trans_9 | Denial? Just a little bit.

Entry tags:

Denial? Just a little bit.

Who: Kaya, open to all.
Where: Sensoriums
Summary: Ed not remembering her is sort of the last straw, so she's getting her aggressions out.
Warnings: Um. Are there any? TBA, I guess?

But so much for that now. Right now Kaya, who had had a pretty bad last few months, found the last straw was bringing Ed back and having him not even recognizer her had been the last straw. Now she was just standing here, around a background of water and streams, and she was moving in a combination.

First there was her own bending. Smooth, flowing each movement into the other, legs supporting the base as arms and shoulders tensed and drew forward, calling the water up and around her, making waves into developed whips, turning that into solid substances and back again.

And then, when the Bene Gesserit came into play, that slowed but accurate action became quick, deliberate fast. Her body become a putty oin increments as she geared for offensive kicks and movement, pushing her body to the limits here. There was no turning back, no moment of reflection.

At this moment, Kaya wondered what would become of her training, if they would form a base of strength and bending even she didn't fully understand yet. She would put aside those feelings of helplessness, of pain she could not do more.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Get them settled first, I suppose...let them feel as safe as they can." She was thinking of the scared man and his Cube, in the Pod Caverns; what would it take to make him feel safe? "If we confront them right away with the idea that we can't trust anything, they may just refuse to participate in the ship's business at all."

Would Stacy drag a person physically onto a shuttle to participate in a mission they refused to do - or would it just be a Violation? She had the glum feeling that she would be finding out, one of these days.

"I suspect that everyone will be able to help. Operating on a sentient mind the size of Stacy's isn't something we can do by sneaking up behind her - she needs to be fully informed, if at all possible, every step of the way. At the minimum we need her feedback as to what each change is doing - how it affects her memories and her abilities; how it makes her feel. We need to convince her not to fight us. She'll need a friend. Lots of friends."

"I wouldn't be averse to that," Kaya said. "I've been on this ship a long time, and the truth is, I don't think people should blame Stacy for every little thing that happens. I think that the new people can get used to being on the ship so long as we don't have the older people using Stacy as a scapegoat again and again."

She sighed. "I never declined a mission I was told to do. The way I figure, its one step closer to the answers we need to find, so why would I turn it down? But having Stacy allow us to mess with her guts? how can we assure her that we mean nothing but the best for her?"

Anwei nods in agreement. "Especially if we then have to tell them that we are trying to improve and repair Stacy - if they think she's the enemy, they may want her to stay broken."

"Well, normally I would say that she can just read our minds and find out if we're sincere. But I think there's something - incomplete with the way her mind-reading is working. Of course I'm not a telepath, and maybe one of those could state it better, but either Stacy can only read our surface thoughts, or she can read deeper but she's forbidden to act on what she finds." A frown. "A telepathic prison Warden makes a lot of sense. Maybe the Warden can read everyone's mind, but can't act on what she finds; otherwise, how could anyone threaten the ship without being stopped?"

"Then we'll have to find a way to do it without alerting them," Kaya said. "I think it can be done, but I won't lie: mechanics and science are something I know little to nothing about. If we can find a way, I'll do what I can to distract them."

Kaya nodded. "I have a feeling its limited too. It's creepy enough thinking she can read minds, as there are obviously things no one should hear, but who knows how someone like Stacy can process all of that information? It's possible even she needs to shut it up and only looks for what's relevant. If all the grumbling lately hasn't made her tell on us to the Daligig, its likely she trusts us enough to end that part of her programming."

She shrugged. "Neuropathy has been running as a closed shop for as long as I've been here - it's not like they were posting updates as to what they were doing. Unless one of the new arrivals is an AI programmer who wants to join - in which case, whoever the current head of Neuropathy is would have to decide if they should be in on it."

"Oh I think she can process it. There's, what, at most two hundred people awake? And we don't even know how large Stacy's physical brain is, and add on electronic equipment that can do the same work as a brain in a hundredth the space - no, either she can't tell, or she won't tell. Personally, I hope it's the second."

