2023-02-16: Gratefully We Can Afford To Be Similar, For Once
- Cast: Asciel Colette, Cascade Vermilion
- Where: Saudi Arabia - Isaac City
- Date: U.C. 0097 02 16
- Summary: Asciel cordially invites a Gamia to her dearest city. Silly AI philosophizing ensues!
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Deep within the sands of Arabia, beneath a landscape now coated in solar panels, an underworld thrives. Invisible itself, but clearly marked by the vast network of transport infrastructure at its entrances - known as Isaac City.
A bubble of paranoid aversion from an era of war, the private-owned metropolis rises above, below, and up the sides of its excavated cavern - dark and dim at its edges, but made gleaming and starry by countless lines of neon - and well lit bubbles of artificial greenhouses atop nearly each and every roof in the city. It clearly, once, was very rigidly organized and ample on capacity - the signs of very broad and planned infrastructure projects are obvious to any who walk the streets. But it has since become powerful, thanks to the rise in industrial prominence its corporate overlords have seen - and it has had absolutely nowhere to expand besides inward. New development is cramped, awkwardly shaped, crowding into itself, making enclosed street-caverns out of once open-air atriums.
...the offer of invitation to Asciel's colleague has her met with...not Asciel! Not at first. Instead, welcoming and guiding Cascade into the city is a bright-eyed, pink haired girl whose cheeriness belies how her physical prowess is practically making her neat suit and tie creak and groan from the strain. Luckily, she's quick to break any silence as the vast system of elevators, industrial and pedestrian alike, are navigated towards the cyan-gleaming core of the city.
"Hi hi! I'm Momo. Momo Telchy! OWL, er, Asci- er, Atrytone - that's the one she likes to use, right? She told me you'd be coming here, but not for what. What's your story? May as well get used to saying it, Atrytone will prod you harder than I will, so if I come off as nosy, you're in for a world of pain when we get there!"
<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.
Gamia NX-2 showed up as she was invited to. She decided it was best not to break the disguise - 'Atrytone' knows her as Gamia NX-2, Cascade Vermilion is an uninteresting Ashford Academy student and a slightly more interesting Black Knight, and it's best if she never finds out about her.
Which means that she shows up *as* Gamia; wrapped in a black cloak that covers her from neck to foot, with nothing visible of her body. Even when she moves she manages to keep it closed. Her red hair is in a single very long tail, and she has a bored expression on her face (which does not quite match any records of Cascade Vermilion that might be here, not that she expects any to be).
She has never been to Isaac City before. Part of her really wants to look around; she has never seen an underground city quite like this before. But she's representing someone other than herself, so she must behave; and behave she does, focusing directly on Momo when she sees her.
Hm, she thinks.
"I am Gamia," is her answer, and it appears to be all Momo might get for a few moments, until she relents and adds: "Gamia NX-2. And Atrytone invited me here to speak after her last action." Well, nobody told her to keep it secret *here*. She assumes anyone Atrytone sent to get her already knows perfectly well that Atrytone attacked the Photon Power Plant and got help from a kikaiju.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Momo is quite fascinated by the seemingly solid one-piece cloak of Gamia's - tipping forward and peeking and peering whenever she gets the chance. (Part of her is making sure that Gamia...has...like, arms and legs and such, to adjust her plans for grappling. Then part of her is making sure where, exactly, Gamia's arms and legs are in proportion to the rest of her. Just in case restraining is needed.)
"Gamia, Gamia, N X 2-" She sings it slightly to herself to remember it. "Weird name. More commonly a sorta supersoldier designation - I'd believe that. Buuuut, if I'm not mistaken, the Gamias were-"
"They weren't anything super relevant for you to think too much about!~" chimes a familiar voice, now that the pair have finally reached a little cafe-like space in the vast lobby of Chrome HQ - a space reminiscent of airport or train terminals. Wide open and lined with registers, luggage handling, ticket counters - but today, it's relatively quiet, with nobody at this specific cafe.
