[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!"