piper90 | [Video] [locked to the New Hires]

[While Woody needed some time to come to terms with speaking to big people, and more time to test the waters as to how they'd receive him, Buzz has already overcome the hurdle of making first contact, and has longer term plans to set in motion. Woody's comfort keeps him from introducing himself right away, but once his pal has calmed down a little, Buzz doesn't wait around.

His introduction video arrives as encrypted as possible and labeled "for New Hire eyes only," in case anyone was in danger of opening it in front of an employee.

The video is being shot from the communicator installed in Buzz's forearm, and the Uncanny Valley of seeing an action figure speak is unavoidable, well, that's a shame.]

Greetings. I am Buzz Lightyear. I come in peace.

That's a space toy joke.

[He's trying his best to maintain good Space Ranger bearing, but though he's not consumed with anxiety at breaking the non-contact rules the way Woody is, he's still a little nervous.]

As you may have gathered, I am an action figure. [sure it's obvious, but it is the tiny plastic elephant in the room he has to acknowledge.] Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have made myself known but . . . Jorgmund didn't leave me much of a choice. Therefore I've decided to introduce myself and clarify my, uh. Unusual circumstances.

[Gosh he's already embarassed by the masquerade he's going to have to keep up.]

Due to a nonfunctional feature of my model, Jorgmund currently believes I am under the delusion I'm a real Space Ranger. I'm not. They also believe I am loyal to their agenda. I'm not.

[He has to be vague. Brainy would be implicated immediately if it were known that his demo switch no longer worked. This channel may be secure, but not secure enough for him to risk someone else's secret. He can pretend the switch never worked in the first place, and that the drama surrounding it during his interview has been a clever lie of his own all this time.]

If I'm right, this deception may be useful in covert operations against our captors. Therefore I am apologizing in advance for anything . . . mind blowingly stupid I say or do in front of everyone to keep Jorgmund convinced I'm too deluded to question even their substandard ethics.

[If he sounds formal, well, he's being formal. He thought for quite a while about how to make this speech, and longest about how to end it.]

I understand it may be . . . unsettling for some of you to think of a toy as alive. I will do my best to be considerate. I don't know how it feels to be a person. [He thinks he does, because he thought he was one once, but since he never has been, he must not actually know.] But I think I want to see this world saved and all of us safely home again as much as anyone else here could.

[Even with all this planning he still looks a little awkward and uncertain as he picks his closing statement.] This is Buzz Lightyear, out.

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They did?

[Someone wears the same Forced Amnesia hat as Buzz? It inspires a sense of kinship, but certainly not comfort.]

How did you manage to evade them?

One of the few upsides to running on lost technology is I was too fiddly for them to figure out how to try while they were implanting the nanochain. A friend on the crew's volunteered to help keep me running so they don't get another chance.

[ So runs the theory. So they hope. ]

Honestly, it's better for them they're dealing with this me than whatever me they'd get out of that. I'm pissed, sure, but I've had a couple hundred years to learn some subtlety.

Can't promise what a fresh me would do.

[ Well. That got serious for a second there. And it's not getting less serious. ]

Anyway. I'm Cayde-6. I'm an exo. Nobody here seems to have exos back home, so here's the rundown of what's generally public knowledge: I was squishy and human once. I'm a robot now. The 6 is how many times I was reset before humanity forgot how to do that.

[Six times? Oh no, Buzz can imagine all too easily what a horrific cycle that would be. Reset once for good here he'd lose Jessie, and never get her back. He'd go through crisis after crisis again and again as he inevitably realized the truth, and if Woody were ever not around to talk him back into accepting life as it was, all Jorgmund would be able to do to keep him from sinking into the depression of having no life would be to restart the process over, and over, and over again -]

I don't even know what to say. That's horrifying. I'm deeply sorry for your loss.

[Here's someone who's living the reality of Buzz's own identity crisis, but living it with the life he'd thought he had as a person truly having been his, and then truly lost to him entirely.

It takes a long time, between deciding if this is making it too much About Him, and then deciding if he wants to be this emotionally vulnerable with a near stranger at all, for Buzz to finish his message.]

When I was first activated, I believed I was a person. It was hard enough to discover I hadn't ever been one. I don't know what I'd do if that life had been real and had been taken from me. You must have an incredible force of will to keep going in the face of that loss.

Edited 2020-06-30 04:10 (UTC)

[ Cayde pulls up video feed because it just... feels like the right thing to do here? A face feels appropriate to talking about this, even if he's trying to make light of it.]

Thanks. I'm alright. It's just not a secret to anybody where I come from, so I figured it's fair to lay down some ground floor material I'm used to everybody having already anyway. I'm a couple centuries old, and it's all behind me.

[ Or at least, that's what he's going to say here to somebody he just met. ]

Point is: I've got a bit of a grudge about people taking other selfaware beings and wiping out memory and sense of self and all that jazz. Any of that becomes a real threat to you again, you tell me and I'll do what I can to help you.

Not that I'm not a selfless, generous, high spirited kind of guy giving the galaxy the shirt off my back to begin with, but this one's personal.

[ If he makes jokes, that helps make it less so. Right? Right. ]

I'm sure they'll try to do it again.

[He's just being realistic. He's not a real space ranger action hero, he's a toy who's never done espionage before, and he's bound to trip up, show too much of a soul, make a few mistakes. Hopefully not many. ]

I'll just have to keep pretending it works every time, and ask everyone to be patient if I ... have to pretend not to recognize them in person.

[There's a lot Buzz recognizes that hes naive about, but he's not too naive to recognize the sarcasm and the misdirection in Cayde's own not-praise.]

I'm sure no one would ever accuse you of backflipping through hoops on someone else's account.

Of course, if there's anything I can do to help you in the same situation, I'll do whatever I can.

Appreciated.

[ On both counts, most likely. ]

And don't worry, I've known plenty of amnesiacs. Usually not for repeat performances, but I won't tip the hand.

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