[MINGLE] One-Man Show

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Inari Shrine and elsewhere
WHEN: 25 January 2019 through ?
OPEN TO: All opted in characters
WARNINGS: Please warn in the subject line of your comment as needed, and remember to move anything turning adult to a new post.
IMPORTANT NOTES: Final reminders and informational links are here. Please label all top-levels clearly so that there is no confusion who they are open to and what they are for, and DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR TAG!
Have fun and ask questions here!

Comments

[youcantkillme]

It means that the calm of the Connor in front of them is a thin bandaid hiding discomfort. Connor meets Altair's eyes, and when he identifies the emotions staring back at him he jerks his head away rather than meet it head on. This leaves him glancing at Zevran--whose question was already answered, if indirectly--and Shiro. Connor gives Shiro a faint smile, but it's stiff. Every movement is stiff, and the only place his posture would suggest comfort is in an unmoving photograph.

"Thank you, but I haven't chosen anything," Connor says bluntly. He sounds more censuring than grateful. "Your support is unnecessary. It appears that we were just shown a hypothetical, one that I will take into account in the future and act on accordingly."

Refusing to destroy someone else's property is hardly one of the worst transgressions Connor has seen, but the act itself isn't what's alarming. It's what it implies: the errors he's been noticing, the system instability he's been trying to quarantine until it can be dealt with and removed--is this where it's leading? 'I just saw that girl's eyes... and I couldn't.' What did he see? Chloe's face hangs in his memory, but it's just a mask. Just a thing. Just like the android itself.

'What about you, Connor?.. You look human, you sound human, but what are you really?'

Connor's LED bleeds yellow for an instant, and Connor blinks quickly, forcing the memory back. The LED steadies in a blue, erratic pulse.

He turns to Zevran. He smiles again, crisply, perfectly. "My name is Connor. I am an android built by Cyberlife."

[ombranera]

"Android." Not human, then, for all that he looks it- but a machine? A golem. He lacks the stony exterior or the brilliantly glowing lines of Lyrium that creates such a thing save for the flickering circle at his temple but-

He has known self-determined golems before.

And he knows of those that resist the idea.

And seen the lengths through which one would go to keep them complacent. Keep them tools and toys rather than the living souls they truly could be. To hear one describe themselves in such a way, to enjoy or at least wish to remain a thing? Is...curious.

Zevran's head cocks to the side, eartips up, eyes narrowed, the whole of his focus on Connor.

"You would kill her for answers." There is a distinct lack of judgment in Zevran's voice, more idle bemusement than anything else. If anything Zevran's voice is carefully, delicately neutral.

[eaglesonofnone]

"A future," he echoed. He understood, though, all too well. "Then there is something here like the Apple from my own memory. We must be wary. Often, such things make those who see into it pay with a portion of their own life force for seeing what it is that is offered."

That was what Abbas forgot. Why he had been about to hand the man the Apple once more. Why he'd been immune, he still didn't know.

The emotion, though. That, he was not immune to.

[rebornpaladin]

"You can't kill something that isn't alive," Shiro says, glancing from Zevran to Connor.

"That's the point he was making, I think." It wasn't exactly where Shiro came down on the subject, but then, they'd never gone down the insanely dangerous, needless road of making artificially intelligent androids, back home.

To Altair, frowning, he murmurs, "You think this could be connected?"

[youcantkillme]

Connor inclines his head towards Shiro in agreement, before turning to Zevran.

"Of course." His face is smooth--too smooth to be honest, really, considering the discomfort the rest of him is projecting. "If Elijah Kamski had answers, then it would have been my duty to obtain them through whatever means possible." Sacrificing the mission for the sake of an android wasn't an option. Connor would never--

...

Connor certainly wouldn't do it again.

He tilted his face back towards Altair, cutting in before he can answer Shiro. "What exactly is this 'Apple'?" They saw it in the man's memory, but at the time Connor had assumed it to be some sort of golden trinket, even with the way they'd spoken about it. If it could be involved with these 'visions', though...

[ombranera]

"Of course." Because- there is no control rod in play, here, not that he could see, not that he can see. Perhaps it works in the words, the control- but Shale had been able to be themselves as honestly as a golem possibly could-

And Zevran will argue until the day he dies that Shale? is alive. Self-determined if nothing else. His eyes cut across to Shiro, eartips dipping for a moment, eyes flickering before they return to Connor- to Altair. Again with the Apple- though having seen what it can do? He is somewhat (not terribly) more willing to entertain this particular thought process.

For a moment.

Perhaps two.

"A magical bit of bullshit particular to his reality which, again, does not make it any more likely to be what it is we are dealing with here. It simply means you are more practiced at dealing with this bullshit. For one- I do not feel any more or less alive for having been forced to see that. In fact this is what my...power, my magic? Whatever it is those that brought me here does- though it is something I have to focus on and it is more of an even exchange- the knowledge shared is something both parties must agree to divulge. Not..." He gestures to the field, to the group. "Whatever this is."

[eaglesonofnone]

Altaïr's eyes narrowed for a scant moment as he watched and listened to Zevran. While he could see the words were coming from a place of his own experience, there was still a timbre to them that brought his level of respect for the man down a notch or two. The deliberate discounting of someone else's experience - perhaps it was specifically because it was Altaïr's, but he was as yet unwilling to dedicate any more attention to it than a passing notion - spoke to a degree of self-importance that he truly disliked.

"The question of you causing this," he said mildly, "was never raised, Zevran."

[rebornpaladin]

"Wait," Shiro says, turning to face Zevran, "you've experienced something like this here?"

Shiro hasn't experienced any of the powers that people have talked about, but if this is anything like that, another manufactured experience of the village or whoever's controlling it-

His frame tenses a little.

"...Did you receive a message, a video clip, on your wristband last month?"

[youcantkillme]

Connor turns his attention to Zevran, but there are problems with his arguments. Both his and Altair's, really: although there are similarities between the exchange Zevran's explanation describes, there was very little about the vision that Connor could have provided the group beforehand, if he would have even agreed to showing it. Altair's explanation isn't perfect either, because it assumes the need for the participants to all be alive.

Connor remains skeptical, but doesn't interrupt. He'll let Shiro answer, and then speak.

[ombranera]

"Much like you said it was like your Apple, this is like my power." Zevran does not roll his eyes, does not let more than the barest edges of frustration with the situation slip past his otherwise civil mask through- though it is a near thing. Trapped on a mountain, that is fine. Trapped on a mountain with men he finds...

Trying? Delightful fun. "I shared my life of my world with Alistair upon his arrival. Apparently, things were...quite different with his Warden. I wished him to know and held him and we were able to experience that which we had not lived." Something in the magic of this place- but it had been him and not this shrine, by the fountain.

"A message? No. I received nothing of the sort. Perhaps it is like the door? To the mansion on the eve before First Day."

[eaglesonofnone]

"The only thing I am relatively certain of in any of this," Altaïr said, his voice heavy with the quiet that only an instructor could manage, "is that something is at play which none of us can fully fathom. It seems that in part, most of us have some sort of experience with this, whatever it may be, but not in this exact fashion, and likely not with this exact means. Yet one thing, in my experience, remains true:

"All of this must be treated with caution. Costs and outcomes will remain unknown until it is too late for anything to be done about them."