Upgrade/Downgrade

“Listen, Jack, no disrespect or anything”, the young blonde man protested “but you simply can’t install Class 8 Personality on a simple 4 Gen Chassis! There’s not enough computing power in it, not even if she looked like a circus fat lady!”

“I appreciate your honesty Mr Zajak”, a feminine voice chuckled behind Aldo’s back. “But maybe that’s because I’m not smart enough?”

Aldo turned to see the elegant, dark haired woman walking in, clad in tight, floral-print dress. She wasn’t very tall, nor fat, in fact she was hourglass shape.

“Barbara, meet Aldo.” Jack Hennessey stood up to introduce his wife. “Aldo, this is my wife Barbara.”

“Jack told me so much about you! Although I guess you know more about me than I do”. She smiled, reached for the wine carton and poured herself a glass.

“Er... It’s nice to meet you too, Barbara.” Aldo tried to quip but gave up. “We were just talking about you.”

“I noticed.” She turned serious for a moment. “I’m not entirely 4 Gen chassis though, the main processor is actually a Class 6 Spiderplant 6PHz.”

“Quite a lot of computing power must be wasted just to ensure compatibility with both body and simulation!”

“More than you think, actually.” Jack explained “I had to rewrite parts of the machine code from scratch.”

“Is this even legal?”

“He’s not distributing it, and I’m not complaining.”

“You wouldn’t know... Well, not on the personality simulation level.”

“Trust me, kid, If something went wrong, I would know”.

“Point”, Aldo chose to ignore Barbara calling him kid. Jack had told him that she was activated six months ago but her age was supposed to be thirty. “Well, minor coding errors could go unnoticed but accumulate over time, though I guess something would be visible...”

“No”, Jack answered. “Most of the processing power actually syncs with the main household unit, which then syncs with the botnet.”

“Wait... you mean she’s in the cloud? Cloud computing personality simulation? That’s incredible!”

“Nothing is impossible for Jack!” Barbara smirked. “I’m at seventy nine percent efficiency despite my body being seventeen years old and my brain eight.”

“Well, parts of her body, most of the sense protocols had to be fitted to the Spiderplant, and the midbody section is made from spare parts.” Jack nodded at Barbara “Honey, Gamma Omega Xi!”.

Barbara froze, her proud smile paused on her lips. “Check her out”, the older man walked to his wife’s inert body and reached for the zipper of her colorful dress. Underneath, she wore nothing; not a bra. Her large shapely breasts held together on their own, and her pussy was shaven - but Aldo was more focused on the cheap plastic stomach. It was a mass of wires, plastic coils and rubber hoses.

“... well, it’s one thing for a man to see friend’s wife in the nude, it’s something else to see a disassembled robot, right?” Jack tried to explain himself.

“Doesn’t it... you know, isn’t it a bit inconvenient for your...”

“I’m not looking at her stomach” Jack answered calmly. “Besides, she’s often wearing something when we make love, a corset, a shirt or one of these Asian things...”

“Sarong?”

“I know, but I can’t make it right. It’s too expensive.”

“Yeah, about that. You remember that in the twenty first century an early computer system was called ‘free - but only if your time is worthless’? It seems to me that you've wasted a lot of time and effort, you could just patent your cloud personality simulation, sell it and buy yourself a nice new Class 9.9.”

Jack smiled. “Maybe I will. Right now Barbara is a guinea pig. So far her head hasn’t exploded or she didn’t develop a murderous urge to dominate males and take over the world.”

“Hahaha, what?”

“Don’t know where it came from, sorry. It’s still kinda a valid point - basically the alterations in the basic code can cause visible ramifications in the hardware-software-hardware-AI-personality-human interface, probably on the AI operating system level. Nothing so drastic, of course, we’d get some visible error messages. Chances of permanent alteration of the personality protocols at the external levels are literally one in a million. Billion.”

“Speaking of error messages... maybe it wouldn’t hurt to install a viewing panel on her body? If we’re gonna to run diagnostics it’d be convenient.” Aldo reached for his tool box. “I’m thinking that if you’re running the cloud thing you must be using your Omninet connection to the limits, so Barbara’s not going to leave house.”

“Not without... well, a lobotomy is a harsh word. She’d drop to effective level four. Maybe three since a lot in her is non-standard. Intelligence and abilities of a burger salesgirl and a body that’s clutter of random parts”

“Aww, how can you call a lovely lady that?” Aldo laughed. “Though I would do a better job. Listen, activate her again, and we’ll talk about configuration. We might rebuild the body from scratch - well, leaving only the main skeleton, but that’s basically an unchanged design since forty thousand years ago...”

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