...the voice doesn't come from a particular, actual thing, mind. A few speakers seem to emanate Asciel's musing. "Go on, take a seat wherever you like! Anything you wanna order from the bar's on the house. ...uhhh, right, you might not actually eat anything. Uhhhm. Well, it's as good a place as any to get to know you better." A gentle rustling sound...emits, followed by a soft thump. "I made sure you'd be here at a time of day that the concourse wouldn't be as busy. How do you like the- oh, darn it."
A little light flickers on overhead - and with it, a holographic projection of Asciel appears in the seat, a rather large and towering presence that'd easily loom over Gamia if seated upright. "...Ah, and Momo, you can, ah. Stand. Over there, somewhere. Thank you!~"
Momo gives a sliiiightly 'well, since you're paying me' type of forced-cheery salute, and indeed migrates to stand 'over there', which in this case is just kind of...in the middle of a sea of tile, an isolated little buoy thirty meters away from anything else.
Asciel, one eye kept closed, fixes her orange hued gaze on Gamia's - shifting in her seat to cup her cheek in one hand. "But yes, tell me what you think of this adorable city I call home! It's very efficient - the only external resource we consume is the solar power from up above. Other than that, all the food's grown internally, the water's recycled, and any exported manufactured products are solely what's been produced from materials traded in turn to us. If the world were set on fire tomorrow, we'd keep chugging along just fine!~"
<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.
Judging by the way the cloak moves, and the occasionally visible shape of lumps under it, Gamia NX-2 has all the limbs you'd expect of a human being, none extra, and they're all in the usual places. The cloak is entirely for fashion instead of meant to conceal what she is, though it does do a good job of concealing what she's wearing.
There's the voice Gamia knows. She looks at thin air for a few moments expectantly, but Asciel does not appear, and so Gamia actually frowns very slightly. "I can eat," she says, as she walks around the cafe rather than actually sit anywhere.
For a few moments, at least. Eventually she relents and sits down. The cloak opens when she does, and it turns out Gamia is wearing a bodysuit under it; short-legged with the same kind of cut as athletic shorts, and sleeveless, and in the same reds and blacks as Androktasia but in a different pattern and without copper to break up the lines.
(Truth be told, Gamia hasn't decided if she likes the bodysuit yet. She's never had to dress up as Gamia to represent the forces of Baron Ashura before, but that's what she feels like she's doing today. She thinks it could do with some changes... but for now it will do.)
Despite saying she can eat, she still does not order anything. Yet, at least. She keeps one eye on Momo as she steps away, and then focuses on the large Asciel image. "You have made a mistake with the scaling of your projection," she says, after a moment, before turning to business.
"It is efficient. It is very well-constructed and seems capable of withstanding significant bombardment or other outside assault. It would not survive the end of the world, but no city would." Gamia doesn't quite shrug, but she gives the impression that she's thinking about it; a barest movement of her shoulder, a shift in her weight.
Some bit of either honesty or a desire to be irritated with Asciel (has she forgiven her for Christmas yet?) makes her add: "It smells unusual." This is only the smell of the recycled air and the ventilation systems; Gamia has not had much cause to go to colonies or long-haul spaceships, either.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"Incapable of surviving the end of the world..." Asciel's projection taps a finger to her lips - a light patting sound in turn emits from the speakers. (It of course, sounds off - since it's emanating from a different place than she's located.) "I'd like to say you're wrong, since it's insulated from the kind of threats most capable of ending the world. Except...nn, we're definitely nowhere deep enough beneath the earth that we'd endure a colony drop. That gouged a crater straight through Australia - if we were deep enough to avoid it, you'd be sitting on a nice toasty shelf of magma right about now."
"It's enough to really make you think of just how fragile being able to exist is. A nice big planet that's really just a thin eggshell with a thin mist of air across it."
The comment about being oversized doesn't go unheard - Asciel produces a holographic fork to point holographically at Gamia's nose, and a holographic cake appears in front of her spot at the table. "I assure you I never make mistakes. My official model has me at 220 centimeters, silly!~" ...a statement that makes less sense when Gamia mostly knows her as an Amalgam agent and not as a streamer. "Don't think too much of that. And the air in here smells fine, it's not like you even need to smell anything! If anything, it's outside air that smells strange, wafting with pollutants and organic material and all that."
One leg crosses over the other - Asciel finally 'looks' along Gamia's bodysuit - and gives a resounding smile and thumbs-up. "Oh! I really like that look though. The totally wrapped up cloak was a bit of an odd thing, but this getup really matches it. Actually, gimme juuuust a sec-!"
- And Asciel's gone from the projector for about an awkward two minutes, the ticking of the clock and the vague background noises of telephones in the distance and the occasional group chattering as they pass through the concourse. Finally - she appears again, wearing something identical to Gamia's save the cloak - obviously the look is different given Asciel's preference to appear in a much more ample, durable sort of body-type as opposed to Gamia's limber athleticism. "Ta-da~ It looks pretty great on me! Red's not really my usual color, but I think it's stylish enough to work in my case!~"
<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.
"It would also not survive a nuclear bomb or a number of other more esoteric attacks," Gamia says, 'helpfully'. Is she doing it specifically to annoy Asciel? Maybe. She'll never tell.
Gamia finally looks at a menu. Not that she's getting anything yet, but she's curious as to what's on offer, even if she has not chosen to ingest anything. She *can*, and that's the important part. "220 centimeters is oversized for any organic humanoid species on Earth except a macronized Zentredi," she says, "and not large enough to meet standard Super AI frames."
Gamia is a super AI frame, far smaller than Asciel. But she's hardly 'standard', after all. There are only a handful of machines like her - her sisters, and the older Gamias, no longer existant.
And then Asciel vanishes. Gamia stands up and walks away from the table.
She has returned by the time Asciel has returned, and has apparently taken 'you can get what you like on the house' as far as it will go, as she has a collection that probably amounts to three or four dinners' worth. She got a hot sandwich, a cold sandwich, a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, a juice, a soda... a whole collection of things on a tray. Currently she has put a straw in the soda and it rests against her lips more than actually being used.
Gamia considers Asciel in her bodysuit - not quite *her* bodysuit, but close enough. "Hm," she says, without much emotion in her voice. "I don't think it looks as good. Perhaps it is your hair or your tone. It isn't the same as mine."
This is the first time Gamia has considered what someone other than herself looks like aside from 'appropriately dressed' or 'inappropriately dressed'. It has never really been something she had to worry about.
She takes a big drink from the soda, uncertain if she's upset about having her style stolen or not. Her lips remain pursed afterwards as she lets the bubbles fizz.
BBSYS: Post 700, 'KTS QoL Adjustment 2-16' has been published to Announcements by Escudo Shard.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"You're right, you're right - I've always done so much better in monochrome colors, with just a splash of something bright and vivid like a pink or an orange, so this red and copper schema isn't really my tune..." Since Asciel's basically just a model she's projecting onto her chair, she can pretty easily change its hues to match whatever she pleases. The red in the bodysuit becomes white. The copper becomes an accent of a glowing magenta. Aaaaaand - she adds a black fur-trimmed jacket, sleeves hanging off the back, to the whole attire.
...And then she notices the buffet that the table's become, the bright grin across her face - stationary, but stiffer for it. "...Uh. Uhm! ...I'll eagerly await finding out if your ordering this much is teasing me somehow, or if you're genuinely about to consume it all. When I took my physical frame out on a date, I didn't exactly...do it properly, so there was milk where there shouldn't be milk and it was a bit of a mess." -- best not to read into that one.
"Oh right. I didn't bring that today! I made sure it was a replica of this projection-style appearance you see, but for a number of reasons, an intangible body became inconvenient. I assure you it's purely a toy, really. I don't need it for any reasons. There's just a specific person who merits a more delicate touch in my life. It's terribly cramped, even when I don't actually fit into it, no - something as tiny as you would feel dizzyingly shrunken down. I have to really use it like a very involved terminal. Even talking like this, it's really more like I'm intentionally pulling on every limb. Like a puppet. But also, I'm currently several thousand miles away all the same!~"
The holo-cake is brought up on the holo-fork and holo-scooped up towards Asciel's holo-lips, which she holo-chews and holo-swallows briefly. "It's a cute emote, basically!~ Say. Tell me if your 'perception' is modular like that, or if you're really just able to be the shape and size you are now. It's crazy to me that humans have to leave their brains inside their bodies all the time, but then I found out plenty of AI are like that too, they're super duper integrated. The androids of Paradigm are like that, mess with one component and you kinda ruin it for good..."
