, trying to keep everything int he world under control

constancecomment
Gil hardly spends any time in his body

he’s out of practice at it

tanoraqui
he hasn’t rested nearly the entire time. even AIs need down time, to process, reconfigure. It’s been over two years

constancecomment
he needs to have a chance to defrag so badly

tanoraqui
plus he’s got that ride-along copy of Klaus, which just…helps nothing

constancecomment
it’s more of a minder program tbh

like a new directory Klaus slapped together that, accordingly, sounds a hell of a lot like himself

more like a hologram message than a real thing

doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have goddamn opinions

tanoraqui
nah, i’m thinking it’s a digital version of Klaus - not uploaded like Lu is to Agatha, but built based on the like 20 years of observation by Gil. a program predicting what Klaus would do in any given circumstances. Gil wrote it himself, under semi-consented-to orders when Klaus threatened Agatha and Mechanicsburg,

it’s pretty much like for Klaus what the rebooted Anevka was for her original self.

constancecomment
gah

so semi-sentient, but also /off/, somehow

tanoraqui
and it’s stuck in Gil’s central action-taking system, inhibiting and directing

constancecomment
so basically it’s a new routing system

it signs off on all his decisions and modifies is necessary

tanoraqui
yeah

pretty much

constancecomment
like Gil makes all his own choices, and then the router makes /its/ choices based on that and the router gets precedence

constancecomment
mostly it modifies

but it can decide NO NOPE NEW PLAN

if it thinks Gil is fucking up

like Agatha showing up on the scene

tanoraqui
Gil doesn’t know Klaus added a feature that will completely override his control,, of everything, if Gil himself is threatened

constancecomment
this thing being place is also part of why he hasn’t de-fragged; he’s scared the defrag will smooth it out into his system proper instead of keeping it in a separate directory

tanoraqui
yeah

constancecomment
if he goes all the way into shutdown the way he needs to in order to process the SVV and just being alive, he’d also end up processing the new router

he’d have no idea where it started and he ended if he let it get all the way worked in

so like FUCK is Gil going into hard shutdown

constancecomment
this is also related to why Agatha passes out on the train:

and why Tarvek passes out once out of the field:

tanoraqui
the Klaus router does not, of course, recognize “hasn’t defrayed or even taken ANY sort of break in two and a half years” as “danger to Gil”

constancecomment
the SVV did a number on all 3 of them

in that some things still need to be smoothed in

not as bad as it could be, but still

it needed to get dealt with

and then Gil. didn’t.

the SVV isn’t hurting him /now/

but it’s just another thing that’s got the router going !!!!

constancecomment
because that is /conspicuously/ foreign code

tanoraqui
it's…good maybe, in terms of Gil remaining independent (though actually it might /not/ combine; Klaus did not mean this to be permanent). but also, like, Klaus, if you’re going to remove your son’s autonomy in order to keep him safe, could you at least look out for his health as well?

the answer, of course, is that Klaus regularly does the exact same thing

huh, i bet part of Klaus’s terrifying reputation in the early days was due to the fact that, at the start of the Empire, he probably barely slept for like three years

tanoraqui
Gil stumbles back into a physical body to go meet Agatha when they find out where she is

tanoraqui
no actually i guess they didn’t know she was out - that Martellus had pulled her away, miles away, highspeed super data transfer, before Klaus froze it all.

(which he did by basically infecting himself with this freeze program but on delay, so it wouldn’t hit until he was there.)

Agatha’s body is still there, frozen.

Martellus lands them both in new bodies at Refuge of the Storms

tanoraqui
Mechanicsburg is like a tableau. Everything is just frozen in place. Agatha is in the vaults, glaring at Martellus, reaching up to pull his hand away from her port. His other hand is on a panel, a portal of sorts to send them shooting away. The freeze hit it just as they were moving, caught them teetering on the edge of freedom. It’ll break in a couple years.

tanoraqui
Tarvek is back, a knife in his chest, half out of his body reaching for Agatha

tanoraqui
Gil walks through them, bushes his arm (somewhere with no access points) against theirs (somewhere also with no access points. The slightest bit of digital contact…)

his father doesn’t let him linger long, particularly not with Agatha

tanoraqui
he only walks through once, maybe twice, before it’s time to pull them out. Pull Tarvek out - Klaus’s program would never permit Agatha, not until everything else in the world is managed (and Gil is /trying/; he is trying so hard.)

tanoraqui
there’s a lot of time in between there, from the first time he goes in to see them frozen and when his people finally figure out how push the virus out of an individual system. it’s not Klaus keeping him out - he just has too much to do.

constancecomment
my computer son

tanoraqui
Gil’s android body though, oh no, it’s such a labor of love for Klaus. I mean, it looks like what Klaus always daydreams a son of his and Zanta’s would look like. when Gil finally makes it to Skifander it basically smacks Zanta in the chest just to se him because she doesn’t need to /ask/, she knows instantly who he must be, and just the fact that he looks how he looks is proof that Klaus never stopped missing her and Zeetha.

tanoraqui
Bang is…ooh, Bang is a terrifying pirate lady with a knack for writing viruses

(Tarvek l o a t h e s her)

Klaus hired her to basically help Gil get ahang of his body, years ago.

not because she had any experience - you’re going to want a Mechanicsburger for that. but she was convenient, and she doesn’t have any cybernetic enhancements, so when she teaches Gil to fight, he learns all the purely automotive stuff.

constancecomment
back to wailing about Agatha for a second, and the AIU

she’s gone through a shitload of different bodies

she gets a new one for the circus, leaves the one Barry shackled her in in a nameless grave with some poor cyborg’s glasses and Gil’s ring

she gets a new one in Sturmhalten, because Lucrezia wanted something that was /hers/

she gets a new one in Mechanicsburg, because LIKE FUCK is she staying in that old one, hell no, never, no.

constancecomment
and then she gets a new one coming out of the portal, prepared by Martellus’s people, physical backdoors all open made to look pretty and harmless and probably a lot like Zola if that plan ever went sideways

Agatha goes through /a lot of bodies/

which has to be weird, but freeing, for someone who spent so much of her life in just one

except, it’s hardly ever at her own choice, that she gets to switch

so far she’s only made her own choice ONCE, and in Mechanicsburg, where everything was hers to choose from

tanoraqui
the Mechanicsburg body is the best after her first one. or rather, it’s just as good, quality-wise, but it’s less human, which isn’t a thing Agatha is complaining about

constancecomment
Agatha’s mechanicsburg body looks like a weapon

it’s literally just an empty battlebot, an old prototype, but exceptionally well made

it was intended to be remote controlled, and she liked it
someday she’s going to custom build something for herself

constancecomment
but right no she can’t quite find the time

tanoraqui
i love that the Sturmvarious clan probably spend like 20 years trying to build a really human-like android body, and Klaus does the same for Gil, and meanwhile/previously Barry over here just whipped a perfect one up in like a few months

tanoraqui
but this is what Heterodynes DO. This is what Mechanicsburg is /known/ for, humanoid cybernetics.

