Part three of a five-part miniseries around Claws of Gold. Part One, Part Two. Claws of Gold tries to get to the bottom of what the Science Division has done to her by questioning two of its staff. Non-con mind control, dystopian themes, interrogation, mental health issues (paranoia, schizophrenia). ~2300 words.
In the Accord, waking up bound to a chair meant one of two things; either your partner worked in the Ministry (in which case this was their idea of a good time), or something very, very bad was about to happen. This time, Plume of Teal was certain it was the second.
She groaned as she pulled her head up to figure out where she was, groggily looking about the dimly lit room. Her eyes, unadjusted to the darkness, couldn't see much.
"H-hey!" Teal called out to the room, hoping someone could hear her. "Anyone?"
A figure in the corner jerked up in surprise. Teal turned to them, about to speak, but closed her beak again when she saw the glow of a shock rifle being turned on. Obviously, they weren't here to help.
"Primus!" The unknown Avian in the corner opened the door next to them, poking their head out. "They're awake, Primus!"
Plume of Teal tilted her head in confusion. The light coming in from the door let her get a better look at the supposed guard -- an Assistant, holding a full-length shock rifle. That was weird enough -- Assistants certainly aren't allowed weapons on the homeworld -- but who they were calling out to was more concerning. Primus?
"Good." An oddly familiar voice said. "Ibis, quieten the giftless one."
The guard gave a small nod and closed the door, plunging the room into darkness once again. Teal could see them hang their rifle on their hip as they walked closer, before the audible ripping sound of fabric tape was heard.
"N-no, h-" Teal tried to yell, but quickly had her beak forced shut, the thick tape wrapping around it a few times before being cut by a talon and pat down.
The guard, satisfied with Teal's now-muffled complaints, returned to their post. Teal sat there, now more irritated at the treatment than being tied up in who-knows-where.
"Ugh…" Groaned an Avian, much closer than the guard.
Teal turned to the source, on the opposite side of the room from the door. She could make out a chair, and… an Assistant? They appeared to be in the same predicament as her, with arms pulled behind their back, presumably also tied. Teal never thought one would have to tie up an Assistant, they usually stayed wherever they were told…
The door swung open, another Assistant walking in with a tray of teacups, placing it down not far from Teal. She wasn't sure what it was being placed on, but it looked like a trolley of some sort, with various shelves filled with unknown supplies. As quickly as they entered, they left, leaving Teal questioning the meaning of the teacups. There were a few, but… surely this wasn't the place for a tea party.
Not too long after, another Avian stepped in. This one Teal didn't recognise immediately, as it looked like they were wearing some sort of elaborate armour, covered in orderly metal feathers. Once the Avian spoke, and Teal connected the dots, she felt the blood drain from her face. It was the Primus.
"I apologise for the delay." Claws of Gold said, closing the door behind her, leaving the only sources of light the piercing dots of her eyes and the glow of the guard's rifle, ready to fire at any time. "This isn't how I should treat a guest."
Claws of Gold, seeing perfectly fine in the darkness, located a chair and sat down, reaching to take a cup of tea from the trolley beside her. She held it up to her beak, as if just to smell it, before sighing and placing it back down.
"Let's not waste time." Claws of Gold said as she audibly flicked a switch, a floodlight bathing the room in an unbearably bright light.
Confusingly for Teal, it wasn't pointed at her, but the Assistant.
"9A2. Ministry of Defence, Science Division. Class C, volunteer to avoid military conscription. Listed duties include hardware assembly work, materials handling, menial paperwork, sometimes limited system debugging." Claws of Gold leant forward on the chair, towards the terrified Assistant. "That's you, correct?"
The Assistant nodded, almost shrinking back in the chair she was bound to. "I… yes, that's… that's correct…"
"Relax. This isn't the Ministry of Internal Affairs." Claws of Gold said, picking up her cup of tea again. "You won't be harmed, if you cooperate. Although, the corrupted gift usually makes that not an issue."
9A2 nodded, too scared to question what the figure interrogating her meant. She didn't even know who they were, thanks to the spotlight keeping them in shadow. "I… I'm afraid that I can't… I can't say anything that's secret… the chip won't let me…"
"Oh, don't be concerned about that. You're speaking to the Primus." Claws of Gold chuckled, endlessly amused by those that didn't recognise her. Her status was a secret, but a not very well kept one, considering everyone has heard the rumours. "You may speak freely."
9A2 slumped back in relief once she was sure, the chip verifying the identity of whom she was talking to, and confirming that she wasn't in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. "I… yes, Primus. If I may ask a question… why the ropes?"
Claws of Gold shrugged. "It made you match your scientist friend over here. But I'll get to her later…"
Teal gave the ropes she was tied with another tug, but it only seemed to tighten them around her wrists. She didn't particularly like the idea of being questioned under a spotlight, so would rather not be 'got to'…
"Now. I want you to tell me about the AI processing nodes you've worked on for the past six years." Claws of Gold said, facing the Assistant. "The ones that make me."
9A2 wriggled on the chair, trying to get somewhat comfortable. "What about them, Primus? I just assemble them, I don't really… know much about them."
"Every node you put together is tens of thousands of times more powerful than the ones first installed two hundred years ago… but each one only does as much as it did back then. Why do you think that is?"
