mark my words, expose anything and everything;

[recrypt]

Comments

[wowcool]

Perhaps all of that, or none of that. I guess you'll never know unless someone goes and sees it. Maybe that someone will be you.

[He huffs.]

That's a dream worth working for, I think. To see a sight that probably no one else has seen for years.

[recrypt]

Haha. Maybe.

It'd be quite the thing for someone like me to achieve something like that.

[wowcool]

And why is that? Is it difficult, to get to the ocean where you're from?

[recrypt]

To that specific piece of ocean? Likely. It's on the other side of the world entirely, after all.

But to the ocean in general... Mostly, I'm just not at liberty to travel that far. Perhaps if a job ends up sending me there, one day.

[wowcool]

...

What do you do for your job, 45?

[recrypt]

Contract work, mostly~! ♪

[ it's trilled out, light and breezy. ]

At my discretion, of course. But there's a lot of jobs that need doing out in the yellow zone, due to its overall lack of infrastructure compared to green zones.

[wowcool]

Contracted by who? A corporation?

[He scratches at his chin.]

And what exactly does the work involve?

[recrypt]

Not by any single group exclusively, no. Frankly I don't think that the type of corporations you might be imagining still exist.

It's various parties. But we do search and rescue, retrieval, infiltration, escort ... that sort of thing.

[ among other things. ]

[wowcool]

Ah. That almost sounds like a military operation than anything else.

[Then again WHAT DOES HE KNOW ABOUT THE MILITARY]

Here's a question: what's your favorite type of work?

[recrypt]

Well, yes, to an extent. I am a Tactical Doll, after all. I've never been civilian.

[ when you are made to be weapon, ]

Either way, business is business. It's not my place to have an opinion on the kind of work we do, though what jobs we do take are up to me in the end.

[wowcool]

So you have control over what you want and don't want. That's nice.

[Way better than him.]

...Hm. A Tactical Doll...in a novel, you'd probably be called a "robot" or a "droid". I assume you're fully synthetic?

[recrypt]

Do I? It's still taking orders all the same. I'm not at liberty to refuse overmuch.

[ she's just... a special case. ]

Do you mean to ask if I'm partially biological, but simply augmented? Haha. No, you're correct. I'm fully synthetic.

[wowcool]

But you have freedom to do what you like. While other people, like myself, have no choice whatsoever. Even a little freedom means a lot.

[A nod.]

How interesting. That robots in some other future have progressed that far...haha, well, I shouldn't be surprised! Technology is moving fast!

[recrypt]

Do I? I'm executing my baseline operating principles in the end. Perhaps I only have the illusion of free choice?

And what shackles you so, hm? The constraints of society, or the role you're meant to play?

[ novel metaphor, and all. ]

[wowcool]

Perhaps. Ah, but the person who programmed you, or the machine that made you gave you preferences. Those would be the preferences belonging to your creator, so now we have to consider this: are those preferences real? Or are they also an illusion? Does it matter, who it comes from? A machine, a man, a god? Haha.

[He raises his shoulders in a shrug.]

Both, I would think. They feed into each other. The role cannot exist without society needing it. And society requires the information I uncover to help it thrive by catching killers who pose a risk to it.

[recrypt]

Well. If even those preferences aren't real, then how are you to say that any of them are?

[ no one:
absolutely no one at all:
these two: what is a man ]

Conversely, if none of it is real, and all of it is simply a constraint made and enforced by someone, something else... then are you truly so different from anyone else?

[ ah, society. ]

[wowcool]

Then that would assume that everything isn't real in the first place. But surely something real must be able to create the unreal, right?

[And a nod.]

Haha, that's true! I'm just another layer of unreal, if that's the case.

[recrypt]

Hm. What are you then, if you're an abstraction away from presumably the rest of humanity?

[ mildly. ]

Don't tell me they had mind-mapping technology already, where you're from ... Ah, but if it's faulty and prototypical, then that might explain your amnesia, hm?

[wowcool]

Hahaha, what, are you calling me a ghost in the machine?

[How spooky.]

Perhaps! Or maybe it's just me, if that really was that type of scenario.

[recrypt]

I'm not calling you anything that you aren't saying yourself. Ghost in the machine is your wording, not mine?

[ spooky indeed. ]

Hmm. Do you really think of yourself as so different from other humans, Anaido?

[wowcool]

You said mind-mapping technology, which implies computer, and me being a faulty part of said technology...so there! I'm just a ghost!

[He winks.]

Of course I do. Sometimes it feels like a tricky sort of god decided to mess around with my mind as a joke to me and everyone else.

[recrypt]

The technology was faulty in this case, you'd just be a byproduct. And just because a mindmap is made, doesn't mean it has to be used... though I suppose in this case you really would be a ghost, considering that mindmaps don't just simply gain cognizance.

[ you can use them as the basis to stick into [redacted] but they're not going to become even remotely sentient, let alone sapient, on their own. ]

I wonder. Perhaps you really would relate more to us Dolls after all. Idiosyncrasies and traits that don't make sense even to yourself, yet you're helplessly beholden to them. That's correct, isn't it?

[wowcool]

So you agree, then.

[hehehe]

Relate to you? Hm, I think so. I have often felt, when talking to you, that you might understand my situation better than most. [Not that he's a robot, but...] And yes! You got that right. I feel like...a mold has been crafted for me, and I've been shoved into it, regardless whether its a good fit for me or not. I have to function as the form wants me to.

[recrypt]

[ a long, thoughtful hum, followed by a moment of silence. then: ]

I'll tell you what someone once told me: "Even Dolls can change."

... It's quite optimistic, isn't it? What does it even really mean? There are things we can change about ourselves, but nothing like that. Short of formatting ourselves, nothing can be done about those intrinsic qualities, whether we like it or not...

Yet we persist nonetheless, don't we?

[wowcool]

What is "change", really? Changing qualities about ourselves, but those changes are still within the frameworks we're programmed with...then is that change at all?

[Is it not change unless one moves past the limitations, or does it still count?]

But yes. We continue, and try, and do our best, we do.