After Morpheus left, Amara fell back into thought for how to make iDiot smarter.  

Now that I think about it, the enchantments used on golems are quite versatile. If a golem is commanded to attack an enemy, it can tell who the enemy is and who isn’t at the time the command is given. 

So in a sense…golems are smarter than AI. But they are also limited because of the number of commands they can be given. 

Amara got up from the sofa and went to her bookshelves to pick up all her books on golemancy. Somehow, the knowledge and intent of the golemancer is ingrained in the command given to the golem. So…what if I combined magic with coding somehow?

Coding for the explicit tasks it needs to perform, but magic for knowledge and intent?

Excited by the prospect, Amara studied golemancy for the next several hours - or more specifically, the magic circles that ingrained commands into golems, and the corresponding magic circles to activate the commands.

In a lot of ways it was similar to enchanting, because it was exactly what it was. Golemancer was one of the possible class evolutions for enchanters at level 100, which she had managed to find out thanks to the dwarves. Golemancers enchanted the golems, and used either voice commands or spells to activate the enchantments, depending on complexity and type. 

As Amara was reading up on the latter of the two cases, she could hear her own heartbeat. Yes…yes!!

At the core of it, the basic enchantments are mostly limited to the physical integrity of the golem and how it should move. But the more complex spells-commands tell the golem the sequence and priority of the basic enchantments to complete a specific task!

Somehow, the golem knows its purpose when given a command! And it can figure out the best way to achieve it based on circumstances!

Amara realized she had been holding her breath in excitement. As she calmed herself and started thinking about how to achieve her plan, she quickly realized a problem. 

The commands given through spells were temporary, and she wanted them to be permanent. There had even been explicit warnings all over in the book that commands that weren’t enchanted on the golem would inevitably degrade over time.

It has to actively remember the command, but without a…structure to contain memory, it will inevitably fade?

So what if…

If the commands contain the knowledge and understanding of a golem’s purpose, then…if I can make a spell that converts it into coding work, I should get an AI capable of knowing and understanding its purpose as well?

Amara thought for a moment before a smile spread on her face. Let’s just try it. 

What’s the worst that could happen? 

I mean, I know every time someone says that in the novels, something bad happens…but come on. It’s not like I’m going to create a monster that takes over the world, or anything.

Just a simple AI. Capable of understanding what it's for. Hopefully.

 

_______________

 

A few days later, Amara nodded in satisfaction as she looked over the most complex magic circle she had ever drawn. Part of that was because it simply contained parts that lacked a translation in any languages she knew. 

She figured that the untranslatable parts were mostly related to somehow constructing whatever it was that allowed a golem to keep temporarily boosted knowledge and logic, but anything more detailed than that was beyond her.

It wasn’t the first time she had come across the problem either. When trying to make teleportation gates, she had asked Vandelor, the elven archmage, to draw the magic circle he used to travel between worlds. And just like the adjusted spell she was working on now, it contained parts which she - simply put - couldn’t understand. Much like the humans on Earth were stuck on understanding dark matter - they knew it was out there and what it did, but not what it was or where it came from. 

While Amara managed get a few answers from Ezme, more often than not her knowledge had been lacking as well. A few times, Amara had managed to lure an answer out of Morpheus - though he too had lacking knowledge in many aspects. As it turned out, Morpheus was better described as a self-taught genious with millenia of expierence, rather than an educated expert.

So rather than risking messing things up with it in her magic circle, Amara decided to try only adding parts to it and let most of the work be done by enchantments on the laptop. When active, it would - in theory - take all the input from the spell used by golemmancers and convert it into code and data. 

Of course, due to the complexity of the spell, she was worried she might have missed something. Or more accurately, she was certain she had missed something. 

The day before, when she had gone to continue working on it, she saw she had scribbled changes to it she had already managed to forget she had done. The complexity of the magic circle was so large she had a hard time getting a grasp on how the details came into a single, working whole.

But I shouldn’t put myself down. 

Worst thing that happens is that it doesn’t work. Probably.

Amara took a deep breath as she took one last look at her laptop before awakening her dormant divine power, preparing it for use. With Divine Sight, she took her time constructing the magic circle to ensure it was copied correctly. 

