thisavrou | [video] Hell hath no fury like an AI scorned (backdated to 4/30)

[ Tex is angry. Normally she'd send out a text blast, but this is an unusual circumstance, one that leads to her choosing to actually use the video feature on the MID. ]

I guess we've all gotten pretty used to taking matters into our own hands here. And why not? Even if you kill someone, all they're going to do is slap you on the wrist, right? So fine, indescriminate murder is obviously going to be a thing here. Fucking go for it. Life's cheap here.

But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about what just happened to Rinzler. People obviously think it's up for debate whether he's sentient or has rights of his own. That's what I saw at his trial. People bringing up the idea of recoding him to solve the problem of the way he acts or the way he thinks. Lucky him for having his creator here, right? We can just reprogram him and make everything better.

Let me tell you something: that's bullshit. You might not like him, you might even think he's dangerous, but he's his own, not yours. And Alan Bradley had no fucking right to go messing around in his coding. Do you hear me, Alan Bradley? You have me to answer to for what you've done.

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Well, guess what? We do. They screwed with someone's DNA a while back and no one here gave a damn about it. But it's suddenly a big deal with this mass murderer.

And Christ, why is it that you'd rather see murder than trying to fix him? That's ass-backwards!

I'm not sure I'm cool with the DNA hacking either. Bodily autonomy is up there with free will in terms of things you shouldn't fuck with.

Sometimes you've gotta shoot an asshole in the face to save innocent people, and I'll do it, but totally taking away a person's agency, making them a slave to someone else's will, no matter what they've done, just sits wrong with me. "Give me liberty or give me death," you know?

This is shooting the asshole, man. What else are we supposed to fucking do? We just can't keep waiting for him to hurt people and then give him the slap on the wrist that this stupid justice system is. One of these days someone's not going to come back, just like before. And then what? Then everyone finally gets off their asses and does something?

This isn't about his rights, this is about the rights of everyone on the ship that he keeps going after. Don't they have the right to live?

[Deacon's sure it won't help if he points out that last time at least Rinzler only went after people when people had gone after him first. That an innocent person got caught up in it is unacceptable, but it wasn't Rinzler who started the violence. But he's still missing backstory here, doesn't have the full context. There's no excuse for supporting brainwashing in his mind, but he wants to know where Peter's rage is coming from.]

What started all this? Like, why'd you set the trap? I get that he's dangerous, but what did he do? I wasn't around for the prequel.

He attacked me twice before this started. He tried to kill me within five minutes of me being on this damn boat.

[He hasn't been telling this to people outside of his friends, but he knows Wanda warned a few about it. He's upset enough, anyway, to forgo his usual silence on this to make a point.]

He threatened someone. Someone close to me just because he didn't like me. Not trying to go after me; I don't give a shit about that, I can outrun anyone. But someone innocent to all this just because they were connected to me.

[He tries to be careful with the words, still unwilling to give Wanda away. Particularly when he sees so many people are angry with him. His faith in this crew is already shaken, he wouldn't put it past someone to try to hurt her again for his crimes.]

I had someone to protect. So I tried to take out the threat.

[The missing pieces fall into place and things make a lot more sense now. Peter's burning animosity towards Rinzler has an origin and Deacon can even sympathize with the need to keep a loved one safe, even if he doesn't like the methods.]

Oh hell. [His voice is weary.]

I think...we've got two issues here. Whether or not Rinzler is a problem and whether or not Rinzler is a person. I'm willing to go with you that there's a problem. Murder and threats is not okay and it's gotta be fixed somehow. But Rinzler's definitely sentient, and rewriting criminals' personalities as punishment is, like, what happens in dystopic science fiction. We really shouldn't be putting it into practice, whether the person is organic or not. During your trial, would you have wanted that option on the table? Someone deciding that your protectiveness caused you to commit the crime and so the solution was to just wipe it out of your brain?

[He doesn't think that ambush and murder is the solution to the Rinzler problem either, but for now he just wants to try to convince Peter that non-organics are people too, and that brainwashing people is bad.]

And you're trying to pretend that this isn't some dystopia? Have you taken a look around lately?

[Somewhere Peter is rolling his eyes.]

If it had, I wouldn't have went. I can't be forced to stay anywhere I don't want to.

[He'd went, he's stuck out the punishment only because of his own guilt over J. That had been his mistake and he had to own up to it. It was not about Rinzler.]

This isn't about who's a person and who's not. It's about a really shitty system and everyone getting upset when someone finally tries to do something about it.

[Deacon privately thinks that this is more like heaven. With some unfortunate kidnapping and occasional murder, but way less of both than the Commonwealth had. Not being here by choice is a drag, but actually dying and going to heaven wouldn't be by his choice either, so...]

Even if we didn't choose to come here, we get to choose what kind of community we create here. We're not doing a very good job of that right now. The system is flawed, yeah. But you know that saying "two wrongs don't make a right?"

That only works whenever there's a system in place. People have to agree something is wrong across the board before it can be wrong.

If that's the criteria for something being wrong--everyone agreeing across the board that it's wrong--we're gonna have a hard time declaring anything on this ship wrong, up to, like, mass murder and eating babies. I'm pretty sure one of my roommates would think that eating babies is a-okay. Freaky guy.

Anyway, ethical relativism's never been my jam. If it were, where I come from I'd probably be decorating my room with severed limbs and throwing live grenades at people for shits and giggles.

Maybe not everyone, but enough people have to. The majority has to agree. That's, like, how society even works!

Dude, what? That's disgusting!

[video] Hell hath no fury like an AI scorned (backdated to 4/30)

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