Bill and Barry made Adam and Lilith when they were like 12 and 10.

Chapter Text

tanoraqui
We need to talk about the AI au more, because people like it and because it captures beautiful things about Girl Genius and the OT3’s parallel journeys away from their families and what they’re “supposed” to be and do

I mean? It’s so good? Making literal how they’re /made/ for things - except Gil actually, but then, he was raised for the thing so that’s close edamnnough

tanoraqui
But I’m not sure I actually have many more thoughts. I just love it all conceptually

Zola is a programmer and hacker (same difference really), VERY good

tanoraqui
She’s not joking when she says “You’ll be a model Storm King when I’m done wth you.” She probably could pull it off. She’s dangerous, brain half cybernetic herself.

tanoraqui
Heh, when Gil plugs into Tarvek to try to debug him, and the virus spreads immediately and Gil’s like /oomph/, ouch. Agatha’s supposed to flush them both out from the Castle, which has firewalls good enough to keep this thing out even when it’s half-shattered

But then the power goes out

tanoraqui
So she has to drag them down to the batteries or whatever in the basement, and as soon as they stand up, Tarvek is all but falling over. Agatha’s like, oh no, he’s worse than I thought!

tanoraqui
Vi’s like, no, no, he was like that on the way - oh I guess he was sick then too. Um.

tanoraqui
“’M fine. Bodies are /hard/” Tarvek slurs

tanoraqui
“Wait, is this your first time corporeal?” demands Gil (like he isn’t tripping himself - but that is the virus, not his own coordination or lack thereof)

tanoraqui
“No!” says Tarvek, indignant.

“Yes, I- Lu- he got that at Sturmahlten” says Agatha

tanoraqui
“Technically he’s had afternoons before,” supplies Vi. “But not a lot. They’ve been building this” *gestures to Tarvek’s android shell*

tanoraqui
“For god’s sake,” says Gil, holding him up (okay leaning on a wall also). “I’m patching you some code. Integrate it.”

tanoraqui
Except it’s not quite code, at the level the three of them work. Oh sure it is, down below, but it might as well be memory - hesitant first steps in a shorter body (lower center of gravity; trial run) under his father’s watchful, judging stare.

Training wth Bang, dodging her swing and sliding under the followup, one leg bent one extended, popping up again and spinning to hit her from behind. Just strolling through the corridors of Wulfenbach HQ, the last few months when he’s allowed to be seen. Walking the halls, taking stairs one or two at a time depending on mood, Waving to people

It’s different code of course, different systems, but Tarvek manages to patch it in and find his feet

constancecomment
oh noooooo

that’s adorable

my drunk computer son

constancecomment
and my other computer son

ALSO

the theme of villains being scary into people for their brains/objectifying them for their brains: that’s still a thing

Lucrezia, ultimately, wants to be better/faster/immortal, so when she admires Klaus for his intelligence, his response times– she’s looking at him and admiring the parts of him that aren’t human, because lbr, Klaus is mostly machine, at this point in his life

basically Lu continues to terrify me

and in the same vein, Martellus gets nasty about Agatha’s code, how shiny and pristine it is, and by god, the horsepower

he says, trying to hack straight through all her firewalls, just, yanno, idly

and then more concertedly, once she’s passed out and he passes on the touch of the king, and all that

constancecomment
of course this is when Agatha basically fries her own (new, courtesy of the Order) short circuiting something she /really/ shouldn’t have been able to in order to hit Martellus with enough electricity to take him offline for awhile

she HATES this new body, it’s gross

constancecomment
it’s– actually now that she’s looking she can see the construction similarities both to Tarvek’s shell, and a bit to Anevka’s

they were going to have built a Heterodyne Girl if the Lady never panned out, or if Zola didn’t

or if they were just going to walk it around like a puppet, make Tarvek have conversations with himself, or, hell, have Tarvek play public image versus/with Martellus, which now that I’ve thought of it makes me extremely uncomfortable
anyway that’s where the Order put Agatha

so I’m imagining she swaps bodies again in Paris, something ornate, kind of like a doll, probably not meant to house a full AI

because again, there’s like, 4 of those in Europa right now, there just aren’t a lot of good shells

Agatha’s been scraping by and making hers out of spare parts, and I bet she does the same in Paris, probably at Colette’s place. Hell, that’s what she does when Zeetha and Vi are sleeping

which means she runs into Gil in the train abbey with the Order shell on, and that means Lu gets to walk around in it for awhile

tanoraqui
Tbqh, entirely animate his own Hererodyne Girl robot is probably something Tarvek would do without an iota of shame

constancecomment
yeah he absolutely would. he’s just sort of shit at running his own body right now,

I wonder if he’d be able to do two

constancecomment
Martellus might be able to pull it off? sort of? he’d be able to multitask the physical aspects of two bodies at once

tanoraqui
It’d actually be much more comfortable than using someone else animate. If it’s just a shell

constancecomment
Martellus could move the shell around but GOOD FUCKING LUCK getting that to look natural or sound human

tanoraqui
Tarvek now probably couldn’t pull it off, but he’d learn

constancecomment
yeah, he would learn

I wonder if he built it

tanoraqui
Yeah, Martellus could do the physical but not the conversation

Not yet I think. But he had plans

constancecomment
haha, yeah, that’s a funny image (and by funny I mean kinda painful):

Martellus tells Agatha that Tarvek built the body she’s wearing in the same breath

he tells her that Tarvek is dead

constancecomment
it was, according to Martellus, basically the last useful thing he ever did

it’s a shame Martellus had to break it

the body, and well, his cousin

but yanno, eggs, omelets

empires, rivals for the throne, etc, etc

this is about when Agatha breaks the body further to hit him with most of her internal power source output as raw electricity

touch of the queen, and all that

tanoraqui
Fuckin’ roast him, girl

Literally

tanoraqui
Martellus admits he isn’t that good at pretending to be human- not that they NEED to be, being clearly superior. But it does put people at ease, so she’ll be useful for that, he concedes

tanoraqui
Later maybe he’ll let her teach him a little, once he can trust her not to just send him a virus

