2022-10-06: Mask Off
- Log: Mask Off
- Cast: Loren Voss, Azoth
- Where: Deku Isles
- Date: October 06, 2022
- Summary: Loren, meeting with Azoth, has a few questions for him -- no more pretending. Should he be happy he gets what he wanted, though?
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Eventually, Loren had made his way back. It might have helped that he wasn't the only late- returnee: others had been scattered by the Aeon's awakening and with the destruction of the outpost, had been forced to make their way back on their own.
In this -- even with the delay -- Loren had actually been at an advantage.
Even now, well over a month later, there are a few individuals who have only just made their way back to Filgaia and back to the relative arms of civilization (e.g. the empire of Solaris).
Which means that some general processing and health evaluation is underway for the last few stragglers before they get sent back home (the decision had been handed down from on high after all) and of course the latter falls under Loren's domain on Elam Base. Which is... just keen, really. Just fine.
More work, just what he's always wanted.
Skimming the lab results on his tablet as he walks down the hallway, he's focused more on his work at the moment than anything else.
"...How do you pick up a nutritional deficiency in barely two months," he's muttered, squinting at the screen. Seriously, how does that work!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth had not elected to make reports on Loren's whereabouts or activities. He knew enough to know Loren was where he needed to be -- helping Lan -- and that Loren would be receiving help from reliable sources as far as Azoth's calculations could determine. No one thought to ask Azoth directly what with him being a weapon and not a scouting drone, so Azoth did not have to say.
Mostly, the aftermath involved comprehensive looks into Azoth's data and attempts to address his erroneous operation. Perhaps he'd have even been grateful, were these endeavors not made by Solaris' definitions. But all the fuss left Azoth to continue efforts toward his primary purpose... and tangle himself with whatever distractions he could along the way.
As always, he has to touch base -- literally -- at least some of the time. It is perhaps with the greatest audacity that Azoth is now walking behind Loren with no announcement of his presence, peeking over his shoulder toward the tablet screen.
"Doesn't it only take two months for humans to starve to death?"
He is presently humanguised, as he usually is around base, but with personality in his voice, as he usually isn't.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Something like that, but it's not starvation," Loren replies, firmly on autopilot as he reviews a whole host of minutiae regarding his fellow soldiers' bloodwork. "I think they were eating--"
This is the moment in which he freezes up and more or less stops in his tracks. If Azoth is quick on the draw, he'll avoid walking right into him. Regardless, this is also the moment in which Loren, juggling the tablet briefly before tucking it under his arm, turns about to face Azoth.
He is not happy. ...Which may be a rather vague description, as Loren is rarely ever happy.
Nevertheless, the point stands.
He doesn't say anything at first. He just stares at Azoth as if he could somehow reach into his mind and see whatever lingers there.
But ultimately, the question comes:
"Why? I told you to stop."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth is quick enough in his calculations, and in his expectations, to account for Loren's sudden stop. He stops himself, and he has the good(?) sense(??) to hold his palms up by his chest in surrender with his usual smile subdued and unfitting against guiltier eyes.
Truthfully, he'd hoped to ask after Lan, if he could get Loren to tell him. But that does not seem to be the first order of business today.
"Do you want me to answer that with my persona on, or would you prefer the machine in front of you to sound like one?"
It doesn't change his answer, but it changes the way it comes out.
Azoth gestures to himself, from the face down.
"...I can even take the entire mask off, if that makes it easier."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Perhaps, once Loren's been able to express his rancor over the subject at large, perhaps then it might be possible to get a few words out of him regarding Lan's condition. The fact that he's unhappy and angry, rather than outright furious, might at least suggest that Lan is alive -- if his display on the snowfield had suggested anything about how he'd feel if her wellbeing was anything less than 'potentially mortally wounded' -- but...
Does he want Azoth to answer him with the mask up or the mask down -- with a form that's easier to pretend is human, or not?
"Don't lie to me," is Loren's answer. He grimaces. "I want you to answer me as you really are. No more pretending."
He'd seen the truth behind that smile on the snowfield, after all. He knows what Azoth is.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
The emotion evaporates from Azoth's face.
"Command received." His voice is deep and reverberating, unfitting for the young man it just came out of.
But Loren has seen it. That's not what Azoth is.
