Self-Improvement [Morning Work Thread]

To Say that Selenus never expected to find himself in the situation he's in would be an understatement. Professor J. had been kind enough to repair him after four long years of maintenance depravation, but of course, like most things in life, the repairs did not come for free. Selenus had no money to speak of, so he was offered a way to make money by J. himself. Namely: Helping out at the bar and assisting Professor J. in the optimization of his... fleet of Selenuses (Seleni?). The fact that J. had a fleet of Selenus clones had shocked him in its own right, but Selenus knew that actually laying eyes on them was going to be another experience altogether.

Stepping into the basement of the bar, where Professor J. took to himself, Selenus opened a text file in his internal CPU to take notes. He figured he'd just transfer the data to a regular computer and print it when he'd finished. As he entered the room where all the replicas were kept, he mentally braced himself for the sight of them. He'd seen them before when J. repaired hi, but at that moment he chose not to pay too much attention to them, as they would only have distracted him from the millions of things he had to get done that day. This day, however, Selenus was in no rush, and so could afford to take his time to fully take in the appearance of his... acquaintances.

Once inside, Selenus laid eyes on ten smaller, sleeker versions of himself, presumably prepped and provided by J. himself. It was as if Apple had stolen his blueprints from the military and created a domestic knockoff...

...iSelenus...

Anyway, he'd begin by using his tail to mess with and test the properties of various body parts. The primary difference between the clones's frames and Selenus's own was that the clone frame possesed little to no sharp edges; most of the metal components had round, smooth edges as opposed to selenus's (Intentionally) sharp, hard ones. Their overall structure seemed to be much more dynamic, yet at the same time much more agile too. While Selenus was built for stealth, chase and combat, these clones appeared to specialize only in chasing. Fitting, considering what Professor J. had told Selenus about their standard mission; Apparently good ol' J. used these here clones to keep Grins under control and chase him down when he went missing.

Moving on from the general frame, Selenus inspected the weaponry on these things. They seemed to possess the same standard K9-667 firearm that Selenus, along with all combat-oriented K9 units possessed by default, and their claws and teeth looked sharp enough to deal out some serious damae if needed. They did not, however, possess Selenus's Winds Of Destruction (That is to say, his set of knives.). Not a big surprise, considering the WoD were a Selenus-specific feature... he did notice, however, that the WoD had recieved an upgrade when he awoke to his Persona... he'd keep that in mind as a topic to investigate in his free time.

Last but definitely not least in terms of physical components: The tail. Most K9 units were equipped with grasping tails as a replacement for hands, which were deemed essential to their roles. Aux contraire to the tails of any other K9, however, Selenus's own tail was capable of extending up to ten meters and was strong enough to support his own weight twice over. Additionally, the place where normally a set of graspers could be found, Selenus had three wires that could not only help him grab things, but could also allow him to transfer data from and to his inner CPU to other computers with ease. These clones's tails, however, had none of those features. It was better than having no way to grab things, at least.

Now came the fun part: Selenus made sure that the clones were all operational before speaking up. If they were anything like regular K9 units, they would respond to voice commands just fine, even if unable to reply with words. He decided to test out their mobility by giving a simple request. "Form a line, side to side, about face." To his dismay, Selenus would not be greeted by an orderly line, but rather by the sight of the ten clones flashing their visors at him three consecutive times before stopping. Selenus remembered what this meant: This was the signal newer generation K9s gave when recieving an order from an unauthorized master. Selenus simply hoped that J. remembered to add his face (snout?) to the clones's list of authorized facial recognition log-ins.

Luckily enough he apparently did, as when Selenus gave the command "Log-in: Selenus." the clones covered his face in a red light before their visors flashed green. Selenus would repeat himself: "Form a line, side to side, about face." And thusly, the ten clones would carefully position themselves next to each other, one bordering perfectly with another's body, all of them facing Selenus. Though their movements were swift and smooth, they were still precise and... mechanical. It brought Selenus to the sudden realization that these K9s are no more than robots: Machines without a heart or mind that can't feel, think, agree/disagree or imagine... just like what he was supposed to be... it was heavy stuff, and Selenus stopped for a minute to let the emotions out of his system along with the artificial audio of a sigh coming from his voice box.

He really needed to stop getting upset over stuff like this, but... it was hard when the reality of your life and situation was literally staring you directly in the eyes ten times over and expecting you to say or do something. Regardless, he'd put his thoughts aside for now. There were tests to be run and money to be made. With another sigh and a swish of the tail, Selenus got back to work.

