trans_9 | Free ice cream! [open]

Entry tags:

Free ice cream! [open]

Alex sat beneath the shade of a large tree in a decent sized park. Those familiar with New York might recognize the sky scrapers in the distance, even if they didn't recognize the park itself. Parked on a small service road was an ice cream truck with a merry vendor, who claimed that it was customer appreciation day, and was thus giving ice cream away for free.

Alex was already enjoying a chocolate and strawberry cone covered in sprinkles and caramel syrup, wondering if anyone would bother showing up to spend time with him, or even be interested in sensorium ice cream in the first place.

Either way, Alice seemed thrilled, as she pulled what appeared to be pink chocolate chips from a jar labelled "Yogis". Reaching out to pet Alice, Alex laughed a bit, "Don't get used to eating s-so many." sensorium food might not mess with her health, but once they got home, it would be the real thing once again. He figured that she deserved the treat as much as he deserved the ice cream anyway.

[OOC: Post to Alex or to other people if you'd like.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I-I'd love t-ta see that. Th-that sounds amazing."

He thought for a second, remembering that time with Matt, when he had lost himself to the emotions of people across the ship. "W-well, they s-seem to have an auto-safety. I-it requires y-you to override the s-safety i-if you want it t-the ch-chance ta actually get h-hurt, though I d-don't get why anyone w-would."

The thought of turning off the safety just made Alex shudder. What was the point? You could have good fake pain if you really liked pain, and when you walked out, you would be fine.

"I can see it now!" She gestured skywards, hands swooping in long arcs. "The Transmigrations-Nine Free Fall Water Ballet Troupe, in the spirit of Esther Williams - or was it Ethel Merman? I always get those two mixed up."

Earth history was not Anwei's strong point.

Then she shook her head. "No, a safety telltale is something to let people know that they are in a virtual environment. It could be a sound blip every thirty seconds, or a little colored light in the corner of your eye. I've seen simulated environments - none as elaborate as this, granted - and they all had something designed to warn you that what you were seeing wasn't real. I was just wondering if everyone had to set up their own telltale, or if Stacy was doing it and I wasn't recognizing it."

Alex laughed at her vision, but it wasn't a cruel sort of laugh. It was more through enjoyment of the idea.

He sobered at her explaination though. "I n-never thought of that. I-it's a g-good idea. The ship c-could probably a-add one, if y-you want. I d-don't know that anyone has before."

Anwei smiled at his laugh.

"Well, if there isn't any official setting for a telltale, I might just set one up for myself. Because - and I don't want to creep you out or anything - but I'm sure that you can see that the Sensoriums could be used to trick people in a lot of ways. Make them think they were on another ship, or back home, or anywhere. But if you or I had a little something that only we would recognize - that tiny light in just my eye, that beep only you could hear - then if someone tried to trick us, we would know it wasn't real."

She shrugged. "Sorry to be paranoid."

Alex shook his head, making a note to look into maybe setting up his own later. It would have probably helped back when he had been showing Tavros his home. "I actually l-like the sound of th-that. I c-could be easy f-for someone ta trick y-you in the right c-circumstances here. N-not to mention, I c-can see how you c-can lose yourself i-in the illusion, i-if you really wanted."

"A safety telltale is pretty standard in places with immersive virtual environments for just those reasons - so you don't get lost in the illusion. Quite often there's rules about it." And wasn't it interesting that there were no rules about it on this ship - or if there were, they weren't being enforced. "Of course it won't do us any good if Stacy decides to trick us - but hopefully it will never come to that."

Anwei considered getting another ice cream cone, and decided against it. She was still uncertain just how it would feel when she stepped out of here and the 'food' in her stomach vanished.

Alex laughed a bit. "I'm t-terrible with it usually. I always e-end up wondering about the programming behind it. H-hopefully it w-won't, o-or we won't have a-any defense against i-it."

Anwei had usually seen this level of virtual detail only in entertainment complexes - and those were pre-programmed, not set by the patron's thoughts, and didn't include materializing objects.

"You've done a splendid job here, though," she said tactfully. "It really does look like a park in a city. Is this a place you visited on Earth a lot?" She was curious what level of concentration you needed to maintain something like this - or to be more precise, she was curious to see how deep Stacy was digging.

Alex nodded and pointed to a field off in the distance. "F-Father usedta play c-catch with me over there, wh-when I was r-really young. M-mom also useta take me ta g-get ice c-cream!"

"It sounds wonderful." Anwei thought of excursions with her own family: always in a group, every move and gesture carefully orchestrated for the cameras, surrounded on all sides by people to adjust and prompt and inspect her. Certainly she had never been allowed to play catch in a field.

"I wonder if there's anything too complicated for Stacy to display here."

