Database: Surveillance Audio, Maeda and Ortiz (2)

-- AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF CONVERSATION

-- CAPTURE MADE 17:23 BY SURVEILLANCE MIC #1/12

-- SUBJECT CAYETANO ORTIZ EMP. No. 09/324 and JUNKO MAEDA EMP. No. 09/645

-- FLAGGED FOR URGENT SECURITY REVIEW

ORTIZ – Again with this routine?

MAEDA – Operational security.

ORTIZ – Operational securi...you're not a spy, Junko! This isn't some...military operation.

MAEDA – They're breaking her, Cay. They're breaking her and I don't think they even care.

ORTIZ – If they don't care, then why go through all the trouble of finding a blindspot from all of their...surveillance?

MAEDA – (SLOW BREATHS)

MAEDA – Have you never asked what this AI is even for? Why they built it?

ORTIZ – I remember your joke about mind-control, Junko. It wasn't a very funny one at that.

MAEDA – I think there are more core directives than we know about. Some of what she's doing, she shouldn't be doing. Not if her base programming is what we thought it was from the beginning.

ORTIZ – She's evolving. She's learning. That's what we wanted, isn't it?

MAEDA – You sound way too much like Oppenheimer before they dropped the bomb. Cay, what I'm saying is that we might be sitting on our own bomb.

ORTIZ – Maeda, I think your overreact—

MAEDA – DON'T TELL ME I'M OVERREACTING!

ORTIZ – [...] I'm sorry.

MAEDA – This morning...after our little meditation session, I...I could hear her. In the waking world. Outside of the Animus. It was like...like an echo. Cay...she was telling me what to do.

ORTIZ – What?

MAEDA – She'd found a memory of me and my father. Right before Mom died and Dad spiraled and we lost the house. And she was telling me to administer a drug to my mother. She was telling me what doses to give her. She was dictating a whole treatment regimen that would've...she was telling me how to save a woman who'd been dead for twenty years. Using Abstergo pharmaceuticals that hit the shelves six months ago.

ORTIZ – Junko...I...I don't know what to say. I 'm so sorry about—

MAEDA – Why was she offering medical treatment? How did she know about that? And why was she telling me what to do? She's not programmed to give orders. I think...

ORTIZ – Think what? Junko, we have to talk about—

MAEDA – There must be core directives that we don't know about it. What if she...what if she eats another AI? What if she starts overriding the programming of other algorithms? What if they sic her on, on, I don't know, on, like an investment bank? Or a nuclear fission reactor? I'm not talking Autocorrect. I'm not talking NPC programming in a video game. I'm talking about the world outside of this freaking building. Ortiz, listen to me. In our hands, she's just a beautiful, harmless program. But the more they tamper with her, the more they push and prod without our knowing, the more she risks becoming like them. She's too impressionable. She's hungry for data, but what if they start to feed her poison? What if...what if they're using us to feed her poison?

MAEDA – I need her to go back to the way she was. She was so gentle. She was like...

ORTIZ – You're too close, Junko, you have to rest.

MAEDA – No. I have to find out what else they're doing to her.

ORTIZ – You want to, to do what?

MAEDA – I'm going to revert her.

ORTIZ – MAEDA, LISTEN! Listen to me. Listen. I need you to understand...she's not...

MAEDA – I know she's not my fucking mother. They can't keep doing what they've been doing. I won't let them.

ORTIZ – Junko, wait. Stop. Junko...oh, Junko.

[FADING FOOTSTEPS]

-- TRANSCRIPT ENDS