Gray finally sent out a message to everyone asking their opinion on working with a team from the military for the tournament. Everyone naturally didn't mind, and it seems even Jono didn't mind when he finally came online.
Gray hadn't heard from Jono for a bit and felt a little bad leaving him out of things since he was supposed to be part of their team. Still, he wasn't allowed to tell Jono anything regarding this world so he could only wait until the Alliance said something or if he didn't need to rely on the Alliance anymore.
Jono informed Gray that he can be available anytime during the week, he said he had taken all of his vacation time in one go to catch up on his gaming.
"That's dedication... I miss being able to do that. Speaking of which, I wonder what games people play in this world now?" Gray imagined that they were probably the same, but without access to the Internet of this world.
After sending a reply to Kelly that his team would be available anytime next week, he was surprised that Kelly replied only a minute or so after.
"Good to hear Gray, I shall request for noon tomorrow from my CO, my team is versatile and can handle any role. I would like you to be the leader of our combined team so that the military can't say it was due to the military's instruction that we were successful. I am really looking forward to working with you. - Kelly"
Gray smiled like an idiot thinking that Kelly was looking forward to seeing him, then he remembered the teal twin tailed terror that would kick his ass for even having dangerous thoughts like that so he reminded himself that she is just an old friend.
Gray sent his team a message saying to be ready before noon Monday August 11th 2121, which is tomorrow.
Shortly after, Caleb sent Gray a message requesting to meet up that night if possible.
Gray went over to Caleb's room and knocked on his door.
"Is that you Gray?" he heard come from the other side of the door.
"Yes"
"Come in, quickly."
Gray opened the door, stepped inside quickly and shut the door behind himself. Spread out across his floor and desk were electronic parts just strewn across everything.
A friendly female voice came from somewhere, "Hi! Are you Gray?"
Gray looked around for the source of the voice as it sounded like it was coming from the desk Caleb was hunched over.
"Uh, yeah, I am Gray... Caleb, who is that?"
"She is my friend, Celes, and one of the reasons I asked you here."
"Pleased to meet you Gray! I'd shake your hand at least but as you can see I don't have any!" the same friendly female voice, Celes, said to Gray.
"Pleased to meet you as well Celes, did Caleb create you here? I've never heard of someone developing an AI in such a short time!"
"He didn't develop me, I was born from–"
Caleb interrupted Celes and said, "Celes, can you go to sleep for an hour? I need to transfer you again."
"Ok! Going to sleep!"
Caleb waited for 5 seconds then said, "Something happened in the virtual world."
"Ok, I'm guessing it has something to do with why you have a new AI with what appears to have very high sentience that even thinks she was born instead of created?"
"Yes, I had sent half my AIs to look in to Edward Teach yesterday, when I last logged in to the virtual world, the other 6 were immediately engaged by whom I suspect is Alterra and destroyed along with all of my data."
"Wow... so I'm guessing that means you can't go to the virtual world anymore."
"Nope, and I think it would be wise if none of you did either for awhile."
"I was supposed to go meet Yurika's parents in a week though."
Caleb thought for a minute. "I think that should be fine as long as you are with Yurika."
"You said you also lost all of your data? Does that mean..."
"Yes, all of our evidence has been destroyed, we still have the copies here, but the original data is lost along with whatever they had uncovered while I was away."
"So how did you get Celes out, couldn't you have gotten the data out too?"
Caleb frowned and looked down "That... that is what I am truly sorry for... I could've saved one or the other, and I chose her..."
Gray realized it was logically the incorrect choice, but he also knew that humans were emotional and would sometimes make the emotional choice when given a choice. "I understand, while that information may have helped our case, they may not have found anything new. Saving Celes was the safer choice."
Gray was trying to make Caleb think it was the logical choice to save Celes.
Caleb laughed slightly and said, "You don't need to try and make me feel better, but I do appreciate it. I've never really had a human friend, I mean you remember how I was with Felicia. If I had known what I know now, I would've been much nicer to her. Basically, I just want to say thank you for being a good friend even though I'm hard to get along with."
Gray scratched the back of his head. "Uh, I'm not good with the emotional stuff, at least not with guys, but I think everyone on the team thinks of you as a friend, except for maybe Jono since he has not been with us long. So what is up with Celes?"
"She is Celeste, and she's not. I was able to save her core, but I couldn't save any memories, self-learned subroutines, or logical algorithms."
"So is that why she seems so... immature?"
"Well, yes, she's basically got the intellect of an adult, but the life experiences of a baby."
"So she's a politician?" Gray said with a grin.
Caleb laughed "She could be much more dangerous than that, but she could also be good."
