Mosaic City, located along China's coast, is quite large city sometimes called the Crossroads Between Nations due to its diverse population. While it was once a large tourist spot, the city was placed under a blockade as the military appeared claiming there was a radiation leak. The true hazard, however, is much more sinister.
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 4, 2014 0:43:41 GMT -5
I nodded. "My mother was quite the interesting person. She was far more active and physical than my father. She originally worked as a mercenary, hailing from Germany, but after becoming disillusioned with wonton murder and assassination, she stuck to information gathering and peddling. She taught me everything she knew, from the art of killing, to the art of stalking, and down to interrogation once it really got down to it, amongst other quirks," I explained. "She, along with my father, went out to the Shadowlands around the start of the lockdown. I never saw them again. I don't know what happened to them, but I want to find out eventually, even if I've given up hope of them being alive."
I sighed. "Them leaving was the sole reason I had to keep things up on my own and manage everything. I've been living alone since then. I didn't begin to have anything resembling a social life until after they disappeared though, so I guess something good came out of it, as much as I hate to admit it."
Interesting life seemed to be quite the understatement. A mercenary and assassin from Europe, who eventually moved on to information brokering. And from the sounds of it, it seemed that while Pyxis wouldn't say such a thing anymore (not seriously, at least) her initial assessment and accusation of Alisa being a stalker when they first met was not for nothing. Alisa's lamentations about shadows taking away her parents, from after Chidori's death, made more sense now too. After several months at this point, there wasn't much reason to believe they were still alive. True, Pyxis had seen a mission posting about a man who had somehow managed to survive in the shadow-infested zone up to that point awhile back, but he had both lived out there and owned a farm. Anyone from the safe zone surviving this long seemed...unlikely, at best.
And then Alisa went into how she had to take over and manage after they disappeared, and how she changed for it. "If there's anything I've learned about living from watching others and...well, doing it myself, it's the hardships that really define who we are. I'm sure it sounds terrible to say, but...I think I like you more for who you are now than who you might have been otherwise. And..." How to approach the subject of her parents? Alisa didn't need sympathy, or else it wouldn't have been so easy to talk about them. Which was good, because Pyxis had already proven that she couldn't adequately provide it. Perhaps wishing her well would suffice? "I wish you the best of luck finding out what happened to your parents."
With that out of the way, there was a possibility that Pyxis couldn't ignore. Especially in light of the discovery of shadows in human form. "That said...even if you do find them, there is the chance that they aren't themselves anymore. They could have become shadows. Are you prepared for that possibility?"
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 4, 2014 1:44:00 GMT -5
"I don't care anymore," I simply said, shrugging. "I just want answers. If the worst has happened, I'll just have to deal with it. Everything so far as just been me trying to deal with everything being thrown at me. I've just simply had to deal with it. That's how life is." I looked up at the ceiling idly. "It's a possibility, a possibility that I've never ignored or been blind to. I seek answers. That's all it's been and that's all it'll be. I let go of that false hope of a good conclusion long ago." I brought my mind back to when my Persona awakened, it was a realization that I had to let go and become stronger, since being alive was of more use than being dead and being a weakling. And I've come a long way since that day. As long as I kept this up, maybe finding those answers would be easier than I had imagined.
"Thank you for the well wishes, anyway," I said. "We've all got to keep on moving forward for everybody's sake, after all."
"That we do," Pyxis said. There wasn't much else she could say about that. If Alisa had already resigned herself to the worst, then there were no more warnings Pyxis could give. Nor any reassurances. Trying to pretend that everything would turn out perfectly at this point was ridiculous, and probably insulting. All she could do was continue to wish for the best in finding what could still be found, and to help Alisa in whatever ways she could. Pyxis wanted that much, at least. Investigation was anything but her strong point, but if there was anything to be done that she was good at, she wanted to be there for it.
"You know, it hardly seems fair," she said after a few seconds of silence, suddenly voicing an idle thought. "I don't really have anything like that to share with you in return. Not unless you want to hear stories of my life at the lab or anything like that, at least."
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 4, 2014 3:17:30 GMT -5
I nodded and crossed my arms, looking a little pensive before relaxing myself again. "Life at the lab, huh? I suppose there are many like yourself, but I wonder if it's really alright to share stuff like that for me. I mean, of course, I'll keep everything confidential," I continued. "But it may be sensitive information regardless. Though I am good at keeping secrets, I still want to be as ethical as I can." I continued, looking towards Pyxis and wondering just what exactly did happen there. How was she created in the first place? Ah... Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but this was all really interesting, the whole deal with "Anti Shadow Weapons." Perhaps, I could get some more information from Pyxis on that and then try to look up dirt on it myself. It would do me some good in the upcoming days when I'm sure more of them will be deployed.
Pyxis shook her head. "It's not that sensitive. Most of what I'd be able to say at all, anyone who knows what I am could make guesses at on their own. Any really sensitive details, I probably wouldn't know anyway. I wasn't one of the researchers, after all." She cracked a smile, and added, "Besides, I trust you."
