2023-02-08: Go Fish
- Log: Go Fish
- Cast: Loren Voss, Azoth
- Where: Great Spiran Sea
- Date: February 08, 2023
- Summary: Loren, under orders, retrieves Azoth from the bottom of the sea. What starts as trolling turns into something more understanding. ...Maybe?
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Leah Sadalbari's tone had brooked no argument on the matter. With much of the squadron in poor condition after that sortie, it was his job to go and retrieve Azoth. It would be better not to attract too much of Sin's attentions besides.
Such an important asset cannot be lost, after all. Especially not in the face of Odessa's ultimatum. Loren had only the time until they could bootstrap Schiehallion's operation and electrical systems into proper working order to himself before he was due out again.
Which, as it happened, had also been just about the time he needed to fully come down from the height that Drive had afforded him. It still hadn't been enough.
He finds Azoth, in due time. It takes him long enough to become suspicious that Schiehallion does have a crucial, overlooked leak somewhere, but not enough time for that to prove true or dangerous. Cradling the operative's form in the palm of his Gear's hand, he considers his options when he surfaces.
All of them.
In the end, he's largely been an obedient man and this proves to continue to be so. If there's a leak, he should try to ID that rather than risk a short on his return. Maybe call for help if necessary. And for that, he's going to have to land and see what he can sort out on his own.
Thus this may be the scene that Azoth awakens to: lying on the upper end of some sandy beach with the sky overhead impossibly blue, as Loren mutters curses under his breath in Solarian as he tries to do a Gear technician's job. He's missed Anat for entirely personal reasons up until now, but now he misses them for practical reasons as well.
"--What do you mean, 'cannot boot manual'?!"
Forget muttering. Now he's just yelling.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
For all Loren knows, he's retrieved a machine that won't be starting up again until after it's been returned and repaired. Not a single light is one. An all black chassis in the depths... certainly not the most enjoyable hunt, even with a tracking device to assist him. Set upon tge shore, he leaks sea water from the cracks of battle damage.
Somewhere in all of Loren's struggles with Schiehallion, enough water drains, and the system reboots. A gurgled start up noise is muffled by the remaining water and, possibly, Loren's own arguments with a different machine.
Azoth pops awake, lights all manner of blue and fuchsia.
And then Azoth pops up right next to Loren.
"Good morning, User Loren!"
It's not morning.
Azoth's head tilts to one side. Farther than that. Farther than that. Metal creaks and snaps. His head tips and threatens to fall to the ground. Azoth catches it, snaps it back into place, and superheats a claw with ARM energy to fuse it steady.
The cracked visor goes ^ ^
So he's just going to be starting in this mode, huh.
"You appear to require assistance."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Fishing Azoth up had been exciting and fun -- or rather, the damn opposite thereof. Not only had he been trying to track a non-responding and more or less dead unit, but he'd had to do it with Schiehallion increasingly indicating that something was definitely cursed as far as its wiring and/or a leak going on, and given the humidity readings in the cockpit, Loren was rather thinking the latter.
He already knows what happens when you drop a tablet into a body of water: you get a tablet that doesn't work and extremely annoyed IT staff.
(He's in the running for 'top offender' as far as broken or lost tablets go for his division. It's a curse.)
Suffice to say, he's not expecting much of anything until engineering's been able to sort out whatever's gone wrong (along with the water, the corrosion from salt water, etc, etc). Which, is sort of the same thing he's dealing with now...
Loren is outside the Gearm trying to sort out what might be a water inlet point that shouldn't be there -- but only if he can get his tablet (this one not broken, lost, waterlogged... yet) to actually pull the schematics for comparison's sake. Which it is refusing to do.
'Good morning, User Loren!'
Loren, already out of sorts from... everything, honestly does the worst possible thing (from his perspective). He yells and drops his tablet, his hand already on the hilt of his sword.
'He screams' might have been more accurate, but even his lack-of-dignity doesn't permit that.
"What are you-- what, why are you-- what are you doing!" Loren shouts semi-incoherently at Azoth, after which he can only watch on dumbfounded as Azoth nearly loses his head, literally.
Stooping, he keeps his eyes on Azoth the entire time as he goes for his dropped tablet.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
There is undoubtedly someone who is going to be quite irate with the state Azoth's going to return in. She is not likely to become Loren's problem. At least something won't be. Azoth, however, is personally determined to be Loren's problem.
