HAKEEM: Well, you talked about our progress being "unprecedented". What precedent HAS been set for a situation like this?
HAKEEM: Specifically, I'm curious about these huge nightmare amalgamations that seem to be self-replicating. Has anything this out of control happened before? And if so, how does the laboratory deal with resolving those situations?
Pal3000: Similar things have happened before to varying degrees, yes.
Pal3000: Although the Multi-Use Beam Station has 1000 possible combinations, we have found that human test subjects have a tendency to gravitate towards numerical codes that have preexisting meanings assigned to them.
Pal3000: As a result of this kind of apophenia, the 666 code is one of the more commonly tested codes, resulting from various cultural associations relating to Abrahamic religions and pop-cultural associations with demons, Hell, the End Times, and so on.
Pal3000: Because test subjects EXPECT the 666 code creations to be "evil" on some level, those creations have a tendency to respond to those subconscious fears and carry out worst case scenarios. This includes behaving violently, acting in uncanny or unsettling ways, rendering test subjects helpless, or creating situations that spiral out of control at an exponential rate.
Pal3000: It is not unlike a nightmare that gets worse as soon as you fear that it will.
Pal3000: Put simply, no, this is not the first time they have combined into huge scary monsters.
HAKEEM: Ugh, I KNEW these things were the stuff of nightmares!
DESMODENA: jeez, thats intense
DESMODENA: so if they feed off of fear, they've got some kinda... psychic link?
Pal3000: Something like that. On a subconscious level, at least.
DESMODENA: well, if they're only evil because we expect them to be, does that mean they'd start helping us if we expected them to be good instead?
Pal3000: It is not completely outside of the realm of possibility, but I would put those chances somewhere around 0.03%.
Pal3000: Attempts to consciously manipulate those forces have a tendency to backfire. It is very difficult to force yourself to truly believe in the goodness of a huge tentacle monster that has tried to kill you many times without SOME doubts in the back of your head, and creations of that particular code are weighted to feed disproportionately off of fear.
DESMODENA: got it. we'll put the make-friends-with-the-horrible-monster plan in the "maybe" pile.
