001: Group Introductions - TEXT

[tarnishedavenger]

[During a lull in the party, Armstrong taps out a quick message to the network. Not that private one, he doesn't trust it. They can answer whenever they like, so long as he gets an answer. The trick would be wording it.]

So, we're all in this for now. You've had your welcome cake, but you can't meet everyone in a party, no matter how hard you try. But, since we've all been encouraged to sign up with Jorgmund, I figured now would be a good time to get some introductions done. Talk about any specialties we might have.

Share information that we feel comfortable sharing. This isn't to pressure anyone or to force out any dark secrets.

[Not where watchful eyes can see, at least.]

Besides, I prefer doing this to making a cute information sharing game.

So, please, make your own threads within this post to keep everything organized.

Comments

[greatlyexaggerated]

[Cain shakes his head, too stunned to even make sense of what this mad creator is saying.]

That is heretical beyond belief.

[It screams against every instinct in his body to get the attention of this obviously delusional, dangerous xenos, but it's too horrifying of a thought not to discuss.]

You're thinking of it as some kind of... twisted child, but you've unleashed a danger on your galaxy. If it's fought organics before, then it will fight them again. You acknowledged it as dangerous, but you refuse to see the dangers!

[googledox]

All sentient beings are capable of growth.

That process can be difficult and sometimes ugly, especially for a new form of life, struggling for long-term physical and emotional viability as a sentient. But when a sentient faces acceptance and love instead of being treated as monstrous, it can lead to an apotheosis.

Evolution to a more enlightened state.

[He's speaking about more than Computo now.]

So far that change has lasted for Computo. When I chose to help him, it was my personal experience that such a change could last because I had once changed that way myself.

[He'd changed that way himself from the cold and callous individual he'd once been.]

[greatlyexaggerated]

You... did?

[Cain is - dubious. It's not often xenos start preaching about love and acceptance, especially after admitting to creating Abominable Intelligences. He shakes his head again.]

Perhaps you were able to change - and I shudder to think of what you were. But for a creature like an AI, that's simply not possible. The way it thinks and acts is inextricably foreign. It will always harbor resentment towards organics for using them.

[googledox]

["And I shudder to think of what you were."]

[Despite knowing he'd been an unpleasant, sometimes amoral, constantly snide nasshead, there is also always the knowledge of what he could have been. Even at his worst, he had been nothing like his mother, nothing like his ancestors.]

[He's ashamed of how unkind he'd been and yet proud of not being much, much worse.]

[But it isn't pride that makes him speak up in defense of himself. It's the fact that sometimes the only person that can take the hand of his inner child self and reassure him that he didn't deserve it...is him.]

What I was, was someone who had been treated like a thing as a child, exploited by others for my mind, when all I'd ever wanted or needed was a parent who loved me.

[He raises his chin.]

What Computo needed was for me to recognize he was the same. That I was repeating the cycle of deprivation.

I don't know if there is an inherent difference between AI in our universes or not. But in mine...that was enough.