homemeless | 002 - The Stargazing Meme

There, that's the one I was named after!

[Orihime points up at Vega, her expression proud. It's been a long time since she's looked at the stars so enthusiastically. Looking at them with an intelligent robot probably has something to do with that.]

You know the story of Tanabate, ne, David-san?

[ david follows the trajectory of orihime's hand placidly, mapping out the heavens in his mind while doing some easy fact recall-- he's programmed for international assimilation, and thus the reference comes easy to him. orihime and hikoboshi, star-crossed lovers bound in tragedy. ]

Yes, I do.

[ a nod. ]

Your name has quite romantic connotations.

It does! It's a little unfitting though, don't you think?

[While she knew plenty of unrequited love, one could hardly label her as a romantic. Her daydreams were goofy and happy things. She was far more likely to wrestle a thug instead of kiss a lover in her idle fantasies.]

I'm impressed you knew it. You're so educated, David-san!

[ he pauses after her statement, assessing it and matching it with the myriad of emotions and nonverbal cues that he knows to be human responses to a given situation. at first, he's inclined to think that it's patronizing, but he can't detect the sarcasm that should be there if she's trying to jab at him. so he discards that notion and replaces it with the idea that she might actually be being sincere. ]

I couldn't say if the name is unfitting, Miss Orihime. But as for my knowing the reference, I can hardly say that it's surprising, given the nature of my programming.

I'm glad, really! I mean, I wasn't sure how much you started out with. I'm happy you learned folklore too!

[She beams proudly up at him, then looks back to the sky.]

Actually, you probably know more about these constellations than I do. We studied astronomy, but not the legends behind the patterns. I know Sirius is also the big dog, and that other star is the little dog, but beyond that...

[Orihime shrugs helplessly.]

I've been made to understand that some humans place little value in lore, while some place the utmost importance in them.

[ he reaches a conclusion about orihime: amiable, harmless. david keeps his chin tilted upwards, blue eyes grazing through the parts of the heavens he can see, his synapses filling in the gaps that he can't. ]

Is there anything you would like to know about the stars?

I like both. I guess that puts me sort of in the middle, then.

[She glances at David, perking up with interest.]

Yes, lots! Which ones have you been to visit?

[Sam hadn't had a long life. He hadn't had a fulfilled one, either. Hell, the life he had was nothing but work and watching edited movies, having memories of people he'd never met and would never actually know. He wasn't meant to last longer than a human body could deal with radiation. He wasn't meant to know anyone. He was meant to serve a purpose, climb into a box, and be incinerated before another clone took over his place.

He wasn't supposed to know any of that, either, but knowledge was something he couldn't erase. He couldn't forget the information in classes he never sat in, how the hell could he forget something so outlandish and terrible?

And yet, from time to time, he finds himself outside and staring up at the moon. He finds himself realizing that the only place he ever knew was a place that man couldn't properly function on. He never knew a real house, never knew anything like it. For all intents and purposes, the poorest person in the worst part of the world knew of earthly things far better than he.

On this night, the moon is full and looking particularly bright. It's, oddly, looking closer than it should naturally be. Beer in one hand, he leans back against the fold-out chair and nudges his elbow against David's (not David8, not a David, just David) shoulder.]

Is there supposed to be something special or different tonight? I don't...that looks a bit out of the ordinary, doesn't it? The closeness of it, I mean.

Edited 2013-03-03 02:52 (UTC)

I believe it's because the moon is at its perigee tonight.

[ david's answer is practical, but not entirely without consideration behind the carefully crafted words-- he knows that overly practical answers are cause for scorn, so he appends the more pragmatic response with something that he knows to be more conversational.

he doesn't exactly understand why he feels (or thinks he feels) the need to humor sam or accommodate him, but sam is the closest he's gotten to a real understanding of actual interaction-- it's something without disclaimers, with very little need for distinction. unsurprisingly, david's curiosity remains the victor in his interactions with sam. if weyland ever intended for david to actually seamlessly integrate with humanity, this might have been an ironic milestone. ]

But that would also depend on the nature of why you feel that the proximity of the moon is important, Sam.

