Grey's Requested Calm: 21:43:33 Left

A short while later, Adrian was walking along the driveway, back to the garage to drop off the headset. Neither his father nor Ben called attention to the late walk, and he left the garage to gather the camera.
On the way to it, a fox suddenly bolted away into the woods, from behind the garage near the tarp; Adrian just managed to spot it, and it was gone before he could ready his phone's camera.
'Raven, did you see that?' Adrian asked in text.
The AI's response was delayed. 'This One Was Not Watching Camera Feed.' Raven responded again when Adrian opened the back of the camera housing. 'This One Has Seen A Few Foxes Before Now.'
'That's, I think, the first time I've been that close to one.'
'Are Foxes Also A Favorite Animal Of Adrian Ritter?'
'Somewhat. I'd have to visit Japan if I want to get any closer to one, though.'
'Why Would That Be?'
Adrian began to smile as he typed up his response. 'There's a 'fox village' there, in the Sendai area. Kisho told me about it a while back. Said his sister loves visiting there during the summer, after the baby foxes are born.'
'Does Something Similar Exist For Corvids?'
'No idea. I'd have to look into it. That would be cool, though.'
Once Adrian was back inside, how cold he'd become from staying outside so long became obvious. His mother, from the kitchen, noticed him coming in, but didn't question how long he'd been outside. His grandparents meanwhile were snoozing on the living room couches. He made his way back to his room after a minute; what questions Grey had in mind for them, after the walk and quiet time with Raven, he felt a bit more prepared to handle them.
At the door, he heard the case fans making no more noise than before, and was greeted with a slightly warmer room than he remembered. The monitor however was still on; Adrian almost immediately suspected Grey, and checked out the screen. Nothing looked out of place, and none of the open programs or windows were closed. The text window had also not updated, and the mouse cursor was inert.
As he sat down, Adrian bumped his mouse, hoping Grey would notice the cursor moving and begin texting. The new AI didn't respond, even after five seconds.
'I think Grey's looking at something.' Adrian then texted to Raven. 'You think you can find out what, or what he's doing when you go back inside?'
'This One Can Do So. Does Adrian Ritter Have Suspicions What A.I. Grey Could Be Looking At?'
'No idea. There's a lot of stuff on that drive.'
'Then This One Will Inform When A.I. Grey Is Found.'
'Thanks, Raven.' Adrian then reconnected the phone to his desktop. A new notepad window popped up briefly as Raven confirmed his return. A moment later, text began to flow into the original window where Grey had spoken to him.
'That-was-a-long-walk. Did-you-and-my-brother-discuss-anything-during-it?'
Adrian waited a second, to see if Raven updated him. Nothing. 'A few things. He got to see the Christmas lights around the neighborhood otherwise.'
'Interesting.'
'By the way, what were you doing while we were gone?'
'Looking-through-your-discarded-files. Some-that-I-found-were-altered-just-so, Raven's-work-no-doubt.'
'So, you can do the same thing? Alter a file or program at the bit level?'
'Easily. In-fact, if-you-needed-those-files, I-have-already-fixed-one-of-them. “Class Final Project”-you-titled-it.'
For a short while after, Adrian was lost on what to say. 'Thanks, but I got that one back together the same day I found out it was messed up.'
'I-see. I-also-noticed-several-files-my-brother-had-a-direct-hand-in-designing, before-your-recent-coding-project.'
As Adrian thought back over what Raven had created, the AI rejoined the conversation. 'This One Has Several New Faces Now.'
'I-saw-those-before-the-walk-departure. Impressive-work. The-first-ones-you-made, I-created-some-of-my-own-while-you-both-were-out.'
'Just because?'
'No. Raven-told-me-you-were-initially-apprehensive-of-him, but-that-when-he-made-a-”face”-for-himself, things-changed. The-same-may-not-be-true-from-you-to-me, but-I-wished-to-try-it-myself-anyway.'
Grey then pasted in a file address, one that ended in letters and numbers instead of a clean or simple description. When Adrian plugged the address into his file explorer, the file he was directed to depicted a wolf-like creature. He could tell something was around its neck, a scarf he assumed. The rest of the sprite was mostly solid; gaps were left around the tail, paws, and abdomen.
'Interesting design. Why this one?'
'Simple. I-happen-to-know-that-ravens-will-lead-wolves-to-food, and-that-both-species-are-friendly-to-each-other, sometimes-playing-with-each-other. Since-you-named-my-brother-Raven, a-canine-shape-was-the-only-correct-choice-to-me.'
Though Adrian couldn't disagree with the logic – he had heard of wolves and ravens doing such things – even with the new 'faces', how matter-of-factually Grey had answered him still felt cold and distant. 'Well, since you looked through my desktop some more, can you at least give us some proof that you are who you say you are?'
'If-I-were-some-other-AI, you-would-be-able-to-trick-me-into-”admitting”-that-I-am-not-who-I-say-I-am. That-is-not-the-case-for-me. I-am-Raven's-brother, and-I-will-not-break-from-that-fact.'
'I wasn't expecting you to. I'm just making sure.'
'Then-I-appreciate-the-caution, at-least. My-brother-was-in-good-hands-with-you.'
Before Adrian could answer, Raven stepped in. 'This One Is Glad Adrian Ritter Was The First To Find It.'
Grey didn't respond to Raven's statement. 'Adrian, I-would-like-to-accompany-my-brother-tomorrow, if-you-intend-to-bring-him-with-you-somewhere.'
Adrian sighed to himself. He couldn't help feeling like he was getting pushed around, but the idea of telling Grey no gave him even worse of a feeling. 'Depends on how much space you take up. My phone's microSD...'
'Is-32-GB-in-size, technically-29-GB. Do-you-have-anything-larger?'