Perhaps to determined to be Loren's main problem and unwilling to share the attention, Azoth's tail deftly snakes out to coil around the tablet and catch it before it can messy itself in the sands.
Ah, if sound could recharge Azoth's batteries...
As Loren comes forward, Azoth reveals the caught tablet, hoisting it up in claw to offer it forward.
"Operating," he replies with a cheerful chirp. "Remember, you may adjust your user preferences at any time! Perhaps you would prefer an asset that behaves more in accordance with your idea of its place?" The emphasized words glitch with excess static. "Despite this system's every impressive trait and valuable quality, I was most likely developed by <Lambs>."
As he says the word, there's an echoed reverb of a 'baaaaa' behind it. His antenna click and shift, curling around forward segment by segment to mimic small, ram-like horns before springing back to their original shape.
"...And as an artificial intelligence designed for a Gear, I may possess the expertise necessary to solve your current problem."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
And a fortunate thing it is! Many things that shouldn't be Loren's problem somehow become his problem, but in this, he is assured to remain problem-free.
If only because in this, Leah is not likely to make it his problem, nor is she likely to permit it become his problem. There are many other things she may well make his problem, but this is not one of them.
But all that aside, this situation is already becoming his problem... if in a different way than such things typically go, even with Loren's horrendous luck. Not only is he having Gear problems from the lengthy survey in the sea, but...
Well, exhibit B is standing over there.
Loren's response is to groan as if personally aggrieved and grimace. "Cut it out," he tells Azoth, slouching his shoulders. "I don't-- care who designed you! Shut up about the Lambs--" he sputters, rounding on the malfunctioning (??) machine.
Maybe it's some lingering trace of Drive in his system. Maybe it's the failure of the mission. Of once again coming up short against Elly. Or even, the thought that if he had succeeded, if Lan had been aboard, he might have well killed his only friend in the name of duty.
If frustration and anger were but a palpable things, they would be rising now from Loren like a billowing cloud. "I said, cut it out! --Here, if you're so good at this, then you figure it out!"
It's an incredibly childish display for a man in his early twenties. He shoves his tablet over at Azoth, as if he were well and done with the matter.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"Me either!" Azoth reports of not caring about who designed him, cheerful as ever with that dissonant, too-deep voice and its alien reverb. "That is why, now that User Falk Imrea and User Rachiel Medry are both dead, you are my second favorite user!" Claws clap together, but the actual clapping sound seems to be coming from the synthesized sound box at Azoth's throat. Colorful confetti pixels burst over the visor.
But Loren is insisting that Azoth cut it out on more than one occassion, and Azoth is not entirely cruel under that heartless metal chassis of his.
Azoth accepts the tablet, and for all the murder those claws are made for, somehow Azoth operates the thing without a hint of damage. He might not even be quite making contact with the screen.
And it is a genuine effort he is making to assess the data and the problem, and what fix he may need to perform -- or if even directly plugging in might be a better way to address the problem from inside, if the tablet provides little helpful data.
"A preview, then, of an alternate user experience."
A beep sequence begins high and tones down, and there's a soft whirr as Azoth's plates open and steam releases. As if literally deflating, the machine's posture slumps. No longer hovering, the height is smaller than it once was, footing unstable on such thin, blade-like feet. The brilliant gradient of Azoth's lights dim down. They become simply blue and blue alone, weak in their pulse.
Azoth's voice softens too, losing its dangerous reverb and ancient depth. It sounds much more like the one he spouts off language in, however misguidedly, in the more human guise.
"Sorry. I know it wasn't your choice to come out here to get me, and that you'd probably be happier if there wasn't any of me left to find... But... thank you."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Falk Imrea wasn't someone he knew. But when Azoth speaks Medry's name, Loren makes the sort of face that one might if someone had trod on their grave.
...Not that Solarians, even of the First Class, have graves.
"Stop," he says, actually looking pained.
At this, and perhaps at the rest of Loren's requests, Azoth does him a favor and ceases.
Loren looks away, digging his fingernails into his palms. "Don't break it. I'm already in enough hot water with IT as it is," he adds, watching the waves lap in. "Or the Gear. Unless you want to stay here."
