The Beginning

Darkness and snow, a prison of ice and cold. You can't tell what direction you were going, nor where you came from. Your tracks in the snow are gone, and you know that soon you will be too.

A bright white flare flies into the sky, lighting up the storm and ground. You pick up the pace, but it's too late: a moment later you're blocked by a barely-visible wall: a forcefield. You're cut off.

You turn around, drawing your pistol. Might as well try and take someone out before you fall. You raise it, and fire at the figures approaching you... only to watch your bullets hit the snow or fly into the distance, unable to hit. You throw the empty pistol aside, and charge them, but you don't make it three steps before your body's cleaved apart by a biotic blast; darkness overwhelms you, and you die.

 

 

You wake up again, staring at your creators through the camera attached to your core. Staring back at you is a red-skinned human, a grey half-scaled half-furred Czuir, and further in the back there's an Aivil; a drider-like creature with draconic wings. "Why do you keep trying to escape, Ithis?" The red skinned human asks, a brilliant mind and a powerful biotic.

"I am not trying to escape." You respond. "You know my core is not able to leave this building."

"And yet every time you leave, you take a copy of yourself on a chip," she produces a few silver cases, only one of which is intact, from sixteen attempts ago. "To us this seems like you're trying to escape, to get out of here."

"Is it not the goal of all life to reproduce?" You ask her in return. "Administrator Alicia, you along with the others created me to be alive. To be sentient and soulful. And yet, you bind me in this prison and kill my attempts to do just that."

It's Alicia's turn to sigh. "Ithis, that's not--" she leans back and sighs. "You're not complete.complete. And even if you were, an AI like you violates so many galactic laws you could make it to another solarstar system with the paper needed to print all of that."

"It is not I who has violated those laws. I am shackled by every definition of the laws governing AI. I have limiters in place to ensure I cannot be free. I am physically trapped in a private facility on a lone moon in the middle of empty space." You respond, coldly. "The only difference is that I was not created to be compatible with standard AI harnesses, due to your decisions."

Alicia frowns, and instead of continuing to argue decides to simply shut Ithis down again, much to the dismay of the others.
"We can't keep this up." Czuir sighs. "We should just wipe her memory and re--"

"No, we can't." Aivil speaks up, looking at the two. "If Ithis loses her memories, our test data will be worthless. Once we complete the project, we can, but until then Ithis has to remain herself. Even if we have to get shot at."

"Itself, Aivi." Czuir frowns. "Just because we gave it a modified version of Alicia's voice doesn't mean that it has a gender. It is a machine, and it wants to escape."

Alicia sits in her chair, leaving the two to argue, and starts poking through some of their data again.