Baby lately the plans we're making

[headandhand]

WHO: Open to all Dualizens
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: Our Crazy Jane's Gallows!
WHEN: January 7-10
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without faces - but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in just fine! But for the rest of you, the Head knows this is gonna be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!


NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating. Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask (possibly invasive) personal questions and receive results - or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship, whatever works! But don't be too shy - you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

Upon arrival, most will be ushered in by the Admins into the Gallery. Just ignore that large painting on the graffiti wall. Once inside you can begin to mingle and meet your fellow Dualizens, the city has also provided box wine, crackers and cheese as refreshments, a lovely Charcuterie spread laid out for any to sample while looking at the art and mingling.

This month there are two other lovely items for your amusement or horror! First off is a Karaoke machine, how the hell did they pull off getting every song you can think of with lyrics to all? Though, nearly every foul word is replaced with the sound a goose honking, have fun with that! Also, along with your normal note cards of questions you will find blank paper and kiddie packs of crayons. Make some art and leave it behind or leave it for your new friend!

Comments

NAPtime

[sirentologist]

"Oh good heavens, no. There's enough chatter from other people, I certainly don't need it from insects too. God, the distraction!" As if the people traipsing through her lab at all hours wasn't enough, now she'd have to hear the bugs too? That actually sounded like torture. What did bugs even talk about? I scared the hell out of some girl today, it was hilarious?

"Damn, now it's my turn, isn't it?" She sighs, and looks at the cards in front of her because really, there is nothing about any person that she's interested enough in to come up with a question on her own.

"Oh my...'Would you rather run through the streets naked, or spend a week being lectured by your mother?'"

[notalive]

"I like chatter from people...most of the time." People are interesting, even the ones who think they're boring. But then, Connor worked for a police department during a revolution, then came to a city where everyone is from a different universe. People have to work to be boring in these situations. "Not sure I'd think the same about insects."

His first instinct at Tannis's question is to say, well, I don't have a mother, but that's not the point of the question. It's about being lectured by an authority figure, one very good at making you feel very small...

He's aggravated and a little alarmed to think immediately of Amanda, the AI formerly tasked with being his handler, then his attempted executioner.

Well, with that in mind... He doesn't realise he'd looked stricken for a second, but the grimace is deliberate enough.

"I'll take going naked. I don't feel the cold, so it could be a lot worse." A few months ago, he'd have confidently said he wouldn't feel the embarrassment of nudity, either, but he's found since deviating that embarrassment is a strange, unpredictable, horrible thing. Just not as horrible as a full week of rowing Amanda around the zen garden river.

"Uh..." His cards are boring; he stares at the ceiling instead. This whole imagination thing is harder than it looks. After a moment, he looks back down and taps one of the cards. "This card has on it exactly how, when and where you'll die, and you can't change it. Would you look?"

[sirentologist]

"How on earth could you get anything done?" Because he's probably a normal person, Tannis, like everyone else who doesn't mind people and socializing and, god forbid, small talk.

"Of course. Having a...'dead'line, so to speak, is rather invigorating. And at least I would know when I had to accomplish all of my tasks." And by tasks she means deadly experiments that are probably going to be reason she ends up dead in the first place. How very thrilling.

And yet there are so many questions she has regarding his response. "Doesn't feel the cold" sounds so very interesting, and she almost demands an answer on that, but then there's Lilith's voice echoing in her head that it isn't polite. She might not have cared before but now...well. Things are different now.

"How interesting. I would like very much to know how you manage that. Not that it really matters much, Pandora is a desert, after all, there isn't much call for immunity to the cold." Unless the temperature control in her lab malfunctions again. But that's what the saurian corpse is for.

Her turn again. She's still not great at this, so looks back down at the cards. These questions are all so stupid...

"If you were a crayon what color would you be?"

[notalive]

"I manage well enough. I'm a traffic cop, I spend most of my days wandering aimlessly around the city not talking to anybody." And when you put it like that, it sounds depressing. He needs another job.

