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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It's pretty early, but Connor's already let curiosity about the axes get the better of him. He's never seen an axe or...heard of axe throwing in his very short life, so just holding the thing is already brand new, getting used to the balance and the weight of it before he even thinks about trying to throw it somewhere.

He's just about to try throwing it - not at the target, just...toss it in the air and see if it behaves like he thinks it will - when--

There's a human next to him, and he promptly drops the axe - and neatly steps back so it doesn't fall on his foot.

"You..." The LED on his right temple goes from blue directly to red as he stares - at her - around them like someone else might have noticed this - back to her. "You weren't there a second ago."

He quickly checks his memory banks - nope, she was not there ten seconds ago. He'd swear on it.

There's a bright smile on her face when she looks at him. Oh this was all very exciting and interesting. And fun. Mostly fun. There were tiny flashes of sadness squished in between the fun, but she was trying to focus on the fun. She told herself to focus on the fun and the people and maybe the things they needed to find out. Whatever those were.

"No, I wasn't." She tilts her head and looks slightly amused. People always seemed confused with teleportation. Or just confused with her in general. Flighty and disjointed. That was how people always thought about her. "It's easy to be here then there. And faster."

The girl - she's bald, purple-eyed, and it's a striking combination of features - smiles at him brightly and looks downright amused at his confusion. Like appearing somewhere out of nowhere is perfectly normal and it's Connor's confusion that's out of place here. He crouches to pick up his dropped axe and clasps it between his hands behind his back out of the way, as if he didn't just drop it like an idiot. But at least they've established that she did appear out of nowhere and it's not that Connor's whole brain just misfired.

"OK," he says cautiously, the LED slipping back to yellow - less freaked out, more trying to decide what just happened, "but how did you do it? What did you do?"

A part or her does feel bad for this obviously very confused and potentially embarrassed man. That was a tiny part of her compared to the part that just found it downright amusing. She knew it was weird, but there was a lot about her that was weird. When she'd chosen to attach parts of Barbie dolls to her jacket she'd accepted the path of being weird and maybe shocking. Not that it was exactly planed to be weird and shocking. It was just something she liked, just like teleporting. She really liked teleporting.

"Teleported," she said it like it was the most obvious thing anyone could ever see. Her tone held a hint of teasing in it, she wasn't trying to be mean but she liked to try to lighten moods. Clearly he was apprehensive about it all and she didn't want that exactly. Even if it was funny. "I'm sorry if it startled you." And that she does mean earnestly and her expression softens to a gentle small smile. "I taught myself how to do it..." she looked up like she was trying to figure out time. "Time gets lost. It was really recent though! At first I thought I had to hold on to people to take them with me, but then I realized I didn't." Did that even slightly answer his question? Probably not.

Connor's got no objection to weird - he barely knows what normal is. But he's still getting used to things that aren't normal in the sense that they break the laws of physics right in front of his face. That's still pretty new to him. He falters a little at the teasing tone - not because he thinks he's being made fun of, but as his LED flickers yellow with the weight of trying to figure this out, he still feels like he's somehow the one making a big deal out of nothing here.

He waves off the apology as he stoops for the axe and puts it back on the rack.

"Do you know how you do it?"

The fact that she seems to be able to take other people with her doesn't escape him, but there's a lot more to unpack before that point.

She bounced from heel to toe as she watched him putting the ax back. It was kind of interesting how so many people at least gave the throwing a toss. Were they all bored here or just all adventurous?

"Of course. I had to teach myself. We have to teach ourselves everything." Which was a frustrating aspect to their powers. "I tried to learn the most. Someone had to." And she'd already been a little messed up, so she had the least risk of getting more messed up by pushing things. She paused briefly and when she spoke again it was much more direct. "There are twelve of us. We were all born at the same exact time on the same exact day with the same exact color eyes and hair. We were also all born psychic. Most of us were kinda wild kids and it didn't take us long to figure out that the more we practiced the more things we unlocked."

In Connor's case, he doesn't even know just how adventurous this activity really is. People are doing it, though, and he's on a personal mission to try out everything people do and see how it suits him.

He's not sure what he expected from any explanation about how to teleport. Maybe he was never going to get scientific explanation of the transfer of matter from one spot to another with nothing more than a thought. Realising this is when he realises most of his other questions are pointless as well - the hows and whys, the fact-based questions.

