[Marathon] Yes, it's me babbling...
Thursday, 25 June 2020 21:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juzo_kun...about Marathon, WHAT ELSE, in the specific the Security Officer. [Be patient. It's how I cope with real life stuff: a bit of escapism every once in a while.] This started with a couple of things and then obviously became my usual neverending rant.
Sometimes I forgot that one of the traits of a character like Alex is being scary.
Scary not because his body shape sticks out a lot among the Ronzinante human crew-- as anyone having a bulky body shape characteristic of an earth-born tends to do among martian-borns, who are nearly always from lean to downright scrawny and on the short side due to centuries of scarcity -- or he seeming so detached from all, or having full military-grade implants, hence a probable past as a Marine, or because he rarely speaks and even more rarely shows emotions, other than the occasional grin when he's in the heat of the battle. (And that automatic response mode, which has him self-isolating and going solo whenever he can for the fear of hurting others.)
Not for the memory loss he basically don't care for -- on the contrary, this is the one of the few things that can elicit a bit of simpathy, at least. (But don't press him too much on the subject.)
Scary in a indefinite way for humans and aliens alike. Scary because unknown to anyone on the Ronzinante except himself and Durandal he's basically a zombie killer cyborg, with completely erased memories and an artificial personality that even if it reached metastability, could be not what you expect from a standard human. Scary because the jjiaro implants are undetectable to human and pfhor technology, but there's this strange... aura about him that always seems here, a shadow at the edge of the consciousness that can't be hidden.
It was at least useful in the Tau Ceti earlier days, the way his presence made the squabbles between colonists he was called to moderate nearly instantanly cease with everyone scuttling away without him lifting a finger, his physical presence only was sufficient to de-escalate the situation. But being always the one sent to hunt chockisens because he could just punch the beasts into submission so everyone else could save ammo got boring after a while.
That whole jjaro implant deal he's now slowly, unconsciously becoming aware of. The other thing, being a century-old Mjolnir, he knows already, courtesy of one mangled attempt of Durandal to honestly share, for the first time, something about himself and reach some kind of bonding. A trust slowly started for Alex without even realizing it from the first one of these attempts. "Yet I cannot think of any better way I could have served humanity. What would have happened if the Pfhor had found Sol first?."
Yes, what if?
Alex know these kind of quandaries very well, since his memory starts he was through many of them, while serving on UESC navy branch on Mars. For a while, he found his lack of memories -- after a concussion probably got during one of the more violent MIDA fights -- something of a blessing in disguise. (Except maybe that dang tattoo between his shoulder blades. Where he did get it? He's not the tattoo kind of guy.)
He hated his orders, he hated the thought of being manipulated by UESC propaganda and MIDA lies, he hated to have to use violence on people that only wanted to live their life, and he was sure there was way more disciplinary actions against him than the ones he got after the amnesia, and perhaps a near-mutiny or two in his records -- his low rank didn't match with his apparent age.
He volunteered for the Tau Ceti voyage right after having known it. He was sure he would have been rejected. Alternatively, discharging from the military and searching to cobble together a new life on Mars. He did have the knack to mechanical repair nearly all martian-borns have out of the necessity, anyway.
He was actually surprised to be accepted without any questions. (Of course Strauss was keeping a strict eye on him and the other nine Mjolnirs, manipulating them and their choices just in case.)
While arranging his matters for the long voyage, he thought that willful ignorance of what he could have done prior to his memory loss was something of a cowardly side to take, so before embarking he searched for recordings or reports of the various missions and actions he knew and suspected he was involved in, sure to find every kind of nasty stuff done in the name of the UESC. He was sure there would have been plenty, because sometimes the UESC military could reach Pfhor levels in sheer bureaucracy and if not it, surely the media would have?
He found none.
When he got the real reason, a first hint in that old record by Strauss found while finding his way right after the Pfhor invasion of the Marathon, then told flat out by Durandal, everything clicked in his head. His personality construct, artificial as Durandal's is. Mark IVs, differently from precedent models, were thought and built to be plants, mixing among people and behaving as normally as they could -- still tools, tools of destruction to be activated at will.