"I guess a lot of the departments are like that now, right? Too much has happened to shake things up, and people haven't decided yet whether they want to trust in making trouble for you know who. First we have to decide where it is we stand."

She nodded. "Which brigs me to my next point. Every time something bad happens on this ship, Stacy is the first to be blamed, the first one who we decide we hate. If Stacy had that much power over us, we would be in a much worse state. So I think, for starters, we have to ally ourselves with Stacy, and realize that she is just as powerless as we are, if not worse."

"Department meetings would be a good way for people to mingle and discuss things, while having it look like normal ship business. And maybe the Outsiders should have an open meeting as well. Once everyone who's been here a while has decided what to do as a team, we can decide who else should be brought in."

She looked at the Water Tribe village around them. "That's going to be a tougher bite to chew. People can literally see Stacy surrounding them, holding their loved ones in the pods. But now that the Daligig have shown themselves - and done so little to make the crew warm to them - it may be easier to say that Stacy is just their tool, just as we are. And perhaps that tool should turn in the hand that wields it so carelessly."

"I think they would do us good. Medical suffered a set back when we lost Sam, and a lot of the other departments also lost people that really mattered to them. I'm going to talk with Beastboy when I get the chance about holding the meetings again. I've met a few new people who I'm sure I could get to help. Cedric would probably lend a hand, and I'm sure I could find others!"

Kaya waved at one of the onlookers, who quickly turned their head away. "And maybe that'd what the Daligig has counted on. We spent all this time hating Stacy, not realizing that it was playing into their hands. Why ally yourself with a ship you hate so much and you don't even trust? They wouldn't be expecting we finally join forces with Stacy. But how to tell she feels as oppressed as we do?"

"I'm sure you could," and she meant it. Kaya had a talent for finding people and drawing them out of their shells, getting them to step up to the line and work.

"The thing about that is," Anwei worried her lower lip with her teeth very gently for an instant, "it's entirely possible that she doesn't feel oppressed."

She took her metal comb out of her jacket pocket, and laid the tines across her open palm. "Imagine that the Daligig went through the ship's mind and combed out everything that was good and honorable and loving, and created a separate personality from just those parts of the ship." Her hand moved as she spoke, combing her hand. "They could have built in a revulsion for those parts of her that were now Other, now the Warden. More; they could monitor her brain as they worked, and if any part of her resented what they did, or realized that she was no longer a whole person, they could turn that part of her off. Erase it, even."

She looked down at her faintly pink skin and frowned. "It's an easy trap to fall into; to craft a mind to do exactly what you want it to, and cut out any part that would disagree. The problem is, a mind like that can only do what you built it for. It can't innovate, or imagine, or respond to the totally unfamiliar. You're hobbling another mind rather than risk having it inconvenience you with originality."

She slipped the comb back into her pocket, and her long lips shaped a phrase something along the lines of "Obscene attitude."

Kaya swallowed nervously. She actually didn't like to think of things like this: if anything, after all that had happened to her on Stacy, it was something of a nightmare. Could it be possible that the Daligig had such extensive influence that they could actually edit the mind of an AI as advanced as Stacy?

"The hardest part is getting everyone to understand that," she said quietly. "For most of them, with all we've been through, hating the machine and everything connected with it is so much easier, the idea that Stacy is as much a pawn is a scary one. There might even be some people arguing for Stacy to be shut down before she can fully become a tool to be used by our enemies."

She held her hands out as though holding something back. "No, that's a chain of though we'd have to break fast. Shutting down Stacy could kill us all - we have no idea which of her processes are keeping the air fresh and the water running. Shut her down, and we could be trapped in space in her corpse. Along with the corpses of everyone in the pods, maybe."

She pulled her hands back and rubbed then together, palm to palm. "First to get the Daligig to turn their eyes from us. Then to talk to the crew, and Stacy, about where she wants to go from here. If her personality is stable and she's happy with it, maybe work to remove processes from the Warden's care and shift them to her. But if she isn't stable, we might have to merge her back with the Warden, to save her life."

