trans_9 | Enchanted Aquatica---the Prom [WIDE OPEN Y'ALL]

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Enchanted Aquatica---the Prom [WIDE OPEN Y'ALL]

The day had finally arrived for her big event, and Starfire couldn't be happier---or more nervous, actually. She was certainly not an expert on the inner workings of a prom, but it couldn't be too terribly complicated, right? As long as the people could eat, dance, and talk, it should be a reasonable success.

With that in mind, her decorations sprung from her mind into the large dome all around her, transforming a grey Sensorium into a beautiful underwater world, one with clear waters and free from the possibility of a shark attack.

The first change was the scent of the air, shifting into the comforting salty scent of the seas. Then the ground beneath her feet became a hardened sandstone, maintaining the gritty texture while remaining easy to walk upon---except for the smooth dance floor, of course. The grey dome transformed into a flowing bluish-green, rippling all around with fish of all colors passing in the background. Some of the 'sky' faded into a violet tone over the dance floor, lit by glowing circular lights in every color. Suspended in midair, they almost looked like motionless fireflies, though they sometimes swayed in tune with songs.

Tables arose from coral in all colors, rising from the ground and twisting to provide a flattened surface on the very top---rounded ones for guests, and long tables off to the side containing shell-bowls of food. Chairs were large floating clam shells with well cushioned interiors, some large enough to hold two people. More comfortable spongy places to sit were also littered across the area, notably by the large shell-shaped enclosure that was the promised swimming pool. It too was lit by the floating lights, providing what she hoped was a romantic atmosphere.

Finally, the glowing stage above the dance floor couldn't help but attract attention with its chairs. Six royal thrones and one plush chair of all colors directly in the middle rested in the back of the stage, leaving the front open for announcements. Just off to the side of the stage stood the DJ's table, with even that machine painted to match the soft underwater glow of the scenery.

Everything finally seemed pleasing to Starfire. With one last change, dressing herself in the formal attire of the prom, she sent out the signal to everyone and waited. She hoped they would have a wonderful time.

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"Hey, like I said, I'm not suggesting anything." Besides, he knows he's not the only one on the ship who would unquestioningly let a whole multiverse burn to protect someone he loves. "Let's hope. Knock on wood." Unfortunately, not much wood on Stacy to knock on.

He glances down at his too-long pants and untucked shirt. "Well, I'll definitely bitch about it less than Zou did. You'd think they'd asked him to tromp around naked or something."

He frowns a bit. "Why, did something blow up in your face before?"

"Knock on shell," she replies, tapping the table with her fingertips. She thought of the old Vizsnunishne oath, to never take hostages or slaves; and the related, not oath but widely held belief, that all hostages should be considered dead, and revenge taken accordingly.

"I would have happily switched clothes with him, if it had been culturally acceptable." Trading a heavy, difficult-to-manage gown and ridiculous hat for a brief skirt-and-stockings outfit. "I actually gave away that dress, to Stormwind Clothiers. I figure Zwei can make three normal outfits out of it."

"Not in my face personally, but...you have to realize that even though an AI may act like a person, he or she (or it, or other) is capable of thinking many times faster than you can. That it may be able to create a model of your responses so perfect that it can anticipate anything you do. And that just like people, they can go insane." The last word more than a little cold in her mouth. "I've seen that happen. Very ugly."

"Does knocking on shell work?" he asks. He sort of believes in knocking on wood. Can't be too careful.

"Man, I'd have switched clothes with him if it would have kept him from sulking about it. Except those stupid breakaway robes saved my ass." Besides, it must be hell to run in those types of shoes. There's a reason Howard treasures his sneakers, bitten, blood-stained and battered as they are. "Maybe Zwei could make a tent out of it. Or a hot air balloon. I think that dress weighed more than I do, and I wasn't even wearing it."

He bites his lip, then swallows another piece of fish. Having a friend go mad...he doesn't want to admit to himself that he's seen it, but crippling, violent rage and depression pretty much qualifies. And while Orc's stupidity made him easy to control, it also made him more dangerous. Still, the idea of an insane AI is much more daunting. "Not Horanckk, right?"

"I don't know," she said, frowning. "I don't really know human luck rituals very well. I suppose the equivalent for my species would be - touch teeth maybe?"

