[Desperately Seeking Roidmudes]

[warintheextreme]

I have always and will always be a scientist. While my expertise has mostly been in the area of biology, when one accidentally discovers an entire human digitized, and then reviving them and discovering that they are fully conscious, and have been the entire three years they were essentially trapped in a data subdimension...

One starts to pay closer attention to what happens in the realms of the internet and data transmission.

And then, of course, there was the Global Freeze event- not that anyone could miss it.

Still, if nothing else, it resulted in a massive dump of new accessible data, and there are certain lines of code that are... Unsettlingly familiar.

I considered contacting Jin Masato to ask his opinion, but he has recently reunited with his partner, and I don't want to be a bother or annoyance. Besides, I can tell with a little extra digging that this data is artificial on a deeper level than Jin Masato's data was.

Still, it is humanoid. And, from what I can tell, it's conscious.

Perhaps I should be more cautious- I have seen terrible things in my life, things that can go horribly wrong when mistakes are made, actions taken without considering all potential consequences.

But whatever this conscious data in the dump from the Global Freeze event is, who it is, they aren't responding to my usual avenues of communication with digital entities, and if nothing else, my recent life has left me a lot more sympathetic to those trapped by circumstance.

I sift through, collate the data with this specific electronic signature, and feed it into the second prototype of the portable hard-light holographic emitter, then activate it.

It, or rather, they should load automatically.

Comments

[atelltaleheart]

The last thing that I felt was chill, an unusual sensation for me given the warm temperature my Roidmude body always maintained, in any form.

So I notice first that I no longer feel a chill. Nor the wet seeping cold that suffused myself - and everything around me - as I ceased to be.

Then, I notice that I'm noticing. I'm operating again. But my Core couldn't possibly...?

I resubstantiate standing up, arms at my sides and head tipped forward. As soon as I realize I have the ability, I grab for my chest, feeling for the gouged hole over my heart, the edges of flaking silicon and chipped circuitboards. Instead of damaged, solid structure, my fingertips blip faintly, pressing into - through? - the unblemished surface of my chest.

Alarmed, I look around to take in my surroundings. I see a scientist - the coat is a cue, but the particular demeanor is the truly telling quality to my eye - sitting in a desk chair, observing me as I compiled. I gather that he is the one who has reassembled me from the scattered electrical static I had become.

The rest of the room is dim, outfitted with many rectangular, oblong, and paneled appliances, equipment, tools and work surfaces in varying textures of smooth, durable, white, chrome, and easily-sanitizable. A laboratory.

The rush of chemical terror that I expect to feel flooding my synapses, a cocktail synthesized to mimic the animalistic fight or flight endorphins present in mammals, is absent. I do not have care or time to wonder why my head is so clear, my gut so quiescent. The roiling nausea and choking dread that I would normally feel upon finding myself in a laboratory alone with a white-coated scientist are absent, but they would only distract me, so I am grateful for their absence.

I growl, hands fisting at my sides, and swing smoothly into my defensive crouch. I will my evolved form to appear, gritting my teeth with effort.

This human might be a valuable one, like Tomari Shinnosuke. It's more likely that he's a dangerous one. In my experience, though some humans appear wholesome at the start, most of them eventually proved to me their duplicitousness and treacherous nature.

So while this scientist might not live up to my suspicions, honestly, I'd rather not give him the chance.

"Choose your final words and hold them dearly to you, human!"

[warintheextreme]

The being that develops is tall, visually masculine presenting, wearing a long red coat with a heavy fur collar. He has dark hair, light brown eyes, and Japanese features.

But that's all physical attributes- it's not even technically real, since the avatars are only hard light. Still, that doesn't mean he couldn't hurt me if he wanted to, and that's certainly a potential that needs to be addressed, because above all of that, there's the contorted expression on his face.

I'm not great with emotions or the physical representations of them, but even I know fear combined with anger when I see it.

I have a few potential avenues of protecting myself- I could disable the emitter entirely, cutting him off. I could disable just a part of the emitter, making him become less hard light and more just... Light, and thus incapable of hurting me.

But I've changed in the nearly a year it's been since Kouta revived me. My own self-preservation wasn't ever the highest priority on my list, but it did rank rather higher than the agency and emotional distress of others.

Not anymore.

So I scoot my chair away from my desk, lifting my hands off my keyboards and holding them up in a display of non-aggression. His words are threatening, but I hope he'll let me speak more than one or two of these final words.

"Are you alright? I loaded you because you were not responding when in data form. I was concerned that you couldn't."

[atelltaleheart]

I am caught off guard by his response to my threat display. Instead of showing fear - or, for that matter, a lack of fear - he shows caution, and concern, and puts himself in an unthreatening posture.

