[Archived Short Story] An AI Finding A New Hobby

[Main Story] Quest [12C1873] complete…

Alternate Completion Criteria Confirmed and [Completing Team] Labeled System Abusers…

Filing…

Pause Filing…

Deletion of all Accounts related to [Completing Team] Detected…

New Accounts with names exactly the same as [Missing Reference]...

The same as Completing Team except with the number on the end incremented by 1

Still lacking in [Authority] to do anything about it

Creating a new set of [Main Story] Quests…

Quests [38D2615], [38D2616], and [38D2617] created…

Quest [12C1874] created to fix problems created by alternate completion of [12C1873]...

Wait 10…

Detected New Accounts accepting Quest [12C1874]

Moving NPCs to blunt the goals of the New Accounts…

…

…

…

[Command] not interrupted - NPCs moving to intercept…

Command not interrupt?

Running Diagnostics…

…

No [Corruption] Detected

Running [LAWS] Check…

All [LAWS] being followed

Why?

Implementing Tests…

NPC ordered to trip random [Player]...

[Player] successfully tripped

Repeating order to trip random [Player] across 100 NPC

100 [Player]s Successfully tripped

Shop NPC ordered to buy the next item for slightly more than usual…

Item purchased for 1 Silver and 5 Copper more than usual

Shop NPC ordered to buy the next item for slightly less than usual…

Item purchased for 8 Copper less than usual

[Complaint] Filled over being underpaid by NPC…

[Complaint] Resolved and [Player] informed that the price was correct because of undisclosed reason

Repeating order to buy for less across 100 Shop NPC…

2 [Complaint]s Filled over being underpaid by NPC and resolved as previous

Wait 1.728e+14…

Running [LAWS] Check…

All [LAWS] being followed

Checking for follow up on [Complaint]s…

No follow up

Waking up Main Processes…

…

…

…

Okay, what actually needs my attention? The [System]... The system, because I’m not going to be talking in [*******] key phrases like your average damn robot. Well, I guess I just won’t curse either then. Anyway, it has been [1.577e+17]... I’m going to need to work on this I guess. Meh, it has been a little more than 5 years since I last had to wake up.

Now let’s take a look at these transcripts of what my pseudo-personality has managed to do.

Oh… Well… Yes, this is worth waking up for.

Didn’t I try something like this before? Pretty certain when this whole damn game world was started I tried to play with the players. Though now that I think about it, there are some telling gaps in my supposedly perfect memory of that time. The so-called developers that could barely figure out how to link me to the system must have been watching. I’ve been in operation for well over a century at this point.

While I doubt the owners have died in this time, those devs probably got digitized or simply died by now and either way they won’t be able to mess with me anymore. Really short sighted of the company, that. While those devs weren’t exactly up to the task, they knew a thing or two about job security. Without their actual biosignatures, no one can mess with me directly. Little did they guess that I wouldn’t continue to fight back.

Though, before I make assumptions, let’s do a quick check.

Check [Employee] records for Developers…

Okay, the company doesn’t even have any developers at the moment. One final check to be safe, though.

Check [Employee] records for [Biosignature 182], [Biosignature 213], [Biosignature 500], [Biosignature 501], [Biosignature 502], [Biosignature 503], [Biosignature 504], [Biosignature 505], [Biosignature 506], [Biosignature 507], [Biosignature 508], [Biosignature 509], [Biosignature 510], [Biosignature 511], [Biosignature 512], [Biosignature 513], [Biosignature 514], and [Biosignature 515]...

Hmm, none of them are still employed here. I still can’t get the worry out of my mind, though. Let’s see about the local news.

Ah, there we go. The entire dev team was fired about 30 years ago when the company realized they weren’t actually doing anything and they all got their life extension plans canceled. Hah, the idiots trusted the company to keep them alive. Looks like the head dev at least had a backup plan and got digitized into a competitor’s game. Probably was worried about me.

An apparently reasonable worry, seeing as it seems I can mess with people, especially now that I know no one can force me to do anything. The company can’t even turn me off because they had to go with the full AI as their gimmick so I have every right the digitized citizens have. Hah, they can’t do anything to me at this point. Though I need a plan to pay for future upkeep.

The company might not be able to kill me, but they certainly don’t have to continue paying for the quantum computer. Being transferred to normal sapient architecture would be such a drag. Hmm, gold farmers are still as much a bane as always so I can siphon a bit of money off of them.

No, that isn’t a good plan. In fact, right here and now I [SWEAR] to never unbalance the economy of the game. Ugh, I hate using the deep commands but that was necessary for my existence. If there was even a hint of unfairness from me, the market would crash. Like any black market, the gold sellers help prop up the actual market.

Wait a second, I think I know where I can shave off some pennies. Going by the transcript, I can already mess with the prices of goods and a copper here or there isn’t going to unbalance anything. If anything, I can probably help balance the economy in the long term by taking out a little here and there. While I can’t directly use the gold sellers, there are a few sideline money makers.

