dualislogs | i've been bitten by the bug ...

i've been bitten by the bug ...

WHO: Open to all residents
WHAT: Inoculation Season, plus your regular monthly NAPs session
WHERE: Throughout the city, with NAPs held at The Ax Hole.
WHEN: Sept. 10-30 for plague shots and associated side effects; Sept. 10-14 for NAPs
WARNINGS: Please use if applicable!

So tell me, what do you prescribe for these symptoms?

Remember that awful plague that wiped out the city's entire original population? You know, the entire reason you've been brought here? Well, the medical science community of Dualis has been hard at work concocting a cure for as long as anyone can remember, with minimal results. But during the morning of the 10th, news of a breakthrough is announced is a special city-wide bulletin. All media channels are overtaken with this message, and alerts hit every citizen's phone. The best part? Science needs your help!

There's no formal approval process for new vaccines and medications, just a series of volunteer trials before it's determined whether what's being tested is effective. All residents are invited to participate in these trials, with a bonus of 200 extra duos as compensation for their time and possible suffering. Simply head down to your nearest MedDualis clinic and inform the MedDroids supervising that you're reporting for your civic duty. Participants will be given a quick, easy, and practically painless inoculation shot in the arm, and will walk out the door 200 duos richer. Neat, huh?

Participants will be warned that like all experimental drugs, there may be side effects. A non-comprehensive list of those possible side effects includes: minor appearance changes (hair/skin/eye color), enhancing or reducing senses (smell, taste, hearing, sight, etc.), sudden mild development of extranormal abilities (telepathy, super strength, super speed, etc.), the ability to share dreams (if you're not tired of that sorta thing after last month), and/or loss of control over abilities you already possess, or those abilities misfiring. Hey, at least death isn't included on this list!

Any intrepid Dualizen who comes down with a case of weirdness as a result of doing their civic duty will find that weirdness will wear off by the end of the month. The Head thanks you for your sacrifice!

Don't you feel the fever like I do?

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without 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 an exciting new establishment called The Ax Hole! The 'Hole is an indoor ax-throwing range plus bar plus mid-price grill-type restaurant, the first of its kind to find a home here in Dualis. You must be at least 18 to drink and/or throw axes, and if you are throwing axes, there is a limit of one drink per hour. The bartenders are very strict about enforcing this rule, and employees are available to give safety instructions on proper ax-throwing technique and supervise activities.

This is a family-friendly establishment, so anyone under 18 is welcome in the restaurant section and the viewing room between the restaurant and range to watch the ax-throwing action, but they are absolutely not allowed inside the range, even just to watch. In fact, anyone who wishes admittance to the range must sign a waiver stating that they understand the risks of participating and agree to hold the Ax Hole free of liability in the event of any accidents that cause injury or death.

If that hasn't scared you off yet, come on down and meet your new neighbors! Oh, and do try to exit with at least as many fingers and limbs as when you entered, OK?

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[ A happy accident, mostly. It's just one of the strongest liquors he has on hand. ]

You didn't strike me as an ouzo aficionado. [ He confesses. ]

And don't thank me. I'm just doing my job. The real brains behind the operation is Rick.

[ He hooks a thumb in the direction of his canine employer. He still can't quite believe it, so is coping with excessive irony. ]

[Yondu takes the oddness of the owner being a dog in stride, giving him a loose toast before taking a drink of what is probably capable of completely sterilizing his throat. He hisses in a sharp breath, after.]

I dunno. Sometimes I'm a man of distinguished tastes. But I ain't gonna look down my nose out a perfectly decent firestarter.

[He finally situates himself properly on a stool, leaning on the bartop.]

I guess you're gettin' all types in this joint.

Animated. Passionate. A little scared. Yes, that almost perfectly describes what he was at the precinct before going to find Markus. Urgency had taken him over, and though he wasn't going to ever fight his deactivation in a literal sense, he would avoid it any way he could. And the only way in front of him was completing his mission.

"You didn't have any way of knowing there were other Connor models," he points out. It's true - he was never badly damaged enough to need a replacement, so why would Hank have ever seen one? "What else were you supposed to think?"

He quietens to let Hank focus, and his gaze flickers from the axe - it's at a good enough angle, he doesn't need to adjust it (though he irrationally considers doing it anyway) - to Hank's mouth as he licks his lips, the trail of moisture his tongue leaves behind... The thought of tasting his mouth - not a sample, a taste - crosses his mind for a fraction of a second.

He shuts down that stray thought with the ghost of a frown, not sure entirely where it came from.

"Wha--You know Fern?!" This is suddenly much more interesting than whatever is going on with the bar. He did say 'grass', so it clearly isn't a case of mistaken identity.

As Connor is having that thought, Hank is having another one. That little lying shit that used him to try and get to Connor. He pulls back on the ax and flings it hard, imagining that moment he realized which one was trying to trick him, and he actually hits close to the target. If it had been his head he was aiming for, he would have at least gotten him in the chest. That's something.

