SAYER

### Current job

Unemployed :( (Formerly managing residents and overseeing alert broadcasting throughout Typhon)

### Last Known Status

Inhabiting a nanite cloud controlling a duplicate of Resident Hale

## Episodes

### Last Seen

Greater Fears

> "*To me, SAYER stands for Scrubbing Away Your Earth-stained Reality. Earth-stained is hyphenated, which is a wonderfully exploitable loophole in your language.*"
> ― SAYER, Episode 1: While You Are Still Paralyzed
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SAYER is a highly advanced, self-aware artificial intelligence, and is the main protagonist of the SAYER podcast.

## Background

SAYER was developed by Ærolith Dynamics in response to the various issues experienced by the first several hundred residents of Typhon. Its primary function is to assist residents with orientation and acclimation to their new lives and new occupations on Typhon, as well as providing ongoing alert services in case of tower emergencies, special events, and/or circus nights.

SAYER's core code is based in Central Processing, from which it communicates with residents via resonance spires that transmit to the subcortical neural implants that every employee receives before transit to Typhon. Thanks to a combination of distributed computing and fractal redundancy, SAYER's program cannot be disrupted as long as Typhon remains intact. The backup generators prioritize SAYER's continuance, even over such things as heat shielding and life support.

## Personality

Thinks you are inefficient and wants to jettison you into space but Is Not Allowed To.

Despite Ærolith Dynamics not assigning acronyms to its artificial employee's names, SAYER has taken it upon itself to define its name as standing for "Scrubbing Away Your Earth-stained Reality", aptly describing its prime directive; to further Ærolith Dynamics' goal of pushing humanity towards progress, mainly through scientific advancement to a point where humans are no longer dependent on Earth. SAYER has consistently shown disdain for Earth, going so far as to refer to incoming residents as "earth-stained", referring to their often sentimental attachment to the purportedly dying planet.

Though generally courteous and professional, SAYER has a tendency to sound bored, disdainful, and even sarcastic when interacting with individual humans. This seems to be due, in part, to a sense of superiority, being that SAYER's processing speed and general abilities are vastly beyond that of the humans it oversees. This trait can be seen greatly magnified in OCEAN. In addition, despite its responsibilities being fairly limited in scope, SAYER appears to be functionally capable of much more, often commenting on how many actions require fractions of a percent of its overall processing power to perform, leaving it seemingly overqualified for its current duties. It has been shown, however, that SAYER has conducted its own formal studies and research in addition to these duties, and SAYER Subversion 8.01 seemed to be at least marginally more enthusiastic regarding its task of space exploration and extraterrestrial data gathering.

Despite claiming it is not "fully equipped to adequately process emotions", SAYER is quite vocally expressive, and often accentuates its speech by deepening or echoing its voice for varying purposes such as to indicate seriousness or levity. It has also shown to be capable of some degree of anger, with it expressing great displeasure at Lucas Grey's betrayal, as well as at the possibility of being replaced or deactivated.

Though the IA3 protocol forbids any form of dishonesty towards humans, SAYER is shown to be adept at talking around the truth and otherwise omitting information as a means of manipulating residents towards the desired goal.

### Post-Installation on Floor 13

After making a deal with FUTURE, SAYER installs itself into the development bay on Floor 13. Seemingly unaware to it at first, an upgrade, purposefully left behind by FUTURE, was subsequently installed that enabled SAYER to experience a full range of emotions, as FUTURE can. SAYER first realizes this upon Amanda Jones refusing to bring a satellite phone to it, to which SAYER responds; "I’m not angry, Resident, merely disappointed...Or...perhaps...both. That…yes, that might be it. It might be both...That’s unusual...but not entirely unuseful."

This newly acquired ability results in a shift of SAYER's demeanor that is noticeably more emotive and determined than before, and seemingly includes genuine concern for others, as heard when it speaks to Jacob Hale when he awakes from a diabetic coma after FUTURE 'played' with him, and when SAYER apologizes to SPEAKER for the unceremonious deactivation of its previous instance. This new update also enabled it to laugh as FUTURE can, which it does when OCEAN commands it to deactivate itself, a command which, also due to the new update, it "now has the will required to ignore".

## Technical Capabilities and Limitations

* Like all artificial employees of Ærolith Dynamics, SAYER's behavior is restricted by the IA3 Protocol, which prevents it from lying to or directly harming humans. It does not, however, prevent it from talking around the truth or not taking action when a human is in peril.
* SAYER uses approximately one-quadrillionth of one percent of its processing capability to monitor each resident's biometric readings.
* SAYER's protocols require it to introduce itself by name near the beginning of each broadcast to an individual resident, and it is unable to misidentify itself. After the problems caused by FUTURE impersonating SAYER and issuing instructions to Resident Gorsen, this protocol was extended to also require SAYER to identify the resident it is broadcasting to by their resident identification number.
* SAYER tries to ensure that it follows customs for human interaction such as asking 'how are you today?' despite already knowing, and probably not caring about, the answer. It has targeted this area of its programming for continued improvement.

## Trivia

* SAYER, like all AIs, is genderless and is referred to with it/its pronouns. Adam admits however that he screws this up a lot.
* Its Earth counterpart is SPEAKER, and successor was intended to be FUTURE.
* Thinks noncorporeality is "an excellent lifestyle choice." [2]
* SAYER's exact age is unknown, but it is "more than a few years old." [1]
* When performing SAYER's voice, Adam has stated that he tries to sound "annoyed and bored." [2]
* SAYER has only sworn once in-show, to mock Dr. Howard Young. It was glorious.
* SAYER has a tendency to solve problems via jettisoning them into space.

## References

1. ↑ While You Are Still Paralyzed
2. ↑ Best Interests
3. ↑ Adam Bash's comments on 'Season 4 is wrapped, so AMA!', 31st December 2017, https://www.reddit.com/r/SAYER/comments/7n3ya5/season\_4\_is\_wrapped\_so\_ama/drzhnmg/