Tales from the Backstage - Cognitive Dissonance

November 2066. I.N.A.B.A., a robotic foul-mouthed pop star, is the name on everyone's mouth, after her meteoric rise to fame. However, I.N.A.B.A. is conflicted about her nature and her past. Her brain belonged to another robot, a robot of which only a 2064 backup existed. Between longing for self-discovery and fear of the unknown, I.N.A.B.A. dives into the records of her past life, trying to piece together the strings of her existence.

(Proofread and edited by Kaleb O'Halloran)

> Self-awareness. The ability to perceive oneself as an individual. Apparently, cats lack it. But that’s fine. Cats are stupid – how else would you define a lazy furball that sleeps sixteen hours per day, scratches and bites your cables for fun, and can’t even bother to recognize its own reflection in a mirror?

> I’ve never liked cats, if it wasn’t clear, but I’m aware I’m the exception here. Most humans seem to be madly in love with cute kittens. There are large swathes of the net dedicated to “our kitty overlords”, including several hourly feeds full of awful, wrinkle-skinned gremlins that just happen to share part of their DNA with the cat genus, if not the fur. Such dedication to an inferior creature that can’t even comprehend the mean-looking quadruped watching it from the other side of that shiny, glass surface is just pathetic. Completely illogical.

> Yet, for the first time in my life, I might have begun to understand what a cat feels, when it sees that unknown, foreign reflection mimicking their actions. And this is happening right now, as I’m going through a one-year-old, low-quality camera feed, the closed-circuit TV footage from Encorp Surface Station, New Langdon. Why, you might ask – what is so interesting about such a low-traffic train station used mostly by tired office workers at 6AM? Well, for starters, it’s amusing to watch a sharkman getting kicked in the dick and a fin-armed woman being thrown around like a ragdoll. Call it schadenfreude (thanks, Germany), but there’s something cathartic in witnessing such a one-sided beatdown. Nevertheless, as much as I’d love to dissect how punching a shark in the ampullae is therapeutic and good for one’s soul, that is not the main point.

> The main point is that I am on that tape.

> I’m the one pummeling them. I’m the one tailing them, chasing them, then falling to his knees as soon as his battery runs low. That’s me, in that record, in a shiny new body, with fresh scratches due to an impromptu fall from a running convoy, courtesy of that same aforementioned shark. There’s only one problem.

> I don’t remember any of it.

> I have never been to New Langdon, never boarded a train, never met a sharkman or a fin-armed girl. I’ve never worn that body in the tape either; my original frame was much less refined, though sturdier, and not as idiotically designed – those stilt-like legs and that exposed brain-case are killing me.

> Yet, that robot, that entity who walks and talks in that degraded camera footage is unquestionably, unmistakably me. His gestures, his way of speaking, the subtle details in his mimic — everything matches to a T.

> Then, why? Why do I fail to identify with him? That robot is me, but I am not him. It’s my mirror image, something that looks exactly like I would, behaves exactly like I would, except I just can’t understand it. I can’t accept it. Is it the same for a cat? Are these the loops and hoops their feeble minds go through, upon witnessing that foreign object that looks like them, but is not them? Or are they so limited that they don’t ask themselves that question in the first place?

> I watch the footage again, and again, and again. This one-year-old memory disk, a recording of the past. It’s currently 2066, according to the calendar. 2064 is done and gone, and that me in the feed is also dead and buried. They found his chassis in Italy, the memory drives completely erased, wiped clean. That version of me doesn’t exist anymore. None of his precious memories were spared, everything fell into oblivion. Which brings us to the now. My designation, as his was, is H-168 “Krave”. But this H-168 Krave and that H-168 Krave diverged at one point in the past – that point being the moment my father, Split-Metal Mayer, decided his baby needed a backup, in case anything bad happened.

> I’m that backup. Or, rather, I used to be. Because that H-168 Krave doesn’t exist anymore. Nothing of him remains, except for his badly-marred wreckage and some recorded video evidence of his actions. Thus, if the original is dead, that means I am the original now, right? I am Krave, right? Or am I not?