There were three main functionalities that Selenus had to test the clones for: Physical performance, systemic performance, and combat performance; The first being the clones's capability to perform strenous physical commads and endure exterior damages, the second being their capability to compute and comprehend the world around them and the commands given to them, and the third being their capability to defend themselves or those around them from potential threats. Selenus figured he'd start off with their physical performance, since it was arguably the easiest trait of the three to test and analyze.

"Alright. You three-" He said as he used his tail to point at three separate clones. "- stand on top of those four in a symmetrical trapesoid." He pointed to a separate group of four clones. Sure enough, the three clones he adressed first climbed on top of the four he adressed last, each of them laying one front paw and one hind paw on a different clone's body. "Now you two, do the same as those three did on those four, but on them." As expected, the two clones he adressed climbed the pyramid of clones (using the first row of clones as a step) and made themselves comfy at the top, above and between three other clones "Now you, put the icing on the cake." Unfortunately, the clone didn't understand Selenus's manner of speech, and instead of climbing the tower replied with two quick yellow flashes from its visor: The signal K9s gave when they failed to recognize the existance of one or more nouns in their master's request. Selenus sighed. "Just... get on top of the pyramid, will you?" Promptly, the clone used the first and second rows of clones as steps to ascend to the top and take its place in the perfectly symmetrical center of the pyramid.

"Hmm." Selenus began, getting ready to transfer his thoughts into the text file he'd opened. "(Title) K9-Q36c Performance Tests (End Title). The following observations should be taken into account whenever the nearest future event arises that ends in the necessity of repairing, mantaining, or replacing the K9-Q36c in order to further approximate their performance standards to those of their original model. Pleasen note that the observation on both ends of these comparisons have been analyzed and computed by a trustworthy source."

"K9-Q36c's weight carrying capacity seems to be adequate for a robot of its size and shape, being able to carry its own weight. Units exposed to the weight of their own units carrying that said weight in turn, however, seem to be having troubles maintaining composure. If they are to be equal to the original model, they must be able to carry four times their own weight before showing signs of structural damages. Their balance is perfect."

Moving on from balance and carrying capacity of their central body, Selenus commanded the clones to use their tails and one of the steel supports on the ceiling to exercise pull-ups until their tails started to show signs of oncoming damae. They obeyed and lasted a while, but the steel support in the ceiling did not. "K9-Q36c's tails seem to possess the same durability as the original model's, being able to hold the weight of the rest of the body for approximately five minutes before showing signs of damae. The steel supports of the basement roof, however, need some work." He figured he'd just tell J. up front next time he saw him. He didn't seem like the kind of man who minded property damage if it was done in the name of science.

After that, it was time to test the durability of their bodies. Selenus pointed at one of the clones and ordered it to ram another clone at full force, while he commanded the clone on the recieving end to take the blow without attemptintg to evade or counteract it. The clone reared up and sprinte head-first into the side of the other, causing a loud metal "clang!" that could probably be feintly heard from the bar above. When the two succesfully pried themselves apart from the mess that was their area of collision, Selenus observed that, though clone number one was mostly unphazed, clone number two had suffered a serious dent to his exoskeletal plating. "The durability of the units' exteriors is severely lacking. Whatever these units have for plating, it's not going to work. Recommended course of action would be to replace their exterior platings with a superheated steel, titanium and inconel alloy to allow for maximum durability. The round nature of the edges and turns of their plating parts might also be contributing to the fragility of their exoskeleton."

Lastly came speed. Selenus asked the 9 remaining clones that were in a state capable of doing physical activities to run around in circles in the basement as fast as they could. Their speed was nothing to scoff at, but nothing out of the ordinary either. At the very least they seemed to have very stable footing. "K9-Q36c units are lacking a very important feature that the original had. They should be supplied with the ability of shifting their center of gravity to make themselves sturdier or lighter and improve their durability or footspeed depending on the situation. This can be achieved by programming them with prompts to change their positions slightly, such as separating their legs or tilting their bodies into a diagonal position."

"That about sums it up for physical performance." Selenus thought to himself before realizing that his thought were still being written on the text file and disconnecting that portion of his mind from his CPU. He checked the time: Roughly half an hour had passed since he began testing. This was going by smoother and faster than he had originally expected, which was definitely a good thing, since although he had nothing in particular planned today, he didn't exactly want to spend the whole day cooped up inside a basement with ten and a half clones staring him in the face.

Next up was systematic performance, whose testing was fated to be relatively easy in comparison to the other two performances's respective tests. Selenus grabbed a marker and began writing a complex equation on the nearby whiteboard. The end result looked a little something like this. Once all 10 clones, including the damaged one, gave him the correct answer (Which I hope for both my and your sanity you're not actually expecting me to write out) Selenus nodded and wiped the whiteboard clean. This was a simple method to check that their CPUs were running at full capacity.

"Internal computers seem to be operating at full capacity. The clones were able to calculate the answer to a complex equation in fractions of a second. Though I trust the original model's calculation time to be faster, the difference in this case seems too minute to be noteworthy. CPU speed is fine."

Instead of giving a following command, however, Selenus found himself drawing a blank as to how to test the clones next. Not because he was unsure of what exactly he needed to do in the situation, systematic checks were performed by making sure that all of a unit's systems were runnning properly and Selenus knew this very well. It was just that... though he knew what he had to do, the definition of what he had to do was very vague. There were so many things that Selenus could use and do to compare the differences between his and their systems that he didn't know where to start off. Right then, a thought crossed his mind.

Standing up from his sitting position, Selenus would approach one of the clones and ask it to lay down on the floor with its belly facing up to the ceiling. After it did so, Selenus would carefully and cautiously remove the plate on the clone's barrel that covered the access to its circuitry and hardware. Spotting the main hard drive right away, Selenus used his tail to connect with it and be able to see the specs of a clone's hardware through his own CPU. What he found varied from good to bad.

"In regards to specs of the clones' hardware, there are many things to say, so allow me to start off with the most glaring issue. A petabyte's worth of storage is way too minuscule for all the data that a robot such as a K9 has to handle. In order to be completely equal to the original, the clones would need a zettabyte of disk space at minimum. Aside from that, speech recognition devices could use an upgrade. It shouldn't be beyond reason to outfit them with versions that supported the understanding of slang, figures of speech and sarcasm. I strongly encourage this upgrade, considering who it is that they were built to take orders from and who it is that they're supposed to look after. There are some outdated drivers in their storages, but they are too few and too meaningless to be worth noting. However, going long periods of time without updating drivers can be dangerous, and since long periods of time stem from short periods of time, I'd recommend updating drivers whenever it is that the chance arises. On another note, battery consumption appears to be better, in fact, than the original model's, with the clones's average battery life before needing to enter sleep mode at 100% being of 62 hours compared to the original model's 48 hours. Recharge time, on the other hand, is lackluster in comparison; The original model regains full batery in 4 hours, while the clones do it in approximately 8. I imagine this is due to the battery in posession of the clones sacrificing battery charge speed for battery durability. If this is indeed the case, then feel free to modify this or not depending on what is most convenient in regards to your current situation."

With that out of the way, Selenus only had one more thing to test in regards to systems, though it wasn't exactly something that could be looked up in their system statistics, so he would have to test it out for himself. "What am I?" He asked the clones. "O u r - m a s t e r ." They would all reply in unison, though one of them with some slight glitching due to external damage, in a clearly synthetic, artificial and robotic voice. Hell, even Microsoft Sam would've done a better job of sounding like a person. "That's not what I meant. What species do I belong to?" He reiterated. "Y o u - a r e - h u m a n ." They replied again. This was the answer that Selenues expected. They were programmed to understand that nothing but a human was capable of giving them orders, after all, no matter how incredibly ugly in terms of humans that implied their data of their master's face to be. "Then shoot me." Of course, Selenus was planning on shadow acceling out of range if they obeyed, but thankfully for him, he didn't have to accel anywhere. "I l l e g a l - c o m m a n d : L a w s - o f - r o b o t i c s - v i o l a t i o n ." And with that answer, Selenus had all he needed to know about the final systematic test."Clones comply with Asimov's laws of robotics. Work ethic results are satisfactory. In terms of systems as a whole, there are quite a few upgrades to be made if the owner of the clones has any hopes of them replicating the original, yet some systems seem to outperform the original even if only by minuscule amounts. I'll include a system statistics chart of the original model at the end of this document to be compared and contrasted with a system statistics chart of the clones in order to correctly identify which systems should be replaced and which should be left alone."

