meadowlark | @clarke.griffin

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@clarke.griffin

Thank you to Yalena for getting us sorted. [Sort of sorted. Sort of.] Now that we've arrived in New Tokyo and we're stuck inside for a little while, I think we should talk about some new changes that we're facing. I can't be the only one.

But first: a good number of us are here unwillingly, but we have to wait until we're fully prepped before we can go anywhere. Heading outside in these temperatures while unprepared could cost you your life. We all hate being trapped somewhere. I think that's pretty well-established. We also hate having to do anything or be anywhere when we didn't ask for that to happen. At least it doesn't seem like we were drugged, though it wouldn't hurt for Katelin and I to take some blood samples to confirm that. We'll have to store them until we get back.

As for the changes in your lives: have you noticed any? For instance, apparently I'm a lab tech at Giles Bell. I tried to set myself up for a new internship there that I could get easily, but I got ... elevated. Or hired beyond that? I'm not sure what the right terminology is here. Has anyone else noticed this? Or had it happen to them? I got permissions to take leaves from both of my jobs. And no, I'm really not prepared to work as a lab tech. I don't even know the first thing about setting up gels.

As a bit of a personal request ... does anyone think we can make pancakes in the small kitchen here? I have a craving for them. I've not really had cakes of the "pancake" variety before, but I want them now. And if you think we can, can you make them?

[This last bit is Loki's fault.]

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No.

Though I'm not surprised that someone in another world would use that.

It's very biblical.

[Way, way too casual because she doesn't Get It.]

I thought maybe

[ that in the 400 intervening years, 1100+ new people had been programmed from scratch and one of them had ended up here somehow?

yeah no ]

Not that it would make any sense. The ARK’s a virtual reality, you couldn’t have gone back down to Earth.

Can you tell me a bit more about this Ark?

[The switch to private is purposeful. The uncanny similarity to the City of Light?

Yeah, she has to ask. Especially if someone here is behind it.]

[ damn good call on the private. ]

It’s what’s left of humanity. A computer running a simulation for the brain scans of the last people on Earth. Perfect copies.
It wasn’t that big a deal at first, it was just Catherine’s pet project, but then the comet took out the surface, and it turned into the last hope for mankind. We launched it into space so it wouldn’t rot down there with everything else.

Is Catherine like the androids here?

[She's careful with her questions.]

What I mean is—was she created to serve humans in some way? And this is what she came up with?

[Okay. Leading a bit. But it's not like she can approach it from the angle she'd like. "Were people there allowed to feel, and what would happen to people here if that proved necessary?" It's a very hard question.]

If you can't tell, I've seen something similar. It wasn't good.

No, she’s human. An A.I. engineer. I guess it sounds like something a robot would make.

[ As far as Simon can tell, she must be asking because, first, the ARK sounds insane from an outside perspective, and second, who the hell programs a hyper-realistic virtual environment for volunteered simulations of their coworkers in their free time?

He doesn’t even connect her last statement to the rest of it. He spent too much energy banking on the ARK almost as hard as everyone else to see someone else imagining a moral downside to what he just described. ]

Something similar, as in a virtual reality?

A city where humans were meant to live out their lives because the world was inhabitable. It was called the City of Light, and in preparation, it passed along like a myth. The city itself allowed people to live, sure, but they weren't themselves. Their pain and bad feelings were turned off because of an imperative by the AI who created that world.

It was a case perverse instantiation—where the AI was programmed to make things better for humans at any cost. The problem is that even as she was her own person and made her own decisions, her overall directive couldn't allow humans pain and suffering, as she was meant to eradicate that.

[Breathe. Not that Simon can see her breathing or hesitating.]

Because the Earth had another ... problem on the horizon, she viewed the best solution as the one that would save the most people. That was letting them live in her virtual space, and finding means to get them to consent to that no matter what.

[Not to mention how she handled the overpopulation problem, but Clarke keeps that to herself.]

[ oh.

Well, that sounds disturbingly familiar. But not, to Simon, like the ARK. So... he doesn't make the connection Clarke is making. ]

There was an A.I. like that, too, but it wasn't a person. Just a machine. Its overall directive was to preserve human life. After the comet hit, it went rogue... or broke its own programming somehow.
It didn't understand what humans consider "human". Or "life".

I'm sorry you had to experience that. For what it's worth, the AI I've met here have been a lot friendlier. I'm sure this Catherine can tell you the same.

Your ARK sounds a lot like the City of Light than what we originally considered as a last resort.

And I ended up having to make the choice not to live there. For everyone. We need pain so that we feel alive.

[No matter how much pain it is.]

No, I mean-- she never would've forced anybody to be scanned for the ARK. It wasn't like that.

There wasn't anybody who wanted that? Life without pain?

What if losing that pain meant forgetting the life that came before? Memories can cause pain, too.

That's how ALIE saw it.

[ that just turned into his least favorite thing ever real fast. Simon doesn’t know who the fuck he is now, and he has all his memories. Presumably. Except no, he doesn’t really, nothing from the original Simon’s post-scan existence, as short as it was, so yeah, the worst. ]

I would opt out of that.

Edited 2019-05-13 03:27 (UTC)

The people who agreed to it early on had no idea that that's what would happen. They couldn't just forget the bad. They couldn't just forget someone's death, but everything about them. Because their death caused them pain, and so did the rest. It was all connected.

It wasn't a place where we could thrive.

So ... that's why I was worried. Why I had to ask about her.

[ jesus christ?? ]

Right. Most of my life was pre-apocalypse, so that’d be just about everything.

I’m guessing ALIE wasn’t happy you steered all those people away from her Ark.

No, but by time it came down to her realizing that she'd lost, it was too late for her.

She really did want to keep people from feeling pain.

And after that, you went down to Earth to see if humanity had a future down there? If it could be made livable?

[ has he mentioned he definitely has just been assuming Clarke is some manner of scientist? no? well. ]

[Oh. He definitely has it mixed up. And that's not including the part with the science that she doesn't know about. Which ... is going to be true soon, thanks to her job. What a trip.]

No, our Ark was a collection of twelve space stations from a wide variety of nations, only it started to fail, so we had to go down to the Earth to see if it was inhabitable. While down there, a lot happened, eventually leading us to this AI that was creating the City of Light—which is akin to the Ark you know. Only it wasn't good for any of us.

Does that make sense?

Sort of? The one they had— the WAU was built to run things in PATHOS-II. I just figured ALIE was your ship’s A.I.

[ in other words: as a time-traveling caveman, not as much sense as the wrong thing he was imagining before she told him the correct thing, but. ]

Edited 2019-05-28 02:57 (UTC)

The second version of her was meant to be, but she was very different by then. So, in a roundabout way, you saw why she was created.

[Clarke wonders if this is just what happens with similar situations.

That's most likely it.]

She was a remnant from before that used what little bit of tech that was left in the world to communicate with people and bring them to her. Come to think of it, that must have been pretty hard to accomplish.

[And yet—she followed her directive.]

You can do a lot with a strong enough blast of EMP.

I guess it's sort of comforting to know I'm not alone. I mean, if we both had to go through that, at least we're both here.

Without anyone we know, but ...

Sometimes I wonder. I mean, if we can get here, can other people? Things aren't perfect, but if you're not glowing or doing anything like that, you can fit in. You can forget what came before.

[ at first he has no idea what she's getting at, because they do bring other people? There are all these other people here?? Except oh wait those two statements are related. ]

Other people we know? Like via time travel?

And dimensional.

Both.

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@clarke.griffin

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