2021-10-27: Memory Protection

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  • Cutscene: Memory Protection
  • Cast: Azoth, Ovelia
  • Where: Etrenank
  • Date: October 27, 2021
  • Summary: Thanks to the meddling of a certain Element, Azoth gets an opportunity he thought impossible. But nothing is every without complication, especially not feelings.


One Azoth's way out of the hanger, he must have malfunctioned.

A memory from his database uploaded erroneously: the sight of the lapine beastfolk, beaming from fluffy cheek to fluffy cheek as she wiped the grease out of her blonde fur. Long ears stuck out of holes in her cap, making up a large portion of a frame Azoth had calculated to be exactly 0.99981 sharl, minus those ears themselves, which were nearly half that. Half of her tiny body disappeared when she rummaged into her toolbox.

Azoth ran diagnostics. No errors detected. Not in optics, not in his database. Ovelia dug herself out of her tools and turned to face him. She lifted her goggles from her eyes, setting them above the bill of her cap. Her round eyes grew even bigger than they seemed with the lenses magnifying them.

"Azoth?"

"Affirmative," he said, his voice losing all its personality, his face losing all its emotion. He did not make the shift to put distance between them. He did it because that was the Azoth that Ovelia knew. Because to use the persona on her with no warning would be too cruel. Because Ovelia, of all people, did not need him to have one.

"Do you still remember me?"

"Affirmative."

Ovelia's eyes filled with fat tears. "Did... Did they alter -- your code, did they change --"

Azoth hears what she's afraid to put to words: did they manage to reprogram him so he didn't care for her anymore?

"Negative."

"Do you hate me?" she whispered.

"Error. Query not understood."

Ovelia charged at him on all fours and sprung from the ground as if leaping a chasm, tears trailing behind her. What Azoth should have been able to gently catch and balance on his finger, or let sit on his snout, he had to caught in both arms, letting out a shocked beep when the force of her knocked him to his back.

But there he stayed, arms wrapped tight around her as she buried her face into him and sobbed.



Such loud sobs for such a tiny creature, shoulders shaking and hiccups echoing in the hanger. It wasn't the first time he watched her work herself to exhaustion, but she hadn't cried before. He could not locate any new variable that might serve as the source of her distress.

But no one else was present for the moment. Azoth, slowly and softly as his mechanics allowed, extended his arm and nudged the back of his claw against her.

When she screamed, he first calculated the gesture to be a mistake. But then she clung around his finger and cried until she ran out of tears.




Crying turned to laughter, and she shoved her soft paws against his face. "Aaah, they ruined you, Azoth! Look at your ears, they're so weird!"

"And a significant downgrade in expressive range." He ruffled her own ears pointedly, and she tipped her head up into the gesture. Ovelia looked closer to a rabbit from the woods who stood upright than she did a human with rabbit features. Or like a stuffed toy, some might argue.

They both knew without saying it that this meeting couldn't be long. In Solaris, one was always being watched. Ovelia had to pry herself off of Azoth, and Azoth could not risk anyone thinking she had the opportunity to tamper with him. As it was, the fact that Ovelia was released at all meant Axton would be tearing through his data for changes whether or not she could confirm the two of them had met.

They sat down, a few feet put between them, Ovelia excitedly and hurriedly explaining how she got to be here. Azoth did not balk at her when Seraphita's name came up, but if he were with someone he showed faces to, he would have.

He didn't offer his own recap, and when Ovelia hesitated like she might ask, he asked his own questions to spare them both from what would only be terrible answers.



"Sorry, I know you're not thrilled about this, but... We can try to make it fun! We can make your body look like whatever you want! I mean -- so long as it's something that blends in with, um, people."

"Eliminating the possibility of my body in a smaller scale."

"Er, yeah, sorry. Although... with the right parts, you might be able to make adjustments to the frame in real time. I know a lot of your capabilities for that are missing, but they're not entirely gone... W-Well, anyway, you need to mostly look like a people to start with! So if you can look like any people, what would you want to look like? Maybe we should get some magazines..."

"I do not know that I have an aesthetic preference. But if you claim I am family, then a genetic resemblance would be the logical decision."

"Eheh, if that's the case, we're gonna make you the CUTEST."




She was alive. And he was alive. She smiled at him with her entire face, happiness reaching through her perked ears, and he smiled back. Ovelia's eyes went wide with it before lighting up with pride. He showed her a variety of expressions and gestures he learned, and mimicked some of her own as they puffed cheeks at one another. He shocked her into laughter with the most absurd contortions of his face he had learned. Instead of laughing with her, he gave a cheerful beeping, smile soft as he saw the joy and relief take over all of her. Welcome replacements for his last memory of her.

