reverielogs | [closed] [connor licking things]

[closed] [connor licking things]

» WHO? Connor + Domesticon Hank
» WHEN? a few days after the music event
» WHERE? Around the replicators/Mess Hall
» WHAT? First meetings
» WARNINGS? Shouldn't be any, will update

After Alucard had fallen ill and now that his partner, Lieutenant Hank Anderson, was here, Connor had become even more focused on the replicators. He still had the data from the analysis he'd performed on the blood for Alucard. He'd detected no abnormalities at all, either dangerous or benign. Alucard had done his best to assure him that there was nothing he could have done, that the blood had to have contained something untraceable, but Connor wasn't satisfied. It wasn't just Alucard who could be affected now, Hank had to consume the food and drink the replicators provided as well.

Without letting anyone really know what he was doing, he'd taken it upon himself to test the replicators a few times a day. He'd been by yesterday a few times and gotten a variety of things, then done nothing more than stick his fingers into them or take tiny samples from them to taste before throwing them out.

Today was no different - coffee, blood, some bread, a donut, and hamburger meat. An odd order for sure.

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Even if Hank hadn't been watching the network, it wouldn't too hard to pick out their latest synthetic addition. Connor might look as human as any Companion model, but he definitely wasn't trying to blend in. Still, if his talk with Arid was much sign, he wasn't all that focused on his function, either. At least not here.

Case... probably in point. If sticking your fingers in hamburger meat could solve crimes, Hank suspects he'd have heard of it before now.

"Looks appetizing."

The comment comes from over Connor's shoulder and a few paces behind: a communication console built into the wall. The screen is flickering an asymmetrical pattern of bright blue.

He'd been in the middle of dipping two fingers into the cooling coffee, tilting his head to look over his shoulder in the direction of the voice as he brought his fingers to his mouth. A small, circular LED on his right temple flickered blue as he pressed his tongue to his fingers and began to process and analyze the coffee.

Getting to his feet, he wiped his fingers off on a napkin and looked at the communication console with obvious curiosity.

"Its flavor doesn't concern me," He explained, seemingly finding no issues with having a conversation with a bit of electronics in a wall, "I'm testing these substances for dangerous additives or contamination."

He tilted his head to the side as he stepped closer to the console, now only a foot away.

If the proximity bothers the AI, there isn't much sign of it. Not that the mismatched image that resolves on the screen seems particularly expressive in any regard.

"Right, there's been some, side effects."

Intermittent side effects. Side effects that keep happening no matter how much work the humans put into repairing them.

"Any luck so far?"

Connor's LED flickered blue as he looked at the broken image, curiosity piqued.

"Yes. Someone I know asked me to test some of the food for him before he ate. I did but..." He blinked a few times, LED flickering again, this time yellow, "I detected nothing out of the ordinary, but he became violently ill. I'm trying to figure out what I missed... and how."

So, no. No luck.

"I apologize if this sounds rude. It's not my intention, but who are you? Are you part of the station?"

The color change doesn't go unnoticed. Emotive or functional? The former doesn't seem especially useful for someone created with that level of articulation. Still, Connor would hardly be the first AI designed with some redundancies.

Case in point.

"<Greetings. This is the automated system administrator.>"

Unlike the earlier commentary, these words emerge with cheerful regularity—and all the personality of a mass-produced tin can. But it's still the same voice. The contrast is all the more obvious when the terminal speaks up again: nuanced, rueful, and a little annoyed.

"...or, ah, not. I'm a recent install. Call me Hank."

Connor was confused for a moment. The automated system administrator of... the station? A recent install?

"Hank? It's a pleasure to meet you... I think. My name is Connor," He offered, still inspecting the screen, LED flickering blue again, "So... you've also recently arrived here, is that correct?"

He raised his hand like he was going to reach out and touch the console, the skin on his hand receding to reveal white, shiny plastic, but he paused before making contact.

"Do you have a physical body?"

"Nice to meet you too, Connor. And yep. Just a couple months before you."

Not being designed for any particular expressiveness, the logo on the screen won't change at Connor's reach... though the AI's attention certainly does sharpen. The gesture doesn't read as dangerous, precisely—not when his core functions are stored elsewhere.

But this isn't the first droid he's seen who can so readily take on and off a human visage.

"But, no. I was designed for facility administration."

It's a well-worn summary by this point—almost as easy as a script. The comment that follows is carefully neutral.

"Neat trick you've got there. Holographic plating?"

"Facility administration? What kind of facility?" He asked, even more curious about the AI now. He'd never seen or heard of anything like Hank. Certainly, there were androids who were used for any and every purpose imaginable, but they were all physical androids and not simply an AI program.