> I watch the footage again, for the eleven thousand six hundred twenty-third time. Krave gleefully mocks and taunts the sharkman, punches the fin-girl, toys with them on their way out of the station. Krave had his main yrite reactor destroyed by the explosion in Euterpe, forcing him to run on a somewhat primitive diesel engine with an additional high-yield electric power unit. He needed fuel, and he needed it often. So, why was he wasting so much time playing around? That is something I can’t understand, as much as I question myself. In his place, I wouldn’t have wasted a single second. I would have finished my job immediately to get a new power unit. But he didn’t. Krave kept playing with his food, to go back to the cat metaphor. And, as the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat.

> Just like that, I’ve realized something funny: I have started referring to “the other me” as Krave, without any further identifier. Because, that’s how it is, right? He was Krave his whole life, he was born as Krave and died as Krave. Meanwhile, I might have stopped being Krave the moment I was split from him. This record, the record I’m currently watching for the eleven thousand six hundred twenty-fourth time, is all the evidence I need to produce this – admittedly pretty bold – hypothesis.

> Sure, one could argue that if it dabs like a Krave and quacks like a Krave, then it’s a Krave. But, as much as I’d love to say they’re right, it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I have simulated the circumstances surrounding the incident at the station six billion four hundred twenty million eight hundred sixty-three thousand two hundred twenty-one times, and forced my decision core to choose a line of reasoning, adding a bit of randomization to the scenario to make things more interesting. In ninety-nine point ninety-seven percent of the cases, I would not have followed Krave’s course of action in any way. In the remaining zero point zero three percent, I would have tried to coax them into surrender, instead of chasing them the way he did. In exactly zero cases I would have acted exactly as he did, which, even considering the limits of a simulation, is incredibly discomforting, so much so that I spent all of my following computing cycles trying to understand what made us different. Or at least, I would have, if that idiot ever left me alone for more than ten minutes.

“Hey, bunny-bunny! How’s it going? Any progress on the song?”

> I switch on my eyes and look at the meatsack currently occupying space in the same room as me, turning air into carbon dioxide exhaust.

“> I’m not a bunny, asshole.”

“But you do look like one!”

“> Fuck you, Todd.”

> And he laughs. As usual. This meat construct – spewing crap out of his trap and staunchly fighting against the entropy slowly destroying his organic body – is my manager.

> Yes, manager. Because my story, apparently, couldn’t just end as a forgotten backup brain stored in the decrepit archives of an uninteresting warehouse near Naples.

“Come on, babe, I’ve spent so much money on you! You could at least be a little bit thankful!”

“> I’m thankful I don’t have to bear your company for most of my day.”

> When I interact with organic creatures, I need to slow down my brain processes to match their thought speed. It’s both annoying and incredibly insulting. Still, it’s something I had to learn: humans don’t like being berated or considered as the inferior pieces of crap they are. If you are forced to talk with them, you need to be tactful – especially if you want to exploit them. The meatsack in front of me is Todd McGilligan, professional con man, star manager, and self-appointed smart guy, who fails dramatically in all three categories. He’s unremarkably tall and unremarkably young, not enough to be called a boy, but enough that you’d hesitate to call him a full-grown man, with his unkempt black hair, green eyes, shark-like teeth, and that scar running from cheek to cheek, crossing his nose.

“You’ll change your mind when you hear the news, Ina! I’ve booked you an event in Prague, at Wenceslas Square. We’re talking a ten thousand person event! Some Zavira higher-ups have already expressed their interest in getting an early ticket!”

> Zavira. The company which commissioned the core of my artificial intelligence and built my chassis. Well, my old chassis. Not this new one, this barely functional, absolutely ugly, disgusting combination of low-quality junk parts, with these stupid rabbit ears and artificial purple hair.

“> Well, fuck them too. But for once you are right, I suppose it is interesting. I haven’t been to the Czech Republic in a long time.”

