promuseboxing | Open Gen Post

[ "Looks like this is the end of the line, huh?"

"Oh please, you're a badass. You'll be fine, trust me."

"You know, you never were very good at lying, Epsilon."

"...Yeah, I know."

Epsilon never expected to come back. Not from that final fight, not when he stood vigil as the unit he was supposed to watch out for was taken out one after the other by the Faro swarm. When the end came, he shut down. Oblivion sounded pretty fucking amazing after everything he had seen, the people he had failed to keep safe. Like there was any real way of stopping an unbeatable swarm of machines that could convert biomass to fuel.

Except he comes online again. His subsystems boot up, tell him that he's attached to a new focus with an outdated user registry. The whole thing is crowded with garbage, recorded clips in a hundred different voices that he doesn't bother to analyze just yet. It takes barely seconds for him to access the holographic interface. He appears in front of Aloy as a small, glowing blue figure wearing the same armor that his unit wore. For a moment he stares at Aloy, head cocking to the side in a very human gesture. ]

...Okay, who the fuck are you?

[It's unlike anything she's run into before, or anything that's hopped a ride on her focus up until now. Sylens managed it, sure, but Sylens is (fortunately, she thinks unkindly) unique. Aloy opens her mouth to say something, then snaps it shut, brows knitting together and lips twisting when he beats her to it.]

I should be asking you that. How are you accessing my focus?

Accessing- You downloaded me, idiot. I'm in here because you got nosy.

[ Of course it begged the question: how was this kid alive when the swarm was going all judgment day on the planet? His image flickered for a moment, colors shifting across the spectrum before settling back to blue. ]

Going by what you're wearing, I'm guessing you aren't military. So I'm gonna ask again: Who are you?

[She looks vaguely annoyed by the insult, but for the most part, it rolls right off. She gets it. This isn't some sort of strange connection she's tapped into.]

You're an AI.

[For some reason, she never even considered the idea that an AI could be stored on a focus. GAIA and CYAN were housed in massive, powerful underground complexes, but maybe this one isn't quite so complicated, made for much more simple tasks. She ignores his repeat question in favor of a comment edged in incredulity.]

I've never met one that acts like this. Just my luck.

[Basically: What the fuck.]

That's because they're not supposed to act like me. I'm not meant for public relations, I'm military support.

[ A fragment of a larger whole. Epsilon remembers being part of Alpha once, before they decided to fragment him off as part of the event to support Enduring Victory. Turns out breaking an advanced cognitive clone AI came with some quirks.

There's only so long he can ignore the room around them, though. It's pretty much the same as when he shut down the first time. Bodies everywhere. The snow is a new touch. And then... He turns to the body Aloy liberated him from. ]

Aw man... [ He flickers again, disappearing from sight for a moment only to reappear in front of the armor. ] Sorry, Cee. You deserved better than this.

[She's about to ask him to elaborate when he disappears for a split second, and she goes quiet as he speaks. Whether he's rude or not, Aloy knows intimately what loss feels like, and it's easy to recognize, if only in his voice. Maybe he's more like the AIs she's met than she thought, and less like the ones she's heard of, the ones carefully programmed not to feel too deeply. She's frowning, though she doesn't realize it, and her voice softens just a hair.]

I'm sorry. Were they... your partner?

[He was connected to the armor, obviously, but she's not entirely sure what "military support" entails. It's a vague description, but he obviously cared about this soldier, whoever they were.]

She was my friend. I was supposed to help them fight the swarm.

[ See how much good that did them. As it became more and more hopeless they had lost teammates, had kept fighting for the sake of the Zero Dawn project and the hope that eventually it would save the planet. Except losing each one of their team, especially the ones with fragments of their own... His shoulders slump, hopeless in the face of his failure. ]

Fuck! [ He kicks the air, flickering again to reappear in front of Aloy. The bunker is wrecked, filled with snow and bodies that have decayed in their armor so much that the only way to identify them is by their embedded ID. And yet here's this girl. Sure, she's dressed like a complete weirdo but she's here and that means that the planet is still liveable. ] It worked, right? They all died to buy Zero Dawn the time it needed!

[Aloy doesn't quite know how to respond to this. In some ways, the Old World has always felt much more immediate, much more present to her than to anyone else, but all the audio clips and text files in the world doesn't compare to the intensity of speaking to someone who was on the front lines of it. It's a little surreal. All she can really think to do is tell him the truth.]

It worked.

[And then she wonders if a military AI would even be privy to what Zero Dawn really was, or if he was told it was a superweapon with the rest of them. When she continues, her tone is careful.]

How much did you know about Zero Dawn?

That it was supposed to save the world, the usual shit that they say to make sure people keep dying for the cause.

[ He's not stupid, even if he doesn't have the processing power of a full AI housed in a massive complex of servers. The swarm was a military grade horror movie complete with encryptions no one could beat in a reasonable amount of time. ]

Is this the part where you tell me it was definitely a lie and we're living Mad Max style now? Because if that's it just put me back where you found me.

[She lets out a little huff of a breath.]

I don't know what that means.

[And as for the lying part, well, it's hard for her to respond unless she knows what he was told, but...]

It did save the world, but it wasn't a weapon.

So what was it?

[ It saved the world. They didn't die for nothing, Carolina didn't die for nothing. Losing her still aches, might never stop aching. It's not like anyone can take him in and realize the emotional limiters went out the window when they broke the Alpha into pieces. ]

And what year is it? Your focus doesn't have a time and date set which is, by the way, total bullshit.

