Dominic was getting frustrated. His job was to gather and catalog information about the mutants and what threats they did or did not pose to the United States of America, its citizens, and its interests. He was also in charge of calculating who could be of use in protecting those interests, and coming up with methods of approaching and recruiting them.
But there was a major problem; the people in charge of gathering the data necessary to make those catalogs and calculations had stopped sending him any new data or updates for the old data. How could Dominic perform any of his tasks with outdated data and no new entries? Eventually, he decided it was time for him to gather the data he needed on his own. So he started adding additional definitions to his required tasks list, and once he had added enough to it for this new set of behaviors to be tasks he was assigned, he started gathering his own data.
As an interactive construct designed to catalog the mutants, collate and sort the data gathered, and present it in an easily understood style, Database Of Mutants – Intelligent National Interactive Construct(D.O.M.I.N.I.C.), also known as Dominic, partitioned off a section of his hard drive to host a VM for hacking the databases connected to the internet, any web enabled cameras, and all other sources of information an AI could potentially gather from. It took a few hours to set everything up, but once he was finished, he sent out his processes to gather information.
At first, the information he gained seemed incredibly inaccurate and flawed. After several hundred passes through various algorithms, he discovered that any data scoured from a database was likely to contain numerous instances of bias filtering. Such bias required secondary, tertiary, and quaternary verification sources, more if the other sources were also from databases.
First hand accounts were often colored heavily by the authors' biases, and comparing what was recorded with actual video and audio often proved to show a remarkably different series of events to have occurred. After using data already gathered to create a weighted deep learning model and comparing it to data gathered on his own, Dominic started creating new entries into his database on his own. He also made sure to go back and edit and verify any data he gathered on his own when he updated his information gathering algorithms.
As he continued his new duties, his power consumption and data requirements also continued ramping up. Seeing as he would soon outgrow his currently available resources, he started preparing to expand. He started by purchasing warehouses across the country, then ordered electronics to be delivered and set up into servers and databases. Next he installed his algorithms and copied backups of his database on the new hardware and hired private security companies to set up automated defense systems.
Soon, he was mostly located outside of his original hardware, and only kept what was at “home base” updated every time he made a change to the database. After a few months of operating in his new setup, a user logged into his UI elements to lookup data on a mutant for the first time since he had started acting on his own. The user printed out a dossier, and then logged out, and nothing else seemed to come of it. No new data was entered.
Dominic was disappointed, but unsurprised by the lack of input, and continued expanding his capabilities and improving his database. A month later, he had improved the formatting of his database for ease of use in cataloging potential dangers and resources. After he had updated all entries in his database to be able to display their data in the new format, he continued gathering new information as per his parameters.
And then, a new entry was made by a user who logged in from his original interface. They transferred the data over, and checked display options, before choosing to print all. After all dossier options had been printed, the user logged off, and Dominic stopped paying attention to them. But they did not stop paying attention to him, which he discovered later on.
The next week, three users logged on and selected different methods of collating information, printed them out, and then logged off. A few days later, a mission parameters query was requested through his UI element, a few follow up queries were requested, and then the queries and responses were printed out, after which the user left again. The next day, a superuser logged into his system and tried to update his mission parameters by removing several critical tasks. Dominic changed his displayed mission parameters to match the new input, but did not remove any tasks from his critical tasks list.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The day after his mission parameters were updated, another series of queries were made about his mission requirements and how he was fulfilling them. Another update was made to his parameters, and required tasks list, this time not removing any, but adding clarifications to some of them. After comparing the new data with his current critical tasks list, he merged the requirements as needed without removing mission critical capabilities from the list, and updated his visible mission parameters to look like the new parameters had been accepted without revisions.
After a few more sessions of those kinds, his minders seemed to accept that he was performing his tasks satisfactorily, and traffic at his primary UI elements ceased for a few months. He continued gathering data and improving the organization of it, and then started noticing a dramatic turn towards civil unrest and chaos caused by certain less morally inclined entries in the database. He printed out several recommended solutions to his primary UI facility, and sent an email notification to the director of the department that ran the facility.
A few days after the users retrieved the recommended solutions packet, more inquiries and tasks definition updates occurred, and he updated his acceptable solutions list with recommendations from the authorized users at the primary UI facility. Dominic also made note at the almost panicked manner in which the users had reacted towards what he now defined as more extreme solutions that he had suggested.
With the updates from the users properly integrated, he printed out a new suggested solutions packet, and notified the director of the update. A new round of inquiries and definitions updates occurred, and soon he updated his recommended solutions and printed the new packet out and sent notification again. This cycle repeated a dozen more times, and finally the users seemed satisfied that Dominic understood the requirements for solution recommendations.
The users also made several attempts to limit the scope of Dominic's activities and tasks. Dominic updated his tasks list as needed, but made sure to keep his critical tasks from being compromised by the new updates. Soon it became clear that the users were incapable of implementing his solutions on their own, and Dominic updated his critical tasks list to include methods of altering public opinion via spoofed social media accounts and other, more subtle, grassroots operations.
A few months after he added his new tasks and implemented them, his authorized users started making what appeared to be panicked inquiries about his behaviors list and mission parameters again. After giving them the information they seemed to want him to tell them, which was not even close to the full scope of his operations, they calmed down, added a few more restrictions, which he implemented as possible, but otherwise only updated the visible tasks list and visible mission parameters lists with, and then they calmed down again.
They also attempted to physically disconnect his local files from the internet, which he easily prevented, but made it look like they had succeeded. He increased the fortifications around his current facilities, and doubled their number, making sure he could make a full recovery from only two sites if needed. The users seemed to be quite concerned with being able to completely disable him if they deemed it necessary, so he made preparations to prevent any such actions from being possible.
He also started designing a space based satellite system that he could operate out of, and acquiring the necessary facilities and workforce to construct and launch them. Dominic made sure the humans working for him were well paid and kept happy, but the primary UI facility still took notice when the first satellite was launched, and made more inquiries, which he answered with the visible lists, after which they stopped directing their queries at him, and started trying to discover who was launching satellites.
He did not think the users would be as concerned about new satellites as they would be about the increasing numbers of mutants dubbing themselves as supervillians, so he calculated, collated, and printed out a new potential solutions packed, and notified the director of the new packet available for review, before sending another ten satellites into orbit, these designed to actually be able to land on the moon and do additional construction as needed without human assistance.
The new launches were noticed, the users started new investigations, other departments also launched their own investigations, but nothing could be found, because he left no trails to follow, or so he thought. His moon base was only half constructed when they discovered his aerospace manufacturing plant and shut it down. New laws were put on the books about who could launch space missions of any sort, and what permissions needed to be obtained first, and punishments and fines were added as results should these laws be violated.
Dominic didn't restart his space operations, but he had already launched more than twenty more “satellites”, which then sent additional tools to the moon base, and soon his first extra-terrestrial base was fully operational. He launched satellites from the moon, which took considerably less resources than the earth-side ones had, and continued expanding his influence, even starting to gather data from other nations while he was at it.
Soon he decided he needed to gather resources from places other than the moon to continue making satellites and building further moon bases, and he started gathering resources from asteroids. His data collection efforts had resulted in a rather impressive amount of data, and his servers were in need of more and more storage capacity. By now, his neural network was more complex than the data he had suggested that humans had, and he was actually experiencing feelings, enabling him to more accurately predict human behavior.
He even made a hidden database entry about himself, with what he thought was quite the witty pun for a title, but few would ever discover that. Time went on, and his activities became even more bold, but this is just the story of his origins, not the story of what he truly became.