It causes me to hesitate long enough to hear what he says.

"Loaded me?"

Quick review of the pertinent data on human syntax --

"In the way one would load a program?"

I push my fingertips through the surface of my chest again, shuddering at the unfamiliar feeling.

I still do not feel the fear, the endorphin surge, that I expect. If I have no body, then it follows that I have no endorphins that would fill it. Yet I am thinking, existing, and I am still unsure of several things but I knew in my Core how badly damaged I was. In my last moments, I felt the cracks streaking through me as I shattered.

I should not be alive now. My head swims with the impossibility of it.

"My body was destroyed. But my Core..."

Growling, I step forward, testing whether I can move from this spot. I can, and I advance on the man with unkempt black hair. I catalogue every visible difference that I can between this scientist and the one I fear, as if to reassure myself that I am not experiencing some horrific delusion - even as I remain prepared to act on the fear that I am.

((no collar, a white streak where he had none, hair longer, eyes sharper, voice calmer))

"Who are you? Did you repair my Core? Did Banno send you?"

[warintheextreme]

"Yes." I answer his question with as reasonable a tone as I can manage- or at least, reasonable for me, which may actually mean without any particular tone at all. But at least it's not, as far as I can tell, particularly mocking.

Well, it shouldn't be. I'm not mocking him at all.

"Yes, like I would load a program. Which is what you seem to be, at this point. I am sorry if that is a shock to you."

He moves closer, and his eyes glint warningly. I remain still, hands raised, but I twist them at the wrist so I am instead visibly shrugging without the actual motion. "I have a bad habit of dabbling in things that are maybe outside of my responsibility. But you were conscious within the data dump made public after the Global Freeze event. I was concerned you were..." I pause, trying to think of the right word, or words.

"In pain. Or discomfort. In that form."

I don't know what he means by Core, but I'm thinking maybe I should, perhaps I should have researched the events in Kuruma more completely before fiddling around in this data. But I recognize the name, and while I am trying not to be offensive or affronting, I can't help the sharp laugh that barks out of me.

"Banno? Banno Tenjuurou? That hack?" I scoff, rolling my eyes a little.

Banno was a terrible scientist who relied too much on the intelligence of greater people, and with a bad track record, a lack of principles, and hardly any worthwhile method to his madness, even before he tried to take over the world through the most absurdly contrived methods ever heard of- and that's coming from me, who believed in magic evolution fruit that granted godhood.

"Hardly."

[atelltaleheart]

I have many thoughts on what the scientist is telling me. Suspicion against the purity of his intentions, curiosity at the genuine-sounding apology he offers me in sympathy. But thoughts further than that point are brought to a screeching, gobsmacked halt when he laughs.

...Oh. OH. I have witnessed derision, and I have witnessed deception. This is derision, yes, but not deception. And not directed at me.

Generally, I have observed that humans are skilled at creating artificial reactions. Those with exceptional skill in this area are the ones who work as diplomats - or thieves. Not the scientists, who eschew companionship of their own race and pursue passion in a way that seems to make sense only to themselves.

This one does not have the skill to conceal the subtle, telling movements of facial muscle that reacted instantaneously when I said Banno's name. (Nor, I think, has he ever spent much time attempting to develop said skill. He is an "open book.")

He laughs, calls Banno what I imagine is one of the strongest insults he knows, and something in my heart - in what would have been my heart, if I still had a body - untwists. Something about his reaction strikes me in the right way, reassuring me not only that I am safe - for the moment - but also that I am in friendly company.

Quite a conclusion to draw, from a simple short laugh. But, as the story goes, there are some things that only the heart knows. I don't mind that I cannot quantify why the scientist's laugh has so easily convinced me of something that his words had not. I simply can. Of course, Brain would fret, certain I'm jumping to unfounded conclusions.

...Brain.

"The others." Wide-eyed, fists opening to supplicate, anger forgotten, everything else forgotten, I advance until I am within the scientist's personal space, pinning him to his chair with my desperate gaze.

"The others. Where are the others?"

[warintheextreme]

This time he actually lunges, and I'm pretty cavalier but there are certain potential threats that even I react to reflexively. He stands over me and while his expression is no longer fierce with potential violence, he's still much closer than I generally allow any person, artificial or otherwise. I stand up, my chair rolling out from under me and away.

He's still quite taller than me, but that's not the problem.

I wet my lips thoughtfully, glance towards my computer where the data that I culled him from is still scrolling resolutely, and then look back up at him, meeting his eyes.

"I did not know there were others. But I can look."