Now, where to start? Something silly, or something useful? Well, it was Alisa after all. Pyxis figured she should start with something more useful. "I couldn't tell you how I was built, or what went into making my artificial heart. Even my handlers couldn't tell you everything about that. But I can tell you that they placed a great deal of emphasis on making sure I developed a 'self'. I wasn't created with a Persona. I had to awaken one on my own, just like any other human. So as human-like personality traits and interests started to appear, they encouraged them to develop. In my case, it started with curiosity, and ended up focusing around an interest in video games. So that's what they encouraged. I'm...pretty sure that makes the researchers irresponsible parents." Pyxis laughed. Now that she thought about it, she only actually knew that one of them had a family of their own. The others never said.
"But as you can imagine, that's not enough to cause a Persona to form. Otherwise you'd have a lot of gamers who could walk outside the safe zone right now and fare just fine in the lower-level areas. Actually...I couldn't say if it was the same for all of my siblings, but the lab had a number of captured shadows from previous shadow-related incidents, and when that part of my development came around they threw me in a test chamber with some of them and basically told me to sink or swim."
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 4, 2014 3:52:00 GMT -5
I listened intently to Pyxis' story, explaining how she wasn't entirely sure how she was built - a bit of an obvious quip considering she was the subject being constructed and wasn't one of the researchers herself, but clarification was always welcome. She then mentioned how a great deal of attention was placed on the concept of developing a 'self.' So in other words, researchers attempted to construct a robotic human, or an android, which was in possession of a human psyche for a Persona to awaken and flourish. And to do that, the appropriate nurturing needed to be done. So Pyxis was curious and had an interest in video games, which somehow helped her to develop more 'human qualities,' or something. I was trying to wrap my head around all this.
Then she talked about the awakening of her Persona, something that needed to occur naturally just like a regular human as opposed to an artificial or man-made one. Sink or swim, that's what she mentioned. I nodded and committed a good chunk of those details to memory - the most pertinent ones. "I see. That's very intriguing. It looks like the researchers took a great deal of care into making sure it was possible to provide a mechanical frame with the human psyche, and once it was successfully implanted, being able to allow it to culture into something functional and resembling human capacity," I stated.
"Is that perhaps why there have been 'failed' subjects? Those who did not quite manage to reach expectations? Thinking about this has dangerous implications if you think about it. I, personally, am a little apprehensive towards the future especially if tech like this becomes widely adopted."
Failed subjects? Had Pyxis mentioned anything like that before? She had mentioned losing family, but...
"Yes," she said, deciding to accept that either she or one of her siblings had told Alisa about that, or else she was just taking a guess. "There have been plenty of failed subjects. Either their combat abilities were inadequate, or they never developed the sense of self needed for a Persona. And...most of them ended up being destroyed, in one way or another. I lost quite a few siblings that way. Most of them I'd never met, but some of them I knew very well."
Pyxis closed her eyes and went quiet for a moment. When she opened them again, she had a neutral expression despite what she had just said. "That said, I don't think that kind of thing would ever become widely adopted. If they don't fully understand what goes into our artificial hearts, then they probably get them from somewhere else. And I doubt they'd have the resources to adopt that sort of thing on a scale any larger than what they have." She chuckled. "So, I doubt there's going to be any semblance of I, Robot in the future. Or Terminator, for that matter."
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 4, 2014 21:23:59 GMT -5
"Plenty? They were destroyed? That... I guess that makes logical sense," I responded to Pyxis regarding the 'failed subjects,' that is, those that basically did not live up to the expectations of the researchers. So, like used objects, they were disposed of. That was a bit sad, but ultimately the 'logical' decision to make. "I wonder how you must have felt about that, being different from those who did not unlock the same capabilities as you, and learning that just like used objects seen as useless and obsolete, they were disposed of."
"Anyway, I'll take your word on that. I suppose the resources and materials required to engineer such a being would be quite taxing to collect, if it was even possible to harvest in bulk." She had made a movie reference or two, to which I laughed softly. I stretched and relaxed a little bit more. "You have a computer, right? Do you use it for anything other than video games?"
"I try not to think of it too much. It's...far from pleasant, to say the least. Who knows, if things had gone differently, I could have been one of the failures. That may be the worst part of it all." And that was all Pyxis was going to say on that. That was another thing she had to deal with that humans didn't. The fact that her consciousness, as she knew it, was never guaranteed. The ability to think, rather than processing data, and to feel, even when those feelings were painful, were things she treasured. And everything she knew about herself and her siblings pointed to the fact that she was right to do so, because they could have never developed at all.
Thankfully, Alisa soon changed the subject. "I use it for pretty much everything anyone else does. Keeping up with and sending messages to colleagues, doing homework because someone thought it was a great idea to have me act as a student, looking up information about the city on the local network, storing and playing music...stuff like that. I may be a machine, but until I manage to get my own internet connection my body can't do a lot of the things a run-of-the-mill computer can."
