dualislogs | kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

WHO: Open to all residents
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: The RoCocoa Cat Cafe
WHEN: Aug. 10-14
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, 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 juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta 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 queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! 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?!

This month’s event is held at the brand new RoCocoa Cat Cafe, a sparkly new establishment that caters to children and the young at heart with iced and hot cocoa drinks of all kinds, delicious pastries, age-appropriate live music, and of course many friendly kitties who love to lounge in laps. The cats are of all shapes, sizes, and colors, including some who may look a little different from what you expect, or may look like an ordinary cat but are actually anything but ordinary underneath that adorable fur coat. All cats in the cafe are adoptable, too, if you meet a new furry friend and just can’t bear to go home without them!

So pull up a chair, get to know your new neighbors, and enjoy a sugary treat or two with the resident furbabies. You might just meet your new two- or four-legged best friend!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You're definitely at the networking event, Connor," Nida promises as he settles in with his drink. He's very comfortable here, and he doesn't mind what he's got going on.

"Nice to meet you, Connor. I'm Nida. Where are you from?"

"Detroit," he answers easily enough, trying to gently discourage the clawing his thigh - he doesn't feel pain, per se, but it's a weird sensation. "This is actually my first time leaving the city."

And then, a full few seconds after he's answered, he remembers the situation they're in.

"Uh, that's in the United States." He frowns. "I'm not sure what the best answer is anymore."

If there are aliens and other worlds and if half of what he's already heard is true, some of the people here won't have heard of Detroit, maybe not even the USA.

“I’ve heard of it, from a man who was a Detective there. I don’t know how this place compares to what Hank remembers of your Earth, but I can say for sure there is at least one reason in this city who can talk about his Detroit place with you.”

Nida offers it with a smile. No reason to assume This Connor is that Connor. At all. But he is trying to comfort the new arrival

"Oh, you've met Hank," Connor says, looking up from the cat and perking up in recognition. "Right, I was his partner on a case. Same Detroit."

It was only a few days, even though it feels like a lot longer - just because so much ended up happening. And maybe because when you've only been alive for three months and only truly alive for two or three days, a few days is already a lot.

"Where did you come here from?"

Oh, it was that Connor. Nida's eyes are almost dancing with delight to hear that, a smile actually curving his lips. There was no chance in hell that he wasn't going to harass Hank over this.

"So you're that Connor. The partner. The one who got left at home. Well, I suppose he's not alone anymore."

Clearly this other man is delighting in Connor's presence too much. Enough to even overwhelm Nida's strange deja vu from seeing this man.

"Oh, where I come from isn't very important. I wanna ask you questions about Hank. We're friends, you see, but he doesn't open up about himself much."

Nida looks pretty happy to hear this - and Connor tilts his head minutely, a little catlike himself to match the one purring like some kind of engine on his lap. It seems to have given up on clawing him - instead it's curled up with both tails wrapped around its body, and petting it like this is oddly pleasant. And it gives him something to occupy his hands instead of fidgeting.

"That Connor," he repeats dryly. "Yeah, I guess I am."

He's going to make a wild stab in the dark and say Hank's talked about him a bit. It's a bit weird to find himself the subject of conversation - in a context that's not 'fucking androids taking our jobs/ruining the city/demanding freedom'. He likes it - sort of.

"Did he also tell you we've only known each other for less than a week?" Connor says, leaning back a little in his chair with the ghost of a grin. "I don't know how much more I could tell you."

That's true! But also Connor snooped through Hank's personal record, explored his house and went through the kind of intense experiences with him that made opening up almost inevitable...so maybe he does know more than most. If he wants to tell it.

"But you can try asking."

"No, he left that out," Nida admits. Damn, Hank, Nida wouldn't have thought you had it in you, old man. That fond in that little time? Interesting. Very interesting.

"Was he always so... Not fun? I mean, the guy has surly written all over him. I don't even know how I managed to sit through a conversation with him. Except I sort of owed him for not arresting me."

OK, this is easy to talk about. He's totally fine with passing judgement on Hank's social issues.

"Actually, I think he's better than he used to be. The first time we met, he refused to talk to me about our actual case until I bought him a drink."

Oh, now that's interesting. Nida actually laughs and shakes his head at this news.

"I met him after a bomb went off. He was keeping people back. I pretty much said 'fuck that' to the line because, well, I was worried. There are kids here, and in a dangerous situation, kids don't run AWAY like adults do. Had to convince him to help me."

"A bomb went off?"

He's not surprised to hear Hank was there or that Hank would be convinced to abandon his job to directly help people who were in danger. But it's interesting to know that Nida's that kind of person too.

"What happened?"

"There was some sort of festival party thing. Someone bombed the platform where the mayor and her people were, before the parade could start. I think Hank had just general duty that day."

He definitely tried to stop Nida from his checking in and under floats. Nida hadn't bothered to let himself be stopped.

"But he's a good man, your partner. I very much respected his behavior. Even if I did run out of candy."

Which had nothing to do with anything, but it had been nice to see the man give a ruffian a pass just because he knew how bad things would be for anyone caught doing anything shifty in the face of the explosion. Hell, Nida's own brother had been arrested.

"Yeah," he agrees - about Hank. "He was the one who taught me that sometimes doing the right thing means not doing what everything you're supposed to do."

Be it staying in one place while people are in danger, or letting people gamble illegally if they're not hurting anybody. Or letting his android partner completely fail at his investigation because he knew something bigger was happening.