"What sort of other things have you learned?" He steps away from the range so he's not running any risk of axes flying into him while he's not paying attention.

"Oh I could show you!" Her eyes went white for a second and she looked back at the ax range and sent an ax flying towards the target telekinetically. It hit straight in the middle and she grinned as she walked fully away from the range and off to the side with him.

"Things like that are some of the first things we learned. It's easy." And one of the more harmless things to tell people about. There were other things she could do of course, but they all had the potential to make people afraid. Start small and work up to bigger things. That's what she'd always heard was the best thing to do. If it didn't freak someone out then she could explain other things.

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."

"Sorry if it weirded you out. Sometimes it does." Most of the time. People always seemed to be unsure of how to react to things they couldn't understand. She liked things she didn't necessarily understand. They presented puzzles and new things to find out. Like this person. There was definitely a puzzle to him.

"Names aren't nearly as interesting as other things," but his name brings a very bright smile to her face. "I know a Connor. He's a very important person to me. It's a good name." It occurred to her she should offer hers now. "Arkady. My name is Arkady. I know it's kinda weird." Not nearly as weird as one of her friends, but it was up there.

"I was just surprised, is all," he says, waving off her apology. "Where I'm from, that's completely impossible. I'm still getting used to seeing all of these impossible things."

As he glances at the axe still embedded in the target, the LED on his temple cycles - still blue, but the circular light ticking steadily round.

"It's not that interesting," he admits, "But most people start with that, so that's what I tend to do as well."

He has the hint of a grin at hearing about this other Connor she knows so well, then tilts his head briefly. "I've never heard the name Arkady, but I'm the only Connor I know as well. I wouldn't know it was weird if you hadn't told me."

He's seen a variety of names in his four months active, but since one of those months is here he's lost all concept of what normal names are anymore. People have regular old nouns for names, he's lost all expectations.

"What would you rather ask somebody you just met? Something more interesting."

"I've always had impossible things." The moment they were born impossible things started happening. Or maybe their births were impossible things to begin with.

"I like your light." Watching it shift had been exciting and the more it changed the more she wondered what it did. It probably did something.

"Meeting another Connor is nice." Comforting almost. The grin she had didn't fade as she spoke. "Connor's different than the rest of us. He always tries to do what's right and just wants us all to get along." But they never really did get along. They tried but people were always messed up deep inside. That was the core of what people were.

She tilted her head. "I would ask them about their world. Or the what their world was like before. What is your world like?" That seemed like the most interesting thing to learn. Before's were always more interesting.

"I've seen unlikely things," he concedes with a small grin. "Just nothing impossible, not back home."

Although an android gaining sapience was impossible...right up until it happened. So maybe he actually has seen the impossible.

"He sounds like a good person to be around." Connor - this Connor - has only really come to appreciate how lucky he is to have the occasional good person around him. His partner from home right here in the city. The leader of the revolution back in Detroit. Without them, he wouldn't be the person he is - wouldn't have known how to grow into anything more than an intelligent, but ultimately lifeless, machine.

"I never saw much of the world," he says, and he wishes it wasn't the truth. "I was in one city the whole time - it didn't occur to me to mind until I got here and met people who've seen so much more than I have. But my city was a little like this one - just less unpredictable. And there were a lot more people like me around - androids."

He taps his temple where the light is. "That's what the light means - it's my ID as an android."

"Connor is a wonderful person. Better than the rest of us." So much better actually. No matter what happened or what they did Connor had still tried to have faith that they could be better. He even had faith that maybe they could make up for all the mistakes they made.

"I never saw much of the world either. We weren't really allowed to leave." First her parents had been against them leaving the small town they were born in. Then her parents had sold her to the government and they'd definitely not wanted to let her leave. "Were you allowed to leave or did they make you stay?" She blinked and looked at the light with interest.

"I've never met an android." in her world they weren't even a thing.

"I never tried to leave Detroit," he says with a frown. "But I would never have been allowed to. I was owned by a company for most of my life. They gave me my whole purpose."

His frown clears up, Connor shaking it off like so much dust. "I found my own purpose in the end - I was about to leave the city when I was brought here."

A free android, he and his partner had been planning to evacuate the city with everybody else, and go to Canada. It was probably the best thing for him - but also a whole new adventure. But the adventure ended up being Dualis instead.