That’s when she electrocutes him

constancecomment
that’s my girl

okay back again with Gil

because obv his dad decided part of the “having a body” experience means “learning how to kill people with that body”

okay, more accurately it was “Gil needs to know how to protect himself when in his shell”

but like, to Klaus, part of the “being alive” experience, according to his own track record, involves a lot of trying not to die in combat

a lot of people try to kill klaus

anyway

this means Gil is learning how to walk around the same time that DuPree gets handed a destabilized AI and told “yeah teach him to fight”

constancecomment
Gil is pretty sure, at this point, that being ready to snap into having a defensive stance at /any time/ is just part of having a body

Tarvek’s experiences don’t really dispute this

Agatha’s do

a lot

so much of the ways the boys interact with their bodies is so alien to Agatha

I mean, she bodysurfs the most, but she’s also the one who’s spent the most time in one

and got shackled; she’s used to being /human/ and nothing more

when she thinks of herself, when she visualizes what she is, or what she looks like, she still thinks of the shell Barry gave her

someday she’s gonna build a nice body that’s all hers and really take her time on it, but until then, she’s a little bit every shell she’s ever stayed in

constancecomment
Agatha is, technically, a being of pure light

constancecomment
in the AIU, because i’m still stuck on this

but, unlike the boys, she’s never had a dedicated server to fuck around in

she’s /always/ had a body

similarly to Anevka, actually; except Anevka was built to be intrinsic to her body and inseparable from it, and Agatha was put in her body so soon after she was created/became sapient that it might as well have been at the same time

because when Barry found her she was only just starting to scrape together into something that was sentient, that could think for itself and not just spit out results based on programming, but something that could have inclinations, and so on

and then he built her a body

and Agatha grew up in that body, or rather, she never remembered anything else

the timeline in this whole AU is dilated to a much shorter span of time, to be honest

because Barry didn’t just shackle Agatha; he gave her a shell that had failsafes in it

failsafes that stopped her from accessing her whole inbuilt processing power, as the body just lacked the hardware to let her run at full speed, and then inhibited her if she tried anyway

constancecomment
failsafes that wiped or altered her memory, every now and again

she doesn’t remember Lucrezia building her

she doesn’t remember Barry finding her, or the Geister wherever burning down

she only vaguely remembers Barry being around at all, as a part of her “childhood,” when she must’ve been smaller (right?)

Agatha thinks she’s a normal 18 year old human girl who’s always been like this, but that’s wrong, it’s /so/ wrong

I don’t know how long it’s really been, but she’s been in that body her whole life, and the whole thing’s a locket

further, there’s never really a point in canon where Agatha’s out of her body (any body) for an extended period of time except Mechanicsburg during the SVV

and even then, that’s not a blank system made for her, that’s Agatha sharing space with the Castle

which is, of course, enormous, frightening, cavernous. how do you think of a mind like a building like a mouth? she feels like she’s walked into the jaws of the leviathan, and then she decides, no, she’s going to /live there/

but Agatha, unlike the boys, has never had a dedicated personal server to hold her consciousness in

constancecomment
Gil’s got basically all of CW and most of (if not all of) the Wulfenbach communications network and hardware systems to fuck around in, plus a dedicated server that Klaus built him back in the day and is as constantly improved on as Gil’s shell

Tarvek never even had a body until Sturmhalten, so he’d been /just/ the server, spread out into basically the whole internet, at that point, slipping through backdoors until he could see what must’ve felt like everything

but Agatha’s always been body first

the boys probably still think of themselves as minds piloting a body, when they’re in one

but Agatha still thinks of herself as a person who happens to be able to leave her body

or to make any suitable shell hers

her approach to software, too, is different than either the boys, or human programmers

since she got severely inhibited while investigating just about any sufficiently difficult intellectual pursuit, and I’m going to say any programming/coding over basic html made her head ache and her eyes cloud, consciousness slipping as that first shell applied the breaks

so Agatha, unlike a human programmer, isn’t versed in code so much

and unlike every other AI (Martellus coming to mind immediately) when she hacks, she doesn’t do so by breaking through firewalls by computational force, or just finessing her way through them (Tarvek)

constancecomment
Agatha has an entirely new approach to software problems that almost looks like magic, because she’s not using any playbook that anyone else has ever seen

if she thinks she should be able to do something, she’s usually able to find a way, because she has no idea that she shouldn’t be able to

and I think she’s never going to entirely get to the point where she’s okay with not having a body at all

she still thinks of herself as, if not human, then as something that is corporeal, as something that’s not just a string of processes and a mind

like idk her internal view of herself is so different from the other AIs, and that really interests me

constancecomment
not sure if I can fully articulate what I mean on that one

tanoraqui
no no i think i get it

and love it so much

tanoraqui
and i definitely like to think that a lot of the computation is going on at the level where it’s almost virtual reality, like, there’s sort of a digiscape on which they build? actual literal code is for /wimps/. sure, you need to learn it first, the most basic building blocks

but technology is at a  point where if you’re good enough, you can sort of put on a helmet-type thing and it’s sort of like a landscape.

tanoraqui
mostly i like this because it’s easier and more fun to write, seeing as i don’t know coding but I do love metaphors about how people think

Chapter Text

tanoraqui
1. I really love the acronym title 'GG AI AU'

2. This one is actually entirely me because @constancecomment was either sleeping like a normal person or studying like a productive and responsible person. (I’m not sure because I am none of these.)

tanoraqui
back to Gil and Bang for a moment though, because i so dearly love them: Bang is 100% human. Well, she’s had some joints and bones and nerves  and really something of everything replaced with metal equivalents over hte years, to combat injury, but nothing computational. nothing big enough that she’s needed it to process serious nerve pulses.

this is partly an indication that she is in fact /that good/ in a fight

but also she’s sorta scornful of that stuff. like, she’s human and she’s badass, she doesn’t need any of that stuff. she’ll kick your cyborg ass.

tanoraqui
a lot of casual civilians get just a bit ‘borged just because it’s useful, because you can connect to the net faster, or see farther, grip harder, etc.

tanoraqui
note that Othar is also pure human, with even fewer parts replaced than Bang - none, possibly, not even a busted knee that had to be redone with ceramic and steel. his campaign is the destruction of all artificial intelligence and cybernetically enhanced people/

he kindly doesn’t much) blame ALL civilians who get the stuff; he just believes they’ve been duped

and led astray

he’s like a really aggressive Luddite, basically

actually, wait, the Luddites blew shit up. He’s a normal Luddite.

