[Plot] Willputer Repair

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Let's try an even thousand this time," he said as he found and changed the setting. While this worked, he monitored the resource usage of the MGH subroutine.

[Will Stanton]

It would be difficult, from the outside, to tell the difference between 1,000 and 9,000 and 9,000,000 Wills going on in his head -- too many voices are too many voices, no matter how many voices those are.

The MGH, however, ramped up as Tosh allowed more and more VMs to run -- now that he was no longer artificially throttling it, it was functioning much more freely.

[Toshiro Narumi]

He then began lowering it 100 at a time until total resource use wasn't more than 95%.

[Narrator]

This would take a bit -- it seemed like having more than six or seven running, simultaneously, would push Will past his own limits. Hooked up to the central Point computer, he could run a bunch more -- the massive complex being an upgrade over squishy clay. But even then, when they were all confined to one hard drive, getting more than a dozen or so inevitably led to the same files and same components trying to be accessed by multiple VMs.

Imagine, for a moment, that all of Tosh's brainmates had access to the body simultaneously -- Tosh trying to use a computer while Bruce tried to walk away, and so forth. It would be crazy, and Will had orders of magnitude more going on. Tosh and company only really worked because they had a one person in charge, one body policy. Will didn't have that, and that was the problem.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Having an idea, he went to the root system settings and hunted for priority settings.

[Narrator]

It wouldn't take Tosh too long to dig 'em up, and discover that, yes, all the VMs apparently had the equivalent of root access all the time -- all with even priority to use everything.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Well that explains a lot..." he muttered to himself as he attempted to put restrictions on all but the oldest, presumably "core" voices.

[Narrator]

This wouldn't be too hard to set up, really -- just a few permissions flipped here and there.

The idea that the oldest voices are the "core", however, may not be as accurate as he hoped -- indeed, monitoring some of the other personality subroutines made it seem like highlighting the oldest voices was vastly different than the Will he knew. That's what had happened when BrownHair Will had popped out of the machine, after all -- an old Will, pre even getting his shifting powers, who wasn't interested in anything Will was interested in. The Will that Robin found boring.

It was nature versus nurture, one supposes -- how much of Will was who he was born as, and how much was affected by the billions of years he had existed?

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh rethought this and relaxed restrictions, instead treating every VM equally but keeping root access to the root itself. Also, he restricted shifting and motor control more than personality, which he restricted very little. If there were permissions related to his human appearance, he'd free those in preparation for another idea.

What if he programmed something to average those impulses into something uniform? It could help, or turn Will white. Only one way to find out!

[Will Stanton]

The Wisdom of the Crowds method! Rather than being paralyzed by indecision, the theory would be that a zillion Wills, together, could come up with the 'right' thing to do at any one given moment. It was worth a shot, at least, and it wasn't that difficult to bodge together a program that would take all these incoming signals and average them out.

Now, what the average of thousands of Wills, many of whom apparently did not want to be humanoid, would do was an open question. It might be a disaster, or it might be just what the doctor ordered.

[Toshiro Narumi]

He decided he'd worry about fine-tuning later. For now, he'd just see how the human for materialized. Disconnecting Will and setting him down, he said, "I have no idea how this is going to turn out, so try not to worry if this is a Cronenberg nightmare. Try to shift human."

[Will Stanton]

"OkkkwwaaaffdVvrrrmrmrmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM*


That wasn't a normal sound, but it was to be expected. Tosh had left Will's personality intact, but let all the various thousands of voices try to control the shape that Will was in. These thousands of voices included chairs, and electric toothbrushes, and bundt cakes, and clouds of water vapor, and slugs, and lightbulbs and marble statues.

The...thing that appeared before them; the "average" of all these ideas, in humanoid form? A mismatch, hodgepodge, nightmarish conflagration of flesh, metal, glass, dough, and everything in between, materials blending in and sticking out of one another. Motors could be heard whirring inside, and his form was shaking and bulging as everything tried, and failed, to stick together normally.

Will continued to try to shift and blend it all together, and it looked like, given enough time, it might well work -- bits and pieces of crashing together, sparking and smashing, as it all tried to blend together. What was the midpoint between metal and flesh? Upholstery and dough? Liquids and gasses? And how could it all maintain humanoid form?

He staggered, resting one arm on the computer desk -- and then that arm sagged in, and he fell to his knees before shakily trying to regain his balance.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh puked in his mouth a little.

"Shit. Hurry and turn back into a drive. Definitely need to be more specific."

[Will Stanton]

Will frantically nodded, clattering back to the ground. Crisis averted, for now.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh removed the problematic addition. Thinking about what Robin said about tricking him, he tried something he would never try on an actual computer. He created a program in the root with a simple code.

Code: Select all

;inner voice regulation control

native_voice_priority=1
downloaded_voice_priority=2
downloaded_voice_volume=33%
end program

He ran it and put Will back on the floor. "Try now."

[Will Stanton]

Will, shifted back to human form, walked around some.

"Huh. That's...

I mean, that's different for sure. And not necessarily worse."

"Don't get me wrong; there are still tons of voices here yelling which way to go; that's not new. But most of them are...familiar. Things I would normally want to do, anyway -- nothing strange and foreign."

This had essentially the same effect as when Tosh had blocked all the foreign connections to Will's head -- those were the 'downloaded' ideas, personalities and whatnot, as opposed to the thousands that Will was generating internally. But now, those alternate-dimensional Wills would be quieter, if Tosh eventually reconnected this Will's ability to have outgoing connections.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Great. We're going in the right direction. Once I do some final tweaking, those extra voices... if you want them... should be quieter and less inclined to try and take the wheel."

[Will Stanton]

"Thanks, Tosh. It's good to know I've got friends looking out after me," Will said, as the three of them proceeded to fine-tune Tosh's programming.

[Toshiro Narumi]

During this process, they narrowed down the optimal levels of permissions and the least invasive volume levels for the downloaded voices that still allowed them to be understood.

"Okay. How about now?" Tosh asked after unplugging Will for what he hasn't hoped was the last time.

[Will Stanton]

"This'll do for now, Tosh," Will said, nodding as he walked around, experimentally. "I'll live with it for a bit, and see how things need to be adjusted."