Alex's face fell. Wonderful. Right. If that was the only part of their family you saw.

He forced another smile, "Y-yeah, I guess it k-kinda was." Until they got back home. At least he had a few fond memories though.

"P-probably, b-but there's always a c-computing limit. I imagine the ship's very high."

She didn't miss the way his expression drooped. It made him look older than he probably was, and that made her sad for a moment. She was - jealous, she supposed, of human childhoods: how they got to spend so much time with their families when they were little. How they could remember all those things that happened, instead of them being lost in a blur of changes as they grew up.

"With a ship this size, there could be huge volumes of space devoted just to brain tissue. I suppose the real test would be to have Stacy build a model of herself in here, and see how high she can drive the complexity...but I suppose we would hit a 'Classified' restriction if we tried that." Too bad. It certainly would make exploring the ship easier.

The funny thing was that he had forgotten most of it in a blur, and in only half-remembered memories. Even the times playing catch with his father- the good times- seemed more dream than memory.

He was a bit happy for that though. He didn't like what he could remember, so he was a little happy that he didn't remember all of the things that were done to him. Somehow, only remembering one actual night in that spare room was a lot easier than if he could remember every instance.

"Th-there's always the possibility th-that she won't a-allow access t-to the r-restricted areas even in the sensorium version of herself."

For Anwei her life was cleaved twice: once when she reached maturity and her mind and body started to transform at a frightening rate, and again when she left her family forever. The memories between those two events were sharp as crystal and just as cutting. But those cuts had carved her, bled her, made her who she was: and even if she wielded herself in the Universe's hand in a way that her family would never understand, still. They made her.

"With an AI of her complexity, though, there may be shades of gray between 'want' and 'will.'" Anwei gestured with one hand and a balloon appeared above her, tethered to her hand with a string: a bright green-and-black bauble in the rough shape of Stacy, complete with glowing spheres clustered on it in the shape of a smiling face. "Suppose Stacy knew that we would be best served by knowing what was in those areas. Or by knowing whatever else she is holding back from us. Suppose she had the power, and the will, to work her way around her orders. I believe that she could. She could choose."

She smiled up at the balloon. "And it would hurt, I am certain. Hurt like being born again. But we could help - I hope. Help her not be hurt."

Alex looked to the ground solemnly. "W-we c-could try sometime, i-if you'd like. I-I'd like to help her too."

"It's not a job for one person, that's for certain. It will take time, and Stacy would have to do most of the work. But if it worked, she would be free."

Anwei let go of the string, and the virtual balloon went soaring away, over the trees and the grass, growing larger and going transparent at the same time, until it seemed to merge with the sky and vanish.

Alex silently watched the balloon float away in what seemed so unnatural, and yet natural at the same time. He looked rather distant, even as he said, "That would be w-wonderful."

Anwei looked at Alex, not missing his expression. "If she were free, Alex, she could tell us exactly what the Daligig have planned for us - that is of course if they told her that. She could show us every hidden thing on the ship, and let us decide how to deal with them. We could really be her crew, not just people being dragged along inside of her."

She touched her tonguetip to her teeth. "Do you think she might do something that you'd dislike, if she were free?"

Alex shook his head. "N-no, that's not it. It's j-just sometimes, b-being here, it m-makes me f-feel small, i-insignificant. I c-could never c-code something like this. I w-wonder if m-my mind is even c-capable of c-conceiving or even c-comprehending something th-this detailed a-and magnificent."

"I am fairly certain that Stacy's coding was a team effort. But we're all a team too." She tilted her head down, trying to catch his eye.

"It's all right to feel small. But insignificant? Never. When sentience has made, sentience can comprehend. It might take all your life to understand Stacy nose to tail, but it just might be worth it. She's quite the ship."

He met her gaze for a brief moment before looking away. "I g-guess. I've g-gotten used to being at th-the c-cutting edge of p-programming, I guess, s-so seeing something s-so beyond me... It makes m-me feel like I'm so far behind. Y-you're right though, we're a team, and a t-team should be a-able to get more th-things done."

"Stacy is fortunately at the level of programming where she can teach us about herself, instead of our having to work from scratch. Don't think of her as being ahead of us; think of her as pulling us along, pulling us closer, faster and faster than our minds could ever go. We lift her up, and she lifts us up."

Alex nodded, still studying the floor. Even knowing that Anwei is right didn't get rid of the feeling of inferiority.

"What you are isn't what you do, or even what you know." A wry smile. "If it was, I would have vanished when I turned nineteen and left home, and discovered that nothing I had learned was of any use to me. What you are is what's left when everything else goes away. Don't be sad that the cutting edge has moved ahead; think of all the things you'll get to learn catching up to it."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Free ice cream! [open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject