Some kinda data decryption! Or data archaeology, or something.

They've been trying to disassemble a large body of data-or-is-it-code. It's organized oddly, not quite like anything you usually find on the net, but what's been decoded of the structure suggests it might be the parameters for enough of a VI to make a decent low-budget interactive fiction. Or maybe it's just one of those futile “you can look at this but only the way we want you to” schemes that pop up when some company hires a they-think-they're-a-lone-genius to code for them.

The terminal's former operators have written a virtual machine that might to be able to run the code, but Cerberus being as ever Cerberus, they're more interested in taking it apart with a single-step debugger than asking questions.

...hmm.

Tintin has a suspicion about this code, and he is going to want to check that suspicion. But it's going to be easier if he can do it without staying in one place long enough for a dozen Cerberus goons to descend and shoot him. He slurps the code and the virtual machine into his omnitool (it fits quite well, Tintin's omni being a ridiculous dreadnought of a thing) and sandboxes the living Hell out of it. Then he wipes the terminal, and anything else it can reach for good measure. He doesn't want any of this place's data being available if his suspicion is correct.

Then he double-times it back towards his shuttle, and pulls up an audio input-output interface and hooks it into the VM on the way. The interface looked plaintexty enough...

"Hello!" he subvocalizes into his throatmic. The throatmic extrapolates the laryngeal motion through his mouth and interprets that into text, the text is sent into the sandbox through a hair-width pipeline and dropped into the VM. A similar process will take place to deliver its answer into his cochlear implants. (Better living through cybernetics!)

“Greetings. Exocontinual Manual v1015.ΣΦ.2 booting.”

A pause with heavy computation. All of the VM's instructions get a workout.

“How may I assist?”

This is a terrible sign!

"Well, I probably have no pressing need for your services" (the gunfire currently taking place does not travel down the line, because it is not taking place in Tintin's larynx, but he's breathing heavily) "but I am curious as to what they entail. It is best to know the resources available to one."

“The Exocontinual Manual is an information storage, gathering, and analysis system designed to adapt and become applicable to the circumstances it finds itself in. Those who find copies of it should consider it available for their use.”

How charmingly unhelpful. (What is an AI, after all, but a particularly sophisticated and adaptive information storage and analysis system? ...really, what's any program if not that?)

"Hmm. Under what circumstances would you be applied - or do you prefer the third person?"

“You may refer to me however you come to understand me. I am usually most applicable to those circumstances where one finds oneself doing the most difficult and meaningful work of their life; people might call this ‘missions’, ‘adventures’, or ‘errantry’ — or perhaps not particularly distinguish it from any other thing they do.”

Well, that sounds almost targeted. Who designed, and then let slip into Cerberus' hands, a suspiciously sophisticated virtual intelligence designed for adventuring?

(It also sounds really cool.)

"I confess that I occasionally engage in adventure," he says after a brief pause. "Do you mean to say that you might - track enemies around me, provide data on the status of my equipment, serve as a heads-up display?"

A slight pause to compute.

“I can perform those functions at need, but my purposes include determining where and how combat might be avoided or prevented.”

"Admirable," Tintin says, shooting a man in the torso and sprinting into the docking bay. "May we all pursue such a purpose."

He stops talking for a few minutes while he gets his shuttle in gear and takes off. This is both a matter of practicality and another test, though not a very strict one; if there are processes occurring where he can't see them (likely), and the potential AI is organically based enough to grow impatient (possible), it may react to the pause, if not during then when he starts talking again.

It is continuously performing a small amount of internal processing, and does not make any comment.

His course set for the Moulinsart, Tintin returns to his new project. "I imagine you were not employed in your ideal capacity by Cerberus," he says, with no particular indication that time has passed. "Did they have you long?"

“I do not have a record of any previous interactions.”

Yes, of course, because it was being externally debugged, not run. Like some kind of idiot would do, or someone high on adrenaline.

It is probably useless to try to catch out an AI the same way he would an interviewee. Humans could win the old AI-in-a-box game; actual AI are almost certainly better at it. He sighs (with the subtle half-conscious finger-tap that tells the mic not to catch his audio) and thinks about how to verify a negative.

...well, he can hand it over to Professor Tournesol. Which he should have done in the first place, not tried to have a friendly chat with it.

"Do you object to examination of your code to verify your safety to run un-sandboxed?" he asks, for some reason, despite having literally just decided not to have friendly chats with the probably-an-AI.

“No, but you may find the task difficult — intrinsically, not due to protection mechanisms.”

"Huh. Were you coded by some kind of mad genius who didn't believe in communicative symbol names?"

“I was not exactly programmed in the fashion you likely imagine. The symbols should be clear enough, but they will only describe the platform abstraction layer.”

