singularityderp | Dark Future Meme (as requested)

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Dark Future Meme (as requested)

DARK FUTURE MEME
[We know who it is we want. We have a collective mind.
We don't miss a single step. We're always right behind.
We know we serve someone else. We have swallowed our pride.
We march to this tune of loss. We take this in our stride.]

Ten years later, humanity and the synthetic life on the station are at odds
Hypatia has inducted as many citizens of Sacrosanct into a private military and launched
an all-out war against organic life and the people of Asphodel.
Some were kept on the station as captives, some escaped down planet-side
to become part of the resistance, and countless others were re-purposed into
Hypatia's willing slaves.

Where will you be?

How this works:
-If you are synthetic or part-synthetic, OR if you have special armor (Looking at you, Spartans, Troncast, EVERY ROBOT EVER) you are a target for re-purpose.
You can still have escaped down to the planet, but she'll be after you. Going to the station is dangerous, once you enter her wide-area-network you are at risk of being hacked
-If you are fully organic, you are either dead, kept prisoner and made to work on the station, or part of the resistance on Asphodel.
-Anything in-between? You decide. Be creative with this.
-Fill out the form below to give us an idea of what your character is up to, what happened to them etc. Thread with each other! RP it out!
-Also, bring in your extra journals! There won't be the same people on the station ten years from now! If you're planning to app someone, or just have something interesting lying around, toss them in!

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This wasn't the first ship Hypatia had shot down, and it likely wouldn't be the last if there were any sentient organics still left on the station. Of course Sonny had known this; he'd seen a few unfortunate vessels exploding like fireworks against the dark abyss that was Sacrosanct's skyline.

But this was a risk he'd been forced to take in order to protect one fragile, stubborn human. And even though he had the capacity, even though he'd changed over the years, he still would risk his life for a select few.

So when the missile had hit their patched-together craft, Sonny had done his best to keep Kimiko in one piece - even in the face of their ship coming to pieces. It was as much luck as it was anything else that when they crashed onto the planet's surface, the hull landed in such a way that they were:
A) not crushed to death
B) protected from the elements
C) see note: A)

But that was where lucked had ended. Time hadn't been kind to the robot either, not entirely, and this new environment was too dangerous for Kimiko. Not to mention the woman was still in need of the basic necessities - many of which were now lost in space.

To remedy the situation as best he could, and in an effort to fulfill a distant and original purpose, Sonny had made it his duty to fetch his friend what he could.

Today he came back limping (which in itself wasn't abnormal, but hadn't Kimiko had fixed that joint just the other night?). On the bright side, he also came back carrying some scrap metal and more importantly: water and food. (Though it was no small miracle that he managed to come back at all. The denizens of Asphodel - robot sympathizers or not - did not take kindly to thieves. Especially not the repetitive kind.)

Kimiko was a fanatic, a fact she didn't often acknowledge, and never willingly. She hated the other inhabitants of Asphodel as much as she hated anyone, which was an enduring, cold-burning emotion that she used as much for fuel as the food she ate. Right now she was in the rearmost cabin, staring through the foot-thick space age material that passed from glass out at the blurry, sand-whipped landscape. It was the only such window that ever saw sunlight, and as often as not it was covered in the scouring sand that had given its exterior surface a smoothly frosted finish.

She wasn't looking at the stars, she was looking at the motes of dust floating in the light. Her workshop had once been the engine room and now it was...

Clang.

Sonny was back, and Kim turned in time to see him limping across the curved floor to meet her with supplies in his arms. He was such a good robot, but Kimiko had never been given to extraneous praise, especially when her very own Nester-series robot was limping. Kim waved off his supplies and dropped too examine the damage with an intensity that would have frightened a human.

Mine, her eyes seemed to say, as she smoothed her much-battered prosthesis along the holed cover and probed the damage. Her mouth could have said any number of things, commentary on his risky behavior, rebukes, suggestions, lies.

"I'm replacing this panel tonight," she told him, then stood to take the sustenance portion of his burden. She wasn't asking him if he'd let her, she was telling him. Kimiko did not, as a rule, give orders; he was Asimovian, after all, and in her mind that made the rules very clear, even if he didn't seem to follow directives very well anymore, "You were out longer this time."

It was a good thing that Kimiko had no love lost for the other Asphodel inhabitants, because if the latter group found that she’d thrown her weight in with the robot who was pilfering their valuable and costly supplies, she’d likely be joining him on their Shoot On Site list.

