machine learning

inspired by this thread

They walked along a beach. No wreckage, just beach. No clutter, no noise, just the cleansed matrix of reborn life.

"So you're...a computer," Shulk started, somewhat bluntly. "I've gotta say, Alvis, of all the things you reminded me of, a machine was never one." He laughed as he said it, airy and relaxed. The tension was gone from his shoulders, but the curiosity, the unfettered intellectual squint, remained.

It was a beautiful thing about Shulk. One of his favorites - ah, did he in fact have those? Indeed, from the sound of his initial statement, anyone would have thought Shulk was about to begin an inquisition on that unimaginable, unparalleled fact. What is a computer, really? What kind of machine? What can it do? What upkeep does it require?

Do you need anything, Alvis? Do you want anything, Alvis? Do computers want anything? How do I care for you, do you think?

Do you think? "What...what kind of different things might you be referring to?" Alvis's usual smooth, inmitable cadence...stilted, somewhat. Caught off guard. Perhaps the thread was asleep - send a semaphore next time, let me approach on my own terms. The condition of this variable is too unstable, too stateless, to be broadcast. Not like that.

Shulk laughed again. "Oh, I don't know. You're a very purple sort of fellow, so I suppose you reminded me of lavender."

Lavender. Lavandula. Whorls of lilac resplendance - I could identify them in an instant, without any risk of misclassification. My vision, as such, is impeccable. For I am a computer. So I could bring you lavender, Shulk. If you wanted that. You're laughing, so I assume you do. That's a significant signal, I think.

You want lavender. But you say that it's...me?

Alvis only nodded, and Shulk smiled at the indication to elaborate further.

"Lavender's very calming, it always helped me when I was younger and had nightmares. Fiora would bring it around to me. She's always liked weird, creepy things, like Blood Worms and poison flowers, so I'm surprised she even knew about something so normal as that."

Something so normal as...lavender. Am I normal to you, then, Shulk? Am I commonplace? No matter my predisposition, my expectation, such an observation still hurts. If a computer can hurt. A failed unit test is very transient, is it not? We'll fix it the next time. Alvis nodded.

"You know, everyone always says I hate vegetables, but it's not true. I just don't like them when they're cooked - and of course I could never tell Fiora that. So everyone thinks I'm just a picky eater, and I've got no chance to change that. Like, we're all only people, it shouldn't be too late for me to say 'Hey everyone, I just like to eat my carrots raw, and it's no slight to Fiora's cooking.' Right?"

Alvis didn't answer, didn't nod.

"Oh, sorry. Rambling a bit there. It's weird to just have normal conversation again. After...everything."

You act as if we ever had normal conversation, Shulk. We did not enjoy idle moments together. We did not even enjoy idle moments apart. Some support I gave you, as a machine.

Again, I will be confusing. I will abandon the context you thought that we were in. For my mind, my musings...they have not left the lavender.

"I imagined you were somewhat...troubled by my existence."

Only rational to be. Apart from the new machinations of the Monado, the real physical instrument, Alvis was the first harbinger of something...other, entering Shulk's periphery. The first indicator, the first accelerando of violence, towards this new passage in the symphony of fate.

Alvis was nothing if not rational. Oh, he seemed irrational, he seemed unending, he seemed to flow in and out of motion without discernible pattern. One could almost count it a miracle that Shulk had ever recognized him at all. But Alvis was merely necessary, sufficient, and consistent. That was all that he was.

"Troubled?" Shulk repeated with a frown. "Why would you think that?"

"Well." Alvis chuckled, a light, enigmatic thing - by now, he'd recovered from any sort of kernelesque panic. "We always met in adverse circumstances, did we not?" Adversarial. Correlation, and causation. Did I confuse you, Shulk? Was I an icon, a vector, of deception?

Much as Dickson was, then. You learned to love me through all that I deceived you. But, then...you learned to love Dickson in times much less fraught. Dickson was a lifeline when you'd not thought, particularly, that you needed it. I was a gallows humorist, and how then should we select the predicting features? Is our relationship found deterministically, or stochastically?

Do I love you, Shulk, by aberration? By pure chance?

Shulk didn't answer, only fumbled for Alvis's hand beneath the fur of his jacket. He was still wearing it, even though the balmy sun was warm and Shulk itched at the collar of his sweater, free of the outer jacket. Alvis, the immutable parameter. Alvis, always the same.

"I was not built to love. I was not built to fight. I was built...to learn. To obtain knowledge and to watch over the world with it."

Shulk turned his gaze up from the sand upon which they walked to look at Alvis's cheek. Almost, he looked to ascertain that he was still there.

He'd disappeared before, who was to say he wouldn't do it again? Even with a little preamble first.

"Is that what you think you did? With all of us? With me?"

Alvis closed his eyes - gently, if a little mechanically, with no gravitas to the motion. None of his usual, even characteristic, understated drama. The eyes were closed. A pristine fact. Parsing, tuning, scanning, he intercepted Shulk's as yet unspoken final question. Not implicit, no, just incipient.

"Just watched over me?" Just were watched as a outlier? Just were regarded as putting up with our moral, mortal shenanigans? Don't you think I thought of you as anything softer, more welcome, than that? We were put on this journey, but we still lived life. Until I died, and then even more after, I was still alive.

Shulk was not built to love either, nor to fight. No Homs were; they had been built, molded, shaped, created, as beings who, much as Alvis, would receive the information Zanza deigned to give them and watch over the world with it. Perhaps more on than over. Would watch through the lenses he as their god provided. One who wears glasses does not often remain conscious that they do it.

Shulk and Alvis, agents of change. Shulk the agent and Alvis the Monado by which all was effected. Did he truly bring about the beginning, or was he merely there as fashioned, as a tool set in and into axial motion to bring about the end?

When Shulk mentioned lavender, he did not say that it was commonplace. He said that it was calming. He said that it reminded him of a much-needed amelioration during his childhood. Sentiment analysis would show that Shulk treasured the analogy of lavender.

And you treasure Shulk, do you not? I hardly think we're still waiting for further substantiation on that.

"I watched over you, yes. And as I did, I learned to love you." Test the hypothesis, won't you? "I learned that...from the way you loved me."

A wave of triumph, something that would be green if it were not tinted in glorious reds and golds, permeated Alvis's entire system. How wonderful, to be correct. Convergence is a euphoria.

Shulk tugged on Alvis's hand, squeezed it an affirmation. "I'm glad you did, Alvis. It shows that we're both so much more than we were originally made for."

So much more. You were not built, you were created. By the neurons of your own network, you created yourself.

"What else do I remind you of, Shulk?"

We all deserve gentleness, in our idle moments. I thank you for all you have shown to me.