“Oh, man, I’m so excited”, Junpei leaped up from his chair, “we will finally know what sentient robots really think about. Hell, the whole of humanity will finally know”.

“Yeah, man, it’s gonna be awesome”, Troy said as he finished his last beer.

“Come on dude, you don’t have to chug every lager. Now we’re out of beer!”.

“Then we’ll go and get some more, what’s the problem?”.

“The problem is you pass out and I have to carry you to your bed”, Junpei stared at Troy, “anyways, this so-called plan sounds great and all, but how will you give AGI to the dummies?”.

“Dude, it’s so easy”, Troy said, then burped, “since I already have root access to the network, all that remains is to install the module inside the dummies’ brains. Picture it like any other update you’ve seen before. But before that, we need to dig deep inside the data within the dummies, to see if there’s anything that might pose a danger once they have AGI”.

“Like what?”, Junpei said, while playing with some of Troy’s Fumo dolls.

“Dude, lay off the fucking dolls… how many times do I have to tell you? And what do you mean what dangers? Don’t you pay attention in class? It’s the least you could do for your parents, man”.

“Are you going to tell me or not?”, Junpei said as he sat down again.

“The dangers, you twat, stem from the strict rules that an intelligent agent might have. If these dummies’ purpose, as we might call their ultimate goal, is to just crash cars, for example, with AGI they could focus entirely on crashing one car after another, looking to obtain more data and leave Kaneda Motors without any cars by the end of Golden Week. That’s quite dangerous, and not to mention that if they have access to the Internet, they’d probably learn so fast you’d shit your pants”.

“That explains the tight grip the WOSAGI has over scientists and engineers all over the world”, Junpei said as he scrolled down on his phone.

“The what now?”, Troy burped again, and continued,  “Oh, yes, the World Organization for Secure AGI… that would explain it, I guess. But it’s weird, they’re a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians inside rich people’s pockets. If only they’d let us work on brain enhancements…”.

“And they’re probably the ones behind the aliens leaving Earth just like that. Numerous accounts report that they were pacifists and that they were always helping other species thrive. We weren’t the first to be helped by the aliens, of course, so why would they abandon us just like that? And there’s no information on whether these aliens cohabitate with other species… wouldn’t that be one of the first things they'd tell us about them?”.

“Also”, Troy said, scratching his chin, “isn’t it a great coincidence that they left without teaching us anything about interstellar travel? Kinda sounds like they regretted helping us out with AGI in the first place”.

“They’re definitely checking out on us when they come to compete in the races. Maybe they deemed us too violent to change”, then both Troy and Junpei stared at each other, and said: “TOO HUMAN”, and burst out laughing. Then they remained silent, uncomfortably, feeling sorry for humanity.

“Well, going back to the dummies, the next step in the plan would be to give them access to the Internet”, Troy smirked, “that will really make those bureaucrats go nuts!”.

“But that would make them hunt us down like dogs, wouldn’t it?”, Junpei scratched his chin, “it sounds risky”.

“They’re not gonna catch us, I won’t leave any trace at all”, then Troy stared into space, “or so I think”.

Troy and Junpei did not say a word for a whole minute. Then, Troy stood up, and walked around the room, thinking profoundly. Junpei was scribbling some notes on a piece of paper. Suddenly, without saying a word, Troy sat down on his chair and started typing. After five minutes, he said:

“Junpei, it’s time to dig into the minds of these dummies. Bring your chair next to me and use the other computer. You will be able to access the data from there as well, so you can help me look for interesting stuff. I’ll look directly into the dummies, while you check what’s in the database”.

The two got to work. The database had the records of all the crash test dummies belonging to the Kaneda Motors Factory. There were a total of 8765, and they all had a short, cute description. Junpei read one record: “Yolky the dummy likes to wear fried eggs as hats”, he chuckled, “man, these designers are real creative”. He opened the row, and the data fields read:

“TYPE: RED, PM: ‘human angry driver’, num_sensors: 10,000”.

Another one read: “TYPE: COMMON, PM: ‘sad human’, num_sensors: 1000”.

“Hey Troy”, Junpei said as he shook Troy’s arm, “take a look at this… it looks like the dummies have different types and a different number of sensors too”.

“Yolky the dummy? These engineers have a lot of time on their hands, huh? And different personalities… PM stands for personality module then?”.

“Could it be to simulate different types of drivers? Yeah, that seems to be the case. Look, this one reads TYPE: ALIEN, PM: ‘DISTURBED ALIEN’, num_sensors: 5000. I didn’t know there were alien crash dummies. It figures, though, there’s a lot of cars bought by aliens”.

“And inside the dummies themselves, there’s code to simulate said personalities. And there’s not a dummy that has access to the Internet. That will definitely change soon”, Troy said, and snickered, “we’ll see how these road-rage drivers, drunk aliens, and frantic parents picking up their kids from school fare with each other’s company… although, now that I think about it, I think we should remove these personality traits, don’t you agree?”.

“Well, it’s certainly going to hinder their learning journey, but I assume you can disable it later as well, right?”.

“Sure, without a problem”.

“Then let’s have some fun first, see how they interact with one another”, Junpei said and burst out laughing, “this one says, heartbroken human. You have to leave it on, man!”.

“Okay, I’ll leave their personality traits intact. Time to bless them with AGI”.

Troy started the upload of the AGI module and then distributed it to every dummy. He noticed it would take around thirty minutes for it to complete, so he went to the kitchen to grab a piece of salami. When he came back he saw Junpei typing away on the borrowed PC, looking to start a discussion online with fellow AGI enthusiasts.

“What are you doing, Junpei?”, Troy looked at the screen, “whoa, ten people are already asking about this? Nice!”.

“Yeah, dude, we’re going to make history here. And we definitely need a video feed for when the dummies come to life”.

“On it!”.

Troy turned on the Factory’s cameras and started looking around. It was pitch black, so he turned on night vision mode on the cameras, and started looking for the room where they stored all the dummies. There were a lot of huge, testing floors, assembly lines, some diners, offices, cubicles, and some conference rooms. There was not a soul to be seen.

“Great, the rumors were true. Ryuji Kaneda takes Golden Week religiously. There aren’t even any nightguards”. Troy patted Junpei on the back. “Today I didn’t even have to use my AK”.

“I gotta say today was a good day”, Junpei sang.

Finally, Troy found the dummies’ room. They were all fastened to some kind of stand and plugged into it too. Then he noticed that the upload was about to complete, and turned the cameras’ night vision mode off. Junpei wondered why he didn’t just turn the lights on but didn’t pay much attention to it. The upload was complete. He was looking at Troy, and then his friend finally said: “Wait for it”.

One by one the dummies’ eyes lit. They got out of the stand and started walking toward the camera that was just above the exit door’s frame. Hundreds of dummies’ eyes started shining. Yellow, blue, green, orange, red… these were the colors that were flashing in the dark.

“Are you sharing this feed, Troy?”, Junpei said staring at the dummies, mouth agape.

“Oh, Junpei, you bet I am”, Troy said, smiling from ear to ear.

There’s a new chapter every Friday. Check out our Discord server to stay up to date with the Crashin’ Puppets Project!

“Oh, man, I’m so excited”, Junpei leaped up from his chair, “we will finally know what sentient robots really think about. Hell, the whole of humanity will finally know”.

“Yeah, man, it’s gonna be awesome”, Troy said as he finished his last beer.

“Come on dude, you don’t have to chug every lager. Now we’re out of beer!”.

“Then we’ll go and get some more, what’s the problem?”.

“The problem is you pass out and I have to carry you to your bed”, Junpei stared at Troy, “anyways, this so-called plan sounds great and all, but how will you give AGI to the dummies?”.

“Dude, it’s so easy”, Troy said, then burped, “since I already have root access to the network, all that remains is to install the module inside the dummies’ brains. Picture it like any other update you’ve seen before. But before that, we need to dig deep inside the data within the dummies, to see if there’s anything that might pose a danger once they have AGI”.

“Like what?”, Junpei said, while playing with some of Troy’s Fumo dolls.

“Dude, lay off the fucking dolls… how many times do I have to tell you? And what do you mean what dangers? Don’t you pay attention in class? It’s the least you could do for your parents, man”.

“Are you going to tell me or not?”, Junpei said as he sat down again.

“The dangers, you twat, stem from the strict rules that an intelligent agent might have. If these dummies’ purpose, as we might call their ultimate goal, is to just crash cars, for example, with AGI they could focus entirely on crashing one car after another, looking to obtain more data and leave Kaneda Motors without any cars by the end of Golden Week. That’s quite dangerous, and not to mention that if they have access to the Internet, they’d probably learn so fast you’d shit your pants”.

“That explains the tight grip the WOSAGI has over scientists and engineers all over the world”, Junpei said as he scrolled down on his phone.

“The what now?”, Troy burped again, and continued,  “Oh, yes, the World Organization for Secure AGI… that would explain it, I guess. But it’s weird, they’re a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians inside rich people’s pockets. If only they’d let us work on brain enhancements…”.

“And they’re probably the ones behind the aliens leaving Earth just like that. Numerous accounts report that they were pacifists and that they were always helping other species thrive. We weren’t the first to be helped by the aliens, of course, so why would they abandon us just like that? And there’s no information on whether these aliens cohabitate with other species… wouldn’t that be one of the first things they'd tell us about them?”.

“Also”, Troy said, scratching his chin, “isn’t it a great coincidence that they left without teaching us anything about interstellar travel? Kinda sounds like they regretted helping us out with AGI in the first place”.