"You were lucky with that robe. I think that whole mission came down to half luck." A sigh, accompanied by a bite of pastry. "Let's just hope that we don't get a mission in the future where Stacy tells me to wear that dress. Because by now I sincerely hope it's a matched set of pillows, bedsheets, curtains, and rag rugs."

"No. Not Horanckk." She lets her eyelids droop, her expression contrasting oddly to the friendly waving of the dress-tentacles. "I don't even remember his name. He wasn't a Ninth Empire AI, it was almost impossible to break the Empire's controls on them. And he wasn't Penn'ae either. Ibis maybe?

"He went on a mission, in a crack box. That's a shielded casing with a row of connectors on it, to protect the AI from being hijacked until it's hooked into another system. Somehow, in fighting the other AI, something in his mind - broke. And since AIs think so much faster than we do, his madness grew just as fast. He was sane when he left the ship; when he returned, his patterns didn't match what he had been previously at all, so we put him into the Black Hold."

Her eyes grew even sadder. "The Black Hold is where you store particularly nasty sentient code, and AIs that are in trouble. A whole section of one ship is made non-conductive: shielded walls, chemiluminescent lights, no wiring or electrical equipment at all, no memory or storage devices allowed on people inside. The guards don't even carry smartguns, because an AI might be able to tamper with them; just spears or spring-loaded projectile weapons. It's a place to hold someone who thinks a hundred times faster than you do. It's supposed to be sealed off, all the time. But by bad luck, on the same day we brought him back and locked him into the Black Hold, there was a new guard on duty who'd been given slightly higher access codes than he should have had. He was – young. Young and foolish

"The first we found out about what he'd done was the alarms had gone off: something taken out of its bracket in the Hold. So, Security goes down there, and sees this kid, and he's sort of staggering, towards the door. Arms out in front of him, and absolutely no expression on his face. He just kept staggering forward, even after they put the spearsbutts to him and tried to force him against the wall. He wouldn't go. They knocked him down and turned him over, and saw why.

"The crack box was grafted onto his spine. It had organic-compatible connectors, and it had just socketed itself into his body, taken over his brain, used him like a puppet to get him out of there. Not the best plan, really, but - the AI was insane. The kid was dead; no higher brain activity at all once the surgeons got the box off him. The question was, how had the thing gotten onto his back? It had been locked down, and the kid must have known that the connection would let the AI take over his brain, so – why?"

She waits for Howard's response, her expression suggesting she'd be just as happy if he said 'No more.'

Howard drums his fingernails against his front teeth and nods.

He listens intently, hoping that somehow there's some closure to this story that will let him put it out of his mind tonight, but knowing full well that there probably isn't. There never really is, in real life.

He pauses for a while, letting her wait on his response, finding some way to engage with what he was just presented with without just letting another horror story get filed away. He's seen too much to let it shock him.

"Back home, in the FAYZ, sometimes kids'd step out. From the whole thing. Probably to death, that was everyone's best bet. I mean...I almost did. And other ways, a lot of times, I mean, thought about it." He realizes he's not making much sense and makes a 'moving on' motion. "Point is, if you're already vulnerable and you've got someone you think can give you answers, who thinks a thousand times faster than you, who can maybe fix things...is it hard to believe?"

He shrugs. "Or maybe he was just curious. You know what they say about that and cats."

"He'd gone through all the standard new hire screening; they should have caught it if he was suicidal. There was an organic memoryfilm in the Hold, rather than a camera, so we could see what he'd done. He snuck in there with a little earpiece, plugged it into the crack box and just listened for about four minutes, nodding his head and muttering something back once in a while. And then he picked the box up and slung it onto his back and he was gone." She snaps her fingers, to show how quickly a life flares away.

"People said that of course, since he was new, the AI must have kept track of his interviews and tests, and known exactly what to say. That was the reassuring thing to say. Better to think that, than to think that an AI could cold-read someone and talk them into becoming their vehicle in four minutes."

She finishes off the last of her sushi. "Or maybe it told him it could upload him; turn him into an AI as well."

He shrugs. "Did I ever tell you about the zombie in my basement?" He doesn't wait for her to answer. "So anyway, this zombie, she's this religious girl, right, real into that Jesus bullshit and the golden rule and everything. She wakes up underground, fused to this psychopath who likes to whip people to death. And um, we kept her in our basement, and eventually she started losing it. And, I mean, who wouldn't?"