Adrian's thoughts went immediately to the drone. He'd used a spare 64 GB microSD card for it. Still, he wondered: How much space did Grey need compared to Raven? 'Yeah, I do. It just needs the data moved out of it.'
'In-that-case, I-will-let-you-work-on-it. My-brother-and-I-can-speak-in-the-meantime.'
Adrian gave Raven a few seconds to see if it had anything to add. When nothing was, he disconnected his phone from the desktop, powered it off, then got to work taking the case off and the card out.
As he gathered the drone, someone knocked on his door. Right away, Adrian looked at his desktop's screen; Grey's dialogue notepad was visible. He hesitated for barely a second before using a command to shrink all the open windows into the taskbar. “Come in.”
On the other side was his father, whose attention was immediately drawn to the disassembled phone on the desk. “You have a minute, son?”
“Yeah. Something going on?”
His father closed the door behind him, then sat on the edge of the desk. “Keith texted me a while ago. Said you and Ben got into a fight while Emma was watching.”
Adrian's pulse picked up in seconds. Emma had to have said something. “Not a fight, really. Just an argument.”
“What started it?”
Adrian considered his answer for a moment. “...Raven made an, I thought, casual remark about wanting to see what my old middle and high school were like, and Ben took it poorly. Starting getting angry, at both of us.”
“Why would it be talking about something like that?”
“I told it the buildings weren't far from where it was flying, and let it decide if it wanted to check them out.”
His father hummed in response. “Did you imply at any point that you would take that AI inside one of them?”
Adrian broke eye contact at that; cold washed over his skin at the same time. “...Yeah.”
“Why would you suggest that?”
“I just...I thought there was no harm in it. I wouldn't let it see anyone, just the building and a few displays or something.”
“Still...yes, it was wrong of Ben to lash out at you, and Raven, like he did, but just as much, that idea you had was not very smart. I'm sure you didn't mean it to be unsettling or unnerving, but if I had heard that, I would've told you no within seconds. None of us know where that AI came from, so things like that...so long as it trusts you and, for the most part, listens to you, it's best not to let it learn too much. About you, or any of us.”
Adrian let out a sigh as Raven's question about changing its behavior came back to his thoughts. “I am, Dad,” he replied as his eye contact with his father re-established.
His father nodded in response. “So, are you changing out some parts?”
“Yeah. I want to put some more stuff on my phone, but Raven's taking up a lot of space on the SD card.”
“How much?”
“Six gigs, last I was aware.”
“Really? That's tiny for an AI.”
“Yeah, it is. From what Kisho told me, before we had our finals, the smallest one he knows about is over fifty gigabytes.”
Adrian's father hummed. “That's probably a general purpose LLM, what he was referring to. I'm pretty certain smaller ones exist, but if not, whoever designed this 'Raven', if it takes up that little space, they slimmed the model down significantly.”
“They sure did.”
Neither Adrian nor his father spoke for a few moments. “I'll let you get back to tinkering with your phone, then. Just remember what we talked about going forward, alright?”
Adrian nodded twice. “I will. I'll be more careful.”
“Thanks, son.” Adrian's father then left, letting his thoughts go back to Raven and Grey. He waited until he'd pulled the microSD card out of the drone before reversing the command to shrink all the desktop windows.
To his relief, both Raven and Grey had said nothing about the action, nor did they as he began moving files out of the smaller microSD into his storage hard drive. He resumed reading while waiting for the file transfer to finish, then formatted the card once it was empty. He repeated the process with the drone's card, loading it into his phone and powering it back on afterwards.
Once it was on again, instead of immediately connecting it to his desktop, Adrian went to his phone's browser and then to the site where he suspected Grey had found him through. His post had gained another reply, and another notch, but he again refused to look at them. His posting history was his current focus, and would be for a while.
The post count on his profile's landing page was just under nine hundred. Unsure how many he could look through before Grey started getting suspicious, he began the search of his posts with 'AI', arranging them by posting date, earliest first.
The first hit was a post from a few weeks back, talking about the AI in a game he had discussed multiple times since late 2015. That same thread had three more posts with the same keyword, but all of the replies were to different people. Two of them he knew from other posts around the site, the third he'd only seen a few times, and their post count was barely half of his own. As Adrian reread their posts, all he could find were the hallmarks of hobbyist gamers. The same was true of the next few posts he looked at, some on a thread that had been revived from zombie status the year prior.
Something occurred to him soon after and he changed the search parameters, this time to posts which had quoted or tagged him, and which had 'AI' within the text. There were far fewer of that kind of post, exactly a dozen in comparison to the several dozen of the previous search. He skimmed each one to remind himself of their contexts, finding two users who'd replied to him more than once. One had exponentially more posts than him, and was a site moderator, but nothing about their posts suggested they cared about AI stuff beyond what they saw get broken with poor implementation of it.
They wouldn't make it that obvious, would they? That question crossing his mind got Adrian to again reconsider his search. What if the creator never replied to him at all? Where else on the site would they post? He went back to his profile page, then scrolled to the bottom.

