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Science You Cannot Possibly Comprehend, Monday, Period 5

"If you were aware that your teacher last week was a Doombot, then I congratulate you," Doom said. "It takes an admirable amount of confidence in yourself to lie to Doom, after all. When I realized what affects the damnable pollen would have last week, I knew attempting to teach a group of hormonal teenagers anything would be more of a lost cause than usual."

"And so I introduced you to this week's topic, advanced artificial intelligences. In my world, a man named Doctor Henry Pym is commonly credited as the father of artificial intelligences based on his creation of Ultron, a crazed automaton alternately obsessed with his creator's psychological issues and committing genocide against the human race. Ultron then used its own great mechanical intelligence to create a son called the Vision, who became a superhero, and a daughter named Jocasta who he obsessed over marrying and who also became a superhero."

"In short, though he is considered an expert in the field, Pym was a failure who begat an even grander failure," Doom said.

"Years before Ultron was even a dream destined for failure, I invented the Doombot," Doom explained. "These artificial intelligences obey my commands without question. Their will is mine. In my absence, I command them to act as though they are Doom. The deception is nearly perfect. It must be noted, of course, that even an omnipotent God cannot create a boulder he himself cannot lift. So if a Doombot falls just short of the majesty of Doom, it's merely because there are limits."

And then it was time for the detailed part of the lecture. If Doom seemed to be going a little more slowly this time and making sure that he hit specific points, it's because he actually intended for you to accomplish a task from scratch for once.

His description of how to build a robot body was brief, as was only right in a world where children could build crude battle robots for competition. The bulk of the lecture was speciffically on the artificial intelligence and how to program it based on someone's brainwaves.

Finally, once he was done explaining, he touched his gauntlet, opening a secret door in the lab floor, from which several robot bodies rose.

"You will be break into groups of up to three. Together, you will program your automaton to perform basic functions. Whether you choose to do it by imprinting the brainwaves of one of your group members onto the robot or via one of the more challenging options I described in my lecture, is your decision to make. I have provided the tools for the most common advanced methods, including neural transmitters that will digitize the most basic parts of a personality. I have confidence that you could effectively program these robots by the end of class, if you work hard enough. However, you can use the lab outside of class hours to refine your work and possibly customize your robot throughout the week. The Doombot will be here at all times, ensuring that you stay on task and do not attempt to remove any technology from the lab."

"The lab will be closed Friday night, before you go on your fall trip. Your projects will reside in this lab for the week of the trip. By our next class, two weeks from today, they must accomplish a brief list of simple tasks. If the robots critically malfunction or attempt any form of rebellion that would lead to the Doombot needing to destroy it, you will fail this project. Video will be provided in the event that anything happens to the robot."

"Begin."

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Robotically.

Topher Brink

Jim Kirk

Karolina Dean

Cecil Baldwin

Chaz Villette

Raven Darkholme

Victor Mancha

Billy Kaplan

I'm sure at least one person won't appreciate the Hank Pym smack talk, but it's all factually true.

Topher made a face when Doom reached the insults portion of the class. He was pretty sure that guy was Victor's grandpa. Also, there were worse things you could do than create an evil robot that spawned other robots with daddy issues. Honestly, he had to respect the guy.

With that Pike guy gone, Jim could get back to concentrating on what was important: himself. And today he was concentrating on listening to Dr. Doom and getting a little excited that he was going to get to try and build a robot.

Karolina was one of those who didn't particularly appreciate the smack talk about Hank Pym, yep.

She looked a bit wary thoughout the lecture.

During the lecture, Victor started to sink into his seat and do his best impersonation of the Incredible Invisible Student. Then he decided he had nothing to be embarrassed about, pulled out his phone to send a quick text, and sat straight up. He was trying to keep his face neutral, but there was a bit of dagger-glaring going on regardless.

It could have been worse, he reasoned. Doom could have been accurate about how many kids Ultron had.

If you work by yourself, you will need luck. You should probably just imprint your brainwaves onto the robot unless you really know what you're doing. If you team up, you should have more options available in the next half hour. Feel free to use the science lab for posts during the week or simply handwave that you did, as the Doombot will be watching the entire time.

All robots are wirelessly hooked up to computer consoles around the room. Each console gives the option to either hand-program the robots, or you can use the metal headband to read someone's brainwaves and program the robot with basic personality that way.

The tasks the robots will need to accomplish are as follows:

*Saluting the Doombot in a non-profane way. Profane salutes will be considered a malfunction and the robot will be destroyed (on video).

*Lift a box and move it to the other side of the lab.

*Choose their own name.

*Do basic multiplication tables from 1 to 12.

*Shake hands with their fellow robots.

They will need to repeat these tasks throughout the week without malfunctioning.

Topher was practically bouncing with excitement as he looked around for partners that he deemed sufficiently smart for a project like this. This sounded really fun. He wondered if he could convince his group to let him create a Brinkbot. But such a thing would be a terrible contribution to the world, so they probably shouldn't.

"You okay working with me?" Victor checked, already taking a seat near Topher. "I figure we have an advantage."

He'd said what he needed to say in the text; the thing to do now was to get to work, not to indulge in robot angst. Tempting as robot angst was.

"Two, admittedly different-size advantages," Topher noted, but he was mostly teasing. "But yeah, for sure. No offense to your friend--" he nodded in Karolina and Jim's direction-- "but we're going to kick their asses."

Say that a little quieter, Topher.

"Obviously," Victor snickered. "But maybe we wanna surprise them with it. Like, stealth awesomeness."

Topher gave that a begrudging nod. Victor had a point. "So, your brain, mine, or none of the above?" he segued.

"Neither," Victor said. "I don't think Doom needs a record of either of our brain patterns. Besides, programming's more fun if we start from scratch."

"True," Topher said, pointing his fingers at Victor approvingly. "Guess we could also rip off a fictional robot, but it's a fine line between inspired and derivative."

"Depends which fictional robot we use," Victor mulled. "We could do something like ~~meta~~ Rosie from the Jetsons. Kind of play with the maid cliche."

Jim was already jotting down a few schematics, mostly just observations he'd made from the Doombot while he hung around and waited for a partner.

"Hi, need a partner?"

Karolina definitely did. Because she was just good at making friends with robots, not so much with actually programming them or anything. Which was also why she was considering it too terrifying a prospect to work with Topher.

Jim was much less intimidatingly smart.

"Sure," he said, looking up and nodding at Karolina. "What he's saying shouldn't be too hard to complete during class. Robots are pretty straightforward."

"If you say so," Karolina replied with a little self-deprecating chuckle, as she leaned over to look at what he'd been jotting down. "A lot of what he said kind of flew right over my head."

"Come on, I wouldn't lead you wrong," Jim said, showing her some of his notes. "I'll make it easy for you, I promise. You'll know how to build robots in five seconds flat."

"Really?"

Maybe not that fast.

"Well, I promise I'll do my best to keep up."

"You'll be fine," Jim assured her, smiling. "And I don't know about you but I'm not giving that robot my brainwaves. You wanna do that?"

"I... come from the same world as the Doombots," Karolina said. "So that's a nope."

Because where she came from, giving a random robot access to anything in your head could turn out to be a catastrophic idea, and she was barely comfortable being in this class as it was.

"Of course the other way's harder, right?"

"It is but we can make it work," Jim said confidently. "I'm pretty but I'm smart too."

"And, well, I'm pretty, I guess," Karolina quipped with a chuckle. "Okay, let's get to work."

She could at least make sure the robot would be polite and stuff.

Jim nodded and set off to get the robot constructed ~~and he was able to do it correctly but I am so not getting technical here~~.

It would be a polite robot and a charming one. So, basically, best robot ever.

Cecil wasn't precisely sure how this would work, but he had really great notes! He looked over them and the robots trying to get them to match, and mostly wishing Carlos were still around.

He'd probably just go with the brain thing and hope, unless somebody wanted to help him.

Who cannot power the robot with consciousness through magic. They are not Destroyers.

Who does not have positive opinions of robot rights, for the record. He once paid Luke Cage to quell a robot rebellion, after all, and then stiffed Cage on the fee.

This was in the classic "Where's my money, honey?" story (http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/08/07/i-love-ya-but-youre-strange-wheres-my-money-honey/).

Just sayin'.

THE SHORT, OOC VERSION:

Play with it as much as you want. I encourage at least picking teams in this class, then handwave whatever. I'll establish Doom beginning on surveillance on the robots on Saturday, then the next class in two weeks will let you decide what happened to the robots, what tasks they accomplished, what names they chose, etc.

Also, seriously:
"When my men reported a crazy black man in the Fantastic Four's craft, I knew it had to be you!"
"Where's my money, honey?"

The 70s were weird, man.

Edited 2013-10-07 03:50 (UTC)

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Science You Cannot Possibly Comprehend, Monday, Period 5

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