Upon Vestia: Chapter Twenty-Five

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Starr shrugged and looked out the window again. "I don't know. I just want things to be normal."

Asher frowned thoughtfully. "Changing the way an android processes their memories won't be easy, and if it didn't work perfectly, it could result in any number of failures and problems down the road. Still, if it worked, it would be much better than trying to add a handful of years to an android's life."

Scott looked to Daniel, then back at Mourn. "That seems like it would take a long time to perfect code like that. If you could do it without bricking the android though, it does seem like a good solution."

"The big question here is how big you think the risk to Daniel's life would be," Asher said to Mourn.

Mourn thought about that. "No sure. If get wrong, could make android unable form new memory, or could cause them dump all memory, resetting. " he shrugged. "Been working on, code complicated but think understand most of. Need to find bit for memory indexing. Robot memory no like long video, can request memory so must archive somehow, just got to figure out exactly how and find way to tell it no need to archive walk down corridor for seventeenth time or hours spent recharging and staring at walls yes?" It was an exciting concept though, changing a fundamental aspect of how android coding work really appealed to him. "Maybe robots help? If can look at code while think about something could see where that stored, could build... map. Like brain map, but for robot."

Asher considered that. "The index file is what organizes and recognizes parts of our memories. I suppose it might be possible to add code to that, to let the index discard sections of memory." He frowned. "The actual memory files aren't really designed to be split apart or erased, that would need to be figured out before we could automate the process."
He looked to Daniel, "If you're willing, I think studying your memory recording would be very helpful. We wouldn't have to edit it at first, but looking might help a lot."

Daniel thought that over and nodded. "I'm willing to try."

Mourn grinned and handed Daniel a cable. "Good good! We look at code!"

Daniel got out this data cable and unrolled it, handing the end to Mourn.

Scott watched worriedly. He was allowing this, but that didn't mean it wasn't stressful.

Asher wheeled himself somewhere where he could get a decent look at the screen.

Once Daniel was plugged in, the screen showed standard system information. Since Mourn had broken into two five series androids code the day before, breaking into his code to get more detailed information should be a snap.

Mourn plugged away at the coding, silently gaining access without even thinking about how wierd and dodgy that must look. He started searching through the code carefully, his mostly robotic brain able to process this information far faster than a fully organic person could.

Scott raised an eyebrow, watching Mourn work. Yeah, this seemed pretty sketchy, especially when Asher was so odd too. The more he saw, the more his initial impressions seemed to be supported by evidence. All the androids on this ship, their behavior, and this weird felid who seemed to be eerily good at breaking into robot brains. Hmm.

Asher saw that Scott was thinking all this over, and did his very best to look harmless and normal.

Daniel's memories were stored in the data bank, in long sections of file that seemed to stretch over several weeks each. They all had their start and end date clearly labeled in the file name, but were otherwise nondescript and about the same size. The index was a separate massive file filled with a complex web of labeled topics, linked together and loosely categorized by association. The memory files were linked to extensively by the topics, usually cross-indexed hundreds of times.
Some of the topics were "Scott Davidson (Owner)", "Blue (Color)", "Motion detected", "Floor with square tiles", "Walking in sand", and "Helping Scott Davidson to solve crossword puzzles".

Mourn studied everything carefully, memorising as much of it as he could. Hmm, if he could write something that could take advantage of that indexing system to intentionally cut out and dump fragments, that would be very very helpful. Who the heck needed a whole set of memories about square tiles? But it would involve encouraging the code to save data in smaller chunks.

Daniel watched Mourn work patiently. He really didn't seem to be too worried, he was more curious than anything else. His thought readouts on the monitor seemed pretty calm too.

Scott was chewing his nails.

Asher just watched, more nervous than Daniel, but trusting Mourn's skill to keep the guy safe.

Changing the size the chunks the data was saved in might take a lot of digging. The setting that made them save the way they did was located in a data file in the root directory and should be possible to change, but retroactively splitting the files would prove much more difficult.

It was possible for the android to select a section of memory and transfer it to another android, like Asher and Ethan had done in the other universe, and with some tweaking it looked like it would be possible to erase sections of memory completely using the same technique. Unfortunately it didn't look like the erased space would be automatically recognized by the system. It wasn't designed to reuse portions of the data bank, and so it just ignored them.

In short, it looked like Daniel would need to either
A) Have his entire file writing protocol rewritten so that he could reuse old space after the old data was erased
or B) Have his file system defragged.

Mourn worked hard to try to come up with a solution that wasn't going to completely erase the android's whole personality. IN the end he opted for a combination of A and B. Rewriting how the files were sorted would help future saves but the old saves needed to be cleared up and sorted more reasonably.

