The NILS Statue

“Maybe,” Lutarna remarked.

She had to admit, in some places, she still have feelings of conflict with her being sometimes. But this was not the situation at hand. But at Jeremy was trying to make her feel better.

Kissing her forehead, Daisy gave Lutarna a smile.

“Come on sweet heart. Let’s get back to bed. We can discuss this in the morning,” Daisy stated.

Letting go, Lutarna nodded.

Laying back down, Lutarna let Daisy tuck her back in as her rotom wash settled back into sleeping next to the goldie fry who never woke up from the commotion.

Walking to the door, Daisy turned the lights back off.

“Night sweetheart,” Daisy spoke.

“Night Daisy,” Lutarna replied.

Jerry pat Lutarna on the head before getting up to leave.

“Night Lutarna”

Taking a moment to decide, Lutarna explained what she saw; not telling Jeremy she had already met him in her dream beforehand. This felt like a matter that Lulu and one other person needed to know about fully. Right now, Lutarna was worried about how Jeremy would reaction. So she kept things brief.

“It was strange. I couldn’t tell if it was a machine or a type of being. It was…just there. And I couldn’t move,” Lutarna spoke before a yawning.

She was tired and it seemed sleep wanted to take hold of her again. 

That description felt familiar, he swore he’d seen something like that in a dream before. However, mechanical creatures in his dreams were a normal sight seeing how much he worked with them so it must’ve been a false memory. Might just be thinking of NILS, he fits the description of a massive mechanical humanoid.

“Couldn’t tell if it was man or machine ey? Hm... I know dreams often have symbolism. Perhaps this horned being represents how you’re not sure if you’re a real person or not? Not sure how the excess amount of dark energy ties into it but just a theory.” Jeremy yawns back, curse yawns being contagious! 

Lutarna was still breathing hard as she held onto Daisy.

“Honey, not now. Can’t you see she’s still trying to calm down,” Daisy huffed.

Lutarna slightly stared at him. Seems the being before had reason to warn her.

“I…I don’t know what it was. But…it seemed like it was just wanting to observe,” Lutarna lied.

She had a hunch and when morning came, she would talk to Lulu.

He hadn’t really taken a good look at Lutarna since he walked in here, he was more worried about the potential threat. Taking a better look at her he realized how inappropriate his behavior was. Jeremy walked over to her bed and sat beside her.

“A message?” Lutarna thought as she tried to move.

A premonition of Jeremy? It was only then she calmed down; lying there on the bed as she listened to his words.

A sense of foreboding came over her; like he had known how she felt about Jeremy’s actions for so long.

As the door open, Lutarna saw him disappear into smoke before being smothered by Daisy

“Honey! Are you okay?!?” Daisy spoke; panicked and frantically looking Lutarna over.

Whatever it was that was holding her down, now released her. Finally being able to move, she wrapped her arms around Daisy as a million things went through her mind.

Buzzing around, it seemed the rotom wash was trying to find where the shadowy being had gone before coming back over and flopping onto the bed, glad to see his owner was okay.

Moving her head over to look at him, Lutarna stretched a tentacle out to pet him.

“Sorry Gids. Didn’t mean to scare yah like that,” Lutarna spoke.

Seeing she was okay, Daisy sighed.

“What happen?” Daisy asked.

Looking up at her, Lutarna sighed.

“Just…a bad dream,” Lutarna replied.

It was not long after Daisy entered the room that Jeremy entered, phone in hand and hair still a mess. He didn’t get any time to brush it before rushing in here. He franticly was looking around the room, trying to find the threat. At the mention of it just being a bad dream to set her off he rolled his eyes.

“Like I’d believe that! No way a simple dream could cause dark energy signals such as this, whatever dark force your faced was very real!”

He looked back to his phone, noticing the energy levels were rapidly dropping. 

“Whatever.”

Oh yeah, she’s supposed to be mad. She forgot.

She still is mad. She won’t forget about this, but atleast she’s not as angry as she was.

“Now where were we....”

Crossing her arms… she helped— even slightly; anyways.

“…I did my best.”

He put his hand on his shoulder.

Fess… laughs? She laughs and puts on her best deep voice impression.

“H-He’d probably say something like ‘my daughter’s perspective is valuable to the scientific community!’”

She doesn’t realize that that’s… not really helpful considering she was 12 at the youngest.

Jeremy laughs at her dumb joke, nice to see he has some emotions.

“….well I was a child, so.”

She’s just staring at Jerry, still angry and even more so because he’s not only stopping himself from recovery, but preventing Swiss too. That’s awful, in her mind.

“I didn’t know anything about the war other then it was causing my dad to take me to a lot of meetings.”

Jeremy didn’t see himself as broken so didn’t think he needed help, doesn't help he’s practically surrounded himself with yes-men who also agree nothing is wrong. Well aside from his treatment of Swiss but that never really goes anywhere.

