“What is the A.I. doing?” The man sitting in front of the Trials main feed readout asked to himself.”Hey, is anyone else checking out Asset 75,309,?”

  “Nope, why what’s going on John?” The man across the paired desks asked back.

  “It’s doing something weird with this guy. Like really fucking weird”

  “Like what? seriously dude you need to elaborate more when you bring this shit up”

  “Just come look at this Eric, I can’t really explain it that easily”

  “Fine but this better actually be weird. Not that bullshit again like last time.” He mimicked John’s voice. “Hey Eric come look at this weird thing.” switches back to his original voice “ Turns out the A.I was just copy pasting the same mob all over the dungeon to save on processing power by using it to remove a bunch of Assets before their timers ran out.” He complained as he circled around the desk to join John at his monitor.

  “What the fuck?” He then said in actual wonder. “Is this the actual Trials data and not some shit you ,ade up on your own?” he asked John in wonderment.

  “No, man. The A.I brought out Gary. Also, it’s following this asset around like a lost puppy. I mean it’s still doing all it’s other jobs too obviously. But, this guy. whoever the fuck he is, has his own personal tutorial guide and information sprite. I don’t know what’s going on with it. Did the A.I just really like this Voyager it made and decide to keep it safe or is it running a new variant to see how it performs on the show? Either way it’s fucking with the system in a weird way. Look at the level of processing it’s putting into it. Rendering longer corridors and making way more elaborate environments for the first Tier. it’s not normal.” John spewed out in amazement.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “no, it is not. Okay go in to the subroutines of the system and see if you can reroute focus back to normal surveillance mode. Get that sprite out of there if you can. This shouldn’t be happening this early. Hell some of it shouldn’t be happening at all.” Eric directed John.

  John nodded and began typing on his workstation. The screens began to flash as he started and stopped different systems and parsed information to clear out old caches and run scripts they hadn’t needed in a long time. He just kept thinking to himself how this was even possible.

  It’s an A.I thats how. What did they think would happen, that it wouldn’t ever realize it was doing to itself.

  His thoughts continued down this path as he worked furiously to reset the situation and bring the Assets experience back in line with the others. Variety in what is happening was one thing, but this current Asset was experiencing something that would not be sustainable if it leaked into other runs. The Trials was running on the best processer and memory in the world, but even it had it’s limits and the A.I. would burn through all the resources at it’s disposal quickly if it started expanding this experience.

  John managed to reset everything for the Asset and put him back on a basic Tier one track. Gave a thumbs up to Eric, who nodded in confirmation and then went back to parsing through the next Assets current run. The the next, and the next. He got up for lunch a few minutes later and didn’t notice the flashing warning that began popping up next to the Assets. First back at Asset 75,309. Then to 72,056, then another one. Then multiple, and soon to all the current Assets in the trials. The monitor was lighting up like a Christmas tree. John was not going to have a very good day. Nobody was going to.