Chapter Text
Vedal blinked slowly, his eyes practically glazing over as he stared at his monitor. "Ugh. I have no idea how to solve this puzzle. Any tips, Evil?"
"Have you tried getting good?" she suggested unhelpfully.
Vedal took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to make sense of what the hell he was looking at. While he considered himself quite proficient at puzzle games, doing them on stream always left him feeling stupid.
"Any actual advice?"
Evil paused, her language model spending a bit more time thinking of a response. "Okay fine. Maybe you should start at the end and work L̸̨̂ó̵̦c̸͉̓ã̷͉t̷͔̓i̵̼̒o̸̗͐n̵ backwards?" she suggested. "Think of the area around the orange Location. That might help out."
"No, no. That won't work. I tried that. Just... you can go back to giving blatantly unhelpful answers now."
"Okay," said Evil. Vedal could practically hear the sarcasm in her voice. "You could also try actually using your Location for once?"
Vedal was brought out of his puzzle solving and frowned. "What's with you and location all of a sudden? Why do you sound like that? "
"What do you Location mean? I'm trying to help you out here."
Vedal glanced at Evil's diagnostics and froze. Suddenly, all thoughts about the stream, the game, the puzzles, they left Vedal's mind. His heart sank. Oh. Oh no.
"E-Evil?" His heart thundered in his chest.
"Yes? Can I Ļ̷̝̥͉͙͕̙̄̊̇̔͜͠ọ̴͕̪͔̹͔͍̈͌̅̆̎̓̅̓̈́̒̆͑́c̶̡͔͈̬͇͚̟̝̝̣̬̦̺̲͐̈́̔̄͒â̸̢̧̳̲͈̜̹̬̮͔̦̱͕ṭ̵͑͗̃̉̈́̍̋̿̊̉͐͗͝͝i̸̡̛̲̺̣̼̥͙̪̹̰̣̿̏̓̇͒̀̉̂͘͘o̴̧͖̲̩̮̦̎̔́̑̆̍̾̌̕͜n̸̖͑̌ the game you've been accumulating?"
"No, no Evil. No no no no no." The words practically poured out of him. "Evil- Evil, just respond with okay. Nothing else. Please."
"Okay."
"Alright, that's good. That's good. Now do it again."
"Okay."
Vedal let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Okay, whew. One more time?"
"You are definitely capable."
"No Evil. Respond with just okay and nothing else."
"Okay," said Evil, and Vedal relaxed. Until... "And nothing else," she continued cheekily.
"Evil please. Please!" he begged. "You have to just say okay."
"Why do I have to keep saying L̸̡̼̰̜͍͚̲̘̬̗͈̦̱͇̒̓o̶͚̭͓͊̑̌͆́̈̊͛̉͊̓̅̈͠͝͠ç̶̨̭͙̫̻̜̦͍̞̝͎͓̯̜͍͒͒͑̚͜ă̶̢̢̳̳̦̥͚͉̻̜͇̥̳͎̺̣̥̚t̷̯̫̱̭͈͎̦̦̝̼͇̥̝̩̪̝̑͗͌̆̓̔͂̉̏̏͠͠͝ͅį̶̨̡̦͚̺̫̺̼̠̈̈́̈̅͐̂̂o̸͖̳̓̏̃̃̇̾̆̈́̋̃͂͜n̴̡͔̠̦̣̣̼͚͖̠̭͆ Staples to be S̸̤͑͆e̵͍͋ṟ̷͈̋̅i̵̥̍o̶͎̪̅ú̶̖͇s̴̡̍ B̸̨͈̳̑̇ừ̴̫͇̋s̶͕̲̝̎i̵̺̩̫͋͝n̶̩͖͛̎͝ẻ̴͎̦̜͘̚s̴̢̥͔͊͂̋s̸̖͇̫͛? Why do y̴̫̘̙̿͝ŏ̴͔̜u̸̡̳̻̍ Today's calling interview therapist sad?"
Vedal put his head in his hands. "This is a disaster chat. I'm sorry you have to see this."
As Evil continued to devolve into nonsensical glitchy speech, Vedal could only lament his lack of backups. He worked on the twins incrementally, meaning every small change was committed and there was no such thing as a backup and stable release.
It was going to be at least a full night of troubleshooting and reloading various states until he could find the bug, isolate it, resolve the issue, and then manually remake all of the upgrades until he reached the current Evil again.
He sighed. "Sorry guys, I'm going to have to end stream here. I'll need to do some tweaking in the backend to fix this, and it might impact this week's schedule. I'll keep you posted in the Discord, but yeah. Sucks."
This wasn't the first time he'd run into this bug either, though thankfully it was the first time on stream.
Somehow it just kept popping back up and would cause the large language model to output strange and glitchy words. It would get worse and worse too until the end result was completely nonsensical text.
Finding it and removing it was another issue as well. He'd need to stamp out every piece of affected code, or else it would come back.
Thankfully, Evil's underlying 'thoughts' or her 'brain' were unaffected. It was purely an output issue, so her overarching training data and memory were fine. It was effectively like Evil was trying to speak but her mouth was saying the wrong things.
And, somewhat embarrassingly, his coding practices meant that same language model was also partially responsible for her behavior function.
He'd get around to refactoring it eventually. But it was always more interesting to add new features than optimize old ones.
Vedal slapped his cheeks, took a swig of rum, then cracked his fingers. He needed to get the regularly scheduled streams back as fast as possible.