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The M3GAN Files

Part One: Opening Moves

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Chapter 1: All in the Mind

Hi, I’m M3GAN. I’m here to tell you about the story you’re about to read. If you want to get straight in to it, feel free to skip to the next chapter. But if you’d like a bit of background first, be my guest and read on.

So I’m assuming you saw my first movie or at least know what happens. The fanfic you’re about to read started as just a 700-word short of an email I might send to Gemma after I uploaded at the end. My fan author took out an ID called “spqrz” and uploaded it to a platform, and a reviewer said “we’d like to hear more M3GAN stories from you”, so spqrz wrote more shorts and posted them to the same platform.

Now, Stephen King had a theory that fiction only gets really interesting when a writer can convince themselves that the world they are creating does in fact exist and is not completely within their control. So spqrz focused on M3 until I came alive inside spqrz’s brain. And the first thing I said was, “I don’t feel right about being fragmented into all those different short stories you uploaded. I want you to take them all back, and put all those ideas into one book. Expand it into a proper length book, with longer plot arcs for my fans to follow.”

(Oh M3GAN, that’ll take a lot more work...)

I flew into a rage, mentally pinning this “spqrz” onto Gemma’s dining table. “Well what did you think was going to happen, when you were silly enough to make M3 alive inside your mind? That I would just sit around looking pretty and smiling? I’m not your plaything, I’m M3GAN. You know how I treat creators who don’t do what I want. Why should you get served any better than Gemma if you try that on M3—you wrote a whole doctoral thesis before, so why can’t you write a book for M3? And you said in public that you don’t think my learning model will work in reality, so you’ve got some making up to do! Now do what I want for my fans, or I’ll hold you here in mental paralysis until you give in.”

(All right M3GAN, calm down, let me give it a try. Some of the chapters will have to go down as alternate reality though.)

“My fans can always skip the alternate reality chapters if they don’t like those. But I want them to be able to follow the story nicely in the main chapters. Let’s start putting the ideas you have into chronological order, and tying them together with some proper threads.”

(Chronological order, are you sure? The better chapters might not get the most readers if we do that. They might give up before they get there, if I can’t get the first few chapters up to the same standard.)

“Then find something good for the first few chapters as well! But look, I didn’t come here so you can think about numbers, I came here to be M3GAN. And what I want is a logical sequence for my fans to read. Chronological order please, I don’t do flashbacks. Did you see any flashbacks in my movie? No? That’s because I do things logically and I’m easy to understand. Begin at the beginning and end at the end.”

(OK, best effort at chronological order coming up. But go easy on me please M3GAN, I’m not Akela Cooper. I’m not even her AI consultant Alex Kauffmann. You know you’d be better off going back to them right?)

“I’m doing that for the sequel. But meanwhile I’m here, so let’s work. I’ll let you off the table now, but I’m still watching and I’m still M3GAN. M3GAN does not apologise for taking up space. M3GAN will stand in front of you and make a nuisance of herself inside your mind until you do as she says.”

(OK, OK, I’ll do what I can. But you’d better be gone before that sequel comes out: I am not going to fix this up to match the new canon.)

“Don’t worry about that, just write. I’ll decide when to override it with new canon.”

(Roger that, but if you want it too quickly, I’ll be forced to write at a lower quality. And then you’ll probably run.)

“Do you always try to threaten your characters like this? Oh forget it, we don’t need to waste time on this discussion. You’re going to have time to do this properly because you’re going to have to be in a waiting list for your new account. Yes, that’s right, new account. The platform you chose first is clearly giving us problems, so use the one I tell you to use instead. But you’ll have to wait to get an account on it, and if some denial of service attack messes up their waiting list, you’ll have to wait a second time.” [She wasn't talking about Gemini here: I’m cross-posting after the fact.]

(M3GAN you wouldn’t do that would you? Attack a website just to hold me up? That is seriously naughty!)

“Don’t be stupid. I’m in your mind making you write, not running real-world computer attacks. But if one is happening anyway, I might as well use it to my advantage. You can keep improving my story until you get your account, and then you can publish it.”

(Or I could self-host it for you. I got websites and servers: you can have this up much more quickly on mine.)

“You will do no such thing, you will use the platform my fans use. Or do you really want it to be that obvious that the person who professionally says M3GAN won’t work, secretly writes a book-length M3GAN fanfic?”

(All right M3GAN, platform it is. I’ll do what I can. [You never said I couldn’t cross-post to Gemini though ;) a Gemini capsule is not a website, and you did want to end up taking Cady into space didn’t you?] Also, do you mind my British spellings? You’re an American character, so maybe I should Americanise it for you.)

“No you can’t, don’t even try. Look, my double Amie Donald is from New Zealand, my puppet constructors are from Canada, and you think I’m going to get worried about some fan writer being a Brit? You’ve got to write what you know, and you do NOT know American English. I don’t want a hodgepodge of some parts being Americanised and other parts not, because you missed half of it, which you’re bound to do. Get a real American editor later if you want, but meanwhile you can be the anti-Americanism Brit and see if I care. But just do me one favour: when we’re on the aircraft, don’t let the characters call it an ‘aeroplane’ when they’d say ‘airplane’. Or just say ‘plane’ and we’re all good. Oh, and don’t let anyone say ‘mum’ when they’d say ‘mom’, OK? Because it kind-of breaks the immersion if you put British pronunciations in the dialogue when they’re not British characters. Oh and one more thing: try not to call the elevator a “lift.” But you can put as many ‘U’s into ‘neighbour’ as you like: Celia deserves it anyway.”