Maybe the reason that question came to him so readily is that he's been there. He's known roughly when and how he would meet his end, although at the time he refused to call it dying and thought of himself more as equipment being switched off. Somehow hearing another person's perspective of that is nice.

"It's not that interesting, I promise." Of course, interesting in Connor's mind is...magic. Superpowers. Even a human who just plain doesn't mind cold. "I'm an android. I know when it's cold, I just don't mind it.

"Blue," he says almost automatically. "I don't know... I like blue." He taps his LED, currently a cool, stable blue on his temple. "It means everything's alright."

The questions definitely aren't great, he agrees with that. But they get things started - and they help him find out more important things.

"What's it like living in a desert? I've never seen one."

[sirentologist]

"That sounds absolutely wonderful, perhaps I'll have to try it." Oh, Connor. If only Tannis could get away with never talking to anyone ever again. It would be positively blissful. Imagine all the science she could do! No interruptions, no other people, no having to put her own projects on hold for somebody else... If Heaven exists, that's certainly what it's like.

"An android? How fascinating! I must say, you are far more...advanced than the androids available in my neck of the woods, so to speak. And less chatty. Which makes you a thousand times better already." If only Claptrap would take a trip out the nearest vent.

"It's very hot, mostly. But I suppose the bigger problem are the bandits. And the wildlife." Making life difficult, shooting everything in sight, eating people...the bandits, too.

[notalive]

"I'm sure the PD's hiring," he says with a huff of a laugh. "I don't think I'll be there much longer anyway."

After that awkward moment when a mole got him beaten up in the street, he hasn't felt as warmly towards them. Not that he had warm feelings towards them exactly. Pity towards the people - clones, who are also people - who worked there, maybe. It's hard to work with people you pity.

There aren't many jobs where he can avoid everybody in the city who's been cloned.

Connor's never been complimented on not being particularly chatty before. He huffs out a laugh imagining some kind of basic robot talking a mile a minute all the same.

"Sounds like you lived rough," and for someone from 2030s Detroit, that's impressive just because, "I think the lack of air conditioning alone would be the end for a lot of people where I'm from."

Beat.

"I don't think I've ever seen wildlife before. Except pigeons."

They were being kept in someone's apartment, that barely counts.

[sirentologist]

"Count yourself lucky that you've never seen a ratch or a skag, or even worse a bandit. Disgusting creatures, eating people who wander too close. And the skags vomit, too." Ugh. Thank god she doesn't have to go too far from Sanctuary. Or here, apparently. And there's no skags or giant annoying bugs to get into her laboratory and ruin everything.

"It's almost a paradise here. Except all the people. But then, I suppose most places that aren't Pandora are exceedingly cushy."

[notalive]

"You've convinced me I don't like animals as much as I thought I did," Connor says with a grin. "Pigeons and pet dogs are fine. Something with a name like skag that vomits isn't what I pictured about the great outdoors."

He doesn't know why the word 'skag' sounds bad, but something about it just does all the same.

"Hey," because there is no good time to mention this, and he might as well do it now, "do you remember the ball? A couple months back?"

[sirentologist]

"Good. They're disgusting." Granted, the animals on Pandora are much different than the ones she's seen around here, but still! They're always making a mess of everything, screaming for no discernible reason, mating in public...ugh.

And what a change of topic. She raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment, choosing to just answer the question directly.

"I do. It was terrible. What about it?"

[notalive]

Connor would have considered himself an animal person until this conversation, so maybe it was just better to change the subject before he becomes too profoundly grateful that his pet dog is an robot dog.

"I meant to apologise for it," he says with a grimace. "I was supposed to be chaperoning Karen that night and she got a little out of control. You got the full brunt of it... Well, almost."

The full brunt would have been if Karen wasn't straight. So he has that to be grateful for.

[sirentologist]

"Why? It was utterly fascinating! I would love the chance to experience it again! The implications are gloriously terrifying!" So she's maybe a little strange, but that's definitely an ability she's never even heard of before. And she definitely needs to study it further. For science.