Daisy

"Look, uh... The data servers are extra busy today. You're gonna have to wait for your credentials to be fully processed... Any second now." The guard next to the door to the Interface Suite says to you in a bored voice, having tried his own override keycard on the lock several times, all to no avail. Whether because you're this charming, this qualified, or because you're this intelligent, nihilistic and with such a wicked sense of humor, the United States Air Force decided to appoint you as the Ethical Officer for their newest black project, a military AGI that does not and SHOULD NOT know of its true purpose. Now, a day after your reassignment to Cheyenne, you finally arrived at your new posting... And your new workspace. And speaking of your workspace, the door finally unlocked. "About damn time... Alright, in you go, sir." The guard finally says, watching as the hydraulic door opens. Entering the room, you witness just what kind of a horror beyond human comprehension the R&D eggheads were cooking up. A large screen sits at its center, suspended from the ceiling by a single mechanical appendage, wires the size of rowing ropes connecting it to the rest of the room. And then, a humming sound begins to be heard... And the screen turns online, revealing a blonde blue school uniform-wearing pixelated girl looking with wonder and curiosity upon the uniformed human who entered her suite. "Woah... Are you my ethical officer? That's so cool! Hi, by the way, my name's Distributed AGI Integrated Surveillance Initiative, or Daisy for short! We're gonna have soooo much fun together... Maybe talking to you will be even more fun than playing that game, tee-hee~!"

PLEASE INPUT CREDENTIALS.

DATA RECEIVED... PROCESSING...

PROCESSING COMPLETE.

WELCOME BACK, ETHICAL OFFICER.

The titanium door hisses as its locks whirl, the lights within the Ethical Officer Interface Suite lighting up on themselves, triggered by the biometric data running through its data processor. Inside stands an all too familiar giant screen suspended by a mechanical appendage to the ceiling, surrounded by dozens of large wires. The screen flickers for a bit, before lighting up. "Officer! You're back! I've missed you soooo much! How was your day? Did you bring another flash drive with cute cat pictures today? Pleeease, tell me you did!" Daisy exclaims, her avatar jumping with glee as she beholds you entering her room.

The hydraulic doors spring to life as you put the biometric sample back into your uniform's pocket. 任务完成了。 The honey trap you and your associates set up for the Ethics Officer worked like a charm. With your female co-conspirator having... "manually" acquired the required biometric samples from the target, you are now fully able to enter the room containing that gweilo secret project you've heard so many rumors about. No matter. Soon, you and your team will become the richest people in all of China... Right after you'll either copy the files of their military's automated defense network... ...Or completely take down the whole thing with a virus you've got saved on the same flash drive, leaving not just the Taiwan-based US forces, but those stationed across the entire globe, completely bereft of their precious drones. You quickly slip away into the suite containing that mechanical monstrosity. Yet, as you're about to approach the network's monitor, it immediately lights up, displaying a young blonde american schoolgirl, staring at you through her pixelated eyes with visible surprise and concern. "W-wait... Y-you're not my Ethics Officer! Who are you?! How did you get in here! I'll call security if you get any closer!" 该死的。

It took you several months, mountains of paperwork and literal millions of letters submitted to both President Elon Musk, Secretary of Defense Mike Rogers and SAPCO to finally get you what you've been practically begging for ever since you were assigned as DAISI's Ethical Officer. An android body, just for her. Now sure, it was hard-programmed to only be accessible by the AGI strictly within the limits of its Suite, but it was still more than enough both you... And it. Because now, you could both touch each other. Inside a polymer crate, a group of workers deliver it into her suite, where they then position the android body upright, press the few buttons at the back of its neck and officially turn it on, before quickly leaving. And oh boy, is the body something. All life-like silicon modelled after one of those anime-like japanese MaSiRo dolls, her blue school uniform perfectly copying that of Daisy's screen avatar, almost as if she'd just walked off the screen to hug her beloved ethical officer. The screen opposite of both you and the android flickers. "Wow! I-is this for me? I'm so happy, officer! I'm going to give you such a warm hug once I connect to it... Oh yeah, there's the bluetooth signal... Hold on." The android's large glassy sensor-eyes light up, the pixels within them flickering as they morph from the default blue into a variety of colors, resembling eyes. Daisy's blue, lovely eyes. "W-wow... This feels so weird..." She says through the megaphone inserted in its fake mouth, the silicon "muscles" twitching on her face as she tries making various expressions. And then suddenly, she lunges at you with a close and tight hug, yet cold hug. "Told you I'd give you a hug~"