"I was definitely not suggesting that we do that, trust me," Kaya said. "If anything, actually attacking Stacy would be reckless and cause more problems, not less. Besides, the Daligig would want us under supervision at all times if we ever did that."

She nodded. "I thought about that. What we have to do is combine the distrust of everyone against the Daligig and make it so they think we squashed all of those feelings. There is no doubt that they know there's dissent already. The people who spoke for Howie and Orc were proof of that."

"Which would either mean stationing their troops on board, or maybe suppressing Stacy and putting the Warden back in charge. Both of which would make doing any work on the ship difficult."

More difficult than it was already: with no idea what programming-paths were corrupted and which were whole, no notes or records of what Stacy had been like before she was changed by the Daligig.

"So we have to convince the Daligig that either those people changed their minds, or they didn't and they have been removed from any position where they could cause trouble. That's probably not going to be very difficult, considering how the Daligig keep themselves apart. And didn't we find a new section of the ship while I was in the pods? We could always say we were confining people there, and let them out when we are unobserved."

"And no one wants that first part, Daligig included. Why would they want to stay on the ship with their tools when they have other things to do? But the latter part is a very real threat: if they can find a way to suppress Stacy and have her regulated by the Warden, there will be no way anyone can trust her at all."

This was a possibility she hadn't thought about.

"Exactly. What the Daligig need is to have their fears made real: that there IS an opposing faction against them on the ship, and that the rebellion is happening. Then they need to be suppressed, to put those fears to rest. This way, they get the idea that the overall population of the ship supports them, but more likely, that we don't want to have normalcy on Stacy disrupted. We might only just need the brig for that."

Anwei's eyes rolled outward (rather than upward) for an instant in thought. "We actually haven't talked to the Warden - well, maybe some of the crew members who have been awake longest have, but I certainly haven't. She only seems to be dominant during Punishment (except for this last Punishment, of course, which could be significant). Considering her potential for violent action, I'd like to trace out some of her programming before trying to interact with her."

Because don't most people pick apart the brains of people they meet before they even say hello?

"The Brig is an pretty harsh punishment though, even for potential rebels. The command crew that puts people in there is going to be feared for certain." Anwei winks as she says this, and holds a piece of Sensorium-created paper between her hands for an instant; it reads 'Discuss later, where no one can hear!' For all they knew, the Daligig were recording everything they said now.

Then the paper vanishes.

"I didn't really understand anything about the Warden, to be honest. I just always though that Stacy was doing things she was already programmed to do by the Daligig. But this is good: the more we learn about what's going on, the better we'll be."

She only wished she understood more about this programming stuff: as usual. it was all a mystery to her.

"I know exactly how the brig is," Kaya said, reddening slightly. "I've been in it before, awhile back. It was no fun."

Kaya took the paper, read it, then looked over at Anwei. "The more we avoid that place, the better."

"I wonder how the Warden feels about Stacy? I really must ask, someday."

Hopefully the discussion would not involve Anwei hanging from the ceiling, waiting to be subdivided and reassembled.

She mentally snapped at herself: this was the worst possible place to discuss anything, because this was the most certain place where Stacy could read minds. But she knew already that for wahtever reason, Stacy wasn't processing the data she took in the way that Horanckk would. She wasn't maintaining proper predicative models of the crew. Or if she was, she wasn't acting on them.

So - change the subject. Later she would have to muddy the keyword registration more: maybe download a group of movies about conspiracies and watch them, and then discuss them with others.

"I've only visited the Brig once or twice, to see Azula. Is she still here? Is she feeling better?" She'd looked quite the fright, before.

"If the Warden is a creation for keeping Stacy in line, I can't imagine that the two of them get along too well. Then again, if the Warden is something created by the Daligig in the first place, then somehow I think Stacy is resisting the Warden's influence."

As far as she was concerned, nothing but good could come out of that.

But now they came to a subject that Kaya was not so enthused about. "Yes, she's here all right. You could say she's doing a little better. Still pretty out of it, still threatening people, still very dangerous. There are still things in her that need to be fixed."

"I agree. I've read about the pirates attacking the ship in the past; if they damaged the AI in charge, they damaged the Warden. Stacy may have suffered less harm, but would still be unable to access those processes that were under the Warden's control. It will be an interesting repair job, fixing just enough of each personality-core." Her eyes were bright at the prospect; it could take months, but it would be such a complicated, intricate, painstaking, nerve-wracking job!

She couldn't wait.

Her eyes dipped in sympathy. "I'm sorry to hear that. I was hoping with time here, with access to people separate from her past conflicts, she might find her way back." She looked down at her feet for an instant, then up. "I was insane once. For some years. It was the most painful time of my life, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

"That was a pretty bad time," Kaya said, remembering when the pirates attacked the ship, and that the end result of all that was when Braniac was killed. It had been a particularly sobering time then, and had also been when Lex Luthor was found and people were already starting to show distrust to each other. At least after all of that time, Kaya had an idea of who she should and should not trust. "Good luck though. I'm sure you'll find people willing to help there though."

She sighed. "Azula was a pretty vicious person even before going crazy. Going to her old self, I ownder if she'll even be loyal to us."

"Since I'm already in Engineering and Computing, I will have to see who would be interested in doing some projections with me." Anwei saw no problem talking about repairing Stacy here and now, where they might be overheard; ideally, Stacy would hear and know that they were here to help her. And it's not like the Daligig would have any objections.

Right?

"A vicious, sane person can make a rational judgment based on the facts that she knows. An insane person could try to do that, again and again and again, and fail - even if she was trying to help us. If she can be healed, she would be a powerful ally. Leadership-training, fire powers, beauty: all could be useful in the future."

"I can think of a few people," Kaya said. "Celena, for one, if she knows how to do some digging, and I'm sure that Billy would be more than happy to give you a hand. He's been feeling a bit apprehensive over things lately, so I'm sure that something like this would be something he's be all over."

And back to this subject.

"I've tried to tell her that, and we fight and argue and we rage and then we...things about each other that neither of us like too much. And you know, the strange thing? The more we argue and fight, the less I can hate her. She's a victim of her own powerlessness and she knows it, but can't do anything about it. It doesn't help that no one bothered to even try and make her better. I do want her to eventually help the crew, but I don't want her to feel that she's just a tool."

Even if Azula seemed to try to make Kaya out as one herself.

"I don't want to put Billy under any more stress than he already is, though. Watching the other department heads be repodded must have been gruelling for him."

Anwei lowered her eyes for an instant. She knew too well that part of her that saw other people only as tools, things to be used: no matter how hard she ground it down, it always seemed to come growing back.

"I am not a doctor, so how much I can help is uncertain. But even if she never lifts a finger to aid anyone but herself, I would still rather she be healed. Because it's not fair to her to help her only because she would be useful, and I'm sorry I said that. We should help her because it's the right thing to do."

"Billy is going to be under stress, no matter what happens," Kaya said. "But he's also the kind of person who will do whatever is in his power to save the people on the ship. Besides, this kind of thing is where Billy excels."

She didn't add that Billy feared that he would be podded soon. In the end, she knew he would be dealing with that the best way that he could.

"I know what you mean," Kaya said, and really, she looked pained. "I still have memories of the day she and Azula fought. Whenever I think of that and talk to her as she is now, I want her to at least be able to stand on her own feet. She lost her identity after that fight, and now she's surrounded by people she hates along with not having a world. I can't imagine how she looks at everything."

Anwei shivered a bit inside, imagining what her world would have been like if people could stand endless stress AND perform super-normal heroics at the drop of a word. Would it be nothing but freedom and justice - or would her species have found a way to rule those heroes as well?

"Then everything we can do to take some of the stress away from him - and from Ronnae - can only help," she said stoutly.

Completely without her realizing it, Anwei started to move her left hand at her side on narrow spirals, as though winding the tips of her braids around it for the familiar warm weight. "If I were to guess, I'd say she feels that everything she knows is broken, and that she is the last real thing in the world. And at the same time, she knows that she is broken, that she isn't supposed to feel or think like this; but that to admit that would be to fall entirely to pieces."

She noticed her hand's motion, and stilled it. Talk about bad memories...

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