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 4, 2014 23:20:34 GMT -5
I nodded. It looked like Pyxis used her computer in basically just the same way everybody else did, clarifying that she needed an actual internet connection to function similarly to other computers, being a machine herself. "Huh. That's interesting. Come to think of it, I do wonder what kind of interference or disturbance this lockdown, barrier, whatever you want to call it, is causing in order to completely disable communications from the outside. My website is being hosted on a local server, meaning anybody here in the city can access it but nobody from outside can," I pointed out. "It might have been nice though since I do upload some rather questionable artistic material on there, as my mind does come up with rather strange things sometimes. And since you've been tasked to ask a student, let me ask, what do you think of human school life and education? I'm interested to hear from a different perspective."
"Well...a lot of electronics and the like don't work outside the safe zone," Pyxis explained. "It may not be the barrier itself, but the strange air in the outside that's preventing radio communication. When we were coming in, we could still communicate with the scout team as they went in, but only for a very short distance. Of course...we were also using an abandoned tunnel, so it could also have just been line of sight. As for land lines, I think all of them were severed by the barrier." It was, of course, just a theory, but if the lines hadn't been cut then they should have been able to communicate still. Either that or the land lines in the shadow-infested zone were also dead.
From there, Alisa made a comment about questionable artistic material, and then quickly transitioned to asking about school life. "The schedule is even more rigorous than my early days at the lab, classes are surprisingly demanding, and some of the courses are of questionable use. Particularly the literature one," she answered bluntly. "That said, I'm impressed by how quickly they regrouped and recovered after the whole cleaver girl shadow incident. Although at the same time I am surprised and amazed at how students can consider a bad exam score to be the end of the world when there's a more literal disaster going on all around them."
Maybe, going back to how classes were so demanding, it was just the culture. A culture that Pyxis actually knew very little about. And now that she'd stated her opinion on school, she could go back to what Alisa had said right before that. "You know...I don't think you've ever told me much about your site, except that it exists. Can I see some of your art?"
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 5, 2014 0:13:55 GMT -5
"What? You want to see it?" I sighed and gave Pyxis a card which had a link to my website written on it. "Look for the art section of the blog link printed on my card I guess. I didn't bring any of my sketchbooks or papers with me. I don't know if you will like what you see there, but I'm gonna warn you now." I yawned and gestured to Pyxis' computer to let her know she can go ahead and see it. I'm sure she would go ahead and check it out, but I neglected to tell her specifically what she would be seeing.
Well, okay, there were mostly postings of landscapes of the various Shadow infested places I've already been to, my personal interpretations of Shadows I've encountered, abstract art, and other stuff in the realm of "safe" work. But I also had a section that was definitely not safe for work, and I commonly posted art work of a deviant nature; BDSM, bloodplay, amputee art, stuff like that. I was actually deeply looking forward to Pyxis' reaction towards my less tasteful work.
"I'm sure it can't be that bad," Pyxis said, taking the card and walking over to her computer. The computer was still on from some late night gaming, so all she had to do was bring it back out of sleep mode and enter in the web address. Once she did, she clicked over to the art section. For a couple minutes, she browsed through the plainer, 'safer' art. Most of it was landscapes from the shadow-infested zone, or else drawings of shadows. Most of those were very accurate, but it was clear with some of them that Alisa had taken a few creative liberties. "Is it really okay to have this on a public access site?" Pyxis asked.
But then, another link caught her eye and she clicked over to that. She was immediately confronted with a link to confirm that she was over 18. Which, she decidedly wasn't, but since her appearance was right at that range where she could pass for both a high school student and a young adult, she didn't particularly care. "I'm three and what is this?" she joked, clicking right through. And behind that were pictures of a more graphical nature. Apart from depicting much more of the human body than Pyxis ever expected to see (although she could certainly appreciate it aesthetically), there were lest tasteful works in there as well. Some that were just strange, like the pictures of people bound and gagged, while some were bloodier or more brutal.
But, much like the monstrosity in the hospital, Pyxis wasn't particularly bothered by it. Instead, she continued looking through the gallery for another couple more minutes before asking "Do people like this?" Her tone wasn't one of surprise or alarm, but genuine curiosity. This was a side of humanity that Pyxis hadn't seen before, and she wanted to know more.
Post by Ayakura Alisa on Apr 5, 2014 1:44:56 GMT -5
"My site is pretty difficult to find by conventional means," I said simply. "It's an underground hit but nothing bigger than that, and of course people I give the link directly to." Soon, I realized Pyxis had found the NSFW section of my site after she blurted out a joke, 'I'm three and what is this?' she joked. I smiled. She didn't seem to be too phased by it though, but she was a robot after all and I wasn't sure about her morals and stuff. Well, I didn't know how she thought of it until she asked me if people liked it. She seemed to be very curious, like it was her middle name.
"Hell if I know if people like this," I said. "I'm just getting out what I can wean from the recesses of my mind. However, knowing the Internet, and the kinds of people that use it and surf my website, I can probably tell you that at least one person out there is getting their jollies off to my rather deviant work."