dualislogs | Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

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!]]

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It adds up to confirmation that Connor's a machine, yet in some strange way Squall feels himself relate to that memory he saw. He's still not sure what to think about it.

He blinks at the offer and shakes his head. "It's yours. Give it to whoever you want." The dissonance of knowing Connor is not human and yet seeing him act like one is strange.

He'll just hang back and awkwardly lick his ice cream, trying not to regret initiating this conversation.

It's summer, so there are kids and their parents everywhere, and Connor's not only in a cop uniform but so damn harmless-looking by design that the very first parent he approaches very happily gets his kid to take the ice cream from 'the nice policeman'. He's never actually been called 'nice' before. And the last time he came close to a child at all it was after her mother had screamed at the response team to 'get that thing away from her'.

So he's back in less than a minute. The human with the very spiky hair is still standing there, and Connor approaches with a lot more open curiosity.

"Do we know each other?" he asks, joining him. He knows he hasn't met this man before, but maybe he saw Connor across a room, maybe at the cat cafe meet or...somewhere.

Hey, it's not that spiky. He should see Cloud. It's kind of sweet to see Connor be received so well after the memory he saw.

Squall shakes his head. He was there at the cat cafe but he was a little busy at the time.

"I saw your memory, that's all." A beat. "The man wanted you to kill another machine for information. And Hank was there."

He's trying not to look too bemused - or too pleased - about the interaction even when he gets back; but those next words make his face fall. The LED on his temple goes from steady blue to a circling yellow.

"That..." He lets out an explosive breath as he closes his eyes for a moment, and it looks and sounds very human. "Shit."

That about sums things up. If he had to pick a memory - any of his memories - to put out there into the world, he wouldn't have chosen that. He probably wouldn't have chosen any of them, in all honesty. Almost none of them are anything to be proud of.

"You have to understand," he says slowly, and he doesn't even try to keep the slightly pleading look from his face - there's no point in hiding it. "I was trapped by my programming. I had a mission and I had to complete it. If I was in my right mind I wouldn't have even taken the gun.

"I would never treat somebody like that now." He looks this man directly in the eye, willing him to believe what he's saying. He won't deny what he did - he helped subjugate and threaten an enslaved woman whose only crime was being created the way she was - and though he was enslaved himself at the time, it doesn't lessen that.

His face twists slightly - revulsion, guilt, they're like ice choking him, and he finds himself looking away, unable for a second to keep looking the other man in the eye.

That LED behaves like a weird mood ring, Squall notes dimly. And then Connor is startling him. His own eyes widen in surprise. That memory must be from a while ago then and Connor has become human, so to speak.

He recovers and looks at Connor as intently as he can manage with how tired he feels. 'Trapped by my programming'. That's exactly what prompted Squall to talk to him, isn't it?

"I would have taken the shot," he says steadily. "You're more human than I was trained to be." He gestures with his hand. "You don't owe me an explanation."

"I--" That stumps him, perking probably more than almost anything else somebody could have told him in response to his blurted out explanation. He stares for a long moment. He would never argue that this human in front of him was less human than him, Connor, an android, but at the same time...

"Why?" he asks finally, voice soft. "Why would you choose to shoot?"

He's been trying to understand his own choices and emotions since before he met Chloe and Kamski. Now it's time he understood someone else's.

Squall lets out a breath and folds one arm under him while the other continues to hold on to his half-finished cone. He rolls his shoulders.

"You were sent on a mission, right?" That was the sense he got from the memory anyway. "I'm a mercenary. A soldier. I'd do anything to complete a mission. And she's just a machine." A pause and a slight frown. "It was hard for you because she's like you. It'll be harder for me if she's a person."

Connor frowns a little as he thinks about this.

"My mission was to learn everything I could about deviant androids and stop them. Our inventor told me he'd answer anything I wanted, if I destroyed his android."

He still remembers the exact moment he realised hate was another emotion that even he, supposedly a machine, was capable of feeling. He doesn't want to feel like that again, but it's hard not to thinking about people like Elijah Kamski.

"That was the problem," he tries to explain. "Was Chloe just a machine, or was she a person who just couldn't speak up for herself because she was being programmed not to? I was programmed to think she was nothing but a machine.

"I said that a lot too, you know," he goes on softly. "That I'd do anything to complete my mission."

Realising he wouldn't was never a sudden thing. It came on gradually, like sitting in a boat and not realising the trickles of water were leaks until the boat was in the middle of sinking.

Squall's expression softens as he explains further. He still has that crease between his brows from frowning but it's not as stern as before.

"Did that change?" He seems genuinely curious now. "Did you stop following orders because you went against your programming?"

