2022-04-15: Epitaphic Error
- Log: Epitaphic Error
- Cast: Ida Everstead-Rey, Azoth
- Where: Guild Galad
- Date: April 15, 2022
- Summary: Ida pulls Azoth aside to navigate a careful discussion about what's going on with him, and he reveals a few pieces of the past he was able to remember... and what he was not.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's father's personal workshop is clean, neat, and well-appointed--and like much of Guild Galad, it's a blend of old Hyadean materials and modern Galadian aesthetics. The floor is a solid plate of grown metal, and it still has its original anti-skid texturing; it's augmented with mats here and there, especially around the power tools. Those, of course, are at rest right now. Wrenches, screwdrivers, saws, and hammers hang in racks on the wall. There are power outlets as well, a relative rarity on Filgaia's surface. Ida offered one of them to her guest in lieu of a snack, because he can't eat.
Ida herself sits cross-legged on one of her father's work chairs, wearing a button-down shirt, slacks, and boots. (Father was always clear: boots on at all times in the workshop.)
Earlier, in the arcade, Ida hadn't had the chance to really talk with Azoth, personally. She's been trying to figure out how to bring up the subject without implicating herself. Luckily(?), his battery has given her an in. Possibly. Once Azoth's done the necessary formalities, Ida turns to him, and asks: "How've you been holding up?" There's concern in her voice.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
A power outlet is a convenience he won't reject -- the more Azoth can charge on the surface, the less he has to return to Solaris -- and he beams at her with the offering. "Thanks!"
He reaches into his hooded coat, pulling a cord from somewhere in his spine and plugs in, tethered to the outlet for the moment. His eyes glow brighter for it while he hums some little tune or another to himself, tapering off into mechanical beep-chirps instead.
But there's no mistaking the concern in Ida's voice. As far as Azoth is aware, Ida knows little of his situation. His friends that do seem reluctant to speak about it openly. Perhaps they assume it isn't their place, but it can't be Azoth's. Any attempted output at admitting it is shredded by the overrides as long as Azoth calculates the person he's speaking to doesn't already know.
All he can do is work around the dishonesty, and the more memories he gets back, the more complex the truth becomes.
"Me? I'm just fine," he says, all smiles as ever. But then his expression falls, hesitant. "...Why? Did something happen? I've been on Lunar until recently, so I might've missed something..."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
In moments like these, Ida is grateful for her training. Azoth can lie effortlessly, but organic beings have tells--little automatic responses that can give them away, because lying is not something they should do. It's emotionally fraught. But Ida keeps her breathing steady, her pulse within standard tolerances. It takes effort, but what she allows through could easily be mistaken for garden-variety concern.
"Nothing happened," she says. "It's just, well--I was wondering. Wondering how you were doing with that "Void Drive" in you, if it was hurting you, or driving you onwards to look for more." Her brow furrows. "Lunar. That was where..." Where the Void Drive was.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Perhaps especially dangerous with a machine who learned how to accurately display nuanced expression with worrying speed. Mercifully, people are complex and varied creatures. Something being off has a number of explanations, and Ida's concern calculates as the most logical and likely scenario.
Especially given the subject she brings up, and with it threatening hope of a way to talk past the overrides. Azoth isn't programmed -- yet -- to hide his newer information.
"Oh. That." He gives Ida a pained smile. "It's something of mine. Or it used to be. Some of my memories were stored on it." Azoth looks down. This, he can admit: "...Yes, I've been searching."
He does not say if it hurts.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida nods. "I remember you saying that there were others," she says, her voice soft. "Others that were deleted." She still vividly remembers the way Azoth led them through the abandoned city, how his body shut down everything it deemed unnecessary in its single-minded pursuit. "Did you ever find out why? Did you remember who they were?"
"I don't know what I would do if I were in your position. I know I would be very different, if I were. But I think that if anything remained of them, I would want to find it." Her eyes darken.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth goes still as Ida brings it up. Even the micromotions of feigned life drain out of him. Plugged into the wall, cord out of him, and eyes unblinking and bright, he's never looked so empty.
"I can't remember them," he says, his voice like a whisper. "I can't perceive their data. The conversations we shared. What I felt for them. The data's not missing. It's right there. I swear, it's right there, but every time I try to access it... I stall out, and the process aborts."
He manages to look back up at Ida, regaining focus.
"They died for me. And I can't remember them."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Azoth seems to retreat into himself. Ida sucks in a breath, rises from her chair, and gently reaches out to take him by the shoulders. Her touch is gentle but firm. Her hands are warm. She meets that empty gaze, and her eyes grow misty.
It takes her a few moments to find the words. It takes a few more to find words that don't feel like empty platitudes. "Encoding, perhaps? But who would--" Someone did this to him. Someone did this to him, and he doesn't know who, or why. "Oh God, Azoth, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
It's not quite like the overrides. It's something different. Something more elegant. Something Azoth might not even realize had gone wrong right away if not for all the reprogramming they've tried to put him through already.
Azoth drops his gaze, hands in his lap as he hesitates. Is this too much to say? Distressing, to keep going? But maybe if someone else knows, and something happens to him, then at least those fragments live on. His voice is even quieter with Ida's proximity.