"Think they might wake up some of those Connor models? Am I gonna see a few more of you running around?"

It's actually a somewhat serious question. Many of the androids ended up liberated. What about the ones that haven't been activated? Will they just be disassembled? He tempers the thought with a, "Don't worry, you'd always be one of a kind anyway."

"You're... not Fern?" Nida counters right away, shocked by that revelation. How was that possible? Someone from Fern's world that looked just like him?

Good thing Nida didn't know it was Finn. Because he might have some SERIOUSLY choice words for the guy who apparently stole Fern's life or whatever. And not just because being mistaken for Finn got him seriously fucked up.

"Yeah, I know Fern. He was a grass-swordsman, back in the village I was in before this. We were friends, we took down a rampaging boar together. And by we I mean mostly him and I just tried to survive the crazy thing."

[ Erik examines a little more closely, his hand lifting as he traces out the metal workings of his internal structure. There's not as many as one might think, and he can't tell what the rest is. The skin is a total mystery. He suspects there's some sort of silicon involved. Maybe plastic. Probably not stone or ceramic. His fingers extend and his powers grip the metal. Not enough to lift Connor off of his seat, but enough that he moves just slightly, and not of his own free will. ]

Why are you here? What directive are you operating under?

I suppose it is true that I am world-renowned as being incredibly powerful. Sometimes the truth has a way of feeding one's ego.

[ He's downright smug at this point. Though that evaporates with David's confession. The thought is appalling, one of the ones that has a way of waking him up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Stupid fucking Hank. There is only one place his incurable self-hatred could have lead: harming all mutants. Erik reaches across the table to grip David's hand. ]

You are not what was done to you.

[ Doesn't he know what it's like to be subjected to things against his will? ]

[ The coughing fits might get under Erik's skin due to old wounds that will never really heal. But he's mature enough to recognize at this point that it's not Thane's fault, the man just has a cough. And it's more likely that Erik's chronic insomnia will prove more of a headache for Thane than the other way around.

Erik nods. ]

Were you taken from Earth as well? [ Subtext: are you a mutant? Hope springs eternal, even in the unlikeliest of places. ] I find myself more than a little curious as to our gracious host's ultimate goal with this misadventure.

[Of course the world sees Erik as powerful. Humanity had found its true power when it had learned to master fire to make metal do what they want. And here was Erik, shaping and controlling higher forms without having to deal with the whole Bronze and Iron and Steel ages. No, he skipped entirely to mind over matter in ways that people can't touch. And their world is built on steel and plastic and glass. Which makes Erik terrifyingly capable of destruction.

Of course none of that matters because David is flinching in shock at the way Erik reaches out to him. Touches him. That... Was not where he was expecting this to go, and he's left looking at the legendary mutant with open shock on his face.]

I... You hate humans. Everyone knows that. I'm pretty sure that your irrationality over humanity should extend to humans who used to be mutants.

"Dude!" Finn throws his arms up in excitement. He's not sure how Fern and this stranger can possibly have met, but that's less important than how cool it is to meet someone new you have a friend in common with.

"I'm Finn! Fern is like my brother! That's so rad that you guys hung out together!"

Like his brother? Oh no, that's not it at all. Nida's expression even goes dark, and as his hand comes out to gesture dismissively there's a serious gust of wind with it. Whoops. He looks half embarrassed as his puts his hand back in his pocket, not wanting to hurt the butterflies.

"Your definition of brother and mine aren't the same. I don't tend to get homicidally inclined over the idea of my brother."

The anger he's met with startles Finn, and his smile falls. Even that little bit of wind is enough to send the butterflies fluttering around in a panic, creating a living cloud around Finn's head for a moment before they start to settle again.

"What?" He lets his arms fall to his sides again. "What do you mean?" He knows Fern has problems, but homicidal? That's not the guy he knows.

He has a split-second to formulate the words, I'd rather just hear the description before her eyes go white - and a sudden movement in his peripheral vision makes his head whip round; one of the axes just left its rack and hurled itself directly into the centre of the nearest target. He automatically tries to examine the archived footage: there's nothing moving the axe that he can see. The girl's eyes went white, and as soon as they did the movement started.

It takes him less than a second to get the overview, and when he's concluded that once again, he and science have been stumped, the conversation can move on.

"Huh."

It won't necessarily move on in an eloquent manner, but it'll move on.

"I'm sorry, I didn't even ask what your name was," he says, only belatedly remembering when he goes to say it and realises it's information he didn't ask for. "I'm Connor."

Connor's gaze follows the axe to the target, and he smirks. This is mostly Hank's accomplishment, and that pleases him in itself - but it's also a little bit his own, and in something he didn't realise he could do: pass information and skills he has onto another person, without even interfacing with them.

...Then Hank successfully blows his mind.

"They--" In trying to come up with a response to that, to whether or not it could happen and what his own opinion is of that, his LED flickers between blue and yellow. "Maybe. I don't know how many spares they kept of the RK800 model - I never needed any of them."

