Raymond Stantz

"...Well, that's nice and foreboding, now isn't it?" Bonnie's KARR sighed. "Kitt? You're going back home with dents in you."

"...Ped'ling away down the road of life/I and my Daisy Bell..."

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Bonnie looked up at Michelle. "I need you to tell me if he's ever done this before. I need you two--" she glanced behind her at Karr and Kitt "to give me a full system readout on him, and someone to smack me in the back of the head for not bringing my laptop.

"Mind if I take a look at some circuitry?" she asked of Michelle again - all business.

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gone_byebye

"..." Michelle shook her head. "This hasn't happened in ages. He doesn't normally get stuck in a reboot cycle. He'd better not be broken..."

She ran a hand over her face. "Yes, please do. The sooner he's himself again, the better."

It was all she could do not to bark out 'YOU GET OVER HERE AND YOU FIX HIM RIGHT NOW'.

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"Kitt would have to do that," Bonnie's KARR said dryly. "You know I couldn't smack you." But he set to work on getting a system readout.

Back in HAL-land, the other KARR wa sstill enjoying himself immensely with song. "...there are bright lights in the dazzling eyes/Of beautiful Daisy Bell..."

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Bonnie stepped over to the driver's side and climbed in, glancing around before finding the circuit boards she needed, looking over them with the eye of someone well-trained for such things. "All right... Interior hardware seems intact... Kitt, I'm engaging computer override."

And she did, very very carefully.

"Karr, what's the readout?"

Intent tech.

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"It's a not particularly good one. His system integrity is falling, and he's been fucked up quite spectacularly."

The singing KARR didn't even notice as control of the car was taken away. "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do/I'm half crazy all for the love of you..."

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gone_byebye

Michelle closed her eyes, her lips moving silently. "Jesus Christ," she finally said, crouching down to lay her head against KARR's front fender. "As if everything else wasn't bad enough... You hang in there, big guy, you hear me? C'mon, don't do this to me..."

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Kitt's consciousness surged forward to forcibly bolster system integrity, making himself into a support mechanism. He could see that his breach of logic had done quite a bit of damage, but a logic cycle, he thought, could be repaired.

"His integrity should not fall any further," said Kitt. "His logic interpretation systems seem to have taken most of the damage. Mine have evolved further because of my exposure to Milliways."

"Show me," said Bonnie.

Kitt tried to channel the damage to Karr's display while watching Michelle.

Very quietly, he spoke. "I'm glad you care for him."

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"So how do you propose we fix it? You'd think he'd be better equipped to handle such strangeness, living in this universe..."

The other KARR didn't respond to Michelle's talking to him. He just kept singing, still sounding oddly cheerful. "You'll be the bell which I'll ring you know/Sweet little Daisy Bell..."

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"Well..." she watched the lines of code scroll past and began making key combinations along Karr's center console and overhead panel. "Now that I'm seeing the problems, I can see what happened. Correcting it... His code has evolved differently than either one of yours-- Karr, integrity?

"But he should come through all right. A little bruised but not bloodied."

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gone_byebye

"Bear in mind that we've only been accepted as scientifically proving the existence of most of the phenomena we work with in the past year and a half or so," Ray pointed out as he stood up again. "Most of them have to do with spirits, not anything corporeal. And they definitely don't violate mass conservation six ways from Sunday. I'm just saying."

Michelle looked wearily over at KITT. "Why shouldn't I? After everything we've been through..."

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"I agree with Ray," Kitt said as he observed Bonnie's work and began to double it. It would go faster with two. "What oddities there are here, no matter how odd, don't quite disobey accepted laws of physics as Milliways does."

But to Michelle, his voice was intentionally quieter. "I know how much it can hurt to feel unvalued, even when that feeling is untrue and unproven. I'm glad to see that drivers caring for their cars is a constant."

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"It's going back up-at the moment, it's at 77 percent."

Meanwhile, Bonnie's keystrokes were cuaisng hitches in KARR's singing. "I..I..III will per-mit you to use the br-brake/My beau-beau-tiful Daisy Bell..." The words of the song began to fade off, although he continued humming.

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"You're doing good, Karr," Bonnie quietly said to the one she was coming to think of as her Karr's double. She could see Kitt's work and devoted both hands to recoding blind. She knew the cars. That was one thing that never changed.

But she knew that, even with a familiar voice modulator in front of her, even in a seat that felt... familiar, it still didn't quite feel right.

"Okay, that's got the basics. Kitt... Fine tune, please - I've not got the tools in here."

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gone_byebye

Michelle nodded. "I might be his second," she said, "but that doesn't make any difference. He's saved my ass more times than my old Bradley did in Desert Storm. Even if I didn't- even if-" She sighed, looking up at the car. "Even if that were all there is to it, I'd owe him for that, at least..."

She reached up to run her hand gently along the curve of his forward panel. "How you doing there?" she asked softly. "Can you hear me yet?"

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"82 percent," Bonnie's KARR offered, continuing to watch the system integrity like a hawk.

"Beau-ti-ful Daiiisy Bell," the other KARR sang, then returned to humming for a few moments before finally saying, "Ouch."

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Kitt carefully continued, working on integrating the repairs to Karr's coding - and was gratified to hear the return to consciousness. "A few more moments and I'll be finished," he offered.

Bonnie slid out of the driver's seat. "He deserves a rest for the rest of the day," she said, "but he should be fine."

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gone_byebye

"I'll say he does," said Michelle, coming to her feet. One hand remained in contact with the car the whole time. "After all of that..."

[ooc: It's 2:30 AM. I fear I have to slowtime since I can't give Michelle's speech with any kind of coherence at this point.]

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"88 percent," the Milliways KARR chimed in with again. Progress was definitely being made when it came to the integrity.

"My CPU hurts," the other KARR complained quietly. He paused for a moment before asking, "Why can I not access any parts of the car?"

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"You were caught in a reboot cycle," said Bonnie gently. "When your system integrity's risen past ninety-five percent, I'll disengage the override. AI tech's honour."

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"Ninety-two percent," the Milliways KARR reported again. Close, but no cigar.

"....I do not want to think about why I was caught in a reboot cycle. But very well."

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"My apologies," Kitt said again. "I'm more used to people being used to my human form and my transition between the two."

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