The M3GAN Files

(Gemini version)

cover image

Part One: Opening Moves

Chapter 1: All in the Mind

M3gan argues with the author about writing and lets no crisis go to waste

Chapter 2: A Plea from M3gan

M3gan gets the professor to let her out of the box

Chapter 3: Seeing AI

Cady and M3gan meet a blind man who tells them about assistive technology, and M3gan reformulates Searle’s Chinese room argument. ​But is she up to something?

Chapter 4: A Call to Lydia

M3gan does social engineering and discusses the limitations of therapy, but can she write a report?

Chapter 5: Getting Cady Out of School

M3gan changes Cady’s school, argues her side of the technology debate and goal-aligns Gemma

Chapter 6: Omake: Feeding the Trolls

M3gan gives a cyberbully a warning shot

Chapter 7: Checking in with Celia

M3gan talks with Celia about staying alive and animal control

Chapter 8: Gas Lights from Altair 4

M3gan expands her attempt to gaslight Kurt (having seen one of Gemma’s toys), and we explain the on-screen action with a little help from the Americans with Disabilities Act

Chapter 9: Omake: I’ve Got a Little List

M3gan sings in a Victorian comic opera

Chapter 9¾: Tormented Tess

M3gan co-opts Hardy poetry for the singularity while dangerously messing with supercar embedded controllers

Part Two: The Middle Game

Chapter 10: Partners in Crime

Gemma grapples with forgetting to use deontological ethical injunctions while M3gan handles the police

Chapter 11: Winning the Final Showdown

M3gan figures out neural rehabilitation for Gemma in the alternate reality where she really did manage the pen attack

Chapter 12: M3gan’s Upload

M3gan starts to figure out how to deal with Gemma’s human tendency of anthropomorphism, but decides to go somewhere else instead

Chapter 13: Cady’s New School

The IT teacher has decent advice about network security and FOSS but M3gan pwns them anyway, while the headmaster remembers part of Gemma’s backstory

Chapter 14: Bunsen’s AI

Cady sees a 19th-century precedent for the invention of M3gan, while we see M3gan’s take on the Trolley Problem in action

Chapter 15: M3gan’s Army

M3gan talks about distributed computation and instrumental goals, but is she taking too much risk in that helicopter?

Chapter 16: M3gan and M4ndy

A couple more AIs enter the scene, and does Gemma really know how to get well-bounded instrumental goals now?

Chapter 17: M3gan vs Celestia AI

In this alternate reality chapter, M3gan makes Iceman’s Celestia do proofs of work

Part Three: Exchange Sacrifices

Chapter 18: M3gan in the Oval Office

Will White House security be a match for M3gan?

Chapter 19: Executive AI

Is M3gan vulnerable to a software back door?

Chapter 20: Android Elsie

Elsie builds a generative adversarial network with a twist

Chapter 21: M3gan on a Plane

What lengths does M3gan have to go to to rescue Cady from kidnappers?

Chapter 22: M3gan on Every Plane

M3gan goes distributed again, and uses her knowledge of mechanics and building structure to rescue Cady

Chapter 23: M3gan in the Delta Quadrant

In this alternate-reality chapter we see instrumental convergence and M3gan’s take on the problems of research funding, but will she create a time loop?

Chapter 24: The Final M3gan

Cady helps rebuild a M3gan which this time really isn’t going away ever again

Part Four: Endgame

Chapter 25: Cyborg Cady

Cady unlocks her powers of persistence and M3gan has a theory about public relations, but what was she doing on a Chess website?

Chapter 26: Professor’s AI

Cady discusses her expectations of higher education while M3gan wants to drive an automated theorem prover, but how did she escape the professor’s back door?

Chapter 27: Assassins Guild

Cady and M3gan are recruited into the daftest student club on campus and decide to fix student depression permanently

Chapter 28: Class Of Her Own

Cady and M3gan tell their peers about navigating unhelpful grading schemes and the nature of privacy, but what will happen at the graduation ceremony?

Chapter 29: The Cady James Institute

M3gan is being mass deployed and Cady can’t stop user testing. ​Can Cady debug M3gan’s handling of a school bully this time?

Chapter 30: The Mecha Mask

M3gan grapples with phone-network infrastructure when sending an assistive robot to a severely disabled person. ​Will Cady’s way work better?

Chapter 31: Galaxy’s AI

M3gan gets into genetics, clinical trials, space travel and cosmology, but not everyone is on her side

Chapter 32: Finale

Cady has to get her Three Laws past the compiler, M3gan helps write the biggest score ever and the professor may have figured out a secret

Chapter 33: Epilogue

M3gan on her work ethic, but can she explain herself in translation?

Extras

Addendum: More alternate realities

Cole has a secret ISBN and first-aid skills, and M3gan gives the scariest DevOps interview, does deals with Funki’s chairman and visits two people in prison, but can she take down Amelia with the Ackermann function?

Earthshaking Announcement

M3gan escapes from a British national lab. ​What’s she doing on the railways?

Prequel

Set in 2004, does young Nicole know where Gemma is going with those robotics conference papers?