dualislogs | Baby lately the plans we're making

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Markus busied himself making the rounds, listening to conversations and acquainting himself with the others drawn here by whatever the Head's true plan was, wondering if he'd find anyone else from his world here, another android preferably, in order to expedite the knowledge transfer. The computers and other networked devices here were compatible with his systems in his experience, but not reliably.

He smiled slightly, though warily, when he rounded a corner and found Connor, confused by snack foods. His smile turned slightly nostalgic, the simple food bringing back memories.

"It's feta cheese with honey. It's not the classiest finger food, but a lot of galleries like to 'cut it cheap on the guests'. Not...my words."

He turns at the sound of the familiar voice, and his face cracks into a genuine, lop-sided grin. The arrival of another android in the city might have been a worry - people who might know him as nothing but a deviant hunter, or won't know him at all, leaving him living in fear of them finding out. But that it's Markus is both an overwhelming relief an a surge of hope he hadn't expected to feel.

The Heart wouldn't listen to Connor speaking of his experiences of Markus. But Markus himself? He has an uncanny ability to make people want to listen.

"I was never taught classy tastes," he says with a tiny shrug. "Maybe one day I'll develop them for myself."

He lives with Hank Anderson; he never stood a chance. He pops some more of the cheese - the feta - into his mouth.

"Manfred?" he asks a moment later, genuinely interested. "He's an artist, right?"

Information he saw very briefly - that Kamski gifted a prototype android model to him. Some years later that android stood in a TV tower and changed the world.

Markus smiles, glad to see this Connor isn't from some strange, alternate dimension in which they'd never met, or in which he'd made a different decision. Even before he sends a wireless transmission to confirm, the relief in his eyes is obvious.

I'm glad you're here. Later, somewhere less conspicuous, you need to catch me up.

"Maybe so." But there's a more important question, here. "How are you eating?"

They were different models, it was true, but if the new prototypes were capable of food consumption, that was never knowledge he'd acquired.

He does nod in response to Connor's question. "Yes. I was his companion for several years, and later his in-home nurse. He...treated me like a son and I miss him."

Connor's LED flickers as he receives the message - though almost nobody in the city has ever seen it flash in that specific pattern before; they won't know what it means.

Definitely. And the next information he sends is Connor's room number at the dorms, as well as rough directions from the dorms to the office space in the back of a warehouse where he spends some of his nights fixing Roombas. Where he checks nightly for bugs as well as thoroughly dismantling every one of the little vacuum cleaners as soon as they arrive, to check them for bugs too. All of that filters over their connection.

But out loud, he continues the conversation as if nothing happened, "You can...upgrade yourself here. Humans can do it too. It's done with a mixture of the advanced technology here and..." He pauses, figures Markus is going to have to find out eventually and ploughs on, "magic. I have a makeshift stomach, and the ability to heal my skin by myself."

There's a scar on his left temple, and he turns to indicate it to Markus. He's tried not to be too weirdly excited about the fact that he has a scar, can heal himself in a way that is literally miraculous...but he is. He can't help the little smile on his face as he taps on the slightly raised ridge on his skin.

"I didn't realise you were so close to him." He only ever knew what the database told him. "On the one hand, it could be surprising what you ended up doing back home."

He doesn't say what it was Markus did - doesn't want it coming back to bite them in the future unless Markus wants it that way.

"But on the other, I'm actually not surprised at all." Maybe it takes someone who knows what agency is to show the way of it to others who've never before known it at all.

They may not know its meaning, but Markus frowns in concern as he watches. Understood or no, if given enough reason, people could catch wise. You should remove that. It was a simple enough procedure, and the damage easy enough to cover.

"Magic." It was difficult to believe, even as he files away the information streamed to him for later reference. "Do you require food now?" It seemed like an interesting enhancement, but requiring regular meals could become a nuisance. He blinks, eyebrows raising at the obvious 'healing'. Was this the magic Connor was referring to? It was...disturbing, but something he could think through later.

He smiles at the question, nodding. "He always encouraged me. He...knew I was alive before I really did."

Connor grimaces, a reaction so strong and immediate it takes a second to school his expression. I know. I don't want to, but I do have to.

He's an android. Now that the revolutions done with, what he can do for androids is be visible. Be very obviously what he is and if that makes humans uncomfortable, let them be. He can take it. In a way, he was made to. But here, that gesture means absolutely nothing. It's just an identifying marker that literally lights him up like a beacon. And it has to go.

"I don't need it, no - it's just... I wanted to get involved." He gestures around. "A lot of organic social gatherings revolve around food. The only problem with it is that now I don't really like using my forensics suite."

It's hard to go from tasting food to having to put chemicals or blood into his mouth. Luckily, it rarely comes up around here.

Markus's comment about Carl hits home in a way that makes Connor smile as well, warmer than ever. "Yeah. That's what Hank was for me. He knew while I was still denying it."

They're easily replaced if you want to, later. It was a simple part, after all, and now, survival and anonymity were more important that representation. That could come after their freedom was assured.

"Do you have a reason to use your forensics suite here? Surely this place has something just as good, even if you have to take it to a lab." He does know Connor was assigned to the police department back home of course, and it would make sense to stick with familiar programming in such an unknown place.

"It's scary, being alive and responsible for your own fate. Denial's easier." He knew. It was easier and safer, but he'd been blind.

Baby lately the plans we're making

Appreciating cheese a thousand years late

Late is the only language I understand tbh

I completely understand

Re: I completely understand

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