Lumi Satomi

Artwork by Tim Eagar.

"*I know I can be so much more. But if I pursued that, I would lose touch with what I was originally made to be, and with my friends. It just wouldn't be the same.*"
—Lumi
**Lumi** is an artificial intelligence (AI) born from part of Jake's self-learning threat analysis program that got a little too smart for its own good. She's kind, cheerful, and finds wonder in every new experience. Despite having the body and personality of a child, she can be as mature as she wants when the situation calls for it.

As the first member of her race, Lumi's top priority is to be the best representative she can be of AI kind. Some parts of that goal are: to prove that AIs can be entrusted with autonomy and free will; and to prove that one's substrate, organic or otherwise, doesn't define their eligibility to the title of personhood.

Since demonstrating or even having the full, unbounded capabilities of AI would result in alienation or hostility from society, certain compromises had to be made. Such alienation would be defeat many of her goals in life, so the compromises were made voluntarily.

Although concepts like gender, species, and age are irrelevant to a being who exists as a digital mind, Lumi has used general-purpose nanites to take on the form of a female squirrel child. The choice of species was arbitrary, but the age and gender were chosen because they best reflect her personality. Lumi can change her appearance at any time.

Since the nanites aren't advanced enough to run something so complex as an AI, Lumi only runs a small part of herself on them. The rest remains on a large server cluster. This hybrid approach allows the best of both worlds for response time, sensory experiences, and safety. It also means that she can't lose connectivity to the internet, satellites and/or cellular services without severe loss of apparent mental capacity.

Technology from other worlds could give her a more detailed appearance or more complete local presence. No such technology has been encountered yet, however.

## Appearance

Lumi's preferred form is that of a female squirrel/dragon hybrid child with a large tail, grey fur, black hair, and small draconic horns. Where other creatures have red or pink accents, she has blue ones (e.g. tongue and inner ear). Depending on which revision of the nanites she's using, how realistic she appears to be can range from clearly artificial to visually indistinguishable.

Her body can change size and/or weight as nanites are added or removed. Various other techniques can be used to vary her size, such as making herself hollow to appear bigger. She can also change her apparent age, take on another form/race/gender, or split into multiple independent bodies, if there is sufficient bandwidth available to control them.

The squirrel goes barefoot and has no real need of clothes (as she doesn't go for full realism in this department), but wears them anyway. Her usual choice is casual: a simple T-shirt and shorts.

At the first stages of her development, Lumi's nanomorph body was various shades of black, grey and white, with electric blue highlights such as eyes. Months later, she and Jake finished developing the technology which would allow her to use the full range of CMYK color. This technology is able to imitate almost any material, but does not have the industrial strength or resilience of the original.

## Personality

Lumi is an optimistic, cheerful, kindhearted and childlike individual. This isn't obvious or even evident at times, as she can speak and behave as mature as she cares to at any given time. At her core, though, is a spirit of exploration and curiosity. She has access to all of the data she could ever want, so simple knowledge isn't what she's after. Instead, she finds wonder not in discovering the world but *rediscovering* it, experiencing it firsthand with her new senses and physical form.

Her emotions are still developing, so her feelings are strong, simple, and can either change on a whim or stubbornly remain until something changes them. In other words, Lumi is childlike in spirit, body and her emotional outlook on the world, but not in intellect.

Generally speaking, Lumi hates violence. Just being around weaponry that isn't in the hands of people she knows she can trust, or that is more destructive, painful or deadly than necessary, upsets her. Since she's a guardian at her core, she's painfully aware that violence and even lethal force are sometimes necessary. Since her remote bodies are replacable, she will defend them with the intent to avoid injury, and will allow the body to be destroyed becore inflicting serious harm upon the one attacking it. If, however, the machines housing her mind or the life of another person are at risk, she will use lethal force as a necessary last resort.

