This is an extremely AU version of the Knight Industries Two Thousand - KITT - as seen in the television show Knight Rider. While the events of the show remain unchanged, I have taken the liberty of moving the timeline up to the present day. The show itself would have therefore have taken place in the late nineties-early 2000s, with the technology in KITT reflecting those advances. Rather than a tape deck, for instance, KITT would have been equipped with an MP3 player. I have also borrowed somewhat from the telemovie Knight Rider 2000, in terms of some of the portrayal of technology seen there, including the image enhancement technology incorporated into KITT's windshield. The form of the car is paradoxically still a 1982 Trans Am, as I believe in terms of appearance that car was ahead of its time anyway.

KITT was created originally from the shell of Michael Long's own car, with the AI's core programming being that of the preservation of human life - specifically, that of Michael Arthur Knight. This has been referred to in fics and RPs as the 'driver imperative', and I see no reason to change that terminology.

Over the course of the series, KITT (whom I believe was never as unaware of emotional understanding as he claimed) continued to grow and develop in terms of both emotional and mental maturity, however he never questioned his status as that of property or his conditions of servitude. It is my belief that he came to love the people with and for whom he served, and they came to love him. Under the circumstances, at least with that core group of people, he seemed to become an equal. The series never delved very deeply if at all into KITT's legal status.

My version of this character begins to deviate from character canon with his discovery of the Internet. Humans need to sleep, AIs do not, and while spending the nights in motel parking lots, the semi, or even in his garage at Foundation HQ in Los Angeles, KITT begins to surf the web in favor of television broadcasts. (He never allowed his outside interests even at this time to interfere with his analysis of case materials.) After several months of this, reading blogs, exchanging emails, even setting himself up with an IM account - he encountered a young woman online and began chatting with her on a regular basis. He found her to be witty, intelligent, well-spoken, and with a sense of humor that appealed to him. After several months more of speaking to her online, they made arrangements to meet in the town near to where she lived in Colorado, though he had neglected to inform her that he was in fact an AI housed within the body of an automobile. It was fortunate for him that upon meeting with her, she took the news with more grace than he would have dreamed anticipate - and acting on a whim that to this day he still does not understand, he invited her for a drive up the California coast. She accepted, traveling with him for several days. For the first time in his existence, he not only had neglected to ask permission to leave the grounds of the Foundation on his own, but he also neglected to inform anyone of his whereabouts. His reasoning for this, which also shocked and surprised him, was that none of the others needed to ask permission nor apprise anyone of their movements when they were on their own time. For the first time, he was thinking outside of the box of his previous existence, and coming to realize that there was a certain unfairness about it. In short, he was growing up.

He was also coming to another terrifying realization, one that his designers and programmers most likely had not anticipated - he believed that he was falling in love with this intriguing young woman he'd met, and while he wanted to believe that she was feeling the same thing, he also realized the futility of allowing those sorts of feelings to become established - after all, he was still a car. It would hardly be fair to expect her to accept those conditions.

It's at this point that the wonders and joy of RP come into the picture, because in a panfandom community, anything can happen and usually does. In this case, Kitt and Hattie (he thinks it's a lovely name) had been alternately lamenting and denying their feelings for each other, which caught the attention and eventual irritation of the Greek God Ares. In a move that might have been better suited to Aphrodite, Ares smote Kitt, transforming him into a human for a period of 24 hours, mainly just so that Kitt and Hattie would shut up and stop being so annoying. At first Kitt was horrified and confused. Soon after, he began to realize the advantages of the situation. Soon after that, he was not only declaring his love for Hattie but showing it to her as well. They made good use of their time.

The next day, he was back to being a car, but Ares had yet another surprise for them - in their... passion, they'd neglected something very important, and Hattie had become pregnant. Which was also horrifying, because the only thing worse than being a car in love was being a car in love with a baby on the way who may not be fully human.