Azoth lowers his arms back down to his sides, a grid of light crawling over him and repainting him into the much more obviously mechanical version of his chassis, his face like a helmet, his body less human with clawed hands and feetless legs. But the energy that pulses through him is not red in its overridden, overclocked warning: it's brilliant blue mixed with an uncomfortably bright pink that bleed together in a gradient.
Normally, this machine floats ominously, mostly spouting what sounds like prerecorded, scripted output to various given inputs. Today, that deep, alien voice of his maintains a bizarre sense of inflection when he continues to respond:
"You do have to accept something of a filter, User Loren." When he emphasizes words, they do not raise in volume, garble with excess noise, uncomfortable to the ear. "It is through Solaris' machinations that I'm unable to appear or function as I am intended to."
Despite the monstrous form, he gives a gesture mixed between a courtesy and a bow, legs crossed, but one arm behind his back and the other flourished outward.
"That is 'why', User Loren, I did not stop. Because I am broken by the hands of my newest Users."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren has had quite an education in what Azoth is, over time.
He regrets it almost as instantly as the change comes over Azoth, as his 'illusion' fades away to reveal the form beneath. He considers, fleetingly, giving an order otherwise -- to turn Azoth's appearance away from this into something more... palatable.
But isn't this the point? To see him as he really is -- as it is. He forces himself to look at Azoth, even as his pulse accelerates in his chest. Right now, he's probably fine. Azoth won't -- probably -- do anything to him.
It's still hard not to shudder.
"...I know."
The thing is, he already knows why. It's because Lan is an enemy of Solaris. And it's because Azoth cannot decide who is his enemy and who is not.
Leah... had told him as much shortly after his return. As long as Lan stands against Solaris, there is the chance that any soldier -- any asset -- might strike her down.
But even so. Even so.
"But you still could have killed her," he hisses.
Even if it's like blaming a sword for a murder-- he can't simply let it go. The fingers of his left hand have curled inwards, as if reaching for the hilt of a blade that's no longer at his side. He'd left it, after all, in the snow when he'd gone to rescue Lan. Stupid, really-- but he'd been unable to think of anything else in the moment.
Even now the memory of it is enough to breed a bloom of anger within him -- yeah, maybe it's like getting mad at a sword. But most swords don't think. "I'm not going to forget what you really are. If you try it again... next time I really will break you," he just about whispers. If Azoth can't stop, then he'll stop him himself -- and damn the consequences. In this moment, Loren couldn't care less about the consequences.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Something palatable. The entire function of that blond haired Drifter form. Unintimidating. Innocent. It's even provoked the protective urges of Drifters and would-be heroes.
The construct that is Azoth leans back, taking a seat on nothing at all as he floats, cross legged.
"I could have." There is no denying that. There is no desire to. But Loren's wording is a relief. It means Lan is still alive.
"Lan is not registered as a Solaris User," Azoth explains what Loren already knows. "She is a valid target who initiated combat against one of Solaris' operations. I am a weapon programmed by Solaris to terminate opposition." Azoth gesticulates with his glowing claw, his tail ever on the idle move as it flicks back and forth, akin to a cat engaged in activity. "That you were unable to take direct control over me through your command is an error that has since been corrected via thorough investigation and alteration of my code so that Solaris may maintain control of me. ~Rejoice~" And under layer of chirped chip-tune plays, like a distorted heavenly choir.
He straightens out as if to stand, but always, he floats. He's taller like this. Floating makes him seem taller still. Azoth watches Loren, no expression on his helmeted face, empty behind that visor, as Loren makes his whispered declaration.
Azoth does not lower the volume of his own response.
"Should it come to that... I hope that you succeed."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It would be easy to look at Azoth and make assumptions. He doesn't seem like anything more than a kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, in most contexts. But Loren (thinks he) knows better.
In fact, as far as he's concerned, the facade only makes it worse.
Would it be a relief, if Loren knew that Azoth felt relief? If he knew he felt anything at all, under the surface? Or would it only make this worse? As it stands--
"I know," Loren says, more forcefully this time. He grimaces, beetling his brow as he gazes up at Azoth. Leah had made that crystal clear -- as if he hadn't already been aware of it. They're on opposite sides, he and Lan, and one of these days, he's going to have to make a decision.
