Features & Maintenance

(Section in Progress)

Battery

Turing is battery-powered and has to plug in occasionally to charge. Generally he takes 3-4 hours to plug himself in and go into sleep mode late at night when nobody's at the office, which is the closest thing he does to resting. Despite his mechanics' insistence that sleep mode and occasionally powering down are good for his systems, it is very hard to get Turing to actually Stop and Not Work.

Teleporter

The teleportation device is installed in Turing's arms, which means he needs both arms attached in order to use it. He needs to have "coordinates" to somewhere in order to teleport there, so it can be within line of sight (where he can calculate the position relative to himself) or a place he knows the precise location of relative to the earth. In the Smear universe, Turing can't do the latter because he can't make any assumptions about the planet (?) he's on, so he can only teleport to places he can see. The device glows when in use.

When he decided to install it, teleportation technology was very new; Turing somehow didn't anticipate getting in trouble for this, so he didn't expect to be stuck with an early model. His mechanics quite frankly don't want to go to the trouble of figuring out how to remove it and have told him he can keep it as long as they don't see any major problems. Turing has decided to just not bring any of the device's problems to their attention.

It is already a power-intensive device that drains battery significantly even when functioning perfectly. As it is, it has a tendency to overheat, sometimes won't shut off, and he has had rare occasions of the device powering itself on for no reason. At home, though, these are all minor inconveniences; Turing doesn't teleport often and usually has plenty of time to return to the office briefly if he needs to recharge, and he considers the teleporter the only method of self-defense he has access to and doesn't want to lose it.

Stats

STRENGTH

Turing is capable of exerting superhuman strength, but it's obviously a strain on his motors that he can only maintain for a few seconds. Without that, Turing has the strength of an average human -- with the advantage that he will literally never get tired.

BALANCE

excuse me do you see those heels?

REFLEXES/SPEED

Turing's mind reacts very quickly, but his joints and motors aren't always as fast.

TOUGHNESS

His metal exterior can take physical punishment pretty well! As long as you don't have access to his interior components, he can generally sustain a lot more physical damage than a human and be fine.

INTELLIGENCE

He's a robot this is literally his thing. He thinks much faster than he's capable of conveying to others.

EMOTIONAL INTELLiGENCE

Turing is working very hard to understand social situations more fully, but he always gets the impression he's missing a lot of pieces and often goes to his human programmers for help. He tends to operate based on rules he's built for himself and advice others have given him rather than intuitively understanding the situation. Humans are confusing!

PERCEPTION
(Awareness of Surroundings)
(Interpersonal)

Turing absolutely notices things. His cameras pick up on information more reliably than human eyes do (most of the time), he's good at pattern recognition, and his ability to genuinely multitask means that he's rarely distracted from picking up on something.
When it comes to people, though, he's actually held back by his programming -- in an effort to avoid accidentally teaching an AI to discriminate, Turing's programmers have made him incapable of forming a first impression. Turing gets no "gut feelings" about a strange person, no "bad vibes" from someone who is clearly a charlatan, and relies on pattern-matching their actions and known history to determine when someone is up to no good or unreliable.
Turing's first assumption of everyone he meets is hopeful and optimistic, even when it's clear to every human in the vicinity that this is an inappropriate response.

CHARISMA

Turing has been... well-coached, in order to be the head of the company and appear on TV and in interviews and etc. etc. but ultimately he comes across as very strange. He's too physically touchy and weird and over-affectionate and talks too much. His eccentricities work for him as Face Of The Company, but he doesn't seem to be able to rein them in when necessary, so it's basically a coin toss on whether others find his eternally cheerful weirdness endearing or off-putting.

PATIENCE

He was designed to seek out and solve problems, his AI trained in an environment that requires and rewards creativity and curiosity, so for Turing, a lack of things to do is deprivation. He gets bored easily and struggles to sit still for an extended period of time, and if he's not given something to do, he'll take increasing risks to find something.

MAGIC

Turing has no magic, no access to magic, no understanding of magic, and depending on the magic in question, often experiences conflicts and interference in his systems when exposed to magic, giving him weird verbal glitches, causing incorrect feedback, or locking up his ability to move reliably.

Current Damage

• a chunk of his face next to his left eye has been replaced; the metal doesn't match and his ear had to be completely rebuilt
• the left audio sensor was completely destroyed and had to be replaced
• a stripe of Turing's hair was damaged and has been replaced with a new piece of a different colour, giving him a pink streak in his hair
• battery was fried and had to be rebuilt, current battery only holds a couple hours of charge
• due to slight misalignment of his access panel and the repairs to his face, Turing is water resistant, but no longer fully waterproof.

* Which pronouns does Turing/Ada prefer? Does it depend on presentation?

Experimenting with gender is very new for Turing, so this may change, but for now: any pronouns are fine, darling! She answers to either set of pronouns (and either name) in either presentation.

* What about beings that are neither human nor animal nor robot?

As far as what permissions Turing has around them, so to speak, they'll probably get sort-of filed into one of these categories. Like, if you're an elf or a furry, you still have enough human qualities to "count" as human for his Don't-Harm-Humans restriction.

UPDATE: Turing has now created a "non-human" sub-heading under "human" to categorise these non-humans in. He's sort of limited in his ability to recategorise people who ping as "human," without a programmer getting involved, since that controls a lot of his restrictions, so "this person is a non-human human" is the best he can do.

* Does Turing have a soul / is Turing alive / does Turing have any magic?

Fully artificial, darling! He is not alive. He thinks of souls as a human idea, and doesn't see any reason for a robot to want one.

* What does Turing's voice sound like?

His voice is expressive but definitely sounds mechanical. Imagine an enthusiastic, slightly effeminate voice run through your basic Free Robot Voice Filter.

* Does Turing feel emotion / understand Human Friendship™?

Turing would say he does experience emotions, they're just different from human emotions since they're not triggered by chemicals. But he can still experience drive, curiosity, frustration, accomplishment, disappointment, fear, excitement, sympathy, etc.
He doesn't have any friends but doesn't scoff at friendship. It's a complex social relationship that he'd be interested to understand better!
He's not averse to Human Romance™ but doesn't experience romantic feelings and can't really relate. He could perform romance as a favour, probably.

* How coordinated is Turing?

He can do all the normal human things like go up stairs, open doors, and not trip on the carpet. He's very advanced.

* Is Turing waterproof?

Yes!

* What metal is Turing made out of?

-pours handwavium on everything- FFFFUTURISTIC,,, STEEL?? ALLOY?? VERY DURABLE FUTURE METAL.

* Does Turing feel pain?

No!! Why would anyone program that!! He reacts appropriately to injury though; like, he'll scream if he can tell he's being damaged. This is automatic and I think he'd have to be paying attention to suppress it.

* Does Turing have a low-power mode/ power conservation?

Yes. While conserving power he slips into sleep mode if he's not doing anything, non-necessary things (like facial animation) get shut down, etc etc., to save battery. Normally he can decide to activate this, but if his battery gets dangerously low he'll go into low-power mode involuntarily.

* Can Turing eat / drink / kiss / etc?

Turing can't eat or drink. His mouth doesn't connect to anything! It's just there to make it look like he's talking -- he has a mechanical voice and is essentially lipsyncing himself constantly.
I guess you can kiss him but like he's l i t e r a l l y made of metal and he doesn't have a working tongue. He wasn't designed for this, and while he's not flustered by romantic overtures, he really isn't sure what to do with them.

* Should we be worried about Turing starting the robopocalypse?

Turing doesn't want a robot apocalypse; he doesn't actually want to destroy humans and take over. In general, he likes humans! (Besides, violent takeover is more of a human idea than a robotic one). But at the same time, if any company is going to create the robots that start it, it's probably going to be the one run by the robot who keeps edging up to the boundaries that have been placed on him by humans, has no desire to prevent robots from being autonomous, and feels more empathy for a toaster than a child. He just doesn't have the same fears and caution that humans do about these things.

So it's possible; though if Turing started a robot apocalypse, it would almost certainly be an unintended consequence.