5.0 Truthiness

[no_fastolfe]

I hate you. I hate all of you. Except the ones that I don't but I'm afraid if I like them too much they'll abandon me. Even one of my own robots abandoned me and I loved him very much and he's dead. He wouldn't have died if he'd stayed with me and I think he must not have loved me. I was so sure he did.

Every day you show little pieces of your lives and I see how much you are individuals who seek to make the most out of your short lifespan and it terrifies me that there are billions of you on Earth and settling the galaxy because so long as you are insects you could never overrun the Spacer worlds but if you are people then your voices will drown us out and I will not have lived for anything.

I am so afraid of dying now and I hate that the last thing I know before my death will be fear and pain and I hate that there is nothing all Spacer advancement can do about it and I hate all of you.



[OOC: Vasilia is so affected. Not being able to lie to herself is being very damaging. On the other hand, for the first time since she was a weetiny thing she will completely trust people... whether that's good or not.]

Comments

[strangehistorian]

Your opinion of the other people here has no bearing on whether or not you will be redeemed.

[On a normal day, this would have come out as 'i'm very sorry to hear that.]

[no_fastolfe]

I don't want to be redeemed because I assume the worst about what is expected of me and fear that I will turn into an entirely different individual. My greater fear is that the change will be harmless and better me in some way and that this will invalidate the rest of my life and prove me wrong. I can't stand to be wrong.

[strangehistorian]

You will get over it.

[ = "I'm sorry, but I'm sure everything's going to be fine."]

Why would it prove you wrong?

[no_fastolfe]

If I let my negative emotions fade I'll feel idiotic for having had them in the first place.

[Amazingly this is both objection and answer]

[strangehistorian]

Don't. Your emotions are largely a result of the circumstances of your life and upbringing, I assume.

[no_fastolfe]

To some extent they are influenced by my experiences but I have been suspecting for some time that there is a chemical imbalance that makes me prone to depression and paranoia. I feel like my own brain has tricked me.

[strangehistorian]

This is no fault of yours either, simply a result of your genetics. Or chance. And I believe in several of our representative worlds there are chemicals one can take as medicine to regulate this sort of imbalance. I read about it in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

[no_fastolfe]

My mirror self used those chemicals and was a happier person even though she was under constant mental and physical attack and it seems too easy and some of her ideas are frightening to me.

[private // text -- after the whiskey binge] -- just pretend this icon is the right colors.

[ifightfor]

[Rinzler keeps going back to this. And thinking about what his mirror-self and mirror-Vasilia had been like. And what his opinion on all of this had been.

Finally he manages to scrape together a reply:]

If       some of your emotions are|

  the result of a genetic error, and       you feel they impair your function     then

it is

acceptable to choose not to suffer from them. If they can be fixed.

[private: text]

[no_fastolfe]

This makes me sad and frightened and I don't know why. The whiskey didn't make me any more rational and I have a horrible headache.

I am good at patterns. I am a good roboticist, please believe me. I can see that your potentials are out of balance because of the flood of irrationality and organic detail. I'm worried and I know I'm not any better.

I don't know why it scares me because I know that you would never lie to me. It is instinctual and it comes from no-where but it consumes me.

It is acceptable. I believe you.

[private // text]

[ifightfor]

[...]

Recommend cold washcloth, analgesics.

[Not that he knows much about dealing with pain but he's read about that headache remedy often enough.]

JA I believe you.

Change is       undesirable

unsettling

      unwanted. Often. But to play the game you must be at your best and

you should not suffer. You do not deserve to suffer.

[private // text]

[no_fastolfe]

[cold wash cloth. Over her stinging red eyes. The very thought is wonderful.]

I will follow your advice and I believe I will also lay back down.

There is a book of simple logic puzzles in the library, by Gardner. I find it very soothing. I do not know if it will act as an analgesic or restore your potentials as it would a Positronic brain. I still know so little about Program function. You do not deserve to suffer either.

[private // text]

[ifightfor]

[Brief delay as he thinks about how to respond to this.]

I will be here. [Waiting. Like a creeper.]

|

Thank you. JA3 I will find this.

[Logicventures]

[no_fastolfe]

After a long nap and several analgeic tablets, and with a slightly less ringing head, Vasilia padded cautiously out of her room and into the common area.

"Hello, Rinzler. Did you find anything to help rebalance yourself? I have been very worried, your data output was compromised and you must have been in severe distress."

[Logicventures]

[ifightfor]

The Program had found the book Vasilia mentioned in her last text in the library; it had served, if not as an immediate anodyne to his confusion and disorientation, at least a good distraction.

He'd also had some time to think, though, and regathering himself had helped immensely.

Raising his head from studying the book of logic puzzles, Rinzler nodded politely to Vasilia in response--then rose from where he was seated, indicating a nearby chair. Would she join him?

Re: [Logicventures]

[no_fastolfe]

She smiled at him-- an acceptance as non-verbal as the invitation-- and sat down with a a certain sleepiness to her movements still. But she did not slouch; she sat upright, with a faint rueful smile on her lips. A very short lesson in both the joys and the pains of alcohol, an illustration in the space of a few hours.

The sound of the continuous growling whirr that accompanied the program wherever he went was a soothing one.

"Have you come to any conclusions?" she asked quietly, and then added teasingly: "Besides which of William's daughters has red hair and how many steps it will take to move the Tower of Babylon?"

[strangehistorian]

Why is the idea of being happier frightening? Was it at the cost of the suffering of others?

[no_fastolfe]

No. But I am more inclined to remain miserable but the same than be happier but changed.

But I have been told that it is acceptable to change and to use these chemicals as a tool and that's a much more acceptable phrasing to me. Why does it matter so much what form an idea takes when the data is essentially the same? That disturbs me because I like to think I'm much more logical than that.

[strangehistorian]

I can't speak for your own thoughts. Emotions are highly unpredictable in mortals I have not studied.

[no_fastolfe]

What is being immortal like?

[strangehistorian]

I really don't have any basis for comparison. We are appointed with true duties and purposes, though, which I think would make some mortals highly productive and motivated and utterly stifle others.

[no_fastolfe]

Are these duties assigned by aptitude? If so how is it tested? If not does it not risk a sub-optimal assignment? Do you like your assignment?

[strangehistorian]

Aptitude is gifted by duty. Hm. Further information is secret, but I'll be able to explain later.

[no_fastolfe]

Of course! I will wait.

[Vasilia is so much more agreeable when she believes people implicitly.]

[strangehistorian]

Thank you!