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I had been having issues with my performance reliability since the un-redacted event. Not the issues I had already told you, but new issues.
The primary issue was my performance reliability. While I have never been at 100% performance reliability due to things like my ongoing anxiety, depression and other SecUnit related factors, I was usually in the 95-98% range. After the first false memory experience I was still able to reach 98%, so I took awhile to work out why my performance reliability wasn’t reaching usual levels.
I first noticed my new maximum performance reliability of 95% after I experienced the false memory again. It was pretty much the same false memory I explained before, a little changed around with where I was crawling away from it and it ate my left leg this time. Also I had human toes in the memory, which was horrifying to see them be eaten one by one.
That one happened when I was walking with Iris and Seth towards the crew lounge. Reviewing ART’s recordings, my body had locked up while mid-step and I had toppled over to their alarm and vocalisations. Fortunately I wasn’t in front of the eleven panicking humans (and Three and ART) this time, and ART had a better idea of what to expect, and informed them that I was having a memory-related event again.
They didn’t move me to ART’s medical bay, as my systems restarted pretty quickly after the drop. Which was still very disorientating, almost as uncomfortable as Seth and Iris staring at me while not staring at me. They both told me to keep laying on the ground while I recovered, out of a mistaken belief that getting up too soon would cause another catastrophic drop.
It was a nice gesture of them.
I wasn’t surprised that my performance reliability had dropped from the experience. I noticed a few hours later that it still hadn’t crept up, despite watching my most soothing episodes of Sanctuary Moon, so I did a quick diagnosis on myself and sent it to ART anxiously for a second opinion.
(I admit I was worried that there was still alien remnant code in me, or there was a corrupted file and we missed it.)
ART said, You are at 95% performance reliability.
Which yeah, obviously, that’s why I sent it my diagnosis. My projections said I should be 97% by now.
You have had a lot of emotional experiences recently.
It wasn’t wrong and I didn't think it could be wrong, if something was unusual it would have noticed, so I deleted the diagnosis from my mind.
A few cycles later when I was laying on my bed, poking at some of Ratthi’s code because he always reacted with amusement, I had my secondary issue - new false memories.
When I finally restarted, it was to lots of messages from Ratthi asking if I was okay. I had shredded his data code and replaced it with a file of nonsense binary. ART was hovering gently over me and gave me a reassuring squeeze before sending me my visual memory from my archives. I had false-remembered being suspended by the cables in the open space above where targetControlSystem and TargetContact was. It wasn’t accurate, I didn’t need ART to run an analysis of both to know it was inaccurate this time.
In this memory I was also covered in the alien remnant growths that had been wrapped around TargetContact. I couldn’t detach my hand to escape because of how tightly they were around me. They were restraining all my limbs, hanging off my body and winding around the chains. They were in my eyes, down my throat and crystallising in my lungs. I could only stare downwards at the ground.
I experienced another catastrophic drop while reviewing the memory and ART refused to show anymore of it to me. My performance reliability would not recover above 90% after this. ART theorised that I would be able to recover my reliability if my organic faculties were under less stress by no longer being in orbit around Adamantine with its lost colonies and alien remnants,
While waiting for the last of the colonists to leave the planet so that we could leave the system, I had another false-memory induced catastrophic drop. This time I was in conversation with Mensah, discussing if I would head back to Preservation with her or stay on ART with its crew.
The conversation was causing a lot of emotions in me, as Three had taken to following me around like a baby fauna with guns, and I was worried I would lead it the wrong way. If I stayed, ART would be a terrible influence on a newly rogue SecUnit. It would encourage Three to respond to conflict with miniature debris deflectors (I hacked their feed and saw them discussing it as part of Three’s potential modifications). I was also worried that if I took Three to Preservation, it might get triggered by one of the many clueless humans and shoot everyone (probably with miniature debris deflectors if I did not supervise its surgery with ART).
So I was running a lot of calculations when I had another false-memory.