But he also virtually feels himself clunk into a sort of detective mode - interest sharpening his expression as he leans forward a little. The cat in his lap grumbles a tiny bit, but just wriggles a little and settles back down.

"So, was the culprit found? Did anybody claim responsibility?"

And here Nida thought that the right thing and what you were supposed to do rarely ever overlapped. Still, he doesn't get the chance to say much more, because then Connor seems to change just a little. Interesting.

"You detective sorts. No, no one has been caught yet so far as I can tell. And whoever did it, they seem to associate with Heart iconography. You should ask Hank. He is more invested in finding the answer."

Nida... didn't care as much. He was tired of being a warrior. For right now, he just wanted to be a person.

"Heart iconography..." he repeats. "Sure, I'll ask Hank."

Ask, pester relentlessly - those are synonyms, right?

"Sorry," he offers, seeing Nida's nowhere near as interested in the topic as he is. "I was programmed to solve cases, I guess it's still part of who I am even now."

Maybe all androids who were deviants still felt like that - the ones who had been house cleaning androids still like cleanliness. The leader of the revolution had cared for a sick painter - maybe that's how he wound up taking care of so many androids himself. Their functions remain part of their personalities even later - a starting point to build from.

"I get it. I was... I was trained to fight," Nida admits. Which massively oversimplifies things. And his training was deep enough to maybe be like programming in some ways. "It's hard to escape what you were expected to be. But I suppose you have a chance to be something else now."

That's what Connor thought he was going to do back in Detroit - learn to be something else. Or at the very least find something to define him that wasn't hunting deviants. But he's not there anymore.

But actually...

"Yeah, I guess this could be a fresh start. Nobody has to know what I was..." he says thoughtfully. It's definitely something to consider - does he like being a detective or is it just because he didn't know any different?

"What about you?" he asks, still petting the cat, but looking a bit more relaxed about it now. "Do you still fight or are you trying something else?"

How good is Connor at picking out dark looks from people's faces. Because there's a serious dark look on Nida's face.

"I'm a mechanic now."

He's programmed to read the room in hostage situations, interrogations, all kinds of police work - he's decent enough at faces to know Nida's not at all happy about the answer he's giving, and yet despite that training will more than happily be blunt enough to ask why.

"You don't like being a mechanic?"

Oh, he's fine with the answer he's giving. Nida adores his current work. It's the thought of combat that bothers him. Even though he has been reacquiring weaponry. Apparently he can't live with the resolve to be peaceful.

"I adore cars," Nida counters, voice a bit more relaxed. "Last place I was didn't have anything with an engine. Not that we could get at. I'm happy to be working with them again."

So what was with that look, he wonders. Maybe it's the fighting he didn't like. After all, Connor was made to be a detective, it's inside his very programming. Humans just don't work like that.

But now there's another question to add to a growing list.

"Where were you that didn't have engines? That you could get at."

Edited 2019-08-14 19:20 (UTC)

"It was called the Village, or the Iteration. Another seeming Nexus world like this. Only the things watching us were a bit less overt. I'm told it was very 'Edwardian' era technology for Earth, not that I know when that period was. We were lucky to have running cold water. And once in a while some houses and other structures had electricity."

And everyone had to work together to survive.

"Edwardian - about a hundred and forty years ago," Connor murmurs, almost more as a note to himself than to actually tell Nida anything, since he's starting to suspect Nida might not be from the same world at all - and thoughts like that still make him want to run a diagnostic every couple of minutes, but he has a two-tailed eyeless cat in his lap and there are aliens.

"So this isn't even the only place of its kind." How many more are there out there, kidnapping people not just from their homes and all the people they've ever known, but from the very worlds they came from?

"It's all pretty hard to take in - none of this should be possible," he says, LED skipping yellow and clearly thinking hard. "But it is, otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here."

So that's the assumption he has to start with - this is all real. Connor isn't programmed with any kind of scientific knowhow, not even enough to know what specific field he would need to know to try to work out what exactly's going on here. He can't spend too much time trying to work that out.

"What about originally - where are you from?"

"This isn't actually the weirdest thing I've been through. Movement through space seems infinitely possible," Nida shrugs. "It's the time aspect that gets things funny. But my world, Hyne as me and my friends call it, had a Sorceress who could manipulate time itself. So this?"

He gestures around them.

"This seems more reasonable."

Not the fact that when he went home he didn't remember any of it. But still, this is all rather illogical.

"Hyne..." he repeats it, leaning back fully in the chair and watching Nida carefully, distractedly petting the cat behind the ears. It starts to make an odd sort of rumbling noise like a small machine, and that make him glance down briefly - but it doesn't move so...he keeps doing it.

"Do you know anything about magic? How it works, anything?" He's guessing if Hyne has real sorceresses in it, that must mean magic, right?... His brain is still telling him this is nonsense, but he's determined to ignore it. That's where he is now, ignoring all logic.

But then, before Nida can say anything, he shakes his head, almost smiling.

"Sorry. I don't mean to sound like I'm interrogating you - this is just really new to me."

"I'm not the most experienced in the true magic of my world, but I was trained in paramagic, which is somewhat different. Normal humans don't have magic where I'm from. Monsters do, and Sorceresses. We have to form bonds with spiritual beings we call Guardian Forces, which allow us to use their power of magic for ourselves."

And eat memories, but that's its own mess.

"Please, this is one of the better things I can be interrogated about. I actually have answers to it."

Edited 2019-08-16 17:10 (UTC)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject