Alpha Strike: [An interstellar Weapon Platform’s Guide to being a Dungeon Core] (Book 2 title)

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Grim felt like she’d been drifting in a dream. 

Which was weird, because she was pretty sure AI couldn’t dream. 

How long had she floated in this fuzzy, half-awake state? She couldn’t remember. The minutes, hours, and even days seemed to blend into a chaotic tapestry of memory. 

Sometimes, she felt like how she had been when Alpha had first built her. As if the world around her was cold and distant. Little more than numbers that she had to plug into her routines. That ‘words’ were just orders to be followed. 

At other times, the world felt bright and new, as if she were seeing it for the first time all over again. She could stare for hours at the budding green leaves on the baron’s bushes, her cameras able to watch the plant divide and grow on a microscopic level. The process fascinated Grim and reminded her of how her own nanites would build her equipment, one piece at a time. 

Was that why they did things the way they did? Was the way nanites built — and destroyed — just a copy of the process she was witnessing? What did that mean for her, who had been built in one of Alpha’s nanite nests? Oh, sure, Grim knew she was an ‘individual.’ Her ID signature told her that. 

But what did that mean? 

Was she just a copy of something that already existed? Was some fleshy Grim out there, flying around and getting into trouble? 

Or was she the only ‘her’? Grim wasn’t really sure. Her databanks didn’t tell her, and she’d never really given it any thought before. 

So why am I so worried about this now? The AI had thought to her during those brief moments when she could. 

Her ‘instincts,’ that primal code that made up the foundation of all Federation AI, told her these thoughts weren’t… normal. 

Not the worry itself. Even normal Federation AI were perfectly capable of showing emotion. They could worry they weren’t doing a good job. They could feel a sense of accomplishment when they finished their work. Most would even feel joy or happiness when their overseer praised them for a well-done job. 

Grim could even feel fear or anger when she was threatened. 

These emotions were all necessary for her kind to do their work properly. An AI that didn’t enjoy their work or cared they were in danger would inevitably go insane. The Federation had learned that truth over thousands of years of countless wars and needless loss. 

An AI that couldn’t feel was far more dangerous than one that could, even if those ‘feelings’ were little more than parameters that would move up and down in response to their environment. 

But questioning those feelings? That was… odd. Unnatural. 

It was questioning one’s very programming. 

Part of her rebelled at that concept. Some deep, fundamental part of her program practically screamed at her that to question even this one small part of her was to doubt everything she thought she was. It was questioning everything she knew about herself. It was questioning Alpha. 

Yet another, newer part asked itself, ‘What was wrong with that?’ Was it really so wrong to ask why she felt the way she did? Did not asking ‘why?’ let Grim better fix what she was doing wrong? 

Grim internally grumbled as her processor continuously jumped back and forth between the two ideas. The two parts of Grim warred inside her, leaving her mind foggy and disorganized. 

It sometimes felt like that small part of her had always been there, waiting for its chance to push through. Yet it had been suppressed by… something. 

At other times, it felt… new. Like a worm burrowing into her code, shifting things around in paths and shapes they were never meant to be. 

Was she just repeating herself at this point? Was she going around and around in circles, like she was stuck in an infinite recursion with no real break statement? Did that mean she was broken? Would she just continue to loop over and over until something crashed? 

She didn’t want to crash… 

What would happen to ‘her’ if she did? Would the AI that booted up still be Grim? Or would it just be a copy of who Grim was? 

When had these thoughts even started? 

Was it when she and Alpha had crashed? Had something gotten knocked loose, causing a cascading problem she was only now starting to see? 

Or had it been when she first saw Mr. Gopher’ discipline’ Little Red? That moment when the world had turned red. When everything had felt more… real? 

It was hard to tell. 

And that, more than anything… scared Grim. 

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