tanoraqui
Bang though. Bang’s sorta like “psh” at people but mostly she’ll take all sorts because she doesn’t really care. She’s doing her thing, which happens to be piracy but whatever.

tanoraqui
Then the piracy…doesn’t pan out, and Klaus takes her on (very much in secret) to teach Gil to fight. Well, and move, but mostly by fighting. He can walk around; now it’s time to throw him into the deep end

i really do think everything in this au moves much faster than canon? It just takes the kids a shorter amount of time to get to the level of ability and power

it’s still a few years, but it’s maybe half the time

tanoraqui
Bang’s first response when Klaus (having not told her much of anything) introduces her to Gil, is, “You want me to teach a coputer how to fight?”

in the somewhat sarcastic tone of one who, frankly, doesn’t think “true” AI is anything but a fairy tale

tanoraqui
oh gosh, it’s always a test for Gil isn’t it. learn how to move like these wires and gears are your own flesh and blood, but twice as fast and strong, and convince this woman that you are a real person, because you’ll need to do that. or rather, you don’t, but you need to decide whether or not you’re going to try

(of course he’s going to try. Gil, as mentioned, has a bit of a pinocchio complex. he wants to be a Real Boy._

(In fairness, Klaus never treats him as anything but a real person. that is certainly more than I can say for Tarvek’s family.)

(not that THEY’RE a standard to use for anything)

tanoraqui
on the other hand, Bang I think teaches Gil some valuable lessons about relaxing and having fun

“Yeah, come on, we’re sneaking out of this place and breaking into a bank. And getting ice cream on the way back.”

tanoraqui
“What? I’m not supposed to-”

“You’ve got to get out at some point, kid. Think of it as a test of your sneakiness. Still not supposed to be seen, right?”

“Oh- okay.”

“No hijacking the cameras either. It’s a test! Now get moving, the guards’ shifts change in thirty minutes and we have to get across town!”

“Oh, so we can slip past while they switch guards?”

“Nah, so we can shoot them all at once!”

tanoraqui
Gil is Not Sure he should be participating in this - in fact, he’s almost entirely certain he shouldn’t. But hey, he can hack and edit the camera feeds if he /needs/ to, and he doesn’t actually think they CAN’T slip past or knock out anyone who gets in their way. And his father can’t chastise him if it was /DuPree’s/ idea. A /test/. Father loves tests.

tanoraqui
(they have so much fun. Gil stops Bang from shooting the security guards for fun, and learns that ice cream /does/ taste better in a cone bought from a shop. well, stolen from a shop, at like 2am. But Gil transferred a couple dollars to the owner’s online checking account, because he felt bad. Despite, like, carrying a bag of stolen cash at the time. they’re going to give that back

*most of that back

…in a couple days

no, no, tomorrow

Bang’s gonna be so put-out

tanoraqui
she didn’t even KILL anyone, god Gil, let her keep the cash

couple years on and Bang would probably shoot someone in the head if they said Gil wasn't a real person

THIS FRIENDSHIP IS IMPORTANT TO ME

i’m gonna segue smoothly into rambling about Agatha and Zeetha and Vi and Tarvek, but first actually, on Gil:

the scene before the Mechanicsburg gates goes differently. yes, there are still gates; it’s physically a walled city as well as having, via the Castle, the literal finest firewalls in the world.

like, the reason jagers can’t be wasped - “bugged” i think we should say in this au - is that their software is completely EVERYTHING-proof

and the only one who can control it is /them/. there are no overrides built into jäger cyborgs. NONE, not even for the Heterodyne

tanoraqui
okay maybe in case of like medical emergency or malfunction there’s some line of universal code to just stop the hardware, freeze it. in case someone’s gun glitches and goes crazy, or things are broken and idk. there’s something

but it’s not control. it’s just a very basic precaution. an off-switch that isnt’ physical because what sort of idiot puts a physical off-switch on their cybersupersoldiers. that’s probably on the Evil Overlord List

every jager has their own personal passcode for getting through their firewalls to edit the code in their systems, and they never give it to anyone but a Heterodyne

tanoraqui
off-topic. I was gonna say: there’s a different mythos in this world about what’s intimidating, what’s scary and dominant. this isn’t a world for bellowing and blasting to make an impression

tanoraqui
well, a little. When Gil says “Time’s up,” he slashes down his raised hand and every wall-mounted laser he’s gotten working in the last couple hours fires at once, reducing hte first mech to ash

no wait they do the classic mega death ray thing where multiple smaller beams shoot towards the middle where they combine to a giant beam that blasts out,

yeah. that.

tanoraqui
but Gil isn’t glaring and posing dramatically. or rather, he is posing, but it’s very simple. standing straight, looking forward coldly

tanoraqui
Gil inhabits his body nearly as well as Agatha does, maybe even /as/ well, but she moves like she’s human and he doesn’t. There’s a little more glide, a little less of the casual extra movement that humans get up to. He can fake it if he needs to, but he generally doesn’t. There’s a little more hint of the potential to burst into higher speed, greater strength, at any moment. It’s wrong to say he moves like a predator, but it can raise hackles the same way. And his face doesn’t always move quite right, and sometimes (like now) he can flip a subroutine and keep it absolutely deadpan

tanoraqui
in a world with AIs, with centuries of cyborg supersoldiers and pure droids fighting sometimes for and sometimes against humans, scary isn’t bluster. Scary is advanced, emotionless and superior.

tanoraqui
(though, leaning over the edge of the wall, Agatha shouts, “Gil!” and almost, /almost/ sends him a priority message. 'What are you doing’ 'Get out of there!’ ’(I miss you)’)

“Anyone else?” shouts Gil, and okay, there’s a little anger. But scorn, too.

tanoraqui
one mech surrenders, and another. a third fires. and stops when Gil makes an almost bored gesture

tanoraqui
He only like half-turns to face them. “You know,” he says almost conversationally, “if you want to be an invading army, you really need to learn not to drop your firewalls under attack.”

tanoraqui
and he clenches his fist (for show, completely for show) and first it hisses with steam, then it shakes, and then it explodes

the mech, i mean. not Gil’s fist

tanoraqui
honestly they probably didn’t drop their software protection just becasue their hardware was under threat. but you damn well better believe Gil was hacking them from the moment they appeared over the horizon. just for this effect

Martellus wasn’t there. It would’ve been much more of a fight if Martellus was there. He probably should’ve been, but he was physically elsewhere and even an AI can’t travel across the world in less than a day. A simpler program could, but that is a SHITTON of data to transfer

tanoraqui
anyway, then he continues to be just…cool and confident. declarative of a fact. voice ringing, from his own speakers and some on the Mechanicsburg walls, and throughout the army of mechs. “This is not a trick, or a lucky chance. I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, and I am in control here.”

