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Who: Kazuhira Miller and Various

Thread 1: Closed to Big Boss

Thread 2: Closed to Ocelot.

Thread 3: OTA and Link

Thread 4: Closed to Solid Snake

When: Month of March

Thread 1: Ambiguously dated to after this and this.

Thread 2: Ambiguously set after this.

Thread 3: Date open.

Thread 4: Morning of the 19th

Where:

Thread 1: Training room.

Thread 2: Rec Room.

Thread 3: Gardens.

Thread 4: Cargo Bay.

What:

Thread 1: Miller's going to have a "talk" with Big Boss.

Thread 2: Post Big Boss talk, Miller watches a movie with Ocelot.

Thread 3: Miller has a hissy fit but gets calmed down playing music.

Thread 4: David meets a husky

Warnings:

Graphic descriptions of violence, no death. Swearing. Mentions of horrible disease.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I feel sorry for the birds that try to make nests in those trees. There you are, raising a bird family, unaware that death is silently growing in the branches beneath you until suddenly the killers hatch or sprout or whatever.

[Even joking, paranoia has a way of making things that should be cute be viewed through a lens of "potentially deadly."]

So this guy...oblivious?

And people accuse me of being paranoid.

[Because Miller is paranoid. But generally, he also thinks he'd know better than to nest int he cat tree.]

Yeah. He was oblivious. I cleared things up.

[Unfortunately in tandem with a fist fight.]

At least what's said is said. [Though he's compelled to at least leave it on a better note than where he did.]

Paranoia comes with the radioactive, raider-infested territory.

[He leans back against the tree again, straightening his legs to stretch them out in front of him and cross at the ankles.]

Sorry it didn't work out.

Mind telling me his name? Just so I don't accidentally say something really fucking awkward to the wrong person.

[It's as if a mighty burden has just been placed on Kaz. He sighs, settling his face into his real hand, then pinching the bridge of his nose.]

His name is Snake.

He also goes by Big Boss.

He's not the younger Snake from the cargo bay. Or the blond Snake. He's not the Big Boss with the horn that just thinks he's Big Boss. He's the older Snake that is actually Big Boss.

[And then he groans. Can't help it. It's as if every time he thinks about it, his brain just wants to leak out of his head.]

[Blink.

Second blink.]

Wow that's not confusing in the slightest. And doesn't at all make me want to call out "Hey, Snake, catch!" in the mess hall just to watch them all look up.

Are they versions of the same person from different universes or something?

No. No they're all from the same universe. "Snake" is more like the military code version of a surname. They all have real names.

It's just a shitty situation. And takes more explaining than I have in me. But basically, not only is my ex on board, but also so is my student from the future, and the man who kills me, and the man that thought he was the one I cared about. And they all have the same face at various ages.

[And he uncovers his face.]

And that was why I was about to smash my guitar into a tree. But I guess that won't make any other of the reminders go away, will it.

Shit. I do not envy you, pal.

But don't smash the guitar, yeah? It's...special. [It's Old World, plus it has meaning for Miller.] Where I come from, things like that, they're really rare. If you want to get destructive--and I don't blame you if you do--I'm sure we can find some crap to destroy or shoot or hurl grenades at. I should warn you though, I'm not great at grenades. So...yeah, maybe not grenades.

I run the training sim room. I could find something.

[For all the guitar is a painful reminder, he doesn't think he could have gone through that last moment. Not really. It means too much to him.]

Sorry. I guess I didn't mean to unload on you, there. [He idly starts playing something else, a song he'd picked up in Costa Rica.]

Not a problem. Happy to lend an ear any time, free of charge.

[He half closes his eyes again, listening to the music.]

Although if you really want to pay me back, you could tell me something about the Old World. Anything. Like a wacky little detail of day-to-day life that everybody's forgotten.

[He shrugs lightly.]

I don't know what people might have forgotten, honestly.

When I was a boy I used to sneak into cinemas to watch movies. I don't know how many of those are still around.

But I was also raised in Japan, so my early day to day life could be slightly different.

The buildings are mostly standing, minus a bit of ceiling here and there. But movies haven't played there in, like, two hundred and ten years.

Japan? And I thought D.C. was far away.

My father was American. But I am Japanese born and raised. [And despite his time in America, his heart, his ideals, they grew in Yokosuka. Not filled with high American hopes, but a struggle to rebuild. At one time he wanted to be American. He truly did.]

But yes, I would sneak into theaters and watch movies. I was poor. It was the only way I could afford it.

And being blonde, well, I didn't get along with a lot of the neighborhood kids.

It's funny, what we notice about the Old World--big buildings, amazing tech, robot servants--all this stuff, this faded glory that makes it look like it must have been a utopia. Sometimes it's hard to remember that there were people whose lives weren't so great back then, too. People who didn't have robot servants and shit.

Why was your blondness a problem? [He doesn't know much about Japan, only that it used to be a country that was near China, very very far away, on the other side of the world.]

I don't know how World War II might have gone for you, but in Japan we were hit with two atomic bombs. And even before that, the destruction was rampant. Houses were mostly made of wood. Entire cities would burn with minimal attacks.

Americans were the enemy, and foreigners already were frowned upon as oddities. When we were occupied, I was obviously a child of the oppressors. Even if I was as Japanese as every other person.

I'm guessing that sort of racism never goes away through history, does it?

[Deacon thinks for a moment.] Yeah, yeah that happened in my history, too. I think that's how it all started. Everyone built more bombs after that, enough to level the world. I guess in a way that makes Japan the first victim of the Great War.

Where I'm from, people have found new reasons to hate each other. A lot of smoothskins don't like ghouls, some ghouls don't like smoothskins, the Enclave doesn't like anyone who's undergone even the slightest radiation-induced mutation--which, let's be honest, is basically everyone, and practically everybody hates synths. It's just one big hate-a-thon.

What are ghouls, smoothskins, and synths?

[Miller has an interest in military politics and hatred. He has for a long time. Probably because of the mystery in his own history, how war broke his mother and his father. How his mother wanted nothing more than peace.]

Anyway, yeah... sounds about right.

Ghouls are people who had high or, like, really long term radiation exposure, but didn't die. Like, some people croak under those conditions but some people just lose their noses and have chunks of their skin fall off but keep right on ticking. And ticking. And ticking. Some of them are as old as the War. Anyway, they look a little night of the undead, but they're just people, with the usual people-mix of good and bad.

There's a lot of discrimination against ghouls, some cities and settlements who won't let them in at all, and some groups who think they should be killed. So ghouls tend to stick with other ghouls and they call non-ghouls "smoothskins." Sometimes they get angry enough to strike back, violently, at the humans who have fucked them over. I can't say I approve, but I can't really blame them either.

And synths? Oh boy, synths. [He rubs the back of his neck. He's got a lot to say on this subject.]

So, ghouls are found anywhere there's radiation, which is everywhere, but synths are kind of a local thing. There's this group called the Institute who has some impressive mad science going on. For a long time they've been building androids, called synths, making them more and more human. So there are Gen 1s, that are barely more than vaguely human-shaped robots, Gen 2s who are sentient--but still pretty primitive. And then there are the Gen 3s. Gen 3s are completely indistinguishable from humans and totally sentient. They can bleed, eat, cry...fall in love... They can be made to look like anyone, so people in the Commonwealth are fucking terrified of their loved ones being kidnapped by the Institute and replaced by synth spies. They'll kill any synth they find on sight.

The Institute, it's legit evil. But the synths aren't. Sure, there might be some bad eggs like there are with humans, but most of them are just doing what they've been brainwashed for their entire existence to do--obey their creators. They're slaves. Sometimes some of them try to escape and it's...it's hard. The Institute hunting them down on the one hand and the people of the Commonwealth murdering them on the other hand.

Where I'm from, those affected by the atomic blasts were called the hibakusha, "explosion-affected". They didn't turn to ghouls, just survivors of the explosions and the fallout. They're still discriminated against to this day. Not as much, though, the understanding of radiation and its affects is growing with education. But it's still there.

[Deacon's story of the ghouls, though, now has set that comparison in his head.]

[The story of the Synths, though... Miller has had two encounters with artificial intelligence so far. The mammal pod, who in the end made the moral choice to preserve peace. And Rinzler, who is a slave, but a slave that is taking to suggestion of self-preservation.]