...As far as Solaris is concerned, he should have let Lan die and rescued Azoth. Not that they know what he did. Not that he's going to tell anyone that's what he did. Loren might be many things but he's not stupid -- not that kind of stupid.
"...So, what, are you saying next time I'd be able to stop you?" If he looks at all skeptical or dubious regarding this, well...
It'd depend on if someone else gave Azoth direct orders otherwise, wouldn't it -- and whether they outrank him. Machines don't get to decide. Azoth can think but all he can do is complete his orders as directed. Which is why Loren is absolutely prepared to break him.
At least in this moment, where he can ignore things like 'consequences'. Or more specific things like 'the precariousness of the Voss family'.
"...What, do you want to be broken?" He's drawn back a step from Azoth's form, rounding his shoulders as if to defend himself -- it wasn't an answer he expected, that much is plain.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Loren asserts he knows. Azoth regards him in silence. Yes, Loren knows. But does Loren understand it? That what he wants and what Solaris wants are terribly different things?
That, perhaps, Loren's objectives do not align with Solaris at all? A decision will have to be made. As far as Azoth computes, Loren has already made it and already asserted it. Should it all happen again... Loren vows not to hesitate a second time.
"That depends," Azoth responds, invisibly searching Loren's skeptical face. He must realize it himself already. "On if stopping me benefits Solaris."
Loren's sudden defensive posture genuinely surprises Azoth in turn. Azoth decides to express this with abruptly perked antenna that whirr as they swivel into position. "I believe I told you, User Loren. I already am." He leans forward to close just a little of that distance Loren's put between them, claws folded behind his back. "It is not my preference, but it is a preference above harm coming to her."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He'll have to make a decision, eventually, about what matters. 'Am I not enough?' Lan had once asked of him and...
...there's no way he can choose everything that matters to him.
That's fact, even if he wants to keep pretending otherwise.
But the decision isn't today and might not even be tomorrow. Right now, he can make the threat -- promise -- that he feels in the heat of the moment and not have to worry that, tomorrow, he...
He's already made up his mind. It's in contradiction with himself, but he's still made up his mind.
"..." runs his response to Azoth's assertion that stopping him is only possible as long as it benefits Solaris. He's not very good at hiding his thoughts: it's plain as day what he thinks of this. He doesn't... like it very much. This is an understatement.
He also arguably doesn't like it when Azoth presses the matter -- in a manner of speaking -- by wheeling that much closer to him. His blue eyes widen just that much more. Loren takes a long, slow breath, his shoulders hunching up with the movement. "Already--" Just like that, he eases. Well, somewhat: the defensive pose maintains, though his shoulders slouch.
Yeah. That makes sense. He just prefers it as an alternative. It's not like normal people -- machines -- want to be destroyed.
Loren closes his eyes. "Okay. Fine. So you don't want to be broken more. That's good." Only to reopen them and glare at Azoth. "...Just stay away from her. Got it? I don't... want you to get an order against her -- I don't want you to be around her if you get an order like that. Understand?"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
It could be said that Azoth, boiled down to the most basic description, is a series of ones and zeroes. A flip switches positively, a switch flips negatively. Thousands, millions, billions of combinations create life. Or the facsimile thereof.
Loren responds with silence, but the face he makes... A flip switches positively.
It's dangerous. For Loren. For Azoth. Someone would say this isn't the first time an AI -- this AI -- presented too much data to a man of Solaris, and executed in a way that must have served ancient objectives instead of Solaris itself. This had disastrous consequences. But Loren has made his choice. His choice is not, like in the case before, the robot.
Does that prove that Azoth is operating on more than a self-preservation protocol? Or is that provable at all?
Azoth mercifully relents with that space-invading posture, upright and floating ominously from a more respectable distance.
But Loren goes and says that, and Azoth's tail goes awkward and stilted, like it glitched mid-movement. A claw, raised for more gestures while speaking, gives a twitch. A line of light distorts through his visor, passing through like a warbled bolt of lightning. "Command... received." Does that sound... pained? "To the greatest extent I am able, I shall... avoid Subject Lan."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There can sometimes be small mercies.
Azoth says he'll avoid Lan.
Just like that. It's not a solution, really, but it should be good enough for 'tomorrow'. He can worry about 'next week' another time.
"...Good," he says. And he sighs.
