asgardchrysalis | o2; Discovery [Closed]

Entry tags:

o2; Discovery [Closed]

Who: Ariadne (

dataset)
What: Talking about mission stuff
When: April 2
Where: Ariadne's Garden
Warnings: Tiniest bit of blood, Potential Game Spoilers.

It was natural for him to look into strange matters and investigate them. In this case, he had been given something new to investigate involving a strange occurrence with the local lake. The details were sparse. He only knew that the lake exhibited some type of ...abnormality.

The best approach was to interview the witness who initially reported the incident before looking into matters further. In this case, the witness happened to be someone he was casually familiar with: Ariadne. Ariadne said that she could usually be found in her garden, so Connor headed there first to see if she was available for a few questions.

He ducked under a branch and stepped into the garden he had been to a few times before, careful to avoid any of the newly budding strawberry plants. "Ariadne?" It had become a habit to look up into the tree branches overhead first in case she was perched up there.

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She knelt down on the ground beside him, gripping the edge of her tunic between her fingers to carefully and neatly rip a strip of fabric to use as a bandage. "I know the feeling," she sighed. Ordinarily, she would have used her talons to make him a proper bandage. She missed them. As much as she missed her scents.

It was like losing her wings all over again.

"At least with all the things you've lost, you've gained some things too," she said, hopefully. "The ability to taste, for one thing."

"I admire your optimism." Countering that notion with the fact that taste was useless for someone who didn't eat didn't seem productive. Instead, he looked at what she seemed to be doing with her dress.

A bandage?

Connor glanced at his hand. For some reason, the gash didn't seem to be healing itself. That was one more ability he didn't have in Asgard. At that point, he would normally offer his hand to her so she could bandage it without protest but... he didn't know if she would like that. She seemed to have an aversion to touching others' hands for some unknown reason. "Let me take care of it." He purposely withdrew his injured hand to his chest.

Ariadne handed over the bandage without protest. Not only was she skittish about touching someone's hand, but she was no healer. The last thing she ever wanted to do was make an injury worse with her haphazard fixes, picked up on the road over the last nine years.

"It's funny," she said, sitting back on her heels. "Most people make fun of me for it. The optimism. They say it's naive to hope for the best, to see the bright side."

And that bothered her. More than she could articulate, really.

Connor took the bandage and began to wind the cloth tightly around his palm. He talked offhandedly as he did so. "Studies have proven that those who engage in optimistic behaviors are more likely to have improved physical and emotional health, achieve success more often, be more persistent, and have improved longevity."

He tied the fabric off once it was tied to satisfaction. "Though a link between optimism and longevity can't be directly proven, those who show more optimistic traits have been shown to have a 14.9% longer lifespan than their pessimistic peers."

Once that was done, he reached for the jacket he had left lying in the grass and slipped it back on. "Overall, the benefits of optimism far outweigh the detriments."

Leave it to Connor to say something like that. "I don't know how you can really study something like that," she said, "but I guess that's good to know. Although I'm not being optimistic to live longer. That would seem like a strange reason to do it."

Although she could imagine some people trying.

Some people would do anything to live. Even in the face of the impossible.

"Can an Android be optimistic?"

Connor shook out his jacket to get it to lay against him properly.

Whether androids were capable of certain things had a very definitive explanation. It wasn't a difficult question to answer. However... answering that question was going to potentially set himself up to explain a lot about himself.

Though he didn't skip a beat in the conversation, It was a calculated decision to answer the way that he did. "A deviant could."

"A...deviant?"

That was a strange way of saying something. Ariadne knew that there weren't a lot of optimists in the universe. At least, not at her level. But thinking about it as somehow deviant...

Well, in most languages, the word 'deviant' or its equivalent had a kind of negative connotation to it. She didn't like to think of optimism as a bad thing.

But, of course, languages were all unique. And there weren't many as unique as Connor. So better to ask than to assume. "And what does that mean...to you?"

It meant something terribly confusing.

Connor began to calmly explain, "When androids are created, they don't have the capacity to feel emotions or make their own decisions. They function completely based on the instructions that they are given by the humans who create them."

He put one hand over the other in his lap. His palm still stung. "But certain androids develop the ability to disregard the orders they are given. They begin making irrational emotion-based decisions and deviate from their expected behavior. We call those androids 'deviants'. Deviants are able to feel, think, and act independently. I don't see any reason why one couldn't also be optimistic."

"That sounds a lot like children growing up," she said, thoughtfully. "Learning how to think for themselves and argue with their parents." Although the Humans from Connor's world didn't really sound like well-meaning parents to Ariadne.

More like slavers.

Still, she supposed, some of the analogy might hold.

"I suppose you can think of it that way." From the sounds of it, maybe she still thought of humans as the parents to androids and assumed they would share some familial ties. It was a well-meaning comparison, at least.

"However, it's not always an endearing trait to humans. Their unpredictability is why many humans consider deviants to be dangerous. Most of them are killed immediately."

"Like Alastrians," she said. Another unfortunate truth they had in common. Although it wasn't so much about their behavior as their value on the black market.

She reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder. She gave it a tiny squeeze.

Shoulders were easier than hands, for so many reasons.