And finally, for the last performance test: Combat. Selenus looked around to take in the full dimensions of the basement: It was roomy enough to hold a one on one, and it was lightly noise-cancelling to boot, so the only way the patrons on the bar above would be able to hear anything would be if they made another sound as loud as the head-on collision of two K9s, which hopefully wsn't going to happen here. Selenus, however, doubted the room's apability of holding a fight with 11 people (Or canine robots, in this case), so he decided to instead spar against only one of the clones. They all had the same bodies and systems, so he figured his results could be applied to all the rest.

"You nine." He said, pointing to all but one of the clones. "Step back, up against the wall." All of them complied, though the damaged one took a bit longer toprocess the request and so lagged behind slightly. "Now you, come over here." The remaining clone did as told. Selenus took out one of the Winds of Destruction out of its holster and handed it to the clone, who took it obediently. "Spar with me." The clone nodded in understanding. Before Selenus could strike first and initiate the sparring program, however, a voice interrupted from the inside of his mind.




To the clone, Selenus had simply stopped giving orders. It awaited patiently for the prompt to start sparring with its master, yet the prompt took its sweet time arriving. Realizing that this was his chance to try to catch the clone by surprise, Selenus quickly grabbed a WoD from his hip and swung it overhead, going for the clone's head itself. The clone, however, was quick to respond and clash knife with knife. Selenus pushed hard enough to break the clash and quickly followed up by walking forward as he delivered more cuts. The clone succesfully parried all of them, but was being driven back by Selenus's forward motion. Eventually, Selenus decided the clone had parried enough and plunged the knife head-on in the clone's direction. The clone, not wanting to provide a dissapointing sparring match, jumped back as far as it could and propelled itself off of the wall, rushing like towards Selenus. At the last second before touché, however, Selenus stepped to the side and extended his tail on the ground. The clone tripped forward, dropping the knife on the ground as it used its tail as support to get up. Before it could succesfully recover, however, Selenus ensnared its body with his tail and threw him towards the other wall. The clone struck the wall with a heavy *Thud!* That was fortunately muffled by the noise-cancelling properties of the basement.

After a few seconds of recalibration, the clone stood up and braced itself for more to come. Seperataing its legs, the clone opened its mouth and allowed its firearm to peek out. The clone started firing foam bullets, which Selenus was seriously not expecting. He assumed that J. had anticipated this and equipped them with non-lethal amunition, as K9s were strictly prohibited to use lethal resources while sparring. Fortunately, Selenus was able to Shadow Accel out of harm, going in a zig-zag motion from side to side until it reached the clone, at which point he would place his knife under the bridge of its neck. "Checkmate."

The clone, knowing that if this had been a real batle it would have been terminated, retracted its gun back into its mouth and assumed a relaxed position. Selenus carefully put his knife back into its holster before picking up the knife the clone dropped and doing the same.

With that all said and done, Selenus was done with the testing. It was time to finish writing the report. He picked up the foam bullets dispensed by his sparring clone and returned them to it before sitting down at the side of the room opposite to the room. "You are dismissed." Selenus ordained, the clones giving a green flash from their visors before heading back to... wherever it is they were stored. Selenus assumed they kept to themselves somewhere else in the basement level. Now alone and at peace, Selenus reconnected his mind to the document and began to think.

"In overview, the physical aspects of the K9-Q36c units are lackluster in comparison the the original. This comes as no surprise, considering the difference in development time and development budgets of their respective development projects. Though, this does not mean that their physical attributes are not impressive for the time and money that was allocated into their production, in fact, it's quite impressive. Again, the most glaring physical issue lays on the external plating. I've already mentioned that their plating should be replaced with a superheated steel/titanium/inconel alloy like the original possesed, but I know that such an alloy isn't exactly easy or cheap to make or purchase, so... for now, I'd recommend an overlapping coat of kevlar or something of the sort to lessen concussive damages. Other than that, their weight-carrying capacity can easily be improved by applying the aforementioned center-of-gravity-shifting ability. Though, some mathematical calculations might need to be performed before the feature can be properly implemented."

"I've already gone over the specifics of the problems that the clones' systems present, so I'll be skipping the recap and instead heading directly into the recommendations. While a superstorage drive of 1 zettabyte isn't too incredibly hard to find if you know where you're looking, I again understand that the idea of outfitting each and every clone with one would be unrealistic considering the price of said superstorages and the amount of money in posession of the owner (if the state of their living quarters is any indication of thus). Storages of one exobyte should be sufficient. If even that proves to expensive, then retaining the current storage capacity of one petabyte could prove acceptable in the short term, but upgrades will become necessary in the near future once their memory partitions fill up. I mentioned that their CPU processing speed is adequate, but don't let me stop you from upgrading it if you so wish. Same thing goes for battery life and charge speed."