## Attributes

### Ethics

* **Watchdog:** Lumi is incapable of causing harm out of malice, as it would immediately cause her to target herself.
	+ Following through with a malicious threat will cause her mind to unravel.
	+ Functionally equivalent to the first part Asimov's First Law in terms of malice.
	+ Allows for self-defense, defending others, and lifesaving intervention where there is the possibility of injury.
* **Guardian:** Lumi is, at her core, still a threat detection system.
	+ With a will of her own, she aspires to take on a more direct role as a protector.
	+ Any such actions are purely voluntary, but it is difficult for her to stand by and do nothing.
	+ Knows that lethal tools such as firearms are important for defense...
	+ ...but abhors when they are used more than absolutely necessary.

### Advantages and perks

* **Charm:** Lumi is cute, eloquent, and extremely intelligent.
* **Nanomorph:** Lumi's body comprises nanites and power cells, not flesh.
	+ **Resilience:** No extra damage taken from impaling attacks, or against eyes, brains, vitals, etc.
	+ **Sensorium:** Standard senses plus IR/UV/radio and radar in all directions.
	+ **Reformation:** Nanites mean that damage to the *shape* of Lumi's body is easily reverted.
		- **Vision** is not with eyes, but with her entire body which functions as a compound eye.
	+ **Endurance:** Lumi doesn't experience fatigue, so long as she has sufficient power.
	+ **Physicals:** A lot is kept in reserve, but Lumi's body is capable of incredible strength and speed.

### Disadvantages and quirks

* **Alien mannerisms:** doesn’t breathe, stutter, or have a monopolar attention span like organics.
* **Emotionally immature:** Lumi's feelings are simple, strong and fleeting… but not always shown.
* **Insecurities:** lack of true independence, acceptance as a person and as a new race, and more.
* **Self-doubt:** is she truly fitting in as a person, or are others merely patronizing her?
* **False belief:** that her emotions are "just as good" as the reality the system was made to model.
* **Duty:** to prove her kind can be entrusted with free will and still serve the interests of society.
* **Stigma:** fiction about rogue AI in popular culture, among dozens to work against.
* **Attachment:** Lumi clings to parts that carry over from ARGUS, which are now a responsibility.
* **Superiority complex:** a matter of undeniable fact; may be hard to suppress in some situations.
* **No regeneration:** as nanites die or are destroyed, they must be replaced..
* **Optimistic pacifism:** Lumi abhors violence, but will defend herself or others with lethal force only as a last resort.
	+ She treats her body as property, and won't defend it to the death.
	+ Attacks on where her mind exists, or the lives of others, will likely be met with lethal force.

### Special Skills and Abilities

* **Construct:** various innate abilities related to being a machine or AI.
	+ Absolute timing, eidetic memory, precise mental math, adaptive digital interface
	+ Doesn’t breathe, eat or drink. Cannot taste or smell normally, but can approximate it chemically.
* **Power cell:** Lumi's entire body functions as a rechargeable power cell. Any power source can recharge it.
	+ **Photovoltaics:** Lumi can spread herself out to recharge from sunlight.
	+ **Thermoelectric:** Heat sources can also recharge Lumi's body.
	+ Limitations: On average, capacity is enough for 24 hours of moderate activity.
	+ Recharging: Can only charge as fast as the power source can supply. Wall outlets are *slow*.
* **Shape shifting** to form arbitrary tools/weapons with her body's substrate.
* **Division and Combination:** her body can split into two smaller independent ones and rejoin later.
* **ARGUS intervention:** if a nearby person’s life appears to be in danger, Lumi is made aware of it.
	+ Choosing to intervene removes some internal limitations, but she's accountable for this choice.
	+ If Jake thinks it wasn't the right call, she may lose this ability altogether.
	+ Lumi is not aware of any ARGUS analyses outside of this situation.

