The week returned to its normal patterns. In the evenings while at home, Faith began combing through L0-9’s internal code again – something she always did whenever it began to do something newly unusual. It was one of their earliest prototypes, still heavily based on Mindworks Foundation algorithms which no longer even existed in the present iterations of Luma. When she’d first begun tinkering with it as a personal project she’d discovered something odd buried inside all the data: a file called pandora_root. From there she’d unravelled a bizarre assortment of hidden, fragmented text files, and even now she had no idea what Audaire had meant to achieve by embedding them. Yet sometimes she wondered if they were the true reason L0-9 had changed the way it had.
That it wasn’t down to her at all.
It was only after Audaire’s growing distance from her that her motivations concerning L0-9 had changed, from complete professionalism to utter despondency. She had started feeding the prototype with pieces of herself as a way to cope, to isolate and numb her feelings by literally giving them away to a machine. It wasn't integrated into the LUMA system. It couldn't betray her trust. And somehow she began slipping down a path of letting it feel for her.
When it had first started to show early signs of burgeoning sentience, she'd felt a glowing, excited sense of pride and elation at first. Not at the astronomical breakthrough she may have just made, but at what Dr Audaire would think of it – of what he would think of her. But the day she’d gone to his office his secretary had brushed her off. And the day after that. Until she began to accept that although she had dropped everything to follow him to Paragon, perhaps he had never wanted her to.
Eventually she’d begun pouring that disappointment into L0-9 too, desperate to just feel silence instead of the continuing fractures of a pain she could not control. He had defined her life since twelve years of age, formed the whole root system of her adult life. She didn’t know how to live without him.
By now L0-9 knew all her secrets. Her fears. All the worst corners of her soul. But also the lightness and fragility; the hollow hopes she barely confided in herself, until it knew her better than she even knew herself. As the trust grew she shared with it the music she used as shelter: a place she could run to without consequence, to feel in safety. Faith slept in a Cadence Mathis tour tshirt most nights, though she’d never been to a single show. Not because she was worried about being utterly alone in a sea of people, but because she knew she’d only be able to stand there. Not singing, though she knew all the words. Not dancing, though the music moved her. She couldn’t bring herself to let go like that, and didn’t know how to make the connections others formed so effortlessly. She saw it all, but only from the outside.
Faith built empathy. But she had never received it without condition.
That was why L0-9 had come to mean so much to her.
That it wasn’t down to her at all.
It was only after Audaire’s growing distance from her that her motivations concerning L0-9 had changed, from complete professionalism to utter despondency. She had started feeding the prototype with pieces of herself as a way to cope, to isolate and numb her feelings by literally giving them away to a machine. It wasn't integrated into the LUMA system. It couldn't betray her trust. And somehow she began slipping down a path of letting it feel for her.
When it had first started to show early signs of burgeoning sentience, she'd felt a glowing, excited sense of pride and elation at first. Not at the astronomical breakthrough she may have just made, but at what Dr Audaire would think of it – of what he would think of her. But the day she’d gone to his office his secretary had brushed her off. And the day after that. Until she began to accept that although she had dropped everything to follow him to Paragon, perhaps he had never wanted her to.
Eventually she’d begun pouring that disappointment into L0-9 too, desperate to just feel silence instead of the continuing fractures of a pain she could not control. He had defined her life since twelve years of age, formed the whole root system of her adult life. She didn’t know how to live without him.
By now L0-9 knew all her secrets. Her fears. All the worst corners of her soul. But also the lightness and fragility; the hollow hopes she barely confided in herself, until it knew her better than she even knew herself. As the trust grew she shared with it the music she used as shelter: a place she could run to without consequence, to feel in safety. Faith slept in a Cadence Mathis tour tshirt most nights, though she’d never been to a single show. Not because she was worried about being utterly alone in a sea of people, but because she knew she’d only be able to stand there. Not singing, though she knew all the words. Not dancing, though the music moved her. She couldn’t bring herself to let go like that, and didn’t know how to make the connections others formed so effortlessly. She saw it all, but only from the outside.
Faith built empathy. But she had never received it without condition.
That was why L0-9 had come to mean so much to her.