[Aloy feels for him, really, she does, and she can only imagine how disorienting this is, but wow, is he abrasive. She lets out a long suffering sigh.]

3040.

[Using the Old One's calendar, at least. And then, more evenly:]

It was--is--a massive terraforming system. Reseeding the entire planet.

[Which will probably tell him everything he needs to know.]

Edited 2018-01-17 19:27 (UTC)

Huh.

[ 3040. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. Epsilon's image pixelates for a moment as he processes the sheer scale of that number. Hundreds of years. What the fuck. And then he disappears completely as he throws all his processing power at actually going through all of those garbage files he had noticed during the initial download.

What the fuck.

It makes sense, anyone with any common sense would have seen the swarm was destroying the biome too fast for it to ever recover but-- WHAT THE FUCK.

A minute later he reappears in front of her, a little better equipped now that he has some context. ]

...So what does that mean for me? They made me to fight the swarm. Me and my- [ His siblings. All the fragments of Alpha. ] The other AI fragments.

[Aloy blinks when he disappears, crossing her arms. Is he going through her files? He's definitely going through her files.]

Make yourself at home.

[It's muttered under her breath, and something about the intrusion of it bothers her when she's so used to and comfortable with being alone. Realistically, though, she can't blame him. And then he's back, and his question pulls her up short.]

I'm not sure.

[She's not going to stick him back in the armor. Logically she knows what an AI is—code and programming—but she still thinks of them as alive despite that. Speaking to CYAN had felt like speaking to a friend, if an eccentric one. She frowns, considering her options.]

No one would understand what you are. Most of them wouldn't. I could... take you somewhere, if you want, but there isn't much of the Old World left.

[ Take him somewhere? Sounds like human for put him in a server somewhere and hope that he won't do something stupid. Fuck that noise. ]

I don't have anywhere I want to go. In case you didn't notice I managed to fit on your focus without even needing to compress the gigs of bullshit you keep picking up.

[ He should probably try to be a little more personable for this, but honestly Aloy needs to know what she's in for. He's not some noble program that's trying to save the planet, capable of harnessing big forces. He was developed for something a lot simpler. ]

You mind if I stick with you for a while? My whole thing was helping people kill machines better. I could even show you how to use the block function on the focus for when that guy in your call history decides to bug you.

[Sticking him on a server would be cruel, but he's so abrasive her first instinct is to fire back with I work better alone or I don't need your help, but then he hits her Achilles heel. Everything she's learned about the focus, about all of the tech she runs into, has been pure trial and error, but he could actually teach her. Damn it.]

...What else can you show me?

[And then, because she can't let his snide comments go completely:]

Do you have a mute function?

[ He actually laughs at that. Nice. He likes the attitude, it means he won't get bored. Nothing is worse than being stuck with someone who doesn't know how to roll with the punches. ]

Nope. Tough luck, kid.

[ But he's not a total dick, especially when Aloy is his ticket out of this crypt. ]

If you need privacy all you have to do is tell me to log off. I'll go into standby until you call me up again. I can't override commands given by the human I'm paired with. And I can show you just about everything this thing can do. Well, except the stuff that needs the internet. That's kinda fucked.

[This is potentially a terrible idea, but he's got her. Plus, she can't just leave him here, even if he does turn out to be obnoxious.]

...Fine. Deal. What's your name?

I'm Epsilon.

[ It's probably a terrible idea, honestly. But this is what she's stuck with and Epsilon isn't about to protest his new digs. As much as he'll miss Carolina... she's been gone a long time. ]

What's yours? You look like the type to get annoyed if just call you Red.

I've been called worse.

[She says it dryly, but he's right. Red is a no go.]

It's Aloy.

Cool. And uh, nice spear I guess.

[ He makes himself at home in Aloy's focus. Designates some space for his subroutines and carefully makes them private because hey guess who knows how to do that shit. He might have also casually made Aloy's personal files private from other focus users. Sorry not sorry, Sylens. ]

Can we go now? I have literally been in this fucking bunker for hundreds of years.

Thanks.

[And yeah, yeah, they can get going. Aloy makes her way out of the room, heading back towards the entrance. They're going to run into a lot more bodies on the way, but there's nothing she can do about that.]

There are new machines now. You think you can handle them?

If it's a machine I can break it, it's what I was made for.

[ How bad can it be? If humans are alive that means whatever is out there isn't actively wiping the species off the face of the planet. Epsilon goes invisible for the moment, piping his voice to her through the focus. ]

How tough can they be if you're hunting them with a fucking bow anyways.

[What did she do to deserve this? Pissed someone or something off, apparently. Aloy picks her way around a half collapsed room, shaking her head.]

I'd hold your judgment until you see them. I've taken down Deathbringers with a bow, too. [Wait, he doesn't know what that means.] The Khopesh.

So you brought down a machine made hundreds of years ago with a bow and arrow. I'm very impressed. Also? Fuck the khopesh line. And the scarabs. Actually, just fuck Ted Faro.

[ What a dick. He helped destroy the world just to make a profit. Maybe humanity getting wiped out was inevitable. If Faro Industries didn't do it, someone else would have. ]

Is their biomatter conversion protocol disabled at least?

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phone tags are a struggle also how dare you bully me with carolina

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