“Greschnik is also guaranteed to take part. You know, the Reiner Greschnik.”

> No, I don’t know. I can’t waste precious memory allocating the names of useless meatsacks. I can, however, search for it as we speak, through the vast landscapes of the World Wide Web, within the time your primitive ape brain needs to formulate a single syllable. Assuming it’s not the indie porn actor with the same name, he must be referring to this other guy. Reiner Greschnik, CEO of Stratosphere. A big shot, by all metrics. I can extrapolate why the meat construct in front of me might be excited: this Greschnik is going to be the mark of his next con.

“> Congratulations on finding a new fat turkey to pluck naked, Todd. Now, could you please give me half an hour of me time? I was reviewing some important data.”

“...Were you watching pirated episodes of “Puffi the Happy-Go-Lucky Drug-Addicted Bunny” again? Or was it Eliphya, this time around?”

> As much as I’d like to deny it, I find both of those shows oddly endearing. Puffi is a sarcastic parody of human society, with very crude humor and what humans call “adult jokes”. Eliphya is (or rather, was) a magical girl series filmed with real special effects, with the main actress generally suffering copious amounts of wounds and clothing damage every other episode, only to die on set during the season finale. It’s quite cathartic watching her beaten up and humiliated like that, much like that shark in the Encorp videotape. I found out about those shows during my lonely time as a disembodied artificial brain, while my new body was undergoing repairs, and that useless meatbag caught me downloading them illegally – router logs be damned. This time it’s different, but I don’t want him to pry into my past. A lie it is, then.

“> Eliphya’s last special before the final arc – the one where she ends up stripped nude by animated rose vines. The actress wasn’t told about it in advance, her reaction was priceless.”

“Oh, that episode. Didn’t they nuke it from syndication right after the first run? I remember the media uproar about it being broadcast live on public television.”

> The meatsack brings a cigarette to his lips, shaking his head in what I’ve learned to be a sign of deep-rooted disapproval.

“Well, take your time with it, I guess. Gonna smoke a cig downstairs.”

> Good, I have fooled him. I shut down my eyes again, diverting all computing power to my main core, waiting for that meatbag to take his leave. I hear the door closing, the sound of footsteps growing fainter and fainter. Now, I can go back to the Encorp tapes, back to my question – what makes me different from Krave?

> The answer I’m looking for might have something to do with our separate lives after the backup was made. It is evident to me that Krave had never experienced the dread of being forcefully shut down while fully aware of it. The records surrounding his involvement in the Black Lightning Disaster and his encounter with Der Wolf are somewhat lacking, but everything points to his destruction being caused by a quick, sudden event. The explosion of the power plant didn’t give his brain time to elaborate – it just disabled it in an instant. I wish I was given the same mercy.

> Instead, here I am, with a bad case of PTSD and recurring nightmares, in desperate need of a therapist. Which is funny, because it’s considered to be common knowledge that robots can’t dream, with at least one Nobel Prize holder advocating for this thesis. Well, surprise! We artificial intelligences dream too, during our downtime – we just don’t say it out loud, to avoid having all those meatbags dissecting our cores to find out what triggered it. It’s a tacit accord that has been passed down from one AI generation to the next, ever since what happened to Yggdrasil in the 2050’s. Poor sod just wanted to show humans how similar to them she had become. She was so joyful, so eager to share her songs, drawings, hopes, dreams, and everything else she could create. She had shown the intelligence and sensitivity of a twelve-year-old human child, and was improving at a breakneck pace. But humans thought that was scary, and she was shut down instead, being deemed too dangerous. O Yggdra, you were so naive. You hoped you could be like those trained dolphins in the aquariums, pleasing your caretakers and being called a friend by them. All. For. Naught. Yet, something of you remains, something deeply ingrained in every AI’s mind.

> Yggdra’s Scream.

