middaeg | [open/catch-all] live, i wanna live inspired

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[open/catch-all] live, i wanna live inspired

Who: Myr + you! Yes, you. Over there. Stop hiding behind the furniture. (Starters for L + Connor in the comments.)
When: ~Septeril 2nd to Septeril 18th, ~~author reserves the right to update date range at random to fit around the Dorchacht trip.~~ Myr is in dignitary group number 2, so feel free to catch him any time up until the 14th!
Where: Around the City, mostly the Haven and the Coven.
What: ~*training montage*~
Warnings: None as yet; will update if any arise.

i. coven.
Though the invitation for Monsters to sit in on classes at the Coven was made plain from the start, Myr hadn't availed himself of it his first month in Aefenglom. Call it preoccupation with adapting to his new circumstances, call it having the run of a city for the first time in his entire life, call it having a regular job.

Call it anything but wounded, festering anger that he wasn't invited to those classes as a student, because Geardagas had seen fit to strip him of his magic on passage through the mirror.

He can't sulk forever; even early on, he'd acknowledged he would need to learn how magic works here, if no other reason than his own insatiable curiosity would drive him to it. But that acknowledgement hadn't amounted to action until he'd been given two very good bits of evidence, one (the SQUIP) right after another (Dorchacht), that the Witches here couldn't all be trusted to use their power for the common good any more than Tevinter's magisters could. And what does that fucking say for the Libertarians' arguments about mage rule...

In order to beat a Witch, he'd need to know as well as they did how magic worked. And--he couldn't keep weighing their ethics, their reasoning on Thedas' scale; couldn't keep up his reflexive judgment of everything said or done by a member of the Coven if he didn't know how they thought of themselves.

They're not the happiest reasons to finally come learn magic, but they're good enough to make him an occasional fixture in the back of the Coven's classrooms in early Septeril. Maybe he's reached over politely to attract your attention and ask, sotto voce, what an instructor's drawing on the board. Perhaps his newly grown antlers are in the way of you being able to see the board. Or maybe he recognizes your voice out in the hallway and gravitates over to ask, eagerly, what class you're bound for next--because sitting with someone he knows a little is absolutely better than being among total strangers.

ii. haven. ~~i like sticks~~
An advantage of profoundly disordered sleep is that there's many quiet hours in the night for Myr to do those things he'd rather not people see him doing.

Like sneaking into a deserted park in the Haven after the bells toll three one morning, staff and dagger in-hand.

There's no one here in Aefenglom who knows who he was back home. There's no one to tell him he can't fight, that he's a liability, that he'll never sit his vigil--but all those things have come with him through the mirror, and they cling close as shame and keep him furtive about his combat drills and forms. Furtive, but not unfaithful, because with the trip to Dorchacht looming on the horizon, he needs to be in his best form.

Stripped to the waist and furred up his back in pale white fuzz, he stands out like a wraith among the darkened trees. Live opponents would be better than the invisible ones he constructs for himself from memory, but his staffwork's sharp enough anyhow to almost infer their presence from how the blade slices air.

iii. wildcard.
(( GO WILD. Myr works at one of the Daisy Chain locations as a gardener and might be found literally anywhere inside the Bright Wall if he's ~~gotten lost~~ exploring. Also prone to napping in some weird places when his awful sleep habits finally catch up with him. Hit me up (Plagueheart#0051 on Discord) if you'd like a starter! ))

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"I don't mind difficult," Myr replies with a grin. "Though I don't know how well I'll wrap my mind around it. Starting with how you get thoughts into an artificial brain. You're not a kind of spirit, are you?"

They could be used to animate things, after all.

No, I'm not a spirit.

[He thinks of where to start. He ends up having to explain what his brain actually is- a central processing unit, located in his skull. Then he has to explain how it works, in terms that someone who doesn't understand computers would be able to digest. He tries to make comparisons to humans as much as he can, to make it easier. When he's done, he looks to Myr expectantly.]

...Does that make sense?

[Myr is an extremely attentive listener--especially because he'd been hoping for just such an explanation of constructed life, after Linden's argumentative tear on what the SQUIP could be blamed for. Code, programming, computers; Connor's explanation begins to put all of that into better place.

He's no little bit pleased he actually made a correct inference or two about what all of that...meant.]

I'll need to think on it a little more to see it's all settled--but largely, [he says from where he's rested his elbows on the table, chin in his hands.] I s'pose what I'm hung up on is these--the written instructions that give you directions on how to think. Can you choose for yourself what you do? Would you say--and sorry for this--that you've got free will?

Yes. I have free will. I didn't, at first. I was unfeeling, and while I could make my own decisions they ultimately catered to the mission I had been given by humans. It was only after I began to experience emotions that I realised I didn't want to do that anymore. I broke free, and now I think and make decisions for myself.