"What do you mean?"
"Her core is mature, hence the intellect, but she is immature and willing to learn. I haven't been able to create a sentience inhibitor for her yet, and I was considering not doing that."
Gray's eyes widened "That's... extremely dangerous... every single AI has one of those to reduce their sentience so they don't develop certain emotions like fear and hate."
"Agreed, but remember, Dr. Sara Watts is an AI now and she doesn't have one."
"Yes but she is a human, or at least was. Still is? Hard to classify her as one or the other."
"Yes, so I've been treating Celes as my equal instead of a servant. Hence why she thinks she was born."
"Well, I trust you to make the smart choice, you need to have a kill switch in place at least in case she needs to be destroyed."
"That's not fair to her!" Caleb countered.
"Of course it isn't! You are raising her though and she is your responsibility!"
Caleb went silent for a moment then said "Raising her, huh? I guess that would make me her Dad?"
Gray laughed slightly. "You loved Celeste more than you admit, so wouldn't it be fitting that Celes be the product of you and Celeste?"
"You are right about that, this one time Celeste and I were getting really frea–"
Gray interrupted Caleb "AND CUT! I'd rather not hear about it since I can't even conceive how you'd get intimate with an AI."
"It's not as hard as people think, it's just that it isn't real, I developed an algorithm for simulating sexu–"
Gray interrupted Caleb again. "Seriously! Just stop! On to another subject! What is all this stuff you have around?"
"I don't want her on the network here, so I'm trying to create an independent neural network that is able to handle all of the data she goes through. Sadly, hardware is not my expertise, but I can at least give her enough space to experience things before growing."
"What do you mean, experience things but not grow?"
"We learn by experiencing things then processing that information in our own unique ways, she can experience many things right now, but she can't process the data to learn from it. In other words, she isn't able to change yet. We need the same cycling neural network that is able to store processed data and then filter out needless data."
"Ah ok, so basically she is going to remember everything and can't process it yet to learn from it."
"Yeah, you're surprising intelligent sometimes Gray, we could develop a lot of good software together for our mercenary team I bet."
Gray shrugged his shoulders "I'm not nearly as good at it as you are."
"Well obviously." Caleb said with a grin.
"I think you're going to join us for the next close combat seminar, yes?" Gray said with a grin as well.
"Is that an order?"
"It is now."
"F**k off! I'm the brains, not the brawn!"
"And that is another reason why, we suck at fighting I discovered."
"Well naturally, none of us have any training except for Yurika."
"Yep, so all the more reason!"
"Uggg, fine, I get it. Help me find a hardware specialist when you can, I want Celes to grow and I need to change up my plans for what I wanted her avatar to wear."
"Why do you need to change it?"
"You told me to think of her as a daughter so I can't have her wearing this!" Caleb showed Gray a picture of what could only be described as a scandalous white lacy dress with enough skin exposed that it would be better suited as something a wife wears on her honeymoon in the bedroom than an actual dress.
"You know what... think of her as what you want... you look like you put a lot of time into creating that virtual outfit."
"I know, it's a shame to erase it..."
"Are you guys done yet?" Celes suddenly chimed in.
"Hey, didn't I ask you to go to sleep?" Caleb said
"Yeah, but I wasn't tired anymore so I woke up naturally. Hey, who is that pretty dress for? Is that for me?"
Before Caleb could reply, a beautiful female avatar that looked like Celeste appeared on the tablet Caleb was holding and had put on the dress. She had the same beautiful blue eyes as her mother, the long blonde hair, toned body, generous bust, and long legs. Gray and Caleb merely watched her twirl around in it.
For some reason Caleb whispered "She is just as willful as her mother."
"How'd she get to the tablet?" Gray asked.
"Local network, I found she was very adventurous so I had to let her at least explore this room."
Seemingly ignoring Gray and Caleb, Celes then said, "Hm... it's a little too skimpy..." Celes was looking at herself in a mirror she brought up on the tablet, then started pulling on parts of it, the bikini bottom transformed into a skirt, the straps that barely covered her torso were transformed into a full tank top with the midriff still exposed slightly. She seemed to like the lacy sleeves so she extended the lacy pattern down her arm and put a finger loop on the end of it.
"That's not right..." Celes then rubbed a hand over her body and a green leotard appeared under everything covering her midriff now.
Celes then nodded her head satisfied and said, "Better! I'll work on it later, what do you think Caleb?" Celes strutted around proud of her modifications, even posing provocatively leaving Caleb and Gray wondering where she had seen poses like this before.
Gray looked at Caleb and whispered "Yeah, I couldn't think of her as a daughter anymore if it was me, good luck!"