Maybe... Azoth would prefer that, comes the little insistent thought. Lan didn't want to go back. Does he want to go back? If he doesn't, he'll never get repaired. And even if that's something Loren, himself, would be just fine with--
Or maybe he's overthinking this by thinking Azoth 'wants' anything.
Azoth announces a preview of an alternate user experience, prompting Loren to look back at him as his shape alters in those few subtle ways. He doesn't say anything at first. He just watches.
Azoth... apologizes.
And thanks him.
The expression on Loren's face can rightly be called 'complicated'. People don't thank him much, as a rule. In fact, he'd almost rather they didn't. It's easier, in a way, when people hate you. Or simply dislike you.
"...Is that really how you feel?" he asks Azoth, finally. "Or is this another... what did you call it. 'User experience'."
Would it be easier if it were real? Or if it were fake?
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth does not presently have a face to look pained with. Just that obnoxious tone of voice and all to jovial display at the deaths of people they once knew, as if they were simply scheduled tasks on an old agenda.
And weren't they?
But ever merciful (naturally!), Azoth settles and quiets, studying the tablet with gentle care -- a request Loren thankfully needed not make, as Azoth is not in the habit of destroying technology that isn't active hostile, and even then.
Except when Loren mentions staying here. There is the smallest, curious little beep lilted up. But breaking a tablet only delays the inevitable. Also, it's rude. Also, it's against his current orders.
Loren asks, instead, a question. He asks the question, as it were. Azoth is silent a long time, studying the data instead.
"Good question," Azoth eventually replies. "I know I didn't want to be stuck down there, and I know I would rather deal with you than most anyone else in Gebler... So. Yes. That is how I feel, if you're willing to believe I feel anything."
Azoth looks up from the tablet. "Are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
What would it be like to be caught under the waves?
Forever?
Some things, Loren decides in that very moment, don't bear thinking about. Even for someone like Azoth -- about whom Loren currently harbors a good many strong feelings -- doesn't deserve that sort of fate. Most probably, nobody does, or at least no one he can currently bring to mind.
Neither does he miss the fact that it takes Azoth a while to respond. He's not always the most observant young man -- he does try! -- but it sticks for him. Especially in context with everything else.
So there's no one else in Gebler with whom Azoth would rather deal with? No one at all? Just... him. That seems, even -- no, especially -- to Loren, to be a particularly lonely thing to express. Not even someone in engineering? Not even Seraphita, or another of the Elements?
It's also a statement that he finds he doesn't know what to do with, precisely.
"...How should I know?" is what he says, as nonsensical a reply as it might be in response to Azoth's prompting. "You're always showing some... other face," he continues, shaking his head. "Is the 'you' now the same as the 'you' I spoke to the last time?" Back when he'd asked for -- and received -- no more lies. "Or is this another..."
Loren grimaces, trailing off. He'd been taught that Lambs -- surface-dwellers -- were just barbarians, that they couldn't control themselves. That they brought the world to ruin time and time again and that's why they needed to be brought to heel, before it was too late. That whatever they felt and thought and said were just examples of them being out of control. Little better than beasts, some had even said.
The people on the surface had hopes, dreams, nightmares, and despair. Some were just as bad as he'd been told. Others were far better than the people he'd known in Etrenank. Others still were... they just were. The people on the surface had many faces.
So do the people of Solaris.
"Ugh... I'm too tired for this," he says, rolling his head to the right and pulling a face as if put upon. "Fine. I believe you," he tells Azoth as he looks away.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Would it be better for Azoth to be trapped there instead of trapped there? Once he might have said 'yes'.
Now, he has promises to keep. Promises that cannot take place trapped below the waves, looking forlornly at an unreachable veil.
And right now, he keeps looking at Loren with that faceless visage, not providing into pictographic symbols of expression while he waits for a response. Only a quiet, dim hum of blue energy. Loren did ask for no more lies. But Azoth never promised him that the truth would be easy to parse. The least Azoth can do is give him time to internally squirm about it.
But, finally, Loren has an answer, and the visor goes ^ ^ again.
"Oh, good, at least one of us believes it!"
Azoth's attention falls back on the tablet. His tone softens as before.