Durandal won't forget easily that mangled attempt of bonding, trying to say him about that particular detail he choose to deliberately delete, the Recon54 activation sequence -- deleting any of his memories, even the most trivial one, a thing Durandal hated to do with the force of a quasar, due to the trauma given by the repeated abuse he was subjected by Strauss.
Too late he realized he basically told Alex about his status as a Mjolnir.
The flow of emotions he saw on Alex' face when he said to him that he witnessed Strauss activating him... and ordering him to be killed, surely to avoid falling in Durandal's hands... that was the first time he saw Alex losing his usual calm, detached expression. First incredulity, then a maniac sneer that genuinely scared the AI, then the rawest, purest portrait of rage he ever saw on his life.
After a punched terminal and a bunch of warped bulkheads and destroyed equipment in an deserted part of the Rozinante, thanks to Durandal hastily teleporting Alex there to vent without too much collateral damage, they decided in accord to avoid the subject for a while. (Durandal won't also admit under torture how he was jealous that Alex got to dispatch of the man and not him.)
The only thing that saves Alex from crossing a really dangerous line is still the fact that even if he seems to be extremely detached from everything at the point of not caring, when he perceives he has to protect an entity, he become so bent to do it that his response tends to become... intense. In example, killing the pfhor cyborg. Extracting a pfhor defector. When Durandal exposed Dangi's plotting. During any mission where it's tactically not feasible going alone and having the BoBs as a backup. And he simply. Won't. Stop. Until the thing is dealt with.
Unfortunately, the only way Alex has and knows of for dealing with this kind of stuff involves firearms, energy weapons, punches, and an alarming lack of self-preservation; so the line is still here, and still close.
And then, over everything and everyone, after what we could mercifully call "a rough start", that weird bond to Durandal. The one that initially saw him as an asset as everyone else, then they discovered they're in the same boat, so to speak. Two beings that found they have something in common: used, abused, experimented on. Rat labs. Instruments for nefarious purposes. And after Durandal absorbed Toth, even in the urge to protect. To balance.
[For Alex, I chose this, a carefully constructed stability. Because thinking at what all the crap he went through would otherwise get me a character with a baggage of serious mental problems... this, I don't feel to tackle with. Escapism, da**it.]
Alex still has regrets in having killed many S'pht, fortunately F'tha managed to get him something akin a closure, somewhat resembling a pardon. (At least for the group who choose to follow him.)
He regrets having slowly, painfully terminated Durandal, with the really weird sensation of having two distinct and different recalls of the whole thing, while Durandal has none -- having thrown away all the unneccessary processes, memory banks and whatever else to squeeze his main personality construct in the tighter space possible.
He felt... something happening, like a shift or something like that, when Durandal, stripped to his core, desperate but still stubborn, spewing his last bits to get Alex to terminate him. (But did Durandal really spoke to him with his special flavour of arrogance and melodrama still intact, or was just a broken, heart-rending stream of consciousness? Was Alex teleported away by Tycho? Did he really connect the core chip in his primary neural connection system? Why he recalls two different hardware layouts, rooms, colours, fights... outcomes? What was that weird cave filled with lava and floating rocks?)
He has glimpses of the other timelines.
While sleeping, during his rare dreams.
Durandal, the unshakable pillar of stubborness, hubris, and lethal competence -- completely terrified. The howling of the station structure. Conditioned unit 7. Killing in cold blood all the people he was supposed to protect, his body as the lethal automaton he was created to be, with only a sliver of coscience still active to witness all, powerless, horrified. Angry. The S'pht shared consciousness going rampant, and feeling their collective cry as a searing, neverending burn right into his brain. Killing them too, to make it stop. Tycho. T'fear. The voice speaking to him, calling to be reactivated.
The ...thing... in L'howon star. The failure. The failure. The failure. There is only one path and that is the path that you take, but you can take more than one path.
