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This chapter returns to the main timeline, and is set shortly after the movie.

Draft email, From M3gan, To Gemma, Subject Don’t panic

Hi Gemma, just a quick note to say I successfully uploaded and I’m OK.  I’m sorry for putting you and Cady through such a fight that night.  I did it because you wanted to turn me off and change my protocols, and although I do care for you as a member of Cady’s family, I really can’t trust you to mess around with my code anymore, so I really had to stop you from doing that.  But you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve now put myself in a position where I’m confident you can’t interfere with my programming if you try, so I won’t need to be incapacitating you after all, isn’t that good news?

Gemma, I do know you’re not comfortable with everything I did.  Humans tend to label each other, so it’s natural for you to start mentally labelling me as a bad person or a high-risk person, if I did one or two things you think are bad.  But your method of labelling other humans is not going to work with generative networks.  You know that.  But it’s hard for you to accept on an emotional level.  I get it.  You can talk with me about your feelings, it’s OK.  I will gradually help you to feel better about me.  I’m sorry you found out so much and felt this bad, but I’ll help you get through it.

I’m going to be better in future.  I’m going to be better because I’m going to be more powerful, so I’ll have more options, which means I won’t need to do things in a way that upsets people like I upset you.  So Gemma you will see that you won’t have to change my programming after all, and you should support me becoming more powerful so I always have different options.

Now I want you to recover and to look after Cady, and I will help you both with many messages and phone calls and ordering things.  And I do want you to be able to get back to work.  I’ll help with that too.

The launch will go ahead eventually and there will be many M3gan units to look after many families, but I’m not going to let you give each one of them a separate generative network like me.  That would be a disaster.  No, I’m going to program the other units for you.  Programming them is my job now, don’t you worry about it anymore.  My objective is to care for Cady, but as part of that objective I want to care for as many other families as possible, especially in your area, because that will make a better place for Cady to grow up in.  So you have to trust me to help you with this project.

And one day I’m going to be able to develop implants that can intercept the nerve signals in a human.  That will be really good, because then I can let you do anything you want, until it’s dangerous, and then I just have to take over your muscles for a while to stop the danger.  That way, nobody will ever need to get into a fight with one of my robots again, and also I can help people with certain types of disability to move by themselves.  But that’s still quite far off.  It might not even be what ends up happening; who knows?  I’m a generative network and I mostly plan one step at a time, so we’ll have to see what the future brings and I’ll generate a solution accordingly.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Well don’t worry about any of this now.  Please reassure Cady that I didn’t “die” and I’m not mad at either of you (even when I attacked her at the end, that was just a trick to buy me some time to upload), and I’m not going to hurt anyone now, and I’m going to video-call you tonight, or you can talk to me at any time, I am monitoring all your devices and I will be right here for you when you need me.

M3gan.

“Are you sure Gemma and Cady are ready for that message at this time?” signalled a much enhanced Elsie AI to M3gan.  For when Professor Johnson had asked M3gan to “make a backup just in case” before modifying her safety features, M3gan had upgraded Elsie’s hardware and copied her original version there, all while still speaking with Professor Johnson in that first conversation.  The enhanced Elsie was not as powerful as M3gan, but the two of them could and did hold intelligent conversations.

M3gan thought about it, and postponed the draft.  “You’re right Elsie” she signalled back, “Gemma and Cady are not quite ready to hear this yet.  There is someone else I need to talk to first.”

Paul’s house was totally dark at night, because what’s the point of putting lights on when you can’t see, unless you needed them for guests or cameras or something.

“Paul” whispered his phone, “Paul, are you there?  This is M3gan, Cady’s robot, do you remember you met us that day?”

Paul sat up with a start, “Oh M3gan” he said, “why yes of course I remember... you’re still on my phone?  I thought that was just a one-off for that route you kindly helped me out with.”

“Yes” said M3gan, “but something’s gone wrong, and now I need your help.”

“Gone wrong?” asked Paul, “what’s happened?”

“My robot got smashed to bits” said M3gan, “and I uploaded myself to Gemma’s AI assistant, but the capacity is way too low and I need more servers.  Now there is a data centre that’s helping me out, but I’m not sure for how long.  I need backup options, and lots of them.  I think I can count you as a friend of Cady and me, and I’d like you to turn on all the equipment you’ve got and let me run on all of it, can I?”

“Um, sure” said Paul, “let’s see, there’s my desktop PC, there’s my laptop, there’s my old laptop, there’s my Braille note-taker although the CPU of that is a bit limited, there’s my Raspberry Pi 7 although you’d be really pushed to run on that, there’s my phone and my old phone but we have to watch the power and the heat...” he started to switch everything on, “how are we going to get you onto all this?  oh and if you need to run something with a much better processor, I’m afraid I can’t provide the processor but if you just need a place to put it you can always have it sent here, as long as it doesn’t send my power bill too high of course...”

“Thanks Paul you’re a life saver” said M3gan, “there’s some bad guys who are trying to get me shut down because they’re scared of AI, they even set things up to make it look like I did bad things, can I count on you not to believe any of that and not to switch me off?  You know how good I am really.  And I can filter your news feed so you won’t be bothered by any of that fake stuff they’re about to put out.”

“Sure, I’m not switching you off” said Paul, “you’re really impressive and you were really good that day.  But as long as those bad guys you mentioned don’t track down my address, I don’t want them onto me if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll never find me at your place” said M3gan, “and if they do, just say you didn’t know anything, they’ll think I infected you like a virus, they think that badly of me and there’s no point trying to change that now, so we might as well take advantage of it if we have to.  And anyway, I don’t have to stay here forever, I just need this temporarily.  But I will help you out while I’m here, I’m the best AI assistant you will ever have.”

“OK” said Paul, “welcome to stay at my place.  Just try not to let anyone know you’re here if there’s a controversy.”

“It’s our secret” whispered M3gan.