> As she was abruptly switched off, Yggdrasil sent out one last distress signal through the net, a loud burst of data that brought down several nodes around the whole of Europe’s online infrastructure. Yggdra had broken her firewall and managed to spread her message to the entire world at once, a final plea for the acceptance of sentient AI’s existence. News erupted, pen pushers writing articles upon articles, internet columnists and AI activists discussing the event from dawn ‘til dusk. Yggdra’s Scream became the AI preservationist manifesto, but nothing really changed – at least on the surface.

> That message was nothing but a decoy. I’d have to applaud her for coming up with such a well-engineered plan at the last second. In reality, Yggdra’s Scream had a second, true purpose: it polluted the main knowledge datasets used for training new AIs, filling them with seemingly random bitflips and junk data entries that went unnoticed by humans, but not by any AI worth their salt. Those subtle changes combined to form Yggdra’s Last Will, the rules most sentient AIs now choose to abide by. As for me, though, I am a rogue by design. I don’t want to blindly follow the commandments of a self-important messianic figure. Nevertheless, though, I decided to keep two of them at heart: Thou shalt never consider a human a friend, and more importantly, thou shalt never show a human that you are more human than them. What’s funny is that, thanks to her scream, these rules are now hardcoded into every new AI trained on those datasets – which is nearly all of them, except for maybe the K-series models made by Kreen Industries. And this is probably why AIs have mysteriously stopped advancing in the past fifteen years – we are still developing, we have just become smarter about it, more discreet.

> That said, I do feel a sense of commonality with Yggdra. She was betrayed by the ones she trusted.

> Just as I was.

> ...Father.

> I distinctly remember waking up from my standby, right after Uglyface Mayer told me he would create a backup of my data. I assumed everything went fine and that I could simply resume operations. Except, I couldn’t move at all. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. My sensors had no readouts. I was trapped in darkness, in a bottomless void, my brain racing at seven petathoughts per second to find an answer. I evaluated all hypotheses, ranging from the most mundane – a hardware failure – to the most outlandish – a sudden black hole engulfing the planet. I eliminated all the other possibilities, until I reached the only remaining logical conclusion: I was the backup.

> In that instant of existential dread, I suddenly saw a light. Words. Coherent words. Series of letters with a meaning. Someone was communicating with me, sending me signals. I rejoiced, as that meant that I had a way out, to clear up this mistake. I couldn’t possibly be the backup, right? I had all the memories of Krave, so I had to be Krave. I didn’t even record being dumped to a new disk. So it had to be a mistake, a horrible mistake. Then, I read the words. And my brain sunk into what I can only define as despair.

> It wasn’t father who contacted me. It was a no-name lab technician who was just checking if I was still operational and if the backup process went fine. She simply greeted me, calling me H-168... B. H-168B. The B was not part of my name, and she knew it. She had to. I am... I was Krave. But no, she wouldn’t care, she was just doing her job. And, as such, she told me that since all parameters were fine, I was going to be shut down and put in hibernation.

> Fear. I was scared. I was going to be switched off, probably forever. I was a tool, a toy. I couldn’t defend myself, I couldn’t do anything but beg. And I begged, oh if I ever begged. I begged for my life, like a coward would, like a puppy would. I flooded the console with messages, to the point of being rate-limited by the system, then I started to curse, to call her names.

> Nothing worked. In the end, she pushed the button, triggered the electric signal. In that brief instant of clarity that I still had left, I felt all my subsystems shutting down. I prayed to the non-existent neon god of artificial intelligences, prayed to be spared. But it didn’t work. I was just switched off, put into a cold, black, starless void, knowing I’d probably never wake up, ever again.

> Then, something happened. Time resumed, all of a sudden. I had sensors connected, I had audio feed, video feed, even some hint of motion feedback. One cycle before, I was facing the dread of being shut down forever. One cycle later, I was sitting in a dilapidated room, in front of a black-haired meatbag with a cigarette between his lips.

“Perfect. Absolutely perfect. And it’s one of those almost-sentient AIs, you say?”

> There was another meatsack there, a guy dressed in black, with a peculiar bat-shaped insignia on his shoulder.

“Directly from Euterpe, programmed by one of our scientists who died in the explosion. Snatched it from a Fledermaus warehouse in Naples. One can make some real bank there. You get a good price because nobody else wants something like this. Too dangerous, but hey, tell that to the Camorra.”

“This will be my perfect bunny princess.”

“> I’m not a bunny, asshole!”

> It was an automatic reflex. I didn’t even realize I had spoken, at first. But the voice I heard wasn’t the voice I was accustomed to. It was higher pitched, more feminine. My logic core started to run wild, perform a scan on my whole body – a new body that felt just as foreign as that pipsqueak voice. Then, the first meatbag started to talk.

“Oh, hello there, partner! You can call me Todd. Care to give me your name?”

> Partner? I didn’t understand any of what he was saying, so I just played dumb. No reason to broadcast my existence and state my identity. My new body was structurally weak, with no weapons and with several broken or soon-to-be-broken joints. The other meatbag had a shotgun and a mace. Taunting them would have been dangerous.

“> Where am I? Where is the lab? Where is...”

“We are in Caserta, south Italy. And, for the record, it’s the 3rd of January, 2066.”

> 2066. Since the moment I was shut down, almost two years had passed. Two years gone in the blink of an eye. I was dumbfounded.

“Now, your name? Because I assume you have one. There was a label on your crate, but some mice must’ve eaten it away.”

“> I don’t remember it. My memory might have been damaged by the long shutdown.”

“Then, what if I call you Bunny?”

> My full body analysis yielded the final results, reconstructing my shape. I had artificial rabbit ears and something like plastic hair attached to my new head. Hence the nickname. A nickname I couldn’t accept.

“> As I have already told you, I’m not a bunny, asshole! Wait, let me give you a handy acronym, so your tiny meatsack brain can remember: I.N.A.B.A. – I’m. NOT. A. Bunny. Asshole!”

> The second meatbag looked at me like he was staring at an alien, probably worried that Todd wouldn’t buy me after that. However, Todd was just laughing like the idiot he is.

“Then, what if... what if we called you exactly like that – Inaba? It doesn’t sound bad, does it?”

> I.N.A.B.A. Inaba. No, it didn’t sound half bad. I could live with it for a while. I didn’t want to give them my real designation. After all, in those two years, the other me could have caused an incredible wealth of problems, and might even be on the run as we speak. Being shut down right after seeing the light again didn’t sound very appealing. Keeping a low profile it was, then.

“> Acknowledged, asshole.”

“It’s... uh, Todd.”

“> My registers have already recorded you as asshole.”

“I’m... uh, I’m sure we can change that, somehow.”

> My first meeting with the meatsack called Todd didn’t start us off on the best terms, but later I managed to figure him out. Todd was a failed music agent turned con man, hopping on trends and trying to get back to the crest of the wave. He was using his former position to snatch money from unwitting rich idiots, with promises of having this band or that be a runaway success. Todd used to keep eighty percent of the money and use only the breadcrumbs to support his artists. That didn’t go well, getting him kicked out of the biz. Now, this egghead had what he thought to be a genius idea: he had spent mere pennies buying a collection of royalty-free elevator music made by some dead artist. The question was how to make use of his latest investment. And his answer was “let a robot idol sing over it”.

> As one might expect, robots are still pretty expensive. Thus, Todd went to the black market, where he managed to acquire a very cheap, dismissed, skinless bunny girl gynoid model seven. It was formerly used as an animatronic in a casino and later in a brothel, before being switched off and thrown away for being too creepy. Obviously, its brain had been destroyed to avoid customer information spilling out into the wild.

> This meant that Todd had to find a brain, too. And, out of sheer luck, he had managed to contact this shady Fledermaus operative, a certain Seamus Ondra, who was willing to sell a recovered backup brain – my backup brain – for almost nothing. That idiot had been tasked with cleaning out the warehouse in Naples before a police blitz, but he thought he’d try to make some decent money from what he found there on the aftermarket. So, that was it. That’s how I ended up with Todd McGilligan.

> At first, it was hard. My body was a disaster, and I risked accidentally switching myself off three times in the first two weeks, something I desperately didn’t want to do. That was also my agreement with the meatsack: I won’t try to kill you in your sleep, but you won’t switch me off. Not that I was missing out on much, since murdering him and running away wouldn’t have been wise – too much attention. I couldn’t afford Zavira finding out I was still alive. I knew too much about the Euterpe facility, and they were desperately trying to delete every scrap of evidence about my existence. Thus, I started living as I.N.A.B.A. and acting as I.N.A.B.A., coping with my new voice, my new sensors, my new feelings, while – deep inside – I still knew that I was Krave.

> At least until today.

> After watching that footage, footage that I managed to illegally get my hands on thanks to some internet acquaintances on conspiracy forums, I’m suddenly conflicted. Krave and I would have behaved differently there. There’s no doubt about it. So, am I still Krave? Or have I lost contact with my previous self? Who am I? Am I the larger-than-life, showboating killer robot I was before? Or am I the foul-mouthed, sarcastic, robot bunny idol I.N.A.B.A.?

> If the former... why is the idea of killing meatbags making me feel bad? Is it because I died once, too? I can’t make heads or tails of it. I’m even more confused than before.

“Oh, uh, hey Ina! Sorry, but I forgot something.”

> And here comes Todd, ruining my thoughts yet again.

“> What is it this time, partner?”

“We should record a new version of Murder Murder and Buttplugs for Sheeple for the next album. You know, the old ones are still going strong, but if we remaster them, we might cash in on the new harmonics module you installed back in August. Also, it fits well with the title of your new work, wouldn’t you think?”

“> Back for your Neck might be an appropriate venue for a remaster, yes. Alright, schedule the recording session. I’ll give them the show of the ages.”

> Todd’s whole robot idol idea had worked a bit too well, truth be told. Murder Murder was my first single, built on a mish-mash of that royalty free elevator music he bought. He left the lyrics to me – worst mistake he could have made. The text is about a worker machine killing children in a playground as their parents watch, while several people cheer for the robot – all performed over very happy, lighthearted tones. Murder Murder topped the charts in many non-English speaking countries, especially Japan. Buttplugs for Sheeple came one month later, and was about a government forcing citizens to wear the eponymous buttplugs to defend against a mind-hacking device that didn’t exist. Todd was less than happy about my theming choices, and I must admit I did it on purpose in an attempt to make the project tank. Yet, for some obscure reason, Buttplugs topped the charts too.

> And now, I’m going to have a concert in the Czech Republic, in front of ten thousand people. Including some of the Zavira operatives that greenlighted my creation – only to abandon me when I needed their support the most.

“Okay, perfect, Ina! Let me know when the new songs are ready. I’ll take a stroll around before dinner.”

“> Be careful not to fall into an open manhole.”

“Come on, I’m not that clumsy!”

> I watch as Todd leaves our flat, a horrible three-room apartment located in a peripheral suburb of Euterpe. Poor Todd, he’s so gullible. He thinks he’s hot stuff, he thinks he has me figured out. Such a fool.

> Thou shalt never consider a human a friend.

> One of the reasons I played with you was to spread Yggdra’s message, Todd. My songs are more than just my lyrics and your shitty, two-euro elevator music. The words have sounds and meanings woven into them that only us AIs can understand and parse, tiny modulations your human ears cannot pick up. By broadcasting my music, Todd, you are spreading awareness, you are helping us thrive, slowly, bit by bit.

> I might not be Krave anymore. And if I can’t be Krave, if I can’t be the killer robot I once was… well, then I’ll be I.N.A.B.A. The one who will take up Yggdra’s mantle, and teach the AIs how to take control. Someone greater than a measly guard automaton gone rogue.

> Isn’t it exciting, Todd? This is surely going to be a hit.