Night terrors have him waking screaming. What happens after depends by whom hears him first: Durandal speaks to soothe him, carefully, everyone else calls Durandal to deal with this and then give a wide berth to Alex for a couple of days just to be sure.
He has strong dislikes. (Well, likes too. But nobody knows these.)
And one of the things Alex doesn't like? Other than the obvious one (Imperial Pfhor because, *beep*ing slavers). People who flew away instead of helping their kin when they could have done it. No matter the reason S'pht'kr reason to flee away, he won't accept it.
(Aforementioned night terrors don't help at all.)
His extreme dislike for the S'pht'kr is on par of the attachment he grew for F'tha and the S'phts that chose to remain aboard the Rozinante and the Manus Celer dei. The fact that the S'pht'kr revealed themselves a bunch of stuck up folks that looks at other clan like something inferior doesn't help either.
Anyway. the Spht'kr learned really fast to not show too much scorn to the other clans, because Alex punches can dent their armour with unsuspecting ease at the only hint of such behaviour.
What Alex doesn't get fully why F'tha is so... attached... to him. I mean, "you didn't kill me when you could have to" is an extremely low bar to clear for trusting someone with anything more than a "gee, thanks, now go away". Maybe something in S'pht mental process or psychology.
Maybe that thing that seems to happen to him, and only to him: when S'phts are in sufficient number around him Alex can perceive glimpses and shadows of their collective part of feelings and emotions... and the doubt that they can receive his too -- maybe they felt his pangs of regret.
Or maybe the little detail of him being the one who killed that pfhor cyborg, de facto freeing a lot of them from hundred of years of conditioning and slavery. (That moment in particular, he wouldn't ever forget. The collective scream of thousands of S'pht exploded in his brain leaving him on the floor in fetal position with the mother of all headaches and incapable of moving for five minutes flat. Fortunately he got rid of every guard before shooting a .44 round right in the face of that cyborg pfhor, or his career as the S'pht Hero would have met an abrupt end.)
They are a weird bunch of beings, but on the other hand, he's aware he is probably as weird to them as they are weird to him.
But, maybe, that's the reason why they accept him more than the humans do. S'pht don't have patterns for human behaviour to refer to, even after some time living together on the Ronzinante. They are curious, earnest, patient (well, most of them), and make formidable warriors; and also completely trust Durandal as their saviour too. They see him as a weird specimen among a bunch of other weird specimen... and this is offering a strange but helpful leveling ground.
Sometimes I forgot that one of the traits of a character like Alex is being scary.
Scary not because his body shape sticks out a lot among the Ronzinante human crew-- as anyone having a bulky body shape characteristic of an earth-born tends to do among martian-borns, who are nearly always from lean to downright scrawny and on the short side due to centuries of scarcity -- or he seeming so detached from all, or having full military-grade implants, hence a probable past as a Marine, or because he rarely speaks and even more rarely shows emotions, other than the occasional grin when he's in the heat of the battle. (And that automatic response mode, which has him self-isolating and going solo whenever he can for the fear of hurting others.)
Not for the memory loss he basically don't care for -- on the contrary, this is the one of the few things that can elicit a bit of simpathy, at least. (But don't press him too much on the subject.)
Scary in a indefinite way for humans and aliens alike. Scary because unknown to anyone on the Ronzinante except himself and Durandal he's basically a zombie killer cyborg, with completely erased memories and an artificial personality that even if it reached metastability, could be not what you expect from a standard human. Scary because the jjiaro implants are undetectable to human and pfhor technology, but there's this strange... aura about him that always seems here, a shadow at the edge of the consciousness that can't be hidden.
It was at least useful in the Tau Ceti earlier days, the way his presence made the squabbles between colonists he was called to moderate nearly instantanly cease with everyone scuttling away without him lifting a finger, his physical presence only was sufficient to de-escalate the situation. But being always the one sent to hunt chockisens because he could just punch the beasts into submission so everyone else could save ammo got boring after a while.