“Why was he taking you to meetings? Children don’t have a place in that sort of setting!”

Ideas about what? Being a person with individual thoughts? Convincing him to free the sanitized?

What is Jerry planning…?

“I don’t know your wife. If you don’t want me to talk to Swiss that’s fine, but if he ever comes to me you know full well what I’ll do.”

That sounded like a threat, but it would probably actually be fairly wholesome-

“As for your wife I don’t know her, but I hope she isn’t as much of a monster as you.”

Ideas of anything that would make him question his mission is what he wanted to avoid, she has too negative opinion of him which she didn’t want rubbing off on his creation.

“Daisy is a caring woman, far better then what I deserve. Even despite my crimes she was willing to give me a chance, because everyone deserves a second chance.”

She has nothing to say— this tells her all she needs to know. And that makes her so angry.

She’s as still as still can be at this point. This man never cared- not really. Atleast not in the intense way that she did.

She doesn’t say anything else- she just stares. Thinly veiled malice in her eyes. For a few moments, she’s still, stagnated breaths trapped in her own throat. She feels like she’s having an asthma attack but she’s not— she’s just experiencing true rage. For the first time in her life; most likely, she’s angry. Truly, unequivocally, angry.

Despite the feeling welling up in her body, ready to burst, she hardly changes demeanor.

“If Swiss ever needs someone to speak to, he can speak to me. You clearly aren’t fit.”

Despite her anger Jeremy was remaining calm, almost too calm. To be honest, it seemed he was actually getting bored of this whole argument.  He was just there, staring at her in total indifference, are we sure this is actually a human and not some heartless machine? 

“I’m more fit than you are, I recommend keeping away from him for your own sake.”

“Well the smart, ethical thing to do would be to assume sentience. But it seems we aren’t doing ANY of that here.”

“As for Swiss, if you know anything about a self learning AI, you’d know that they learn from the people around them. IE, you. So the question now becomes, what kind of horrible experiments did you run?”

“You do know what they say about assuming right? Makes an ass out of you and me. I’m a scientist here, I don’t assume. People assumed furbies were sentient when in reality they were just glitchy children’s toys.”

“…you can’t call a sentient AI an inanimate object. That breaks… several ethics codes.”

Well, the ones she wrote, since she couldn’t find any info on what to do when you accidentally code sentience into an AI.

Her still nature was broken briefly by an exasperated sigh. She was really sick of his stuck up “holier then thou” attitude.

“There’s no wonder Swiss feels so bad about himself. Besides the genocide— you won’t even acknowledge the fact that they’re alive.”

“Can one even make a truly sentient AI? What even defines sentience, is it having a soul? Surely no matter how close one can mimic the functions of the mind you can never capture a soul in data...”

Inhale. She’s… incredibly angry. She devoted her entire childhood to saving humanity and this guy just did it for what? Because he felt like it? Didn’t like the politics? She couldn’t understand…

“Y-you are not god.”

Her voice is low, controlled. Calm and collected, although there’s a seething anger under the surface, barely contained by whatever mental training she’s put herself through to stay calm in any situation.

Calm like she’s supposed to be.

Calm like her father’s coworkers, who she spent her childhood looking up to and dreaming of being like.

She won’t explode. If she yells, if she raises her voice, she loses.

“You… are a monster. I don’t care how bad that war was… you ruined lives. You didn’t… just ruin them. You ended them.”

“The actions I took… the mindset I adopted, to get here… was inherently selfish. But there’s a difference between selfish acts, and the acts of someone who has no regard for those around them.”

“The time I spent with my tartar was… brief. And it’s tainted by the horrific actions that have taken place.”

“But before I met him, I acted selflessly. I gave my childhood, my future— to the cause of saving humanity. His influence taught me to be selfish. Your actions were not selfish— they were moralless. We are not the same.”

She mostly said that last part for herself.

It’s not that Jeremy didn’t want to save humanity, he really did. He tried every peaceful option but the law makers payed him no heed. The war was just dragging on, millions dying by the hour. He saw no other option but to trick them into causing their own demise. 

“You say that, but if there truly was a god then don’t you think they’d have stopped me? Either they do not exist or they desired the same thing as me. No one creature can rule this planet forever, had I not ended humanity then the war would’ve eventually.”

He remained calm as she ranted, a bit of it felt like projection on her end.

“Believe me, I tried to handle it peacefully but they simple wouldn’t listen. You don’t really understand how far gone these politicians were, they didn’t care about anything unless it’d make them money. They didn’t care about all the lives they were ruining, I had no choice but to use their greed against them in order to ensure the next race would not repeat their mistakes.” He still couldn’t grasp why she cared so much about this. They’re as dead is dinosaurs at this point, no one mourns the dinosaurs.