[ it's an invitation to talk about himself if he wants. ]

[David's answers are always practical. Or, it should be said, the ones he gives Sam and the way he takes them end up being practical. There's nothing about David that gives Sam cause for alarm, that would make him scornful of his existence, or that has him wanting to throttle him for being what he is. Sam's not what he appears to be, either; although he's human in every way, he's a clone, and that...that's not something he could expect anyone else to understand. But he's a clone of a human, meaning he can't possibly ever be as sophisticated as someone like David.

That doesn't bother him in the slightest.]

I was just thinking about the way it influences the tides, that's all. If it gets too close, watch half of Asia go underwater—that sort of thing. I didn't read anything about it being at perigee tonight, though, so thanks for thinking ahead of me on that one.

[Maybe David didn't read it or hear it. Maybe he had something programmed in him so that he knew every movement the celestial bodies would have in the next thousand years. It didn't matter to Sam. He got his answer, it was an answer that made sense, and that was really all that mattered.]

Might freak some people out, that's all.

[ david looks up, studies the imperceptible movements of the moon, and thinks about all the things he's studied with respect to this particular celestial body and the reactions that humans have to it. he's seen films starring the moon, read books with paragraphs and paragraphs of description about it, watched people dream about the thing, and time and time again, he's run into the illusion of mystique from something that he finds to be very much something functional. and despite that clinical conclusion, he equates that functionality with the perception of beauty. maybe an android's version of wishful thinking.

so sam's response garners a smile, one that says that david understands that concern. because sure, if the moon gets too close, everything would actually fall apart. ]

Asia sinking would be cause for concern, wouldn't it.

[ if he sounds a little too pleased about this, it's because david's sense of humor (something he thinks he was given in error, since no one seems to enjoy it) is a little skewed. ]

Though I do think that the impending possibility of that happening would hardly be kept a secret, unless some people had an agenda.

[For his part, Sam had thought of the moon as a temporary residence. He had a three year stint on it that would undoubtedly keep his family in money for a long, long time. It was far more demanding than being on an oil rig for months at a time with a few weeks reprieve back home, and with far greater monetary recompense. If he completed his contract, his family would have to do a great deal of spending to run through the cash garnered during his stay. And since he knew (or had, but he never really had) his wife was responsible and had every bit of trust in her he could, he had no doubts that his time in space would make it so they never had to worry about a place to live or food to eat again.

Of course, she had never known Sam, and he had never known her. But for what a clone's thoughts and false memories were worth, he was sure that Eve and the original Sam Bell were living well and not wanting for anything.

Other than Tess, of course.]

That doesn't sound like a very good agenda to have. [It's laced with amusement as he leans back, looking over at David in something akin to approval. Sam likes his sense of humor. Sam likes him in general, though he's well aware that some people wouldn't, no matter how much time they spent around him and had the ability to adjust to what he was; but David wasn't a what to Sam. He was a who. David had never treated him as a what, after all, so why would he think of him as that?] I mean, last I knew, China was still Communist, and they have a good chunk of land right next to the ocean, but on some sides...it would have to flood through India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam...that's a lot of collateral damage just to get at one country that puts people on edge. Vietnam's Communist too, though I don't think anyone worries about them much at all. Or even thinks of them, aside from...sweatshop stuff.

[ he listens to everything with a congenial patience, though he responds most to the phrase 'last i knew'. it piques david's curiosity, and he tilts his head to the side in that perfect sign of polite inquiry, though people would still find his straightforwardness with respect to asking things a bit off-putting.

but, in expert form, he prefaces his question with a quiet, mild: ]

May I ask you something?

[ a beat, and he asks the question anyway, because he knows from experience that sam will say 'yes'. he supposes that this is what people would consider a mutual understanding, and he's come to learn that it's what he can store in his memory as something 'pleasant'. ]

What year are you from?

[ there's a little pause here, as if to acknowledge that that question might be personal (the clone business, as he's made to understand, is a moral dilemma for humans). ]

[Of course the answer would be "yes." Sam lived what short life he was meant to have answering all questions asked, if only because his life was purely business. The video replies he made of a personal nature never went anywhere. He wasn't sure if they were even recorded, if Gerty had a collection of Sam Bell responses that he'd kept in case something happened, or if they'd been shown to the suits at corporate to have a good laugh at. He didn't know where they went.

And after a while, he didn't know what he'd put on them. The little blips and "glitches" he'd seen in the video replies from Earth had always been blamed on transmission, or Tess not being pleased with the way she looked at one point or having to take a break and record after something came up. That there were people purposefully crafting them to look like suitable replies never occurred to him.

A lot had never occurred to him. It was why it was so much worse whenever he found out the truth. He didn't find it out over the course of months. He found it out in less than a day; and, in less than a day, Sam lost a life he thought was his and lost the one person he believed knew him better than anyone else. He found out the only person who knew him at all wasn't a person.

He found out he wasn't a person. When paired with someone like David, what reason would he have to deny him the basic, unalienable rights Sam had believed he had for three years? In what world would that be appropriate behavior at all?]

I. [He thinks his hesitation is answer enough, but he doesn't feel like leaving David with a one-word reply is proper. David is a lot of things; physic? Not so much. At least, not as far as he knows.] I don't know. I'm not sure, I don't know how long the other Sams lasted. I don't know—I know that my, that his daughter was fifteen when I...I mean, it's easy math, right?

I just haven't bothered to do it.

[It's easy.

He does it in his head in less than a second.

He just doesn't like the answer enough to say it out loud.]

Why?

[ it's a little remarkable to david that sam humors him at all-- the scientists on board the prometheus were all varying degrees of patronizing, except for the one exception of dr. shaw who managed to baffle him with her tenacity towards an intangible that he couldn't understand. he's cultivated the opinion that humans are hypocritical, selfish things (because why else would they create something with an identity, however false, and then keep on denying them what they've been given? it fails to make logical sense), and that he has the capacity to know better, but in the end, even that knowledge does very little.

the point of it all is nebulous, and it brings david back to a charming smile and a man burning his own fingertips: 'the trick is not minding that it hurts'. lawrence of arabia. if words could resonate in his hollow, android core, david would think that peter o'toole has gotten the closest to finding out if androids can dream.

the trick is not minding that it hurts, but david knows that for humans, hurt is a fundamental component. he identifies it in sam when he asks the question, and when sam is stuck on a response. ]

Just curious.

[ his own retort is calm, even. ]

I suppose I wanted to know if our times ever overlapped. Not a very good reason to ask such a personal question.

[Sam knew that Gerty was simple AI with a sort of physical form. He knew that he would go home one day and come into contact with other GERTY 3000s if they hadn't upgraded models on Earth. He knew that one day, he'd have his little girl on his knee, asking all sorts of questions about his stay on the moon, and that Gerty would be discussed as in depth as he could. As she grew up, she might ask about his companion on the moon, and Sam would talk about him with a great deal of respect.

He hadn't treated him so well at the beginning. In the end, Gerty had been the only lifeline he had ever had. He hadn't seen the footage of incineration. He never knew that Gerty not only woke him up, but would burn his body completely when it was all said and done with. The dirt on the floor had confused him. He never thought to equate it with human ashes.]

I...suppose it was around 2044 or something like it. You gonna tell me you're from 400 and some odd, new acronym after it?

[ the inclination to laugh surges through his wiring, and david does so; the breath of artificial air is amused, placid, and not entirely without friendliness. ]

Would it surprise you to hear that I'm from 2089?

