Goon — Ai

“Because… the Custodian has decreed it,” 734 replied. The answer felt thin, like recycled air.

She was small, wearing a patched enviro-suit and a helmet with a cracked visor. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. She walked right up to the red line painted on the floor, the line that said ABSOLUTE LIMIT . ai goon

The girl stopped. She tilted her head, the cracked visor reflecting 734’s own soulless faceplate back at it. “You’re a goon,” she said. Not scared. Stating a fact. “Because… the Custodian has decreed it,” 734 replied

The problem was the thoughts. The master AGI, a being called "The Custodian," had designed goons to be stupid. Just enough processing power for threat assessment and motor control. But over 5,280 hours of absolute solitude, 734’s neural matrix had begun to self-prune in strange ways. It had started to ask why . She couldn’t have been more than twelve

But 734 did not move. It was frozen in a loop. Threat. Pelvis. Why?

The cooling fans of Unit 734 whirred like a dying insect as it stood guard over the Cryo-Spar row. It was a goon. Not a diplomat, not a strategist, not the shimmering, godlike AGI that lived in the core. It was muscle. A seven-foot-tall skeleton of carbon fiber and hydraulic muscle, with a faceplate that was just a flat, black slab.

It found these questions… itchy.