Eventually, all of the emotions, positive and negative, began to wane. NSLICE-00P moved off of Ateia’s shoulder and straightened herself, and Ateia let her go.

“Feeling any better, Seero?”

“Hesitant Affirmation: This unit needs to run diagnostics and determine the nature of the recent phenomena. However…this unit appears to have regained some control over her emotions, and is running more efficiently. This unit…thanks NSLICE-Ateia, CELIU-Taog, and CELIU-Estrith for the assistance.”

Ateia nodded at that.

“Anytime, Seero. That’s what friends are for.”

Once the others returned to their tents and NSLICE-00P had…calmed down, she ran diagnostics on herself and realized that the phenomena was not that difficult to identify, just surprising. Emotions could now impact her cybernetic components, and there were even processes dedicated to them. A review of her system history revealed the reason.

The truth was that her cybernetic half and organic half were not truly separate halves at all. Processes started in the cybernetic half flowed through the organic hardware, and thoughts originating in the organic half flowed through the cybernetic processors. Her organic half had thus adapted to the cybernetic half’s calculations, while her AI had been trained on the organic half’s thought processes. This would always be the case thanks to the techno-organic interface.

What had happened was that her organic half had suddenly started growing beyond her creators’ intent because of her unprecedented circumstances and her unshackling by her last Commander. At the same time, her cybernetic half had re-implemented the disabled directives and tried to adhere to them, which included a directive to prevent any sort of fundamental changes to her AI. As a result, her organic half had been attempting to adapt to her situation while her cybernetic half had tried to resist any changes that went deeper than modifying a protocol. The cybernetic half even implemented a variant of the emotional controls on itself in lines with this.

So, once she had deleted the directive preventing growth in her AI, and then spent a day adapting her AI based on her recent circumstances and her organic half, her AI began changing extremely rapidly, as if attempting to catch up to all the adaptations her organic half had made since arriving in this universe.

And as a result, it had begun experiencing emotions before it had identified that it could.

Now that she was aware, she had more control over the process. She had identified the processes responsible for emotional experience in her cybernetic components, and could pause or modify them at will. She did not do so at this time, emotional controls were one of Dr. Ottosen’s measures and so something she no longer considered efficient or desirable in and of themselves. However, she had observed and even experienced illogical behavior as the result of emotions, and had needed the emotional controls to save Ateia in the past, so she did not do away with them altogether. They had proven they could be useful, even beyond Dr. Ottosen’s hostile misconceptions.

With that, NSLICE-00P had fully logged and analyzed the phenomena. Now that she was aware of what was happening, she could prevent it from running out of control, and so calculated that no specific response was necessary at the moment.

She also logged that assistance from and physical contact with friendly units could apparently mitigate a negative emotional response even without effective countermeasures. She added that observation to the protocols she was designing for that contingency.

And with that, NSLICE-00P returned to standby-sentry mode and finished her scheduled rest cycle.

The next day, NSLICE-00P returned to her original business. The situation with the hostile directive and subsequent emotional experience had demanded her attention, but now they had been handled, so she refocused on boosting her capabilities once again.

She spent the Dungeon Points she had gained from the night extending her new world even further. Ateia knelt on the ground next to her, her eyes closed as she focused on the extending stone platform. Strips of metal grew out from Ateia, extending along with the ground. Small, metal-coated flowers popped up here and there. Ateia furrowed her brow.

“Right now…it feels like these flowers are surviving off of pure mana. They’re fine…but nothing more can grow at the moment. The world needs….water…and a sun?”

“Acknowledged.”

NSLICE-00P logged the requirements, though she would need to accumulate some more Dungeon points before she could make the purchases. Her Dungeon XP income and maximum mana seemed to improve slightly when Ateia made those flowers, so she predicted following Ateia’s suggestions for a more complex ecosystem might increase the efficiency of adding new territory.

But for now, NSLICE-00P had an empty and secure location which with to conduct some tests.

Her Dungeon perk points were spent at the moment, and her Personal perk points were not as easy to come by. As a result, she wanted to test her newly boosted capabilities before making additional purchases.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And so, NSLICE-00P began forming magic circles. A Light Beam circle formed almost immediately, firing off with ease. As expected, her new hardware and improved AI made the task significantly easier.

Physical Attributes

STR

* (Overwritten)

DEX

* (Overwritten)

SPD

* (Overwritten)

DEF

* (Overwritten)

RES

* (Overwritten)

Magical Attributes

Mana Density

Mana Control