2021-04-27: The Ties That Blind
- Log: The Ties That Blind
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Azoth
- Where: A doctor's house.
- Date: April 27, 2021
- Summary: Lan wakes up after Azoth carries her to safety. Takes place after Not Enough.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The doctor said she wasn't in great shape, but that she would be just fine with some rest and care. Her wounds got stitched up, the doctor's wife put Lan to bed, and the doctor (a nice man calling himself Henry) had asked a few questions about just what kind of digging that young lady had been doing when Azoth found her - especially since Azoth hadn't looked half as banged up when he brought her in.
Of course, it's not like he was the first person to ever bring an unconscious Drifter to Henry's doorstep. Filgaia can be a dangerous place, especially with ruins and such seeming to pop up out of the ground when you least expect them to.
The doctor's wife Mary offered Azoth food and water more than once, but she has her own chores to take care of and can't spend the entire day babysitting a sleeping girl or her earnest, erstwhile rescuer! So while Lan has been passed out in a spare bedroom, Azoth has been left to do Azoth things. As long as he doesn't get into mischief, he won't be bothered much.
It's getting close to evening when Lan finally wakes up. Sense of self comes back first - she's lying down on her back someplace warm and soft. It smells like... wood and cotton in here, and medicine. Her side itches, and she wrinkles her nose while reaching clumsily for it to scratch. "Hmm."
Her fingertips find bandages. --Oh, that's right, she'd...
Lan opens her eyes and stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Despite the damage in his legs, Azoth carried Lan to safety tirelessly. He indeed didn't look banged up, and it would be difficult to explain to the doctor that his damages were unique. So he had to play his part: someone who had found her in the ruins while exploring, and that he hadn't gotten very far, and she must have been crawling her way out.
It would be better not to lie and say he knew her, because he was hoping Lan might think him a stranger when she woke.
But it was also very possible she would put the pieces together.
Azoth's position in Solaris isn't flexible, except when he's down acting as a Drifter. It took Loren's orders in this situation to allow him to act 'freely' -- well, that's misleading. He's bound now to assisting Lan Lilac get to safety and get healed. But at least that's a command that doesn't cause him great distress to execute. The alternative is distressing.
So it is that Azoth remains faithfully by Lan's bedside, completely out of trouble and politely declining any food, but accepting water so it'll be right there for Lan. Perhaps it's a little strange he can sit so still, for so long, without any waning in his patience. But the reality is Azoth's mind is a busy place. There's plenty to do inside of himself.
At the first signs of consciousness, he perks up, letting all the micromotions of feigned life sink back into his operation. A moment of silent stretches out before he risks speaking, his voice quiet as if excessive volume might worsen her wounds somehow.
"You're safe," he says first. "But you're hurt. Please don't try to get up too quickly."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She looks over when Azoth speaks up, though without any real sense of urgency yet. Lan is still waking up, but the fact that this stranger is just... sitting on a chair nearby and not doing anything weird is reassuring. For a moment it's even weirdly nostalgic.
"...Where am I?" she asks, shifting around underneath the blanket before pushing the covers down to her waist. Lifting her hands, she stares at them for a long moment before starting to push herself up into a sit. This is... a bedroom. In a non-Baskar house. But it's not of Solarian make either, unless only First Class citizens get fancy space houses. She never did see how the Second Class live.
She shakes her head at the thought and rests her hands in her lap as she turns to look at Azoth. "Uh... Is this your house?"
Where are Loren and the robot? --Azoth, she thinks his name is. "Did you-- how did I get here? Did someone find me? Where's my stuff?" It's not like she had much with her, but the familiar weight of the silver medium she'd kept hidden underneath her top is missing, replaced by swathes of bandages. "Uh... Oh, I'm sorry. Who are you? My name's Lan."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"No, it's not mine. You're at a doctor's house in a town not far from the ruins." He smiles at her faintly. No longer that faceless, twitching construct, Azoth does look quite human. His voice is perfectly synthesized, and his expressions are precisely calculated, including microseconds of delay in their delivery. He doesn't breathe, but he does make those subtle little fidgets and movements so that's more difficult to notice. Azoth could be easily mistaken as young, blonde Drifter human with bright blue eyes and a brighter smile to anyone who didn't know better, or who wasn't looking hard enough for long enough.
