M3GAN: Cole's one shot

Fixing it

Written for a fan of Cole in a rough patch

"She's still patched in", Tess had said, "we have to unhook the cables". Cole was always ready to volunteer, and he strode across the lab to the android doll.

Cole hesitated. Cables have two ends: should he unplug them at the doll, or should he unplug them at the patch board? Either way, he might risk being hurt if the doll were suddenly to reactivate and he didn't have time to put in his secret shutdown code.

"Tess" asked Cole, "just as a precaution, can you keep an eye on the doll while I unplug the cables from the patch board?"

"I have to keep an eye on the monitor" replied Tess. "We really need a third person in here. Where's Gemma when you want her?"

Cole sighed, "I'd better do it this way then." He approached the doll: at least unplugging them from that end meant he'd be able to keep an eye on her all the time, even if it did mean getting too close. He thought about using his shutdown code as a precaution, but decided not to, because he knew that code could be used only once, and he was worried he might still need to save it up for something even worse than the current situation.

"M3GAN" said Cole as he slowly raised a hand toward one of the cables. "M3GAN, respond. Debug level 5, respond."

M3GAN said nothing.

Cole carefully took out the cable, then another. M3GAN was certainly active on the monitor, but her physical systems seemed to be offline. Or were they?

Suddenly, M3GAN tied the cable around Cole and walked out of the lab. Tess managed to save Cole, but then an explosion happened. Remarkably, Tess and Cole were both uninjured. Had M3GAN got the size of the explosion wrong, or was it just a distraction?

"We've got to get out of here and call the cops" gasped Tess.

"You get out and call the cops" replied Cole, "I'm going after M3GAN."

"No!" yelled Tess, "you can't put yourself in that much danger!"

"Don't worry about me" replied Cole, "I have a secret shutdown code. I put it into her low-level speech processor just in case, and I didn't even tell Gemma because I wasn't sure what she'd think of me for doing such a thing. You get out of here and call the cops, I'm going to shut down M3GAN before she does any more damage."

Cole caught up with M3GAN just as M3GAN was dancing in front of David. Cole said nothing for a while: he'd been running too fast, and he had to get his breath back. His shutdown code had to be said very quickly and all in one breath: the simple low-level logic to interpret it might fail to do its job if it picked up the sound of panting between the digits. So, getting his breath back was very important.

"M3GAN, what are you doing?" asked David as she cartwheeled around the corridor.

M3GAN ripped the blade from the paper cutter, and David started to run. "Help! Security! Cole! Do something!" he called out.

How was Cole going to deal with this? He'd just about got his breath back, but now he'd have to run again. Reminder: he could not use his secret shutdown code if he was panting. It had to be said all in one breath. Furthermore, if David kept calling out things like "security help", that could interrupt the low-level processing of his code too. How was Cole going to tell the boss David to keep quiet for all of ten seconds? Cole couldn't tell David "I have a shutdown code" in front of M3GAN-M3GAN would likely respond by disrupting her low-level language processors and redirecting that to the learning model if she knew the shutdown code existed. That was why Cole knew the code could be used only once: M3GAN would find a way around it as soon as she knew. Everything against M3GAN works only once, and Cole just had to make sure this one worked.