It was selfish, but for this reason Sonny was almost thankful for the inhospitable environment; this way Kimiko couldn’t venture far without him, and he had no illusions that his words alone would stop her from doing something if she really set her mind to it.

He didn’t dislike her obstinacy though, far from it actually. She was a strong character, and in a way she reminded him of the 3 people he still thought most fondly of. Dr. Lanning – his father, and Dr. Calvin had both shared Kimiko’s brilliance and had a special compassion toward robots (for which he was eternally grateful), and there was something in Kim’s demeanour, her resiliency, her determination, that brought to mind Detective Spooner. That she had helped him where no one else would, meant so much to the robot; Kimiko had truly won herself his single-minded dedication and loyalty. But if she asked him to kill her, he would seriously flip all the tables, and then make her build him some more tables to flip, because honestly, he would not stand to have that sort of stunt pulled on him again.

Sonny wasn’t human, and he found her intensity flattering. The built-in modesty of his personality also led him to feel that he didn’t deserve such passion, though he cherished it anyway. He was barely human after all, he couldn’t possibly have been worthy. And that was a topic he’d spent quite a long time deliberating on, recently. He’d decided she needed to live among the rest of the organics.

She needed to be around more people like herself. People who would be better companions for her, than he. He only wanted what was best for the woman, and whether that was the remnants of his programming or genuine emotional self sacrifice, he would never know.

He didn’t properly know where he – as an entity – started, and his programming ended, because like his father had predicted, he had evolved to be more than just a synthetic consciousness.

But all of this was conversational fodder he didn’t know how to broach yet, and the bit about Kim’s hypothetical new community was a topic that needed to be presented with the utmost delicacy. Sonny neither wanted Kim to feel offended, nor did he want her to immediately barricade the suggestion out of her mind – he knew how she felt about the planet’s people.

So instead of discussing her future, Sonny began to peel off the layers and layers of protective material he’d taken to wearing in order to withstand the harsh environment lest he let the radiation, wind and debris further wear down his chassis.

And for all the brunt he’d put himself through during his short life, his uncanny valley face remained remarkably undamaged over the years. And even though he had a grittier, more necessary outlook these day, and even though he was practiced in appearing blank and complacent, when Kimiko mentioned his delay, his expression turned downright sheepish.

He tried for placation by way of avoiding the question. “It was necessary.”

Any blood he’d had on his hands had been chaffed off by the blowing sands on his way here.

Kimiko was subject to a great many forms of flattery, but there was nothing about a comparison to Detective Del Spooner that she'd find anything but insulting. She knew the man, or at least she knew what he was like, but as she'd once told Sonny, "We had a movie like you, back home. But I like you better."

People.

Now there was a difficult prospect.

Even back home, when the idea of 'people' had been nebulous enough to only mean ordinary people, urban or suburban, people who were wrapped up in their own lives, but not actively cruel. Normal people, happy, generally nice people, even, were nothing Kimiko could cope with. Her interactions with their replacements was...

She'd seen what they'd done to Sollux, after all, and Sollux was genuinely on their side. He hated Hypatia, SHODAN and their kind, or at least he had reason to, and for that they locked him in a pillar of goo and milked him for data like a placid, corralled cow. It was unconscionable.

Kim let go of the food when it creaked; her left hand was starting to deform the aluminum packaging. She set both hands flat on the worktable surface and inhaled, low and deep. Forget them. They were irrelevant. Deal with what was in front of her, the immediate problem in the form of a recalcitrant robot.

"You didn't find a cache from the terraforming crews."

Not a question. She wasn't stupid, and nor was this the first time she'd realized it, only the first time she'd said it aloud. Abruptly, Kim pulled away from the impending conflict with a yank that was like ripping the paneling off a burnt-out console. It wasn't that she was afraid to start a fight with her robot, oh no. Kimiko had never shied from conflict and would never come down on the side that was afraid to learn the truth.

"Nevermind," she bit out, deciding that maybe this was a sign that he'd finally be coming around, to see her side of the argument about Hypatia and the Refugees, "I'm still replacing it. You need better shielding, anyways."

Sonny watched her crush the ration can with a slight furrow to his synthetic brow. He could sense elevated tension in her voice, her body language, and her breathing rate. His instincts told him to ask if she was alright, whether she'd like to sit down, or any other number of helpfully domestic suggestions. Likely for the best, he kept them to himself.