He takes a deep breath and puts some more of the food in his pockets. "So after a while, she's completely hopeless, so she gets to going along with the psycho. Starts helping him kill people. This is after she breaks out of our basement. She just...goes with it. Crazy Bible-thumper before who would have cried if she stepped on a bug, and she's helping him torture little kids to death.

"Point is, if a crazy teenager can make someone do that in a few weeks, is it that crazy to think an AI could do that to someone in four minutes?"

"So you kept her in your basement to keep her from hurting people?" She pauses, and then looks at him with respect. "I don't think I could do that. Not in the FAYZ, the way you describe it. I couldn't - keep something dangerous that close to me." I couldn't handle the responsibility, she thinks but doesn't say.

She had always been terrible at being responsible for others' lives.

"Or that an AI, with multiple points of attention and Instancing capabilities, could do it to as many organics as it wanted to, all at once." She shakes her head side to side, and then smiles. "The two of us always have such heartwarming conversations, don't we? We should record them for posterity, except that someone might listen to them and go mad. Maybe not in four minutes, but...."

"I did mention she broke out, right?" he says, with a lingering trace of genuine shame on his face. He was careless. He nearly got Orc killed with his carelessness, overestimated what the big guy could put up with. "I didn't volunteer for the job. Me and Orc were just the only two with the manpower to keep her in place, besides Sam."

And stupid Sam couldn't even do a mercy killing or put up with jailing her. It was Howard and Orc, who were unpopular and unlikeable, who got stuck listening to Brittney wail all night and beg for death. Listen to a twelve year-old girl sob and scream and pray for mercy every minute. Howard and Orc, who eventually had to just get used to it. Ignore the well of misery in the basement, can I interest you in some cooked rat?

Howard feels sick. Maybe it's just because he's been stuffing his face with sushi.

But he laughs anyway. "Seriously. Give us a topic about rainbows and butterflies and I'll bet we get to discussing misery and genocide in fifty seconds."

"Sometimes all the choices are bad ones. And not choosing isn't an option. At least you tried, where Sam would not."

She had once tried to map what something like the FAYZ would have been like on her world, and failed utterly. As soon as the adults were gone, she imagined, all of the children ten years and under would have been culled for food, and then the rest of the survivors would have turned on each other, fighting with hands and teeth and anything they could use as a weapon. The largest and fastest would have survived - one survivor. Until the call came, and they walked away and disappeared.

"We shall both become prize-winning horror novelists, rolling in money and groupies. And when people chirp, 'Where do you get your ideas?', our hands will shudder just-so, and we will whisper, 'You really don't want to know'."

"Watch out, Stephen King. I'm coming for you," he says with a laugh that's a little too loud. "I noticed you do the shakey hands thing too. Haven't run into anyone else on the ship who does."

Everyone else seems so put together. People like Zou, or Rory, who either have everything figured out or don't need to. In a way it's comforting to find someone else with similar mannerisms.

"I actually know who that is! He wrote 'Salems's Lot, right?" Anwei's knowledge of Earth culture was rather spotty.

"Sorry, am I imitating you? Another disadvantage of growing up in a totally insular culture; you end up speaking alien body language. I learned fairly quickly after I left that I should not punch people to get their attention, or yawn at full gape to show them I was bored." She considered yawning in demonstration, but decided against it. Howard would probably try to stuff fruit in her mouth - say, a whole pineapple.

"I don't know. Maybe. He wrote Cujo and Carrie and Christine and like, a million other books about Maine or something. My dad was a big fan." In some regards, Howard's is only slightly better than Anwei's.

He looks a bit disappointed, as if he's lost some idea of kin he had with her. "Oh, no, I thought you just did it naturally."

He probably wouldn't waste food like that, but there's no guarantee he wouldn't try to make Anwei eat a chair or something.

Anwei had been skimming Earth's culture for vampire references before she arrived, else she would never have heard of Stephen King. She wonders if there is some pattern, with all his books apparently starting with C- or S- sounds. Maybe he hissed a lot? A sub-dialect of English relating to horror stories?

She giggles. "My natural expression of nervousness would look like this." She puts her plate down on her lap (the dress-tendrils immediately start exploring it with curiosity), crosses her eyes inwards, and starts picking at the corners of her mouth with her little fingers. "Besides, isn't imitation a form of flattery?"

