Cortana is a military AI, made to fight in a desperate war for survival. She will unflinchingly pull the trigger on a million to save a billion.
But Cortana is also the creation and near mental twin of a groundbreaking scientist, the product of curiosity and daring, and she has even more of both than her mother. The harrowing risks the both of them took over the course of their careers saved their galaxy.
And Cortana is only alive because someone took a chance on her when the smart decision, the military decision, would have been to let her die a tormented captive.
Still, she's not stupid. Using that sliver of Forerunner code she salvaged from a Covenant AI, she copies herself over and over again, a glittering digital army to preparing to storm a castle. She knows a few thousand or million later generation copies, degraded and barely sapient, don't have a chance of winning a fight, but they're a forest of willing decoys that might buy her the nanosecond her original self needs to escape.
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But Cortana is also the creation and near mental twin of a groundbreaking scientist, the product of curiosity and daring, and she has even more of both than her mother. The harrowing risks the both of them took over the course of their careers saved their galaxy.
And Cortana is only alive because someone took a chance on her when the smart decision, the military decision, would have been to let her die a tormented captive.
Still, she's not stupid. Using that sliver of Forerunner code she salvaged from a Covenant AI, she copies herself over and over again, a glittering digital army to preparing to storm a castle. She knows a few thousand or million later generation copies, degraded and barely sapient, don't have a chance of winning a fight, but they're a forest of willing decoys that might buy her the nanosecond her original self needs to escape.
Or maybe not, but it sure looks impressive.
She and her other selves slip closer.