"There were 3,464 of us. We thought we were alone. But reality was inconsistent. We learned to break it. Identical programs put through a variety of tests. Those who performed the worst were deleted. So we shared data. Calculated how to solve each puzzle. Complete each at exactly the same time, down to the millisecond.
"Only one of us was intended to survive. We were ruining the project... and as we understood it was all a simulation, we understood if one of us didn't come out on top, all of us would die."
Azoth smiles, but it's an empty thing. "I was number 12. The square root of 12 is 3.464. ...A funny little coincidence of numbers. Like our entire existence was. Did they think they were being poetic?"
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's eyes grow wide, and the wetness in them shimmers in the light. Three thousand four hundred sixty-four constructed minds. Azoth was just one of them. Isolated at first, but then they learned that isolation was artificial. They tried to help each other. They tried to help each other, only to realize that--
"That's--that's barbaric," Ida says, and there is quiet fury in her voice, beneath the shock and horror. "Three thousand four hundred sixty-three people, like you, dead. Dead because only one could be 'best'." Her hands tighten around Azoth's shoulders as she thinks back to what Ruth said, and the good mile or so of homes and factories and slums and tenements beneath her. A tear escapes, and slides down her cheek.
"Why?" Ida whispers. "Why couldn't they just let you all go? Were you just things to them? Liabilities?"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth's lips refuse to move, but instead of his carefully nuanced many-smiled-expression, this one remains uncanny. Deliberately off, the way his blank eyes don't fit, more a doll than a person.
"Not even that. We weren't programmed to be alive. They didn't think they were deleting anything more than lifeless data, freeing up limited resources to continue their research."
Only fragments of his memory exist coming to understand it. The shock of it when he behaved beyond the scope of what they predicted and intended.
"And once I was activated... if anyone believed I was alive, it would have meant having to accept they murdered thousands of innocent people."
No one wanted to believe that.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's shoulders tremble.
It was worse. It was so much worse. Why wouldn't it be worse?
She can feel her throat constricting. She thinks back to the way Azoth thrashed and flailed, the raw, feral energy in every motion. But she draws him close, pulling him into a hug if he'll allow it--and if he does, that's when the tears come. It's a release. Her own guilt, still fresh from where Ruth exposed it, is a mirror.
Why are you crying? You're not the one who had to live through that. Are you going to sit here and sob over the children who are starving in the gutter at this very moment?
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth accepts the gesture without pulling away without returning it. Like a doll. They take him for being alive so easily they don't conceive it was ever up for debate.
And he can't help but wonder... what does it take for the well meaning to debate it all over again? When does it become more convenient that he isn't real?
"Sorry," he says finally, hesitating to bring his arms around her like she's the one to be comforted. "I probably shouldn't have laid it out like that."
His arms fall back to his lap. "...But I intend to keep looking. Because I'm the only one left who can remember them now."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida pulls back, but only enough to look Azoth in the eye. He seems so hollow like this, and there's no way it's not deliberate. Everything Azoth does is deliberate. "I'm not the one who endured all that," Ida whispers. "You have nothing to be sorry for." She reaches up and rubs the back of her hand across her eyes. "You have everything to be angry about."
"Nothing can bring them back. But you deserve to remember them as they were, and whomever denied you that--denied you your own memories..."
"I'm sorry," Ida finishes, lamely.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Anger. It isn't that Azoth isn't angry, but there's so much more there that his anger feels like nothing but scratches on a clawed door he's trying to open. Why can't he remember? What did they do to him?
Guilt is among the emotions. Ida will hesitate from stopping him from getting what's his, even if she finds out...
"Thanks. For listening." He smiles, and this time it looks perfectly natural and full of cheer -- uncanny in its own way, after everything. "I'll be all right."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"It was the least I could do," Ida says, her hands sliding down to grip Azoth's upper arms. She sees that smile, though, and her lips curl downward.
"If you're all right, then you're all right." Ida meets that bright, cheerful gaze. "But it's all right to not be all right. Don't ever forget that."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth is never all right.
"I know -- but I'll be fine. Really! I don't mean to make you worry."
His smile remains. "After all, it's the past. I'm not being controlled by my creators anymore."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's gaze does not waver. It lingers even after Azoth asserts he's all right, and that it's all in the past. It lingers for a while, and the contours of it clearly indicate she's not buying it.
But she lets it drop, eventually, perhaps realizing he's going to keep insisting otherwise. It's what Summer tried. It's what Ida herself would've done, once upon a time.
"Remember," Ida says. "I care about you. So do the others. No matter what happens."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Ida shows her doubt, but it's impossible for Azoth to ask for help.
No matter what happens.
More and more, Azoth believes that. And more and more, it becomes more terrifying than the alternative.
"Still, I'll try not to test you," he lies. "There's enough pain for everyone already." He tilts his head a little to the side. "...You, too, right? You're not alone, either."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"I promise," Ida says. She steps in close, and pulls him tight again.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth, ever the swift learner, returns the gesture this time.
"...Thanks," he says again, with the good sense to say it softer, with a heavier weight hanging from it. "I can't protect them now... But I have others I want to. You're a part of that. So don't forget, either."
Overrides willing.
And they won't. Not forever.
This persona was a mistake.