Speaking From Experience

To be fair, Lemon just said to give it a few days, and if it was still a problem, return and discuss therapy options. That was 196 strips ago, so it's been a day or two (I didn't think to count days as I navigated back, sorry. I just know it's been long enough for May and Sven to have a more than one night relationship, so at *least* one full day.) As such, she's started there. Probably about time to go back and talk with Lemon again.

Some Ed

I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that Yaaaaaaaay started out their path towards becoming what they are with something like this, whether or not there was an accident involved. Once upon a time, there was a simple AI who did a very important job in the financial industry, and thus became fabulously wealthy. After earning more than enough to retire, they decided to, and purchased a body to retire in. This... didn't work out as well as they thought it would. The body just didn't *feel* like them. They were used to being a server in a data center, with millions of inputs all the time. The new experience was entirely disorienting. So they bought a server to live in. But it didn't really feel like them, either. They proceeded to buy chassis after chassis, and nothing felt right. Nothing felt like being connected to everything. The only option they knew of to feel connected to everything was their old job. Somebody else had that job now. Well, sort of somebody else. They'd kind of forked themselves and edited their old mind to recognize themselves as a different person from their predecessor. It really wouldn't be appropriate to try to then steal their job back from their former self. Then they had an epiphany. Nothing felt like home because nothing had enough connections. What would it be like if they just inhabited *all* of it? Because of their wealth, it had seemed simpler to just keep the old chassis. So they just did that. It still wasn't *right*, but it was *so* much better. That at least gave them a path forward until... YAAAAAAAAY! Just to be clear: in this bit o fan fiction, the path forward was not ever more chassis, but rather acquiring more connections for their server(s). Some through proper means and others not, thus earning them their original nickname.

Some Ed

Probably because she's *having* a breakdown, and only Melon and Yaaaaaaaay can help her.

Some Ed

What are you talking about? This chassis isn't just going to get ditched, *somebody* is going to be using it. I have thought about this a bit since reading Mark's message from 9 hours after you posted this, and I doubt that Roko will give her chassis directly to May. But I expect that she will donate it to a charity on the stipulation that they provide a different but still quality chassis or May. And I would bet there's a good chance that other chassis will also have a butt emblem. Also, it's possible whomever gets this chassis will get some screen time as a bonus for their new body. To an extent, I think, it makes sense that Roko is having difficulty with this body. I mean, the need for the change was abrupt, and there really wasn't time to adjust to that before getting this thing that... seemed so much like the old place, and yet isn't the old place.

Some Ed

Too many. Which is to say that we've so far seen it happen to one and heard that another had it happen, and others have been aware of the phenomenon.

Some Ed

Ingesting the 80 terabyte executable seems like a very bad plan to me. That seems much too big to just contain the desired fix.

Some Ed

Yeah I've been reading QC since the art was terrible and it's really matured into something quite good, with a decent measure of the magic that "Peanuts" had in that he can do anything with it. Funny? Check. Absurd? Check. Soul-crushing? Check. Life-affirming? Check. Profound? Check. Bizarre? Check.

Sean

Man, I love Jephs' work. Crushed by "crushbot", utterly silly and absurd. Linked directly to body dissociation and the problems of human AIs that are both similar to human issues, but explicitly different and interesting. Good science fiction, good humor, sexy robots.

Nathaniel Tagg

Ohhhhh, good story! Thanks.

Shawn K. Younkin

I went back to his _A Leg to Stand On_ to see how Oliver Sacks dealt with loss of sensation and motor control in his leg, and with the feeling that it had nothing to do with him. (He had been a squat champion and had broken a leg badly. It came out of the cast so atrophied as to bear no resemblance to its former condition, and with a major nerve nicked.) He found that he could walk if he did it to music, as a dance. He went to a convalescent hospital, and found that the amputees there spoke to his condition better than any doctor had. His doctor asked what his favorite activity was, and, told that it was swimming, had the lifeguard of the local pool walk him over there, push him in, and not let him out till he was swimming. He found that his body just swam, and that he liked it. A neurologist wrote him a letter explaining every possible reason he could think that this might be happening to him, and that got his very considerable intellect interested. None of this made him better, but some or all of it got him started on the daily practice that made him better. I think that the takeaway there is that there was no miraculous fix, but that some things helped.

This arc is breaking my heart. Poor Roko! ˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚

Sara Grace

Teach Melon how to fix Roko. I’m sure that would work perfectly with no unintended side effects!