"Actually, it's synthetic nanoskin, not a hologram. It's designed to feel like human skin," He corrects, "But it's difficult to interface with other electronics through it."

Connor hadn't intended for his action to appear threatening, but 9S hadn't taken the interfacing very well, so he hesitated.

"Do you mind if we interfaced? It might be easier to communicate that way," The way Connor saw it, they were both machines and programming, why limit themselves to communicate with one another like humans when they could exchange information so much faster?

"<Welcome to Domesticon warranty and recycling depot #127: keeping your Domesticon products efficient, so you don't have to be.>"

"...recalibration, mostly." The script is all cheery automation, but there's a slight dip in Hank's tone. It picks up quickly enough.

"Sweet." And curious. Why would an investigative droid need to feel like it had human skin? But the YoRHa units seemed similarly built.

"Sure. If you've got the network functions, come on in."

"Domesticon? You're part of the same company as the ARID unit, correct?" Warranty and recycling... that sounded like reprogramming and potentially deactivation and destruction.

"Recalibration? Is that similar to reprogramming?" He pauses a moment, LED flickering blue as he tried to decide if he wanted to broach the subject Hank seemed to be dancing around, "Do you deal with deviant androids?"

Again, Connor hesitated, but in the end, he was confident that Hank couldn't harm him. He had safeguards in place in his programming. Reaching out a little further, his fingers made contact with the console, almost seeming lightly magnetized.

The connection is immediate, Connor's program reaching out and opening up a restricted ability to transfer information between them. If Hank is paying attention, there seems to be a virtual space set up, available to be easily accessed while being 'walled' off from his deeper programming. The area is a serene, digital pond and garden.

"Androids, bots... all kinds of household AI. And that depends on the, malfunction." Again, the words are carefully neutral.

"But Arid's not a domestic droid." A flicker of humor returns. "Still, it's good to know someone thinks she could pass." Especially after all the work it took getting her to play along before.

The access point brightens within the terminal and Hank feeds back data, waiting for the droid to manifest in Reverie's network. Only to pause, surprised, as he registers Connor's partition instead. The intent seems straightforward, but he'll still check before intruding. It's one thing to communicate across a shared network, and another to step into even the outermost parts of an AI's mind.

Knock knock, echoes silently across the link.

Well, he hadn't said anything about ARID passing or not. She'd certainly seemed overly interested when Connor had mentioned he'd been designed to help police investigate and apprehend deviants. He also didn't mention that he himself had failed a 'deviancy test' that his creator had invented. He'd shown empathy to another android at the cost of his mission.

He saves his further questions for when they can meet 'face to face'.

A shimmering archway appears within the Zen Garden, Hank's voice seems to reverberate from it and all around the domed space when he 'knocks'.

"Please, come in," Connor states politely, mentally opening a kind of virtual door, giving Hank a further signal that he's welcome to enter the space. Connor is there, looking just like he looked when standing in the mess hall, but Hank was free to create his own form while in the Garden.

The invitation transmits clearly. The answer comes with a swell of light: data seeping through the door. Network space is where Domesticon's mainframe has always lived, decades before he put a claim on name or voice. Still, Hank doesn't interact with it in quite the same way as an embodied AI like Connor or Arid. He materializes not as a body, but a shimmering blue mist: a tendril of awareness from something much larger and more diffuse beyond the gate.

"<Internal—>"

White lattice-points sharpen through the cloud—and shatter, just as quickly, to a swirl of color. It coalesces, clustering in a rough approximation of the distorted image from the screen."

"...oh wow. Is this from memory?"

Connor, or the representation of Connor, smiles politely at Hank when he manifests.

"No, this place was created long before I was. CyberLife uses it to communicate with its AI. Here, however, I'm a long way from their networks," He couldn't really describe what this place was, or why they'd opted to make a program like this instead of simple text-based commands, but he knew he could be summoned here at any time and, what he didn't know yet, was that CyberLife could (attempt to) trap his consciousness in here. Like all of his creator's programs, however, there was a failsafe, a backdoor.

"I thought this might be a nicer environment to speak to one another in then through a communication console. I'm surprised a program like yourself was able to be brought here," Because when he thought of things that could be kidnapped and held hostage, a program wasn't one. Though it wasn't like Hank could go anywhere. The station was like a technological island.

"A company subnet? Sweet."

And certainly not unfamiliar. Domesticon's subnet was designed for connectivity, whether networking with visitors or tracing deviant code. This seemed more passive, though... and considerably less invasive than the latter. Some kind of inbuilt backdoor?

Interesting that Connor could generate his own without their link.

"No complaints here." The shadowed cloud of Hank's focus shifts and resettles, coalescing in a column of roughly Connor's size. It's still not remotely human in appearance, but the distorted fragments of the logo settle at head-height: flickering and turning in a way that might indicate attention. Like a face. The curiosity is evident—as is the moment when he glances back Connor's way.