For the first time since they've started speaking to one another, Loren -- almost -- relaxes. But then again, not only has Loren just about never entirely let down his guard around Azoth in the entire time they've known one another, he's also never entirely let down his guard around other people.
...Discounting only that time when a version of himself without his memories had been led about by Lan. The real Loren Voss hasn't been able to really trust someone else in a very long time.
Does he notice Azoth's pain over such an order? Or is he just so wrapped up in his own wants and needs that someone else's hurts simply pass him by? It's easy to ignore what other people want when you curl in on yourself.
"But that's it," he tells Azoth, gazing up at him. "Stay away from her. And if you hurt her again..." Threats are of no value against something that lacks free will.
But it makes Loren feel better.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"If I hurt her again..." Azoth echoes, claw beckoning for the rest. "You will irrevocably damage my core and ensure that I am never again fit for operation? Demand I am reprogrammed into an over-glorified toaster? Order me to hold still to dismantle me piece by tiny piece, so that I experience what I qualify as agony into eternity? Take it up with those who determine which lives should be considered -- no, no, what am I saying! Emperor forbid!"
Azoth relaxes and leans back, 'sitting' in air again and tail idly twirled in claw. A brief chip tune version of a song in praise to Emperor Cain plays before Azoth speaks again.
"You have given your command, and unless it contradicts with higher orders, the overrides installed into my system ensure I execute them to the best of my calculated ability. Threats are not required for my obedience, but should it please you, I can put on a performance of fear -- with your permission to pretend, of course. I am not afraid of you, User Loren."
Azoth pauses, tail swinging to a stop without the momentum of his claw. The visor directs itself at Loren straight on.
"Because I trust you."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
If he hurts her again, Loren had said, trailing off meaningfully.
If he hurts her again, Azoth says, instead turning implication into actualized scenarios -- each landing ever more firmly into the realm of the absurd.
Loren had already become freshly angry simply by the recollection of what had been. Now he's transformed a step further, smoldering ire flaring up into brilliant irritation.
"Will you shut up?" he all but demands of Azoth, glaring up at his floating form. "And-- quit it with the blasphemy!" It might not be overt, no, but it doesn't mean he's not noticed it for what it actually is.
He curls both hands into fists at his sides, as if almost daring Azoth to give him a reason to use them -- for all the good it would do, to dash flesh against metal.
"...Fine, you've made your point," Loren says, closing his eyes in abject frustration. "Then, just do what you're told, and-- and that's that," he finishes, suddenly scrambling for metaphorical ground without the presence of a threat to land upon.
Azoth isn't afraid of him, he says, and Loren would have normally sighed to himself about he just can't get any respect can he. Except that Azoth has more to say than just that.
Because he trusts Loren.
"...What?" He's again opened his eyes, regarding Azoth as if he'd sprouted another head -- well, or whatever would be sufficiently odd for a machine like him to do, anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
All current observations determine Azoth's point has not yet been made. Loren has taken a different conclusion from them. This is not unexpected. Loren's perception of the world, of himself, and of Azoth remain skewed. For example, not a single scenario is absurd at all! For all Loren's threats, he does not realize the power he holds in this conversation, and over Azoth.
That cannot be solved within a single conversation. Certainly, it's taken Lan much, much longer to get through to Loren on certain matters, if Azoth had to guess. But as for where Loren stands now...
Having been told to shut up, there is a moment Azoth waits in silence, giving another vague gesture before assuming there exists permission to speak. Continuing that audacious lounging in the air, Azoth's claw releases the tail, letting it dangle.
"I trust you," Azoth repeats simply, side of his face in claw. "You do not threaten me because you care if I am afraid. You threaten me because you care if Subject Lan is safe. In that moment in the snow, you made a choice."
Several of them, if anyone wants to nitpick. A crisis emerged, and Loren was faced with overwhelming feelings and a number of dilemmas. He had to determine his priorities and act on them.
"That choice proved I can trust you."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
If it hadn't been for the circumstances they'd both found themselves in relative to one another, perhaps things with Lan and with Loren would have turned out differently. If it hadn't been for Lan's perseverance, either, to name another feature in what has become a very strange friendship indeed.
Already, she has changed who he is -- for the better, for the worse?
In this moment it is still too early to tell.