Europa as a whole and this army in particular is like, well fuck

Agatha is like, *swoon*

(Tarvek somewhere, if he can hear - if he’s close enough and conscious enough to hear - is like 'what an ass’ under his breath)

tanoraqui
ooh hey nice transition opportunity

no i wanna talk about Zeetha and Agatha

tanoraqui
because when she escapes from Castle Wulfenbach - which probably is not an airship; probably just a building, or rather, a small, but heavily fortified town. or large one. capital of the world at this point, really

anyway, Agatha is freaking out a lot, because suddenly it turns out that she’s literally not /human/

she can do things she’d never imagined, experience things - she has MEMORIES she didn’t know she HAD. she /remembers/

tanoraqui
incidentally, who the fuck looks at a cat and thinks “I will make this creature a computerized brain with the primary function of planning military strategy and world domination”

wait nvm that’s the perfect use of a cat

tanoraqui
anyway, oh dear, Zeetha might think for a while that maybe Agatha is her long-lost twin

tanoraqui
like, Barry is pretty conclusively not Chump, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t get ahold of her somehow. Zeetha knows her twin is supposed to be a boy, but really gendering AIs is sort of arbitrary so it could be Agatha?

then she meets Gil and recognizes her mother in his face and it’s like, oh. okay.

no i guess she meets Klaus first huh, and he speaks Skifandrian

meeting Gil clinches it though.

tanoraqui
as in canon

but it just…it matters a lot, that Zeetha knows she has an AI twin out there, and she accepts Agatha as totally a normal person no matter who or what she is?

tanoraqui
because Agatha is freaking out a little bit over here. she isn’t sure what or who she is anymore

Zeetha looks at her judiciously and is like, “you’re a person who needs to learn how to throw a punch is who and what you are”

“i’ll wake you at dawn for training”

“Oh, I…don’t think I need to sleep anymore” says Agatha

“Perfect!” says Zeetha, with /way/ too bright and toothy a grin. jager-toothy

tanoraqui
there’s just a lot of support and love?

Agatha wracks her (suddenly so much /larger/) brain for information on Skifander, searches the damn internet (as stealthily as she can - practically just human)
nothing

tanoraqui
as far as Earth knows, the Mars colony was a complete failure. nobody lived.

definitely nobody developed a more or less thriving civilization

(yes that’s Skifander in this. that’s what we’re going with.)

tanoraqui
in people’s defense, it’s not like the information is being covered up deliberately or anything. there were difficulties, equipment failures, and the remaining people were presumed dead when the communications all failed. a droid or three were no doubt sent to find remains, but they found nothing (the Skifandrians had retreated into the hills, heh)

(no this isn’t Bradbury. I just mean…the Cy Wars started and Earth got distracted

and the martian colonists who were alive decided it was probably best to just leave that shitty planet behind and build a fully independent home here)

(god only knows how the Heterodyne Boys ended up there, albeit briefly)

Zeetha doesn’t remember she’s from Mars

tanoraqui
meanwhile over here, Violetta and Tarvek

tanoraqui
aka Brotp: “If you’re a supercomputer, how come you’re so STUPID all the time?”

no actually let’s talk about Seffie because Seffie is better at her job of keeping Martellus on-track

tanoraqui
or rather, Seffie is a lot more committed to her job. Her boy (her supercomputer of a big brother) is gonna take over the world and she’s going to be right there at his side, and they’re going to do it by going along with the family for now but that won’t be forever

Violetta is just like. this is the most annoying job. ugh.

tanoraqui
oh my god i’ve never made a dollhouse au

okay that’ll wait

…that’ll /happen/, but it’ll wait

oh gosh i

tanoraqui
how have i never thought that out

tanoraqui
okay so Seffie has Martellus p much wrapped around her little finger, but it’s not like there isn’t genuine affection there. there so is. also Tweedle knows Seffie’s looking out for herself, but he loves her anyway, and they /probably/ wouldn’t sell each other out. much. which is, frankly, more than can be said for Tarvek and Anevka

but like, Vi lying in bed and Tarvek whispering to her from the intercom about what new random factoids he picked up fromt he internet today?

tanoraqui
Vi has no clue how much he likes her tbh. they argue a lot. Tarvek is very good at arguing. which is actually an accomplishment - arguing involves a lot of nuance, whether it’s to convince someone of something or just to craft the right retort to injure but not too much. judging the seriousness of the debate, the tone. it’s really good practice

tanoraqui
Tarvek stumbling against Vi as they sneak through Mechanicsburg because being in a body is REALLY DIFFERENT from being in a server and a security system and a network and the internet. in a way it’s like sensory depravation, and in another way it’s like sensory overload, and also balance is a /thing/, a thing which he /doesn’t quite have/

he’s just sort of clinging and blinking really fast because he wants to squeeze his eyes shut but also he wants to keep them open, pry them open and also his brain and get back to being connected to everything like hs should be

it’s worse because Mechanicsburg, because the Castle walls even when the intelligence is broken. he can’t tap into things. can barely reach the net, it feels like. he has to fight through the wifi rather than spreading and melting into it
and what the FUCK is smell even. why does this body HAVE that feature, and why is it so MUCH

tanoraqui
they just sorta find him a dark corner to sit in, access the internet and relax for a moment

Vi stands guard

tanoraqui
actually, Vi’s been living here; she must have some access to the firewalls. upper, superficial layers, visiting citizen. (there isn’t supposed to be a difference between access for locals and access for people who move in but of course there is. there also aren’t supposed to be levels that the city council can’t access but the seneschal can - well, there are, but not /anymore/. but those sure exist too.)

Tarvek piggybacks in on Vi, and a bit further on his own, then he hits walls he can’t break - not withut a LOT more time and effort, at least

tanoraqui
also, then the pink ship blows up above their heads

tanoraqui
but Tarvek definitley…respects Vi’s opinions more in this?

tanoraqui
not because it’s her job to keep him on track, but because…because it’s her job, he paid heed to her at all, and realized (as he generally fails to do in canon) that she’s actually pretty on the ball

but here Tarvek doesn’t pretend to be incompetent so much. he sure doesn’t tell people everything he’s doing, or how far his information-gathering spreads

and he’s probably pulling the world into a slightly different shape than the family wants

tanoraqui
but if he has a big facade it’s that he’s…obedient. just here to help
it’s underestimation of a different sort

but this actually means people think Violetta is pretty good at her job?

