[Church shudders, the sound of Wash explaining it all over again, in similar or the same words...haunting, in a fashion.
Him. Wash keeps calling Alpha him, not it like before. Fuck. This is going to hurt.]
Okay, so he wasn't sparing you some of the details.
The Alpha. The Alpha AI of Project Freelancer was a...special case. Some brainiac with some deep personal trauma and no god damn scruples running a secret elite military operation to try and end the war decided to make a copy of himself in AI form. Pretty sure that's super illegal or at least super dangerous, but that's how you get smart AI, the kind that truly think for themselves, able to grow and change, rather than the--pardon the phrase--dumb AI that can't grow past their programming.
Though I'd argue how figuratively dumb some of those AI are. I'll tell you about the tank that helped stage a robot uprising and fell in love sometime.
[There's more history there than he even knows, but it's all beside the point. Shit. This is going to be hard. But that's the point, right? Talking about the stuff that he'd rather keep buried, the things he doesn't want to look at.]
But he had all these soldiers and only one AI he was allowed to use to test with them. They didn't...know Alpha existed. They didn't know a lot of things. So the Director decided he would just make more AI with what he had. So he took an AI he made of himself, did the...the torture, the fragmenting, b-because...who would know better how to hurt him beyond repair than himself?
All these bits came off, including a memory of someone he lost that he then turned into a soldier, it--it's a whole thing, that's a whole thing in itself. All these fragments came off, different aspects of one person, until it...until Alpha ripped his own memories out. Then the whole project started crashing down, cuz when you put the memories of someone that's been tortured beyond repair directly into someone's meaty brain, then, heh, yeah, that's not gonna end well.
Some of the agents fought back, some fled into hiding, some stayed, some did their own thing, I don't, I don't know everyone's stories or anything, just a buncha people having different opinions, but obviously the Director didn't want all these disparate pieces out and about in the galaxy, right? Top secret property. And evidence of his fuckery. Gotta send people to try and find these AI, and what does he do with Alpha, the one that's left, who doesn't remember who he is or what he exists for?
[Somehow, it's even worse saying it out loud. It makes it real, makes it solid. One thing to think about it, to play it out in his head, to realize internally how fucked up it all is, but it's another entirely to say it to another person. To really hammer home how awful and horrible it all was.
One thing to think shit, that was me; another to say oh...and btw that was me and shit I'm sorry I said anything I want to put the words back in my mouth and forget we had this conversation. Because he's pretty sure that's how this is going to go. He's close, he just has to...he has to commit to this if he's going to do it. He's not sure. It towers over him, constantly lurks around him, follows behind him, and it scares him.]
Well, the Director needed a safe place to store him. I think he tried a couple of times, to hide the Alpha in bases, surrounded by soldiers, and things went awry each time. At least, that seems to be the case. [The reality of Sidewinder is still...tentative, at best, to him. But Tex seems to think it happened in some fashion. Maybe that part was real. Just not in the way he remembers it.]
So you gotta stick this thing on some backwater nowhere planet that nobody has any reason to be concerned about. You surround it with dropouts and dipshits who can't be paid to care, who are too stupid to connect anything together. You put in an agent undercover to make sure things go smoothly. And you pretend there's nothing amiss, nothing awry, like it was never there.
What you do...what you do with an amnesic digital fraction of yourself, when you need to hide the evidence of what you did...what you do is, you put him in a body. You give him a story. You let him fill in his own details, using the fragments of your memory to give him a life. You treat him like any other soldier. You call him by your own name instead of a callsign or a designation.
[If he had a mouth, it would feel glued shut, all of a sudden. The sensation is still there, and he wonders how much of that is sense-memory, when he was in a human body, or when his mind was really the Director's, and how much of it is a remnant of his own mind trying to cope with that he is (and what he isn't). The flowers blow gentle in the breeze. Somewhere in his mind, the unbidden thought of at least they're not forget-me-nots is thought and leaves as soon as it came. He's not sure he'd know what forget-me-nots look like. He sees yellow and all he can think of is yellow rose of Texas but they're not roses and Tex would probably punch him if he started singing that.