"Who was stopping you?" he asks, a little hesitantly. He's made more than one faux pas asking the wrong questions already. But he's fascinated - who was Arkady's CyerLife?

"Oh," she meets his eyes with a sympathetic look. It wasn't a very good thing to relate to him about, but she did. "I'm glad you found your own purpose. When you go back I hope you'll see the world." Everyone deserved the chance to be free and see what they wanted to see.

She bites down on her lower lip and frowns at the question. It's not a wrong one, just a bad memory for her. Still, there isn't a long hesitation before she answers. "The military. Our parents sold us to be weapons and the military didn't want to lose that. Some people like power too much." From what he's said it sounds like he might understand that sort of idea. To the military they weren't kids, they were weapons of mass destruction. Power like theirs couldn't really be controlled though. Especially when they turned out to just be a bunch of angry kids with a lot of issues.

He's worried for a moment that he has made a mistake, and he's ready to hurriedly say she doesn't have to answer, they don't have to talk about this, it's fine, when she answers anyway. And he's still a little sorry he asked.

"I got...loaned out to the police," he says hesitantly. "But I wasn't a kid. I mean, I'm only four months old now, but I was never a kid. I..."

Sure, there's all sorts of people out there. But he's been on the receiving end of a human mother terrified for her child ("Don't let that thing near her!" still plays through his mind occasionally). How could somebody's parents sell them off like some kind of...

"I didn't think people would treat their children like androids," he finishes, sounding genuinely lost.

"Four months sounds like a kid-kid," she says with a smile. It's a comforting one, one to tell him that it was okay he asked. The subject isn't one she likes but she's not adverse to talking about things she doesn't like.

"Our parents were offered a lot of money for us. The military thought we'd be very good weapons." There's a somberness to her words that hints at just how haunted she is by that particular thought. "They weren't wrong." But they were kids and kids can't be controlled even when they're not super-powered freaks. "I think they thought we were less than human because we weren't normal human. People do strange things when they don't see you as the same as them." Usually they did bad things. Fear lead to anger and anger lead to very bad decisions. "But it sounds like you know that."

He grins lop-sidedly. “I’m more advanced than most four-month-olds. I can walk and everything.”

It doesn’t seem like Arkady minds too much talking about these things. It means he doesn’t have to feel guilty about his curiosity, or about the frown that crumples his features as she talks. It sounds so totally familiar. And humans have treated child androids just like that as well, simply because they didn’t see them as human.

“Yeah. I get it.” His voice is quiet, troubled. “It didn’t bother me at first. I treated myself like a piece of equipment as well - it didn’t matter to me what humans said about me. But I started to realise I was more than that, a little bit at a time.

“If I didn’t have one person treating me like I was an equal, I don’t know if I could have kept that feeling.”

It might have just been stamped out of him before it ever really took hold.

“Is this the first time everybody’s treated you like...this? Like you’re the same as everybody else?”

"You're going to ruin all the other four-month-olds self esteem!" She giggled and shook her head.

She notices his frown and tries to keep a smile on her face so he doesn't feel too bad about it all. "It's good you had that one person then! We all had each other, all twelve of us, but I don't always know if that was good or bad. It just was." Being without them though, that's difficult. No that she's open to admitting that to him, or anyone, but it's becoming more more difficult to be without them all. There's usually constant chatter in her head about really ridiculous things and now there's just silent. It's strange.

The question he asks causes her smile to waiver though and a shadow of regret to take over her expression like a sudden storm. She turns around and lifts her jacket up so that it covers her shoulders and actually shows the words written on the back of it. The design is simple, a pair of steampunk powered wings with the word FreakAngels written across.

"That's what they called us. Freaks. Or Angels of destruction. We adopted both." Maybe for reclamation or maybe it was just in defiance. It could have been either or both, they were kids when they decided on it. Defiant kids.

"We were always treated different. For a while we were angry about it." Are they still angry about it? Sometimes. but for a lot of different reasons now. "Yes, I think it's the first time people haven't reacted too bad to me." She's still gotten a few weird looks here and there, but that's probably the bald head and doll heads on her jacket. "But nobody seems really afraid. Or uneasy with me. People are usually very uneasy with me."

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i've been bitten by the bug ...

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