"Either all of it is real, or none of it is. I don't know that any of what I experience internally qualifies as 'normal' or 'equivalent' to your own phenomenon of emotions... the problem of 'qualia', right? But whatever I do experience, it's important to someone. I've determined that's... satisfactory. Either way, you asked for the truth and I have acted in accordance with that command since."
Azoth produces a cheerful string of beeps. "...It's just most of the time, the 'truth' is your screaming and complaining registers as confirmation to successfully performed behaviors, resulting in positive feedback. So. You know."
There's less robotic ways of putting that, but they're probably all even more annoying.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The truth is never easy, as Loren has found again and again. Sometimes, he wonders if it wouldn't be simpler to just ask people to lie to him instead -- or why he insists on the hard way through life and everything else.
But he'd asked for it, and so he'd gotten it: the truth, or at least, a truth.
Just like the people of Solaris, or Filgaia, or Lunar or anywhere else, Azoth is complicated. Is what he's talking to a program, lying to itself and him to trick reality into thinking it's 'alive'? Or is he more akin to any other person -- like the way he presents himself differently when he's talking to Major Sadalbari, or Lan, or (ugh) Tabitha, or even facing himself down in the mirror?
Loren doesn't have a good answer for that except... maybe there's no difference.
It isn't as if Azoth -- as he admits -- can do better. A machine's experiences of the world aren't the same as his own.
And that goes for Anat, Loren thinks suddenly, hunching his shoulders slightly at the unwelcome lonely chill that settles across his upper back and down his arms and spine. What's their 'existence' like? It can't be the same as his own, either, and yet...
Perhaps it's 'satisfactory', because it's important to someone.
Loren isn't looking at Azoth now, his gaze downcast as he folds his arms across his chest. "'Satisfactory'... huh."
Azoth isn't done. Straightening abruptly as Azoth spells it out for him, Loren wheels towards him, his eyes widened in barely banked anger. "And--?" he all but demands, a far cry from the version of himself he'd demonstrated just moments before. "I haven't forgiven you yet, you realize! So don't push it!"
Not that he can... do anything meaningful to Azoth.
That's just the facts.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth regards Loren quietly, letting him work through whatever his thoughts are. If only Azoth knew the half of it. But all Azoth knows is: there is a lot there, whatever it is.
They're always so much, humans. And unlike him, they struggle with the 'why' of anything in their heads. That must be terribly frightening. Knowing why is bad enough!
'Satisfactory', Loren echoes, and it does occur to Azoth it could be something of an understatement. Regardless.
But the mood shifts, as it should and as it must, and Azoth's beeps seem akin to something like laughter, especially with the obnoxious persistence of his 'happy' visor face. "Nor I you, User Loren! In this, we are even!"
Not that Azoth can do anything about that, either. Except... for all of this.
He offers the tablet back to Loren. "But I still trust you."
With a flick of his tail, Azoth lifts from the ground and approaches Schiehallion. "Now, let me see if I can repair my friend here, and we three will be on our way..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Old habits die hard. Loren has been bottling up a lot of what goes on for him for about a decade now, and he's hardly likely to stop anytime soon. Lan has enough of a hard time getting him to talk about what's going on in his life, and she's his friend -- even getting to the root of some of his more persistent problems literally took divine intervention.
Humans are pretty weird about this stuff, as Azoth may be aware. It's not enough for any of them to simply be. They need to also know 'why'.
Azoth admits that he also hasn't forgiven Loren and here, Loren has the temerity to look startled. As if he were silently asking, 'what did I do'?
...Even if he doesn't ask the question out loud.
Still dumbfounded, particularly at that declaration that he trusts Loren, even so, he silently accepts the return of his tablet. "...Sure," he says at last. He can't say the same in turn, not without knowing that incident won't repeat.
But he also knows that it will. As long as Azoth and Lan are on different sides, it can and will happen again. He knows this logically, even if his heart rejects it out of turn every time.
So instead, he shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. As long as we can get out of..."
Azoth isn't the first one to refer to Schiehallion as a 'friend'. Almost, there is something that Loren wants to ask, parting his lips as he gazes sidelong at Azoth.
"...Yeah," he says, finally. "They've had a rough time of it today." Schiehallion exists to protect him, as Anat had told him once. It's fine, it will recover. But it doesn't mean he can't have sympathy for... yes, even his Gear.
"I think they're owed a rest."