dualislogs | Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

WHO: All residents of Dualis + special guest stars
WHAT: Strap in, kiddos, it’s a ~memshare~
WHERE: In your head. Or, you know. Everywhere you go to escape that.
WHEN: August 15-24
WARNINGS: Don’t forget these if they’re applicable!

It’s been a few months, Dualis, how are you settling in? New arrivals, we know it’s sudden, but we hope you’re making new friends already and settling in well! You’re all gonna fit in juuuust fine around here.

Things have calmed down after the supposed terrorist attacks during the Dualis Days celebration, and there’s still no news about that strange network broadcast. But maybe that’s for the best, right? See, the Head really does have everything under control.

But speaking of heads…

Over the course of these next few days, yours might be feeling a little funny. Maybe you just aren’t quite feeling like yourself. Or there’s an ache that just won’t quite go away. Or maybe you’re perfectly fine! Which is completely optimal, honestly.

Except--that memory you suddenly have. Is that really yours? And what about those fainting spells that seem to come with premonitions...or are you perhaps remembering something you repressed long ago? You’d probably remember something like this, though, wouldn’t you?

It’s perfectly natural to be concerned. However, if you approach your friendly neighborhood MedBot or clinician, they’re going to be pretty stumped. It appears there's nothing really wrong with you, but hey, here's some mild painkillers if you want them. And if you try and consult the Head, all it’ll be able to do is give you it’s most sincere condolences. It seems that there may have been some complications with the transfer process, but these should definitely wear off soon! In the meantime, why not visit your local clinic for a sedative and some painkillers?

Good luck, denizens. Looks like you’re in for a bumpy week or two...

[[As a reminder, these memory shares can happen at any point in time during the span of the event, not just when your characters are sleeping! You're also welcome to have them experience no side effects at all, all the way up to fainting spells and headaches a la Cordelia circa season 2 of Angel. Feel free to reach out to your friendly neighborhood mods if you have any questions!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Right," he says softly, brow slightly furrowed. He still feels like the thirium in his system is running cold all the same, even though she still seems perfectly friendly. Maybe it's just the rarity of being treated that way, still new to him even a few days after getting here. An existence of being spoken over and referred to as an 'it' never bothered him, but not having it anymore is still something strange and new.

"But you want to know why."

He's not asking. Why he let the two go, why they were fighting in the first place at all. Even if he couldn't read it in her face, he'd want to know as well. The memories he's seen himself have no context to them; he never knows who everyone is, what brought them to that place in that moment in time. And a fight like that always comes from somewhere - but they rarely break up into nothing like that one.

"I want to know why." It's a simple and clear statement of fact, and one that Alex isn't ashamed of in the least. It's not a question, or a plea because she understands that in this, there's a very good chance that he might not want to tell her, and she wouldn't blame him for that. Everything about him, in both the memory and the way that he's holding himself now as he talks about it is setting her journalism senses into overdrive. She knows that what happened isn't usual, just from the contact cues of everything.

So, Alex just looks around a little bit, casting a glance over her shoulder and towards the coffee shop that she'd just stepped out of. There's a hopeful little note in her voice, because if there's something else that Alex knows, it's that standing on the open air street isn't exactly conducive to having deep conversations about one's past, especially when it has all of the story notes of being as painful as Richard's was. So, Alex just asks softly: "do you want to go into the coffee shop to talk about it? It might be easier than out here."

He doesn't blame her. He's seen a lot of things already that he would love to ask (or has already asked) people about, because the context of all the things he's seeing is often just as interesting as the events themselves. He can't begrudge anybody wondering about his own - and it's already occurred to him that he needs to tell people the context. The things he thought, the things he did, while he was a machine - they weren't the real him.

The idea that people go around thinking the machine he was when he was first activated is exactly what he is now... He hates it.

He falters a second, like he does every time the prospect of going somewhere like a cafe. Somewhere public. Somewhere for humans, where androids shouldn't be. But he quickly shakes it off.

"Yeah. Sure, let's go," he says, then, "I don't drink, but I'm sure it's fine."

When he falters, Alex just gives him a reassuring smile. She's good at that, and it's helpful sometimes when it comes to things like getting people to feel comfortable enough to talk. There's more than a small part of her that wants to push back and ask about why he doesn't drink, but she doesn't. Instead, the smile grows to a grin, and Alex just raises up her large paper cup of coffee almost like she would a champagne flute when giving a toast. "Don't worry, if they're concerned about you not drinking coffee, I'll definitely be able to cover the amount of drinks they think you should have." Because Alex has a coffee problem--she's definitely the sort of person who gets too much blood in her caffeine system at times.

Alex keeps her pace even with his, even though he's taller than she is. Catching up with people with much longer legs than her has been a habit for longer than three years, but in that time period, it's definitely one that she's refined to damned near perfection. "My advice?" She says, and it's clear that she doesn't mean it in a mean way, just casually given as Alex would to anyone else. "When you go into some place like this? Just walk in and act like you're supposed to be in a place. Nine times out of ten no one will even question that it's where you're supposed to be or not."

"Act like I'm supposed to be here," he repeats. He's done that before - done infiltrations, walked into places he outright wasn't welcome and just ignored what people thought - but he was a machine then, or pretending to be one, each time. This is Connor, just Connor, walking into a normal place when he still doesn't feel normal yet. It's hard to explain. But Alex is remarkably good at putting people at ease - or at least, it works on Connor, and he takes a deep breath he doesn't really need and manages to do a passable job as they find a table. Or rather, he doesn't look quite so awkward.

He's reminded, sitting at the table, of the one interrogation he did, just a few days ago by his memory. He feels like the shoe's on the other foot now, so to speak.

"Those two women who looked like you were androids - like me," he starts by stating the obvious. "Tracis - that's what the whole line's called. Companion androids," and he says that like it tastes bad, because suddenly it really does. He hasn't had any reason to think about them in the hours between deviating and coming here, and the days since coming here, but now that he is... The the slavery he was subjected to is one thing - but then there's what they all had to endure.

"My partner and I were called to a murder case at a sex club. A human male. He killed one Traci and the other, the blue-haired one, killed him. It was self-defence." He knows that now, but at the time it hadn't mattered, no part of it had. What mattered was-- "We were investigating deviant androids, androids who'd broken the bounds of their programming, so it was vital that we find the blue-haired Traci. She hid in the warehouse out back, but we found her, and that's when she attacked us - and so did the short-haired Traci you saw."

It's still weird looking up and seeing the face of those two Tracis staring back at him, without the anger or fear he saw in them.

"They were both deviants, so I was supposed to destroy them and take them in for disassembly and examination." He manages to start clinically, but his next words are far less so: "My programming was telling me to shoot them both and something in me knew it was wrong. I can't describe it. At the time I didn't even know why it was wrong, I still thought they were just machines."

He feels a horrible crawling feeling that he would claw out of himself if he could, but he might be talking to the only person who can actually understand some part of it - having seen it herself. Even if she doesn't like what she's hearing.

"It's the first time I really knew my programming wasn't all I was," he says a little distantly, really thinking back on it for the first time since he cast aside his programming entirely. "And it was terrifying - but I wasn't even supposed to feel terror, because androids weren't meant to feel anything at all."

He's tapping agitatedly on the table with a fingertip just to do something with his hand, to keep it moving.

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

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