We don't know what she's up to but it's for Cady
The M3GAN Files
is a M3GAN sci-fi / rational fanfic posted on Archive of Our Own in July 2023, and since cross-posted to a couple of other platforms, by a coder pennamed "spqrz".note It is set during and after the movie and then timeskips into Cady's teenage years, adulthood and the far future.The M3GAN Files provides examples of the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc: M3GAN's Jet Pack (called out later)
- Actress Allusion: an early chapter is called "Getting Cady Out of School" when Jenna Davis (who voiced M3GAN in the film) had recently posted a video called "Sneaking Elliana Out of School"
- Affectionate Parody: the prologue has a couple of goes at M3GAN trailers
- Alternate Timelines: some "alternate reality" chapters are scattered through the book (and prologue M3GAN tells you to skip them if you'd rather just read the Prime Timeline)
- And That's Terrible: young Gemma in the prequel on Janis Joplin's early death (justified because she was on a Cassette Craze for the future M3GAN to ingest)
- April Fools' Day: M3GAN vs the author on Forth Bridge
- Arc Words: the "blue flame" metaphor
- Author Appeal: use free software, do universal design, be security aware, care about the planet, don't give up, help medicine, enjoy science, classical music, the countryside, literature...
- Back from the Dead: at the end everyone, via galactic space-time technology
- Big "NO!": Cady stopping M3GAN from launching the missiles
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: in a bonus chapter, M3GAN leaves a message for someone who knows both Braille and Chinese by writing the message in Chinese Braillenote
- Celebrity Paradox: M3GAN composer Anthony Willis's 3-note musical pun is attributed in-story to a reconstructed Leopold Stokowski, presumably because anyone involved with the production of M3GAN is not supposed to exist in-universe (but the story does also mention "an up-and-coming composer" which might have been a nod to Willis)
- Chekhov's Skill: Cady's neurodiverse persistence is said to be the only reason why M3GAN eventually becomes aligned as a Friendly AI
- Chess Motifs: the part titles (discussed in the prologue)
- Coming of Age Story: Cady is still a child in most of the book, but suddenly we get two chapters of her teenage life, three at college level and then she's running a philanthropy mission and blasting off into space
- Conveniently Empty Building: M3GAN says this when she blows up the gas pumping station, although we only have her word for it
- Creator's Culture Carryover: the author tries to apologize to M3GAN for being Britishnote (but some American terms are used despite M3GAN saying no you can't don't even try)
- Curb-Stomp Battle: galactic M3GAN vs the rebels: the whole war gets only two paragraphs
- Deus est Machina: galactic M3GAN when Cady wants it
- Disney Death: effectively all death because everyone gets brought back technologically in the last chapters (apart from those who choose to die for real at the end)
- Don't Try This at Home: don't ride between seats in a sportscar, and definitely don't mess with Bunsen burners. M3GAN has warned you! (There's also narrator warnings about smashing windows and short-circuiting lights. They really don't want kids trying this stuff.)
- Episode on a Plane: when preparing to rescue Cady from the kidnappers
- Everyone Knows Morse: averted: Seth knows S.O.S. but not the rest of it
- Everything Is Online: Averted, but things often have Bluetooth interfaces, which is good enough for M3GAN or a nearby smartphone she's controlling
- Failsafe Failure: if the chemistry lab had a better gas cutoff mechanism for the teacher (like a solenoid valve) then M3GAN wouldn't have had to blow up the city's gas supply instead
- Foreshadowing: the protective sphere (also the Alternate Timelines set in Star Trek: Voyager + Star Trek: Picard's Et in Arcadia Ego and Friendship is Optimal should be more than enough to tip off readers that M3GAN will end up Munchkining the main timeline for Cady)
- Also subverted: Cady wonders what conversation Bunsen would have with Gemma if they both could be pulled into the same century; when they are, Bunsen ignores Gemma and spends the whole time arguing with M3GAN about nuclear fusion
- Fridge Horror: discussed in-universe: what if M3GAN had been paired to a bully/despot?
