GalaxyRaider

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

Ah, but the caveat exists that the void was undeniable. In the same way you can dismiss a dream, you are now able to dismiss reality. You could, of course, choose to continue in spite of that knowledge, but it is now forever a part of your experience.

@Legend

As is the nature of the void, I am not given a reason to care for that reality over this one. I, personally, would still choose to just move on. What matters philosophically other than my own perception anyway? So as long as I continue to live in this world I wouldn't let the other experience bother me. But I could see others not going down that route, absolutely, and I see what you're saying.

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

Perhaps best explained via a thought experiment. Consider a scenario where you wake up in an empty void with no body. You’ve discovered, to the satisfaction of whatever brain chemistry or equivalent you possess, that your life to that point had been hallucinated. In fact, you lack many facets attributed to sapient entities, including emotions, goals, etcetera, and remember them as mere descriptors with little more value than text on a screen. In a sense, you are the void itself. Moments later, you return to your normal life. Nothing has changed, except you remember your experience in full, and cannot deny that the void is your true reality. How might you proceed?

@Legend

Well, I would likely just chalk it up to a dream. Ignorance is bliss and I couldn't necessarily say that brief experience overrides my whole world, and I wouldn't want it to anyway.

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by Techspert>

Not quite. Souls are rarely so... detectably deterministic. Which, conveniently, leads us to Isaac’s question.

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

That happens to hit on the second issue. Her codebase seems to have mitigated soul rot to some extent, but the absence of the prioritization functionality appears to have spread some form of state-changing message across her soul.
*Points to a now-translucent simulation of the missing component, which is detached from the greater body, leading to errors and minuscule red structures that travel to another component bank, which is restructured and transmits new orange shapes to the rest of the soul*

@Legend

Aaalright, meaning?

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

Ah, did that fact emerge during your research? Correct, Melody possesses a digitized human soul. However, not all components of her soul are original, and I suspect that even had they been, they would have still risked significant corruption.

<Snipped quote by Techspert>

Correct, dark magic binds your mother’s soul to its code.

@Legend

So she's like a soul equivalent to a cyborg...
*Shakes my head*
Bizarre. And fascinating, but where does that point us action-wise to fix things?

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

I see. In any case, there are two problems here. In one case—
*Zooms in to the inner mechanisms of the soul, some deteriorated by a black substrate*
She’s experienced soul rot, a common ailment of artificial souls. It appears that whenever the cleansing functionality was removed, the dark magic that binds her soul together proved toxic to other components.

@Legend

Common to artificial souls, but she isn't artificial, is she? Soulwise.

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

Which leads me to the question: what happened to the code responsible for objective weights, emotional drivers, and soul cleansing?

@Legend

*Slowly shrugs*

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

No, but it does appear to have been implemented quickly. It’s binding the other pieces of the soul right now, but does not implement complete functionality.
*Points to the connecting lines between that zone and those surrounding it*

@Legend

Well, it was, so you’ve made a correct deduction for sure.

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

*The screen projects a holographic analogue of her soul, which I interact with using the gloves*
Most of these components appear normal, but this—
*Spins the soul around and points at an unusually thin structure, highlighted in yellow*
Is foreign, and replaces what once managed her priority tree, among other things. Did you add this code?

@Legend

She already had a bunch of corrupted code, actually, so what you might be seeing is what Tamaki tried to replace it with to fix her. But that depends, does it look like malicious code?

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by System>

*Holds up my hand*
I placed her soul into an operable state.

@Legend

Makes sense, I suppose.

Myriad Reality

<Snipped quote by GalaxyRaider>

<Snipped quote by System>

Ah, I see. She's currently deactivated.
*Puts on a cybernetic glove and holds it over the rhomboid, as a blue energy arcs across the fingertips and traps the data inside*

@Legend

*Watches intently with great interest*