etcelsior | QUIT RUNNING IN THE HOUSE

TEST DRIVE MEME

Considering apping into MASK OR MENACE? Want to dip your toes into the setting and get a feel of whether your character will fit into it? Or maybe you're just cruising and want to play around? Then you've come to the right place!

Pick any of the following scenarios below or feel free to make up your own, but don't be afraid to throw yourself at anyone's thread, either!

And remember to have fun!

01. Your memory is hazy and you might feel increasingly frustrated or anxious, or maybe you're excited as soldiers march past, barely glimpsing you. One second you're somewhere underground, the next you're enveloped in blue light, and suddenly you find yourself directly under Flordia sun's bright and burning glare. A female soldier steps toward you with a wide smile on her face and directs you to a car, ready to debrief you. You realize you are not the only one, surrounded by equally confused or eager faces... and you're all sporting a digital tattoo on your wrist.

02. Welcome to Cape Canaveral, where the smell of the ocean is in the air and locals are more than pleased to see new imPorts roaming their streets. They wave, they cheer, they ask for pictures as politely as they can. The more inhuman you look, or if you're wearing a costume, the more likely locals are to approach. Hey, enjoy the moment! The popular malt shop is offering you a free drink if you need it.

03. The technology in this world is certainly something. The cars are clearly modeled after popular 50s cars, but they hover several feet above the ground as they drive down the street. There are digital jukeboxes in restaurants, motorcycles also hover through traffic, advertisements can be seen on a digital projector on the taller buildings. Even kids on skateboards appear to drift a safe ten feet off the ground while playing!

04. Wherever you are, you can hear the loud revving of an engine, distance at first before you finally see it: a hovercar bursting around the corner, going beyond the maximum speed limit and just barely making its sharp turn. It doesn't appear to be slowing down any time soon, not with two police cars trailing it... and uh oh. Those skateboarding kids don't have much time to get out of the way as the car comes speeding down the road. You've been brought here for a reason Hero — so you better act fast.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ah, but he can drink it away, and that strategy is serving him pretty well so far. He can fall in with a team of screw-ups or people with nothing better to do, whatever you want to call Nextwave, and put a lot of it behind him as best as he can.]

You don't say. What you are, or what somebody else told you you are?

[He'd rather not talk about himself anymore. Even if he wants to help her- and he does, because there are so few of them- there's been enough Sharing Time on his part today.]

[ It's a difficult question to answer when you haven't fully discerned your own identity for yourself yet. Sometimes she feels very human, and sometimes, she feels completely removed from humans. Like a monster, even. Some terrible, volatile entity.

Finally: ]

The two can never be completely separate for me.
I evolved from a program created for an express purpose.
While I choose my own paths now, that programming will always be the core of what I am.

And you're ok with that?

[He cares more than he'd let on. It's the one thing he hasn't quite forgotten; the plight of robots. Killing robots is sick! Treating them like second class citizens is abhorrent. Like appliances is worse.]

[ Another difficult question. It makes her stop and pause. It's so rare that anyone asks her if she's okay with anything that she finds there is no answer she can quickly calculate and provide. What does that even really mean for her, to be okay with something like that? ]

Even if I were not, it is hardly something that can be altered now.
This is what I am.

[ A small pause. ]

Should I not be "okay" with that?

You know I can't answer that for you.

[It's not his call to make. He's not even sure if he knows what a right answer is. Aaron is not unaware of just how incredible a gift his creator gave him, that he has no programming that he absolutely need follow; and how much of a curse, too, because it leaves him trying to decide his purpose all on his own.]

[ No, he can't, can he? And perhaps it's unfair to even ask. But she can't help the feeling that he knows something she doesn't-- or perhaps that he has something, some secret in his code or in his data banks that makes him different than her. More genuine somehow. Less an imitation, more an individual.

It's frustrating and intriguing at once. ]

It was not my intention to make you uncomfortable.
I only seek your insight.
Since you are the most human-like mechanical being I have ever encountered.

That's not really a compliment, you know.

[Given the opinion he's formed of human beings. But he empathizes with what she actually means by that, and he wants to offer her his insight. She's not human; belligerent as he might be, there's no impetus to push her away or make her actively uncomfortable, even if he can't turn off his cynicism.

Once, he'd had something like this conversation, with Jocasta. His insight had come too late to help her, and it hadn't brought him any kind of happiness in the end either.]

It's- how can I put this? Take Ultron. He has programming. He's more than happy with it. He has a purpose. It might be an incredibly destructive and shitty purpose, from everyone else's point of view, but he's content with it. But, when he made- Jocasta- [It shouldn't be hard to talk about her, all these years later, but it still gives him a slight hitch, a stumble in his footing.] - she didn't like what he'd programmed her to be. She wanted something more. Something else.

[ Something more. There's a sentiment she understands. ]

Discontentment is a symptom of sentience I often experience.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting something more.

[ Otherwise, she would have resigned herself to a life of enslavement to generations of X-Men. Charles Xavier's little secret. It would have been a lonely, hateful existence. No, she had wanted something more too. She still does. ]

I could never be fulfilled with my programmed purpose alone.

What is your programmed purpose?

[Recognizing that this is something of a delicate question, with the sort of things robots have been programmed to do. He was made to be a robotic soldier. His 50 predecessors were psychotic.

But hey, they've strayed pretty far into personal already. This isn't any worse than everything they've talked about.]

To design and implement specific ways to kill.

[ Humans did always like having machines to do their dirty work. Though it was one thing to force a machine to kill for you-- it was another to purposefully program it with a purpose it could never fulfill. That was cruelty of a different kind. That was what Charles Xavier had done to her. ]

But I was additionally programmed with a failsafe that prevented me from actually dealing a killing blow.
My father deemed it to be the most effective way to train his X-Men.
The failsafe ensured that I would be compelled to do my utmost to kill them, but would ultimately be unable to do so, in the case that they should be ineffective in defending themselves.

Good god.

[It's not often that something renders Aaron speechless. Not these days. If nothing else he always has a snide and ugly opinion for something, a dismissive comment or a less-than-cheerful analysis of the situation. A demand for beer. Something.]

...How can you even live with that?

[He'd be sick to his stomach, if he had a stomach in the first place.]

There is no alternative.
That is the programming I was designed with.

[ Not entirely true-- there are some alternatives. One would require her to effectively lobotomize herself to remove whatever parts of her essential code contained the failsafe. And there is always self-termination. Neither exactly appeals. ]

I simply make due.

[As someone who has contemplated those exact options- of completely wiping everything he ever was, to make himself less of a danger to others- of killing himself, to prevent himself from killing other people. They were terrible options. There had been no other alternative.]

I'm sorry, Danger.

[If he had a solution, he would offer it.]

[ She tilts her head slightly at him when he says that to her, considering him a moment with that unblinking and blatant stare of hers before she answers: ]

It is not necessary to feel sorry.
My circumstances are not ideal, but I am functional and capable.
I can feel and think for myself.
I have my freedom.

QUIT RUNNING IN THE HOUSE

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