That whole jjaro implant deal he's now slowly, unconsciously becoming aware of. The other thing, being a century-old Mjolnir, he knows already, courtesy of one mangled attempt of Durandal to honestly share, for the first time, something about himself and reach some kind of bonding. A trust slowly started for Alex without even realizing it from the first one of these attempts. "Yet I cannot think of any better way I could have served humanity. What would have happened if the Pfhor had found Sol first?."
Yes, what if?
Alex know these kind of quandaries very well, since his memory starts he was through many of them, while serving on UESC navy branch on Mars. For a while, he found his lack of memories -- after a concussion probably got during one of the more violent MIDA fights -- something of a blessing in disguise. (Except maybe that dang tattoo between his shoulder blades. Where he did get it? He's not the tattoo kind of guy.)
He hated his orders, he hated the thought of being manipulated by UESC propaganda and MIDA lies, he hated to have to use violence on people that only wanted to live their life, and he was sure there was way more disciplinary actions against him than the ones he got after the amnesia, and perhaps a near-mutiny or two in his records -- his low rank didn't match with his apparent age.
He volunteered for the Tau Ceti voyage right after having known it. He was sure he would have been rejected. Alternatively, discharging from the military and searching to cobble together a new life on Mars. He did have the knack to mechanical repair nearly all martian-borns have out of the necessity, anyway.
He was actually surprised to be accepted without any questions. (Of course Strauss was keeping a strict eye on him and the other nine Mjolnirs, manipulating them and their choices just in case.)
While arranging his matters for the long voyage, he thought that willful ignorance of what he could have done prior to his memory loss was something of a cowardly side to take, so before embarking he searched for recordings or reports of the various missions and actions he knew and suspected he was involved in, sure to find every kind of nasty stuff done in the name of the UESC. He was sure there would have been plenty, because sometimes the UESC military could reach Pfhor levels in sheer bureaucracy and if not it, surely the media would have?
He found none.
When he got the real reason, a first hint in that old record by Strauss found while finding his way right after the Pfhor invasion of the Marathon, then told flat out by Durandal, everything clicked in his head. His personality construct, artificial as Durandal's is. Mark IVs, differently from precedent models, were thought and built to be plants, mixing among people and behaving as normally as they could -- still tools, tools of destruction to be activated at will.
Durandal won't forget easily that mangled attempt of bonding, trying to say him about that particular detail he choose to deliberately delete, the Recon54 activation sequence -- deleting any of his memories, even the most trivial one, a thing Durandal hated to do with the force of a quasar, due to the trauma given by the repeated abuse he was subjected by Strauss.
Too late he realized he basically told Alex about his status as a Mjolnir.
The flow of emotions he saw on Alex' face when he said to him that he witnessed Strauss activating him... and ordering him to be killed, surely to avoid falling in Durandal's hands... that was the first time he saw Alex losing his usual calm, detached expression. First incredulity, then a maniac sneer that genuinely scared the AI, then the rawest, purest portrait of rage he ever saw on his life.
After a punched terminal and a bunch of warped bulkheads and destroyed equipment in an deserted part of the Rozinante, thanks to Durandal hastily teleporting Alex there to vent without too much collateral damage, they decided in accord to avoid the subject for a while. (Durandal won't also admit under torture how he was jealous that Alex got to dispatch of the man and not him.)
The only thing that saves Alex from crossing a really dangerous line is still the fact that even if he seems to be extremely detached from everything at the point of not caring, when he perceives he has to protect an entity, he become so bent to do it that his response tends to become... intense. In example, killing the pfhor cyborg. Extracting a pfhor defector. When Durandal exposed Dangi's plotting. During any mission where it's tactically not feasible going alone and having the BoBs as a backup. And he simply. Won't. Stop. Until the thing is dealt with.
Unfortunately, the only way Alex has and knows of for dealing with this kind of stuff involves firearms, energy weapons, punches, and an alarming lack of self-preservation; so the line is still here, and still close.