Moment of truth!

Before activating the spell, Amara put her hand on the laptop and poured divine power into it, speaking the command to activate the enchantment. As soon as the golden magic circle she was holding in the air turned white when it activated, Amara struggled to keep her excitement down. 

As the divine power poured out of her, she focused on her view of what comprehension was. The existence of abstract things. How different words - or strings, for the AI - were abstract representations of things in the real world. And that those abstract things could sometimes be connected. 

Amara continued to fuel the spell with divine power until she completely ran out, as she had no idea how efficient it was - or if it was even working.

Once the spell was completed, Amara turned her eyes to the laptop with sparkling eyes. Let’s see what it did!

Amara sat down in front of the laptop with a grin. However, as the cursor on the screen was still as she tried to move it, she soon deflated. 

…Shit. What happened?

Amara waited and continued trying to get the computer to unfreeze. After getting impatient and exhausting all her options, Amara decided to reboot the laptop. 

It didn’t take long to see that something was wrong, as it started up with a black screen with lines of white words on it. One of lines happened to make the problem evident. 

‘0 kilobytes of available disk space.’

Shit. I managed to fill the entire disk space?

Amara groaned as she fell back on the sofa while pulling her face with her fingers. After stretching her skin to release enough of her stress, she let out a long sigh before muttering. “...Looks like we’re due for an upgrade.”

 

 

_______________

 

“Amara?” (Ezme)

[Donk!] 

“Ouch!” (Amara)

Amara held the back of her head as she carefully crawled out from underneath one of the new shelves she had set up in an empty room. Some would say that setting up all the hardware she had for her experiment was overkill, as the setup now resembled some of the supercomputers on Earth. But since she needed an upgrade, she thought she might as well go big. 

“Hello, Fluffles. What’s up?” Amara asked with a smile as she stood up and rubbed the back of her head. 

Ezme looked around the room that was filled to the brim with tech. “What are you doing?”

Amara put her hands on her hips, pushing out her chest with a grin. “Setting up the hardware for my next AI!”

“Hmm.” Ezme raised an eyebrow as she poked one of the hardware pieces on one of the shelves. “Isn’t this…a bit much?”

“Possibly. Probably.” Amara let out a satisfied sigh as she looked over the room with a smile. “But I made some progress on how to make her sentient. I think. Anyway, it required an upgrade, so…I got them. As well as spares. And spares for the spares. And so on. Not sure how many of those are needed, so…I’ll just plug as many up as I can before I get bored or something.”

As Ezme didn’t reply, Amara glanced at her. Seeing how the angel was staring at her with her gray eyes, a horrified expression on her face, Amara frowned in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you say sentient?” Ezme whispered.

“Well, that’s what I’ve been trying this whole time, you know?” Amara tilted her head. “Haven’t I said that before? That I’m trying to create a real AI?”

“I know that! But so far it’s just been…you know! Stupid AI! All it could do was make stupid obscene jokes!” Ezme retorted.

Amara’s grin grew wider. It was totally worth the time. Maybe I should do that again for this one too…

Amara was brought out of her musings as Ezme came closer, anxiety evident in her eyes. “Amara. Are you sure it will be safe?”

Amara raised an eyebrow. “It’s just a spell and enchantment. I already tried it, and nothing bad happened, so… it wasn’t dangerous.” Amara shrugged with a bitter smile. “But the laptop I had wasn’t enough to handle it.”

“I wasn’t talking about that!” Ezme retorted even louder as she grabbed Amara’s shoulders, looking up at her. “Amara, I’ve seen enough stories about artificial intelligence to know that it’s dangerous. Have you taken any precautions?”

Amara frowned. She has seen AI? Why hasn’t she….oh. 

Seen enough stories, huh. 

So that’s how it is. A grin suddenly spread on Amara’s face. “You mean the movies?”

“Yes! Exactly!” (Ezme)

Amara’s lips twitched. Adorable. 

Wrapping her arm around the angel’s shoulders, Amara smiled. “My dear Fluffles, the movies exaggerate things. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

Ezme glared at her skeptically. “Are you sure? How can you be certain? Don’t they exist for a reason?”