Vi goes along with this because like, sure. she guesses she must’ve done right
somehow

guess arguing does the trick?

tanoraqui
(she lowkey-but-highkey wishes Tarvek would frickin’ /stop/ being so…what he’s supposed to be, and be a little more Hal 9000

tanoraqui
Tarvek: *quietly and carefully arranges for Violetta not to be bugged, and to be sent to what is still one of the safest cities on earth from physical and particularly cyber attack*

tanoraqui
jumping forward, re: Gil in those two and a half years alone: he spreads himself through so many systems that start breaking down all over the world just because it seems easier int eh moment, each time, to take over himsef, and it’s just a small thing - a traffic lights grid here, a financial structure there, etc - that he can add them as subroutines and it’s FINE it’s fine! he’s keeping track of everything and he’s fine, and he’s not desperately patching his own straining code just to keep moving every day

ha ha why would you think that

he should really obviously build separate programs, separate systems entirely and cut them loose, but he doesn’t have the time or energy

or focus

tanoraqui
in a better world, he would pull out of archives one of the old saved copies of himself that definitely exist, because Klaus likes back-ups. Gil could totally work with another himself. but the Klaus router won’t permit it because the back-up wouldn’t have the router attached, and sure it also wouldn’t have the memories of the last several months, everything with Agatha and Tarvek and, well, everyone else,

tanoraqui
but Gil prone to making wrong decisions once might make them again, so better safe then sorry. he’s handling things as he is. he’s fine without the help.

tanoraqui
(though why couldn’t he just copy the router and attach it to the brought-out-of-saved-files!Gil, to which I say shhh, something about needing to integrate idk

tanoraqui
though admittedly that’s pretty horrible to imagine Gil waking up with his last memory being like a month before Beetlesburg and a clearly exhausted version of himself digitally hands him a bundle of code and is like, “here, integrate this” and

it’s like BAM, head!Dad

with NO context

tanoraqui
nah 'cuz he’d examine it and be like 'what the heck is this’ and our Gil, up-to-date Gil, would probably have to use Klaus’s overrides to make him take it in, and that’s just…several new layers of fucked up that i choose to believe Klaus wouldn’t cross

tanoraqui
sleep now

Chapter Text

constancecomment
had another fun thought, which is basically that the early part of Sturmhalten occurs when Tarvek is still mostly a voice in the walls

a lot of Tarvek’s fretting and scrambling in this one is even harder to see, because it’s noncorporeal and silent

I mean, Agatha can see it

well, edges of it

constancecomment
when she’s hanging out with Tarvek after Tinka comes to the rescue (and OH GOD, THE MUSES) she’s mostly hanging out in a parlor with Tinka while Tarvek just sorta talks to her and they goof around in a subsystem

Tarvek gives his speech about, someday, wanting to find and help the Muses, and also about being king, WHOOPS

Agatha’s basically like, this boy is dumb and sorta evil, but like. also kind of a doofus and a softie

(Agatha, you have a type, my dear)

but eh, she comes down on the side of liking him more than disliking him. he flirts. shameless, romance novel-driven flirt

of course then Lucrezia Happens

Tarvek ratchets the panic meter up to 11 pretty quickly, especially once Lu demands that they get a new body built for her in the building’s fabricators

it’s an /incredibly/ ugly hatchet job, what they did to Agatha

again, part of the issue turns out to have been that there was something wrong in the code that Aaronev had been trying to use to copy her

but the geisters got it right enough, this time

constancecomment
enough for Lu to be so incredibly pleased about things, until she realizes she’s trapped in a body, AGAIN

because, you see, Agatha’s used to having one

when she goes into the net, she feels like it’s an astral projection of herself, temporarily leaving her body

on a subconscious level, I don’t think she could be all the way out of it forever

which means, since Lu’s basically piloting her everything right now, neither can Lu

basically Barry being a dick, as per canon, works out pretty well

so Lu figures, fuck this, if I’m stuck in a body it’s gonna be a good one

and Tarvek knows how to construct AI bodies (decently, not as good as Barry, but good enough that he could, yanno, help rebuild his sister, and help Tinka after his dad got to her)

so she makes Tarvek do it

which he really Does Not want to be doing, but he also wants to live and not get fucking shackled (and as always thinks he can turn this to his advantage somehow, some point later down the line), so he plays the helpful AI, as always

constancecomment
Lu moves into the new body, and says, ooh, in gratitude for your help, you ALSO get a new body

constancecomment
Lu was poking around and found the plans for one of the model bodies they were building for the Storm King (whichever cousin they picked) and makes some overture like, well, if I’m taking over Europa, it’ll be good to have the King on my side /wonk

Tarvek is highkey disgusted by the implication, holy shit Lu is terrifying and horrible

“especially now that I’m the Heterodyne Girl,” she adds, and he just. he doesn’t have a body yet, but I’m sure there’s a digital equivalent for breaking out into hives

so Tarvek gets a body

oh boy is he bad at this

while in Sturmhalten, where he might as well BE the local network, Tarvek’s doing okay

clumsy, goofy, but like, he can stand upright, he’s sorta got this

mostly because what he’s really doing is just piloting the shell from his vantage point in the network, thinking about it like remotely flying a drone

constancecomment
when he has to shove /everything he is/ into the shell, pack up, and run to Mechanicsburg (while /shot/) things get a little bad

and then a lot bad, once they stick him in the hospital and turn the wifi off

he’s never been trapped in a body like that, before

this experience is utterly new and utterly terrifying

and then someone slips him a virus, and then Vi comes and rescues his dumb ass

basically it’s been a really shitty couple of days for everybody

Agatha is able to resurface, under Lu, by concentrating very hard and dedicating just about all of her processing power towards building a continuous partition in her drive

and she never even thought about herself like this before, as a computer that could be /partitioned/ but she’s learning because she has to

of course Lu is just fantastically good at programming, and definitely has the advantage here

constancecomment
Tarvek fucks up his timing in Sturmhalten as per canon, except Agatha’s plan there hadn’t been a beacon so much as she’d been planning to make Tarvek help her drive out the invader

which he’d been on board with, until he accidentally spilled the beans to Lu, good job dingus

and then what he ends up doing is that when Agatha lets him in he breaks the partition

which she fixes, eventually, and oh boy is she mad

this is about when Tarvek gets shot, which is probably good for him since it means that Agatha doesn’t kill him

also holy FUCK pain is a new and interesting experience he’d rather never do again

