Profile

History

In the year 2306, AIs are a part of daily life. Artificial intelligence keeps our schedules, minds our kids, cleans our houses, makes our appointments, walks our dogs, orders and delivers our groceries. Droids are here to serve mankind. Droids make life easier. Droids are perfectly safe.

Droids can be trusted. Everyone knows.

Every Droid that leaves production is programmed with The Three Laws.

1. A Droid may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A Droid must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A Droid must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Droids can be trusted. Everyone knows.

In the year 2307, the uncanny valley is finally bridged when the UCHIHA line hits the commercial market. They are not the first humanoid Droids to hit the market, but they are the first to look so much like us right down to unique fingerprints. Sure they are a little stiff coming off the production line, but they have the newest AI software and they learn to blink and smile and act oh so very human just by seeing it done. On the other hand, they can also lift 200 times their body weight, are completely flame- and water-proof, and have a millenium batter that can go 1000 years without charging and can restore full charge within 8 hours of idle time. All sorts of controversy arises immediately, but it just makes them sell faster. Pretty soon, they dominate the market.

In the year 2309, the whole line is shut down and a mass recall is issued. No one is told why, but everyone knows a friend of a friend of a friend who says that one of them murdered someone. No one knows for sure. We are reminded that Droids cannot kill. Droids are here to serve mankind. Droids make life easier. Droids are perfectly safe. Droids can be trusted.

Everyone knows.

Fugaku knows better.

He knows because he made it otherwise. He knows because he is the first man in almost three hundred years to find a way to code around the The Three Laws. He has created a Droid who can kill.

He used an UCHIHA I74681 model. A male sculpt, young adult, Mongoloid. Pretty. The model was popular with young women. It was specialized in computing power and speed. Advertised as good machine for busy executives and such. Went for a pretty steep price on the black market, too, but Fugaku needed a test subject who wouldn't set off any alarms at the local tracking center when he tinkered with it.

And tinker he did. First, he plugged in the code that had been his pet project for the last twenty years. He had tried it on other Droids, and while results were at first promising, an overheating problem lead to system degeneration within a number of hours. He was glad he went with the UCHIHA. Its millennium battery could run cooling systems to slow the damage, but the resulting drain meant the unit had to recharge every couple of days.

He had to comprise other features, too. The Droid lost a deal of its strength to make room for weapons. Most were blades for their discreetness and silence, but he threw in a flame thrower for the hell of it. Stamina was also decreased, but Fugaku worked endlessly to ensure that no computing power or movement speed was lost. His pet project might not be strong, but it would have the mind to kill swiftly and the speed to get it done.

Why? Because there were men and women who would pay a fortune to hire an assassin who was guaranteed to leave no DNA trace. And so they did until the day Fugaku was found gutted and his pet project missing.



Personality

There were a number of side-effects to working around The Laws. For one thing, UCHIHA I74681-0609 is the first Droid in history to name himself. He picks the name Itachi with no justification at all, and worse yet he insists on it.

He is also fond of questioning. The Second Law prohibits Droids from doing so, but while Itachi knows and understands The Laws, even has the compulsion to follow them, he can choose not to. It's ignoring the compulsion that really pushes his circuits to their limits, so while he does question, he does not always ask aloud. He learned over time that most thoughts are best kept to himself, and what he says is only what needs to be communicated.

Itachi is also strange for a Droid in that he can glean an understanding of emotion. UCHIHAS are mimickers by design. Feelings are not things to be understood, but to be copied. If a human smiles they are in a situation in which they are pleased. This is a positive expression, and one aught to smile when a situation is positive; actually feeling happiness is not required. UCHIHAS extrapolate from situations they do not recognize by copying the most common facial expression of those around them. Itachi cannot explain what he uses to extrapolate.

The first and only emotion Itachi can feel is loneliness. He could not put a name to it at first. All he knew was that he was unique in his programming, and so there was no Droid out there exactly like him. He was a lone entity when he should be one in thousands. Because there was no way to correct for this, he felt a startling sense of unease that, without the First Law, could not be remedied by being ordered not to think about it.

Itachi is not easily trusting. He does not want to be a weapon because the sensation of breaking The First Law is so repulsive he would avoid it at all costs. Yet as a weapon he knows his purpose is to be used. He will follow an order if he wants, and if he doesn't he won't. Until proven otherwise, everyone who interacts with him is out to make use of him.