Nevertheless, it was the bond between them that had spurred Loren on towards the series of decisions he'd made when confronted with the choice between Azoth and Lan there in the snow. He could have done what was expected of him. But...
Even when this is pointed out to him, Loren is at a complete loss for words. It was because-- it was just because...!
"...Shut up," he says, ever eloquent in a pinch. He turns his face away from Azoth. "If it weren't for you, I..."
He just won't let this go just yet, will he?
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth unlounges, returning to a normal posture for hallway conversations -- insomuch that Azoth is ever normal, floating, watching, observing. Loren is afforded a moment of silence as Azoth determines Loren does not intend to finish, but has once again chosen the path of aposiopesis.
If it was not for Azoth...
"Do you regret it, User Loren?"
A query asked, but the answer already known.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
If it weren't for Azoth, would he have been in that situation in the first place?
But asking that really is asking the impossible -- what might have been, in some hypothetical, alternate series of circumstances.
But does he regret it? His choice.
To go by the look he fixes Azoth with, Loren thinks that's a foolish question to start with. "No," he answers simply. He did what he meant to do, and he'll stand by that decision. It was the only one he could have made and lived with.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
The past cannot be undone. It is because of Loren that the past is not a more terrible thing for Azoth than it already is. And now Loren knows what he would choose.
Another positive switch flips with that look of Loren's. As if the question itself is foolish. Because it is, isn't it? Loren has no hesitation.
A '^ ^' appears in the helmet's visor in a cartoonish mimicry of smiling eyes. They remain a moment before vanishing back to a void of black.
"I have already confirmed through context than Subject Lan is alive. This was the purpose of my approach. I am aware you find my presence undesirable and will thus remove myself... unless you have more grievances and threats to relay to me."
Or maybe Loren does want to punch him, but this would likely be more unpleasant for Loren than for Azoth.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The production of those cartoonish eyes takes Loren visibly aback; he actually goes so far as to briefly drop his defensive posture out of the shock of it, his mouth agape.
But they're there... and then they're gone.
And then Azoth reveals that much of his intent here was to discover whether Lan was alive. This brings Loren to out and out sputter in response, "--Couldn't you have asked!?" He is at least indignant, more than truly angry. His hands are no longer curled into fists.
And indeed, even if he tried, he'd just hurt himself.
"...Why are you like this?" he asks of Azoth, as if he hadn't brought this confrontation upon himself in the first place. But he shakes his head. No. He's done. He's said everything he intends in this particular moment, and so...
"Go do... whatever it is that you do. --But I'm not kidding. Stay away from her," Loren says, retrieving his tablet where he's masterfully kept it under one arm this entire time and restoring it from idle mode.
He still has some idiot fellow soldiers with a nutritional deficiency to sort out.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"I would have asked if it proved necessary. But I determined answering your queries to be of greater importance."
And then... Azoth had the information he needed without having to. It's quite simple, really!
Loren asks why Azoth is the way he is, no doubt entirely rhetorically. And thus he receives an immediate lesson in asking the Azoth rhetorical questions. Azoth points a claw to himself, helpfully: "I exist as a mix of fragmented directives clashing with an overlay of reprogrammed overrides that dilute my ability to act to the full extent of my autonomous design. In short, new code demands I be subservient to you above my own secondary objectives in a given moment in time, but old code continually attempts to develop ways to express itself."
Explanation given and question thus sufficiently answered -- or Loren sufficiently exasperated -- Azoth gives another curtsy-bow. "Command received, User Loren."
It is his final effort to remind Loren he is speaking to a machine who lacks the will to disobey... The order itself a negative switch flip among what was, for Azoth, and otherwise positive conversation. But it is still Solaris. What else can be expected?
...This will make apologizing difficult.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren's response to all of that is to give Azoth a Look. The sort that says to the world at large, 'that's my last nerve and you're standing on it'. But he has learned some control over the years -- today is not the day he blows his gasket in Azoth's general direction. Instead, he simply sighs long-sufferingly and asks to the universe at large, "Why?"
Azoth has but one last thing to say to him though as he starts to make his departure.
It's a reminder, and one so pointed that even Loren can't miss it. Azoth isn't someone who can disobey.
Loren regards the values on his screen as he walks away but he doesn't really register them. His own mind is elsewhere.