[Deacon obviously has strong feelings on the matter.]

Can they break their programming? Brainwashing? Are they like clones, or-

Hibakusha. [He repeats.] Man, I can't imagine. [Just seeing the devastation around particular bombs sites two hundred years later is grim, but being near ground zero when one went off must have been horrific.]

Absolutely synths can break their programming, but it isn't easy. They're sophisticated enough that their programming is more like a combo of base personality and stuff that substitutes for biological instincts in humans, like a drive for survival, for companionship, that sort of thing. But like humans they're totally capable of making their own decisions and choosing their own actions.

What keeps them obedient is propaganda almost more than code. They're taught to believe certain things about the world, the Institute, and themselves and by the time they might hear about other options, the Institute's version of things is embedded deep. Like how humans in the past could be taught to love the dictator who was oppressing them, and anyone who called "bullshit" on it was made to vanish.

[He thinks of what little he's heard about the Philosophers, the Patriots, what they do to children taken in. Ocelot is one of those children, handed to a madman to raise.]

[How some people feel about Big Boss.]

[He doesn't know how he fits in with those people now. He knows that he was almost made to vanish. It was follow Big Boss, or die with his arm around his neck. It's a hard thought; sometimes he doesn't know why he came to love him after that. He often wishes that he hadn't now. As much as he finds himself missing the man that fought to keep him.]

[Again, he pulls himself out of the line of thought.]

Companionship. So they still have the same drives. Even just to be with or around someone?

Yeah. You hardly ever seen one synth alone, even the primitive Gen 1s and Gen 2s seem to have, like, a pack instinct programmed in. They group up and work together. The Gen 3s are more likely to go solo but when they are it's usually either a mission or because they feel they can't trust anyone but themselves.

But the Gen 3s, yeah, they enjoy companionship, camaraderie, they can make friends, take lovers. They can get lonely, too. The Institute uses that, the desire to belong, loyalty to the group, to keep them under control.

Did you know any? Sounds like you're pretty familiar with them. [If only he knew how loaded a question that was.]

Yeah. Yeah you could say that. [He gives a small chuckle, a laugh with little humor in it.]

The thing is... [Hesitation. He thinks of the synths he's known well, of Glory, one of the best damn agents he knows. He thinks of Barbara, his wife now long dead. And he lies.]

...I'm a synth. I was saved from the Institute by a group called the Railroad. Saving synths is, like, their raison d'etre. [Deacon is still terrible at pronouncing French. It comes out more like "raisin dee etree" like someone who's read it and never heard it spoken.]

I joined up with the Railroad after I was freed and...that's what I do now. That's what I've devoted myself to, saving fellow synths, one at a time. And we also give innocent people of any race a little helping hand when we can. The more stable the Commonwealth is, the better it is for everyone, human and ghoul and synth alike.

Back home, admitting that to anyone outside of HQ would be like asking for a death sentence.

[While Miller understands why that pronunciation would happen, the startled look he has for half a moment is pretty funny.] Raison d'etre [He corrects him, maybe just for the fact that there's a blond Parisian somewhere that he needs to honor.]

So I guess they gave you a hell of a time?

What did they do to you? Or want you to do?

[He buys the lie, hook line and sinker. He doesn't know any better. Both because Deacon is good at lying, and because now the story had his interest as another cultural misfortune. Yet another type of bias.]

Oh is that how you say it. Huh. Raison d'etre.

[He'll remember that.

He would feel bad about lying to Miller--he likes Miller, seems like a decent guy--but Deacon lies so much and for so long that he's practically numbed himself to any feelings of guilt over it. It's just how he communicates now.]

I don't know. I can't remember. It's probably better that way.

[This is one of his favorite lies. ~~One he almost wishes were true.~~ He's even got half the Railroad convinced that he's probably a synth.]

The Railroad has this technology to erase a synth's memories and replace them with new ones. It's never ever forced on anyone but it's offered as an option. A lot of synths take us up on the offer. I did, but I was one of the first and it was a learning experience for everyone. My memories got erased all right but they weren't able to replace it with anything, so a big chunk of my past is a big, black void of nothing. So I make shit up about my childhood, my family, my past, because make-believe is all I've got.