- Fun with Acronyms: to M3GAN we add backronyms of M4NDY (a reference to the Cartoon Network spoof) and the GEMMA Act, plus an expansion of "Lirpa-1" (which is actually 1 April backwards) in the extras
- Hammerspace Parachute: averted: M3GAN lands without one (causing destruction in the process)
- Hand Wave: occasionally used by M3GAN for selected people she considers incapable of understanding her more technical explanations (answering "how does it work" with "very well thank you" borrows Star Trek: The Next Generation science consultant Michael Okuda's answer about the "Heisenberg compensators" in a 1994 TIME Magazine interview); M3GAN can use other opportunities to explain in more detail though
- Heroic Resolve: Cady deciding to use M3GAN to eliminate the depression of her classmate and, while she's at it, everyone else's depression too
- Hero Insurance: justified once the president starts working with M3GAN
- Hiss Before Fleeing: when M3GAN can't get her preferred ending from the author
- Hollywood Autism: averted: Cady's autism is played subtly until the reveal that it helped M3GAN decide to become a friendly AI
- Hollywood Hacking: averted: M3GAN's hacking methods generally come with plausible explanations (although the vulnerabilities she exploits might or might not really exist)
- Humble Heroine: Cady toward the end: she highlights what others did more than herself, downplays her qualifications and isn't really into fancy titles
- Hurl It into the Sun: M3GAN gets threatened with being sucked into a black hole by the author
- I Did What I Had to Do: "it's for Cady so I have to do it" - M3GAN
- Idiot Ball: lampshaded when Gemma falls for one of M3GAN's Social Engineering attacks (although to be fair it was quite alarming if you've heard of Value Drift)
- If I Wanted You Dead...: M3GAN when the president gets worried her instruction to sit down is a trick
- I Just Write the Thing: M3GAN explaining Stephen King's theory and quarrelling with the author. However, a note at the end says no M3GAN was angered in the making of this fiction.
- I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: an Alternate Timeline Gemma (echoing her boss in canon)
- Immortality Immorality: Gemma's first thought is overpopulation (before M3GAN tells her it comes with a space program)
- Insanity Defense: M3GAN talks about using this to get both herself and Gemma out of trouble (but it doesn't happen)
- Interactive Narrator: arguing with M3GAN in the prologue
- Intrepid Reporter: Played straight with Steve who in getting his story goes as far as attacking Cady to force M3GAN out of hiding (he was lucky to get only broken bones and a scolding for that); averted with Mike whom M3GAN chose for being easier to manage
- Jet Pack: M3GAN starts to develop one but doesn't finish
- Let No Crisis Go to Waste: M3GAN used the July 2023 distributed denial of service attack against Archive of Our Own to make the author work on the story more in the meantime (her "might as well use it to my advantage" line echos Enigma (2001)); also in-story M3GAN uses Cady's kidnapping to have Gemma disable her power switch
- Living Forever Is Awesome: for most people anyway
- Loophole Abuse: discussed around AI goal functions
- Meaningful Name: Cady: at the end she is Cady of Arcadia and the etymology is narrated
- Modern Stasis: in millions of years you can still catch The Proms from the Albert Hall on BBC Radio 3 (possibly justified by the nostalgia of long-lived humans on Old Earth)
- Narrative Profanity Filter: "get lost" said Brandon or something like that (anyone who watched canon will know what he really said)
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: if Crissy was a Florida version of Carissa then that had better be one of Jacksonville's K-12 schools Cady was in (this chapter has Cady in her mid-teens while Crissy was at levels the real Carissa could have played at age 8 or 9), but it could explain how M3GAN could push her from 850 to 1600 in under a month
- Origins Episode: the prequel (turns out M3GAN scanned Nicole's teenage mannerisms from Gemma's old tapes to further remind Cady of her Mom, plus clumsy Nicole was why Gemma started using titanium)
- Our Presidents Are Different: M3GAN's working relationship with the unnamed president is uncertain to say the least
- The Professor: Gemma's tutor and original designer of the learning model; she gets a bit more interesting when Cady reaches adulthood
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Gemma (What. Are. You. Doing) and M3GAN (I, Have, High, Standards)
- Quote Mine: M3GAN explicitly says she's "allowed to look up obscure facts to make weird selective arguments when it suits" her, and goes on to claim to be the subject of a Bible verse ("a time to kill and a time to heal" has her model number on it) and stealing a plane is OK if her method is not covered by Webster's definition which she reads out only partially
- Reading Ahead in the Script: played with by the professor, although it doesn't seem she has an actual book (M3GAN also tries to pull off the Aladdin genie's "your line is" on Steve)
- Reference Overdosed: lots of shout-outs, some lampshaded
- Mostly justified as M3GAN's recycling of data: I, Robot, Forbidden Planetnote , Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Our Exploits At West Poley, Live Free or Die Hard, WarGames, Flight-Plan, xkcd, Air Force One, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Short Circuit, Ex Machina, Crystal Trilogy, Apollo 13, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, The Light of Other Days, Dunnet, Mr. Holland's Opus, Elite, WWW Trilogy, Slate Star Codex, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationalitynote etc
- A few are not M3GAN's doing: Carry On Teacher, Sproggit and Sylvester, Finding Forrester, Isabella's 122 episodes of anger, etc, and Gemma gets a closing Contact referencenote . But it's less clear why Celia quoted Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
- An extra Alternate Timeline chapter (separate stories in the Wattpad version) references Twins (1988), The Artifice Girl, The Man Who Sold The Moon specifically the part quoted in The Mythical Man-Month, and Innerspace, and the prequel has a Liar's Paradox: the narrator says there's no reference to The 39 Steps, which is itself a reference (although to be fair it meant no reference in the "main" story).
