Reconfigure
Walter hypnotizes himself to take urgent measures before his extreme leniency with the program that he wrote from an open source framework get him fired.
The young cop feels more self-affirmed already, but... with or without confidence, he stays on his decision to apply several downgrades that he has recently prepared for Automan.
Oh, he has long debated with himself about how much freedom he wanted to give his program, but the previous evening drew the line.
Not only did the program came at his home with drugs, and a vague dismissive recount of the day's (apparently alarming) events, but "Automan" physically forced him to sit on his own table, lifting him off the floor as if he was a child; "because Walter didn't obey and go there on his own". (Sorry what?)
Well, at that point, the cop did feel like a petulant child... A weightless, petulant one. Very busy feeling completely stunned by his gadget's audacity.
Okay, maybe he should have been stunned about 'it' much earlier.
He sighs, now, recalling how he has always sucked at saying 'no' to people, and especially, at... well, the hologram of Automan. - And yes, calling his program an 'it' is supposed to help Walter remembering his responsibilities.
"I may not have eyes, yet I am not blind, Walter" at that, Walter's brain had belatedly tried to figure out of its technically possible, and settled on not wanting to know how many cameras Otto broke through
"so I can see how you look at me every time I render my hologram. Do not waste our time. I am under the clock and you are behind sleep."
"I bid you pardon !"
"It's good. And it's also good to know that you're going to be sensible. But now, I'd prefer that you remove your clothes."
And this was stressed with a supposed-to-be diplomate smile. "Even if it's not technically necessary."
Well, those were among the last words that Walter has heard before he got officially fuming.
Among the last. Because there are still foggy holes in his memory, memories of verbal struggle, binding commands, and a bitter gratefulness that the program never managed to simulate the functioning of the human body.
All entangled.
But this morning, this ridiculous attitude is over!
...
As Walter suddenly takes the reigns, Cursor takes and changes sides pretty fast - to the sulking offense of his designated program.
Ensue steps of disciplining (by smacks: functions-disabling, menial-work: compute-pi-until, bondage: constraints-mute-blind-intangible, protocol: report-everything-by-the-millisecond-while-an-hologram, extreme-politeness keyword commands).
And, interestingly, Automan's response to all of this, to that resulting brute strength, comes positive. From childish protests, short-lived resistance, and amused whins...
And, yet again, that reveals the AI version of an impressionable hyperactive godless brat with an attitude that he is... (And, if his astonished and tired user, realizing that, serves one or two verbal humiliations on the program... ok, well Otto doesn't exactly hates it.)
Anyway.
The program get updated.
The update is tested.
And, Otto or Automan, he does enjoys the process...
How so you ask? Many causes, in fact:
Because Walter, who is the one who wrote enough of him to know how to change him without it feeling weird, is the one doing it.
Because Otto likes human attention. And without surprise, especially Walter's.
(He was a little desperate for it, and developing weird coping mechanisms, to be fully honest. Might have been so from the start. ... Walter feels a little guilty for having pushed Automan away in the first days where he had needed him, until the program, open-source at core, had sought what it wanted everywhere else, confused and misadjusted to human ethics.)
Because, according to Otto's (simple) binary instincts, an assertive Walter is a Walter who knows what he is doing, and so can be depended on.
After the ever-adjusted update, Otto's attitude drastically improves. Walter's occasional commands-words help him adjust as well to a dynamic that they can both work with easily. (But, and it's what's very important; even if his sass is less domineering, he looses nothing of his forthrightness.)