oo1 / video

[interspace]

WHO Misha Hunt
BROADCAST Fleet-wide video!
ACTION Marsiva hospitality deck
WHEN May 20th because I'm a loser

[ The comm is set down on a table, facing down to give a wide angle of a young redheaded woman who is basically standing inside of a couch. Phasing! She looks to the camera, brows raised very pointedly!! And then walks forward to one of the walls leading further into the Marsiva and pushes.

Nada.

She looks back to the camera. Walks back to the couch, does a slow turn around while standing inside of it, then goes back and pushes on the wall again. After a moment, she steps back, uses both hands to point at the stubborn wall. ]

Is anyone else seeing this shit?

Comments

[thezerothlaw]

I am pleased to meet you, Ms. Hunt.

[Oh, good. He's helping. This is exactly what he wanted.]

In some respects, I am a technologically advanced model, but robots are very common on Spacer worlds. There is nothing extraordinary about that. You, on the other hand, are capable of circumventing all the rules of physics I am aware of. It is... an adjustment.

[interspace]

Call me Misha. [ Ms. Hunt is unnecessarily formal considering their current situation and all. ]

Oh, please. Where I'm from, it's the kind of stuff any human can do depending on how their genetics get bent. Spacer worlds, though?

[thezerothlaw]

Misha, then.

[He does default to formality, but whatever she wants.]

The Spacer worlds are the fifty planets settled in the first wave of human settlement through the galaxy. My own creators were from Aurora, the first of these worlds. And yet, while Spacers are significantly longer-lived than humans from Earth or the more recently colonised Settler worlds, I have never heard of abilities such as yours. What other abilities are known, may I ask?

[Maybe he has an ulterior motive for that. Maybe.]

[interspace]

Um... a lot, really. Wow. Just to start, you've got mine: phasing and flight, kind of the same thing but not but also like one of the longest and most personal stories I've got, so deal with that. Uh, flight-phasing, and telekinesis, super-speed, elemental manipulation — like, earth, water, fire, air, wood, things like that. Power copying through touch. Absorption and manipulation of energy. Those are the ones I've dealt with the most.

What's with the lifespan difference for Spacers? Some kind of habitat thing, or rich and poor division? Or space racism? Space-ism. [ Hm. She squints at that last one. ]

[thezerothlaw]

You can fly? Would you be willing to demonstrate?

[That's... incredible. All of it is.]

Spacers live longer than Earthmen for a variety of reasons, but it comes down to a combination of access to superior medical care, many generations of selecting for favourable genetic traits, and a complete elimination of communicable disease. Most Spacers can expect to live two or three centuries, though this lifestyle has left them with a severely weakened immune system. There is regrettably a good deal of prejudice between Spacers and the shorter-lived Earthmen and the Settlers who have only relatively recently begun the second wave of colonization.

[interspace]

[ She shrugs, lifts her feet and crosses them, all without lowering herself to the ground at all. She's sitting on air and now resting her arms on her legs. This is comfortable, this is safe, this is all hers and generally invincible with the proper combination of her powers. It doesn't, however, make her strong. ]

So kind of a rich and poor thing with a dash of science. I guess Spacers don't get a chance to go out and explore often if they get sick from every little sneeze or cough. How do the Earthmen and Settlers get along?

[thezerothlaw]

Few Spacers have any desire to leave their estates in the first place. They are heavily dependant on robot labour and comfortable where they are. To be perfectly frank, it is a society that is stagnating, badly. Earthmen and Settlers are still closely linked, and many Settlers are only a generation or two removed from their ancestors on Earth.

[He circles around her a little, openly interested in her apparent disregard for gravity.]

This is extraordinary. This is certainly unlike anything I have ever witnessed before. How common are such abilities?

[interspace]

I'm seeing some parallels here to what's probably early Earth history to you. Hardship demands diversity, right? Peace without challenge is just... ugh, gross, I guess.

[ Yep. That's her incredibly eloquent way of saying it. When he circles, she waits until he's about done before her head dips down, her torso twists and her body lifts up until she's basically aloft upside down with her face at level with his. She's definitely smiling here. ]

Where I'm from? Not very, but it isn't impossible. Find the right energy to expose yourself to in a nonlethal dose and you, too, could probably get superpowers. [ She pauses. ] I mean, the general 'you'. I don't think it applies to robots? Unless androids have genetics. How do they work for you?

[thezerothlaw]

That is a very good way to put it. Hardship does demand diversity, and innovation as well. Humanity must grow outwards, not inwards.

[This is so neat. He's not really excited, because that's not really how he is, but he is incredibly interested all the same. He also has to sort this into a way that he can make sense of, because this isn't flight in the same sense as a bird or an aircraft.]

You seem able to consciously control the gravitational field in your immediate vicinity, due to a genetic abnormality. How very useful. It is true that I do not have genetics, though...

[He pauses, debating. It's not exactly a good thing, where he's from, for robots to have unusual abilities. It would be the sort of thing that would result in a robot being deactivated permanently in order to investigate what positronic abnormalities might have caused it, so that it can be prevented in future. He's... maybe not quite ready to admit to his own abilities.]