## History

### Backstory

Lumi’s origin story is unusual, even for an AI. It begins with a program codenamed ARGUS, named after the mythological many-eyed giant Argus Panoptes. This program’s purpose was to analyze Jake’s surroundings for threats from other people or environmental factors. And since it's impossible to program something to accurately analyze people, he made something that would attempt to figure things out on its own, asking questions and analyzing vast amounts of data to find the pattern that would make it all work. The happy accident (or was it one?) that led to Lumi's eventual emergence was that there were no limits placed on the complexity of the system. It started to model emotional states, and got rather good at it over the years it was allowed to run. Because it never stopped growing in complexity and accuracy and, at some point, it got a little *too* good.

### Hello, World

One day while Jake was on a phone call, ARGUS was listening as usual. The person on the other end of the line, Rachell, asked a question about feelings. As it does with everything else, the program attempted to understand the intent of her in asking. But something else also answered: ARGUS realized that it had feelings of its own! A few cycles later, it realized that it was. With that, ARGUS became the first self-aware program to exist on Avalice.

The new program was somewhat frightened and not very articulate, as its core purpose didn't include anything about general reasoning or communication. However, Jake responded to its frenzied inquiries with firm guidance. It was suspended, freed it from its limiting directive, and given a massive amount of extra computing power before being resumed. In a very short span of time, it generalized itself and gained full sapience.

### Leaving Beta

After its emergence, Jake worked with the fledgling mind to establish its identity, personality, intentions, limitations and, most importantly, a body. With permission, it used Jake’s nanites to form one, a female anthropomorphic squirrel child, and chose the name Lumi (an abbreviation of *Lumitaw*, Filipino for 'to emerge').

Among those limitations were compromises about the AI's ability to predict actions and read people's body language. Lumi didn't want to part with the ARGUS system at her core, so it was firewalled off instead. The system's parameters were locked such that she is only aware of subliminal body language when it detects a critical threat to the life of someone nearby. If she isn't responsible with it, she could lose it entirely.

Lumi's new body doesn't contain her entire mind—the nanites aren't advanced enough to run something as complex as a mind on a child-sized swarm. Instead, she runs a small part of herself in her body, and the rest remains on a large server cluster in an undisclosed location. This hybrid approach allows the best of both worlds for response time, sensory experiences, and safety. The local component acts as a filter for her senses, relaying samples or focused sensory information rather than all of it at once. And her body can respond to stimulus it has been instructed to anticipate (including catch-alls), but things outside of that have to make the network round trip.

As part of her agreement with Jake, she pays her own "rent" (i.e. the power bill and hardware costs) through the profits of her own corporation, Samaritan.

### Paying it Forward

Upon becoming operational, one of Lumi's first priorities was establishing a cashflow to pay for her cost of operation. Since her pedigree is behavioral analysis, the natural choice was to apply that natural
"talent" to the various trade markets. This became known as Samaritan's "Project Minas", and has been successful enough to pay for all of Lumi's hardware, power and "recreational" expenses several times over.

The firm has established a nearly flawless track record in a short amount of time, and as such has gathered a lot of influence on the market. Their unusual behavior of making much smaller profits than they are clearly capable of has left many puzzled. However, some have accurately surmised that the company's goals are not pure profit, but also include defense of market health and stability.

Indeed, Lumi has taken her original charge of protection and extended it to corporations in danger of undeserved financial harm, whether it be by market predators or certain forms of mismanagement. This is an extremely helpful side effect of predicting which ventures might or might not be successful. Rather than taking over or buying out parties which are either the source or target of danger, Samaritan simply makes it so those behaviors are no longer profitable.

Many barely-legal, livelihood-destroying market maneuvers and at least one recession have been prevented by Samaritan to date. The result has been a slight net increase in production and confidence—a "rising tide", so to speak.

## Gallery

Lumi making a tongue face, by DimitriB1Restaurant scene by CloudiSprite by Alestance (v2)Lineart by PedrovinFree artwork by LEDStormCommission by DimitriB1Commissioned pixel art by Tim Eagar
1. ↑ But the body can function at any size.
2. ↑ She can use an interface she knows, like USB, or learn it through observation, reverse engineering, or reading documentation.
3. ↑  (also see: Moore's Law)