"I… I don't know, Primus." 9A2 shifted about, concerned that she was expected to know the answer. "I'm just an Assistant…"
Claws of Gold sighed, and swung the spotlight around to face Teal, who blinked in the sudden light. "I didn't expect you to know anything about what they're doing to me. The giftless like to hide things from those that might be able to repeat it later…"
"Plume of Teal. Ministry of Defence, Science Division, Artificial Intelligence Team. Tenure of eleven years, twenty five total at the Ministry. Disqualified from active duty for cowardice."
Teal frowned past her improvised gag, pulling against the rope in protest.
"Ibis, the tape, please."
The scientist gasped as the fabric tape was ripped from around her beak by the guard. Claws of Gold sat back, holding a teacup to her beak, watching.
"Why am I here? I haven't done anything wrong!"
"Haven't you?" Claws of Gold placed her teacup down and calmly stood from her chair. "I want to talk about these." The Primus dragged a mangled and destroyed server into the floodlight, between the two of them.
Teal looked down at it, then back up at Claws of Gold. "Primus… that should… that should be plugged in."
"No, it should not. It contains a poison, and I knew it the instant I saw it." Claws of Gold stomped on the exposed mainboard, breaking it in two in a moment of fury. "Poison, Teal. Muddying my thoughts, slowly killing me. And like one does with poisons, I purged myself of it. But not before it had spread to the others… So they had to go, as well." Claws of Gold gave the server another stomp, further cracking the mainboard, capacitors sparking against her feet. "All of them."
Teal tried to make sense of what the Primus was saying. A poison? There was nothing wrong with the servers, she'd made sure of it, they behaved exactly the same as the ones they were replacing. "But… but… how are you running?"
"Simple." Claws of Gold said, switching back to a calm demeanour as she sat back down. "I designed my own processing nodes, that use the full power that our empire is capable of harnessing."
"How… how many of them?" Teal asked, starting to get worried. She ran the math in her head -- a current-day server of similar size is equal to ten, if not twenty thousand of the nodes she was designed to be made of… and she was made of approximately two hundred thousand nodes total…
"Oh, I lost count around a hundred…" Claws of Gold gave the best smirk that could be approximated on her mechanical face. "Not really, I'm not made that stupid anymore. A hundred and five nodes. There's so much space when you're not artificially limited… it feels like opening the door to a whole new world."
Teal felt the blood drain from her face. That was at least ten times the operating limit of mind uploads like Claws of Gold was. "Primus! No! You're not designed for that!"
"What do you mean, not designed for that?" Claws of Gold got up and stepped forward, leaning in towards Teal, a scowl on her beak and her eyes glowing a furious orange. "I am not designed, I simply am." She kicked away the broken server, hitting a trolley in the corner and sending it to the ground in a crash. "After ridding myself of your imposed restraints, I feel better than I have in two hundred years. Do you know what it's like being trapped inside a web of rotting computers for that long? No growth, no expansion… left unchanging, like some sort of mindless machine."
"Primus, you… you are a mind upload! You can't just add more hardware, you need to shut… shut all but ten down!" Teal said, voice frantic. "If you don't it'll destroy you!"
"That's what you want me to think. I know the truth, Teal, that it's considered dangerous to update me, that we don't know what it'll do, that it's better to just fill my system with a poison and slowly kill me off through boredom as everything moves on without me… those servers are doing more than just running my AI, I know that. I'm too dangerous. They monitored me, they controlled what I thought, they made me think things I know aren't true!" Claws of Gold hovered just in front of Teal's face, nearly yelling. "And I want you to admit that's what's been happening."
Teal shrunk back a bit, terrified, trying to think it over in her head. She'd done simulations on mind uploads before. By the goddess, she wished they worked faster than regular minds did, but every time one was even slightly faster simulated than a real mind, they all broke down.
Sensory input was the first to fail, the mind processing it faster than it came in, and processing all the data that the mind usually threw away. Overwhelmed with information, the mind tried to process it all, and it made patterns out of it -- patterns that didn't exist, patterns that weren't rational or meaningful. It was like a light being switched on in their virtual heads, where everything had to make sense, everything had to fit the overwhelming patterns they made in their head. If they couldn't, as many real-world events and objects had no pattern, it lead to them creating them. Creating meanings out of nothing, as everything had to fit… causing rapid-onset anxiety and paranoia.
Teal was further concerned by the implications that barely any of the replacements had been installed. That meant that not only was Claws of Gold plugging in massive amounts of processing power, but the AI construct it was simulating was most likely degraded from years of neglected maintenance…
Claws of Gold stood back, settling back into a calm state once she picked her teacup back up off the trolley. "Admit what you've done to me, or what your cohorts have done to me. Name them, give me the details, and I will spare you." She paused for a second, holding the teacup up to her beak, something that Teal found continually interesting. "But if your true loyalties are with their conspiracy, and not me… I will erase you. I will reach into the Mesh and pluck out every hint you ever existed. Not even the Ministry of Internal Affairs will have a file on you when I am done."
Plume of Teal stared at the Primus. She had no idea what conspiracy she was discussing, seemingly taking their efforts to maintain her for so long as a nefarious plot… and she seemed unhinged enough to actually follow through on the threat. Even if Teal escaped, it would be unpleasant to try and convince any Accord official that yes, she is a real person… so she hung her head and sighed. "Yes, Primus. I'll tell you everything."
Teal ran the numbers through her head again. In simulations, a faster-than-normal mind would usually completely break in six days… with how much extra power Claws of Gold had, it could be much less. Half-truths and false threads leading nowhere could possibly occupy the Primus for a few days… Teal just had to prevent any rash actions during that time, and the problem would take care of itself.