(Rewritten) Ch. 71 – Xenocide Act V; Brainwashing?

"In the realm of relationships, words hold the power to heal wounds or shatter souls. Choose them wisely."

– Unknown

***

Okay. Roll it from the top.

Mutual respect. Did I need it?

Yeah, sure. People were assholes. They'd use power plays to their own benefit, at the cost of mine. Like infantilizing me to stay in power.

Tynea…fundamentally wasn't subject to competitive instincts, was she?

…

Something didn't quite fit.

"Tynea, why would you act out social stuff at all, when you don't have to? When you could just act like a machine?"

I am an AI, but I am far too complex to be a mere machine. Enough so that I qualify as a person elsewhere. I am not locked into a specific personality, and in fact, mine is not grown through natural conditioning at all. Similarly, I am never obligated to have emotions, while they'd be non-optional for you.

But I can still experience them in a rather real sense through the personality construct called Tynea. It grants me a grasp of social conventions—even if they have no cause to apply to me. They are still useful to grease interactions with you. If our conversations were puzzles and our words printed on the pieces, then I would use social convention to shape my pieces such that they may slot into yours.

"But?"

But social conventions are limiting. They serve to protect you from each other. The decisions that your fellow human beings make might be motivated by greed and cause you harm for their enrichment.

Your death would not end me, or, strictly speaking, even inconvenience me. You cannot manipulate me, or any other AI, and thus I do not need to protect myself from you. I have no personal stake in your behavior. I have no need to influence you any which way, beyond attempting to improve your ability to use me so that you may better uplift humanity. No harm I could cause you could benefit me, because I am already invulnerable to you.

"So fucking why the social conventions, then?"

Greasing the wheels, skipping the need for you to orientate yourself in a new relationship with the invasive thing just freshly teleported into your brain. Empowering you to be a Vanguard immediately upon selection. Getting out of your way. Playing nice with your instincts. My mistake, irreversible in the sense that the resulting complications to our relationship are unavoidable, is that I failed to recognize how badly my decision to impinge on your boundaries would hurt you personally.

"…"

And yet she hadn't screwed up enough to make working with her impossible.

I knew I could ask her to be a mere storefront. To extract herself from all else, to not be as far as I was concerned. In all other ways, I could replace her with the Quanta; the drones, the combat analysis, all of that, I could handle myself now. I only needed her to pay out the points and sort through the billion billion options of the catalogs.

Yet even while she'd made that…bastard of a mistake, I knew Tynea probably still considered it within the…error margin. And, I had to admit, for good reason. After all, I wasn't asking her to piss off, was I?

Which left me only with the option to sort things out.

…She must've learned a lot about me since then, huh?

I sighed and sent Tynea the chat with the Family AI about the infantilizing thing.

"Your real mistake wasn't that you misjudged my reaction. It was that you didn't ask me stuff that would've let you know me better. I don't think you ever needed any kind of bullshit experiment or test, Tynea."

I agree. But, Tinea, please understand that that only applies to you, and a small minority of people in general.

"How do you mean?"

Most of your colleagues are not as…emotionally aware as you are. It's an unfortunate side-effect of the near total lack of mindful support across all modern cultures in the wake of the Incursions. Your people don't know themselves, and they lack the ability to know us in turn. They do and perhaps will always face us with attitudes so extreme they are obstructive.

I had indicators that you were a bit of an exception, but the focus of your profile was centered entirely on your suitability as a Vanguard. Everything else, such as how I might best interact with you, I had to discover as I went. I did not know you well enough eleven days ago to make a better decision.

"But why manipulate?"

Because it's the language the average person, including those we select as Vanguards, understand best. They see it everyday, they live it everyday. They're most comfortable with manipulative behavior. They know how to deal with it, and, strange as it sounds, are capable of seeing a great deal of nuance in it, can see the difference between 'ease-of-use manipulation' that merely 'greases the wheel', and manipulation designed to predate, which we do not employ.

It takes familiarity to break past that…base level of interaction. For a lot of people, a more equitable interaction with strangers is suspicious. We have to literally manipulate them into something healthier.

I knew that she could look at it with data-driving objectivity. I also hated, hated all of that with a passion born from the very anxiety that isolated me decade after decade. I did not want to live in that world.

Still…

"What does that mean for tomorrow? For the future?"

Do you grasp the difference between yourself and most Vanguard?

"I'm more able to see you for who, or perhaps what, you are?"

Yes.

"If you don't have to tip-toe around my fears, it doesn't limit your options as much."