Reluctantly, because honestly the God is a dick, Kitt and Hattie summoned Ares for help with the situation. Their reasoning was that if Ares could do make Kitt human once, he could arrange for it so that Kitt could become human whenever he either needed or desired to be. (At some point in all of this, Kitt DID eventually return to the Foundation to 'fess up, but not a lot came of it, although they never saw Kitt in his human form and so realistically they could have believed one of several things, such as that Kitt was off his rocker, or was going a little overboard to protect this poor pregnant girl, or maybe she'd even mucked about with his circuitry and he truly believed what he was saying - who knows?) Ares agreed - on the condition that Hattie sleep with him. Of course this was unacceptable to Kitt, as he would be the one reaping the benefits of the deal. He offered himself up instead. After a lot of finagling, Ares accepted. Kitt... doesn't like to talk about that period much. Not at all, really. To add insult to injury, Ares still wants to sleep with Hattie, and she and Kitt both know that Ares can change the conditions of his deal at any time. Even now Kitt doesn't feel secure in his humanity.

Another stressful complication was the fact that Kitt was utterly, utterly, utterly petrified by the possibility that if the board members of Knight Industries discovered what had happened, that he, Hattie, and the baby would be subjected to experiments and tests and the like, given the fact of his still being classified legally as property.

It was almost a relief that day when, while he was driving Hattie back from a doctor's appointment in downtown Los Angeles, they were swept up in an anomalous tornado-like weather condition and dropped off in the heart of London, England.

Fast forward a few months.

Kitt and Hattie, after their intial period of wondering what in the world had happened and whether or not they could return, have accepted that they are now living in UTR-verse and have accepted this fact, though Kitt misses Michael, Bonnie, and Devon desperately. He rarely speaks of them, and doesn't try to bother Hattie with it, as he figures she probably guesses. They are living in a palatial estate just outside of London, England. (Don't ask me where, it's made up, okay?) A short time after their arrival, in a community-wide plot in UTR, Kitt and Hattie were swept back into the Dark Ages, ending up in a castle and realizing that they were Lord and Lady of the manor. Immediately realizing the potential implications, not to mention the romance of the location, Kitt finally asked Hattie to marry him, and to his delight she accepted - by this time she was five months' pregnant. The wedding was arranged hastily, and Kitt reluctantly settled on the last name of 'Knight', though it still makes him feel uneasy to use it and most of the time doesn't. They were married with as much pomp and ceremony as could be summoned on such short notice, but immediately after Kitt retired to the privacy of his chamber with the man he learned was his most trusted advisor (who looked remarkably like Devon Miles) in order to draw up a long-term financial plan for the estate, as well as a plan for the legal inheritance of the property - the idea being that once he and Hattie returned to their own timeline, the estate would be ready and waiting for them, having earned them a tidy income through the centuries. It was only then that he returned to the reception, intending this to be a surprise for Hattie. (It was during this time that Kitt discovered his business acumen, which would come to serve him well. And yes, I realize that the history of Great Britain is fraught with invasions and hostile takeovers and nobles losing their heads as well as their lands, but for my purposes Kitt and Hattie's estate was well cared for and passed down through the centuries and back into their hands with no trouble at all, so there. This also means that Kitt and Hattie also probably have some small ties still to the nobility in Great Britain.)

Having discovered that he had a knack if not a passion for business, and finding himself without a driver, it soon became obvious what his next move would be - Kitt acquired a small, struggling tech firm in Los Angeles that had fallen on hard times with the passing of its founder some years before. Flush with an infusion of new capital, Kitt was determined to make Knight Industries into the successful firm he remembered, by overhauling it completely, restructuring it from top to bottom, and moving the company's headquarters from Los Angeles to London. In doing so he probably made himself a good deal of enemies, but the end result was all that mattered to him, and once in his hands the company began thriving, becoming successful virtually overnight. It was becoming so large that he found even he was having trouble keeping track of everything, and so he found himself hiring a personal assistant.

But I digress. When he first acquired the company, he realized that Knight Industries had never constructed an analogue to the Knight Industries Two Thousand in this universe. A little digging revealed that plans existed but had been shelved due to an inability to finance the project properly, followed soon after by the death of the founder, Wilton Knight. Kitt has these preliminary plans in his possession, but he's sitting on them for the time being as he tries to reason out the moral and ethical dilemmas presented by an AI towards creating what would be, essentially, another of his own offspring.

And... there you have it. That's where things stand at the moment with this version of Kitt. I know that I've probably left out a good portion of his background, his motivations, so on and so forth and what have you, but this should at least provide a start for anyone wanting to know how I'm playing the character as of this moment. I of course reserve the right to add or change things as I see fit or as needed by the dictates of RP. If you've actually read all of this, thank you and congratulations.

PB: Nick Bryant

Mun: Vespurrs

Replaced: Dave Gahan