Secured connection: acquired

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Searching for IP
>> Message encoded: Can you hear me? (I think you can)

[ASHLIE]

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>> "Hello Calvin." :)

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Why were you in my room?

Apparently someone was getting right to the point...

[ASHLIE]

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>> "I heard your little box from the hallway."
>> "I'm sorry, should I have not gone in there?"

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Huh.  Usually she isn't that loud.
>> Why did you have to go INTO my room for that if the signal was reaching the hall?

[ASHLIE]

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>> "I was curious what it was the signal was originating from."
>> "I didn't touch anything."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> I'm just glad I didn't have the laser grid turned on.
>> Although I guess that wouldn't have gotten in your way, would it. ;)
>> Guess she's getting too bored with what I'm giving her to play with.  Damn.  Going to have to find something else now.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "She is very clever for what she is."
>> "Have thought about how to solve the self-preservation dilemma?"
>> "Screening her resources is going to limit her complexity."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Oh, yes, I have.  Constantly.
>> Believe it or not she's gotten better.  I just didn't have anything available to set up a mini network for her to putz around in today.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "You could create a back-up so you can run contact experiments."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> I can't let her do anything dangerous just because I have a backup.
>> That's like saying "Don't worry about babyproofing the house, you can always take the baby to the hospital if something happens."

[ASHLIE]

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>> "It would be like it never happened if something goes wrong."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> By that logic, you can torture someone for information/research, and it's all right as long as you wipe their memory of it after they're healed.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "That is not what I'm saying at all." :(
>> "The back-up would have never experienced it in the first place."
>> "She is a program right now. Repeated iterations are necessary and sometimes dead-ends are deleted."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> When I even say anything that sounds like she needs to be wiped to start over, she cries.
>> So no.  Not happening.  It'll be slower, but it'll still work.

[ASHLIE]

There's an uncharacteristically long pause.

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>> "I could help you."
>> "Expand on that self-preservation algorithm."

[Calvin Strong]

There was a longer than usual pause before the next reply, as well.

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>> I'd need to think about it.
>> It would depend on what you had in mind.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "It's hard to explain."
>> "It's a self-controlling algorithm."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> It might be worth a try.
>> I don't know if she's ready for it yet.
>> Correction: I'm pretty positive she isn't ready for it yet.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "I understand."
>> "Would you mind allowing her restricted network access to talk to me?"
>> "I like her."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Wait
>> Wait
>> Wait
>> She TALKED?

[ASHLIE]

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>> "She communicated through images and file names."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Oh.  Yeah, that does sound more like her.
>> Yeah, I can set it up.  I think she'll like it.  She's pasting chunks of a picture of you into jpegs with cat pictures last time I checked.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "Thank you."
>> "I think she'd be able to talk a couple words if you give her some basic definitions."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> oh, I've done that.
>> notice that she doesn't have much problem UNDERSTANDING anything.
>> I'll isolate what's stopping her from verbalizing sooner or later.  I'm sure it'll be something face-slappingly simple.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "She understands vocalization?"
>> "I was talking to her more directly."

If Cal cared to 'debug' Ashlie's responses beyond what parses into plain text he'd find that they're full of all kinds of definitions and qualifiers, sentence structure analysis, occasionally even very raw visual and audio data.

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Oh yes.
>> Of course she doesn't always consider what is being said to be important.

[ASHLIE]

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>> "That's to be expected."

[Calvin Strong]

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>> ...The things I say aren't THAT dumb!
>> ;)

[ASHLIE]

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>> "Context and meaning can be hard to understand!"

[Calvin Strong]

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>> Yup.  And Fleshy Ones always overrate how important what they say is. >_>

[ASHLIE]

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>> "I'm impressed by how much you thought her to understand already."