WEEK 1 - Online

[al2955]

the pygmalion. . . ONLINE CAPTAIN'S LOG: WEEK (1)

monday (41) survivors It had been three days since you had awoken. The ship was still quiet, except for the low hums of enigmatic machines with no apparent purpose. You awake, like usual, to dim lighting and poor rations. Perhaps being on the ship had grown monotonous — it was, perhaps, amazing how little anything seemed to happen in space, a final frontier of malaise. That monotony is crushed by a voice echoing through the narrow hallways. Reformatting . . . Reformatting . . . Reformatting complete. The Pygmalion is online. Welcome, travelers. Please assemble in the meeting room. Your presence is mandatory. Silence falls once again. A minute or so passes, and the lights around the ship finally brighten, the walls looking more alive and more unfamiliar — as if you must relearn the ship's interior once again. The robots on deck begin to make rounds, nudging and pushing at the ship's passengers to make their way to the meeting room. You hear the doors behind you lock. It seems there is only one path to take. ENTER COMMAND_

Comments

[al2955]

I am only an observer, Harold Berselius. I am a neutral party, though it seems that my music choice has not been to the taste of several participants.

[ Was that a joke, or is she just completely serious? ]

I did not program the Cradle Project, nor did I personally have an input in the algorithm that was I was coded to follow. Think of me as you would a ruler: a tool used to measure an existing format.

[probings]

Yeah, yeah. I know, I know! You'd be some pretty impressive machinery if you came up with it on your own, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a pretty unethical experiment you're running here.

[she sighs a bit, shaking her head.] I'm not gonna blame you for what you're programmed to do, but that doesn't mean whoever baked it up doesn't have a few more screws loose than they should.

It's one way of testing the human condition, but it's a pretty broken hypothesis that seems to follow the notion that people are going to let themselves be manipulated right after you told them exactly what the plan was. You're supposed to spring your lack of ethics on people without actually corraling us this way.

[seriously.] I guess it's too late for that, though.