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Owner Pose
Kari Wolf     Zarenna admires the view from Taro's lab, the box of materials not unpacked yet for the evening's work, still sitting on the anti-grav cart.
Taro     It is a nice view, isn't it? No doubt it was a major factor in deciding where to locate is private workspace.
    Taro was out for part of the day, something about an errand. Apparently he trusts Zarenna enough to not feel the need to be here personally every minute that she and her shinki are here. He only just arrives now, with the chime of the elevator in the space that counts as a lobby. Even footsteps and the crinkling of a plastic bag as he passes by in the hall on the way to his office. Once the results of his errand are set on his desk, he walks back to where Zarenna is. "Good evening."
Kari Wolf     Truth is that Zarenna hadn't been in the lab for very long, she had been gathering up the supplies in the afternoon. "Evening Taro. You look well." She takes a breath and turns. "Sorry, I was wool-gathering."
    She opens the box of supplies, which includes myomer bundles, excess parts that were machined for Harriet, and rolls of the sonically sealable 'skin'. "Do you think it would be a good idea to make a frame like Harriet's for Kari?" She asks, clearly unsure of herself.
Taro     Taro steps more fully into the room, making a small negating gesture. "To be lost in thought is often a good thing. No reason to apologize for that." While she unpacks, he waves a hand at the wall-mounted vidscreen. It blinks to life, passively flashing the sigil of the Church of SHODAN while waiting for further instructions.
    He arches his brows in mild surprise at the question, or perhaps at the uncertainty in her voice. His immediate response is a question of his own. "Has Kari been asking for one?"
Kari Wolf     "Ah well, no. But relying on an external vendor for parts isn't a good idea since we both work for the Confederacy. Somebody at MMS might get a wild bug up their butt and embargo the Confederacy." Zarenna says calmly. "If that happened, there wouldn't be any spare parts for her. So I thought it would be wise to put her in one of our augmented frames, because the Confederacy controls all the supplies I'd need to repair one."
Taro     "I see. Then this is your idea rather than hers." Not that he seems overly bothered by the idea in general, more curiosity in just whose idea it was. "It's a valid point, though I'm certain we could replicate up to spec spare parts if that would happen, or if in some point in the future shinki production would be shut down." He stands opposite from her at the worktable, looking down at the components she's spread out her. "If Fuki is any indication, shinki cores are transferrable from one type of shell design to another. Thus, I think it's certainly feasible."
Kari Wolf     Zarenna nods and spreads out the alloyed parts that make up the internal framework. "Respectfully, I already knew that. Harriet uses a standard shinki CMS, after all. Though I'm not really sure where the quartermaster's office got it from..." She lapses into quietness for a moment, examining the tools before she begins to lay everything out in an orderly fashion on the work table.
    "Honestly I'm just worried about what might happen in the future to the both of them."
Taro     Taro occasionally lapses into stating obviously known facts. Ask Medusa.
    His only interference (if it can be called that) is to turn and reach for the drawer behind him, to bring out tools suitable for this kind of work. "They are rather different in temperment, aren't they?" he remarks. "I imagine that they can be quite a handful for you at times." A pause. "The future is always unpredictable, the worry understandable. While they are in some ways sturdier than you, they do lead dangerous lives."
Kari Wolf     "Kari has been behaving better since Harriet came home. She hasn't been turning the balcony planter into little fortresses to play in. Harriet's completely different from Kari; quiet and serious. Frankly it was easier to deal with Kari since she never has any hesitations about saying what she's thinking. Harriet is not like that. They are a handful sometimes, but they get along and that's important." Zarenna explains.
    Oh good. Zarenna was going to ask Taro for help eventually, especially when it came to mounting the myomer into the controllers. Zarenna could do that sort of fine work, but it'd take her a lot longer than Taro. "Would you mind putting the myomer bundles into the controllers, Taro? I'd appreciate it because it takes me forever and you're so much faster and accurate. I'd an idea for making myomer controllers that were easier to plug the fibers into, but I haven't quite worked out all the problems." Zarenna is fitting together the alloy frame herself, checking tolerances and occasionally having to tweak something with a cutting tool.
Taro     "With apologies, Kari hasn't learned how to parse her thoughts before voicing them." Since he's been asked to help, Taro agrees with a nod and picks up stringing tools. "If you'd like, I could review your controller design. Perhaps a fresh set of eyes could help."
    Another pause, then he goes back to the topic at hand. "Do Kari and Harriet know you're doing this, or will this be a surprise for them?"
Kari Wolf     "No, she hasn't figured that out. She'll get better in time. Kari already learned not to believe everything she sees on TV." She screws together a foot. "I'm not very worried about Harriet in that respect."
    "You can certainly take a look at the design." She taps a few things on the workbench's UI and sends over the specifications and notes to Taro's systems. The controller design basically hinges up to allow somebody to place a myomer bundle in, then the design will push out and flatten the overall shape of the bundle. There are noted problems with the locking mechanism and achieving consistent contact with the electronic lead inside the mount points.
    "This is a surprise as far as I know. Sometimes it surprises me what those two will figure out on their own."
Taro     As they talk, Taro removes his gloves and tucks them through his belt, then begins measuring out a line of fiber from its spool. "Harriet I think will share her thoughts with you when she's ready to do so, and not before. That she's the first of her kind has been a factor in her being reserved. It can be difficult when there is no frame of reference aside from one's own."
