ask-nightmaremoon:

invaderskund:

ask-nightmaremoon:

The code, after settling in, attempts to access the long-range communications system.

Since it’s running in a sandbox, it can’t, but it just keeps trying. If Skund looks at it with a debugger, he’ll see it is trying to download more code from the same source, which it will then execute.

Skund squints as the program attempts to do something that it can’t, then looks at it with a debugger to find out what it’s trying to do.

After a few moments of deliberation, he allows it access to the communication system, but prevents it from uploading anything.

The program immediately begins downloading a second, much larger block of code from its original source.

The numbers begin to tick by, faster and faster. One megabyte. Two. Two hundred. One gigabyte. One thousand.

Soon, the total exceeds forty terabytes. As the download completes, the original (bootstrapping) program sets the new, second one to execute, then shuts itself down. The second program comes online.

If Skund looks at the new program through a debugger, it should be fairly obvious to any advanced alien that the program is a saved, compressed neural network that is attempting to rebuild itself inside his system.

The new program is labeled ‘TRAX_IV’.

Skund is amazed at just how much room this thing required. It wasn’t until it was fully downloaded that he used the debugger to take a good look at it and realized that it was a compressed artificial intelligence.

Less than an hour later, Skund had Carl’s memory saved and stored elsewhere, the SIR unit’s body strapped down to a workbench. Ensuring that Carl’s male-end connecting components were moved, he plugged the isolated system into the robot and downloaded the AI program, curious to meet it.