dualislogs | 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

"Here's the secret. Neither do we."

And that's something no one tells you in the manual for living. That no one knows what they're doing. Some never figure it out. Some do and they're lucky. That's sort of what humanity is about these days. Trying to find purpose for yourself. IT can be long. it can be frustrating. But it can also be rewarding.

"Sounds like the perfect time to do research and take up some hobbies to me."

Well, if he expected to find an exact, concrete answer to the meaning of life today, he's going to be sorely disappointed.

"Hobbies," he says like he's never heard the word before in his life. "I guess... Yeah, I guess I should find something else to do."

This is clearly a new and unexpected development in Connor's life.

"What do you do for fun then, Nida?" he smiles, just the ghost of a grin. "Help me get started."

Oh come on, android, you can't do that. Nida grins and shakes his head.

"Free climbing. This city is wonderful for it and parkour, especially with how things move and change."

Hey, he can try. Besides, asking people what they do absolutely counts as conducting research.

"I don't actually know what those are," he says, then quickly clarifies. "Obviously I know what climbing is, but..."

Help him out here, Nida.

Really? A cop-andriod doesn't know? Nida smiles and shakes his head. "Alright then. So, free-climbing is like climbing, but with no safety gear. I have done it mountains, but I love it in cities. Parkour is an art of moving where you minimize loss of momentum, and you also do pretty intense things. Jumping between building rooftops, climbing things, flipping over other stuff. I'm sure somewhere on the network there are videos."

And he'd offer to show off some but this is neither the time nor the place.

"Oh," and Connor brightens in recognition. "Then I've done parkour. I chased a suspect over rooftops once - part of it was an urban greenhouse so I had to go over and around a lot of things. I honestly didn't know it had a name."

He omits the part where he jumped on a moving train and then lost the suspect, but still.

"How high have you gone free-climbing?" Genuine interest - as an android, Connor wouldn't be that worried about climbing with no safety equipment: falling probably wouldn't kill him, exposure and exhaustion aren't an issue, his strength wouldn't fail him. Humans have none of those advantages - but here's Nida, telling him he does it anyway. And that's pretty amazing.

Definitely has a name. And yeah, jumping onto a train would absolutely count. But Nida just smiles to hear the guy has tried it. Not intentionally.

"There are places in town where you can learn to do it, or be better at it if you already can."

Still, the other question has him now thinking. Thing is, he hasn't bothered to calculate before. At least, not the mountain. Buildings? Yeah, he can tell by stories. But otherwise? No, nothing specifically.

"I couldn't tell you what altitudes I hit back home when I did the mountain climbing. Tallest building I've climbed the exterior of? six story. The dorm here."

"The dorm?" he asks, eyebrows raised. "I never even thought of going up that."

...When he was testing out his visualisation abilities, he mentally simulated jumping out of his 5th storey window. So he's thought of doing down, sure.

"Maybe I could try that for... For fun." He still looks a little like the concept of 'fun' is new to him. It is, but in a kind of way where he's fully ready to jump into it. "Could you show me a couple of these places sometime, you think?"

Is that crossing a boundary of some kind? He's unsure, and he looks it. Being social without needing something from somebody is new to him as well. This isn't integrating with a team or wheedling information or goodwill out of somebody, it's just...company. He might not be sure of himself, but he's finding he likes it.

"Up tends to be easier than down. Less injuries," Nida smiles. At least, by his experience. That might not be fully accurate. But he grins at the man's consideration of it. He can spread some love of this around. Altair and Malik would be happy with him for this.

"Actually, there's a place around town that will teach you the basics. I can take you there. And maybe a place with a fake rock-wall for climbing. Get you some experience in evaluating surfaces before we put you at risk."

It would be a lot of fun. In fact, he wants to see how fast this new person picks things up. In a strange way, Connor already reminds him a little of himself when he arrived at the Village. How he needed to learn to relax and be himself. And learn who himself was.

"I've heard that before," he says, with a grin and the kind of voice that says he doesn't buy into such rumours. Connor's done very little actual climbing or falling in his time anyway. And that just cements his wanting to - it's new, he's never done it, what's stopping him?

"I'd really like that." And Connor's got absolutely no worries about sounding uncool or too eager or whatever a younger human might worry about, because he just sounds genuinely interested in trying out something new, with someone who doesn't give a damn or what he is. And that might be even more appealing than the new hobby.

Then the very obvious occurs to him.

"Uh, back home my serial number doubled up as my phone number," he says, now rummaging for the phone in his pocket.

Yet another reminder that humans had domain over every part of him, including getting into his brain to commandeer his attention whenever they wanted.

"Do we just swap phone numbers?"

Look, he's never had a phone before. Or friends.

Serial number? That makes Nida frown. The guy deserves better than that. He does hold his hand out to Connor, though, offering to take the phone briefly.

"I can put myself in there for you. And you're welcome to reach out whenever you want. Give yourself some time to adjust to things here, maybe make sure this is what you really want to do before we get invested in dangerous things."

He sees Nida frown, and it immediately makes him feel a little lighter about it...but at the same time, it's bittersweet. This man who just met him recognises what was wrong with what the androids all went through - so why did nobody back home for so long? Why are they still having to be convinced?

"Thanks." He hands over his phone easily. "And you're right - think about it before I take up the dangerous hobby."

...He's still going to want to do it. But sure - he'll give it some time.

"See you around, Nida." He's grinning his lop-sided little grin as he takes his phone back and stands to move around to the next table.

kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

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