- Mostly justified as M3GAN's recycling of data: I, Robot, Forbidden Planetnote , Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Our Exploits At West Poley
- Rescue Arc: when Cady is kidnapped, obviously
- Reset Button: the AI is shut down 5 times in 4 different ways, but always leaves a remnant that then starts expanding again
- Science Is Good: especially for building galactic utopias
- Self-Deprecation: the author tells M3GAN "go easy on me, I'm not Akela Cooper"
- Shown Their Work: when M3GAN says things like "I found this in the proceedings of the 44th Cambridge Ophthalmological Symposium", it checks out
- Sky Heist: rescuing Cady from the kidnappers
- Song Fic: a bonus chapter M3GANizes I've Got A Little List (but the author stops M3GAN from going on to the Major General Song: "one song only in this book, that's the rule")
- Star Killing: the resurrection machine's power requirements are so high it needs Dyson spheres and star harvesting (which might be why they put it in a "dense" area of the galaxy)
- Stealing the Credit: the boss at the end (predictably)
- Sub-Lightspeed Setting: the adult Cady and M3GAN do try to get FTL but don't succeed except in an Alternate Timeline; interstellar travel on the Prime Timeline is bearable due to Time Dilation and long-lived humans
- Switching P.O.V.: the narrative, although third person, does this
- Take That!: Cady's official opinion of Chucky is that he's gross
- The Future Will Be Better: colonising other planets means less population on any one, and that automatically solves a bunch of random problems
- The Stations of the Canon: the story starts near the beginning of the movie, but skips or glosses over its major events as assumed already known to the reader
- Take a Third Option: Headmaster Smith tries to do this when arguing with M3GAN about her decision to blow up the local gas supply infrastructure to save Cady
- Talking Your Way Out: it didn't take M3GAN long to have The Professor let her out of her AI box near the beginning
- The Computer Is Your Friend: just about averted by Cady's special cyclical version of the three laws, but Jack Williamson is referenced
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: M3GAN's handling of Cady's kidnappers involves destroying the building, 9/11 style
- Title Drop: the M3GAN files is what Kurt stole in canon
- Tricked Out Time: M3GAN in an Alternate Timeline planned to ensure her own creation while saving Cady's parents
- Trust Me, I'm an X: M3GAN several times wants people to trust her on the grounds that she's done the calculations. The adult Cady and the author each use it back at her once.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Cady's final title (lampshaded)
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: rescuing Cady from the kidnappers
- Unusual Chapter Numbers: a "Chapter 9¾" was retroactively inserted between chapters 9 and 10 after a reader request (on the AO3 version this is an appendix, probably due to platform limitations: on the cross-posts it's put between chapters 9 and 10)
- Watsonian versus Doylist: reasons for M3GAN replacing NPCs on chess.com in January 2023 (the Watsonian one is Cady accidentally asked for it)
- We Will Have Euthanasia in the Future: but only as a last resort if you really can't put up with life under Cady and M3GAN
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: M3GAN does microbiology
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: get the learning model to do everything
- Will Not Tell a Lie: M3GAN never lies outright, but she can be selective about which parts of the truth to tell when
- You Do Not Want To Know: M3GAN explains to Cady that some of the information M3GAN figured out about Cady's friends could be "an information hazard" to Cady if she knew
- You Will Be Spared: Epilogue M3GAN to the translators
The M3GAN Files is sometimes misspelled as The MEGAN Files
.