A circuit of consciousness

[notglitching]

Who: Rinzler and YOU
When: second week of March
Where: around the ship, planetside, and everything between
What: buddy meetups, transporter training, and general Rinzlering
Warnings: nothing awful planned; will update if needed.


Library (Open):

Between Inugami and the Moira, Rinzler's spent almost half a cycle in the user world by now. Enough to familiarize himself with plenty of the basics... and not nearly enough to comprehend every reference the users took for granted. Fortunately? There's a file archive on board. Even if the users running it seem to have a bizarre preference for analog.

The library's more common occupants might be accustomed to the sound, but anyone looking for peace and quiet today might want to be careful which shelves they frequent. There's a noise echoing through the wooden floors, a ticking whir that starts around the card catalog before eventually localizing to a reference room upstairs. It sounds like broken hardware. (Or possibly an overly friendly cat.) Anyone who tracks the disruption down will find Rinzler: lurking, glowing, and rumbling ominously as he pages through a nature guide on sharks.

Abort/retry/question?


Ceta rock formations (Open):

The collection of badly-written buildings holds little interest for the enforcer, and the chance to submerge himself in fish guts is not an incentive to go hunt. Still, there's one area of the planet everyone else seems to be discounting, and that makes it worth visiting—for the solitude, if nothing else.

Anyone watching the clouds might notice a streak of orange disappearing downward as Rinzler's lightjet slips past the temporaries toward the denser rock formations lurking below. It takes a little effort, and some strange gravity currents to work around, but it's not long before he's landed himself on one of the jagged peaks. It reminds him of the outlands, more than a little: rough, uncoded, somewhere only the most desperate creatures would go to ground.

Worth seeing what a search turns up.


Cargo Bay/Outside: ~Training Montage~ (Semi-Open)

As partial as Rinzler might be to his own flightcraft, the vehicles he's actually assigned to work with here are in heavy demand on the gas-based planet. Fortunately, he's no longer the only operator. When he'd submitted a report on the transporter concerns, Rinzler had been half-expecting to be wiped for the presumption. Instead, the administrators had assigned a full hex of new pilots and technicians to cover the gap. If this system is still vastly (and worryingly) less efficient than Clu's... Rinzler's beginning to mind some of the other differences less.

He's been tasked with providing tutorial, and over the next week, the program will be meeting with all of the new transporter crew individually. Flight is more his specialty than the minutia of repair, but he's grown familiar enough with the workings of the craft to offer technical help, and can supply digital schematics to anyone who needs them. He'll also insist on a flight test for anyone planning on regular operation. For the more talented recruits, the planet's gravity wells and floating obstacles offer a challenge in flight and weapons both, and it's one Rinzler isn't opposed to making a competition.

While most of the program's focus is on the new assignees, anyone else stopping by is welcome to get his attention—for training attempts or otherwise. Rinzler doesn't particularly approve of the Moira's policy of letting anyone operate the crafts, but he's pragmatic enough to know that it's less hazardous if the users at least know what they're doing.


Mero hallway (Closed to Kylo Ren)

After last month, Rinzler knew better than to argue his 'buddy' assignment—no need to give the trojan another chance to score points off him. All the same, it was a little odd to get the message from Frisk instead. The enforcer shelved the misplaced variable for later query, messaging his assignee over the MID and waiting for response.

It seemed to be taking a while.

By the time Rinzler resigned himself to actually tracking down Kylo_Ren, he was already irritated at the necessity. When his location ping returned Mero Deck, the annoyance worsened. While Rinzler wouldn't strictly admit to avoiding the area (or the duplicate that lived there), he had been leaving it somewhat conspicuously out of his patrol routes since his release from the hold.

So when he followed the signal and found himself outside Tron's room...

...well, that ticking rumble is definitely pitched a little closer to a growl by the time Rinzler keys the door chime. When (or if) Kylo opens it, he'll find an identical copy of his roommate. But where Tron stands tall and at least looks to have a human face, the figure outside is drawn into a coiled hunch, nothing but the rattling sound and a slight tilt of his dark mask to give away emotion. Currently? Not happy.

Comments

[notglitching]

The hum and ebb of presences in the deck is a constant brush on background processes. It's something Rinzler largely ignores. He'd come here for the datafiles, not the privacy, and most at least had the sense or luck to give him space. The voice that speaks up from behind is no exception, but Rinzler's mask still turns—as much to check for sarcasm as anything. His noise might not be too disruptive, but it's certainly audible.

No sign of taunt in its nonverbals. The enforcer offers neither an answer nor any sign of offense. The ceaseless rumble ticks out evenly, and his stare lingers, mask eventually tilting a little to the side. The brush on passive scans had felt like a user, but this creature seems to be composed of everything but. What is it?

[meyneth]

Uhh, alright. It's... staring at her. She blinks and quickly folds under the discomfort of the situation, taking a visible step back. With no clue as to how to interpret the silence, her caution and pessimism cause her to assume she's disturbed them.

"Uh, I'll... leave you to it, then..."

Keeping her gaze away, she turns back to the bookshelf and pretends to be interested in its contents. Maybe she should just... go to another aisle.

[notglitching]

The stare continues for a moment, passive scan shifting to an active one. The feedback that returns is enough to draw an audible skip of startlement from Rinzler. No, really, what? The user signature is there, but mixed in with readings of code right down to the core. Not blended, but interlocked in piecemeal.

The program's curious enough to start for his MID... but when the maybe-user actively steps back, the reach stills. In the half-cycle he's spent outside his system, Rinzler's lack of voice has certainly made communication hard. Still, triggering retreat with just a headtilt has to be a new low. Had she seen the archived network warnings, or was she just that skittish on a whole?

The faint quirk to the helmet remains, but if Fiora does withdraw around the corner, Rinzler won't pursue. She's not a target or a threat, and if he needs the data, he can probably ask elsewhere.

[meyneth]

Fiora runs one finger over the spines of the books in front of her idly. Her fingertip stops on one - "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates," 0th edition - and she pulls it without thinking, her mind elsewhere.

...Are they still staring? Fiora knows they're still there, at least; her radar is sending her continual pings but it's not precise enough to tell the position of that person's body. Not to mention that she can still see them just out of the corner of her eye, as much as she's trying not to stare back.

But she can only endure it for so long. Fiora has tried to be polite on this ship, with all its strange and foreign passengers, because she knows she's stuck here with them. And for the most part, people have been polite in return, despite her odd appearance. But this? Is this person just being rude, then??

Finally she picks up her head, pouting slightly, and looks directly back at the mysterious person again.

"W-Well, say something, won't you?! Yes, I'm mostly metal!"

[notglitching]

Headtilt continues. Grows, really, at that outburst. Still, in the end, Rinzler's mask ducks in a careful nod. The rattling whir continues unabated, no variation that might suggest an effort to converse, but orange-circuited fingers move quickly over his MID. It doesn't take long for a holographic textbox to pop up, angled outwards towards Fiora.

User?

[meyneth]

That constant noise is so odd, and pretty creepy if Fiora is honest with herself, having no reason to know what it means, much less what it is. What's left of her organic insides harbor a knot of anxiety as she watches the strange person consult their wrist device. What are they doing now...?

Then the message comes. Her frustrated pout fades as she ponders the single-word message. "User"? What does that mean? Is he asking her if she's "User"? Or perhaps a "user," if it's a title or something like that...?

It occurs to her suddenly that perhaps this person has some difficulty communicating. That would explain their silence and the reliance on the device to ask a question. The possibility at once makes her feel very, very foolish. She'd simply assumed they were acting strange because they were judging her appearance.

"...You're asking me that?" she stammers. "I don't... know what you mean. What's a user?"

[notglitching]

Oh, Rinzler can judge and have communication problems. He's a multitasker like that. On the other hand, this barrier to understanding is a little more familiar, and if there's a short static crackle of a sigh, he doesn't take long to reformat the word.

Human. Programmer. Not code.

[meyneth]

"Not... code...?" Fiora frowns gently, still not understanding exactly what he means by that in particular. But the part before, that's more manageable.

"Well, I'm not... a programmer... But I'm partly human, yes..." she says, trailing off at the end. For most of the people on this ship, 'part human' hasn't been enough; she's had to give a more thorough explanation. But would this person ask for the same?

"And yourself?" she says carefully. "Are you a... user?"

[notglitching]

The qualifier is noted. It's enough to make Rinzler curious—and certainly, the program doesn't have enough tact to avoid asking.

If, of course, he weren't busy staring incredulously at Fiora's own inquiry. Several seconds pass before the helmet jerks emphatically to the side. No. If the circuitry, sound, and language didn't give it away, he is definitely not a user.

Program, he adds to the text display after a moment. Better to preclude the obvious followup.

[meyneth]

"Program..." Fiora says, reading the message out loud. Fiora knows vaguely what a 'program' is, but hardly does it occur to her that she's standing before some kind of personification of one, made real and tangible.

But at any rate, she's learned one thing for sure: this is a very unusual person indeed, and Fiora ought to be careful of what she says and does, lest there's some misunderstanding. She bites her lip, remembering her earlier annoyance with their silence.

"...Could you not tell what I was before?" she asks. The topic of her odd appearance is always a safe one when she meets strangers. Everybody's got questions. Some are too afraid to ask, for whatever reason.

[notglitching]

Th program's stare lingers for a moment, but if her uncertainty is obvious, it's hard to tell whether the user doesn't know the word or doesn't believe it. So long as she doesn't expect him to act otherwise, Rinzler doesn't particularly care. Her query receives another headshake. Along with slightly more elaboration, this time.

Scan reading: user. Also not.

He's seen a couple users with limb replacements here, but this is much more extensive. And very much unknown.

[meyneth]

"I see," she says, frowning. "I'm really sorry I got mad at you. I thought you were... glaring at me, or something."

Not that the assumption was a good one in hindsight, but at least she has the chance to apologize. Raising one hand, she points at her face.

"If I understand right... to answer your question, this part of me is 'user.' And some of the rest of me too, in my body. But most of me is mechanical. Does that make sense?"