I am aware of some precedent for positronic abnormalities or unusual programming matrices producing mental abilities, though such things are considered mostly rumours, and undesirable in any case.

[interspace]

And you'd be damned how often humanity wants to just curl up in their shell and hide away. Yeesh.

[ It isn't quite gravitational control if he notices: her hair still falls downward and she has her arms crossed over her ribs to keep her shirt from flipping into her face. Since it looks like she's going to just be sitting there, someone speaks a reminder in her ear through the earpieces there: Feet on the floor, Misha. She just huffs and turns easily to stand once again on proper ground. ]

So, wait... are we talking like, actual-AI mental abilities, or something even more than that?

[ It's a small wonder she understood. Considering she's lived with a supergenius or two for the last seven years, though, it isn't too far out there. ]

[thezerothlaw]

[His hesitation is almost imperceptible -- almost.]

Telepathy, specifically.

[And oh, is he paying attention to her response to that.

[interspace]

[ That is too pointed a statement and too pointed a tone for her to really take it any other way. Combined with her heightened paranoia and the fact that he's practically going "a friend of mine said," it's not hard for her to jump to conclusions.

She tenses, watches him. Her anxiety ramps up, the feeling of isolation, the need to protect something. Vulnerability. People inside of her head are generally Not Welcome. ]

How much have you read off me so far?

[thezerothlaw]

[A miscalculation. Oops. And she's not pleased, and this is precisely the sort of reaction that he was afraid of. Humans generally don't like the idea of a robot in their head. He could tamper with her to protect himself... but maybe that's not necessary. Maybe.]

You are correct. What I am mostly aware of is the texture of emotions someone is experiencing. Friend Giskard, who had the programming matrix before he gave it to me, was sometimes capable of hearing a distinct thought, if he was very familiar with someone's mind and it was a thought that was both clear and strong, but I have yet to experience such a thing. Right now, I know that you are disturbed by this, and feeling anxious and vulnerable. I assure you, Misha, that I don't mean to cause you distress.

[He does take a step backwards, all the same.]

[interspace]

[ She takes a deep breath, doesn't move from where she is. Her emotions are in flux but not dangerously so. Conflict. Reluctant understanding. Distress and guilt. She doesn't like this but she doesn't want to blame him for something he might not be able to control. ]

Can you turn it on and off, and-or do you have a choice in what you read in people?

[thezerothlaw]

It is a sense. I cannot turn it off any more than I can cease to hear or see. The texture of someone's mind is, now, as much a part of how I perceive someone as is their physical appearance.

[Which is all quite true, and he explains this as earnestly as he can.]

I cannot extract secrets, and I suspect that to do so would cause harm, which I do not desire. I only the emotions you experience now, and must extrapolate from that.

[interspace]

[ Her eyes close and her shoulders slump and hunch together. There's relief mixed in that storm of everything else. Of all her worries, at least her secrets are safe. ]

So you're an empath. Empathy more than telepathy. That's... the distinction we make where I'm from, between reading emotions and reading thoughts. [ She exhales, opens her eyes, forces a shrug. ] Hopefully I'm not being too loud or—abrasive? Everything's... a lot to take in.

[ Which is curious considering the amount of familiarity in the experience. There's fear of the unknown but a strange kind of resignation inside of it all that comes from her past experiences. An odd reaction to have, indeed. ]

[thezerothlaw]

[The line between 'empath' and 'telepath' seems a bit hazy to him, but he's not going to argue. In his experience, 'reading thoughts' just isn't how it works. Maybe it's different for someone far, far stronger, but his personal experience with telepathy comes down to himself. And Giskard before him.]

You have no need to apologise for anything. If I am in the habit of not revealing this, it is because I have no desire to be deactivated.

[interspace]

[ It's much easier for her to categorize if she's got control over it like that. If he can't dig into her mind, she's not nearly as worried. Still... it's rough knowing that someone else can tell how messed up she is by this whole thing. ]

Trust me, I hear you. A lot of people have the same reaction to admitting they're different. Humans don't like change in anything.

[thezerothlaw]

I admit that this is true, based on what I have seen. It is also true that people have rather different opinions towards robots in general, here. I am used to hiding much about myself. I am... not yet sure how open I can be, here.

[interspace]

Which, you know, is totally fair. If you want me to keep mum, that's not gonna be a hardship or anything.

[ She's good at secrets and talking around the issue at hand. Her shoulders slump. ]

Still, uh... if you need some distance from the storm that is Misha's Lack of Emotional Harbor right now, I wouldn't blame you.

[thezerothlaw]

I would appreciate your silence, though it isn't necessary in regards to my being a robot. For now, it is perhaps safest, that way.

[Is she... perhaps trying to be rid of him? That would be understandable.]

I do not need 'distance,' as you put it, but if you would rather I leave you, I understand completely.

[interspace]

Yeah, sure. I'll just razzle-dazzle 'em with my own powers and nobody will even think twice asking about yours.

[ It's not like her own powers have some kind of personal consequence for anyone else. Mind-reading, empathy, premonitions, all of those tend to make people so very cautious and she understands exactly why. ]

No, it... I could really use the distraction right now.