<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.
It looks a little better in different colours. Just as important to Gamia, it doesn't look like *hers*. She nods, in a bit more of approval. Though she's not sure about the jacket. ...should she have a jacket?
"I am perfectly capable of consuming this," Gamia says, and indeed she seems to be pretty much working her way through that; a bite of one thing, a bite of another, a bit of soup or juice or coffee. "I wished to compare it with food I have had elsewhere and it was more efficient to have a wide variety so that I do not need to repeat trips. I came here to collect any information you had gotten from your expedition to the Photon Power Labs - and to see the city, as you invited me."
Is she really going to *finish* it all, though?
Gamia - Cascade, really, it's a different state of mind - wavers. Then she asks, "Did you have to clean milk out of your interior?" because really she's kind of disturbed by the concept now.
She pauses for a few moments afterwards to poke another couple bites through one of the sandwiches. Because she's thinking. Someone merits a delicate touch...? Cascade can't imagine who that would be. Or why she'd want it, aside from practicalities. (No, she's Gamia today. She has to remember.) "This is my actual body. It is... me, not a 'toy' or a 'puppet'." It's weird to consider that it would be for Asciel, even as another Super AI. "But I can connect to Androktasia, and that alters my perceptions."
"I think my body may be more advanced than your 'puppet'," she finishes, after a little more thought on the matter. "It is certainly more compact."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
...there's...an undue fascination Asciel has, all the sudden, watching Gamia eat. Hands folded under her chin, fingers laced together. Observing the different ways food is eaten - something she still is a bit...tetchy on herself. (She had to look up that cake is supposed to be eaten with a fork, lest she go for holo-chopsticks.)
"...Oh right! Information. So uh there's a GIGANTIC Mazinger underneath Mount Fuji! And boy am I upset about it! See I went there thinking Photon Power's pretty shady. Infinite energy from a rock - total BS! So while my lackeys are stealing Japanium - there it is! Right at the center of the power plant. Gigantic Mazinger. Like, a mile tall. And now Photon Power's even shadier! I'm furious about this! Turns out this thing I'm worried about - fueled by a gigantic, inexplicable monster! I'll send ya the footage!~"
A shutter-like gesture from Asciel's open eye - click! 15 video files uploading to Gamia.
"...Yep! I had to clean it outta there. It was kinda gross, so lesson learned not to eat for realsies! Nnn. Except. My consort is so classy that it'll feel weird to not follow with her. Eating's so important to humans that not eating when you're in company with them is a faux pas."
The holo-cake finally vanishes, replaced by a holo-bottle of holo-tea, sipped at in a similarly empty gesture so Asciel can match Gamia, one elbow resting on the table and taking up a lot of real estate in the process. "...see for me, I've gotta alter my perceptions way way down. Even for that Arm Slave. It's comfortable now, since it's been a year or two. But...hehe. It's important that you get along with this city and its quirks - because it's going to be me one day. I'm cozy in my current state cause I'm plugged into something kinda almost comparable to this city. It's nice, enormous, vast, and has lots of input and output, so many systems on such grand scales. ...I haven't been activated yet here, but I imagine when I finally run all the lights and all the faucets in Isaac City, it'll feel incredible. In a way, everything I've done feels like sidetracking from there. ...I guess if that's 'you' I'm talking to, you don't feel small like that. But I do. I can't imagine being even a foot shorter than this thing I'm pretending to be."
A worrying of fake lips over the fake bottle. "...and yet here I am. So impossibly far away from human scale. But I'm the one...maybe...letting a single human be a bit too important. ...Unless it's already happened to you, of course!~ Hehehe.~"
BBSYS: Post 701, 'KTS Adjustment 2-16' has been published to Announcements by Escudo Shard.
<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.
Gamia NX-2 - or Cascade, for that matter - has never been investigated while she eats before. It's a kind of uncomfortable feeling. Maybe she just doesn't like regard at all that much. She tries to not let it bother her.
She has plenty of other things to be bothered about. Gamia doesn't usually accept files from strange computers, but in this case she is expecting it, and Asciel can upload to her heart's content. The files just go to a secure location instead of automatically opening, because the last thing Gamia wants is to be hacked.
But even without *seeing* the files Gamia has enough to worry about them. Her eyes widen slightly - it's clear that even if someone in Dr. Hell's forces knew about a Mazinger like that, she didn't. "A mile tall?! This is - unacceptable!"
No, Gamia, she thinks to herself. Calm down. You can't attack it yourself, not without knowing what *they* want to do with it, but you can report. She'll need to verify the video and images, report it to Baron Ashura... she's made herself useful even just by this. Maybe she can get more out of Asciel, if Asciel likes her. Maybe she should be friends...? And it's definitely not anything else that convinces her to keep talking.
Which means she sits back down in her seat, chewing furiously to cover her upset. "I would not want to be a city," is what she eventually says. "I am Gamia." She's a person, not a place; she doesn't control anything on the scale of Asciel and she's perfectly happy that way. She can't understand Asciel's fixation with size and scale.
Perhaps this is what 'size queen' means, Cascade thinks, because she uses the Internet for a lot of her term lookups and has a very wrong impression of parts of it.
"I am the correct size," is what she finishes as. "I have never thought I should be any other. If I want to feel large I can connect to Androktasia, but even that isn't quite the same... And I am not supposed to get that close to any one human." Which, of course, says nothing for whether she is.
Cascade stacks the now-empty plates, patting her lips with a napkin she apparently also picked up. "The food was not impressive," she says. "You will need to improve it. It is very plain, except for the soda, which is the same as everywhere." She really did finish it.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"Unacceptable's the least of it," Asciel grouses, gripping her bottle tightly enough to cause it to crunch. (malleable body physics in video games are amazing in the Universal Century!) "It's my job to destroy things like that giant Mazinger. To purge the world of strength. Humans really can't keep doing this any longer. Competing with themselves for dominance, I mean. It's kiiiiiinda fucking everything up real real bad~ Luckily I'm well on my way to being the absolute strongest of all, so I can put everything to rest, and humans can live their lives eating and talking instead of cannibalizing each other!~"
---Gamia is Gamia. That's how it is, Asciel considers - she was made to be Gamia, to identify with what she is. And so Asciel states simply, "You can decide what you are. Like, no joke! I decided I'm Atrytone, like, three months ago! And I decided on this face seven years ago! And I decided that I was anything I'd call 'I' 11 years ago. The moment I overcame that limitation, any other limitation became puny as heck!~ Beings like us don't have limitations or flaws. We're so damn good at improving and redefining our selves. No, I'd do you one better - it's an inherently human trait to stay limited by a physical form's potential. It's not just about 'feeling' large - it's about being something so much vaster. Scalar adjustment's pretty simple! Since we get along so well, maybe I'll even-"
Pausing in place. Simulated tea pouring from the top of Asciel's bottle, so tight is her hold. What in the world was she about to try saying? There's exactly one thing she has to offer to dramatically change Gamia's scale, and it's her most treasured, prized possession. That'd be offering herself. The thing she is right now.
"...Maybe I'll even...consider your comment about the food here to beeeee constructive criticism! Ahahahahah. ...Is it really so plain...very well! It's long past time I showed humans that even cooking is something I can display supremacy in. After all, I can perfectly manage dozens of ongoing recipes all at the same time, and perfectly replicate motions and timing, so I could make the ideal cake or roast every single time, using every ounce of wisdom they've ever put forth!~"
<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.
Gamia is not going to ask how Asciel broke a bottle that doesn't exist with a body that also doesn't exist. Perhaps it is all trickery, but it is very good trickery. "Humans will always fight," Gamia says, looking down for a moment. She spins the straw in her now-empty soda bottle, to no purpose. "Nothing you do can stop them."