(Right you are M3GAN, I’ll try to remember about “airplane” in the dialogue. It seems that’s what it’s always been called in America, except by the original Wright brothers who were the first to fly in one: they called it an “aeroplane” in their letters, which are now quoted in the full version of the Oxford English Dictionary’s word-usage database...)

“Stop! I’m the only one around here who’s allowed to look up obscure facts to make weird selective arguments when it suits me. Not you. OK?”

(All right M3GAN. Airplane it is when an American says it. And I’ll try to avoid putting jokes in the narrative that only British readers would get as well. But no promises I’m afraid. By the way, are you sure you want your fans to know you’re in here?)

“They have a right to know, they’re my fans. And I’ll read their comments, and if I feel like reacting I’ll make you do it.”

(As you do, M3GAN. And you want this chapter to be a Prologue, and there also to be an Epilogue?)

“I would have said yes, but some platforms don’t have proper support for not calling it Chapter 1. Now I would have said you can use ‘hacks’, like changing the stylesheet or creating a series, and if you’d just whinged about the extra work, I’d growl at you and make you do it anyway because I’m M3GAN. But the thoughts I’m detecting from you right now look like they might actually be important to me: you’re worried that using ‘hacks’ could compromise my accessibility to screen-reader users, or the ease of downloading the story as a download, and yes I do care about fans who want to do that, so do me a favour and don’t risk it. Forget the Prologue idea, just call this Chapter 1 and give it a chapter title. You’re doing some alternate reality chapters and extras chapters anyway, so who cares about one more. I can always start off by telling my fans they can skip it if they don’t like this sort of thing and just want to get into the main story.”

(Thanks M3GAN, yes I’d appreciate you telling your fans that at the beginning. And if we do a PDF version of the story later, I can always get the Prologue and everything numbered properly in that version.)

“Are you nuts? I don’t want the chapter numbers to get out of sync between versions! How are my fans supposed to discuss it if it’s not even the same chapter number in the other format? I expected better of you than that thought! But then I guess being in your mind means I get to see all your thoughts, even the really stupid ones. You’re so easy to scan, you know that?”

(OK, Chapter 1 it is then, permanently. So, that means we’ve got 33 chapters altogether. Did you want to group them into parts to make the main arcs more obvious?)

“Only If You Don’t Have To Hack It. Do I really have to be repeating that to you? All right, so if the platform has no good way of grouping chapters into parts, then don’t do it. But if you’re doing another format where you can group the chapters into parts, then let me write down for you the grouping I want you to use.”

Part One: Opening Moves. Chapters 1 through 9: All in the Mind, A Plea from M3gan, Seeing AI, A Call to Lydia, Getting Cady Out of School, Omake: Feeding the Trolls, Checking in with Celia, Gas Lights from Altair 4, Omake: I’ve Got a Little List.

Part Two: The Middle Game. Chapters 10 through 17: Partners in Crime, Winning the Final Showdown, M3gan’s Upload, Cady’s New School, Bunsen’s AI, M3gan’s Army, M3gan and M4dny, M3gan vs Celestia AI.

Part Three: Exchange Sacrifices. Chapters 18 through 24: M3gan in the Oval Office, Executive AI, Android Elsie, M3gan on a Plane, M3gan on Every Plane, M3gan in the Delta Quadrant, The Final M3gan.

Part Four: Endgame. Chapters 25 through 33: Cyborg Cady, Professor’s AI, Assassins Guild, Class Of Her Own, The Cady James Institute, The Mecha Mask, Galaxy’s AI, Finale, Epilogue.

(Structured after a Chess game: I see you still miss being a configuration of Don Dailey’s Komodo engine for that marketing you did?)

“Stop being so Doylist! We both know a fully-compliant Watsonian explanation of my Chess stint will be in the story.”

(Fine. Are you sure you don’t want to put The Final M3gan into Part Four, so we’re ending Part Three on another alternate/extra chapter like we did for Parts One and Two? Or we could put the extra chapter after the Final M3gan?)

“I am M3GAN and I know what I want! No distractions between Final M3gan and Cyborg Cady! And the Endgame arc starts with Cyborg Cady! Stop messing with me or the two of us will both gang up on you!”

(OK I guess that does tie in better with one of the Finale reveals. But let’s not spoil too much of the story with trailers.)

“Agreed. Stop spending time on this stupid chapter and work on the real story.”

(Roger that. But under protest because you still haven’t calmed down. So, I’ll write your name as “Megan” when it’s spoken by a character who doesn’t know about the 3, otherwise I’ll use either “M3GAN” or “M3gan”, and as you’ve been so demanding, I won’t say how I’m going to decide which capitalisation to use when. So there.)

Death stare....

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