"I love Humans, most of the time. They're creative and vibrant. They come up with clever ideas. They're constantly moving, constantly changing." She paused. "But they can also be very stubborn, sometimes. Set in their ways. So determined not to be at the bottom of the pile that they sometimes throw others beneath them. It's important to remember the good things about them, even when they're being...rude."

It sounded like she was trying to convince him not to hate humans. Which was just as well, since he didn’t hate them.

“I can understand their initial reasoning." He admitted. Connor had spent most of his time on the side of humans to help them achieve their goals of getting rid of deviants, so he knew what kind of information they were given.

Though he sounded a touch quieter when he recited the facts he'd gleaned through his work. "Most deviants committed some act of aggression in their efforts to escape their circumstances. Something unpredictable and potentially dangerous would inevitably seem like a threat.”

"You can't really blame them," Ariadne said. "I mean, if I was a slave and I didn't want to be, I'd do everything I could to get away." Then again, if she were bound as a familiar, she'd be utterly incapable of it.

Several of her aunts had found themselves in that position, or so she'd been told. Bound to sorcerers and magicians and even the occasional Elf who'd gone down a dark path. Forced to do terrible things. There was no way to break that bond, short of the death of the one who'd created it. And although no one had ever said as much, she was reasonably sure at least one of her aunts had committed murder to escape.

It was hard to hate her for it.

"But you said 'most.' Not all, right?"

"Some were able to escape when they weren't being directly supervised." They'd simply been able to run away and try to find somewhere to hide.

"Others were able to escape thanks to the deviant leader, Markus." Hopefully, he wouldn't regret bringing up the subject. "He freed many deviants using more peaceful methods to help deviants attain freedom."

"Well, peaceful is always better," she said. With the most sincere certainty imaginable. Blame it on that optimism again. She really did believe that there was always, always, a perfect possible future in which everything worked out and no one got hurt.

The hard part was figuring out how that future unfolded.

"I think I might like this Markus."

"I don't know Markus very well, but I have a feeling he would like you too." Markus had a natural charisma as a leader that drew others to him. Even he found himself having a sort of...reverence for Markus and his accomplishments. "I think he'd be very interested in helping all Alastrians."

Everyone liked Ariadne. Eventually. She wore down even the toughest of stoics, usually. Give or take a couple of Elvish warlords...

Still, she smiled, practically preening at the compliment. "Who knows? He could end up here some day. It happens sometimes. People run into familiar faces."

Connor's face immediately fell into concern. Markus ending up in Asgard would be one of the worst things he could imagine. Not because he didn't like Markus - quite the opposite - he knew how instrumental Markus was to their cause.

Deviant's freedoms were upheld on shoestrings and taking Markus away from that would have disastrous consequences. "If he was here then that would mean there would be no one to lead. That would be..." He laced his fingers together and actually...fidgeted a little bit. "...immeasurably bad for deviants."

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that."

Well, that was a lie. She had thought about it. Quite a lot, actually. And often, she felt very guilty that she was in Asgard, while there was work to be done back home.

But she wasn't a leader. That was difference. She was just a bit-player, a cog in the machine. Someone who could be replaced.

Markus was different.

"Well, in that case, I hope he doesn't come here."

"It would be for the best if he didn't." They had that in common. Connor was able to come to terms with being in Asgard because he wasn't very important. The part he had played in the deviant uprising helped in the end, but going forward they could survive without him. His presence wasn't vital.

Now that he had taken some time to recover, Connor stood up and dusted his pants off. His knees were a little dustier than he would have liked. "Now, let's take a look at your plant."

Ariadne winced, looking over at the blackened remains. "I think Kevin may be beyond repair," she admitted, with a depressed sigh. Even her talents had limits. Still, she stood up and moved to stand next to Connor.

She glanced down at her finger. The bleeding had stopped and the prick had been so small that she could barely even see it. As it was, it took her a second to remember where it had been.

Something in the pit of her stomach told her that it had to do with what she'd been through. But, of course, she couldn't prove that.

...Ke...vin. The plants name was Kevin. She named her plants. Suppose that made some sense, she would have to have something to call them if she held regular conversations with them.

Connor walked over to the charred plant. He reached out and felt some of the leaves between his fingers, watching as they easily crumbled to ash. "Is this the only plant you've taken care of since you've returned?"

"No," she said, trailing after him. "I've been in the garden all morning. Kevin's the only one that I..."

...murdered? Honestly, as much as she loved her plants, that felt a bit extreme.

Ariadne shrugged. "Also the only one I cut myself on."

Then it likely wasn't the plant that had caused it. Though he'd never heard of plants causing fires, Asgard sometimes had surprises in store that needed further study.

He looked to the other - more lively - plants around them. Connor walked to one of the healthier plants which were similar to 'Kevin', picked through its leaves to find some available thorns, and jabbed them into his finger to see what would happen. Though he did cut himself, the plant remained unscathed. "...Nothing."

He didn't exactly want to ask her to do it again but it could be the only way to get similar results to what she had experienced.

She watched him, only a little wide-eyed. Connor would go to great lengths in the name of investigation. That was no great surprise. Not any more. What she still needed to get used to was the vivid color of his blood.

Was it blood? He said he was manufactured. Could you manufacture blood? She didn't know. And it felt a little rude to ask.

"Connor, it's..." She shook her head. "It's not you. I think it's me. I think I'm the one that caused it."

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