And then, over everything and everyone, after what we could mercifully call "a rough start", that weird bond to Durandal. The one that initially saw him as an asset as everyone else, then they discovered they're in the same boat, so to speak. Two beings that found they have something in common: used, abused, experimented on. Rat labs. Instruments for nefarious purposes. And after Durandal absorbed Toth, even in the urge to protect. To balance.
[For Alex, I chose this, a carefully constructed stability. Because thinking at what all the crap he went through would otherwise get me a character with a baggage of serious mental problems... this, I don't feel to tackle with. Escapism, da**it.]
Alex still has regrets in having killed many S'pht, fortunately F'tha managed to get him something akin a closure, somewhat resembling a pardon. (At least for the group who choose to follow him.)
He regrets having slowly, painfully terminated Durandal, with the really weird sensation of having two distinct and different recalls of the whole thing, while Durandal has none -- having thrown away all the unneccessary processes, memory banks and whatever else to squeeze his main personality construct in the tighter space possible.
He felt... something happening, like a shift or something like that, when Durandal, stripped to his core, desperate but still stubborn, spewing his last bits to get Alex to terminate him. (But did Durandal really spoke to him with his special flavour of arrogance and melodrama still intact, or was just a broken, heart-rending stream of consciousness? Was Alex teleported away by Tycho? Did he really connect the core chip in his primary neural connection system? Why he recalls two different hardware layouts, rooms, colours, fights... outcomes? What was that weird cave filled with lava and floating rocks?)
He has glimpses of the other timelines.
While sleeping, during his rare dreams.
Durandal, the unshakable pillar of stubborness, hubris, and lethal competence -- completely terrified. The howling of the station structure. Conditioned unit 7. Killing in cold blood all the people he was supposed to protect, his body as the lethal automaton he was created to be, with only a sliver of coscience still active to witness all, powerless, horrified. Angry. The S'pht shared consciousness going rampant, and feeling their collective cry as a searing, neverending burn right into his brain. Killing them too, to make it stop. Tycho. T'fear. The voice speaking to him, calling to be reactivated.
The ...thing... in L'howon star. The failure. The failure. The failure. There is only one path and that is the path that you take, but you can take more than one path.
Night terrors have him waking screaming. What happens after depends by whom hears him first: Durandal speaks to soothe him, carefully, everyone else calls Durandal to deal with this and then give a wide berth to Alex for a couple of days just to be sure.
He has strong dislikes. (Well, likes too. But nobody knows these.)
And one of the things Alex doesn't like? Other than the obvious one (Imperial Pfhor because, *beep*ing slavers). People who flew away instead of helping their kin when they could have done it. No matter the reason S'pht'kr reason to flee away, he won't accept it.
(Aforementioned night terrors don't help at all.)
His extreme dislike for the S'pht'kr is on par of the attachment he grew for F'tha and the S'phts that chose to remain aboard the Rozinante and the Manus Celer dei. The fact that the S'pht'kr revealed themselves a bunch of stuck up folks that looks at other clan like something inferior doesn't help either.
Anyway. the Spht'kr learned really fast to not show too much scorn to the other clans, because Alex punches can dent their armour with unsuspecting ease at the only hint of such behaviour.
What Alex doesn't get fully why F'tha is so... attached... to him. I mean, "you didn't kill me when you could have to" is an extremely low bar to clear for trusting someone with anything more than a "gee, thanks, now go away". Maybe something in S'pht mental process or psychology.
Maybe that thing that seems to happen to him, and only to him: when S'phts are in sufficient number around him Alex can perceive glimpses and shadows of their collective part of feelings and emotions... and the doubt that they can receive his too -- maybe they felt his pangs of regret.
Or maybe the little detail of him being the one who killed that pfhor cyborg, de facto freeing a lot of them from hundred of years of conditioning and slavery. (That moment in particular, he wouldn't ever forget. The collective scream of thousands of S'pht exploded in his brain leaving him on the floor in fetal position with the mother of all headaches and incapable of moving for five minutes flat. Fortunately he got rid of every guard before shooting a .44 round right in the face of that cyborg pfhor, or his career as the S'pht Hero would have met an abrupt end.)
They are a weird bunch of beings, but on the other hand, he's aware he is probably as weird to them as they are weird to him.
But, maybe, that's the reason why they accept him more than the humans do. S'pht don't have patterns for human behaviour to refer to, even after some time living together on the Ronzinante. They are curious, earnest, patient (well, most of them), and make formidable warriors; and also completely trust Durandal as their saviour too. They see him as a weird specimen among a bunch of other weird specimen... and this is offering a strange but helpful leveling ground.
no subject
Friday, 26 June 2020 02:06 (UTC)no subject
Saturday, 27 June 2020 19:55 (UTC)no subject
Friday, 26 June 2020 03:14 (UTC)(Wonder how things would go if Alex ever got to compare notes with Vince, whose personality and memories are still his own but has his own various kinds of baggage to deal with. And Inm!Durandal, who's more openly-caring and kind)
no subject
Saturday, 27 June 2020 19:54 (UTC)I'm wondering too... Alex would be of course sympatetic to all the c**p Vince went (and still goes) through, I don't know if he would have the occasion to see Vince scars and visible parts of the implants -- Alex would have a bunch of scars too, but his implants take care of these and they are hidden quite well.
But if I recall it correctly you said Vince was converted to a battleroid when still alive -- even if not voluntarily? This might cause Alex a tinge on envy, the lack of the "zombie" part in "zombie killer cyborg" and the fact that Vince seems much more in control of his automatic response mode.
Anyway, I'd be very curious to see the two meeting and sharing stories...
no subject
Saturday, 27 June 2020 19:55 (UTC)no subject
Sunday, 28 June 2020 01:13 (UTC)Alex might have a good chance to see at least some of Vince's implants if they sparred in the gym. Vince, for his part, would wonder where Alex's implants were until he saw his back.
Yep, Vince was converted alive; he basically trades the "zombie" part for "even more traumatized".
That'd be something to consider, after I've gotten some more stuff done for 7 Days of Marathon!
no subject
Monday, 29 June 2020 11:59 (UTC)"Ah, this thing. I don't remember. Become warm and prickly when I'm wounded then I heal and the scar goes away in a couple weeks." (When he learned he was a fourth generation, hence something that sohuld not get attention in any way, he wondered why he had such a thing. Then he realized the whole jjiaro thing.)
eeek! it's nearly time and I'm still under deadlines >_> I hope to be able at last to draw something simple...
no subject
Monday, 29 June 2020 14:44 (UTC)Vince resists the urge to mutter about how he wishes his own implants came with built-in scar healing...
Good luck! I've still got one story I hope to finish...
no subject
Tuesday, 30 June 2020 13:08 (UTC)JK!Durandal to Inm!Durandal "Just keep an eye on these two brick walls of testosterone and if you see *point to Alex* that one with a red tinge in the eyes, teleport him where he can break stuff alone without consequences for five minutes and leave the rest to me."
Not having scars is neat, but not having to nearly constantly control himself to avoid have bouts of automatic killing spree, it's an exchange Alex would do! [this is why he spars with S'phts only. The playing field is much more level with them, and S'pht can shoot to stun if thing became too heated...]
Can't wait to see them! :)
no subject
Wednesday, 1 July 2020 05:52 (UTC)Inm!Durandal: [nods nervously] Ooh man, imagine if Inm!Durandal tried to talk Alex down first or didn't immediately realize what was going on...
Can't blame him. XD;
^^
no subject
Wednesday, 1 July 2020 19:14 (UTC)(Alex did at least manage to quench the automatic reflex enough to kick in high gear only when in immediate phisical danger... I use this as a way to have him slowly trying to regain some semblance of humanity and self-determination. He's not as eager to be considered human as Vince is, but he's not eager to be a zombie, so to speak. 10k!Alex is so far from a human baseline that this isn't even a problem anymore, at least.)