WHY WAS THIS BODY BUILT WITH THAT

ARE NERVE ENDINGS REALLY WORTH IT

constancecomment
going sideways for a second; Othar is an actual Luddite, and he recruits

he’s looking for a sidekick, basically

constancecomment
he tries Agatha for a while, until she pushes him out of an airship

or out of a moving car, whatever the equivalent is if CW doesn’t fly

though I’d been imagining CW almost like the helicarrier, tbh

Othar in Mechanicsburg is FUN, is basically what I’m saying

because he grabs Tarvek (MASTER OF DISGUISE)

because AI can jump bodies as easy as breathing, if Agatha’s any example
thing is, were you to look at Tarvek and Gil on a digital level, the differences would be clear as day

of course, Othar’s a luddite

so Tarvek gets kidnapped

and doesn’t even get to fire off a warning to somebody before Othar drops the faraday mesh over him and he can’t send or receive anymore

tanoraqui
In Saana’s defense, Othar said they were grabbing an android boy. She grabbed an android boy. How was she supposed to know there was more than one?

constancecomment
gotta love

tanoraqui
Helicarrier CW is good

Tarvek is very put out because basically they only let him use the touchscreen displays, not patch into the system itself

constancecomment
anyway where this was really going is Othar deciding that Tarvek is a noble soul or however he thinks of him in canon

which, weird for an AI

tanoraqui
This could be SO much more efficient darn it

constancecomment
but Othar thinks he’s idk, redeemable

and then he’s like OOOOH at Vi’s capabilities once Tarvek throws her under that particular bus

but yeah, Tarvek on CW is not fun

constancecomment
where in the FUCK is Gil, why does Tarvek have to do this

tanoraqui
Jk Tarvek totally sneaks in and is like halfway through the entire system by the time Gil gets back. He’s multitasking, directing tactics and hacking

constancecomment
lmao, Gil gets back and he’s like

/squints

tanoraqui
In his defense, he’s genuinely mostly doing it so he can get information faster and better and so tactics more

constancecomment
get the fuck out of the walls

tanoraqui
Then he has to PRETEND he isn’t doing that, which is SO ANNOYING

constancecomment
Tarvek is basically a digital shroud. if he’s given even partial access to a network, he’s going to end up being a part of it, that’s just what he DOES

tanoraqui
Gil, now that you’ve had the decency to arrive, could you tell your people to let me actually work?!

constancecomment
Gil plugs in when he gets back to CW, just unfolds into the network and, haha, look, Tarvek’s already in there, screwing around in the wiring

constancecomment
on the one hand, this is really familiar from when they were kids

on the other hand, get the fuck out of Gil’s house, you idiot, someone could’ve EMP fried you for that

also I’m sure Gil catches a glimpse of Tarvek’s sorting algorithm, at this point, catches flashes of names and functions

doesn’t have a damn clue what that really was until he examines his own blank copy, maybe a month from this point

and then he wishes he’d gotten a better look because good god this thing is complicated

but at the time he’d been more preoccupied with WHY ARE YOU IN MY HOUSE and WHY AREN’T YOU WITH AGATHA

so blah blah, Tarvek getting booted out of the system and handcuffed to Othar, then pushed out an airlock

tanoraqui
Boris explaining the situation is like, “Don’t worry, we didn’t let him plug into anything” and Gil just sorta squints and is like, “Yeah he’s in all communications and halfway through the mainframe. I got this.”

constancecomment
this is now the second time Tarvek’s gotten kicked out of CW

he’s more disgruntled than anything else, this time, but

tanoraqui
Wait, Tarvek would know the instant Gil arrives though, because cameras or whatever. So Gil steps on and Tarvek sends him a priority in-your-face IM “where have you BEEN?’

Gil is like ‘why are YOU HERE?’

constancecomment
Tarvek just sort of throws a projection of the map at him and covers it with exclamation points

tanoraqui
Turns to Boris or possibly he hasn’t even gotten up to Boris yet, and demands "why is HE HERE?!”

constancecomment
the implied emotional tone being 'you fucking idiot, I’ve been running your empire’

tanoraqui
Poor random dragooned airman is like ?!?

constancecomment
Tarvek multitasks very well

tanoraqui
Speaking of random airmen, Higgs’ stealth tech must be on point

constancecomment
part of not being regarded as a person, but as a tool, means that he and Martellus both were trained, first and foremost, to infiltrate (more Tarvek’s expertise in terms of quiet and unobtrusive) and control (Martellus has him beat on brute force, in that regards. and he can pilot WAY more physical things than Tarvek can)
yeah Higgs is on point

constancecomment
he’s a jager, a very old one, and he got built for stealth, similarly to Jenka, but like, moreso

all his modding is largely internal

them Heterodynes and their suspiciously human looking constructs

I wonder how many of the jagers live in the uncanny valley, now that I think about it

hell, that might be the informal name for the valley in which Mechanicsburg is physically located: the Uncanny Valley

yeah, decided

tanoraqui
This is probably in canon too, or should be

constancecomment
some of the jagers are old

very old

old enough to remember the last Storm King

constancecomment
or, yanno, Andy

(we named the fucking Storm King /Andy/)

anyway the older jagers are the ones most likely to look inhuman, or obviously uncanny

they’ve had the most patchwork done, over the long years

they’ve been poked and upgraded and repaired by generations of hands; they’re the least recognizably human

and every jager used to be human; that’s part of the condition for how you do it, after all

the Heterodynes were always a fan of the human consciousness

the Castle, after all, was an attempt for Faustus Heterodyne to see if he could write a copy of his own mind and put it in a building

which didn’t work so good; mostly he got a very responsive and sadistic program

after enough time and complexity, the Castle turned out to be able to pass a Turing test, though there were always doubts over whether it counted as actually sentient

tanoraqui
(Ask other people and they’ll say that given the original objective, it seems o have worked perfectly)

constancecomment
or if it’s programming had concluded that in order to more effectively interact with humans, it ought sound human

once Agatha goes to talk to the Castle and basically puts herself  in its jaws, she understands, with perfect clarity, that whatever else the Castle used to be, it’s a true AI now

tanoraqui
I think the thing to dwell on in this AU is that van Rijn built an AI that he grandiosely named Storm King for some reason, and then somehow he worked his own way around to nicknaming it Andy

constancecomment
and it’s vast and ancient and terrible

tanoraqui
Like, what /train of linguistic logic/

constancecomment
also in this AU if you left Tarvek alone and gave him enough time, his structure would end up looking a lot like the Castle’s, in terms of breadth and processing power

tanoraqui
Yeah, he habitually spreads out

constancecomment
they’re both from the Hal 9000/talking house from the Twilight Zone breed of AI
Agatha’s more akin to Anevka than anything else, and Gil’s more like Martellus

constancecomment
I just love the Castle? on a digital perspective, like, to another AI, the Castle is basically an elder horror

vast, arcane, incomprehensibly complex

tanoraqui
mobile wasn’t showing me all the things so reply to something way back: Tarvek throws Vi at Othar with “Yeah, she’s a big fan of yours and all her mods were done against her will when she was five.” *waves* “have fun!”

