it's about an eight-bit artificial intelligence that grows up inside a computer, playing something like Tube Wars to learn how to survive. it gets installed into a robot body and at one point the robot is being shipped somewhere on a train, and the AI has to figure out how to reattach some of its limbs and escape, where it hides in a barn and is discovered by the farmer's daughter who menaces it with a pitchfork, i think.

the book was called something like "I 2", or I squared, or perhaps "me 2" or me squared. searching for that in google gives me nothing useful. i asked in /lit/, but they're snobs about genre fiction.