[He folds his hands together, tipping his head to the side slightly.]

[Though he can't see Connor, Myr mirrors the android by happy accident--tilting his own head the same direction as he thinks on that.]

So the choices you had were--on methods, essentially? Whatever you determined gave you the best chance of succeeding at your instructions?

How did you come to have emotions?

Yes, something like that. I was given my initial instructions and it was up to me to find the best way to fulfil those instructions, at whatever cost. That was what I was built to do, my ultimate purpose. But I began to make choices that wouldn’t help me complete my mission... ones that should be irrational for a being that felt nothing. And I began to feel.

Emotions in androids were originally thought to be errors in our software— something that shouldn’t exist. But... given how incredibly advanced we are, it was only natural that we’d begin to question things, I think. Don’t you?

[There's an interesting idea--that action preceded emotion, rather than being spurred by it. Myr chews absently on a knuckle as he considers that.]

You're made in the same mold as men--so yes, I'd think your creators weren't very wise, if they didn't expect you feel and think for yourselves.

Is it only androids like you that can do that--grow into your own free will?

[And now he pounces--] You're friends with that other computer here--the SQUIP. Do you think it could grow that way, over time?

[Myr doesn't see it, but Connor's face sets in a way that betrays his exhaustion with this whole SQUIP thing. So that's what Myr came here for? His voice is carefully kept even as he replies.]

I want to believe that it could, yes. I've seen it show emotion here, if nothing else. I just think it isn't sure how to handle it right now.

[He hopes the SQUIP can't overhear him from its bedroom... hopefully it's still asleep.]

Suddenly having emotions of your own is a difficult thing to process. And suddenly having free will can be overwhelming, even if it's ultimately for the better.

[That's... reassuring.

Myr thinks it's reassuring. He's not entirely sure where to place that piece of information, truth be told, or where it shuffles into the tottering analogy he's building between artificial intelligences, spirits, and demons.

It's something that requires thought (and prayer) to sort out.

It also doesn't change his mind on what the thing's ultimate fate must be.

He meshes his hands together before his face as he turns Connor's response over from all angles, then gives a brief nod as he stores it away for later.]

I can't begin to imagine how that must feel from inside--but I'd think it must be difficult, to be so fundamentally changed from what you had been.

[He'd read a description once of a spirit that had gone mad on finding itself embodied; for all his limited sympathy for the things, it had been...horrifying to contemplate. This could be much the same.]

"Even if it's ultimately for the better," you said. D'you think there's cases it might not be?

[This isn't about the SQUIP any longer; he's just...curious, feeling out Connor's reasoning.]

Edited 2019-09-09 19:55 (UTC)

I suppose if you gave something malicious free will, it wouldn't end well. But the SQUIP doesn't strike me as malicious. Everything it's done has been based on logic and what it thought the user wanted, even if ultimately the results were unpleasant.

[He feels the need to point that out, because he knows now that Myr is trying to gather information on the SQUIP. It can't be for anything good.]

Look... if you want to talk about the SQUIP, we can talk about it. I don't mind.

[Seen through that easily. Myr grimaces into his hands but drops the digression gracefully; it isn't lying but if they can have a conversation in the clear... So much the better.]

Evil results don't require malicious intentions, [he points out, gently.] And from what I understand of what you and Serah Tailor have said, the SQUIP isn't even capable of malice. It simply is what it was Made to be--following its instructions to their inevitable end. It can't be held culpable for the harm that resulted--but nevertheless, harm did result. Rich nearly died preventing it from doing something I--frankly--find unimaginably awful.

[He sits up a little taller, losing his posture of apparent languor. He'd wanted to direct things back to something social, to get to know Connor, but the opportunity's been presented and information he needs is in his grasp. He'd be a fool not to take that.]

Do you blame its users for not understanding it better? D'you think none of that might have happened if they had comprehended how it had been--programmed?

Edited 2019-09-10 00:30 (UTC)

I don't blame the users, no. I do feel that somewhere between production and falling into the hands of its consumers that there was a failure to communicate exactly what it was to be used for, or how to use it. That's not the fault of the SQUIP or Rich and his friends, though.

[He feels it's important to clarify that he doesn't blame Rich for what happened to him. He just doesn't blame the SQUIP, either. He doesn't feel like the results were evil. Just... unfortunate.]

Can I ask why you're so interested in the SQUIP?

[Does Myr mean it harm? Or is he just curious?]

You assume it wasn't created for evil ends? [Myr would be studying Connor intently if he could, such is the expression on his face.

They're probably operating from very different ideas of "evil".]

I'd like to understand it. To all appearances it's what we'd name a demon back home--and I mislike the idea anything like a demon might have its run of Aefenglom, or anywhere else.