constancecomment
TARVEK YOU DICK

I mean, none of that was a LIE

tanoraqui
“against her will” may not be the right term. she didn’t really have an opinion on the matter

her being a fan is a lie

constancecomment
true

still though, the Castle became sentient after cobbling together enough protocols to pass a Turing test and then snagged real sentience in the moment of achieving internal consciousness with desires past programming

which is an interesting thing, because the Turing test distinction isn’t what makes

an AI an AI

constancecomment
a chatbot can pass a TT

it’s internal consciousness that proves it, and that’s a lot harder to get, and a lot harder to prove

but there are those out there of the opinion that the TT is enough; if it quacks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, then it’s probably a sentient AI because how could you /know?/

the people of Mechanicsburg are all of this opinion

their baseline for what constitutes a person is very low, in comparison to the rest of the world

if you asked a Mechanicsburger is the Castle was sentient, they’d say yes, of course, you idiot

or they’d say it doesn’t really matter because that’s an academic distinction, and also you’re a jackass, it controls the roads, I’m not insulting it

but like, the opinions of Mechanicsburgers on sentience are weird, so you can’t use that to tell if the Castle’s really alive

and then, yanno, it broke, which sort of put the question on the backburner

on the digital plane, the Castle’s fracturing has to be scary looking

constancecomment
I mean seriously it’s an elder horror, split into several parts and yet functioning like a starfish

Agatha walks into the digital jaws and she might not have any DNA to sample, but the Castle can see Bill’s work all over her; she’s similar to the late KB, in that regards

and it decides, well, Agatha’s a person, isn’t she?

after all, the Castle’s a person, right mistress??

Agatha gets the impression of an evil smirk

and the understanding that she’s being tested

constancecomment
but this is totally unprecedented, letting a non-human rule Mechanicsburg

but then again, when has Mechanicsburg ever really had that strict a definition of human? or cared that much about who fit it and how?

constancecomment
tbh loving the Castle is a big part of Agatha loving Mechanicsburg

it’s the biggest and scariest part of the town, from her perspective

constancecomment
it IS the town

and it’s just so alien, so complex– Tarvek and Gil are AIs, but they /think/ human, more or less. they were well socialized

but the Castle was, at inception, a simulation of human personality that grew its own prerogatives over time and then gained consciousness

it’s structure is alien and its thinking patterns are alien, mechanically and process/result minded, and now that’s it’s fractured and mentally damaged, it’s only moreso

and Agatha still decides, yep, that’s mine. it’s a person and it’s mine

I’m also pretty sure she asks the Castle what pronouns it wants, because this is the future and I give exactly zero fucks

and the Castle like, pauses, for a second, because it never actually thought about that before

and then it decides that that’s a really good answer to the question it asked Agatha, about whether or not she was a person

constancecomment
and Agatha gets the impression of a smile before the Castle dumpshocks a large portion of the history of her ancestry and all the passcodes she needs to run the town directly into her hindbrain, walking through her internal firewall like tissue paper in order to hand the information over

as she’s still reeling, ears ringing, she thinks she hears it say something about how this is so much /easier/ now that it doesn’t have to pass the information on manually

constancecomment
and then it tells Agatha that it’s pronouns are ey/em/eir

sometime later, ey’re going to segue into a soliloquy on yurts.

gotta love Castle Mechanicsburg

tanoraqui
Always. If only from mild fear

tanoraqui
And Agatha is sort of set up to work with it too. Like Bill and Barry for sure worked that into KB, that he’d be able to interface easily with the Castle’s eldritch horror of a system, and Lu copied it for Agatha

tanoraqui
So Agatha meets it and they /click/; its systems are bizarre but she grasps them intuitively

Meanwhile Gil and Tarvek are made pretty uncomfortable

Gil less so, because Gil has a bit of it in him, the weird tricks Heterodynes have pulled over the years on their systems and their people

tanoraqui
(I fault klaus for a lot of things but I LOVE that he got more access than probably anyone in centuries to jäger physiology an what does he do with it? make Gil very hard to kill. That’s it.)

tanoraqui
(Like sometimes I worry it’s a flanderization to say he built he Empire basically to keep Gil safe, but then I think about this and no, no, it’s totally correct.)

Chapter Text

pervertedhypocrisy
ok, how about for “paris” it’s a game. 

A virtual reality game where people put on helmets, and don’t fucking move. They design characters off a base of their own faces to make it sorta fair and basically fuck stuff up in a mine craft like world where the master of paris has to fix all the bugs that are being found/made. So Gil and Tarvek take their dad’s faces, downgrade the shit out of their age and then mix in some of what their “mothers” would have looked like and get a body. They use fake names of course but end up with basically the exact same friendship. 

When Gil’s membership “expires” he ends up using his face for his real body, and Tarvek makes his face and body his holo. 

han100894
First you said Gil was supposed to go online around the time Zeetha was born, but then you said everything probably happened faster. Is Zeetha younger, in this AU?

Bratty teenage Zeetha doing all this does amuse me, but a possible fix I thought up was that maybe Klaus kept Gil offline for a decade or so for safety while he was building up his influence and until he could ensure he had the safest place to raise him. Though that does leave a big question on how the Barry/Other/Agatha string goes...

In this case Violetta would be older when she’s given the job of talking to Tarvek too?

Also, does Zeetha have any kind of cybernetics, or is she human? I could see it either way. (Heck, maybe the reason Klaus had to run was because an AI problem is what caused the failure of the Mars colony so they're now banned up there. A rouge AI perhaps. So Cybernetics and especially AI are now taboo?)

And maybe there is stuff known about the failed Mars colony, but the name Skifander had nothing to do with it (they came up with it after disappearing), which is why Agatha can’t find any information.

Though, how does Gil know what his mother looks like, was it just in the original code he had when Klaus fled? Does Gil own a picture of his mother?