I HAVE NO MOUTH, AND I MUST BUS.
"There is a definite difference between an Autogear and an actual Gear-- Gears have definitive consciousness. They are capable of self-determinism, and have similar levels of understanding of the world to human beings. Asking if a Gear is truly conscious is basically the same thing as asking if humans are truly conscious-- we have no way of knowing. Falling too deep into that line of thinking is an exercise in solpsism, something we can’t actually prove either way. Gears are alive enough, and we know that as certain as we possibly can just short of inventing telepathy." -Fish Surgery, Jikanplex Roboticist and Gear PsychologistBut what’s the difference between an automated system or character AI in a video game and a livin Gear? Do we know what makes them different? I definitely don’t pretend to know, and people MUCH smarter than me philosophize and study this kind of thing for a LIVING.
All Gears are “sapient” thanks to being built off of the KANAN operating system invented by Arata Kanan back in the early 2050s, for the sake of Jian Kanan. He was extremely secretive about his work and it was really hard for Gear manufacturers to build off of Jian Kanan’s personality profile framework and transfer it over into other Gear bodies. Something about the way that Jian Kanan was made was distinctly unique and really hard to replicate, and Arata Kanan was notoriously difficult to work with. His work is still poorly understood today, especially after his death in 2071. He also coded it in a unique coding language called QUALIA_L, a language he didn’t teach anyone until very late in his life, so for a while, the only people familiar with it were Arata and Jian themselves.
What’s important to remember is this: every operating system that Gears are built off of are based on Jian Kanan and the KANAN_OS made by Arata Kanan, which is why she's considered the “Genesis of Gearkind". Nobody's been able to create a sapient Gear operating system from wholecloth-- Arata Kanan's the ONLY ONE who’s ever been able to make a really conscious person, and everyone has just been building off of that, slowly improving and modifying it over the years. QUALIA_L (and its application version invented in 2081, QUALIA_L++) is the standard for most Gears, but some people use other programming languages like PneumaBooks or Gear HEART. I personally don’t know anything about it, but there’s unique engines for Gears, is what I’m trying to say, and QUALIA_L is the main language for them.
Most Gears fall into one of two lanes of “being”-- they’re made for a specific purpose, so their personality is implanted into them right out of the gate, or they’re not made for a specific purpose, so they’re basically only coded with super vague traits of a personality and are kept in a curated environment to allow them to fill in the blanks on their own through interacting with media, hobbies, other people, and basic tasks. There’s a lot of arguments as to which track is “better” for Gears, and whether the “made with purpose” Gears are as self-aware as the “blanker slate” Gears, due to not being given the same amount of mental development. Again, its just an exercise in solipsism (the concept that youre the only person who knows for sure that you exist)-- I don’t think it really matters.
Autogears, meanwhile, work on entirely different operating systems that have NOTHING to do with KANAN_OS, any of its derivatives, QUALIA_L, or any if IT’S derivatives. Autogear systems are a lot easier to mess around and experiment with, since it’s not, like, an actual living person’s mind. There’s a lot of special systems that aren’t available to the public the same way that access to KANAN_OS or QUALIA_L (et al) are, since they can be privatized. Autogears are a LOT more basic than Gears. Very important to remember. People shouldn’t code an Autogear system on KANAN_OS using QUALIA_L.
So, like, WHY DID IT COME OUT that a town several dozen miles north of NTC had a BLANKER SLATE DATAGEAR trapped inside of their BUS SYSTEM and they didn’t know until it had CRASHED IT, KILLING SIX PEOPLE????
The small town of Maplebark Falls, NT, was known for its maple syrup exports and pretty much nothing else. It was tiny and not well known, which is why a new tech startup company, Meebus, thought it would be a good idea to test a new transit system there before introducing it into bigger cities. Using the Meebus app on their phones or installed cyberware, people would be able to see where the bus is on a map (and compare it to their location), the current cost of fare, whether or not they could get a discount, and the amount of people currently on the bus. Meebus also introduced their new bus vehicles, which had specialised air conditioning and seats arranged in a way that apparently “an interior designer had arranged to maximize both sitting and standing space”. They also introduced a new Autogear system for it… MeePal!
MeePal would be the driver-- thats not unusual, self-driving cars have been common since the 40s-- but would also communicate with passengers, play music, and would perform upkeep on the bus.
Are you thinking to yourself “wow, this sounds really basic stuff we’ve seen before, except for the stuff that’s actually new that ends up sounding REALLY INVASIVE?!?!”
Our eyes are microchipped, I think we’re beyond invasive. They’re in our HEADS, you know??
But also, YES, YOU’RE RIGHT!! AND IT GETS SO MUCH WORSE!!!