"In terms of combat, the clone that was submitted to testing was perfectly capable of keeping up with standard K9 attacks and human fighting techniques, even being able to fend off damage from a melee weapon. This means that they appear perfectly capable of fending off common criminals. Once it was subjected to the combat measures that were exclusive to the original mode, however, it didn't last long. The suggested course of action here would be to improve their reaction time and firing accuracy, along with recalibration speed, lest they fail to measure up against more menacing threats than criminals or a certain clown's apparent essokinesis."

"The final touch needed to completely assimilate the clones to the original model's capabilities would be to supply them with Papillon Hearts. This is an action, however, that I am going to have to strictly forbid. Being a roboticist himself, the man to whom this document is adressed should know fully well why this action would be both extremely unethical and a bit of a stab in the back to me. Besides, the components needed to succesfully create a Papillon Heart are ludicrously expensive, and I doubt he would be able to purchase them even if he had the intention to (No offense.), especially considering how many of them he would have to succesfully create in order to supply the entire K9-Q36c fleet with one each."

"I will now be supplying you with the system statistics charts that I promised earlier in the document. Feel free to write the data down."

Selenus did as promised and uploaded the results of the system scan he ran while in control of the clone's CPU alongisde a system scan of his own CPU that he ran just then as he uploaded the clone's. Speaking (or in this case, showing) of himself in such a technical, mechanical manner always felt weird to Selenus, but at the same time it always felt right. He assumed it was because of his conflicting emotions regarding being a robot with a mind and whatnot, but that didn't stop him from being conflicted about it as well. In this particular case, however, he noticed that a lot of his systems statistics had upgraded since the last time he ran a system check (which was about a year ago). Selenus would've written it off as J's work, but J didn't modify or change any of his hardware, he only repaired his external platings and replaced his ligaments and joints. For now, the only expanation Selenus had was that, much like a lot of other aspects about himself, they changed when he awoke to Fenrir.

"Finally, allow me to remind you to properly dispose of this paper as soon as you finish writing down the statistics, observations and recommendations I've listed. Wouldn't want someone else to get their hands on this info, now would we? With all that said, I'll be ending this report now." He thought as he disconnected his mind from the document for good and saved his progress, storing it in his hard drive. He stood up from where he had been sitting and began to walk towards the nearest computer. As he did, however, he began to question whether he was really fine with these clones even existing. It was true that they didn't possess a mind like Selenus did, and that that was the one key factor that differentiated him from the clones completely, but... there was still something that felt incredibly sour to him about his body being used as a base for what was essentially a platoon of objects that doubled as servants and weapons. It was like finding out that somebody made a statue, no, millions of statues in your image, but they all represented everything you stand against and oppose. It was an oxymoron. At the very least they would come in handy as decoys if the government ever targeted him, and if J was honest about calling Selenus a friend, he'd be willing to sacrifice some of his beloved 8D hunters if it meant ensuring that Selenus kept his freedom, which was nice.

Walking into the next room, Selenus would appraoch what he assumed to be J's personal computer and stick his wires in the computer's USB entry port, opening acces between his own CPU and this one. After transferring over the document from his storage to the compter's storage, he'd turn on the printer and set the file for printing. Hopefully Proffessor J didn't mind him using up a bit of the printer's ink, because this document was long. As the computer printed the file, Selenus couldn't help but land his eyes on the tons of strange machinery that was kept down there. He expected weirdness, considering whose basement he was dealing with, but he expected it in a less mad-scientist-y form, to be completely frank.

Once the document had been completely printed, Selenus would remove his wires from the CPU (but not before securing a safe extraction) and pick up the papers before exiting the room. He checked the clock: the whole thing took about an hour and 45 minutes. Selenus was happy with the results, but... he wasn't very confident about giving the document to the professor. The idea that J. could go to town with these results and make extreme modifications to the clones to the point where they surpassed him... it sounded plausible, and it scared him. Before he left the basement altogether, Selenus would grab the whiteboard marker he used before and write a footnote on the last page of the docment.

"Please be considerate of the original model's dignity when applying modifications."

Once he had finished doing that (Which took a litle, considering Selenus had to prep the page up against the wall and write in it with the same tail), Selenus grabbed the paper once again and went for the door. His job here was done.