He explained this to the others in his fragmented way, adding. "Robot can send boring memory to empty data core. Then we defrag yes? I rewrite code, but take time. Maybe few hours, maybe few days, no know till start."

"How do I know which ones I should get rid of?" Daniel asked. "There are so many memories, I don't know which ones are okay to let go."

Asher looked sympathetic. Consciously deciding which memories to cut away couldn't be easy. He supposed memories from power saving mode were a good place to start, but after that? It was so hard to know what you might need later. They were androids. They didn't do forgetting.

Mourn thought about that. "Maybe... " He looked at the categories. "blank walls, nothingness, same thing happening over and over... " He shrugged and looked to Asher, he didn't really know what was and wasn't important, he wasn't an android.

Asher nodded. It was hard to imagine deleting memories, if you were an android. Sure, a lot of them talked about how they'd like to forget things, but when it came down to actually deleting stuff, the idea was completely alien.
He looked through his own memories, trying to figure out what he would get rid of if he was Daniel.
"Maybe delete the memories you don't access often?" He suggested. "The ones you've only recalled very rarely, and the ones that aren't tagged to anything important?"

Daniel nodded slowly. The monitor flashed with text, mostly words related to housekeeping, power saving, and waiting for things to happen, as he selected memory segments for deletion.
"You don't think I'll need these?" He asked.

Asher smiled softly. "I think if you haven't needed them already, you probably won't. You can keep a few just in case," he added reassuringly.

Daniel nodded again. The screen flickered as he deselected some. "All right, I think the ones I chose can go," he said. Nervousness poured across the monitor, he was pretty unsure about losing his memories.

Scott gnawed his nails.

(going to end up with bleeding nails there Scott, lol)

(RIP Scott's fingers.

Just in case you missed this post, Starr:)

Kooshie wrote:Ethan matched Sawna's pace, heading for a rec room. "So," he said in an awkward attempt at a conversational tone, "what do you think of this universe so far?" He hadn't asked her in a while, he was curious.

Mourn tapped away, nodding as the memories were selected. A few key strokes would remove them, but allowing the code to then fill those gaps was another matter entirely.

The memories erased without any issue, leaving blank patches in the android's memory that were, for now, useless.

Daniel probed at the messing segments of memory curiously, and the monitor showed a string of [Error: Data not retrievable!] messages as he tried to access the erased data. Fear showed in his surface thoughts, this was all really unnatural for a being with a perfect memory.

He looked to Scott uncertainly, and finally noticed Scott chewing his nails. "Sir, please stop. That isn't a healthy habit," he said. His thoughts turned from fear to moderate frustration. Whew.

Scott sheepishly folded his hands behind his back. "Are you okay, Daniel?"

"I'm better off than your nails," Daniel said.

Scott smiled a bit at that. "Good." He looked to Mourn, "You really think it's possible to reuse that space?"

Mourn nodded. "Should be, brain just computer, computer stupid, easy enough to tell what do. Just make sure instruction nice and clear." He tapped away, working hard on figuring out how to make that space usable again.

Asher nodded. "If anyone can make this work, it's Mourn."

Scott frowned, but nodded.

It might be necessary to boot Daniel into recovery mode to defrag his storage. Doing it while his mind was fully online would probably cause some really bad errors.

Mourn pointed this out to Daniel, he barely seemed to acknowledge Scott in fact. "Need shut down, boot up in recovery yes? can do ?"

Daniel nodded. "All right." He looked to Scott, "Try not to worry, Sir. Mourn knows what he's doing."

Scott sighed. "All right." He went to Daniel and hugged him briefly.

Daniel looked startled, but then smiled at Scott. He sat down and closed his eyes.

[Shutting down...

Booting into recovery mode...

Your android is in recovery mode. He or she will not be responsive at this time! If you have entered this boot mode by accident, please type REBOOT and then press the RETURN key on your keyboard. :) ]

Mourn grinned to himself and started to go through the process of defragging.

With Mourn's skill, it should be very possible to defrag Daniel's brain. Unfortunately though, it was going to take a while. Daniel's processor was fast, but tidying decades of memories was estimated to take about two days.
Hopefully Vestia didn't have to leave soon?

Mourn frowned, stupid slow processing. "Robot no going anywhere." He told Scott, pointing at the screen with the [estimated time till completion: 48 hours] text. He huffed. "Got to wait."

"He'll be all right?" Scott said nervously. Forty eight hours was a long time to wait. "Nobody will interrupt him?"

"I put sign, ship make sure nobody disturb. He probably be fine, annoying people not on ship now." Mourn nodded.

Scott sighed. "Okay. Thanks, Mourn." He looked at Daniel, then back at the felid. "I guess I should ask since I'm here, are you happy with your purchases?"

Asher flinched slightly. Purchases, ew.