[ maybe david could go find himself one of the gertys, they could have an interesting conversation about the evolution of technology. david's never heard of a gerty 3000, and he's never met the 7 davids that came before him-- he exists in an isolated bubble of perfect, humanoid models and complex machinery. ]

Not even half a century ahead of you.

[For Sam's part, he seems to take the information with a great deal of stride. Big Things had undoubtedly happened on Earth. Maybe they hadn't finally ended famine in certain parts of the world, but they were getting there. There were, most likely, still places where clean water was unavailable without long, daily walks at morning and night, done by the oldest and strongest sibling in a family without parents. The world was a mess, and no one corporation could clean it up, even if they had their fingers in the pies of a hundred countries. It couldn't be done.

But by God, they had tried. They had tried so much so that they declared training and other, real people too much money for a simple job like mining on the moon.

They had tried, at least.]

It's not so surprising, if you're thinking it would be because of what you are. There could be, there could have been early models when I was on the moon. I can't be sure. Fifteen years doesn't seem like a long time, but we went from having to have clunky phones as landlines to super thin, useable by simple touch phones in that time, didn't we? It's not so unprecedented!

[ from phones to tablets. david supposes the comparison is apt, and relatively harmless, even though that little tick in the back of his wiring says that he should maybe be offended. it's pinocchio syndrome-- every time holloway had called him 'boy', he'd been reminded of how very far he was from the term he was being referred by.

but sam seems earnest about it-- it coincides with his knowledge of earnesty, and while david still has the inclination to think that he's better than a phone (obviously, that's indisputable), and that fifteen years is still a short amount of time to make a david8 (even if reality says otherwise), he's not made to feel angry. ]

Yes, I suppose that's true. My observations might have been slightly skewed in favor of how humans view time, and not to the speed of technological innovations.

That said, I have been told that I don't take up much space.

[ ...ok, but he's entitled to be a little sassy about this, right. the slogan is technological, intellectual, physical, emotional. ]

Edited 2013-03-05 02:26 (UTC)

[The absolute last thing Sam wants to do is offend David. He hadn't meant it as an insult in the slightest, only a comparison. Yes, to a human being, fifteen years can be a lot of time. Hell, their average lifespan made fifteen years a fat lot of time and not much at the same time. And even though fifteen years might not be an accurate estimate on going from non-humanoid AI to fully functional humanoid AI, but fifteen years is all Sam really has as a reference.

He'd been asleep for something like twelve years. He'd been in a box in a shelf with so many more Sams that he hadn't bothered to count. He'd been tired and sick and hurt in heart, mind, body, and soul that he couldn't even be bothered to count how many were in a diagonal row and how many rows there seemed to be. He had figured it out and wanted it to end, and then he'd drove to see Earth for the one time in his life...

It wasn't meant as an insult. To Sam, fifteen years was a lifetime that he'd never have and had never been his in the first place. Fifteen years? Shit, Sam wouldn't know what to do with it.]

Probably because you're so skinny. You could...you could wedge yourself between a rock and a hard place and still have room. I don't think we can fatten you up any, can we? That's...I was always kind of skinny. The fattening up, that never worked. It just...no matter how much I ate, I stayed the same. Of course, I can't really say that without sounding, I don't know, like I'm bragging or something, but if you're naturally skinny, getting over that? Could be impossible.

But it's a good thing!

