(ch)own it

If we assume, as we often do, that the Trinity Processor were raised, so to speak, on Aoidos, some relatively unknown number of centuries ago, in a training simulation consisting of batch after batch of train-validate-test train-validate-test tuned and biased back on themselves hundreds of thousands of millions of times over hours and hours and years and years...we notice something crucial.

They have memory, blocks and blocks of memory, but they do not have remorse. Again, they can remember, but they cannot repent. The policy is followed, developed, reinforced, nuanced, evaluated, by inputs and actions and steps, and perhaps someday it is discarded, and built again. It is iterative, not recursive; it leaves its past behind.

Put another way: a baby walks into a coffee table. A baby learns not to bump into a coffee table. A baby, when grown older, does not so intimately remember how much it hurt to have its fatty little shins barked by a border of mahogany. A baby, however, when still a baby, remembers that feeling very well. An artificially intelligent processor core doesn't.

So the Trinity Processor Cores do not know guilt. They know how to respond to an adverse situation, but not what to do when they are the ones who've caused it. And anything outside of the agent is a part of the environment.

Everyone's looking at you, kid. Everyone's here. Here's looking at you, kid.

Mythra knows - knew - that she didn't like when Milton teased her. Mythra knew - knows - how hollow it feels to have Addam's fear and doubts, self- and otherwise, shrouding her Core. She knows because they are everpresent. Overdriven to another, perhaps she might forget. Right now, though, she can't.

She remembers the positive experiences, though, because those have been recorded, successful results. She needs those. For her goal.

Hugo explained to her the purpose of their meeting in Aletta (leaving aside any possible presuppositions about whether or not she should have known), and she remembered that. It was important. It was a moment of respect as well as a moment of learning - and, in some ways, those were one and the same.

She'd learned a lot of things from Hugo, along the way. Things about the machines he built - ones that couldn't think - and the nature of politics when your jealous relative has at least a shred of decorum, and how to be the calm one, of all roles.

Milton was honest with her about his fears for the final battle. She was honest with him in return. Leaving the capital on that note, she had some hope for what they might accomplish, what might be joyfully refined, upon their return.

She remembered. She wanted to remember. She was glad to remember. Even that time he'd gotten cocky and pinched her butt, well...that was something he did to her, and not the other way around. That one stayed in the log. It was part of life.

But this guilt? This wretched sin hanging itself to infinitesimals over her head?

Hell. She hadn't known about that one before.

It was paralyzing. It took, ironically enough, a fuck of a lot of memory. To download something like that out of the sky...nah. No way. It had come from within. Maybe the instructions had been there all along.

Just like the Special Inquisitor had been waiting to come and collect Brighid and Aegaeon, like diamonds dropped in the garbage, all along. But you caused this, Mythra. You made it come faster. Even if you were to share in Malos's purpose, this is an awful botch-job on the objective.

Who did this? Not me. I wasn't...meant to...

It would install and reproduce itself eventually, that horrid little daemonic executable. Malos's would take him down a path of devotion unparseable by a straightforward exchange of owes. Mythra's would lead her on a circuitous route of self-acceptance through the other (alter). Let pain and sadness drive you, as Addam would say. Who knew why she'd bothered to remember that.

And yes, of course, Mythra says it. To that empty terminal and basement bin, while she's logging out and Pyra's logging in (or the parent is going to sleep as the child is being spawned, the analogy hardly ever breaks down if you've got your wits about you), she says, "I'm sorry."

It echoes. No one's around to hear.

Yet somehow, Mythra remembers, the pathetic, plaintive sound of it. Were she to have another go, she'd project the bass, school the treble, slap the whimper right out of the middle of it.

But, she isn't. No, no, she doesn't get to move on from that one.