No. He's veering off track. This is what he does. He doesn't have a safeword here; Legion isn't Wash, and after all, Church is the one doing the talking. He could stop himself. But his brain doesn't want to acknowledge this, so he thinks of something else, thinks of something funnier, and was he programmed to do that, or is it just self-preservation the same way he ripped his own psyche to shreds?
There's no joke to soften the blow. There's no immediate defensiveness, now casual tossing out of bullshit, because Legion doesn't do that. It's all on him. He has a complicated relationship with the thing-he-used-to-be. Embraced more of his AI qualities when the plan was to die together, he and Wash, still claimed himself a ghost even when they both knew better, they knew better he knows better now but the threat of death means so much less here, he's not about to throw himself into oblivion-
-or into a head full of voices that are not his but all his and all the pieces slotting into place we missed you we missed you alpha welcome home-
-so it's harder to face it. To reconcile with the fact that his life is a lie, that he got his name from a crazed and desperate fuck, that Tex was a memory of a memory of someone dear, that everything that happened to so many people was, in some way or another, his fault.
That he'll never get any of it back.
That he's just collateral damage.]
You make--
[He doesn't have to say it. Legion can probably figure out what he's trying to say. How much do the flowers need? What if letting them take him wouldn't be so bad? In this place where death carries a short-term penalty of some kind. He'd get over it. He'd get over death. It might even him and Wash out. Even if Wash wouldn't be the one doing the killing. His throat is full of petals and he doesn't know if that's figurative or literal anymore because the yellow is filling his vision and his body's locking up full of evergrowing matter and it chokes him, crushes him, makes him feel small and nothing. He doesn't have to say it. He doesn't need to do this. He doesn't have to say anything if he doesn't want to.
There are certain things about the human body he misses. He does not miss: the mess one becomes when their face is covered in snot and tears, the ugly way a face screws up in pain, the whole nasty business of crying. He does miss: the emotional catharsis of crying.]
You make Private Leonard Church think he's a human being.
no subject
Him. Wash keeps calling Alpha him, not it like before. Fuck. This is going to hurt.]
Okay, so he wasn't sparing you some of the details.
The Alpha. The Alpha AI of Project Freelancer was a...special case. Some brainiac with some deep personal trauma and no god damn scruples running a secret elite military operation to try and end the war decided to make a copy of himself in AI form. Pretty sure that's super illegal or at least super dangerous, but that's how you get smart AI, the kind that truly think for themselves, able to grow and change, rather than the--pardon the phrase--dumb AI that can't grow past their programming.
Though I'd argue how figuratively dumb some of those AI are. I'll tell you about the tank that helped stage a robot uprising and fell in love sometime.
[There's more history there than he even knows, but it's all beside the point. Shit. This is going to be hard. But that's the point, right? Talking about the stuff that he'd rather keep buried, the things he doesn't want to look at.]
But he had all these soldiers and only one AI he was allowed to use to test with them. They didn't...know Alpha existed. They didn't know a lot of things. So the Director decided he would just make more AI with what he had. So he took an AI he made of himself, did the...the torture, the fragmenting, b-because...who would know better how to hurt him beyond repair than himself?
All these bits came off, including a memory of someone he lost that he then turned into a soldier, it--it's a whole thing, that's a whole thing in itself. All these fragments came off, different aspects of one person, until it...until Alpha ripped his own memories out. Then the whole project started crashing down, cuz when you put the memories of someone that's been tortured beyond repair directly into someone's meaty brain, then, heh, yeah, that's not gonna end well.
Some of the agents fought back, some fled into hiding, some stayed, some did their own thing, I don't, I don't know everyone's stories or anything, just a buncha people having different opinions, but obviously the Director didn't want all these disparate pieces out and about in the galaxy, right? Top secret property. And evidence of his fuckery. Gotta send people to try and find these AI, and what does he do with Alpha, the one that's left, who doesn't remember who he is or what he exists for?