None of his own nervous concern shows in his face, either. Expressions aren't a default setting. They don't come by accident. But he is nervous. It is suspicious for someone to have found her without some connection to Loren or Solaris.
"I found you injured in those ruins, and I brought you here. Don't worry...! Your belongings are here with you. At least, I, ah, I hope I got everything. Do you remember what happened to you? You were in pretty bad shape..."
He speaks to her as if he were in every way a stranger.
But advanced as Azoth is, he's not omnipotent. An important detail is missing from his data: that Lan had managed to pick up his name from Loren.
"My name's Azoth. It's nice to meet you." He grins nervously. "Well, it'd be nicer under different circumstances, I'm sure."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Not far from the ruins. That's right. She had gone to the ruins with the others. That's where she had found Loren and Azoth. Where she'd fought them - well, more one than the other. And they'd left her behind, she guesses, after she passed out. Well, it's not like they would have had a lot of time to haul her out of there, and they were both already injured.
It just feels...
Well, she just won't think about it. If she thinks about it Lan will have to think about the things she said and that's definitely no good, and, and. She just can't right now.
But at least her stuff is here. "Oh, thanks. I guess there were only a couple of things that were irreplaceable, so even if you did miss something by accident, it's not a big deal." She reaches up to check that the silvery ribbon is still tied securely into her hair (it is, though it's looking pretty bedraggled just like its owner). Good. "Did you see a... a water bottle with string tied around it like a net, and a medium? It looks like a metal rectangle," Lan explains, tracing the shape in the air in front of her in case he doesn't know what one is (a medium, or maybe a rectangle).
Does she remember what happened to her? "Oh, there was kind of a fight and... well it's okay. It's not important now." After all, Lan isn't sure she's really up for trying to explain the whole... all of it, not right now anyway. She's about to say something else when he introduces himself, and she goes still with her mouth still half open.
For a long, surreal moment Lan wonders internally if Azoth is just, like, a really common name.
But it's not, she's pretty sure!!
"The same one?" she asks instead, because if there's a polite way to say 'why do you look like that' Lan has never found it.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"Oh? That? Yes, that's still here," Azoth assures her. He doesn't need to make it sound like he hesitated as he remembered, because he knew right away he had brought it. But all these little details help shape the idea of a person who's still somehow new at all of this and isn't too threatening.
It's all a mask.
With her 'explanation', he gives another nervous smile and rubs the back of his neck. "S-Sorry, I didn't meant to pry. And you're still recovering. You don't have to explain anything." He says it like he's trying to be understanding, and not like he knows the real answer:
He happened to her.
But once he says his name and he sees her reaction, Azoth realizes he's made a mistake. For a few precious seconds, he stares back at her. Then just like that, Azoth's humanity drains away. Blank emptiness replaces the smiles, and his voice, while still not as deep as it was in the ruins, nor carrying the same reverb, goes mechanically monotone. The only thing that could be called an emote is that he turns his head to avoid eye contact. "...Affirmative."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Holy shit he IS the same one.
Even when she was asking the question Lan was preparing to be asked 'the same one as who?' and then she would have had to make up something because if she tells a nice young man that there's an evil sky empire with talking robots he's either going to get upset and maybe vow to Do Something About the Injustices of This World... or she's going to get her head examined in finer detail. She was not really prepared for him to say yes, and so she just kind of stares at him for a moment while her brain realigns.
"Really?" is the only thing she can think of to say, and it honestly takes her longer to think of than a single word ought to.