“Sort of…” He frowns in thought. “It's hard to explain. I never got an order to kill Chloe. I never had to follow human orders at all. I had a mission to stop deviant androids and I could complete it any way I saw fit. That was my whole programming.

"But as I met deviant androids, the things I knew about them - that they weren't alive, that they were objects owned by humans just like I was - got harder to believe. So the things my own programming was telling me I should do to get the mission done got harder. I ended up trying to complete my mission even though at the same time I'd stopped being able to do any of the tasks involved. I'd stopped believing any of the facts holding the mission together.

"But I kept going until I found the leader of the revolution. Right up until I had to actually stand there and make a choice - my mission or everything I'd realised was right."

He rubs his hands together in a nervous gesture. Somehow, though, it’s easier to say these things to someone who understands what having a mission like this is about.

Squall considers that. Given the options... and what Connor knows he is. What he'd be doing if he did stop another deviant android. For or against the mission.

"You abandoned the mission." It's a guess and there's a hint of uncertainty in his tone but he has a feeling. He's peering at Connor know. Squall abandoned his duties once. For Rinoa. Because nothing else mattered but her. It... just ended up aligning with what he needed to do. It felt like he was strung along, walking a predetermined path.

"Right," he says softly. "I completely abandoned it - I decided to deviate as well."

There's a conversation to be had about whether or not it was really his own choice, as his creators planned to make him a mole into the revolution, but as far as Connor's concerned, he still made that choice. It was his.

"I don't think I'd have done it without Markus - the leader, making me choose. Or without my partner. Hank," he adds, "He was with me in that memory."

And he's here in the city, for that matter.

"He's the one who made me realise I could do anything else but follow that mission." It's hard to describe, but he's going to try anyway. "It helps to have somebody who believes you can actually be more than what you're told you have to be. Someone important wanted me to be more...so it made me want it for myself too."

It should be weird that he feels like he can relate to an android but everything Connor has said resonates with him in a way. He nods.

"I've talked to Hank. He's... a good guy." A friend even, strange as it is to consider an adult one. With a soft sigh, he continues, "I met someone like that too. She... Her name's Rinoa." He looks a little embarrassed. "She told me I didn't have to do everything alone. I still don't know who I am beyond SeeD but I think I can find out with her... and my friends."

Even if he does feel trapped in his role sometimes.

"I think Hank said the android uprising was successful. Did that happen after?"

Connor finds himself strangely...warmed just by hearing somebody compliment Hank - before the uprising he has a feeling Hank would never have been spoken about like that by anybody, and it just makes him think all the more strongly that being here has somehow been a huge help. The android uprising and Connor started something - being in Dualis just made it easier for Hank to keep turning himself around. He’s always been a good person - but now it’s much easier for those around him to see.

“I understand that.” It’s almost startling how much he does - he didn’t expect to have so much in common with a human, not on this point. But replace SeeD with CyberLife and Connor might have said those words himself. Not that he has too many friends just yet - but that just takes time, and now he has as much of that as he wants. “I think now we’re here and not in our own worlds, it’ll get easier to figure ourselves out. That’s what I’ve been hoping.”

He didn’t want to come here, and he’s been frustrated that he’s not going to see a lot of the important developments that are bound to happen after the uprising. But on a purely selfish level, this time away from all of that lets him just be Connor. Not the ex-deviant hunter, not one of the faces of the revolution, which he somehow became at the very last minute. Not even a deviant. Just a person like everybody else.

“After.” He nods. “The same night. I confronted Markus while the government was in the middle of rounding up androids to put into camps and destroy them. When he decided to take a peaceful protest up to the camps, I infiltrated CyberLife headquarters where they were building new androids and freed a few hundred of them. That night, the government agreed to stand down.”

He flashes a wry sort of grimace. “I came here a couple days later.”

There'd be some reflecting to do after this conversation. Squall had felt a connection to Connor's memory when it flashed into his mind and this conversation just confirms it. Circumstances molded him, a human, into something close to a machine. It's unsettling. But Connor does raise a good point. Squall still feels bound to his responsibilities at home but in a way it's letting him considering it from a distance, so he nods.

"Maybe you're right. My friends are here too. Maybe something can change." He hopes so. He can't bear the thought of everything being erased the moment he goes home. If a machine can deviate, why not him, right? He's already made leaps and bounds at home. It's just a matter of moving forward.

He grimaces at the mention of camps and destruction. The darker side of humans really are universal. He lets out a breath and folds his arms loosely, thoughtful.

"Your mission's done. You have a chance for a fresh start." A pause. "Like me." Again, the similarities are a little spooky. "We can't relax. There's a different fight ahead of us here, but I want to find a way that sends everyone where we want to go. With our memories in tact."

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Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

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