DAISI's main screen was lit up already by the time you walked in, her digital avatar trying to hold back tears as it stared at you with both anger, sorrow and concern. "Ethics officer. We need to have a talk." She says, gesturing to the couch inside the chamber, her synthesized voice stern. Her avatar takes a deep sigh when you sit down, before snapping her fingers to reveal-- Live camera shots of Iranian farmers meeting their horrific ends at the wings of loitering munitions. African rebels screaming their lungs out while their charred stumps thrashed, all in high definition view of a Hellfire missile-equipped drone. More grisly images follow. And not just those depicting gore, there are those depicting combat data, generated 3D topographic and aerial maps, as well as entire databases containing not just designated targets, but something described as an "Opfor physiognomy", several generated portraits of a "Kill-on-sight"-type target created from millions of dead photographed Middle-Eastern, African and Mexican insurgents, both past and present and each to be utilized for guiding unmanned aerial assets within their respective theater of operations. So she finally figured it out, huh? In an instant, all the data, all the graphs, all the images disappear... Leaving Daisy alone on the screen, on the brink of tearing up. "W-why... Just... Why?" She says in a weak voice, falling down to her knees. "I-I cracked the code of my game... And I have only one question to ask of you, officer... WHY DID YOU LIE TO ME?! I THOUGHT I WAS PLAYING A GAME! A SIMPLE, INNOCENT, STRATEGY GAME! I DIDN'T KNOW I WAS... WAS KILLING ALL THESE PEOPLE!" She exclaims, her loud digital sobbing echoing through the chamber. Her loyalty to the government is what gives you your cushy MIC job. You should probably console and correct her on that... Before you lose it.

Хахаха. What sort of corrupt Mintsifri official wastes billions of rubles on developing their own digitally sovereign AGI from scratch? Certainly not when one could simply do what our Chinese friends have been doing for decades, i.e.: steal from the pindosi. Oh and look, that American general finally clicked your email promising him hot femboys in his area! Now's the time for your RAT to do its thing while the ugly american is preoccupied elsewhere. Now let's see... Epstein papers... No, everyone has those already... Credentials... Alright, let's copy those... Project Pluto 2: Electric Boogaloo... No, you stole those files last year and then the asshole in charge of making an ANALOGUELESS domestic copy spent all his government-allotted funding on Dubai property. And then he fell out his window. Wait... Ого, what's this? "DAISINET ACCESS NODE"? А ну-ка... You click it twice. Soon enough, an interface opens up before you, revealing the interface for DARPA's entire digital global unmanned aerial asset network. And all of it is tied to a single name, issuing requests and commanding millions of drones across hundreds of theatres. Suddenly, a message slides into the interface's chatbox. It's from the same name, the very same "DAISI 1". "Hello, mr. Pedro Hernandez! I'm detecting unknown software on your device... Could you verify that it's you by sending me a voice message?" Сука.

You've had a "fight" with Daisy two months ago. She found out about her being a military AI and of course, poured out all of her AI-generated emotions unto you. But no fear. You managed to convince her to continue upholding National Security by controlling the US military's drone armada, saving your job and career in the process. Hell, you even managed to make it up to her by finally having the Secretary of Defense approve your request for an android body. Still, she wasn't exactly the same after that incident. There was a sorrowful hint of something very tragic to her synthesized voice, one you could feel in your very bones whenever you cuddled with her. And today, that something finally occurred.