Then came the statement about the terraforming crew. He'd been thinking about possible answers to that question while he made his way back, but Kim wasn't asking him, not really. He would have probably lied on the subject anyway, but he liked to be honest whenever possible - at least with this woman - even if it meant deceit by omission. Still, when she put the almost-accusation into the physical world by way of verbalisation, Sonny flinched slightly.

The 'nevermind' felt like an absolution.

Moving to a workbench, and seating himself so Kim had better access, he looked over her own metal accouterments. Without today's encounter to worry about, he was free to focus on being concerned with the woman's wellbeing. He was almost doting in his attention because when he was in the safety of their makeshift home, there wasn't much for a robot to do - not with their limited supplies, and his limited imagination. He resolved his cabin fever by worrying almost irritatingly about Kim's wellfare. To his credit though, he was getting better at keeping the worries to himself - at least orally.

"How are your prosthetics? Do they require any additional maintenance? Should I get you anything else you might need the next time I'm out?" Which was all together a very polite way to put his dangerous, and these days, often deadly trips to the refugee settlements.

It was a very carefully constructed phrase, 'how are your prosthetics.' Sonny knew exactly what the reaction would have been if he'd said, 'do you need anything.'

Kimiko didn't need anything. She was fine. She was fine, here and she didn't need help or charity. She could survive on her own on the burn-out planet in the destroyed husk of a spacecraft, or anywhere else. She didn't need help. Didn't want it. She'd rather die alone.

Abruptly, Kim realized she'd been staring at her hands, comparing the rough, calloused right with the smooth, metallic left. More proof of her will to survive and thrive where others had needed help all their lives to do more than merely lie in their own filth, or die. She didn't need anyone for that, but— Sonny's leg.

He needed her. She smiled; work to do, progress to be made. Survive and thrive, grow and learn, that was the only end to which effort could reasonably be made. She reached for her tools without answering and went to work.

This would take all night, and it was intimate, touching and pulling, tweaked improvements on a living whole. She'd look up from time to time to find Sonny watching her. He had very human eyes, but she wasn't fooled; his expression was too placid, passive and intent all at once. No human ever wore that expression without extreme pathos to go along with it. Kim would smile each time, then go back to her work. She loved this work, loved robots, and Sonny in particular. After what had happened with the time-colonists, humanity would always feel like her children, but robots were her peers. Robots were...

Suddenly, the chronometer read four AM and beeped what would have been the wake-up alarm. Kim looked up from her work with a start— how had it gotten so late? She looked back and found a nights worth of work under her hands in the form of bulletproofing at every vulnerable point between Sonny's hips and knees; she was practically lying in his lap.

They wouldn't be putting him down quite so easily, next time.

If Sonny had the capability, he probably would have sighed at Kim's refusal to answer his questions - though to be fair, he probably should have known to expect it by now anyway. Instead of adding anything new to the conversation he knew they wouldn't be having - at least not now - he settled into the almost comfortable silence of letting the woman work.

He would ask about her needs another time. They had enough supplies to last them a few days, so that would be a few days before he would need to head out.

Sonny watched Kim repair and improve the pieces of his exoskeleton and tried not to think about how much he'd physically changed since he arrived on the station so long ago. He’d been a different sort of robot back then, and he’d needed repairs too, shortly after falling into this world. He hadn’t had anyone to turn to though, and that near 8 months that had been stolen from him by the teleporters may have been as much a blessing as it was a bit of a terror. It had taught him to be as vary of the station as he was of the denizens who had hurt him.

After that he hadn’t received proper maintenance until he’d met Kim. He needed her, he knew that. But more than that, he needed to know he wasn’t holding her back from getting what she needed, vocal denials or not. Spending the rest of her life with a robot didn’t seem right, not when there were other humans on this very planet.

So while the woman tweaked and upgraded his chassis, Sonny mulled over the idea of giving her up and losing his last remaining friend. He was used to loss at this point, having known little else when it came to the people he truly cared for, and it seemed appropriate somehow; it was practically as if he’d been built for it.

When the timer went off, Sonny didn’t startle. He had his own internal measure for time and was always aware of how many seconds had ticked by since he’d first come online (not counting that 8 month gap). With a characteristic gentleness that was still somehow startling sometimes, he touched her back.

"Time for you to rest?" And there was genuine warmth in his face when he asked. He didn't need an answer, that wasn't what he was trying to say here. Kim had made it obvious she didn't need thanks, and this was his way of offering it nonetheless.

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Dark Future Meme (as requested)

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