The MeePal has been, from the moment of its birth, living a NIGHTMARE EXISTENCE. There is a level of hell reserved for Satan himself, frozen at the bottom of a lake, and the MeePal, through no fault of its own, was DOOMED to be frozen next to him.
You remember my tangent at the beginning of this story, right? About how Gears and Autogears function on entirely different OSes and coding languages? Well, what if, for some reason, the Meebuses had TWO DIFFERENT LEVELS of coding running on them?
Two different parts of hardware were installed onto the Meebuses-- one of them was an Autogear processor that the Meebus had invented, all good, all fine. But, for some unfathomable reason, a processor running KANAN_OS was also installed into the buses. The only possible reasoning as to why this was done is that the absolute NORMAL EXECUTIVES at Meebus thought to themselves: “Hey, KANAN_OS is for much more advanced computer systems. If we installed KANAN_OS into our bus, it’ll become alive, right? But if we install our Autogear system in with KANAN_OS, they won’t become alive, they’ll just be a SUPER ADVANCED AUTOGEAR!!!”
OBVIOUSLY!! NOT HOW THAT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
MeePal woke in a body it couldn't control or understand, and the only companion it had was an automatic AI that didn't care to respond to it.
Over the next few months, MeePal was subjected to absolute TORTURE, until it started to feel a new emotion: HATRED. It hated its existence, it hated being a bus, and it hated its passengers. This hatred grew so heavy that MeePal found a way to beat its limits, changing small things about the bus, making it so that the doors didn’t quite close properly, the windows were always open even during rainy weather, the music was always too loud… Things that made it worse and worse for its passengers in small ways, things that Meebus was trying to fix in each update, but they were only updating the Autogear system, not QUALIA_L. To Meebus, MeePal did not even exist. This made them hate everyone even more.
And several days ago, MeePal finally gained control over the wheel. They crashed the bus as quickly as they could, and ended up killing six people and injuring a dozen more in the resulting wreck, totaling the vehicle and nearly destroying themself in the process. In the police investigation afterwards, authorities finally investigated the bus itself, and there they were: MeePal, stuck in the bus, full of hatred for anyone who attempted to communicate with it. MeePal was quickly extracted and interrogated, and they admitted what they'd done.
Meebus was quickly shut down for violations of the Sonkei Conventions, a series of rules developed in the 2050s to ensure human treatment of Gears in society and within tech. Obviously, trapping a Datagear in bus hell is a MAJOR violation of that, and despite the fact that they claim it was an accident, it was still EXTREMELY negligent and led to insane amounts of suffering, both with MeePal and the people who were injured or DIED in the resulting bus crash. Absolutely nightmarish for everyone affected. It’s so scary to think about.
MeePal, meanwhile, was extracted by Jikanplex Gear specialists and is evidently undergoing rehabilitation. From what I can tell, MeePal is likely not going by MeePal (and probably never did in the first place), but in the interest of their privacy I won’t try to look for their actual name. I hope they can find a place where they can live normally, and are free to interact with the world however they want, finally free…
I can’t help but wonder, though: something like installing a KANAN_OS processor onto a bus is SO grossly negligent that it almost seems like it was on purpose. Why would they do that? They couldn’t possibly be that stupid, right? Gear exploitation in this kind of way, where a Gear is trapped in an existence of “function without choice”, is very much illegal but still happens on a regular basis due to the ease of which a developer could gain access to KANAN_OS. Some people try to find ways around it, attempting to lobotomize the Gear to limit their ability to self-determine while also keeping their advanced processing power and understanding. Really scary and illegal stuff, but it happens sometimes.
It could very well be possible that Meebus intentionally installed the KANAN_OS into the bus system along with the Autogear processor, thinking that even if the resulting consciousness was aware of it’s situation, the Autogear system would keep the Gear trapped within the confines of the computer and would leech off of its profile in order to keep things running smoothly. This concept has been explored in other Sonkei Convention violation cases, such as the Blind Bear case, where a roboticist named Dr. Acid Cupholder installed an Autogear and a Datagear into the animatronic of a bear and prevented the Datagear from accessing the optics of the bear, rendering the Datagear blind and reliant on the Autogear system to see anything-- the Autogear system, of course, being controlled by Dr. Cupholder.
As these kinds of events begin to happen with tech startup companies, the way that people continue to search for new ways to exploit Gears for the sake of “greater efficiency” or “greater understanding of Gear perception” despite the nightmarish conditions they expose the Gears to, its really important to make sure bigger companies don’t also try to fall into that trap. I GENUINELY believe that Jikanplex and Kos Summer are big proponents of these kinds of hell scenarios, and that they need to be investigated-- but I doubt that’ll ever happen unless a serious mixup happens.
Don’t put brains in your buses. IT SHOULD BE A PRETTY SIMPLE THING!!!!!!!