Starline Files: Future Eggman? and Sage
I was planning to talk about the Eggman the Pronghorn knew - the one I temporarily dubbed "Eggboss Eggman", but this new iteration of the Doctor is also target of one very interesting subject for me: the advanced AI Sage.
Most of this information came out of said AI. She was pretty helpful in that regard. Anyways, the story began as it began many times with Doctor: ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY!
...in hindsight, it's curious how so many civilization's advanced technology failed to reach the present days. Kinda depressing if you stop to think about it.
Anyways, Doctor's newest discovery was a mysterious archipelago known as the Starfall Islands, home of a civilization called the Ancient (not much originality there, I know). The technology of the region was notably advanced, and the Doctor knew that, if he could seize it, he would gain a massive boon to his armies. His main object of interest was an entire virtual dimension he dubbed the Cyber Space, a virtual world connected to all sorts of places in the real world. The issue is that no machine Eggman currently possessed could handle the sheer amount of data that the islands contained, so he decided to build an artificial intelligence capable of matching his own intellect to handle the stream and serve as a helper. When he allowed it to interface with the technology of the Ancients, however, something changed within her.
Now, even Sage is unsure of what happened to change her so much. The technology of the Ancients was, and continues to be, a great unknown. What we know, however, is that it started to develop...sentience, so as to say. Sentient machines are nothing for the Eggman Empire - heck, Metal Sonic grew a personality of his own with time and Orbot and Cubot are...Orbot and Cubot. But Sage became lifelike, less as if she was a machine and more like a person inside one...and also detected that week's Evil God Trying To Kill Everyone and dragged Doctor into the Cyber Space as a way to protect him from this entity known as The End, who had been sealed inside the world by the Ancients eons ago.
(What is the deal with ancient civilizations and evil gods?)
When Sonic and his pesky friends come to investigate what Doctor was doing in the Starfall Islands, The End decides to use him to unlock the seals bidding him to his prison by using his friends as leverage, despite Sage's attempt to stop him dead on tracks with the guardians of the Starfall Islands. While she failed to do so, she began to develop her personality with the help of the pesky hog and his friends...bah. Doctor and his machines are the only role models she needed! Maybe even me...or Gunther. She's acceptable too.
The experience also changed Doctor. He began to care for Sage and her lifelike personality developing something that could only be described as a bond between father and daughter. In a way, she mirrors Belle the Tinker's relationship with Mr.Tinker...as much as it loathes me to use that comparison. Anyways, this allowed Sage to convince Doctor to ally with Sonic to stop the End once and for all. It took a lot of effort but they managed to defeat the final guardian...but Sage was forced to sacrifice herself in the process of stopping his final attack. Some time later, the Doctor managed to recover her data but from there most of her files became heavily corrupted before she saw herself in the depths of the EggNet. By the time she managed to return to surface, she had to hide from the Zeti's scans until she located the hidden base and hijacked a few Badniks to let her move to here.
She didn't have much information about her Eggman, unfortunately. No signs that he had been Mr.Tinker or anything like that - only a register that he still dominated the world with Infinite, the same way it happened in mine. As it's an AI I'm dealing with, I do not believe she lies. Thus, I dubbed him Future? Eggman, under the assumption he comes from a theoretical later point in the timeline.
Still...Belle the Tinker. Sage the AI. Two machines that developed beyond any known parameters in the emotional department. How delightful!