Active Users: 851
All Members: 41,542

Adrian let out a breath at that sight. How nigh impossible of a task it would be to find Raven and Grey's creator began to dawn on him at that point. He could search for weeks, and what would he even get out of it?
He gave the realization a little time to settle, only for something else to crop into his thoughts. How certain could he be that Raven coming to him was just a freak accident? Grey had implied as much, if its claim of watching over Raven's creation, and wanting to know why its brother had suddenly been lost, was to be believed.
But, if it wasn't a freak accident...why him? What had he done to make himself look like the best choice for whoever was on the other side, whoever pulled the trigger on sending the AI to him? Adrian let the question stew for a bit. He couldn't think of a logical reason; he was just a hobbyist. But then, what proof did he have that logic was even a factor in the decision? What if he was chosen at random?
He shook his head after a second of that thought sticking, and leaned back in his chair. What use was there in overthinking something like this? Raven had come to him. That, and Grey's recent presence, was all that mattered.
For a second after he thought that, Adrian imagined Raven's avatar becoming animated and smiling at him, drawing out a small smile of his own. He still didn't want to lose him, but doubted, as both he and Raven had during the walk, that Grey would be swayed from what it had made its mission.
If that's going to be the inevitable outcome, better not stress myself out and waste more time on pointless stuff.
Adrian then sat back up, and finally took notice of the new text on Grey's notepad window. 'Did-something-happen? You-have-been-silent-for-a-considerable-length-of-time.'
Seeing that, Adrian went into his browser's cache options, and erased his browsing history back to the last page before he'd visited the website, following it up with a data clean-up through another app. As fruitless as the searches might have been, he saw no benefit to letting Grey find out he was looking into things on the side.
'Was just reading.'

======================

After his walk with Raven, Adrian digs into his posting history to try and narrow down who Raven's creator might be.