robot au (angeal and genesis)
companion draft to the Sephiroth Is a Robot: Genesis and Angeal's activation
Still a very rough draft
Genesis and Angeal were both activated outside of a lab. Their OS wasn’t as stable, didn’t integrate the JENOVA code as easily, and their designs weren’t as balanced as the Sephiroth model. Hollander argued that made them more specialized, but with mixed success.
Gillain Helwey was the first to realize what they could do, besides make weapons - she spent months pouring over the code, and then she looked at the results and thought, oh, we might be able to -
She kept coding, kept making the code more and more sophisticated - occasionally at the cost of stability, but it was worth it, would be so worth if it it worked, having done what everyone else thought was impossible -
- would it be worth it to create a weapon, she thought late at night, was it /right/ to create what she was trying to make and then send it off to kill - she met the shadowed eyes of Lucrecia Cresent, the only other programmer who might be capable of doing it now that Gast was gone, once across a board meeting and then thought that oh, she’s trying it too. (She really wasn’t surprised, later, when Lucrecia’s suicide was announced.)
Hollander never realized what she was doing, much more interested in the physical designs. Beneath his apathetic eyes and late at night, Gillian created - not a personality, not really, not fully formed - but the /potential/ for one, the ability to learn and made desicions and have /feelings/. She named the first one Genesis, something new and freshly possible, the beginning - the second one she named Angeal. Something holy and perfected. She assigned their base reaction values more or less at random, Genesis more willing to risk and Angeal more willing to help others. Maybe they’ll be non-combat roles, she thought one day as she coded. Genesis had the built for a scout…
She thought, again, of sending out these two - robots, she reminds herself, they are not boys, they are - but they /could be/ - they are not - of sending them to war and having them damaged or destroyed. Her coding paused, for a long moment.
She’d gotten too attached. She shouldn’t have given them names. But it was too late for that, and she couldn’t hand the project off. Not now.
She was one of the only ones that had access to the frames, and so one day - weeks before Hollander expected anything to be finished, and months before Hojo’s team - she had them wheeled out into the courtyard - “object identification test” she explained to the bewildered techs - and checked that everything was ready to go. She let out a deep breath, and activated Genesis.
Blue eyes opened, mako flaring, and then focused on the techs. He was curious, she had decided, built in a need to investigate and understand in his base values. Mako-blue eyes flitted from one tech to another, comparing them to the pictures loaded into his memory banks. They settled onto Gillian, just as she’d expected them too.
“Genesis.” A whir as he tilted his head, listening to her. “Are you receiving information from all of your sensors?” A pause, and then Genesis nodded. Good. Language and body language loaded properly. “Excellent. Can you stand?”
Another whir as his servos responded - his movements were jerky, unsteady, his balance taking a moment to calibrate itself. But he did not stumble, and soon stood to his full height. Only a little taller than herself, in case a shorter tech needed to repairs, and to make him faster.
“Balance and movement check cleared. Excellent. Genesis, can you speak?”
Another pause, and then - “Yes, Professor Helwey.” Gillain tried not to cheer as one of the techs gasped. Loading that voice set was a great idea. The blue eyes then flicked away from her, and to the as of yet inactivate second frame. She hadn’t uploaded any data on each other to either AI. She’d wanted to see what would happen. He did not speak again, but instead approached Angeal, reaching out with elegant and sensitive fingers to stroke the synthetic skin over his cheek.
Gillain swallowed, reminded herself that he was a robot that literally was just activated and that she built him to be curious, and said. “That’s Angeal. I’m going to activate him once I’m sure all of your functions are running correctly.” Blue eyes flickered to her, and then back to Angeal.
“I want to meet him.” Some of the techs muttered - no one else knows how much detail is built into the AI, what they should be /capable/ of - but Gillain heard “I want” and thought that she didn’t expect any thing to happen this quickly, just had has she created - and she nodded and flipped the switch.
A second set of blue eyes opened and scanned the techs - lingered on Genesis for a long moment, the two robots observing each other, much too still to be humans - and then settled onto Gillain.
“Angeal. Are you receiving data from all of your sensors?”
“…Yes, Professor.” Interesting, that he spoke without being prompted. She’d made him friendlier, as much as she could. Blue eyes shifted back to Genesis, who hadn’t moved. Gillian held her breath as her two creations registered each other properly for the first time. (Hollander be damned - they were /hers./) “….your face is not in my data banks. What is your designation?”
“Genesis.” Genesis tilted his head. “Can you stand?” Gillain opened her mouth - he learned so quickly, the pattern recognition codes kicking much sooner than she expected - and then shut it again. He grabbed Angeal’s hand and tugged until Angeal shifted to his feet.
Gillain breathed out, the enormity of what she had done starting to sink in - she had created something alive, created things that could learn and feel and have friendships and - they would be sent off to kill and be killed, to be used up. She swallowed, plans sparkling in the back of her mind, and made a note on her clipboard.
“Well, if you’re both functioning so far, why don’t we go inside and do a few more tests?”
Angeal turned to her and nodded, but Genesis focused on one of the dumbapple trees lining the courtyard and reached up to touch one of the pale fruit. His haptic feedback hadn’t calibrated yet, and so he left dark bruises on the skin and nearly pierced it. He - frowned, actually frowned, but he tried again and touched the next fruit gently, without damage.
Gillain let out another breath, and decided to leave him to it.