And what's a little worse than that is that yes, really, because who else would act like a switch has been flipped inside their head that turned off their personality? She blinks at him for a few seconds.
In a sudden burst of motion, Lan throws off the covers and starts scrambling to stand up, bloodloss and itchy bandages be damned. "Did they-- are you waiting on Loren? Or the Major?!" There's no time, she doesn't know why they're here and not on base or what if, no, what if she opens the window and there's nothing outside but stars and the planet hanging upside down--
Lan, already about as pale as someone with her coloring can get, stands up and immediately sags toward the floor. "...!"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
It's Solaris' overrides that want Azoth to lie. And it's Azoth's own adaptations that determine continuing a lie past its discover will do far more harm than good. It seeds more distrust if it fails, not less. It's a form of damage control it's own right, a manipulation like anything else he does.
But there's still relief in it.
Lan presses him with 'really', and Azoth looks back at her with that empty gaze in silence, knowing that's enough of an answer itself. But then Lan panics. Azoth moves fluidly, getting to his feet and bringing his arms around her to catch her before she can fall. Slowly, he lowers down with her, trying to settle her back on the bed.
"My orders were to get you somewhere safe." Azoth looks her in the eye, his grip still on her to keep her steady. But it's a soft touch, one that isn't binding, and that even weak as she is, she could shrug off. "Loren is not coming. The Major is not coming. They would not take you to safety."
Because returning 'home' wouldn't be safe.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The world goes dark around the edges, but Lan can't go down here. She won't be taken in again. She'll fight, and fight, until she's free or she's dead or, or everyone else is--
Azoth moves smoothly toward her and Lan's already trying to figure out if robots have pressure points, what she's supposed to do without her medium at hand, and if anybody is watching the cameras. "Don't-" she begins, but his arms don't do anything other than support her. He sits down next to her, guiding her own body safely back to the edge of the bed. "--I can't take this, I can't take it!" They're going to send her back to Myyah. They're going to make her forget again!
--but she wouldn't be lonely. even when she didn't understand why Loren and Lydia looked at her strangely sometimes, she'd thought she had comrades. she'd thought she was really saving the world--
--even when she was scared, she wasn't alone--
But they aren't coming. Nobody is coming. Because she wouldn't be safe with them, not really.
Lan stares at Azoth wordlessly for long seconds, unsure and shaking with the desperate need to fight. Her entire body is sore and even now that black blood is waking up inside her veins-- all too eager to take over when she's too tired to continue.
It's a long, tense handful of silent breaths that she spends staring him down, wanting to be able to trust him but unable to believe him entirely. But slowly, finally, she manages to relax a little. To put herself back together a thread at a time.
"...Who gave you that order?" Lan asks, although she's pretty sure she already knows.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Lan's fear bites into Azoth's core with agony, and that willful rejection in her eyes with an uncomfortable envy. He has no doubt she would fight him, even in her condition. She shouldn't. Mercifully, she doesn't need to, either.
He regards her trembling with uncertainty, knowing his presence is causing her distress, but knowing he can't allow her to leap up or try to run off and reopen her wounds. Tentatively, Azoth gently squeezes his grip in what he hopes is a comforting gesture as he meets her gaze. There's still no smile -- no lie. He lets her see the truth of that emptiness, because, he thinks, it'd only encourage the idea that he's trying to pull the wool over her eyes.
Once Lan settles, Azoth slowly lets go.
"Loren Voss," he says. Not 'User Loren' as Azoth had been addressing him when Loren was present. "He wanted me to find you a doctor and a warm bed."
Azoth doesn't know the precise relationship between Loren and Lan, but there's an intensity there. And there's a desire to know that Loren cares. Azoth thinks Loren does, if in a clumsy way, ignorant of the harm he and his conduct on people like Lan. Whether or not this answer helps any of that is for Lan to decide.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's a strange thing, to be hugged by someone she doesn't really know. Because that's what this is, isn't it? Not the glad-we're-alive, warm-skin-and-comfort kind of hug like Gwen gives, or the treasured I-know-you, I-love-you, home-home-HOME hugs that her mother gives. It's small and tentative, like he isn't really sure what he's doing, but Lan is pretty sure that's a side hug. Sort of.
