As soon as the other Djinni straightened, he continued with his introduction.  "I'm not very good at the simulation, as you can tell. For now."

Tage felt her heartbeat pick up at his words, beating in her ears as further proof of the wonders of TITAN’s simulations.  It was so different to hear him actually say the words, rather than just stumble across the possibility herself. It was so much more... real. There was no room for her to be mistaken, no room for misinterpretation. He had said it. He was a human AI. Not just an NPC, designed to feel human on the most superficial level, but something that was supposed to imitate a human all the way to the core. Even now, Tage had problems believing it. Perhaps that was what made it even more terrifying. And more fascinating.

"My purpose,” Ripley continued. “Is to figure out more about humans, so we can use that knowledge to improve the games.”  His eyes seemed to positively sparkle with excitement and curiosity as he stared at her.

“How about you?"

"Huh?”  Distracted by her thoughts, Tage's mind immediately flashed back to the question she’d first asked him.  What are you?

“Oh. I'm a... girl?" She wasn’t sure that was really what he wanted to know, but it was the only answer she could come up with while most of her attention was turned towards a thought that was niggling in the back of her head.  However, Tage didn't give the AI the chance to correct his vague question if he was dissatisfied with her equally vague answer. The thought that had been building in her mind since Ripley had stated his identity was finally fully formed, and it was too important for her to ignore it, even for a moment.

"Ripley, you can't tell anyone that,” Tage said, voice sounding almost desperate.  For one moment she was tempted to step forward, grab his hands in some attempt to convey the sincerity of her words. “That you are a human AI, I mean. Ever again."

Would he understand why this was so important? No, she doubted that. If he already understood it, he never would have told her in the first place. "People..."

How could she explain this? It was important that she got this right. Not just for Ripley, but for the TITAN program as a whole. Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself down and organize her thoughts, Tage started again.

"I think there are a lot of people would not like it. At all. In fact, they may dislike it so much that they would... try to destroy TITAN. Remove all the servers, delete the code.”  Tage took a deep breath, trying to keep her imagination from spiraling out of control at the thought.

“You've got to understand, people are funny about the human consciousness. If the wrong people found out that TITAN had... decided to make an AI..." At least, she assumed TITAN had made this decision without any sort of approval from people. "Especially a good one, it would probably make them very afraid.  And since it’s something that’s outside their control, they would want to stop it."

Tage's attempt to keep her imagination both reasonable and under control was rapidly failing.  The more she considered how far this could spiral out of control if people found out, if they reacted in the wrong way, the more she was certain it could have disastrous consequences. Her voice was starting to get heated, filled with an unexpected passion that was driven by this fear for a future that was nothing more than the vaguest of possibilities. "And if enough people found out, if it caused a big enough panic, those people might use it to outlaw, not only this gaming program, but research into AI altogether."

Only when those words passed her lips did Tage finally realize she was being overly dramatic, and her teeth almost audibly clicked shut. A faint blush touched her cheeks.  Ripley had stared patiently at her for the entirety of her rant, his expression swinging from curiosity to concern to fear and back again, one finger lifted to his mouth so he could nibble on a knuckle. However, if anything, Ripley’s attentiveness only heightened her building embarrassment.  She’d gone too far down the rabbit hole.

All the same, that didn’t change the fact that she did believe what she had just said was a possibility. If it had been someone other than her who had finished this quest…  She didn’t really want to think about it. Imagining someone else discovering Ripley and crashing this, everything, before it even had a chance to fully develop, was almost tragic.

"I'm sorry," Tage spoke again, voice returned to a more level tone. "That might have been a bit excessive. But promise me you won't tell anyone, okay?"

She waited for him to react, almost fearful he’d ignore her warning, but then he opened his arms, almost apologetically, smiling at Tage.

"Thank you for the warning,” he finally replied. “Please give me a few minutes to escalate this." Ripley nodded to himself, positioning himself in a completely neutral, emotionless pose.  And then, his face abruptly turned into a blank slate.