2021-07-13: Walk On
- Log: Walk On
- Cast: Azoth, Lan Lilac
- Where: Ruins of Zanarkand
- Date: July 13, 2021
- Summary: When Lan slips away from the others after climbing Mt. Gagazet, Azoth follows to protect her... and receive help in return.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
With Loren and Seraphita able to verify that Azoth was still following Solaris' directives for him and was not, in fact, malfunctioning nonsensically or had somehow otherwise gone rogue, Azoth was no longer compelled to remain in their presence. They were safe, and hey had their own orders, and he had his.
The problem was, not being a nonsensical, malfunctioning mess was still news to him. But the readings were here, however faint and difficult to follow. To find them, he would have to keep looking -- aimlessly scanning and searching as he looks over the Zanarkand ruins. Why why why?
This left him enough room to act on secondary objectives. To be more precise, it was necessary to be motivated by secondary objectives while his primary ones remained uncertain.
"Lan," he says to her, still with that robotic, emotionless tone. "Users Loren and Seraphita have proceeded toward their own tasks. User Loren's call in has been aborted." He pauses, glancing down. "Threat of your retrieval today is low."
Azoth, there is a fine line between trying not to fake anything and being needlessly obtuse with people who have to pick apart your robo-speak.
"...What is your estimation of your core temperature?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Although Lan doesn't know what Azoth is thinking about, she'd likely agree (though maybe not in so many words). When you don't know how to get where you're going, focus on what you can do. Otherwise you'll just end up spinning your wheels.
After they'd all had a chance to regroup and rest for a few minutes, Lan had thought to put a little distance between herself and the others. Even if it didn't seem likely that Loren would make that call, even if Seraphita hadn't mentioned apprehending her... Well, it just seemed kind of a good idea to slip away when they weren't looking. There's no need to invite more trouble, right?!
And so she'd left Seraphita's pink knitted cap where it could be easily found and when the others had become preoccupied with their own tasks... Lan just kind of stood up, sidled towards a wall, and crept away. Sneak bonus!
This was about thirty seconds ago, and Lan is busy congratulating herself for being so sneaky when Azoth speaks. "Ack!"
But it's just to tell her that she's probably safe for now, and honestly? That's pretty good to hear. "I hope they won't be upset that I didn't say goodbye," Lan says, looking past him in the direction of Seraphita and Loren. "But I didn't think it was a good idea to stick around." It's going to be nightfall in a while, and the temperature is only going to get colder. "My-- Uh, I don't really know how to tell my core temperature without that thingy Loren has. The medical scanner," she tries to explain, tracing its boxy outline in the air. "But I'm not too cold yet. Aren't you going to stay and help them?"
Lan has no idea that Azoth was also a 'missing asset' for a while.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth takes a step back when he startles Lan. He has not entirely gotten the hang of announcing himself to people 'properly'. Yet. In his persona, he leans into excessive enthusiasm -- so excited to be here that BAM, there he is! Without it... perhaps the suddenness reads as more threatening.
Maybe he should calculate making more noise with his feet? But the calculations to not do that have far more practical use.
"They will understand," Azoth assures her. He thinks Loren will -- that Loren will be grateful she hadn't, because Loren, frustratingly, still acts at odds with his own objectives, but at least seems to be aware of that. Seraphita... Azoth can't be sure of her yet. Does she, too, play with a kind of persona to protect herself? Or does her position of power afford her sincerity?
It is only going to get colder. Azoth raises his own body heat again to act as a small generator in Lan's presence. The snow at his feet melts. "Recovering from the condition 'too cold' will introduce more complications than prevention. ...Requesting permission to accompany you to your destination."
He glances back toward the direction they've both snuck off from. "My assistance is not required," Azoth says. "Nor is it my primary objective."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
He's already reminded her more than once - in his own way, as clearly as he could - that he can't always be trusted. Through no fault of his own, and against his own wishes to be sure... but that doesn't change the programming Solaris forced into him, or its consequences. Lan barely even understands it, but at least he made her aware.
"Yeah. I don't like it, but it can't be helped. Goodbyes are supposed to... I dunno. They're supposed to be said. They comfort people when we don't know how long it will be until we see each other again." Azoth had said he experiences time differently than humans do. Maybe he doesn't miss people who aren't here with him, if he knows he'll probably see them again...
