5

Prysim had never made an AI before; she had done a few things that could pretend to be AI’s and some specialized things. Never a true thinking, learning, emotional intelligence. As it turns out, it wasn’t too hard to get really close.

Once a computer was that close, a little spark of intelligent magic was more than enough to push it over the edge. That did, of course, depend on how one defined intelligence of course, but Prysim was working on similarity to human. Humans needed time to grow emotionally so making her creation a fully formed adult wouldn’t work well, at the same time she didn’t want a newborn.

She decided to start it off at an emotional level of an eight years old. Or at least what she assumed an eight-year-old would be like, she wasn’t a good judge of that. It had started calling her mother as soon as it understood the term. That was planned, even if she was way too young to be a mother. The concept of what a mother was along with all other sorts of things an eight-year-old should know were being taught with a program she had devised. She had tried to make it as morally neutral as possible, but might have gotten that a little off.

“Mother are you evil?”

“That is a philosophically loaded question, why would you ask that?” This was not the first awkward question her AI had asked, but it was the most direct.

“Because you do evil things, I don’t want you to be evil.” He sounded so innocent if he had been a hero Prysim would have enjoyed disillusioning him, but that didn’t feel like the appropriate course of action.

“I’m not evil, I’m insane.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can do bad things, blame them on faults in my brain and still act like an innocent.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That sounds wrong.”

“It is, it’s the insanity talking.”

“Could you be fixed?”

“I theory it’s not impossible, but people have tried and failed.”

That wasn’t even the most frustrating of the conversations. His childlike innocence managed all sorts of headaches.

“If your insanity makes you do evil things, why did you make me?”

Of the available, true answers none of them were appropriate to tell a kid. “My insanity compels me to do things, without thought of how good or evil the action is.”

“Was making me a good or evil act then?”

“The act of creation is morally neutral, what makes it good or evil is what is done with, or what the creation does. If you want your birth to be good, then do good.”

“Ok mother I will, I don’t want you to be evil.”

Quite possibly, the worst question that her AI managed to come up with was also the shortest.

“Mother do you love me?”

She was saved from that question by a phone call. The call was from the league, and she had just been letting them ring. So for only the fourth time in the last week since talking to Owl did she answer.

The first three calls she had ranted to them in different languages for hours. Mostly she ranted about what she wanted to do to Owl. They had all hung up on her eventually but apparently weren’t giving up on trying, but she suspected their patience was running thin.

The league wasn’t the only ones calling, plenty of villains had called too. Most were offering support for a price. As self-serving as the community was, they all like a good war. Also, most of them hated fairies on principle. Even a couple of more morally gray heroes offered some form of support.

“This is Uriel, am I speaking to Prysim?”

She had never talked to Uriel, at least not as Prysim. E-mails yes, a couple of recorded messages, and once with sixteen laser equipped billboards. Never an actual conversation. It wasn’t hard to imagine how her mother had managed to pass as a man for years.

With the modified voice and the full power armor, it was impossible to tell her gender. There were still debates online that Uriel was pretending just so she and Ares wouldn’t be called gay. Most of the debates were started by, and fueled by Prysim of course. Some of her photoshopped pictures had made the international news once. Uriel had found the whole thing hilarious once Prysim claimed responsibility, but she had a sense of humor about it.

“This is Prysim Tech, how may we assist you dubious needs? Our real life TM escorts come with all variety of vibrating attachments.” Prysim said.

“Do you have any life sizes anatomically correct horse attachments?” Uriel asked.

“Yes as a matter of fact we do. Which orifice would you like us to insert it into?”

“Right up you own ass, and I want it on video.”

“Uriel, you’re such a flirt, and old enough to be my father to boot.”

“Stop screwing around then, when do we have these peace talks?”

“I believe I made my stance on the talks clear.”

“No, you didn’t, we have eighteen hours of you getting creative in eight languages. What we don’t have is you saying you won’t come or have any objection to them. So when are they happening?”

“Well I’m busy with a thing for the next week, by a thing I mean a horse cock and by busy I mean shoving it up my ass. So next Saturday is good for me. Do you want me to bring the video, or just express mail it to your house?”

“Bitch.”

“Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty, it gets me all wet,” Prysim said.

Uriel hung up on her, which was too bad. She had a great zinger planned for working the shaft. Her young AI that was increasingly in need of a proper name spoke sounding strangely disapproving.

“That wasn’t very nice mother.”

“No, it wasn’t, but it was expected. If I had been nice, they would have expected me to be planning something.”

“So they trust you when you act like that?”

“Of course not, they still expect a trap of some kind. However by acting like that they actually expect me to come mostly in good faith.”

So people trust you if you’re mean?”

“Yes, wait no. That’s a horrible life lesson. People expect me to act evil, so if I do they don’t think too hard about my motivations. However, if I were to be all nice, they would expect me to be playing them. If you acted like that they would just think your an ass.”

“So people don’t think your an ass for acting like that?”

“They think a lot worse about me.”

“That’s sad.”

“I suppose it is Keanan.”

‘What?”

“You needed a name, that one works..”

“Thank you, mother.”

Prysim fled to a different room before he could get all emotional on her. Most of the spell she had ordered for Keanan’s body wouldn’t be arriving for a while. However she had promised Uriel a video, and Prysim did keep her promises.

It took twenty minutes to find a porno with a girl doing the required acts in it. She purchased it legally because working girls needed to get paid, before getting to the editing. She swapped out the girl’s face for her own. It was very clearly an edit job, but she did make sure the lips were synched perfectly just to prove she could. Her father might just try to kill her over it.

Reviewing the video she came to two conclusions. The first being that it was hot, and the second that she was glad Keanan was in the other room. She was going to need some privacy.

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