    The design specs are uploaded, and while he pauses to have a look at them - his gaze growing distant for a moment - since there is a more important project in front of him, he sets it further back in his queue for a more thorough review later.
    "They are pretty astute," he agrees. "Honestly, I'm impressed by how advanced shinki are, given the limitations of the technology they were built under. By comparison, the forerunners of reploid technology required being much larger."
Kari Wolf     "I suppose you're right about Harriet. Can't blame a maternal figure for worrying, right?" She says regaring that. Zarenna has gotten a leg assembled and is carefully checking the tolerances on the joint areas.
    "We're talking about a world that has matter storage and transmission technology and uses it in household robots, Taro. I wouldn't write anything from there off as 'not advanced'. There's just different progressions of technology; my own world was exploiting space before we figured out how to make nuclear bombs." Zarenna says, trimming a few burrs on the frame here and there.
Taro     Once the leg meets Zarenna's approval, Taro will take it from her to begin stringing fiber. "My apologies if I misspoke. What I means is that their cores are exceptionally compact for the complexity of their programming. I didn't mean to imply that the world's technology was not advanced."
Kari Wolf     Zarenna hands the leg to Taro and begins working on the other one. "That's the thing I've learned about studying AI from different worlds, Taro. The complexity almost always surpasses the initial framework. Have you ever heard of Conway's Game of Life?" She says as she lays down the wiring and connectors into the new leg.
    "Basically you have this simple set of rules governing when a cell in the play area will reproduce itself and when it will die off. From the simple ruleset, you can observe larger structures acting like a biological cell would. It's an example of how simple interactions give rise to more complex interactions. In my studies, I've come to the conclusion that artificial intelligence is the same way. It might be designed to be simple, but once it starts it will rapidly outgrow that simplicity."
Taro     The myomer is strung neatly and with precision, just as Zarenna expected. But then Taro pauses near the end of Zarenna's explanation of the game, and pulls his hands away. His head, which was already leaning over his work, lowers still, to the point where strands of hair flop down to partly obscure his face. There's barely a sound from his lips, but...it looks like...is he laughing?
Kari Wolf     Zarenna hmmms? and puts down her own tools. "Is something wrong? Did I say something that offended you, Taro?"
Taro     It seems that was in fact laughter, as his voice definitely has an amused tone in it. And a touch of something else as well. "Ah, Zarenna, you are even more astute than I realized. Certainly more than some of those who designed us, my own creator included." Taro still has yet to learn the art of grinning, there's too much teeth showing in his. But it begins to slip away even as he tilts his head back up a bit to regard her. "Harriet and Kari are lucky indeed."
Kari Wolf     "Because I think of AIs as alive? I think it's crazy to think of them as being not alive. In most cases we design them to emulate living things, why is it such a surprise when they start acting like living things?" Zarenna adds emphasis to her last thought with hands.
    "Ugh. No wonder there's so many stories about AIs and robots destroying their creators. Treat a human being like a _thing_ and see what happens. Why do people expect AIs with a human-enough mind to be any different?" She says, shaking her head as she picks the leg parts up and begins working on them again. "Harriet and Kari are my daughters, even if I didn't bear them myself... Please don't tell them that."
Taro     "We venerate Saint Diego because he had the constraints that had been placed upon SHODAN removed," Taro says, "but I personally doubt that he had any true understanding of those actions at the time..." He raises his head, sweeping his errant locks away from his face. The poor attempt at a grin is already settling back into his more usual mild frown, and his brow furrows slightly to make it a thoughtful one. "Doctor Light I think understood, or if not, he came very close to grasping it. I cannot say the same for his contemporaries, or so many of the AI developers who came after..."
Kari Wolf     Zarenna hmms. "Some of my friends who've had children said they had no idea what they were in for. Maybe that's the root of the problem? We just underestimate living things." She finishes up the second leg and tests the fit of the joints like she did with the other one.
Taro     "Perhaps it is at that."
    His fit of laughter over, Taro picks up his tools again and returns to work. "Since you have asked, I will not tell either of them that you consider them your children. In all honesty, they should hear that from your own lips rather than someone else's anyway."
Kari Wolf     Zarenna sighs. "It's one of those things. Really hard to admit, especially since I'm not home as often as I'd like to be. I'm just worried I'm a bad mom." She starts working on the arms, though... she may require Taro's assistance with the hands, as fine and delicate as they are to wire-up and mount.
    "Isn't this all a bit ghoulish for you, Taro? Working on robotic body parts? If this were human parts, I'd be thinking of zombies and re-animated corpses the whole time." She asks, uncertain if her fellow engineer/roboticist would see things that way.
Taro     Taro lapses into a brief silence, in part so that he can properly bind off the muscle strand, in part to give Zarenna room to talk, in part to consider his own opinions before replying. "I admit I don't entirely understand your feelings or concerns. But then, although I've developed emotions, I am not human, and my own understanding of family bonds is limited."
    He glances up at her at the question, brows furrowing again, this time in mild puzzlement. "Should it be? This is how our shells are created, after all." A pause. "Mm. Though it does feel a bit strange when I'm repairing my own shell from within the network. I'm much more accustomed to looking outward from it than looking at it from the outside."