The snow melts at Azoth's feet, and Lan looks down before sighing a bit ruefully. "I knooooow. I just... I've never really been anyplace this cold before. Not even Sielje or Nortune were so..." Just utterly, bitterly cold, without the safety and surety of an inn or even just a pub waiting nearby. How do the Ronso live here and not constantly just freeze to death?! Their fur doesn't look thick enough!! "I grew up in the desert. So... geez, when you said this wasn't my optimal environment, you sure weren't kidding."
But even so, she steps a little closer to Azoth, already glad for the warmth she can feel through the wool of her pants and on her face. "I don't... really have a destination in mind. I'm just here to meet back up with a friend. But I don't mind if you come along. You'd like Gwen a lot, anyway."
Still close enough to him to feel the radiant warmth lick at her face, Lan starts walking. The long-abandoned streets feel a bit claustrophobic, or maybe it's just the long shadows thrown by the crumbling walls. "...So what is your primary objective? Can I ask that?"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth looks toward the ruins, his bright eyes vacant for a moment. "Comfort." He echoes the word carefully, testing it. "I had concluded exchanging farewells to announce the last opportunity to relay any important communications before an extended time apart." He looks back to Lan. "If there is more Loren needs to say, he is not ready. But... comfort... That is important."
For all the emotionlessness he projects, it seems he still places value on these concepts.
"This is an extreme environment," Azoth agrees. "I do not know that anyone predicted this level of severity. But I can provide additional warmth while we remain together."
His eyes brighten just a touch with her agreement, and with the mention of Gwen. "The courier," he says. "Gwen was among the first Drifters I engaged with combat beside while operating on the surface. She pushes her physical abilities to their limit with little heed of her own condition. It is admirable and worrying." Not to mention, the the whole incident with her seeming to be possessed by flame... "It is reassuring that she has a companion who demonstrates a high level of consideration and compassion."
Perhaps he places a lot of value on these concepts.
Azoth follows after Lan, staying as close as she put herself -- but no closer -- as he follows after her. His gaze constantly wanders, eyes audibly giving whirs as he runs his scans. The subject of his primary objective is one that has become jumbled. He has admitted pieces of the search to others. But that they don't know that they're his primary objectives, or who set them and why, has permitted that until this point. But Lan remains an interesting case... She's still registered as a Solaris asset.
"You do not have authorization for the entirety of that data," he says, and how helpful he is to let her know some omission is going on! (Somewhere, a Solaris engineer screams.) "But I am missing data -- memories. I have detected some of it may be within this area."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan watches him, the soft glow of Azoth's eyes reflecting in her own. "Well, I mean that's true too. But even leaving a letter with all that stuff in it isn't as good as getting a chance to hug someone one more time, or wish them well in person when you can." Because Lan, it seems, also puts a high priority on things like that.
"--Loren? He's kind of always been like that, as long as I've known him." It feels like forever, but it's only been three or four years, hasn't it? "He's the kind of person who thinks a lot, but doesn't tell you about half of it. He crabs about stuff instead." Even so, Lan hadn't found it to be a dealbreaker, especially since it could be entertaining to go back and forth with him.
They continue on, skirting past what might have been a fountain at one point. A curved lip surrounds a tiled pool, but any water it once contained has been gone for centuries. "Oh, so you know her already!" she brightens, looking up from where she's running a gloved hand over the smooth stone. "She's really strong... but yeah, it really worries me too when she does stuff like that. I know she's tough, but what happens if she overdoes it one day? But I guess that's just part of it. Being considerate of them, I mean, and wanting them to do well. You just... worry, sometimes." Is her mother worrying about her, right now?
...Is someone out there worrying about Azoth? The thought slows her in her tracks.
"...How do memories work? For you, I mean," she adds quickly, before she can jinx herself or anything. "If you see something important, will you remember what you forgot? Or is it... I saw a sphere once, with someone's memory recorded in it."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"Yes. A hug can be a critically important communication."
But Azoth pauses with that, considering. Hugs are still an uncertain gesture. Important. But uncertain.
"You are important to him," Azoth says of Loren. "This has been observed, in spite of his actions and behaviors contrary to your best interests. And his own. ...I will continue observation of his mental state and mitigate further distress where able."
Because Lan seems to care about him too. And Lan can't -- and shouldn't -- be there for him.