The longer she looked into his smile, the more Ovelia's ears began to droop, and the corners of Azoth's mouth with them. Quiet settled between android and rabbit, and the empty space beside the both of them grew colder. There was a third pair of arms that should have seized them both. A third laugh that should have been with them. A third smile.

"I guess... you do look kind of like him..."



"You're Ovelia, right? Hey, w-wait, don't run --! The uh. The Azoth, er, told -- informed! Informed me. With data. And robotic... beepy... boops? Like robots do. They do that. Uploading and calculations and... stuff. It's very science. ...Okay listen, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think Azoth is alive."



"Yeah! Mission complete! Give me a victory jingle, Azoth! Invalid request?! Okay, okay, maybe next time. But, hey, I can let you autopilot for a bit. Don't worry. I've got a good excuse prepared for why I needed to patrol these coordinates. No, it's a good one this time! Really!"



"He gets a 'genetic resemblance' to me too, right? Ovelia, don't you dare, he's going to be so mad if we make him three feet tall, he just doesn't know that yet...!"



"You're not still upset with me, are you, buddy? Listen... I'm not going to apologize. I know your purpose is to protect me, and I'm making that difficult. But I get to have a purpose, too. And you're a part of it. Let me be the one to save you for once."



"Everything's going to be okay. I'm getting you out of here. I'm getting you both out of here."



His eyes were open, unblinking. His lips were moving without sound, and Azoth could not place the patterns of the unspoken words to decipher them. Azoth was a machine of war. Massive, distant, indifferent. He did not know what it felt like to hold someone as their life left them.

He knew now.

Ovelia's screaming turned to sobs.

The last he saw of her was her fur matted with tears, stretching her an arm out for Falk while they dragged her away. Blood oozed across the floor toward her, as if reaching back.




That was the price of trying to save him.

Everyone was so eager to believe they were an exception. Even Ovelia.

"Ovelia," Azoth said, his voice firm and reverberating, pulling her gaze back up to him. "Confirming your status has provided crucial feedback for me." Azoth's eyes took on a harsher light, core aching with the added heat. "...But this is the end of the data we can exchange."

She did not dare say anything, eyes quivering as she looked back at him. She did not dare argue. That was more damning than if she tried. It meant she knew her words could influence the overrides and adjust his behavior. She knew him and how he worked, and how the overrides worked, able to predict his behavior to dangerous degrees.

She was not free because of this. She was not entirely safe -- who ever is, in Solaris? But she was better off by a dramatic margin. Ovelia was with Seraphita, who Azoth, despite everything, was going to trust to care about Ovelia, even if Ovelia was still Third Class, even if Ovelia would not see her home again. Even if Ovelia could not see him again.

Because Azoth couldn't save her. And if she wanted to save herself, his overrides would destroy her every opportunity to do so. Azoth's only recourse was to stay out of her way.

Ovelia hopped slowly toward him, those big eyes glassy and her ears refusing to stand upright. She reached her arms up, and Azoth bent down for another hug between them, having learned enough from so many others in his time on the surface how to do one properly -- from Ida, from Boudicca, from even Seraphita. He's given his own a few times, and he hopes they're getting better. That they say all the things he knows in numbers but doesn't know the right words for.

He let her go, aware of each sniffle she made as he left.





Ovelia watched Azoth walk away, and only once he was out of sight did she finally let the tears fall, burying her face into her ears.

Do you hate me? she asked, for all she had done to him. For all she let them make her do. Query not understood, he said. Too little understanding, and it sounds like an automatic response from a machine that cannot comprehend the emotional nature of the question. A little understanding, and it may sound like an attempt at reassurance -- a lighthearted response that means to tell her the question is, and will always be, unfathomable in how unnecessary it is. Nothing could ever happen to change the answer.

With Ovelia's level of understanding, she knew how literal it could be that nothing could ever change the answer, and Azoth without the memories to realize it.

Was forgiveness something Azoth calculated from his lived experiences, or had she determined that for him, immutable, from the beginning?

It would be cruel to tell him the truth. That's what Ovelia kept telling herself, over and over again, since that first moment she managed to reactivate Azoth from centuries of slumber. Time had made it worse. For him to behold it now would besmirch Falk's memory and drive Azoth deeper into loneliness.

There was still something she could do. She had coding lessons to plan, and stashed pieces of an old security camera to try reconnecting. If that fails, she may have to make an excuse to run into Axton -- not difficult. That horrible human was undoubtedly still going to demand 'consultation'. The situation may have changed, but hopefully that only makes it easier to help out Azoth's mysterious friend...