Calli...sta?

[Whatevr89532]

The cloaked figure turns to Real Callista as if noticing her for the first time, and pauses in its tracks. "Oh. Hello, val-ued customer!" Its eye does the 'camera-blink' thing. "Yes, you have shopped at one of our fine es-tablish-ments in the past. We would like to conduct an anon-nymous survey re-garding your ex-perience at some time, how-ever our current busi-ness is quite pres-sing." It turns back toward the double...but there's a dust cloud there, and she's started scrambling her way into the building. "...Oh." The being starts moving, much faster than before, apparently to give chase.

[AmbushCat]

*A bit confused at what's going on, Callista morphs to her hybrid form and decides to follow along.*

Callista: *huffing a little* So... is she some sort of advanced life-form, machine or something?

[Whatevr89532]

The cloaked being seems to have no particular difficulty answering: "We are current-ly in pursuit of a mal-functioning Sales Mo-del. We use pub-licly available data to at-tempt to pro-duce an accurate represen-tation of im-portant customers in order to ant-cipate and better serve their needs. How-ever, this one dis-played unusual abil-ities and behaviors and fled our Modeling Fac-ility and even our world to arrive in this one. We must recover and dis-mantle it in order to pro-tect many potential customers from its harmful abil-ities, pro-tect trade secrets regarding its pro-duction, and dis-cover what went wrong and pre-vent future such errors."

They arrive in the other side of the building, a grocery store, and finally catch up with the 'sales model', who is at the checkout just finishing up dumping a large quantity of apples into one of those huge "environment-friendly" reusable bags and taking a receipt from the cashier. The cloaked entity approaches, saying "Please re-main still," which she reacts to by yelling and throwing an apple at its face. The apple splatters like it would if thrown hard enough at a concrete wall.

[AmbushCat]

Callista: That explains why I only understood every third word exiting her mouth...

[Whatevr89532]

The double throws more apples backwards as she runs her way out of the store, many completely missing the cloaked figure but a couple of them colliding with a force field right up against its cloak. "I don't dwann dwanna dwanna fall out the dooooor!"
The cloaked figure, gaining somewhat, holds up one of its 'hands' just past the cloak to reveal a long, shiny needle on the end of it. "You are being unrea-sonable. Please do not make this more ex-pensive than you al-ready have."

[AmbushCat]

*Callista grabs one of the thrown apples out of the air, deciding to have it as a snack, and follows after them.*

Callista: Something about this doesn't seem right to me. Just so I'm clear, she's not going to be truly harmed by all this, right?

[Whatevr89532]

"Nooooo..." The cloaked figure's voice slows down and fades out like a playing record being quickly ground to a halt, and then its head makes a noise like a hard drive physically crashing (not even this pauses its pursuit, however). "...Zero match-es for rephrase."

The false Callista yells a sound like 'eh' but louder and over a longer period of time, continuing the barrage of apples and fleeing attempt, though the apples remain just as ineffectual as ever.

"...Harmed. Yes. It is im-possible to thoroughly exa-mine an organ-ic unit without harming it. Harming sap-ient beings is against the Con-straints except in very spe-cific circumstances." (The way it says 'Constraints' makes it seem like it ought to be capitalized.) "Therefore sales mo-dels are carefully engineered to not be sap-ient."

[AmbushCat]

*The hybrid's tail and collar starts becoming a little bit fluffier even as she eats the apple she caught.*

Callista: Sounds neat. So I guess nothing I could offer for taking her off your hands would solve your problems, since you'd still need to figure out why she went rogue in the first place...

[Whatevr89532]

The cloaked being actually pauses briefly in its pace, looking at Callista with its red eye. "There are ve-ry few things we own which can-not be parted with in ex-change for suf-ficient currency." It turns back to the double (who's gained a few feet maybe from that) and says, "there are ma-ny ways to po-tentially discover the cause of this err-or, or at least pre-vent similar ones. This op-tion is cur-rently the most profitable as it re-duces liability and risk of harm to sa-pient beings be-ings caused by our mis-take."

[AmbushCat]

Callista: Hmm... *finishes the apple, discards the core, and grabs another one* It's possible that the reason she up and vanished on you was because the data about me that was available to you was incomplete. How far would giving you a complete copy, minus my special abilities, go towards helping alleviate the situation?

[Whatevr89532]

The figure is silent for a moment, but seems to slow down its pursuit of the other Callista at the same time. It's clear it was thinking as it says, "We be-lieve this would more than co-ver the cost of the two u-nits the mo-del destroyed during previous pursuit attempts and all other re-sources used in its pro-duction. How-ever, we re-main concerned the rogue mo-del will cause harm to sa-pient beings and in ad-dition li-ability issues from the same."

[AmbushCat]

Callista: The "harm to sapient beings" part I understand, but could you clarify what you mean by "liability issues"?

[Whatevr89532]

"If our cre-ation damages pro-perty or harms peo-ple, we are liable. It is our re-sponsibility to make up for such loss-ses. This has a ne-gative effect on profits. Some-one else would have to willingly take re-sponsibility for this to not be a factor."

[AmbushCat]

Callista: Troublesome... *sighs, her fur settling down* Alright, I guess I'd be willing to cover for her.

[Whatevr89532]

The cloaked being stops completely, which seems likely to result in the other Callista getting away from it. "This deal is highly ac-ceptable. The unit you stand before cur-rently does not have the correct capa-city, so a le-gal unit will be sum-moned to print an agree-ment to this effect." It turns to one side and waves the non-needle arm around at a patch of empty space next to it. With a slight shimmering of the air, another nearly identical-looking figure, but this one with a blue eye, appears. While that one makes distinctly printer-like sounds around its chest area, the red-eyed one says, "It would be meaning-less to make a 'legal-ly binding' agreement in the pres-ence of many uni-verses with different rulers and law codes, but kee-ping things like this on file has helped us in the past re-gardless."