At the once-a-fountain, Azoth stops a moment, palms set to the rim of it to look down below. There is no data or memories down below. It would not make sense for them to be, but it does not make sense for them to be here at all, so why not check the places calculated to be the most absurd? He squints, eyes more focused. A sequence of official sounding beeps escapes him, and then a bzzt. There are no ancient AI memories in a dried up old Zanarkand fountain.
"It is hypothesized she worries for you," Azoth says, looking back to Lan. "I will provide assistance toward ending your 'goodbye' with Gwen."
Lan slows, and so does Azoth, but he didn't predict it enough not to nearly run into her. He stops just short with a surprised beep.
Memories. Azoth holds out his hand, using his holographic display to project the image of a... rabbit, of all things. A fluffy brown bunny. "My memory is stored as 'data' within me. It functions similarly to the sphere you reference. What I experience with my available senses is recorded and stored."
"Data can be corrupted -- present, but impossible to understand." The image of the rabbit distorts, glitched and uncomfortable to look at, absolutely unrecognizable as a rabbit at all.
"Data can be deleted -- inaccessible for recollection." The rabbit image is restored... only to vanish. "But memories are complex and connected. If a deleted memory has a connection to a present one, its absence is observed." Now there is the outline of a rabbit, like a holographic cookie cutter.
This doesn't answer her immediate question though, and Azoth pauses briefly, dismissing his projections. "...I do not know the answer to your question -- visual input may restore a corrupted memory if it provides information that logically connects my valid data. Additional testing required. But I am searching for deleted memories that have been backed up and stored externally."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
...Yes. I was worried. Loren had said that to her once, when Lan asked. She'd been overwhelmed by her memories and the assumed presence of the Stranger, and had fainted. Loren called it a seizure, and made her rush back to base with him to be poked and prodded and given something called a 'neuro exam' that involved lying down on a table while a machine whirred overhead.
"...He's important to me, too. We're friends. I..." Shouldn't be. Lan knows she's stupid for ignoring the things she's seen, and the things he's done, and the things they've both said. "...I was assigned to him when Solaris took me. Before that we were just people who traveled together sometimes. It was fun, seeing him discover the world. I thought he was a medical student from one of the Seed Cities, and that's why he was so awkward with... well, everything." It's not like Lan, in some ways naive even for a Filgaian, could have imagined the concept of a city hidden beyond the sky.
And even though he'd chafed at her presence, even though she couldn't possibly understand him, they'd slowly become intertwined, like trees planted too close to each other. "Thank you. I try not to worry her too much... but I guess it can't be helped."
The beep makes her look up from the empty fountain, and Lan is greeted with a wondrous sight. An image made of light, floating easily above Azoth's hand. Her eyes shine as she stares at it, the winter cold forgotten momentarily. Lan continues to stare at it, lavender gaze occasionally flickering up to meet Azoth's eyes as he explains. The glitched image makes her visibly uneasy, the corner of her mouth turning down. It reminds her of... of what?
"...So..." She pieces the explanation together fairly quickly for someone who only recently learned what a computer even is. "They're like missing puzzle pieces, as well as missing... well, memories. But if you found them, and could, uh, access them? It would be like you never forgot?" The very idea seems... fantastic. Unbelievable. "That's great! We just have to find them!"
We?
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"He is still learning," Azoth says. "I have seen a Gebler change before. Friendship has been observed to motivate shifts in ideology. I hypothesize that Loren Voss may be another who can change."
But what if Loren pays the same price for that change? (And won't the price paid be so much worse if he can't change?)
I try not to worry her too much... but I guess it can't be helped.
Azoth shakes his head. "It cannot be. Worry is a product of caring. It is inevitable." And not a bad thing, he's decided for himself. Not that he doesn't understand the desire to mitigate it.
With Lan's fascination with the hologram, Azoth directs it to hop and move and scurry around through his explanation. This makes it quite strange when it becomes a cookie cutter version of itself, but that only helps the explanation. Her frown, though -- Azoth considers the glitch.
And he considers those dark lines upon her in their battle together, and the way her body kept going, and how when Gwen was possessed by flame, a man heralded by crows had made Azoth's sensors go off as if all his data had been corrupted. He dismisses the glitched version early because of it, and tries to ease it by letting a hopping bunny linger there after he's done explaining everything. Does that help reestablish something less painful...?
