>Seated before this on a folding camp chair was a young woman in threadbare
>jeans, worn army boots, and an old drover coat, a pair of tinted goggles
>pushed up into her tousled green hair, her face set in a frown of
>concentration as she delicately adjusted knobs and sliders.

There's something so odd about a Vocaloid in tatty old survivors clothes.

>Ordinarily, they'd have had the radio on, or possibly have been making their
>own musical entertainment, but not now; not right after a Call. Rin always had
>to come down from those, or rather climb back up from the letdown afterward,
>and for that she required space. It was a routine both women knew very well by
>now.

It took me a moment to work out what was going on here, but then I remembered a key detail of the Vocaloids, more importantly Rin, and the penny dropped. Given how long it's later mentioned they've been stuck on the wrong side of the planet, it's reassuring to know that the twins can function independently for extended lengths of time, but more than any of the others, it's also clearly a deeply unpleasant experience for them.

>Nick Valentine was acutely aware of this fact. For nothing like the first
>time, he wished that he were equipped to smoke. He wasn't sure why he wished
>that; it was a filthy and dangerous habit for those physically able to
>indulge in it. It was just that at times like this, it seemed like a thing
>he ought to be doing.

*snrk* Oh man, good old Nick. Unable to escape his Noir Detective ways. It's nice to see him showing up in UF. I'm guessing he looks in a little better shape than he did back in Fallout, but is still Clearly A Robot?

>Gumi nodded. "It's hard for her. You know? This trip was supposed to last a
>month. We've been here 13 years, with no end in sight. Whenever I can
>scrounge up enough ECPs, I can rig up the hyperwave and punch a signal
>through the Fog jamming to Japan. She and Len can reassure each other that
>they exist then, but... well. We usually don't have enough power to stay on
>for more than a minute or two, and even if we did, if we pushed it the Fog
>would DF us and we'd be dodging missiles. Again. It's never enough. And this
>life... always on the move, barely earning enough to keep going..." She
>shrugged, making a drawn-out pssshhhh noise. "It's tough."

Dammit, Robot Girls Need Hugs. I'm a little surprised they're still wandering after so long. Stubborness, or just a fact of life in a civilisation hanging on against starvation?

>Nick's job, or rather the job of the department he worked for, was to shut
>down any and all attempts to initialize unauthorized synthetic intelligences
>within United Earth's jurisdiction. Virtually always, that took the form of
>corporations who were trying to circumvent the Turing Institute's
>prescriptive authority, and the bits of United Galactica law that vested
>that authority. UE was obligated by treaty to put a stop to that kind of
>thing, Earth's current state of planetary crisis notwithstanding; hence,
>Section 44.

I had to wonder about that for a moment, but then it occurred to me that A) A lot of corporations likely wouldn't be doing it in ethical ways, and B) Programming SIs is the sort of thing that could accidentally go Skynet quickly if you're not careful, or worse, trying for something sort of like that. And then the presence of Nick made me realise that, on top of that, you've got people like GENOM using them like the Institute did in Fallout, and that never ends well for anyone involved.

>Nick nodded. "I don't know where she got it and I don't know how, but this
>kid's got a copy of Vocaloid 6. The old Vocaloid 6. And as of right now,
>she's almost got it working."

Of course the 'accidentally make Sapient SIs' version of the Vocaloid program would be heavily controlled. I suspect the only properly official copies of the original Vocaloid 6 would be in a vault in Japan, and maybe one on Turing.

Mind you, given what it took to accidentally wake up Miku only a few decades before, you have to applaud Ahbi for managing the Box of Scraps version.

>"So here's the thing. You guys know the law on this as well as I do.
>There's no wiggle room in it. If I enter an AI lab with an unauthorized
>project in progress, and the construct isn't yet operational, I have to shut
>it down, wipe the disks, destroy the equipment. That's why my boys and girls
>have sledgehammers. If. It isn't operational. You get me?"

As always, there are two universal constants about Nick Valentine. One, that he walked right out of a detective novel, and two, he'll always do the right thing.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter