championoftime | (no subject)

[Log for Vasilia Aliena]

The Doctor was busily working in the TARDIS, ignoring the furry shape slinking along the floor behind him and trying to pull away a pair of pliers with all its might, when the strange urge overcame him that was hitting so many others simultaneously.

At first, dread hit with it. The last time he felt this way, the Time Lord flu struck him. It was the beginning of the couple of the worst two weeks in memory (yes, he hated it more than the death tolls for the simple fact that he hadn't known what was going on), but still he straightened himself out and staggered to the TARDIS door.

He left the Mongoose to slink around the console room, and headed out in the halls. He went in the direction that made him feel less like retching all over the floor, stopping occasionally to hold on his hat and catch his breath. He was nigh on exhausted when he reached Vasilia's door, knocking earnestly as he pulled out his fobwatch.

"What is this nonsense?" he muttered to himself.

[Private to Dallas | Text]

It seems that I'm going to be indisposed for the next few days. But if you need anything, I'll still find a way to be there.

How are you feeling now about what happened with David? [He saw that unfortunate start of a conversation in David's journal.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"What end would you like it to have?" It was a very bizarre question. He knew he didn't want to stop. He came here to avoid stopping, and at the same time to continue to be his own man.

He actually boggled a bit at her questioning of his intentions, not really knowing what to think of it.

"No, I was just wanting to discuss it. I like to talk about things. Most of my friends on board are mathematicians and engineers, and we like to talk about what we know and what we've seen." Science; always a good topic of conversation for the socially displaced.

She ... simply ignored the first question, having no idea where to start, how even to approach an answer to herself, let alone a stranger.

Instead: theory. She pursed her lips. "I have discovered that the type of robotic theory I know is uncommon. Most have not heard of its base premise, the three Ascenion Laws. Have you, Doctor Smith?"

He didn't mind it being ignored. He could tell that it was personal. Whatever fidget had overtaken him, he still hadn't worked out of his system.

This bit was easier.

"I've heard of it. And I've seen it put into play." Emulated by some aspiring robotics. "Usually, to the end that many intelligences are indeed, intelligent, and capable of finding loopholes. Even if those intelligences were artificially constructed."

"When implemented from the base up-- the first principles from which the rest of the system is constructed-- it should not be possible to circumvent," Vasilia said dutifully, and to a large extent she still believed that to be true. "It makes for a proper symbiosis; if we wish robots to be our servants and aids and no more, then we should design them to be satisfied in those roles, their optimum potential reached there. It has-- for millenia-- succeeded, with only apocryphal tales of robots who were built, by factory accident, without the first law.

"But. I heard a theory broached to me, once." How delicately to put this, when she still feared that Daneel Olivaw might discover that her memory block was gone-- and for the good of his 'humanity', destroy her. "That more important than the first law was a zeroeth law; that higher priority than the preservation of one human is the preservation of an abstract concept, humanity-- its development and well being."

She tangled her hands in her lap again, to stop them from fidgeting on the keyboard. "One robot was exposed to this idea, I believe; I know only that he harmed a human, to save a large number of humans, and in doing so broke the first law; he suffered mental freeze out. The zeroeth law, if he had heard of it, did not protect him."