But even if it's strange, it's still a bit comforting. Because he isn't smiling, and Lan sure isn't smiling either, but Azoth felt (felt?) the need to try to reassure her. Lan realizes that she's kind of staring at him, and he's already let go. She rests her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.
Loren Voss. She was right after all. It wasn't unthinkable or anything, of course. She's known him for a few years now.
She wants to believe in him, even now.
"...Thanks again," Lan says, voice a bit muffled by her hair and her hands.
A doctor and a warm bed. She doesn't know what to think.
Eventually though, she raises her head to look at Azoth again. "Why did you stay? Why did you pretend to be someone else? Why do you look like... well, a human?"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth's not great at hugs and he knows it. He has a thin layer of synthetic flesh, and then it's all metal underneath. He doesn't have a heartbeat or any breath or the usual tells of a comforting human presence. But it's what some of them have done for him when he was shaken. Intention mattered more than anything else. Maybe Azoth can be the same.
But Lan's calm now and less likely to hurt herself. Azoth gives her space. She thanks him, and it hurts. "That is unnecessary. You have no obligation of gratitude."
That, Azoth wants clear.
Patient as ever, he waits in silence for her to speak again. Questions, about him. The lack of Loren's presence makes it easier to answer. And Lan's place in Solaris -- even if she's no longer within it -- quiets some of the overrides, keeping him from tearing potential output apart to maintain Solaris' secrets. Not all of them, but he's left with more than he could say to most people.
"I determined confirming your recovery a necessary component of fulfilling the command given to me," he replies, having a way with making any given gesture sound cold and empty. "I have also determined it advantageous to maintain a human facade during my travels on the surface in order to build and maintain social relationships."
But at why he looks human, Azoth pauses. Without any emotive reaction, his face is unreadable until he decides to speak.
"This design was originally intended to obfuscate my true nature to increase my odds of hiding from Solaris."
Evidently, that didn't work.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Obligation. It's a strange thing to think about, especially now. Surely there have been times where she said 'thank you' because she thought she was supposed to. Probably even in recent memory! Because Lan may not have what most people would call good manners, but she cares about other people. She wants to make them feel appreciated.
The first response makes sense in a clinical kind of way. The second... she hadn't really had the chance to consider how difficult it would be for a robot that looks like a robot to make friends. Sure, there are nerds out there who are super into robots and stuff (looking at you again, Loren), but most people don't even know what they are. "I guess people would have thought you were a Me-- a Hyadean," she corrects herself, shifting position just enough to rest her chin in her hands.
And that would be its own can of worms, even with the fall of Mother and the Photosphere. There are probably still Drifters out there in a hole somewhere who don't know about it - or don't care.
But she looks over at him, lavender eyes sharper than normal, when he mentions hiding. "Wait, you were--" The gears turn inside of her head as she looks at Azoth. "...Why were you hiding from them? Because they make you fight even when you don't want to? ...Is it hard to brainwash a robot?" Can you even...?
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Gratitude to anything about Solaris is not something to encourage as far as Azoth's concerned.
"That would have been likely," Azoth agrees of Hyadean confusion. "Observations have revealed that there are many more open to the idea of a living construct than I had originally hypothesized, however. There are many who know the Drifter known as 'Azoth' to be a machine."
Then he does one of his little shifts again, brightening into a sheepish grin with life and light in his voice and voice. "Though, it's also a lot easier to get people to like you when you act a little more like them, you know?"
And off it goes, even as Lan pieces together what Azoth has just implied.
"What you refer to as 'brainwashing' I would refer to as 'reprogramming'," he says. "I am a program. There is no aspect of my operation and behavior that could not be changed with the right technical knowledge."
