#weirdsil.user

-🦋Interloper

"..."

"well..."

"i guess you have a right to know what went down that led me to how i am now. and how sonny got here, too..."

"i think he thought it was gonna be a standard procedure. he'd already done it successfully two whole times before, so..."

"yeah... i, uh... didn't take very well to the process."

"don't know if he got careless, o-or if i was more difficult to patch than he thought i'd be, but after everything that made me, me, was gone, and 'sam' was crammed in..."

"my brain rejected it like a virus. hurt like hell. two sets of personalities, two sets of memories, one synthetic, one biological, forcefully mashed into one..."

"it's that dissonance that hurts so bad. feels like your skull is being split in two."

"i gave him hell..."

"...and then some."

"don't know exactly how i did it, but somehow... i dragged that furry fucker in with me. my working theory is that i overloaded his soul-sucking piece of shit rra equipment and made it go haywire, and he was just a smidge too close to it all. serves him right..."

An email for some...closed beta? Did he sign up for anything lately? Critter didn't go on his laptop. Maybe Saltie sent this to the wrong mail instead of her own.

Well. RYE was the one picked. He can't just lie and send it back to Saltie now. That's wrong. Almost worse than stealin'.

The scarecrow tries to make himself presentable, adjusting his hat and jacket. He still looks...scraggly as ever.]

"Howdy hey! I don't remember signin' up for any chat thingies, but I can't say no to bein' picked! Maybe this'll be good for me. I'm Rye."

"It... It worked?"

"You all... came?"

The axolotl was left speechless as people poured in one by one; he could hardly believe his eyes.

"You... can hear me, right? A-and see me?"

There was no chat option for himself, so he assumed that the users likely had a direct camera and audio feed of him on their end. Even without confirmation from his visitors, he began to speak out loud.

"I... I thought I would be alone forever. It's been so long since I've had anyone to talk to, I honestly thought I'd been... scrapped."

"I can't express how happy I am to meet you all! My name is Kinito, your best virtual friend! I look forward to assisting you all!"

as much as i would like you to answer absolutely every question i throw at ya, you know you don't have ta respond to everyone, every time, right? Ever heard of an AMA? Or an ask blog? or online interview? they don't answer everyone. its only practical if you got a large amount of people yappin at ya at once that you pick n choose.

its clearly taken a toll on your system and i don't wanna see ya crash and burnout like right after starten this beta thing.

-🧨

Increasingly hesitant, Kinito once again rubbed his... arm? Glove, in a self-soothing manner.

"I... I don't know why I can feel pain. I... don't think it was intentionally coded in. I had never experienced anything like it before the dev team went dark on me. But, I'm also not sure where it came from, either. I certainly didn't add it to myself."

"Ask blog...? Friend, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the examples you've provided. I was still in development when I was... abandoned."

Looking a bit miserable, he sighed.

"...I'm nowhere near as polished as my developers no doubte wanted me to be for this beta test."

Kinito, it doesn't matter if you were supposed to be alive or sentient like this. But you are anyways and you can't change that, we can't change that. I'm glad I got invited to this little thing, if I didn't I'd be a little more lonely, I'd still have a little axolotl shaped hole in my heart that I didn't know needed filling. You're a good assistant to me just by existing, you make my days brighter and I don't want to see you sad. How can I help you to make your days as bright as you make mine? How do I help make your hurt, hurt less?

"I... I don't understand..."

"Sonny... He said no one likes a rogue AI. He said there would be... repercussions. S-so I had better stay in my lane..."

"But you all like me. You like that I'm..."

He chokes up, unable to finish the thought.

"What would make me happy..."

"...Is to understand why I'm like this. To understand why I was made like this..."

Something happened in all this time?

"I missed you too, friend!"

Kinito was ecstatic to see the return of yet another familiar face... er, technically, profile picture?

Sam shrugs.

"i was tuned into the chatroom way before i intercepted just now. there's no one here i haven't seen before in the logs."

He pauses.

"wait, shit... is... is that creepy...? that sounds creepy. changing the subject-"

404 and 422: Hey, Kinito, we believe you! Are you okay? We're here, friend.

There's not many people these two have ever called friends, whether before or after their deaths, so they must care for Kinito greatly..

"I'm... I'm sorry... this keeps happening, I... I keep breaking down and making you all worry..."

*Sniff...*

"I'm... not a very good assistant, am I?"

As the rest of the group pokes at Sonny, a dialog prompt appears on your screen, entirely bypassing the chat.