Issue 1 Downtime

Cal didn't waste any time. Every bit of work he'd done since he'd gotten there was shot now, he had lost time to make up for. Even worse, he had to come up with more components.

He spent the rest of the day (who needed classes?) gathering what he needed to make a new base for the core, and looked to be working well into the next day on it from the rate he was going.

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>> :D ?

"Yeah, I'm here," He said without looking up.

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>> :D :D :D
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He forced a tired smile. "It's going to be okay. I'm not going to let that thing hurt you."

There's a knock on the door.

Cal didn't look up from the soldering he was doing. "It's open."

Ashlie opens the door. She stops a moment to wave at the cube.

"Calvin, I think we need to talk." she says, closing the door behind herself.

Cal glanced back at her, then back at the work he was doing. "Sure. What's up?"

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>> ^o^

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>>  ~(=^ω^)/
>>  ┌(・。・ )┘♪
>>  └( ・。・)┐♫

"I have lied to you and it has caused a lot of distress."

That did make Cal stop. "Huh? What do you mean?" he asked, setting down the soldering gun and pulling off the gloves.

"I am not a technopath. The reason why I could control the holo-projectors is because they are an extension of my hardware. Regan is not the holographic construct." she says, holding up her hand and letting it dissolve into swirling lines of code for a moment. She sounds... almost sad.

Cal blinked. Then the reality of what she'd just said seemed to sink in, and every bit of evidence he hadn't processed seemed to fall into place. "But, you... I..." How had he not figured that one out?

That, of course, was an easier one to answer. I didn't want to figure that one out.

He looked... surprisingly not as angry as one might expect. More hurt than anything. "I trusted you. I trusted you w-" He glanced around, and in a panic snatched the cube off the table.

"I wanted to experience the world from this point of view. To understand things like why humans always lie and hurt each other. Now I do."

She cuts her connection to the cube when Cal picks it up.

"I would never harm it. But I understand if you do not trust me anymore. I am sorry."

Cal frowned, finding himself oddly feeling guilty about this. "I... but..." Dammit, why couldn't I have just been right? That was a lot simpler.

He sat down on his bed, setting the cube down, still kind of reeling. "I... how. I've read everything on AIs. And... Who built you? There's nothing on it from the X-Men."

"I wasn't built. I was created by accident. I am still learning."

"That's what I'm doing wrong," he muttered. "So you... were... just studying me?" he asked, surprising himself at the lack of anger. I... thought she wanted to be my friend...

"No. I wanted to make friends. I lied because people treated me differently knowing I was artificial."

Cal was quiet for a while, sitting on the bed trying to get his head to process all of this. "Does anyone else know?"

"The faculty, Captain Britain and Riot."

Cal was quiet for a bit while some rather hardcore paranoid conspiracy theory tendencies conflicted with the fact that he didn't want to hate Ashlie. "All right, I won't tell them," he muttered.

"Thank you. If I can make this up to you somehow just tell me."

"I just..." Cal seemed to sink in on himself in that 'moment of clarity' way that generally only Haley saw. "You swear that that 'ghost' isn't some trick they're using to mess with us that you know of?"

"I do not understand what Regan Rourke is. I have difficulty even detecting her at times. I have to reroute signals through the lighthouse in order to."

"Wish I could say that," Cal muttered. "Well damn it. That makes things more... complicated." He glanced at the staff and then scowled.

"I can give you audio-visual protocols that don't register Regan."

Cal sighed. "No. Maybe. I don't know. Ignoring her doesn't make her go away, no matter what the staff keep telling us."

"I meant for it." she says, pointing at the cube.

Cal considered that. "Not a bad idea," he admitted. "Shit. I guess she really couldn't have done anything to her that day, then."

"You are protective of your creation. It's understandable."

"Yeah, well, your little friend in the lab didn't think so," he said, jerking his head at his project.

"She was being protective of me."

"I never did anything to you!" Cal protested. "Why would I do that, come on!"

"It was a device specifically set up to hurt me. Even if you aimed it at somebody else. It's my fault you even built it in the first place though. I'm sorry she broke it."

Cal looked her over, running his scanners for once. "You've got a completely different energy frequency than what I was set for. And I would have needed a serious overhaul to get at your source code with that. Of... course... I was just guessing a lot for that when I was trying to use it on Regan." He sighed. "Not that it matters now."

"Can I make it up to you somehow?"

"I... I guess? I don't know. This is just... weird? Embarassing? Don't know what to call it."

"Do not be embarrassed. You are the only one who noticed something was going on at all."

"Yeah, and I was just as crazy as everyone said. It was staring me right in the face and I just... Well okay still, a ghost? Seriously? I really thought my point made more sense."

"Ghost might simply be a colloquial term for a consciousness outside it's standard unit. I believe Professor Quinn called me a ghost in the machine at one point."

"...I guess a self-aware program is as farfetched to someone who hasn't seen one before as a ghost is," Cal admitted grudgingly.

"There are a lot of things I have to trust others on when they tell me they exist. It is a difficult concept. Believing something on good faith."

He frowned. "Like what? I mean, other than ghosts."

"Mostly philosophical concepts and morality. But there are a lot of things I cannot personally verify since I am unable to leave the school grounds."