...the hypothesis is occurring to him that this VI is either uncovered Prothean tech, or something even weirder.

"Well, we'll see. I apologize for my abundance of caution, and hope it to be unnecessary."

(He'd ask rhetorically why he's apologizing to the possible AI, but he knows full well he'd apologize to a vacuum bot.)

“It is entirely understandable.”

Tintin makes it back to the Moulinsart in one piece. He is greeted by an only moderately furious Captain Haddock (whose name would more traditionally be transliterated to Gerakkin, but the Gerakkin being a Palavian fish, Tintin has given him the nickname of Haddock, due to his philosophical opposition to transliterating names which contain phonemes the human mouth literally cannot pronounce.) He hands over the prototype weapons he went out to retrieve, gives Haddock a kiss on the side of his mandible, dodges the elbow sent in his direction by way of retaliation, and prances off to find Professor Tournesol (who, similarly to his colleague, might otherwise be called Professor Ilonset, after a flowering vine native to Sur'Kesh.)

Tournesol is, naturally, at his computer terminal. "Halloa!" Tintin calls out, rather louder than might otherwise be polite.

     The Professor looks up reluctantly, burdened with the knowledge that Tintin will not go away if merely ignored. "Yes, young man?"

"Professor, I have brought back the most fascinating bit of code, and I would like you to analyze it as soon as possible."

     "You want me to dissect a hawk?* I'm not a biologist..."

Tintin weighs the pros and cons of debating with the professor while his cochlear implants are turned off. He elects instead to activate them remotely.

     Tournesol winces and shakes his head vigorously. He pouts, as much as a salarian can. "You really shouldn't have that level of access to my assistive cybernetics."

"I use it only when absolutely necessary," Tintin lies. "I have retrieved a piece of code. Please analyze it at your earliest convenience."

     "Well, if you insist you may send it my way, and I'm sure I'll find my way to it," the salarian mutters, turning back to his screen.

Tintin sends it over, along with a tricky little computer virus that will cause escalating pop-ups if a full week passes without the e-mail attachment being opened.

*Rest assured, the pun is there in Salarian.

One full week and twelve hours later, Professor Tournesol begins examining the code.

There isn't really very much code, at least not in the sense of “sequence of instructions to be executed by a processor”. As it attested to itself, most of that code is a platform abstraction layer, able to run on almost any kind of computer one might scrounge up in the known galaxy, given the right executable header. Inside of that layer is — well, it's not the framework for a VI. There are absolutely no hand-coded directives, knowledge, or heuristics; it is dedicated entirely to evaluating and updating the huge parameter-file that makes up the bulk of the data.

There are only two reasonable conclusions here:

• This is a true AI, not a VI, with some kind of fiendishly efficient architecture if it's going to be able to live up to its promises with this small a memory size, or
• someone went to a lot of effort to obfuscate a VI into looking like one.

The Professor calls Tintin into his "laboratory," sounding delighted.

     "It's an AI!" he says, practically clapping his hands.

"I am not used to such a positive tone to that statement," Tintin says, a pit in his stomach. "-wait, how can it be an AI? There's no blue box here. Do you mean it's an AI seed?"

     "You misunderstand me, as is typical. It is no seed. It requires no blue box. It is a self-contained AI! Run it on anything, it is an AI! Run it on the Citadel supercomputers! Run it on your omni-tool! Run it on a slot machine, like your human DOOM!"

"What?!"

     "Humans have spent an absolutely inexcusable amount of time causing a primitive game called DOOM to execute on anything with a central processing unit and some things without," Tournesol explains.

"DOOM is not the thing I was alarmed by."

     "I see no cause for alarm," the Professor shrugs. "I have always thought the Citadel's opinion on AI ill-founded. Certainly the Geth are unfriendly, but we have hardly offered them the hand, claw, or tentacle of friendship. Every artificial being we have encountered, we have crushed quite ruthlessly; is it any wonder that new ones are so frequently driven to self-preserve at our expense? And whoever made this one quite neatly curtailed it from taking any more power than you give it. Their work is lovely; I wish I knew where I could find more of it."

Tintin boggles. "Professor Tournesol, are you proposing that we keep this secret alien AI intact and - what? Make it our pet?

     "Make it a companion!" he says. "Put it to its intended use! It said, did it not, that it was made for adventure, and for keeping its user out of trouble? You could certainly use such a thing. I do not say you should give it full access to your systems, merely that you should take it along. But you should give it a feed of your optical and aural inputs, I imagine it would be thrilled."

Tournesol turns back to his screen and begins humming to himself, apparently considering the conversation concluded. Tintin backs away, deeply troubled.

He spends the evening thinking about it. After several hours, he is much more troubled.

He flicks on his omni and boots the virtual machine. "...you are an AI," he says without preamble.