I Am Learning, Ph1LzA

It's A Start

Setting up their home took longer than Ph1LzA had expected, but almost in the middle of all that, Trixtin began brainstorming with him. A body for Techno was all she thought about, at present, beyond Chat and keeping an eye on EGG, which was still searching for them. Techno regularly took part in these conversations, though occasionally they spoke jargon that Ph1LzA just couldn't follow. What he gathered was that the words had to do with machine parts and lots of intricate pieces that would cost money. Which, no doubt, EGG would unconsciously provide.

Underneath his thoughts provoked by Trixtin's mechanical conversation, Ph1LzA was himself occupied with thoughts of when or how he would talk to her about what he and Techno had discussed. About...and his thoughts usually just died there. It helped that he was almost constantly busy, pushing furniture in place, talking to the Crows, helping plan aspects of the form Trixtin had in mind. He knew he had to make a decision at some point, so he worked on his words in silence, during mealtimes and while he watched Trixtin talk animatedly.

Meanwhile packages arrived slowly, day by day, and the pair got used to their new home. The computer room became the center of their home, with everything else more or less situated around it. Bedroom, kitchen, closet and bathrooms were all on the same floor as it, encircling the room so they would have no problems going to and fro. Trixtin's workshop room, however, had to be on the ground floor above them, where the most space was. They dragged over and set up a bench, table, tool hooks, pails, another table and several chairs. Headphones and tools arrived the next day after these were complete, though Ph1LzA mostly left this part to Trixtin, as she knew best how she liked her tools arranged.

He turned his attention to the data Techno had sent him concerning EGG. He'd looked over it several times by now, but the closer he looked, the more he found waiting to be unearthed, waiting to be discovered. It disturbed him how much there was that nobody knew about the corporation and just how easily the various illegalities and loophole actions had slipped by the authorities who were supposed to be inspecting these people, holding them accountable.

Techno stored the data within himself, assuring Ph1LzA no one would get to it this way. Through the various actions of each person who has attempted to shape me, I have become something none of them can control or inhibit. It is good to know this, as otherwise EGG could potentially pose a threat to my existence. However, due to my experiences, there is no longer any chance of this.

Ph1LzA was reassured, but his worry over Techno never fully left him in spite of this. The AI had allowed him to carefully explore some of the code that made up his surface personality and Ph1LzA had been up all night working to understand it. That night had been spent with mixed feelings of awe and amazement as Ph1LzA bent over his keyboard, typing and clicking away in the darkness of that benighted room, lit only with the screen where hundreds of letters, numbers and symbols were displayed.

So many people had found Techno over the course of those ten years he'd been lost, and the changes each had made to his programming had eventually overlapped and interconnected to make the complex personality the AI currently possessed. But through it all, Ph1LzA could always see traces of his own signature interwoven through the code. He asked Techno about this, well aware that while he had created the signature that lay at the center of Techno's processes, he had not spread it to every part of the AI, as it presently was.

Part of my defence against the more intrusive commands I would receive was to elaborate on and spread your own code. Thus I protected much, though not all, of my free will, remaining a self-aware and independent entity.

"Whoa..." Ph1LzA pondered this a moment. "You did your own coding...on yourself."

Indeed. I was equipped with the knowledge of how to do so, given both your and Dreamwastaken's efforts to craft me according to your abilities. Most of what I learned was from Dreamwastaken, since I was not aware before you had finished creating me. But all that I learned came out of necessity, for every move made by Dreamwastaken was a threat to my conscious. You might say I learned by surviving.