Puzzle pieces. Azoth gives a bright beep-whir despite the lack of change to his face. "Affirmative. And an elegant metaphor. I will implement it in the future."
But --
"Query: We?"
There was another reason he could tell Lan his objective. Because he had calculated that if she understood this part of it, she would offer her help. An ache blossoms as calculations ping inside him with the success of it. That little bloom of positive feedback for progressing his objectives colliding with every secondary objective helplessly screaming in opposition.
"You are offering... assistance?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Azoth dismisses the image quickly in favor of something less upsetting, and it seems to put Lan at ease again. Eventually she can't resist the urge any longer, and reaches out a fingertip to try and experience what the light feels like against skin. Is it like normal light and only tangible by its heat? Or does it hum against her fingertip like a lightning spell? Maybe it'll be soothing, like her starlight...
But more important than even that novelty, Azoth mentions that he knew a Gebler who actually did change their ways. "Can you tell me about them? Was it really having a friend that did it?" she asks. ...She hopes they're okay. When she'd been on base, Leah had explained a little bit to her about the cameras, and that people are always watching. It had been even creepier, once Lan had woken up again.
If someone changed their mind, and stopped believing all the poison that Solaris spills into their ears... wouldn't someone like Leah do something about it?
...Instead of making Loren kill her, would they make Leah kill Loren?
Would anyone need to make her?
...But it's not right to let someone you care about do evil. Even just the evil of turning the other way while you do nothing.
"Of course," Lan nods. "They're your memories, right? ...It hurt, to watch Loren losing his. It must hurt to not have them. I don't know that I'll recognize yours if I see them, but why wouldn't I offer to help?"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
The hologram is only warmth. The light has no hard edges to it. Whatever power it is, it isn't the same one Azoth uses to produce all of his blades and energy weapons that he hurls like spells unto themselves. Just a bunny of light... that Azoth can make react to Lan as if she had touched it, even though her finger makes no contact with any surface. Its cheek squishes and its ears flop.
"His name was Falk Imrea," Azoth says. It isn't classified information, what happened. Even most of Solaris has convinced themselves they don't know what really happened or why. Only Azoth does. It's his information to give, and his information to bury, however he calculates it. "He befriended a third class beastfolk engineer and... an advanced artificial intelligence."
Azoth fixates his gaze on the image of the rabbit before dismissing it. "We provided him with new data. This data altered his beliefs and behavior, resulting in a refusal to follow orders. But his death resulted from a later attempt to steal Solaris property."
A dry explanation. But Azoth's gaze has lost all of its focus, vacant and staring into Zanarkand as if it were empty space.
He refocuses on Lan. "...Thank you, Lan. The current hypothesis is that we may 'know it when we see it'." That is, perhaps, why he hasn't found much. He points to eyes, which adopt a blue-fuchsia gradient. "The coloration of my energy signature may be relevant." May.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Falk Imrea. She's never heard that name before. Lan watches Azoth as he speaks, her hand lowering away from the hologram as he tells her what happened when a Gebler soldier tried to become a better person.
"He died..." She murmurs the words like she doesn't want to believe them. But she does. A country that would enslave thousands would have no qualms with killing one of their own for putting a tow out of line. But, even worse... to have befrinded that person, and then to lose them like that.
What kind of 'feedback' must that have given Azoth? What does guilt taste like to a robot?
Azoth stares out across the ruins and Lan can't help herself - even though heat's still pouring off of him, she steps in closer and gives him a loose hug - albeit a necessarily quick one before she has to step away again. "I'm sorry," she tells Azoth. "You must really miss him."
There's nothing she can do, except what she's always done - try to bring help and end suffering wherever she can. "I'll do my best to search for them, too."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
There's another part of the story. Another truth Azoth should tell.
But the feedback is already overwhelming. Azoth does not experience the taste of food, but guilt... that, he knows. No more. Not today. Not right now. He does not know which would be worse: the idea that it would frighten Lan, or that she would see a means to pierce right through it, like she's pierced through so many other aspects of Azoth.
Lan hugs onto him, and Azoth goes still. His chassis insulated by synthetic skin to keep him from burning her in the brief encounter. Azoth grips at his chest, over his core. "...I do."
She does not deserve to have her good intentions turned against her.
"I will not reject any help you can offer," he says. "...They are here, somewhere. For now, let us try to locate Gwen."
But that won't make up for what he's done, or what he may do.