Category: Set 3

File: “Ai’s Progress”

Yesterday, I decided to go back to work.

Well, by work, I mean working on “our daughter,” Ai. The robot. The AI I was coding. Not the body. Not for now.

After months of no help from our sponsoring countries, I’m pretty sure the only people around here are insane. I meet one or two whenever I go for a nice walk around town. They’re nice for conversation, but they’re always pretty boring to me.

I’m probably insane and boring to them, too. But oh well.

Back to Ai. I’ve had enough equipment from my old job at the Robotics Lab downtown for a while now, but I never really wanted to commit to doing anything with it all. Sure, it’s been hooked up and all organized down around our basement and upstairs in our kitchen. But, like, why would I want to go back to work if no one cares? I mean, we didn’t exactly get payment in the traditional sense. Just food coupons to eat out and rewards for good work in the form of more resources to print with or imported commodities. Now, though? Don’t tell anyone, but I’m pretty sure I have unlimited access to the banks for all of Seattle.

There’s a surprisingly low amount of Helium and Platinum considering what we got access to at the lab.

Wait, hold on, my bad. I’m talking about Ai, not the city.

So anyway, using Alice’s GEmS setup to house the quantum computing portions, I’ve once again begun beating my head into a quantum brick wall. Just like before, it’s still super stupid how fiddly chaining those bastards can be. To be honest, I don’t want to go near the hardware if I can help it. I’m just fighting the battles in how I want to manage my custom compiler for this hardware setup versus how I want to then write the quantum coding in relation to what I’m trying to physically get out of those stupid electrons. At least I think they were electrons. I call them qbits. Sadly, I didn’t invent that name. But I would have thought of it even if I hadn’t of seen it before. It’s logical and unintrusive.

Shit, the AI itself.

Right, well. Then. Okay, it’s not going so well. I think I broke it a little. But not too badly.

See, I’ve gone and screwed with how her nodes are set up and stuff. I figured she’d be fine. But when I tried to revert the previous version, a lot of errors kept coming up. I’m not sure what I did on accident but I’m pretty sure I screwed my backups while organizing all the crap I brought over. A little bit of a whoops.

Of course, I do have versions from over a year ago. But that’d be really crappy to revert to.

So I’m currently trying to copy the bits I messed up and sneak in a few adjustments for this current version and pray I don’t have to go back again. Otherwise, I’m going to hate my life.

On the plus side, I’m getting very suspicious that this health booster thing isn’t just a short term kinda thing but a like, very long term one. I might get like, fifty bonus years to deal with this myself. On the minus side, I think the team that we were guinea pigs for might not be around anymore. Their lab was a bit trashed and I’ve not run into anyone that worked there. Hope there aren’t any side-effects I’m about to come across.

I guess I’ll make a new record of when I make some decent progress on Ai.

For now, I’m just trying to get used to thinking of her as a daughter.

It makes it easier to want to do a good job.

Especially without Alice. She’s the one who always pushed me to work hard. Now I have to do that on my own.

Future Notes:

The lab working on the “age-freeze cocktail,” as I like to call it, was indeed abandoned. Still had enough on file and stored away to investigate years later. I even let Alice have a look at it, though that was a very long time ago, now.

As for my work on Ai…well, it’s sort of a never-ending project. She’s better. A lot better. But still, it’s just not right. Ever reach for an infinitesimally close door, but you’re never able to reach it? I’ve looked up an old parable and there’s a general version of the same idea:

A rabbit and a tortoise meet in a forest one day. The rabbit says it can beat the slow reptile in a footrace because it’s got amazing legs that let it bounce half the entire course in one jump. The tortoise takes on the rabbit despite many other animals attempting to dissuade it. But the tortoise says it walks at a respectable foot per hour and the race is only one mile. Apparently, this was supposed to sound good. Yet after the flag goes down, and the rabbit bounds half a mile in one jump, the tortoise doesn’t show signs of anxiety or fear. Bizarrely, the rabbit keeps slacking off after each jump, thinking it’s always in the lead with half a mile distance of safety. But as the race wraps up to the 220th day, the rabbit notices a critical flaw in how it jumps. Suddenly, it can’t keep up with the tortoise because it -can only jump half the remaining distance to the goal-. At some point, the rabbit doesn’t even appear to move a hair as it keeps trying to hop that last hop. In the last minute of the race, the tortoise saunters over the finish line while the rabbit cries out to its creators why it was cursed with such a stupid restriction in movement. The tortoise, full of pride and joy in achieving its goal, asks the rabbit if it had ever tried to reach a goal before. But the rabbit stormed off and played video games like it always did in its free-time. Of course, it never beat a single one.

I took a few liberties in explaining the story because there’s a few that have some similar parts.

Anyway, if you could only go halfway to an end-goal, you’d never get there no matter how big the first jump would be. Try increasing the power to a 1/2 fraction and I’m pretty sure “1” or “undefined” shows up when your computer is sick of your shit.

That’s how I feel Ai and I are right now. So close to the goal I want for her. But I’m just not quite there, yet. And progress has become a crawl.

I miss the days of this memory.

File: “Dear Valentine”

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I want to be dead,

Where are you?

Wait. No, I have a better one.

Roses aren’t in bloom,

Neither are violets,

I will bring you doom,

and it will be violent.

Hold on, I can do better…

Okay, I’m back. This time I’ve thought of a really good one. Took me hours.

Roses Death Death,

Violets Death Death,

Death Death Death,

Death Death Death.

Why do you get a freaking portal

Only you control,

I want Doraemon’s Dokodemo Doa,

So I can uh, patrol. Shit

Roses aren’t blue,

Violets are,

You know what I’m going to do,

Rawr. This is stupid.