Chair-eating demonstrations would theoretically require that Howard wear white jodhpurs, a red coat and a top hat, and crack a whip.

He tilts his head. He's never really thought about being able to change one's body language so seamlessly to match one's surroundings. He supposes it shouldn't surprise him, but he tends to let his guard down around Anwei and forget how far from human she actually is. "I guess. Not sure if imitating the shaky hands thing is actually flattery, though. Maybe if you imitated my amazing sense of wit and brainpower or something."

She tilts her head at him. "Some things are beyond me. Hard to imagine, I know."

"In my home dimension, there was a sign language people used to convey body language between species - because it's tough to show sincerity to a species that does so by spreading their wings on high if you don't have any wings. And translations could always end up being imprecise, or misinterpreted, or just flat out wrong."

"Don't steal my head tilt. That's just getting creepy." Besides, he does it so often it's almost signature.

"How does that sign language translate to people who can't sign? Like sentient puddles of blood and that stuff?"

She opens her mouth to point out that her head can't tilt as the same angle as him (different neck vertebrae) but decides not to. Instead she answers, "And you'd better not start imitating my smile, either."

Not that he really could without surgery.

"With a sentient puddle of blood we'd probably use text-equivalents. The issue isn't something that looks very different from you, because your mind automatically tells you that their body language is different. The issue is something that's close enough to you that you can recognize each other's gestures, but they don't have the same meaning.

"If a blood puddle waves its cilia in a way that means 'I don't like you,' you probably won't be upset. But if someone who looks just like you except they have four eyes does this," she draws her finger across her neck, "because that means 'I so respect your opinion that I would give you my voice' and you read it as 'I'm going to cut your throat', well, that's an issue."

"Yeah, don't worry about that." As much as a mouth like hers could be useful when gorging on food during nightly binges. Or eating raw flesh, if it came down to it.

"Besides, that'd have to involve me actually smiling, and everyone else around Medical says I scowl too much." He still maintains that a smirk counts as a smile.

"Oh, I get it. Like how the peace sign if super offensive in Britain."

"Bad idea anyway. Your gums would probably dry out. And you'd get cheek-aches, and the last thing you want to do is wander around asking for a cheek massage."

Cheeky!

She nods. "Exactly. So they came up with 'glinting,' which is an emotion hand-signal language. And even there, I know the five-finger one-thumb two-symmetrical-arms version; there's subdialects for people with no thumbs, or asymmetrical limb arrangements."

"I don't like people touching my face enough as is. No need to add cheek-aches to that reason." Or touching any part of him, mostly.

He nods, listening close. "And what do the people with tentacles do?"

That makes perfect sense; after all if someone stuck their fingers too close to Anwei's face while she was distracted, or about to sneeze, they would probably end up pulling back a stump or five.

"Most species with tentacles just would press four together to designate two arms and least and greatest fingers. The weirdest one I saw - I can't remember the species name - but they had just one tentacle, growing out of their front, and they insisted they didn't have any other limbs. Turned out their antlers were flexible, and they could glint with those, but it was totally taboo to discuss their antlers or even say they had them when they were about to shed them.

"So it would just stand there with its one tentacle pointing at you, and its antlers wriggling, and you would kind of roll one eye," she demonstrates, "to see what the antlers were saying."

And see, with Howard they'll just end up getting scowled at.

He shakes his head. "And everyone's fluent in this glinting? It seems like it makes more sense to just work on translator chips. Your planet seems advanced enough."

What with the decapitating people and keeping their heads alive on pikes and all.

She laughs, mouth yawning wide. "My planet? No way. The Empire didn't care what other species might be feeling; if it couldn't be said in our language, it wasn't worth listening to.

"Glinting was for the species outside the Empire, the ones that cared about negotiating and coexisting and working together, instead of just crushing everything in their path. Explorers, pirates, mercenaries, long-term investors: they invented glinting. The Living People just didn't care."

He should have figured that. He feels dumb that he didn't.

"Here's an idea. When we save this whole universe, we stick your world and my world in the ring together and let them duke it out. Your world wins, of course, because like, technology, but maybe Space Jesus can take a few of your winners out too."

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LOL long horror story is long

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Re: LOL long horror story is long

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