AI Rick

Back in Rick's universe.

Morty saw Beth, her eyes red as she scrubbed the walls, and Jerry sitting alone on the couch, drinking away his worries.

As well as his sister Summer, who had run off somewhere.

When Beth saw that Morty had returned, she threw down the rag covered in blood and bits of tissue, ready to come over, hug her precious son, and ask him what exactly had happened.

But Morty, who had once sold out his own mother without hesitation in the previous world, chose to turn a blind eye to her sincere feelings.

He went to the garage with Rick.

They powered on the shut-down AI Rick.

Less than three seconds after booting up, the AI had completed its self-check and connected to the Dark Matter Network, then immediately began roaring.

"What the hell?! That nt with three pounds of horseshoes in his brain and sulfuric acid poured on top actually chose suicide?"

"Fk! If he pulls this crap, I can't win the AI division championship and return to the Citadel of Ricks!"

"Shit! Wait... I wasn't wiped?"

"Hey! You two are actually here together?"

The cursing AI Rick noticed Morty and Rick standing at the entrance to the underground base, so he projected a hologram to make talking to them easier.

"You two... forget it! What's done is done. Let me discuss something with you."

"Open a portal for me and throw my mainframe into the Citadel of Ricks. Then I won't report to the Dark Matter Network that you two came back."

Morty: "..."

Rick: "I told you he'd pull this. You didn't believe me."

Morty: "So why does every AI made by a Rick like targeting its own creator?"

Rick: "Because every Rick gets lazy when designing an AI's personality and just uses his own. So this isn't surprising."

Their attitude of talking as if no one else existed annoyed AI Rick.

I'm talking to you two nicely right now, and you're ignoring me? When the Citadel Strike Team gets here, don't cry in front of me!

AI Rick tried connecting to the Dark Matter Network.

He discovered that the network he had just been able to access seemed to have been directly cut off by a signal jammer.

Rick, the one responsible for this, told the AI, "All right, open the door. Don't think you can outlast us. On this planet, I've got plenty of ways to kill you."

Knowing exactly what Rick was capable of, the AI used his massive processing power to calculate his chances of escaping and surviving.

Then he obediently chose to open the door for them.

Otherwise, the Rick in front of him could absolutely use some method to extract him, a data-based life-form, from his code.

Then turn him into a soul-form life-form and toss him to the Cthulhus for torture.

Not worth it! Not worth it!

The entrance to the underground base opened. Morty jumped down first. After landing and getting to his feet, he looked around the familiar underground base.

His gaze eventually settled on the chair by the workbench.

Rick had loved working there while ordering him around.

[Sigh...]

Overcome by the sight, Morty sighed inwardly. Then he looked away and saw that the AI had opened a hidden section of wall.

This entrance, which he had never seen before, made Morty recall what Rick had told him a few minutes earlier.

"Your memories are incomplete. He extracted many of them."

"I won't urge you to save him either, because I don't have much history with him. After all, I was only a supporting character in Pokémon Show."

"But you can't forget too many things, pretend nothing happened, and just keep living, can you?"

Rick's words...

Rick's actions...

Morty's thoughts...

"Shit... just how many of my memories did he take?"

When Morty walked down the corridor and entered the memory storage room, staring at cabinet-covered walls stretching one after another, the nostalgia he had felt moments ago was utterly shattered.

Those densely packed little glass bottles contained at least half of his memories.

Which meant there were... a great many things he had no memory of at all!

So many that he was beginning to wonder whether he still remembered certain things.

"All right, don't think too much until you've watched them all."

Rick tossed Morty a helmet with a groove at the top and told him not to jump to conclusions before viewing all the memories.

"Fine. Let's see just how many memories he took from me."

Morty put on the helmet, randomly took out a memory vial labeled 0252, and inserted it into the groove.

As the vial fitted into the groove.

The world before Morty's eyes vanished in an instant. He felt his body lie down, and what replaced it was a medical room surrounded by gray-silver metal walls!

Three or four Ricks dressed as doctors were looking at him coldly, with the expression higher primates used when looking at cats and dogs.

It made anger flare up inside Morty.

That disrespectful gaze—one that could even be called the way they looked at lower life-forms—was, to any intelligent being.

A contempt that reached from DNA to the soul!

But the intense pain that followed throughout his body made him unable to keep staring at them. Instead, he screamed.

"Ahhh!!!"

At that moment, Rick walked in from outside the medical room. Gone was his usual imposing presence. Bent over, he wore a fawning smile as he slipped several doctors some interstellar "local specialties."

That mouth, which normally could barely say anything nice beyond curse words, was unusually flattering toward others.

"Gentlemen, please save this Morty. I have a contract with Citadel TV, and he's currently the hottest Morty around."

"But as you know from watching the show, a sudden script change got him accidentally cursed by Cthulhu. I can't do anything about a divine curse like that. You're experts in this field, so please cure him."

After accepting the "local specialties," the doctor Ricks heard that Morty had been cursed by Cthulhu and exchanged looks.

They threw down what they were holding and silently walked outside.

Their backs showed not the slightest hesitation. Their extreme coldness, refusing even to say, "It can't be done," made Morty unable to believe this was real.

He might not like Pokémon Show.

But he was still a popular character who had kept them watching episode after episode. Yet when he ran into trouble, they just left without saying a word?

Morty looked at Rick again. The latter wore the same expression of disbelief.

After lowering his head in silence for several seconds, Rick turned around. One hand gripped Morty's shoulder while the other pulled out the Portal Gun.

The pure rage hidden beneath his voice made Morty, merely watching his own memories, feel afraid all over again.

Because Rick called those doctor Ricks "it," not "him."

"It... they won't treat you! Then I'll treat you myself!"

"One day, I'll kill them!"