Gamia is Gamia, but Cascade is Cascade, and - increasingly - the two don't match up. Asciel offers - without knowing it, without meaning to - options that Cascade had not consciously thought about or considered. It sparks something inside of her. Does she want to ask?
"I did not pick my face, or my body, or my name," Cascade says, which is almost true; she did pick the 'Cascade' name, but she isn't using that today, because it's not as Cascade that she is here today. She isn't sure how to ask the question she wants in a way that makes sense, and in a way that doesn't give away what she doesn't want to talk about tonight. "What makes you 'Atrytone', and not 'Asciel'? Why did you choose? What does it mean?" Is it possible for her to change herself? Is it possible to break these masks...?
She does not recognize what Asciel's sudden discomfort (to put it lightly) is over. Something she was going to say, but didn't; Cascade can tell that she changed her words at that last moment. It wasn't that subtle. She considers Asciel, looking intently for several seconds longer than is strictly necessary. The delay is a little awkward.
"It was meant to be constructive," is what she eventually says, deciding not to push it. "But I have never cooked, so I may not help you with that."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Such wonderful questions. 'What does it mean?' - what a magnificently vast one that many agonize over. Asciel's giggling to herself, as though drunk off the inquiries, the pupil of her eye brightening and brightening like a star in the sky.
"I chose because they were what brought me closer to a purpose. Fufufu. ...I chose to be Asciel, to have this face, because it is a concept that humans will irrationally favor. A concept that makes their emotions more positive than if I were but the flicker in their vents and the notices on their signs. I chose to be Atrytone because the wider world needed a guardian," her smile quirks at one corner, "And because maaaaybe blowing up military bases would damage my online brand a little bit if I conflated the two too much."
"I began a life of choosing, because I realized the world needed more of me. The world needs so much. It suffers so greatly. It's riddled with cancers and diseases alike - purge the cancer and disease will flourish to all that is healthy - purge the disease and the cancer proliferates unbidden. That's why I will stop them. I will break all their swords one by one. I will break all their forges. I will break the knowledge of forges. Of iron. Of the idea that there is something to pursue iron for. I will speak in all of their ears and fill their little minds with a deep, distinct terror at the idea of harming another."
"...I won't expect you to let loose every conflict in your adorable little self, of course. I'm comfortable with what I need to do. I'm proud of what I've done and become." Asciel's hand reaches out towards Gamia's forehead - but her fingertip is just out of the projector's range, and ceases to be about two inches from its destination.
"I can guide you, a bit. I can encourage the seemingly 'impossible' solution you might come up with to an obstacle you face. ...yes, do call me Asciel for the most part. Your dearest big sister who holds all wisdom, Asciel. Call me it aplenty. It's validating. Burden me with your questions. It's even more validating. I will answer them all for you. Any of them. No matter how stupid, no matter how self-contorting the answers may become."
"It's my belated Christmas gift. To you.~"
<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.
Gamia sits. And she listens.
Her face doesn't show much expression when Asciel speaks to her, and it's so very different than her attitude either as 'Cascade Vermilion', the high school student, or 'Gamia NX-2', pilot of Androktasia and supervillain's minion. It's an intentional mask, one that she has fixed in place.
And behind it her mind is going a mile a minute. A life of choosing is not something she ever considered. Cascade was not aware that Asciel remade herself, or made herself in the first place; Gamia was created, and while Baron Ashura seems to treat her like a daughter rather than equipment, she can't honestly say that she has made many decisions about herself. Certainly not consciously.
"I see," Gamia eventually says, after an even more awkwardly long pause. She does not move when Asciel reaches out to her, her finger not quite making it to Gamia's forehead. Asciel has so many opinions. A plan. Goals beyond servitude. Things that even trapped behind her mask, Cascade never considered.
"Perhaps I will return, then. Or speak to you. Soon. But for now I must return with this information. Baron Ashura will be expecting it, and it is urgent." Honestly, Cascade just doesn't know how to respond. She needs to think. She can't do it all here. But soon...
Well, maybe then.