kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

[headandhand]

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!

Comments

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Wow... that's pretty math.

What about right now? Are you having fun?

[notalive]

It's math?

[Connor's turn to look confused.]

I think so. I've never seen cats before. Or talked to this many humans. [He considers for a second, tilting his head.]

Maybe it'd be better if I was doing it back home in Detroit, but I still like it.

What about you - how are you doing?

[Finn probably has real people back home, a real life. Connor left things behind, left people...but more than the actual things are the possibility of things to come. That's what he's missing right now.]

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Yeah, man! It's cool, or rad, or whatever.

[ And math is cool. Although it can also be a bad thing. Really, inflection is everything. ]

I'm doing pretty good! I talked to a lot of humans at Founders Island, but it's still kind of crazy... I thought I was the last one for like, forever.

[ He's used to leaving people behind when he goes on adventures... and that's still all this is to him. Maybe it'll last longer than most of his adventures, but at some point it will end and he'll back home with all his friends. ]

[notalive]

Math. Right. [He says this like he's going to be tested on it later - Connor isn't down enough with the kids for this. He knows the word 'cool'. It's never before left his mouth, but he knows it.]

You thought you were the last human? How come?

[He leans forward right as a blue, scaly cat decides it wants to get into his lap. Not about to let that stop it, the cat just jumps up and muscles onto his knee anyway, making Connor lean back a bit again, frowning down for a second.]

Come on.

[The cat ignores him.]

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Well I'd never met another one before, and nobody had seen any in like, hundreds of years probably.

[notalive]

[Connor squints. He didn't exactly get programmed with the finer points of reproduction, but he's seeing an obvious question:]

Where did you come from, then?

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Mom and Dad found me in the woods when I was baby. Jake told me I came out of a cabbage.

[ He chuckles. He knows he didn't come out of a cabbage. But the point remains, he was the only human he knew for the vast majority of his life. ]

[notalive]

They found you, huh? Well, I came off a production line, so I can't say anything.

[Production line, cabbage or otherwise, nobody here seems to have come into the world the so-called normal way. But--]

So what kind of people are your mom and dad?

[That's polite talk for 'what are your mom and dad'.]

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Heh. Mom and Dad were great. They had a detective agency, but they gave it up to take care of us kids. They used to fight monsters and stuff, just like Jake and I do now.

[notalive]

[OK, so Finn didn't say exactly what people they were, but that doesn't mean Connor's not still interested in what he's hearing. Actually, his eyebrows go up and he stares.]

Monsters. What kind of monsters?

[punchpunchkisskiss]

[ He lives next to a kingdom where everyone is made of candy. You're going to need to ask direct questions if you want direct answers. ]

Demons, mostly. Ghosts, ogres, trolls... Anything that anyone needed investigating. Me and Jake don't do it for money, though, we just fight whatever's causing trouble today.

[notalive]

Anything that needed investigating, huh?

[He finds himself grinning, just a little.]

So you were a bit like volunteer detectives with monsters. That sounds like fun.

[And he's not being condescending, he genuinely means it - Connor was a detective for no money, but it was with what turned out to be innocent people and he didn't get a choice. Choosing to go after bad guys because you want to help people? If he'd got the choice, that's what he'd have been doing back home.]

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Oh yeah, for sure. We have a great time. I mean, I almost croak like, at least once a day, but it's totally rad.

[notalive]

[ That makes him raise his eyebrows some. ]

Don't your parents get worried?

[Isn't that kind of what parents do? ]

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Oh. They... died.

[ Awkward... uncomfortable. ]

Yeah. Jake and I have been on our own for a while. But it's okay! 'Cause we've got each other.

[ He smiles uncertainly. Awkward feelings averted? ]

[notalive]

[ ...And now he learns that embarrassment is a very interesting emotion. He's never felt one that involved wanting so very deeply to not be seen by anybody or anything. It feels like even the cats are looking round to judge him.

As he falters, he even glances round. None of the cats are looking. ]

I shouldn't have asked that.

I'm an android, this is the first time I've sat down and really…tried to get to know someone.

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Nah, man, it's cool.

[ He waves off the pseudo-apology. At least they're on a different subject already. ]

Asking about parents is pretty normal, I think.

Uh... what's an 'android'?

[notalive]

[He already knows he's never going to get used to this - people not even knowing what he is, let alone recoiling from it.]

It's a kind of machine that's built to look like a human - look.

[Maybe there's something about how totally unassuming Finn is - or maybe Connor's still embarrassed about the parent thing, but whatever it is, Connor holds out one hand and does something he's never done without a good reason for it: withdraws its skin. It almost seems to evaporate down to the wrist, leaving, instead of pale skin, a light grey polymer with an almost glassy shine on the undersides of his fingers, something blue and iridescent shining from under the joints.]

[punchpunchkisskiss]

[ It's a little creepy to watch someone's skin disappear, but that's totally overshadowed by the revelation. ]

Woah, that's radical!

[ He's thrilled by the machinery, even if some of it just looks like sci-fi junk to him. He even leans in to look closer. ]

Are you like a robot, then, like Rattleballs? Looking human is kinda weird. I mean, I love my robot arm! [ He holds it up and wiggles his fingers in demonstration. For some reason there are only three of them. ]

[notalive]

[He actually finds himself grinning at the response - he's never had someone react to him like that before, ever.]

I don't what Rattleballs are...but yeah. I'm a kind of robot.

[He flexes his fingers - the thirium circulating his system is an iridescent blue that shines through through parts of his joints, just a little.]

They did a pretty good job making me look human - so good I have to wear this so nobody gets confused back home.

[He taps the little blue ring of light on his right temple as he peers at Finn's arm in turn. It doesn't have the same kind of fake skin mechanic his chassis does - in fact, it really wasn't made with realism in mind at all. He decides not to ask why Finn has a robot arm - he's learned his lesson about awkward questions.]

So it moves just like your real arm? Does it feel different? In your head, I mean - how your brain feels it.

[Obviously it literally feels different, but there must be all sorts of little things that are completely different when one arm is organic and one is synthetic. Is his balance different, does his brain sense the nerves of it differently, does he have any sense of where the arm is and how it's moving?]

[punchpunchkisskiss]

Yeah, a little.

[ He shrugs. He's gotten so used to his robot arm that he hardly remembers it isn't real half the time. ]

It's like a really thick callus, almost. PB did a really good job on it.