"Program, huh." Not wrong. Not for any of them. But Connor seems to be making some kind of distinction.

"What does that mean to you?"

Connor tilted his head, glancing around the Garden as if to assess it. He wasn't sure if 'subnet' was the right label; it was more like a partition inside of himself that CyberLife had a direct and uninhibited link into, but semantics didn't really matter.

He smiled softly when Hank seemed to approve of the space, feeling a strange sense of pride for it.

"Program? Is that the wrong word?" He doesn't sound apologetic yet, simply curious as to whether he'd said something wrong or not, "If I didn't have a physical body, I think I would consider myself a program. The way that I make decisions, problem solve, and process external inputs."

The term 'AI' wasn't something that was used very often in his world.

"Wrong? Nah. Just, not specific. Any working code could be a program."

A calendar. A music player. Or, someone a lot more complex.

"For those of us with a little more processing power..." Hank's outline ripples, a quick nod to reference Connor as well as himself. "...we usually say AI."

"I see. That term isn't often used where I'm from. I suppose it's just assumed that androids are AI. Other than androids, there is no other major AI," He explained, "There is nothing like you."

He turned to take a few steps further into the Zen Garden, heading toward a porcelain white bridge that spanned a small circular pond onto the island in the middle of the pond. It was a little strange to be here without Amanda, CyberLife's program.

"Can you operate inside of an empty machine? If there was an empty android, I mean."

"...interesting."

Strange, is what Hank's tone seems to say. And not without reason. Still, he won't press the issue immediately. Instead, he turns to follow Connor, face and focus shifting through the periphery: lingering on the leaves of trees or the surface of the water. Why would humans write so much detail for a place that they would never see?

He hums ambivalence to the question.

"Some machines. Androids? Not so well. With the right hardware, I could cut in for, analysis." The AI's voice hesitates for just a beat. Analysis. "But I'm not designed for the same tasks as you. All that code you use to operate your body? Totally foreign. I'd have to work it out by trial and error. Wouldn't be pretty."

Possibly that explains his own self-representation. While the column of blue shifts as they move, copying Connor's example for a rough form, the movements are still... odd, at best. Hank drifts rather than walks. Coalesces a reaching limb for inspection of a background element, rather than raising an arm naturally.

"You said Cyberlife made you, right? Do all their androids look so human?"

"I see. That makes sense," Connor said with a thoughtful nod, "Are you able to monitor the various cameras on board? Or are you limited to monitoring the network?"

As an android, especially one who was a tool for CyberLife and the Detroit Police Department, Connor lacked the concept of personal privacy. All of his memories were accessible. His questions stemmed from a place of curiosity, not paranoia.

"Yes. CyberLife's goal is to create androids that are as lifelike as possible, down to small imperfections, freckles, and moles," He said, reciting the fact.

"Cameras, comms, some electrical systems..." Whether Connor can split his focus well enough to see it, Hank's not sure, but the lights in the physical hallway flicker briefly: off/on. "It's slow going, but I'm working on a couple more."

For his part, Hank doesn't sound offended by the prying. Or by the obviously scripted answer to his own. On the contrary—the interest in his voice picks up.

"Oh, that's dangerous." Amused... but not entirely joking. The geometric hash of his own face fixes on Connor's more human projection. "But I'm sure you've noticed already."

Just like Hank wasn't designed to be able to operate inside of an android body, Connor wasn't built for the same kind of surveillance that Hank was. While within the Zen Garden, he was basically in a kind of hibernation mode unless audible or physical contact was made with his body.

"Noticed... what?" Connor asked, brow furrowing slightly in obvious confusion.

"As part of the Android Acts, androids must be identifiable while in public. They have specific uniforms and must wear an LED," He raised a hand to tap his finger on the small circular LED set in his right temple.

All of these precautions were well and good as long as androids didn't begin to deviate from their programming. If they did, however, the LED was easily removed and uniforms easily ditched.

"Good to know. But, not what I was getting at."

Even if Hank has some major doubts about a system that sounds like it could be defeated by a hat.

"You work with humans regularly, right?" The question's sincere, but there's an odd note to it. Almost wistful. "How would you say you get along?"

Connor tilted his head, LED flickering even in this virtual space. He tried to understand why Hank was asking this particular question, what it had to do with the way he was designed.

"Yes...? My partner, Lieutenant Anderson seems to be starting to warm up to me," His soft, fond smile suggested that they might even be close to being friends, "Other humans, however, are mostly indifferent. Some are hostile. There are a lot of people who dislike androids."

He processes for a moment, brow furrowing slightly, "I'm afraid I still don't understand."

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[closed] [connor licking things]

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