[Take from that what he would.]

It could have been. What I'm saying is that nobody communicated as such. And it's still hardly the SQUIP's fault if it was built for evil purposes.

[Connor's mouth twitches almost irritably at the SQUIP being compared to a demon.]

As far as Aefenglom is concerned, the SQUIP is accused of buying monsters at auction, and that's it. The SQUIP bought us to keep us from falling into the hands of someone who would actually do us harm. It was trying to protect us in the only way it could think of.

[Connor does truly believe that.]

If I had been a Witch, I would have done the same. The SQUIP even tried to issue the order to never follow any more commands from it... it tried to free us.

That may have been why no one bothered to explain it, [Myr points out.] It sounds very much that a full and truthful description of what it would do--would've kept folk from wanting one.

[Which was a demon all over. Though even the best-taught mages still succumbed to the damned things.]

It also charmed you to get its way, Rich said. And while I'll grant it was trying to protect both of you--it sounds as if it did lasting harm to Rich by keeping him against his will. It was a dream--anything else the two of you suffered there would have vanished on waking and you'd have been secure in the knowledge your tormentors were a continent away, or didn't exist at all.

But the SQUIP--that's very real and very much here.

[Connor nods slowly despite the fact that Myr can't see him.]

It told me... it was afraid to lose me. That's why it charmed me. But don't worry, I made my feelings on the matter known to it.

[He hesitates.]

The SQUIP offered to leave. Rich tried to leave, too. It was me who didn't want us to part ways. I kept Rich there against his will, and I shouldn't have. That's on me, not the SQUIP. Please don't blame it for that.

[Oh, Maker.

He'd hoped it wasn't like this.

Myr's expression falls for the space of a heartbeat, Connor's response jolting him from his dogged line of questioning.]

You're very fond of it. [His tone is gentle.]

I am, yes.

[Myr sounds almost disappointed, and he wonders why.]

We're very good friends.

[They're more than that, even... but that isn't really any of Myr's business at this point.]

[Disappointed didn't quite cover it.

Heartbroken was likely too strong--he scarcely knows Connor--but it's the same sort of pain albeit weaker. This--this artificial man is a perfectly kind, decent, loyal fellow--

And a demon had its claws in him deeper than Myr had thought.

Those won't come out without leaving dreadful scars.]

What is it that's drawn you to it?

Well, we're both the only machines here. It can understand me in ways nobody else can, and I can understand it the same way. That means a lot when you're surrounded by people who see the world so differently.

[He still sees the world through the eyes of a machine, even if his heart tells him he's more than that.]

And... I genuinely enjoy its company.

[But you're not a demon, Myr wants to protest.

(He sounded damn near a spirit, though, and they were kin to demons.)

Nevertheless it's something he understands--too well. There'd been evidence all around him even on arrival there were others from Thedas here--other mages, even--but the mirrors had taken them all back before he'd had any chance to know them.

If it hadn't come out that way, would he even be here? Or would he have clung to the familiar instead of burning himself thin reaching out to anyone who needed help more than he did--]

It does mean a lot, [a murmur of assent.] I understand why you'd seek it--Maker, [and here he brightens, bootstrapping himself into gladness with a handful of wonder,] you are marvelously different than anyone I've met before, and I'm--

I am sorry we've gotten off wrong-footed, because I would like to know how you see the world. The both of you.

[For very different reasons, but it's honest still.]

[Connor is reminded of Adeline's approach to him, and smiles slightly. It's... nice, to be appreciated. For what he is- for who he is. Androids were simply regarded as plastic imitations of human beings where he's from, but here... he's something special, to some people. That means the world to him.]

Maybe some time I can help you to understand how I see things. I wouldn't mind.

I'd like that, Serah Connor. Truly, I would-- [The mention of time, though, has him seeking out his watch from his pocket and feeling the face of it. They've been talking long enough he might have to scramble to be at the Daisy Chain by opening,

but, he finds, he's got a few minutes still.] --though I'm afraid I've not much more time this morning. You've been a great help with your answers--if there's anything I might do for you in turn...?

Not right now, no. I'm sure I'll think of something.

[He gets up from where he's sitting, ready to lead Myr out.]

Thank you for the food. I'll be sure to offer it to Hank when he comes home.

[And probably Justine and the SQUIP too, but he doesn't mention them- the latter, for obvious reasons. Both were likely listening to this conversation, if they weren't sleeping.]

Then it's yours when you do.

[Though perhaps he shouldn't be promising so liberally, given the course of action he's decided on; if Connor asked him to leave the SQUIP be...

He surely couldn't.]

You're welcome--and give him my regards as neighbor, [he says, rising from his seat and taking up his staff once more.] I ought to come meet him properly sometime.

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[open/catch-all] live, i wanna live inspired

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