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

[notalive]

“Not that much,” he admits. “Mostly snacks and a Christmas dinner I made myself...for the first time.”

So… No, he’s not coming from a place of wide culinary experience here.

"Why, got any recommendations?" He nods at the spread before them.

“I always come to the NAPs,” he says, trying another kind of cheese and deciding it’s...OK. It's not exactly the feta. “I don’t sit down and talk to people with cue cards much, but I like finding all these places I wouldn't come to otherwise. And I get to meet new people. I didn't think I would care about that so much, but I do."

He thinks it's important to try talking to as many people as he can. Maybe he'll like them and make new friends. Maybe he'll hate them and appreciate the friends he has already. It's never a waste of time.

"What about you?"

[skyward_eyes]

Dude, he's probably better than Nida. Nida MIGHT still burn water sometimes.

"Tacos," he suggests. Because they are complex flavors. And that's amazing. Still, he's glad Connor is meeting new people. The android deserves it. And the more people he meets, the more Connor might really buy that he's fully human, in his own way.

"I've been... busy in my own ways. Since the power outage."

The way he was saying 'since this place tried to kill us'.

[notalive]

Connor's got the whole supercomputer for a brain thing to thank for being able to cook on a basic level. As always, he's significantly more impressed by humans who can do the things he can do than he's ever satisfied with himself.

"Tacos?" he repeats to himself, making the mental note. "I'll add it to the list."

He'll never get through all of it, but he's making it all the same.

His expression darkens a little at the mention of the power outage, though.

"You were OK after that?" he asks a little hesitantly. Nida looks OK now, but it's been a while. Connor's been beaten up and shot in the interim and looks fine now, after all.

[skyward_eyes]

"Oh Connor, don't forget, I'm a very capable man," Nida smiles at the android. He'd been armed when things went down. Saved other people too. He quite enjoyed getting to take things apart again.

[notalive]

"I figured as much." He grins drily through a sip of his drink. "But I thought it'd be polite to make sure."

Nida probably had a damn sight less difficulty with the whole thing than Connor did - but he still can't resist saying something.

"I didn't have any trouble when I found my own. I already met a doppelganger once before, back home. I'm an android, it's not hard to make more of me once you've got one.

"But it was Hank's I couldn't deal with." He grimaces, then looks at Nida. "Did you notice that? That it was easier with yours than someone else's?"

[skyward_eyes]

"Well, there is no harm in being polite, so I do appreciate that," Nida smiles. Connor always makes him think like that. Perhaps he should be more polite too.

But then his smile turns to a soft frown. Face it, he TOTALLY thinks Connor and Hank have something going on by now. So that has to be bad.

"Actually, it depends. If I had run into Seifer's or Rinoa's I'd have hesitated. Or... Or Billy. But no one else. And my own was very easy. I sort of hate myself."

[notalive]

Hey, maybe it's rude to assume someone would happily put a bullet in the head of their doppelganger, what does Connor know.

"Hank's found us first," he says, hesitating a little. "I didn't want to kill him - at first I just wanted to know what he wanted and why he existed. Hank had to kill him."

He omits the bit about how Hank did it, how Connor was so close the blood spray sent his forensics suite into a cascade of errors. Some things are both confusing and maybe a little too personal. He also doesn't mention that he thinks Hank's reasons for being able to kill a 'man' with his own face so easily mirrored Nida's reasons.

"I didn't expect it to upset me so much, you know? Killing mine was easy."

He considers for a second how to respond to the bit of what Nida said that makes his mouth twist in displeasure.

"Well, I like you. And I think I'm a good judge of character." So basically, Nida, you're wrong. But Connor knows enough to know one person making one statement one night doesn't cancel out a lifetime of programming.

[skyward_eyes]

Men like Nida and Hank definitely dealt with issues that they would rather not deal with, right? Oh well. He accepts it and moves on. But he almost wants to laugh at the way Connor looks upset over the idea that Nida doesn't much like himself.

"Perhaps you are a decent judge, Connor. And you are a very good man. But I have a lifetime of regret, no way to fix it, and no purpose but keeping the people from my world safe. I survive, because I don't know how to do anything else. But I'm glad you and Hank are safe."

[notalive]

He's realised before that concepts like self-esteem and self-worth aren't easy for him. They're not concepts programmed into him any more than they're programmed into a cell phone. So he has to find them for himself, slowly build up an idea of where he fits into the world, and the best way to learn that is from other people.

Hard to learn, too, is the concept that people don't always see themselves the way he sees them. The smile he offers Nida is a small, sad one.

"I don't know how we got from cheese to me failing to give you a pep talk," he says ruefully, although he knows exactly how they got there. He just doesn't really like that they did. "But I can tell you that having a purpose isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm trying to enjoy not having one."

[skyward_eyes]

"You're succeeding in giving a pep talk. I'm failing to be pepped. That's completely on me," Nida corrects, offering a brief smile to Connor. He definitely wants to support his android friend.

But really, purposes matter. Nida can't really operate without one. But he doesn't know what to do without someone to guide him.