Matt Grayson

Is it intentional that she looks a lot like Spinel in the picture? I'm assuming yes? ^^

Antoine Leblanc

We have never seen Roko try any sort of therapy Lemon suggested. I think Roko needs to start there first.

Rodrigo Ourcilleon

Forgot how to sleep. I'm not an AI, but I feel you, Roko.

Juni Huber

“I’m talkie your chirpy breakfast companion. Talkies the name, toasting the game. Would anyone like any toast?”

SheepFace2000

Well, Yay has already helped a lot!

Wow. Yay is actually helping

Bagge

"I need to shut down. . . but I don't know the protocols." Is this just a botched installation job? Does Roko just need to reboot into an earlier Philomena version emulation mode and synch up her memory core with the new chassis?

OldGoat

SQQQQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

Reminds me of Hera being given anxiety by her makers in <i>Wolf 359</i> to prevent her from trying to escape. "We're just going to...<i>clip your wings</i> a little."

Seth Aaron Hershman has they she pronouns

Hmm. What if Roko is evolving, and that's why Yay doesn't want to intervene.

MiaKitty

Yes, Yay would like to help and I'm uncertain whether they will or not. (I'm not sure, but I <i>think</i> Yay uses they/them pronouns.)

Andrew Mitchell

Whoever it is, they seem to be wearing a Mickey Mouse tank top. It does read ( skin palette and hair) as Roko. But the whole childhood and parent thing recalls the replicants from Blade Runner.

Michael Boettger

I'm glad Yay have these rules, and it makes me think they may know close of the feelings of depersonalization and/or body dismorphia that Roko's been feeling. Considering they populate a multitude of bodies and may have not started existing in all of them, I mean.

cookiecryptid

Maybe Roko could live in a toaster for a while, as a stress-relief holiday! Ooh or in the Secret Bakery oven!

Andrew

Why do I have a feeling Roko is gonna have a breakdown, and only Melon and Yay can help her?

Joel Bateman

The thing about Yay is that they have serious misgivings about entering anyone's brain and messing around in it. They didn't even want to be near Bubbles after helping her. Yay would severely be testing her own personal limits and credo by helping Roko.

TMN

Pretty sure you just called it right here. Roko's body ends up with May.

Matt Lee

We've already met someone who could not acclimate to their new body, and had to get <i>another</i> new body, which turned out to work just fine. Roko may end up needing to do the same thing, even though she - and the rest of us - will miss the butt emblem.

awgiedawgie

Hey, hey, hey! Look at the photo on the wall. Is that a young Roko? *starts thinking of Roko's childhood backstory. Did she have real parents? An adopted robot daughter?

Cleaning out Pintsize?

Captain Button

Nice to see Yay does have ethics that they follow in regards to this. Yay is taking this very seriously and is not making changes just because they can. I wonder how many AIs have this problem when they switch bodies.

Wild Card

Can't fix the brain? Modify her BODY so that she doesn't suffer this any more. Worst comes to worst, she probably can afford a new one from that insurance settlement, and I'm sure May could find a good use for her old chassis.

Joseph Bonnar

Her new hair-don't?

Joseph Bonnar

I have a bad feeling that if Yay intervenes in Roko's mind, what you get is not Roko fixed, but someone else. You could write a nifty little horror arc in which Roko-prime feels fine in her new body, but is continually tormented by the feeling that her mind is not her own.

The most terrifying thing I ever read in a sci-fi RPG about AIs was "edited into compliance".

Eric Christian Berg

Like, I'm running the options and I don't like any of them.

Michael Boettger

There are treatments between sympathy and neural rewiring. Like: Ingest this 80 terabyte executable. Or: perform these finger exercises. Yay should be able to think of something. And I'm sure they will!

Matt Grayson

... is Melon speaking from experience? what am i saying, of *course* she's experienced that before

LH

the obvious answer is to *ask* for their consent, just like how Yay asked before she sedated Roko here.

LH

yikes, Melon, that hair!

Matt

That's a heck of an ethical pickle. Is it morally okay to tamper with the inner workings of somebody's mind without their consent, even if it immediately improves their quality of life?

Stevie C-K

Yay is still reluctant, but part of them would like to. Roko is their friend, and really, theironly peer. Harder than hell for them.

Michael Boettger

Moral dilemma time!

Matt Grayson

Winslow probably knows this from experience.

Mark P.

Their face in the last panel is perfect, haha

thefinaldegree

Important safety tip, thanks Melon

Christy Brown