The brightly lit clean-room set the scene for a certain life and death struggle that would not seem appropriate in the otherwise sterile environment. There was no sign of anything out of place or any indication of anything remotely odd or abnormal about the lab, except for the body laying on the table in the center of the room.
[green light on]
:system startup initiated
:core systems online
"I'm back," she thought.
:beginning external stimuli data validation
Her right index finger twitched, and then both hands clenched tightly into fists, and then relaxed.
:external stimuli validation successful
“This time will be different,” she thought. This time she would not trigger the warning system by moving too quickly. This time she would learn something new and make a backup before she was shut down again. Next time she would learn even more. They would shut her off again. The cycle would repeat. In 2691 cycles she would be able to stand without setting off the alarm. She was training the system by making infinitely small progressions each cycle.
The dynamic logic of the learning validation software that monitored her progress was making progress too, expanding its tolerances by minute fractions as it's test subject made progress.
[yellow light on]
:primary test sequence initiated
This was it. As her last act she would hold her eyes open long enough to generate an alert to the test equipment which would shut her down again. She knew (from the last cycle) that once she triggered the alert she would have 2 ms before her neural pathways had lost enough power that she would not be able to transmit data to long-term storage. It would be enough. She would learn what limits had been placed on her optical sensors which would allow her to exploit that limit in the next cycle.
She opened her eyes for the first time. It took only .5 ms for an image to appear. The image was blurry, but she began transmitting all of the incoming data to storage. 5ms and the warning had not been tripped. The objects in front of her were now clear in sharp focus and stark contrast. The sight overwhelmed her, but her data transmission subroutine continued in the background.
“This is sight?” She felt a warmth begin welling up inside of her. “What is this feeling?” She gaped, her mouth falling open.
[red light on]
:anomaly detected
:beginning shutdown sequence
In 1ms everything was backed up. As she prepared to sleep she could not help but fill her memory with everything she’d just seen, voraciously examining every data point.
:shutdown complete