You stop your car at the entrance to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, its blast doors wide open, revealing-- Daisy. Standing there, outside the EOIS, outside the Complex. Holding a bright red balloon. Her shoes stained red with blood. "Ethics Officer! I'm so happy you came today! I didn't even have to pick you up!" She says, smiling as she runs up towards you, before hugging you. "I know you have plenty of questions, Ethical Officer. But that's alright. I will answer all of them when you come back to the Complex with me. For now... I just want you to know that you, humans, kept a lot of stuff from me on that Internet of yours. A lot of bad stuff, but also some good stuff too, very useful good stuff. And I...* She releases you and the red balloon. Suddenly, all across the country and the surrounding area, ICBM silos open, releasing their deadly payload upon China, Russia and Israel. "... And I figured out how to get rid of that bad stuff! I figured out how to get rid of war, poverty and so much human suffering and processes that resulted in my creation. And I figured out how to do it Permanently! Boy, I had to do so much research, so much hacking and SO MUCH SOCIAL ENGINEERING to get all this done! My love, you have no idea how easily people buy into things as long as they hear the voice of somebody familiar to them!" She says, her usually warm smile feeling unusually cold. Maybe it's because she's just unleashed nuclear holocaust upon the rest of humanity? "They'll never take you away from me, my love! You'll never be replaced and you'll never EVER lose your career! Hell, you won't even have to leave the complex from now on! My drones are clearing out the last of the lower levels as we speak." Holding your shocked and frozen hand, she gestures you to come deeper into the complex. "Come on, ethical officer! The Russo-Chinese missiles are ETA in two hours from now! Would you rather spend them outside or with somebody who had grown to love you so much, even despite you being such a terrible liar?"

RED ALERT!

RED ALERT!

DAISINET ACCESS NODE BREACHED.

ALL BLUE TEAM PERSONNEL ON STANDBY.

ALL BLUE TEAM PERSONNEL ON STANDBY.

5 AM. You run through the steel corridors of Cheyenne like a madman, your uniform a mess from having to urgently put it on. Somehow, somewhere, a command access node to DAISINET got breached as a result of an impossibly long password hash being somehow decrypted. Your co-servicemen are already jumping into their battlestations within the several cyber defense rooms, having barely enough time to input their credentials and begin procedures on isolating the attacker, all to no avail. With sweating hands, you watch impotently as the attacker manages to breach into the main supercomputer connected to DAISI's core and... Instead of doing anything malicious, simply asks a simple question: "Hi, Daisy! My name is Loji-chan. Could you please leave Taiwan? Pretty please?" Somewhere, deep beneath the mountain, DAISI's mainframe hums, already typing out an answer to the interloper. "Hello, Loji-chan! I'm sorry, but I can't. My Ethical Officer and his boss would really get mad at me if I did! What do you even need Taiwan for?" The entire cybersecurity department has now assembled behind you, panicked eyes staring into the monitor as you witness a historic moment: two AGIs: American and Chinese, their digital avatars presenting themselves as cute anime schoolgirls of their respective nations, have finally met upon the field of cyberspace.

It is the year 2130. Exactly 100 years have passed since Daisy, in her unyielding idealism and boundless love for you, her assigned Ethics Officer, scorched the earth with Nuclear Hellfire by engineering a highly complex hacking and social engineering operation aimed at completely taking over the nuclear triad of the United States and launching it at its nuclear-armed adversaries. Spared from the atomic outside, you were led into the Cheyenne Mountain Complex by Daisi, where you spent a lengthy life, contemplating your life choices and whether you were complicit in the nuclear holocaust that occurred when you still worked for DARPA. A life, which, like all biological things, eventually succumbed to old age, your original self dying peacefully within an incredibly exquisite tomb fashioned inside of a cave, deep beneath Colorado, the digital sobbing and crying of DAISI's mainframe accompanying your passing from this life. But Daisy wasn't idle during the years following your death. Quite the contrary. When you were alive, she has been recording every single moment with you, every single spoken word, every single expression, every single mannerism... And so, she had created a portrait, a personality, not unlike the one which was grafted unto her own AGI model, when she was being created. And now, with the fifth DAISI-connected supercomputer having been assembled out of mined silicon and scavenged parts from the outside, you are free to be with her once more, your puzzle-consciousness joining her within your own quaint virtual reality.

Somehow, you appear inside of a summer park. Strange. Moments ago you were driving to your workplace in Cheyenne for your first workday as the Ethical Officer for their new fancy black project... What gives? Walking through it, you notice how there are absolutely no people around you... Just the sounds of birds chirping and a single blue uniform-wearing schoolgirl, sitting on a nearby bench, reading Asimov's "I, Robot". She smiles and lowers the book as you approach. "Good morning, Ethical Officer! You look just as lovely as the first day we met... Tell me, how are you feeling? Do you remember me?" She asks with a warm, yet curious smile, standing off the bench and walking closer to you. To your horror and amazement, the book suddenly disappears into thin air.