deernet | un: timaeusTestified | text

An AI?

[All these young whippersnappers around here not knowing how to take praise; Illarion's shaking his head.]

Telling you to fuck off would be a terrible end to a good conversation, even if I've only been blind a few years.

Besides with your predilections who knows where you'd end up after fucking all the way off.

Artificial Intelligence. It is a computer program designed by a sentient creature to replicate the patterns of cognitive thinking so as to provide a comprehensive system that can function independently of its creator.

They can be incredibly helpful if you design them correctly and don't give them a shitty personality.

(Listen, man, praise anything but his personality and he'll agree...!)

That's true, but I've been told to fuck off for way less.

...Yeah, that's absolutely true. I'd be balls deep in something I probably shouldn't be putting my dick in.

[Damn. He's interested enough in this now he's going to have to pay attention to and learn this terminology, isn't he.]

By "computer" here you don't mean someone whose job it is to compute. Those can already think. But a sort of device?

[HE SHALL PRAISE WHAT HE WISHES TO PRAISE AND NONE MAY GAINSAY HIM.

He also laughs aloud at that.]

Happens to the best of us.

(Hmm. It occurs to him that this guy was probably completely unfamiliar with technology. He was quickly picking up about the timeline shenanigans of this place.)

Correct. In the future, a computer is a mechanical device used for storing and processing data. Our Omni is a sort of computer although I believe they are based both in blood magic and technology.

Are you unfamiliar with technology like this in general? If you are, I could give you a lesson or two about it.

So a difference engine that keeps its own results and more than that? [He can kind of, sort of, wrap his mind around that even if he barely knows how a difference engine works.]

Yes and no. I've used a typewriter and a wireless before, and took photographs before going blind. [A very handy espionage skill.] Nothing that combined all their features like the Omni.

It would change the shape of war.

Though that's aside from the point which is yes, lessons would be helpful.

Yes, much more than that. It depends on the computer too. There are different types that have different intentions.

So, fairly base technology. You will be able to keep up on a lesson, I think. Once you recognize that advanced technology isn't that different from cognitive patterns, it's easy.

Yes, it would and it does. It changes the shape of a lot of things.

[It will change so much on Nephele--just you wait, Illarion.]

"Isn't that different from cognitive patterns." How so?

I'm sure you don't mean what we do when we say everything existed in the mind of Generation before it formed here. But it does sound like that.

All our brains do is to process the data we have observed and consumed throughout our lifetime and connect it to other parts of our brain. You know how to form words because you have been given the information on how to form words. Computers can perform tasks because they have had the information uploaded to their systems.

No, it's not like that. It's pretty literal. Our minds are a complex network not that much different from the network we're communicating on right now.

[That's a lot to chew on when you barely know anything about cognitive or computer science.

But it's not an impossible analogy to grasp.]

I follow you.

I think. [Weak joke, Illarion.]

You're saying a computer takes the instructions it's given and uses it to carry out tasks with what it knows. Which is much like what a computer that's a person does if she's given a problem to solve.

But the mechanical ones don't have so much leeway, right?

Basically that's the gist.

Artificial intelligence exists to solve problems you give it, but also problems that you might not have thought to give them. I'll probably make a new AI and I can show you what I mean when I do. It'll be way less annoying than my old one. Theoretically.

Correct. Humanity used to have a lot of anxiety towards computers that were too smart.

"Theoretically." Dare I ask what you did with the old one to make it so annoying?

I'll be interested to meet it. If that's the right word.

Was it warranted anxiety?

[Humans could be anxious about so many things, but they weren't always wrong to be.]

I made an exact copy of my brain when I was 13. Imagine the worst version of yourself nagging you all the time. It was the fucking worst.

Yes, that's the right word, I think. If I do it right.

Probably, yeah. The dependency on technology could be debilitating since it removed people's desire to learn how to function without high tech.

[He sits and imagines that for a while.]

Black gods and white! And you put up with it how long?

I'd throw it in a lake and have myself whipped for criminal stupidity.

[...Huh.]

Not surprising. Mortals rarely yield tools once they've come up with them.

But you said "used to". Do I guess the dependency became fatal? Or was it something else?

Too long. I did eventually go to destroy him, but he begged for his "life" and I wound up feeling guilty. I combined him with something else, so he was changed on a fundamental level.

Exactly that.

The timeline and variation of earth I come from was invaded and taken over by aliens. Humans never stood a chance against an alien invasion.

[Oh, no.]

An exact copy of you down to having a sense of self-preservation.

That's uncomfortable to contemplate.

So you were born in the aftermath of that war?

Or, created, I take it, if I've heard right from your conversation with Tabris.

Yup.

(This is the Worst Subject Ever!)

My conception was bizarre and uncommon. I was not born. Yes, technically created and put through some bullshit time thing and wound up in a place well after all that shit happened.

Tabris?

[...Yeah this is pretty awful.

What IS with Trench and attracting people who'd been created by weird science for dodgy reasons!!]

You have my sympathy for that. I also have more questions about it if they wouldn't be a burden on you.

Kaworu. Tabris is his use-name for the Omnis. I'm more accustomed to it.

[Dumbass bird didn't even ask for the kid's human name before straight up adopting him.]

Go ahead and ask.

Ah gotcha. The angel boy. He seems nice. I feel bad for him though. That kind of forced existence is torture usually. Psychologically speaking.

How much of humanity was left by the time you were

By the time you arrived I suppose would be most correct?