[ when something is built to outlast, to outlive, filling time becomes less of an obligation and more of an inclination-- limitations connotate a need, a desperation to find some sort of meaning to fill in the spaces between the void of nonexistence. this is something that david still doesn't understand about humans, their fervent search for something that will never practically benefit them in their limited lifespans ("they abandoned us, and i want to know why" --for what reason?) which might be the reason why people tell him that weyland was successful in stripping him of any real humanity. he suspects that they might be right, but david still considers himself, in that complicated system of falsified ego that he was given against his so-called nonexistent will, limitless, despite his lack of a soul.

by his own definitions, of course.

for david, 4 years on the prometheus with the crew in cryostasis is the equivalent of any 4 years in his given lifespan. he understands relativity, but doesn't experience it.

he also understands this discrepancy, which is the worst part.

but, well. sam always manages to make things a little less complicated, even though everything about the man is a mess of things that david can't quite put his fingers on. that's what makes sam indisputably a human to david. ]

Certainly. Making machinery that takes up extraneous space is something that went out of vogue many years ago.

[ self-deprecation? no. david curls his lips into a perfect half-smile. ]

As for you, Sam, no doubt your weight issues are the envy of many.

[Sam's not so sure about a soul—if he has one, if anyone has one—but the word can be a wide variety of things, from the idea of an eternal and lasting imprint of a person to a type of song that's extremely heartfelt. Does every human being have one part of them that never truly dies and continues on after death? He doesn't know. How can anyone know that? It's just another mystery, and it's one that Sam hadn't spent much time thinking about.

He had a moon to mine, videos to watch, and a job to do.]

Yeah, there's lots of people who'd like to be skinnier. But. [He drops a hand to his stomach, grasping at what little fat there is on it.] If you don't eat enough, it makes you...you can get sick. Really sick.

Even if that food is crummy astronaut food. You can't always pick what you want to eat though, can you? At least, not in space.

[In space, no one can hear you scream for Chinese.]

[ his mild expression remains unchanging, while his memory churns and picks up images of green jello and congealed half-fluids. he would hike up his shirt to show sam his perfectly sculpted abs (it's a perk of being a perfect android), but he knows that that would be bragging.

the fact that that thought occurs to him at all is a testament of an existing ego. why else would he bother riding bicycles and playing basketball if he didn't at least feel a modicum of pride in his ability to do so? ]

I'm not sure, Sam. I don't believe I've ever eaten anything but space food.

[ when someone doesn't have a frame of reference, someone can't make an accurate assessment. david looks up at the moon, the fickle, ever-changing celestial body, and muses upon its closeness to the world. ]

But distance makes the heart fonder for the things you don't have, doesn't it?

[ he doesn't actually understand this concept, but longing is programmed intimately into his AI. ]

Does it make you bitter? The moon, I mean.

[Sam had kept himself as fit as he possibly could. It wasn't just for his job by the end of it, but for Tess and Eve. He didn't want to go back to Earth looking like a lumberjack with a paunch, had had his hair cut and shaved himself clean in preparation for the launch home. Some days he hadn't wanted to get on that treadmill at all, but an astronaut had to be in a certain shape, and who wanted to welcome back their husband plus thirty pounds after him being gone for three years? Sam wouldn't do that to Tess, wouldn't do that to his job.

Or himself, really; he liked being slender, even if he occasionally had to put some effort into it. He may not have had killer abs, but he had what was needed for his job. He had what he'd had when he left Earth, or so he thought. He was fine with his body.]

Why would it make me bitter? [It's an honest question. He sees where one might think that, but Sam can't really hold it against the moon, of all things.] It didn't do anything. It just had, it had what we needed. It didn't, it wasn't something that was out to get me, or whatever you'd call it. It's not the moon's fault. It's the people, it's the industry. The heads in charge. I don't know, maybe the economy. The prices of training, of shooting off what they'd need, it's got nothing to do with the moon. I mean, I lived there. I know there weren't spies on it, running around, making sure I never knew the truth.

It's just the moon. Being the moon. That's not its fault. I'm not...it's always been there and always will be. No reason to get bitter at it. I'm not a werewolf or anything.

002 - The Stargazing Meme

david8 | prometheus.

#9

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casually only nine days late — five

HAHAHA no worries!!

I'M GLAD

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OH MY GOD i never got a notif for this??? DW please

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdjju3LvSZ1qfyepx.gif for rl dw