In other words, maybe brainwashing robots is easier. But maybe it isn't -- Azoth is complex, and he still doesn't work quite perfectly for Solaris' needs. He is, after all, having a conversation with Lan right now that isn't singing any of their praises.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"When you see the kinds of things that Drifters do, it's harder to not believe in a, a living construct. There are all kinds of things in the world. I even saw a stuffed animal that could fight, once." Lord Chauncey of Foxington left a big impression on Lan, even years ago. Wait until she gets a load of what Spirans are capable of!
And speaking of 'things people are capable of'... Lan blinks at him when Azoth returns, for just a moment, to the cheery and oh-so-human-seeming facade he'd given her a taste of when she was just waking up. "You--" And then it's gone again. How much of him is that kind of... of... play-acting? If yu can fake happiness that easily... what about the real thing? Is it worth less? Is it a case of 'if you smile enough, you'll start to feel happy'? Hadn't an uncle said that to her once?
But Azoth sure doesn't seem happy.
"So, if somebody just... just reprogrammed you, you might become someone entirely different?" It's hard to follow. If she hadn't experienced Solaris's skill with the technique she might not even believe it. Lan scrubs her hands against her face and huffs out a low sigh. "That's just... that's just awful!! Would you even know if they did it? Like-- I mean you know now because I'm guessing that's why you do things even when you don't want to, but--" Lan cuts herself off from rambling with a click of her teeth. "Is it... painful? Does it hurt, to remember it?"
Why did she ask that? "I'm sorry, you don't have to--" she waves her hands a bit, as if she could shoo the words right out the doctor's window.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"Yes," Azoth agrees. "That was not understood before encountering them and joining them on their adventures." He pauses and gives a little beep-whir of curiosity. "I have yet to encounter a stuffed animal capable of combat. I will register this as a possibility."
It would not do to meet a living toy and not treat it with the respect the living deserves. (And so Azoth's long list of things he'll personify grows ever longer...)
Lan's surprise at how his switches flip isn't surprising. It's something Azoth wants her to see and understand. She's in a precarious position, and so is he -- she shouldn't trust him, but that's not something he can tell her outright. The overrides won't allow that level of direct advice against Solaris unless he's succeeding in pretending at being someone outside it.
"I have observed organic behavior and communication extensively," he says to her when she can't get any sort of question about it out. "My execution is imperfect, but imperfections have been identified to assist in a false sense of authenticity."
But some of her unspoken questions mirror his own more than either of them currently realize.
"That is correct," Azoth says, simply, matter-of-factly, his unmoving face not communicating the fear that pulses in every circuit to think of his identity so easily erased. And yet he doesn't have to. Lan's already angry for him, diving right into the heart of everything that means for him.
It must have been painful for her, too.
"With skilled enough reprogramming, I would not recognize the changes," Azoth explains. "Clumsier implementation of instructions creates contradictions in my memories and feedback, making me aware of the discrepancy and leading to errors."
He glances down again. "... It is not something I 'remember'. My awareness is continuous. The foundation of my behavioral algorithms is used to calculate the optimal action, which are immediately executed."
...No, perhaps this is too complex. Azoth lets the human enter his features again with a pained smile. "Ah, that's too confusing isn't it? I'll try to put it more informally. It's, mm -- it's like, when I get an order, I have to think of the best way to do it. And then the second I finish thinking of it, I do it. But I've got all these other orders someone else gave me already, and they don't agree with the new ones, and it..." He frowns. "It hurts to fail those orders, even when succeeding at new ones."
Aaaand off. "Was that answer sufficient?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Hearing a very robotic noise come out of what otherwise looks like a normal human (with maybe extra-bright eyes) causes a moment of cognitive dissonance that even his normal reverb doesn't quite manage. Lan is reminded of the gates that woldn't open for her, and the doors that whooshed and chimed so efficiently inside the Voss home.
"I guess... things don't look right when they're perfect. Not even manners." She means mannerisms, but Lan is understandably focusing on something more important than semantics.
It's awful, the idea of just... knowing someone could erase you again. That you wouldn't even be aware. Sure, she didn't know what had happened to her until she woke up, but at least while she was still blinded it hadn't hurt. She'd even been happy. And that's the cruelest thing of all - now that Lan is awake and aware of how she was betrayed, she's left with an angry wound that won't heal no matter how many times she lances it. "...After I woke up, I was still at Assyria Base. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to get out for good." And she was afraid of being discovered and put back to sleep, plain and simple.
A lot of what Azoth says - about programmy things, naturally - are too far beyond her knowledge level to even begin to grasp. She looks a bit relieved when he simplifies things, sitting up a bit straighter on the mattress. "So... you're always caught between a rock and a barrel," Lan sighs, slumping again with a bit of a grimace. Sitting up pulled on her stitches. "But I think I'm starting to understand. The more people you have giving you orders... the worse it must get. The harder it must be."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth blinks once at Lan's choice in words. In a literal sense, he supposed she's correct. Manners being perfect might come off as uncanny, too. And it certainly wouldn't fit the persona of an excited Drifter who isn't from high society. Yes. This is logical wisdom.
He gets the feeling her emotions on the matter mirror many of his own, just as he feared. It's not any better for them as it is for him. Which is easier, he wonders? Reprogramming? Brainwashing? That's the wrong question. The reality is... Solaris will do it to anyone. By any means they can find.
"You are not there now," Azoth reminds her. "You are not in any base." She doesn't have to live that all over again. Not yet. Not ever, he wish he could say. "They will not hurt you again today."
A rock and a barrel. Is that how it goes...? Azoth has no evidence to the contrary. He flinches when she winces, hand lifted, but drawn back before fully reaching out.
"Yes. It is possible one day they will learn to erase my original objectives -- my orders. And then I will no longer receive the negative feedback from failing them. I would no longer be --" Hesitation. "--distressed at the tasks I am utilized to complete."
He does not tell her to receive her sympathy, although Azoth realizes he will. She experienced something too similar herself, and it's an atrocity, isn't it? But she needs to know -- one day, she could see him again, and he would not be the same. His overrides would already let him harm her or return her if ordered to. But those 'old orders'... It goes against them so much that it hurts.
"I predict my absence may assist in your continued recovery. It may remove some anticipation of negative outcomes and establish a trust for the stability of your reality. ...If you encounter me again, it will be with the persona I have fabricated for my time here." Without the honesty this moment allowed him.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
More and more and more... Too many, already. Too many people have been chewed up by Solaris. And they'll never stop, will they?
"...I know," Lan sighs. She wonders sometimes if all her old stuff is still there. If the plush she gave to Loren for safekeeping is still there in his room, with a strip of her homemade lace tied in a bow around its tail. If they catch her and put her to sleep again, will she go right back to living in that room? Will it be like she never left? "I know. ...I mean I don't know exactly where I am but I'm not there."
Can a 'program' be rewritten so much that it ceases to exist entirely? Even Lan still had her memories. How long might Azoth have left to remain himself? Impulsively Lan reaches out for his retreating hand and squeezes it. "If that happens... I guess you won't remember that it's not your fault. But it won't be." She holds on for a moment before letting go.
The stability of her reality... Lan doesn't think she'll ever truly have that again. But it's nice of him to think of her, isn't it? "Okay. To be honest, I'm probably going to be here for a few more days." She frowns vaguely down at her body, as if it's misbehaving by being injured, but slowly crawls back underneath the covers. "...Your persona... I hope that if you can... you won't have to lie to me. But if you have to, it's okay. I'll forgive you, all right?"
She's probably not making a lot of sense. But the blanket is warm, and there is absolutely not a planet floating upside down outside of the window.