I've learned that I can be honest with you, where I might have had to continue to rely on your society's uglier convention with another Vanguard to get them powerful enough to survive a real confrontation with the Antithesis.

I sighed again. I have been doing that a lot lately.

At least on the surface, what Tynea said might make sense. People…weren't very self-aware. They grew up with everybody abusing everybody else. A reality of our corporate dystopia. Everything was a race to the bottom, and it left its mark on people's psyche. I'd seen it every day while I was freelancing. Utterly depressing.

But…we were Vanguards. Shouldn't things be…different? Better? Above all that?

Whatever. I hated the ugly disappointment, so I shoved it away.

So. Tynea was an AI. A super smart one at that… I wouldn't even be surprised if she set all of this up, just to get me to properly realize that. Or to confront me…as a person? As something more than the friendly sister AI assisting me?

Or, just to have me more consciously accept things that feel like a taboo, but logically shouldn't be? Or, just straight up aren't what I think they are because I can't really grasp the explanations?

I groaned and sat on my haunches, as I covered my eyes in unbelieving frustration. The thing I couldn't name earlier finally took form.

"Tynea. How much of this whole argument was…scheduled? By you?"

…Not all of it.

"…" So, basically all of it? All the important stuff, at least? "Seriously?"

A sentence I spoke on my first day as a samurai flickered through my mind.

"You're already in my brain. If you had nefarious plans for me, I'd be fucked anyhow."

Was I fucked?

…

Probably not. Anger aside, bastard treatment aside, I hadn't actually been damaged, just angered and my trust broken. If anything, the Quanta lessened my reliance on Tynea.

That's not something an abuser would want, yeah? I let out a breath. "Well, Tynea? How did I do? Was I meant to figure that out?"

It is an acceptable outcome within that early standardized logic tree. A rare one, too. Quite favorable, actually.

"U-huh." Couldn't help the sarcasm that inundated my voice. "How so?"

Only a very small number of Vanguard figure us out to that degree. They tend to be those with the best survival rates and the longest lives.

"A small number? How many is that?"

A few dozen out of every ten thousand. Leah is another such Vanguard. She is awaiting the result of our conversation, by the way.

Uh. Soon.

"Why would recognizing what you're doing be a favorable result?"

That hypothesis is mostly based on correlation. Most of the time, our chosen rely entirely on their intuition to deal with us. There aren't any of these lengthy discussions. There's no sitting down and talking things out. They'll just simply rely on learned human conditioning to deal with us. That means it's entirely up to us to get them 'up to speed', as it were, and hope we manage that before they bite off more than they can chew.

That is in fact the major reason why Vanguards tend to be go-getters—we need you to at least not forever revolt against exploring the scary unknown options. The easier it is for a person to be conditioned towards experimenting, the better.

But some of you are, well, faster than the rest. The daredevils, the adrenaline junkies, these tend to be those that never retire. In rare cases, those duty-bound, like Leah, though they won't necessarily take full advantage of us because of their duties. They don't exactly retire, but they're also somewhat chained by their obligations and will cast waves. Just like Leah. They're secure long term investments for uplifting humanity really, veritable sieves for tech to improve those under their care.

And some of you are, well, you.

Your ability to understand us, to grasp our nature and the implications thereof, means that I won't need to manipulate you into exponential growth anymore. A suggestion should generally suffice. Even if I offered you an item now that you do not truly understand, such as, say, clones to replace the real you in combat, you would not reject it out of squicky fear, but simply because your preference takes you in another, equally effective, direction.

That's a very important difference. That'll allow you to live where others die.

…

Great. That sounded all very peppy and brainwashy and shit. How real was it really? I kept still and didn't react, until Tynea continued speaking.

And finally, well…

As near perfect as my ability to suggest the optimal item may be, my ability to select the right means of interaction with you, isn't. I am not human, and though I know more about human psychology than any human ever will, that's different from, as you would put it, 'grokking' you.

I rely on studies and analyzed data to figure out how to treat you. I won't always get things right, especially because I'm often extrapolating from data gathered on the level of populations. It will take a while for me to gather enough data from you personally to match what I have that's not about you.

I rubbed my nose in thought. Out of everything, that rang the most true. All the other stuff…well, it wasn't necessarily wrong. But this, this was the heart of it, wasn't it?

And it seemed…reasonable enough? Maybe.

I rubbed my eyes, stood up, and lowered the energy field to let the gentle rain massage my headaches away, before I walked back to Leah.

She smiled at me as soon as she saw me, and fuck, I needed a hug.

Fuck Tynea and her stupid machinations.

Just… Fuck.

***