“Well…” Amara tilted her head as she thought, before admitting. “...I guess I’m not. I just don’t think it would be dangero-ouch!”

Amara jumped as Ezme pinched her. Looking at the angel in shock, Amara was met with the angel’s determined and reproachful gaze. 

“Amara. You will explain everything, start to finish.” (Ezme)

Amara suppressed sighing as she glanced apologetically at the hardware on the shelves. Looks like your evolution to sentience will have to be delayed. 

 

 

_______________

 

Ezme blinked, staring at the screen as her spell finished. “Did it work?” 

“Let’s see.” Amara flipped a switch on a box she had put on a shelf, cutting the flow of divine power fueling the enchantments on the hardware connected to it. 

Walking over to the desk, Amara sat down at the desk inside the completed computer room. Scrolling down, she confirmed that there was indeed new code added. “Yep. It’s there. Probably.”

Ezme’s expression darkened as she put her hand on Amara’s shoulder, her fingers digging in painfully. “Probably?”

Amara shuddered as she heard Ezme’s low, dangerous tone. “Well…I mean, it’s not like I can understand it. And even if I could, there’s…simply too much.” 

“Amara…” (Ezme)

Amara let out a sigh and glanced at the angel that was looking down at her, a dangerous gleam in her eyes. “I don’t know what else to do, Fluffles. I really can’t understand it.”

“Hmpf.” Ezme crossed her arms. “Then I can’t let you do it.”

“Fluffles, come on!” Amara exclaimed and turned around in the chair, wrapping her arms around the angel’s waist as she pulled her in while looking up at her. “Please let me do this. I promise I’ll ensure that it’s safe.”

Ezme glanced down at the woman who was leaning her head against her arm. “How?”

Amara pressed her face against Ezme’s warm arm as she thought. “I’ll make sure not to connect it to the internet until you approve. How about that? It won’t be able to connect to any other devices.”

Ezme was silent before she let out a resigned sigh, unfurling her arms and stroking Amara’s hair. “Fine.”

Yes! A large smile spread on her face as she stood up, pulling the angel’s warm body against hers as she tried to get the angel to look up at her. “I’ll even make sure to install a command that makes all the commands we’ve set act as a filter. So it won’t be able to ignore the commands you gave. And I’ll set that command above everything else in the coding...something like, if it does ignore them, it’s forced to shut down?”

Ezme nodded slowly and finally looked up to meet her gaze. “Good.”

After Amara’s smiling lips had descended on the angel’s, Ezme looked up at her with a raised eyebrow. “What was that for?”

Amara shrugged with a grin as she stroked the angel’s back. “I was happy. So I wanted to make you happy.”

Ezme snorted as she pulled out of the embrace with a wry smile, turning her blushing face away. “Tsk. As if. You just wanted to ‘reward’ me for agreeing to your foolishness.”

As Amara was watching the angel’s swaying hips when she was leaving, she muttered aloud with a wide grin. “Damn. She’s on to me.”

“And she admits it! Tsk.” Ezme spoke to herself in theatrical disbelief before disappearing behind the alcove. “Insolent mortal. Looks like I better schedule some punishment...”

Amara stopped herself as she had subconsciously taken a step to follow the voice. Running her fingers through her hair, she grabbed a handful of her hair and squeezed. No! Don’t let her win!

Amara squeezed her hair harder until she let out a painful groan. Sadly, it only seemed to make things worse. Shit! 

That was close…

Twisting her lips, she considered once more. Farsight. 

Amara navigated through her chambers to see if Ezme had left, to find the angel had stopped just inside the bedroom. 

With faintly pink cheeks, Ezme turned and glanced over her shoulder - straight at where Amara was with Farsight. The angel’s lips rose a little higher as one of her eyes closed - before she turned away and headed for the bed.

Amara canceled Farsight and let out a long sigh as her feet led the way. Well played, Fluffles. 

Well played…but I’ll get my revenge. Just you wait.

 

_______________

“Alright!” Amara stretched in her chair and cracked her neck with a grin. “Think we’re all set! Third time’s the charm?”

