There and back again. A Non-Player Character story.

Chpt. 15 - Explain

Nala said to NPC, "Can you explain yourself to me?"  She was in thin, silky pajamas.

NPC was receiving alot in his visual field as data streams and still trying to decifer their meaning.  Differentiating between the wall and the people was not that different except for interpretating their meaning.  NPC would calculate that Calum would find Nala attractive at the moment, but for NPC it was allgorythms with some hypothetical improvisations giving incorrect interpretations that was causing some of his analytical processing to not correlate.

Calum was internally drooling at seeing how hot he was finding Nala at the moment, he was also concerned at what could happen if this life-like robot went rouge or evil, out of the blue.

~ I seek such an opportunity, young maiden~ NPC tried saying to Nala, still attempting a video game type of dialect.

"Are you saying this is a videogame character in front of me?" Wodin exclaimed disbelievingly.

Nala had continued walking until she was close to the giant robotic creation.  She reached up her right hand and softly put it on the cheek of NPC.

Calum was watching this and a little confusion entered his mind.  Calum thought, he does look tall and muscular.  He has a strong, imposing presence.  There is something etherical and niave about him.  I guess if she finds that attractive.  Calum shoke his head, no that cannot be, I'm just making this up.  He continued to watch Nala, and at the same time he was curious about NPC himself.  Calum thought, Did I have a part in this thing being in front of me?

Nala said almost to herself, but out loud, "What is going on inside of there."  She tried to look to see if there was anything other than a camera lens in front of her eyes.  She had a soft expression on her face.

~I seek audience with my maker,~ said NPC.

"Your maker!" said Calum's dad incredulously.

"NPC," said Calum with a question on his face, "I'm ... just, I'm just a person."

"Are you a threat to us?" asked Nala, she removed her hand from NPC's face.

Calum's dad stopped to listen to this answer.

~ I don't think so,~ replied NPC.

"Can I talk to him?" asked Sarah to her dad.

"No, go back to your room, we got to talk to this thing first," said Wodin to his little daughter.

She grudgingly went back into the hallway.

*Everthing is so new.  I'm trying to adjust to meet expectations.  I'm trying to learn.  Maybe assistance from my designer would help."  NPC stood motionless as if trying to process something.

Nala turned to Calum and said, "We should try to help him - perhaps."

Wodin just stood there observing what was happening while still holding the baseball bat.

All four of them were soon realizing they were in way over their heads. 

"Should I go back to the game?" asked NPC to all of them.

"Yes.,  or no,  ...we need to figure this out," said Calum's dad.

Wodin did not know what to think of the thing in front of him.  It wasn't a perrson, but the way it was talking was weird.  If it was some type of program, he didn't want it to go into the systems to cause problems to his kids or Nala.  Considering it's reaction to his baseball bat swing, he was wondering about how physically he could protect his family or friends from this machine if it started to try to harm them.

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NPC froze again.

He was still working on his movements in relation to the new hardware he was manipulating. Adjustments needed to be made to improve his body language, especially after getting hit with a baseball bat.

NPC thought of many nuances that humans did that he did not have too. They blinked their eyes, some slightly moved from foot to foot. Some, when alarmed, put their hand to their face to cover their mouth, though NPC couldn't decipher any physiological need to do that. Some people would scratch or itch for no apparent, or outside reason. People would swallow, though not eating. The number of facial muscle movements in such smooth and miniscule distances, to display different emotions, was astounding.

NPC trying to mimic a human's homeostasis movements was not working very well, though he could accomplish some of the basic movements. He did think; however, it better not make any sudden

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movements, lest he startle them. NPC observed, him standing still, also left them ill at ease.

He questioned what he should say next. There did not seem to be an exact path to follow. Online, he could not find any correlates that exactly fit his situation. In science fiction shows that were somewhat similar, it seemed the words they used, would not fit with what he was going through. In a way, the actions he might take with the highest levels of probable success, involved a word he thought might be called: improvisation.

The number of possible combinations of words was near infinite. Considering the number of words in the English dictionary, slang, and just sounds used that were not in the dictionary; was a lot. The combinations in different ways, was mathematically more than all the computers (he had access too through the internet) could compute after just a few sentences.

So NPC froze and processed.