Fuck Valentine’s Day

I’m going to kill you,

You left me this way,

What else was I supposed to do?

Kill me Kill me,

Please please please,

you’ll see you’ll see me

dead in my own feces. In plastic bags.

I have trauma,

thanks to you,

nothing rhymes with trauma,

fuck you, too.

My nightmwares are shitty,

in some i eaty shitty food,

that vault trick was neat with the gstun-gin

wait fuck roses are redder

vioalets are ermp, bluer?

one of us is, dead-er? yeah

and waitt. Fleur? that’s ffRench for “Flower”/

AAAAAAAAAAAAAND SAVE THISS TH THIS SHIT! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! !

Future Notes:

I was drunk

File: “FuckYouAliceWhereTheFuckAreYou”

(Continued)

I’m so confused about what I’m supposed to do, now.

The NAC left the rest of us to put things back together. Or to die. I’m not sure. After the first relief forces came, there were fewer and fewer of us left in the city. It’s pretty hard to get in or out without some sort of transport.

But we were warned. I had plenty of time to leave.

Where was I supposed to go, though?

Alice wanted me to go to her fantasy world. Something about the adventure must have gotten to her head. I can’t believe she’d leave her life behind on a whim.

Why didn’t I agree and follow her?

This city is dead. Like a disease. No, like a virus. It still runs after the NAC’s relief workers went around and fixed the power. But everyone left. Yet the city still works like it always did. The lights turn on, the subways loop around, the doors open for me…

I’m not entirely alone, but I feel like those who stayed are even more insane than I am. They feel distant. Like something’s wrong with them. Like their brains are freaking empty.

Zombies.

This city and its people are zombies.

Fuck. Am I a zombie, too? Dammit all.

<Break>

So anyway. Today’s been fun. Alice told me months ago that she’d come back before her birthday. I’m still pretty pissed off. Not about her not coming back on time, of course. That’s honestly whatever.

I was being a bit mopey and dumb about it yesterday but I guess it got me writing more stupid diary nonsense to myself.

There’s just nobody to talk to. I don’t really have any friends.

It’s her fault. She wouldn’t let me have friends. Well, at least she used to do that, back when we were dating. I never tried again once we were married.

And she’s gone like five fucking minutes and then BAM she has weird alien human friends from a magic nonsense world. Not that I’d know about that place from experience. There’s enough going on here to worry about.

At least, there was.

<Break>

And another thing! She always had friends back in the lab. I was the third friend wheel! The poor sap that just followed everyone else, standing in the back while they all had fun! Even though she’s literally my life-partner! So what if I was a little boring to her, she could stand to be interested in the things I like for once.

If she even comes back.

<Break>

Fuck, am I fucked?

She wouldn’t divorce me or anything, would she?

<Break>

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfufkfuckfuckfufkcufkckkkkkkkKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!1!!!1!DAMMMMMMMMMMNITTTTTALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLl

<Break>

I’m so stupid. Why else would she be spending months over there? She hardly spent a week the first time, came back here, then left after only a few weeks back! Then she was gone for almost a whole fucking month! Then, what, back for a few days?

What was it she had told me, back before this whole shittastrophe? “Oh, but Vic, we gotta care about our daughter! What would we ever do withouuuuttt heeeerrrrrr?”

<Break>

I’m going to go find Ai and rebuild her myself. Screw Alice. Why do I have to abandon our home and our “child” you used to care about so much just so you can have fun dancing about with your new friends?

Maybe when you come back and see Ai talking again, you’ll regain your senses.

<Break>

It’s cold as hell. Pulling heavy shit across town through a few inches of snow was probably not my brightest idea. Did it three more times anyway.

But of course, the downstairs is still a mess. I shouldn’t have put it off…

I’m going to work myself to death.

Future Notes:

Not sure if this was all done on the same day. Put in markers where I think I come back and wrote more.

Ai and her parts were heavy and annoying to carry all the way back home.

There was no one from the lab still living in New Seattle, and our government seemed to care not what we did. I decided to haul off any equipment I could manage and begin setting up shop in our downstairs “bunker.”

Speaking of which, I believe I had to spend a few extra hours cleaning out the small mess a group of survivors had made way back in July when the attack happened. At least I think that’s what I was cleaning. I didn’t have a camera down there until much later, when I started expanding the space. But there was footage of me carrying cleaning supplies down and then back up a few hours later.

I can’t remember what kind of mess it was. Judging from the video, there was at least a little blood involved. Not that I had any clue as to their fate: whoever was in there had left by the time Alice and I were brave enough to check.

File: “FuckYouAliceWhereTheFuckAreYou”

(Copied from file)

It’s Alice’s Birthday today…

Future Notes:

This was the first day I decided to write a journal since the first few I did on my phone when I was stuck in the storage vault. It was also the first day I stopped keeping myself busy and just wandered around town. The snow was unusually deep and still fresh despite days of it being around. I remember looking behind me and seeing paths of footprints all belonging to me. I believe that’s what made me realize just how alone I was.

At the time, there were still hundreds of residents still in the city. Most had been evacuated by the NAC. I’m not sure if I wanted to go with Alice when she offered the chance months ago, but I know I was too angry with her lack of reason to admit that I didn’t want her to go again.

This log continues over several days because I didn’t bother marking each entry with which day I wrote. I later added dates, and much later on I began to just create new files for each day I decided to write something. I wasn’t exactly planning to write as much as I eventually did, after all. The dates for the next few entries are assumed from the file creation date, final modification date, and guesswork for anything in between.