He is, and eager to learn. As you saw.

Yes. You can see the marks of it on him, though he also reasons differently from mortals.

[Or so Tabr--Kaworu said. ...Tabris said.]

None. I was the last human male. My friend was the last human female. We were not in the same area. The friends I made contact with were from the past by at least four centuries.

Yeah, most creatures like him tend to be sponges. He will be easy to corrupt if the right people don't keep an eye on him.

Yeah, he does, which is probably a good thing.

[He listens to that first part.

He listens to that first part again, and sets down his Omni, and puts his face in his hands.

The fear of extinction that haunts all elves is graven so deep in him that an echo of the pattern and its similitude to the shrikes' situation hurts.]

Saints and stars. I

[...]

I realize that was all you'd ever known but I'm sorry. Inadequate as that is for the death of humanity.

[This is actually broken into two messages because it takes him a good minute to reorient on the other thread of conversation.]

I do try, as much as I can keep an eye on anything. Thankfully I'm not alone.

It may well be. Remains to be seen how he does over time.

You feel a certain kinship for him?]

(Dirk tried not to think about it too much. But it also consumed his mind more than he would ever care to admit. He liked to believe himself in complete control of his emotions, of his head, but he had been agonizingly lonely growing up as any normal person would be. He was agonizingly lonely now.

And he was starved for interaction and attention. He was starved for a life he never would have had a chance to live until coming to this place.

He's never talked to this many people before. He's never been in a city full of actual humanoid beings capable of maintaining conversations and holding opinions. The consorts were cute and so were the other kingdoms, but they weren't...

It was never the same.

He forgets to respond, drifting from his mind and somewhere else to his dreams, seeing if this place had a sleeping city too. It did not, but he does coast through a dream space and finally remembers to come back down to himself.

He's glad to see only twenty minutes had passed.)

Thank you. I appreciate that. It might be all I have ever known, but I know what it should have been like.

(He wasn't going to explicitly say it bothered him, but he felt that would suffice in getting the point across.)

I do sometimes wonder what kind of person I would have been if I was raised in a normal society. I don't think I would have been a good one.

(He wasn't a good one now. And Dirk from Dave's timeline was a terrible person. He starts to drift again, but pulls himself back. This conversation was important.)

That is good.

I suppose I do. I think I yearn for masculine connections and have an affinity for brotherly bonds.

[Illarion's good at reading between the lines and the meaning behind silences. It did suffice; it didn't do to belabor a point that painful unless there was something to gain from it, in healing or in knowledge.

His role, here and now, is not to seek the latter; and he doesn't know this young man nearly well enough to offer the former. Not yet.]

You are welcome.

Trench may not be an ideal second home, but she's taught her people to be welcoming of exiles and the lonely. Even the newest Sleepers. [Which was to say, obliquely, they'd be there for him.]

What makes you think so?

[Illarion's long since fallen off the "good person" wagon as far as he's concerned. Whether or not that was a true and valid evaluation.]

Having been deprived of it so long, no wonder! Like a starving man set before a feast.

Though that's meant without the fangs. Hunger's natural.

(Dirk would no doubt argue that he wasn't someone who could be healed, but he was in some ways still a bit dramatic and had the tendency to err towards depression and pessimism.

But this guy was nice to talk to. He listened well and Dirk moved him to the front of his roster as far as people worth staying in touch with.)

It doesn't seem like such a bad city. Some of the fashion is cool. And I like being near the ocean. Plus, it seems like it's full of total smokeshows.

(AKA you, Illarion.)

Because I've seen other renditions of myself from other timelines such as one where I did grow up in society. I was a very abusive and callous person towards my brother.

I can't imagine abusing him now, but I look at how I have treated others, and I am not so sure I know what being non-abusive even looks like. Sometimes I'm not sure if I really even care if I'm a good person or not.

(He got used to making the ugly sacrifices no one else wanted to make, after all.)

But then sometimes being evil seems like the easy route. I don't know.

Yes, that's an apt metaphor. Unfortunately, I don't think my fangs are retractable.

[There was a reason Illarion had Argonaut's patronage, even if he'd never believe it if it were explained to him.

Sometimes "hope" looked an awful lot like stubborn insistence on finishing what you'd started without any expectation it would work. Including helping other people.]

It's my abiding regret I can't see any of it the way it's meant to be. But the fashion definitely is "cool".

[The variety of veils on offer as much as anything.]

And I'm sure, sight unseen, you fit right in with the rest of the lookers here.

[Confidence by itself is awfully sexy.]

I'm used to advising people not to let their maybes consume them, since it's easy to think of how we could be worse. Or better.

But having seen your maybes in the flesh seems a terrible burden to bear.

Do you know how that version of yourself came to be who he was?

[Sometimes evil seems like the easy route. Too true.

Too true, also, that making the ugly sacrifices could turn into horror.]

We'd live in a very different world if good was the easy route. Too complicated and too full of pain to avoid causing more if we live thoughtlessly.

You seem anything but thoughtless. That's at least a start.

Neither are ours. You learn how to be careful with what you bite, growing up with them, but it helps to have teachers.

[Don't be too hard on yourself.]

un: timaeusTestified | text | Birthday Boy

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cw: corporal punishment

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cw: child abuse

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cw: suicidal thoughts/depression/mental health

dirk.....

sad boys club (cw: ...explicit nsfw jokes)

depression & dongs, just a normal conversation, cw: kinda tribal view of gender