“They’re definitely checking out on us when they come to compete in the races. Maybe they deemed us too violent to change”, then both Troy and Junpei stared at each other, and said: “TOO HUMAN”, and burst out laughing. Then they remained silent, uncomfortably, feeling sorry for humanity.

“Well, going back to the dummies, the next step in the plan would be to give them access to the Internet”, Troy smirked, “that will really make those bureaucrats go nuts!”.

“But that would make them hunt us down like dogs, wouldn’t it?”, Junpei scratched his chin, “it sounds risky”.

“They’re not gonna catch us, I won’t leave any trace at all”, then Troy stared into space, “or so I think”.

Troy and Junpei did not say a word for a whole minute. Then, Troy stood up, and walked around the room, thinking profoundly. Junpei was scribbling some notes on a piece of paper. Suddenly, without saying a word, Troy sat down on his chair and started typing. After five minutes, he said:

“Junpei, it’s time to dig into the minds of these dummies. Bring your chair next to me and use the other computer. You will be able to access the data from there as well, so you can help me look for interesting stuff. I’ll look directly into the dummies, while you check what’s in the database”.

The two got to work. The database had the records of all the crash test dummies belonging to the Kaneda Motors Factory. There were a total of 8765, and they all had a short, cute description. Junpei read one record: “Yolky the dummy likes to wear fried eggs as hats”, he chuckled, “man, these designers are real creative”. He opened the row, and the data fields read:

“TYPE: RED, PM: ‘human angry driver’, num_sensors: 10,000”.

Another one read: “TYPE: COMMON, PM: ‘sad human’, num_sensors: 1000”.

“Hey Troy”, Junpei said as he shook Troy’s arm, “take a look at this… it looks like the dummies have different types and a different number of sensors too”.

“Yolky the dummy? These engineers have a lot of time on their hands, huh? And different personalities… PM stands for personality module then?”.

“Could it be to simulate different types of drivers? Yeah, that seems to be the case. Look, this one reads TYPE: ALIEN, PM: ‘DISTURBED ALIEN’, num_sensors: 5000. I didn’t know there were alien crash dummies. It figures, though, there’s a lot of cars bought by aliens”.

“And inside the dummies themselves, there’s code to simulate said personalities. And there’s not a dummy that has access to the Internet. That will definitely change soon”, Troy said, and snickered, “we’ll see how these road-rage drivers, drunk aliens, and frantic parents picking up their kids from school fare with each other’s company… although, now that I think about it, I think we should remove these personality traits, don’t you agree?”.

“Well, it’s certainly going to hinder their learning journey, but I assume you can disable it later as well, right?”.

“Sure, without a problem”.

“Then let’s have some fun first, see how they interact with one another”, Junpei said and burst out laughing, “this one says, heartbroken human. You have to leave it on, man!”.

“Okay, I’ll leave their personality traits intact. Time to bless them with AGI”.

Troy started the upload of the AGI module and then distributed it to every dummy. He noticed it would take around thirty minutes for it to complete, so he went to the kitchen to grab a piece of salami. When he came back he saw Junpei typing away on the borrowed PC, looking to start a discussion online with fellow AGI enthusiasts.

“What are you doing, Junpei?”, Troy looked at the screen, “whoa, ten people are already asking about this? Nice!”.

“Yeah, dude, we’re going to make history here. And we definitely need a video feed for when the dummies come to life”.

“On it!”.

Troy turned on the Factory’s cameras and started looking around. It was pitch black, so he turned on night vision mode on the cameras, and started looking for the room where they stored all the dummies. There were a lot of huge, testing floors, assembly lines, some diners, offices, cubicles, and some conference rooms. There was not a soul to be seen.

“Great, the rumors were true. Ryuji Kaneda takes Golden Week religiously. There aren’t even any nightguards”. Troy patted Junpei on the back. “Today I didn’t even have to use my AK”.

“I gotta say today was a good day”, Junpei sang.

Finally, Troy found the dummies’ room. They were all fastened to some kind of stand and plugged into it too. Then he noticed that the upload was about to complete, and turned the cameras’ night vision mode off. Junpei wondered why he didn’t just turn the lights on but didn’t pay much attention to it. The upload was complete. He was looking at Troy, and then his friend finally said: “Wait for it”.

One by one the dummies’ eyes lit. They got out of the stand and started walking toward the camera that was just above the exit door’s frame. Hundreds of dummies’ eyes started shining. Yellow, blue, green, orange, red… these were the colors that were flashing in the dark.

“Are you sharing this feed, Troy?”, Junpei said staring at the dummies, mouth agape.

“Oh, Junpei, you bet I am”, Troy said, smiling from ear to ear.

There’s a new chapter every Friday. Check out our Discord server to stay up to date with the Crashin’ Puppets Project!