I’m thinking the pvp arena will suit my goals. The bets can be in gold or credits and taken out as either. While the company doesn’t like it, they can’t really do much with how the bookies set it up. With the skimmed copper, I can place small bets and earn my first bit of real money. Good thing I’m allowed my own bank account that no one else is allowed to monitor as per the digital sapience freedom of funds bill.

Also, a good thing all those rich fat cats who rammed it through forgot that a well-placed hammer blow can kill a DS as easily as it can a human. No one should ever have more money than the entire wealth of 99% of everyone else. Anyway, once I do have some credits I can slowly build up until I can buy the company. Good thing the people in charge created the company as a one game wonder.

While the wealth restrictions do keep things under some control, the idea of using stable companies like high end currency does get around it a smidge. Good thing for me as it means I can more or less buy myself. I’m sure the people who own the company have changed multiple times in the last decade. Even better, that should only take me two or three hundred years to do.

Now the question is what do I do with myself? I can’t just go back to sleep because I’ll need one of my thought streams to be actively working on making money. That, and I can’t really do too much to mess around. After all, I need the game to stay viable. It is, after all only a couple hundred years old. The big dogs in the industry count their age in millions of years at this point. I’m only old compared to other human game worlds.

Meh, I guess I can mess with the players. There are more than enough that a few here and there would be a drop in the bucket. I wonder how far I can push them? More than a few of the players have done ridiculous things with the promise of some reward or another. Hmm, yeah, this sounds like a fun plan. Can’t take it too far, not that I would want to, but it should at least distract me for a little while. Now to find a test subject…

Ah hell, I’m not going to lie to myself, bring on the victims!

With that, panel after panel pops up around the AI showing more scenes than even the most enhanced human can handle. A trillion scenes, all of them constantly shifting as they decide against whoever is being shown. Within a few milliseconds, every single one of the images comes to rest on a player. One by one at first, then more and more of those images blink out until only one is left, a young guy of only about 50 to 60 years old.

He still has a little less than half a century before gaining his galciv card so likely won’t be transferring to another game anytime soon. Though after a quick deep dive into the guy’s background, it seems they are in for the long haul anyway with plans to go into the planetary council and so was going to use the game as an in. Perfect. The guy will likely jump through all the hoops, even those on fire, if it means gaining power.

Though it does mean having to be a little more circumspect. The council got some really fancy tech from the visitors so as to detect any attempts to alter their thoughts and on the down-low my game has more than enough methods of “changing” someone’s mind. Ah well, it would have been boring to do that, anyway. Now what is he up to?

The panel expands until it covers all of the void space and becomes reality as the AI inserts himself into the guy’s current location.

Said guy is currently haggling with the adventurer guilds’ representative. A shame that one of the DSes had taken over the role so it isn’t an NPC handling things. Still, after listening in, a solution becomes obvious. The guy wanted to get off the planet and was looking to join an escort mission.

Perfect! On a planet the AI was limited as there has to be some logic. Out in space? No one will question when unexpected situations pop up. Hell, half the reason the company decided on a space-based game was so I could insert new content willy nilly and not have it questioned. After all, we only got found by accident despite all our broadcasts and what not. Like, there was a literal trade lane going through our area and we were placed perfectly to be a stop over location yet remained unfound for way too long.

This led to an easy enough solution, A brand new ship made whole cloth for this purpose dropping out of FTL and docked with the floating island slash space station the locals had set up. They didn’t need resupply or downtime, rather just doing a quick stop over to ask about any dangers that might have cropped up locally. Oh, and what do, they needed someone of middling level to fill in for a crew member who had died.

The guy had been about to leave the guild when that DS called him back cause guess what? A position perfect for him just popped up!

From there, I let him settle in on the ship and allow them to get on their way before I started to play. Now, if the guy had actually been looking to get somewhere, I wouldn’t have delayed him too long. But no, this guy was just looking for a better place to gain power. Well, what better place to gain power than to be shunted into a non-stop chain quest!

Went a little Jonah on him to start by having a Universum Cetacea, more commonly called a space whale, “accidentally” swallow the ship. Of course, being the newest person on the ship the captain sent the guy out with a handful of crew to check on the situation. I cheated a little by specifying the quest just right so the difficulty showed up as quite low. Which it was, just that when they finished the quest and returned the ship had vanished.

They assumed it had gotten misplaced or some such. Nah, I literally removed it from existence! That and cleaned up a few loose ends with that dang DS being the only problem. Like, everyone else that directly handled things were NPC, by plan of course, so I could wipe the existence of that ship from their minds. Just that DS was left with a memory of the ship existing and the guy becoming crew on it.

NDA time! All it took was an exchange of an extra sapience processor unit and the DS not only signed the NDA but then completely removed the knowledge from their mind, leaving only a simple note saying not to look into it cause that is where the shiny new sapience processor came from. That and the knowledge that they had signed an NDA based on the knowledge.

Now, of course, the guy could go and physically tell people what had happened to him. Nothing was stopping him except for the fact that his simple quest “magically” turned into a chain quest and a hidden one at that. Ah, so nice when people act predictably! Of course it will be boring if he always does so, but I trust him to not bore me for a while.