[Somehow, it's even worse saying it out loud. It makes it real, makes it solid. One thing to think about it, to play it out in his head, to realize internally how fucked up it all is, but it's another entirely to say it to another person. To really hammer home how awful and horrible it all was.
One thing to think shit, that was me; another to say oh...and btw that was me and shit I'm sorry I said anything I want to put the words back in my mouth and forget we had this conversation. Because he's pretty sure that's how this is going to go. He's close, he just has to...he has to commit to this if he's going to do it. He's not sure. It towers over him, constantly lurks around him, follows behind him, and it scares him.]
Well, the Director needed a safe place to store him. I think he tried a couple of times, to hide the Alpha in bases, surrounded by soldiers, and things went awry each time. At least, that seems to be the case. [The reality of Sidewinder is still...tentative, at best, to him. But Tex seems to think it happened in some fashion. Maybe that part was real. Just not in the way he remembers it.]
So you gotta stick this thing on some backwater nowhere planet that nobody has any reason to be concerned about. You surround it with dropouts and dipshits who can't be paid to care, who are too stupid to connect anything together. You put in an agent undercover to make sure things go smoothly. And you pretend there's nothing amiss, nothing awry, like it was never there.
What you do...what you do with an amnesic digital fraction of yourself, when you need to hide the evidence of what you did...what you do is, you put him in a body. You give him a story. You let him fill in his own details, using the fragments of your memory to give him a life. You treat him like any other soldier. You call him by your own name instead of a callsign or a designation.
[If he had a mouth, it would feel glued shut, all of a sudden. The sensation is still there, and he wonders how much of that is sense-memory, when he was in a human body, or when his mind was really the Director's, and how much of it is a remnant of his own mind trying to cope with that he is (and what he isn't). The flowers blow gentle in the breeze. Somewhere in his mind, the unbidden thought of at least they're not forget-me-nots is thought and leaves as soon as it came. He's not sure he'd know what forget-me-nots look like. He sees yellow and all he can think of is yellow rose of Texas but they're not roses and Tex would probably punch him if he started singing that.
No. He's veering off track. This is what he does. He doesn't have a safeword here; Legion isn't Wash, and after all, Church is the one doing the talking. He could stop himself. But his brain doesn't want to acknowledge this, so he thinks of something else, thinks of something funnier, and was he programmed to do that, or is it just self-preservation the same way he ripped his own psyche to shreds?
There's no joke to soften the blow. There's no immediate defensiveness, now casual tossing out of bullshit, because Legion doesn't do that. It's all on him. He has a complicated relationship with the thing-he-used-to-be. Embraced more of his AI qualities when the plan was to die together, he and Wash, still claimed himself a ghost even when they both knew better, they knew better he knows better now but the threat of death means so much less here, he's not about to throw himself into oblivion-
-or into a head full of voices that are not his but all his and all the pieces slotting into place we missed you we missed you alpha welcome home-
-so it's harder to face it. To reconcile with the fact that his life is a lie, that he got his name from a crazed and desperate fuck, that Tex was a memory of a memory of someone dear, that everything that happened to so many people was, in some way or another, his fault.
That he'll never get any of it back.
That he's just collateral damage.]
You make--
[He doesn't have to say it. Legion can probably figure out what he's trying to say. How much do the flowers need? What if letting them take him wouldn't be so bad? In this place where death carries a short-term penalty of some kind. He'd get over it. He'd get over death. It might even him and Wash out. Even if Wash wouldn't be the one doing the killing. His throat is full of petals and he doesn't know if that's figurative or literal anymore because the yellow is filling his vision and his body's locking up full of evergrowing matter and it chokes him, crushes him, makes him feel small and nothing. He doesn't have to say it. He doesn't need to do this. He doesn't have to say anything if he doesn't want to.
There are certain things about the human body he misses. He does not miss: the mess one becomes when their face is covered in snot and tears, the ugly way a face screws up in pain, the whole nasty business of crying. He does miss: the emotional catharsis of crying.]
You make Private Leonard Church think he's a human being.