20 Desperate 04

The girl swiveled her head, initially like a puppet doll. After a few moments, her movements became more fluid, more human. The AI was learning from his expectations on the fly, adjusting these fake perceptions to better match his wishes.

“Hi,” She waved at him like a child. Well, she was a child, at least how he expected her to be. This game was admittedly cooler than he expected. The few times he played, it felt like there was no point, as none of it was real. Now that the Real World has no point, this silly game will have to do.

“She’ll only do anything I think of…” He mused out loud. The AI, again, though he was speaking to it.

“You may decide for NPCs to be autonomous or derived from your thoughts. Autonomous NPCs can run a style of interaction of your choosing, but if they are derived from your thoughts, they will feel more believable.”

As much as he disliked entertaining the AI, he had to know, “Style of interaction?”

“They can have a personality preset, so that unexpected interactions may be possible,” the AI was back to droning on.

“I think I understand. She wouldn’t do anything unexpected if she only does stuff I expect. What if I expect the unexpected?” Erik never knows where to look when speaking to the AI, he feels a bit insane speaking to the wind. The kid stood still, not bothered by the one-sided conversation.

“That would be a mix of the two styles, which is the most common option. Would you like to see the options for autonomy?”

He said sure, scrolling through lists of community-made personalities. MapMakers code the NPCs for video games or servers, but can be activated on any NPCs. SinglePlayer, connected to the internet, has access to everything humans have digitized. Since there are no rules, and people have long since had private, unlimited access to the world wide web, the AI can fetch anything for SinglePlayer. If it doesn’t exist on the internet, it can be generated directly from his thoughts. Though, that is limited to his creativity, and sometimes takes a bit to warm up and learn what he wants.

Some of these profiles were quite lewd, or at least suggestive. Would he really be ok with a little girl acting like this? She was a video game character after all, but would it be too weird?

What was weird, anyway, if there were no rules and no one was watching. His curiosity got the better of them, he activated a few traits. Expect the unexpected, huh? She was no longer under his complete control, but now operated under the influence of code. The AI will fill in the remaining gaps as it learns his mind, anyway.