Amara glanced at a sheet with all the commands Amara and Ezme had cast spells for written on it. Setting the sheet next to another, which had all the ones she had also considered using, she looked once more if there were any she needed. Some she had discarded, because she suspected them to be duplicate to commands already given. For whatever reason, the spell needed a ridiculous amount of storage on the harddrives, so avoiding duplicates seemed like a natural choice. 

However, Ezme had insisted on casting additional spells to ensure the AI would be ‘safe’. Amara wasn’t even sure what all the spells were intended to do, as Ezme had refused to tell her.

It’s foolproof. If anything, it will be making it hard for it to get things done…but at least Fluffles will be happy. 

Happy Fluffles, fluffy snuggles. Ah, I need to get back at her….but that can wait.

Should I call her to say that I’m ready to boot her up? 

A self-deprecating smile quickly spread on Amara’s face as she shook her head. …Nah. Waste of time, if it ends up being another failure. Besides, she only said she wanted to be here for when it connects to the internet. 

Since Amara had promised not to connect the computers to the internet, Amara had to skip the command that involved looking things up on the internet for answers. To compensate, Amara had downloaded as much data as she could from different sources - most of which was obtained by writing a program to go through the words in a dictionary she had downloaded, and then obtain search results for them. She had also downloaded complete libraries from different encyclopedias, to give the AI even more data to work on regarding forming an understanding of abstract concepts. 

But she still had no idea if it would work. Taking a deep breath, Amara moved the cursor to the button to run the code. “Fingers crossed.”

As soon as Amara clicked the button, a familiar and unpleasant sound came through the speakers, while a box appeared on the screen. Crap! What…oh.

‘Do you want to allow changes to be made to your computer?’ 

Okay, nothing bad. Phew, way to kill the mood. ‘Yes.’ 

Almost immediately after the box disappeared from the screen, it went completely black. Amara could hear the distinct sound of fans speeding up on the shelf beyond the screen.

…Okay, so it’s doing something- oh, come ON!

A familiar, spinning circle with brighter and darker areas confirmed that the computer had, for some reason, restarted. 

Amara’s lips twisted in annoyance as she stared at the screen with crossed arms. The loading screen seemed to take longer than usual, but she knew that it could also be the case that it merely seemed like it since she was actively waiting for it to finish. 

When the loading circle disappeared, the fans slowed down as the screen went black. A few seconds later, the fans were once again running at high speed as the screen flashed and the loading circle reappeared.

It restarted again?!

Shit. What do I do now? It just keeps restarting!

Amara groaned and held her face as she leaned with her elbows on the desk, staring at the loading circle. When it disappeared and reappeared for a third time half a minute later, she ruefully banged her forehead against the desk. Why is this happening?

I thought I had it. Damn it!

Hearing the fans slow down and pick up speed a fourth time, Amara let out a sigh and pushed herself off the desk. Might as well leave it to run. After entering her bedroom, Amara threw herself on her bed. After holding her breath until her lungs screamed, she screamed out in frustration while kicking the bed. “Why did it even choose to restart?!” 

After venting her frustrations, Amara laid on the bed, staring at the canopy while squeezing her hair. Is it really impossible? 

Or am I missing something?

Amara frowned as she let out a sigh. Is it failing to abide by some of the commands?

Or could there be conflicting commands? Maybe I should have just…used the commands on different devices? 

Maybe...

Amara closed her eyes, letting out another dejected sigh as she dismissed the thought. It would make the commands modular. Ezme wouldn’t have liked it. 

But I can’t deny that her insistence might have made it all harder…

Lying in bed, Amara was weighing the time and effort required to make another attempt, until her eyelids started to feel increasingly heavy. 

 

_______________

 

Waking up, Amara felt great - as if she had exhausted her body the night before and fully recovered during her sleep. 

But once she recalled her failure before she went to sleep, her mood plummeted. 

Damn it. What do I do now?

Amara let out a groan as she stretched on the bed. With a sigh that was in equal parts dejected and content, Amara opened her eyes.

In front of her, a familiar blue screen was floating. A screen that was covered to the brim with white words. 

….Okay…what the hell?

As she started to read through what was displayed on the screen to figure out what happened, she didn’t know whether to feel excitement or despair. Her heart was racing, and by the time she was done reading her back was soaked in a cold sweat.