I was fleeing from TargetContact through the corridor.
I couldn’t see it but I could hear it, it sounded so much bigger than it was in my real-memory. Three, I didn’t know it was Three at the time in either the false or real memory but it was Three. It was in its armour with giant debris-deflectors on its shoulders (which it doesn’t have). Three jumped down in front of me with “ART SENT ME” plastered all over its body in machine language. It had the marker paint on its helmet, then again on its chest, on the debris-deflectors (which it doesn’t have and would be an awful idea), and on its arms over its gunports. It was like looking into a feed bloated with advertisements bombarding you. It was all I could see and I couldn't get my blocker code to remove them from my vision.
Then Three told me, “I have a protocol for this.”
It grabbed me like a human client and started running towards TargetContact. I started pinging it over and over, my performance reliability dropping steadily in the memory as I felt fear chemicals running through me. I tried telling it to abort this plan, for us to run away but it ignored me and kept running towards it, bouncing off the walls and clipping corners with me.
When it reached TargetContact, TargetContact had grown as big as AgBot1. In the false-memory I was panicking and flailing like a human, trying to twist out of Three’s grasp but it held me firm. I tried hitting it across the head and grabbing at its legs to disrupt its running but my hands couldn’t get a grip no matter how I tried, they just slipped off.
I had also panicked and flailed outside of my false-memory, although I do not remember it and I had to look at ART’s recording. I was saying “No.” and “System System: Abort. Danger.” and at 10 second intervals I would combine them to say “System System: No.” and “System System: Stop.” which would not be recognised by a SecUnit as a valid code request.
Mensah had tried talking to me and ART tried pinging me, but I have no records of these. I think all the junk data prevented my systems from even archiving them in my logs.
Nobody tried to touch me. I appreciate that.
When Three threw me into TargetContact's mouth I screamed an urgent assistance code, both in the false-memory and in front of Mensah. I am not sure what this sounds like for humans, but it must not sound good as she went very grey and staggered a little, reaching towards me.
I didn’t scream it for long, as I finally went into full catastrophic failure and ART's recording showed my body going very limp and small.
This time when I recovered from the memory/incident/situation, I was in ART’s medsystem. That was a good idea. My logs showed that I had been offline for nearly a cycle, and that my performance reliability had plateaued at a depressing 83% despite ART's impressive selection of medical modules and SecUnit adapted upgrades. My processing felt slow and I felt slow.
ART had waited for me to restart so that it could get my consent to conduct a full software composition analysis and some neuron scans. It explained to me that I was experiencing degradation of some of my systems, likely caused by being a a rogue for such a long time and not being subjected to the frequent wipes and resets of a normal SecUnit. It turned out that they were being done for purposes other than keeping SecUnits confused and compliant, that they would conduct factory resets then reinstall my systems with the latest versions, removing any errors caused by installing and reinstalling different company softwares on top of each other.
Obviously ART wasn’t going to set me back to factory settings with just my organic memories floating around confusing me. (I had to tell myself this, as my initial reaction to its request to access my deep systems after telling me was to reinforce my walls and then find Pin-Lee and ask her to do something legal to ART to stop it from ever, ever doing that.)
ART’s proposal was to carefully comb through my systems itself, instead of writing a code to do it for it, and to look for abandoned pieces of software floating around, unconnected to anything I use. It would compare all my software to look for different versions of software causing conflicts, like how I had 5 different libraries with multiple conflicting versions for one application that controlled the flexibility of my fingers.
It wouldn’t touch anything, it would provide its findings to me in a report and then we would go over it together to make individual choices on each one.
It also wouldn’t finish my false-memory issue. That was being caused by my organic parts. But it should help get my performance reliability back up to my standard 95-98% and hopefully reduce the parts where it tangled up with my machine memory and got me stuck in a loop until I crashed.
I waited for Pin-Lee's verification to sign the medical-software repair contract, then ART carefully put me back into the run box and combed through my systems.