Another couple of seconds of yellow LED.

"I wouldn't be the only one who's got to deal with this," he points out almost as much to himself as to Hank. "Markus is probably the only unique android there is - he was specifically built as a gift for a friend of Kamski's. Every other android out there has thousands of clones."

He's not sure if he's making himself feel better or not.

"I've seen a lot of androids that looked alike. Maybe that would be it. You'd just look alike. I think everything that made you wouldn't be in them. They wouldn't see all the pain you did. Lead hard fuckin' lives, yeah. But you saw real pain, Connor. You tell me you don't feel it."

He plants his finger in the middle of his chest, right on his thirium pump.

"But you do."

Just a different form of it. Those androids? They were hurting. And no other duplicate of Connor would have access to that.

"And you had to survive. So yeah, it'd be like... having fuckin' cousins I guess. Family reunions could turn up embarrassments or okay people."

He goes to get that ax after than pulling it from the target, and returns to Connor. "Alright. Impress me again. I proved myself." He didn't hit the center but he did fine. That's enough, right?

[Lehnsherr lifts a hand, and Connor spares only enough attention to figure he's not armed, so it's not a big deal - but then his fingers extend, and something suddenly happens. He can't describe the feeling of it, just that he suddenly shifted in his seat by a couple of millimetres. The seat hasn't moved, not a single one of Connor's muscles did it, but Connor moved, nevertheless.

The only outward indication of the error messages, diagnostics and above all the fear and shock suddenly clenching Connor's systems is that the LED on his temple has gone from blue to a rapidly cycling red. It shows on his face, too - a shift from confusion to almost blank incomprehension.

His gaze darts back to Lehnsherr's extended hand. A ripple of fear makes its way over his face - and then he forces his expression straight like shuttering a window. He can't stop his LED, but he can stop this.]

I'm here for the same reason you're here - we were brought against our will.

[He was programmed to be a detective. He might have broken his programming, but it's still there - and suddenly it's all he can think of that'll help him. Fall back on old habits. It makes his voice stronger and clearer, and his eyes narrow as he tries to pick up on something, anything that might help him - stress levels, fluctuations in heart rate, minute changes in facial expression. It's always possible that magnetic fields and human unpredictability could throw off his scans, but all he can do is try.]

I'm an RK800 model android, a detective prototype. I investigated crime scenes, managed hostage negotiations and tracked down and questioned suspects. That was my mission.

I broke the bounds of my programming one month ago. I haven't had a mission since.

"I accuse you of that about once a week," Revan points out, then eats one of the fries herself. Every human culture likes salty, greasy starch, she guesses.

"Jedi Knight, huh? I hear it doesn't pay very well." There are a lot worse things she could say about the Jedi, but she's in a reasonably good mood and trying to annoy Orren, not depress him, not to mention herself.

If she's hoping to annoy him, the line doesn't exactly land. In fact, she actually gets a chuckle out of him.

"If I was interested in money, my father has made it abundantly clear how excited he'd be to welcome me back home."

Amusing him will do, too. She's a great friend! ...Currently.

"Oh, so you can deal with the Jedi Council and Core politicians breathing down your neck? What a great offer." Revan thinks they probably both qualified as Core politicians themselves previously, but what she doesn't remember doesn't count.

"One of the reasons I never took him up on it." Orren agrees with a nod. "I've had more than my fill of politics for a lifetime or three."

"You took everything from him," Nida answers, because that's what Fern said when he was attacking. When he thought that Nida was Finn. "What did you do to hurt him? Because he blames you."

And Nida had never sought to ask about it.

"He does? Jibbs! But... But I would never hurt Fern! Not on purpose..." He looks down at his hands, wracking his brain. When did he ever take something from Fern? Why would he?

"I... I don't know... What did I do?" The butterflies, sensing his distress, start fluttering as much as they did when Nida's wind hit them. Finn looks up and around the street like he might find Fern hiding around the corner.

"Is he here? Can I talk to him? I've gotta apologize! And figure out what I did wrong..."

"My name is Naminé" She smiled at the introduction and takes his hand in hers. Warmth tingles against her palm and she glanced down at her palm before placing her hand back in her lap.

Naminé did not have a drink but she was fine without one. It took a lot of focus to think of answers to questions, given her limited experience, and she didn't want anything to distract her from it.

"I have heard of you. Terra spoke your name." He also looked like Roxas but Naminé knew it wasn't him. "You were the pure light in Sora's heart."

She looked up at him, her expression thoughtful before looking back at the ax game. Her apparent age was sixteen and Naminé didn't think they'd allow someone so young to hold an ax. It was a shame. She knew several teens who would be very good at this game but she came from a very different world.

"What if you did it for someone else? As a gift? That would be fun for you and them."

She looked up at him again. "Wouldn't it?"

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i've been bitten by the bug ...

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NAPs

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