NETWORK post, backdated to the 15th

[failedpromise]

Who: Cortana
Username: Chosewell
Warnings: Cybersecurity bullshit, high likeliness for supernaturally fueled paranoia

Just a little PSA:

If you're getting weird, hurtful, or distressing messages from you friends, don't panic. No one's account has been hijacked, and no one is secretly plotting against you.

Someone is spoofing accounts, however. For those of you who didn't pay attention in cybersecurities class, that means someone can make it seem as though they're someone else. Anyone else.

Unfortunately, whoever it is is really good at hiding their identity, so I don't actually know who the real culprit is yet.

(Says the AI who impersonated Manji for laughs, to a bunch of people who are supernaturally predisposed to paranoia right now.

...This isn't gonna be disastrous at all.)

Comments

[failedpromise]

Sure.

(She enters her password and, after bringing up the home screen, holds up her phone so he can see it. Then she'll point to the camera app icon.)

See this? (She taps and opens it up. And now, of course, the phone is just showing a picture of whatever she points it at... she points it at an interesting looking tree and takes a picture. She'll give him a moment to see and copy what she did before she exits the camera app and opens the gallery. Oh, look! There's a picture of that same tree, right there in the phone!)

[canofmanji]

[Despite how standoffish and how much he acts like he's going to refuse to change, Manji does pay close attention to what she's showing him. His good eye going back and forth from the tree to her phone. Struggling to understand how this could possibly work. A perfect copy of that tree, but a picture instead of the real thing.]

Don't understand how that tiny thing did that. It's-- it's so strange.

[failedpromise]

Hm, I suppose it is.

(She taps her chin thoughtfully for a moment.)

There's a whole history of how the technology was developed - the earliest "cameras" were actually invented long before even you were born, though they didn't take lasting images, just focused light to project pictures onto screens - but unless you want me to walk you through hundreds of years of history, it's probably best to just think of the phone as a sort of unthinking brain, the camera as an eye, and the picture as something I told it to memorize for me.

(She deletes the tree image and takes another image, this time of a nearby parked car, mostly so that she can show Manji the process again. Repetition, she knows, makes for better memorization with organics.

Speaking of memory...)

Being a sort of computer myself, I also have perfect recall, though people typically can't see or interact with my memories unless I allow it.

[canofmanji]

Sounds like shadow puppets. Entertaining enough if you're a kid.

[Now having a perfect memory? He considers that for a bit and the implications of it.] I'm not sure I'd want a perfect memory. A memory where I get to pick and choose what stays? That I could appreciate.

[failedpromise]

The principle is similar enough, I suppose.

(She could talk about how photographs started as almost a reverse of that in which a bright light would bounce off of an object and back onto a plate of light sensitive material to make a pattern ...but she's pretty sure he would have asked if he wanted to know.)

To be honest, even if I could just get rid of memories I didn't like, I'm not sure I would. (What the Gravemind did to her, maybe. Everything else though... she didn't deserve to forget what she'd done.)

[canofmanji]

[He is a bit surprised to hear that honest answer.] Really? Why not? I'd think most would want to get rid of most of their bad memories in a heart beat. [He is not counting himself among them. Not realizing he already knows the answer: most of his bad memories he doesn't feel like he has the right to forget.]

[failedpromise]

(She looks at him curiously, blinking.)

Would you? I don't think it's a good idea to forget the consequences of my actions.

[canofmanji]

No. Wouldn't be very respectful to the people I killed if I forgot about them.

Eh. Maybe a couple would be worth forgetting.

[failedpromise]

Yeah. Forgetting an action doesn't erase the results anyway.

(Imagine encountering consequences for something you can't even remember? She does her best to suppress a sudden stab of resentment -- she doesn't even know what Halsey made her forget, she has no idea whether that lack of knowledge might hurt her or someone else in the future. Or if it already has.)

[canofmanji]

"Nope. People are still hurt, even if you're not. That might be even more insulting." He should know, he's hurt a lot of people and may one day forget them depending on how long his immortality lasts. He can only remember so many faces.

[failedpromise]

Exactly.

(She's not going to ask him about the people he's hurt, though. Or killed.)

Anything else you want me to show you?

[canofmanji]

Naw, fill my head with too much and I'm going to get overloaded and confused. This is enough for now.

[failedpromise]

Well, at least you know your limits.

(It's more than she can say for some.)

See you later, in that case?

(She's not sure whether she's gonna go back to ADI or see about maybe catching a movie at the theater, but unless Manji's got some other thing he wants to do...)

[canofmanji]

Yeah. I'm sure you will. Later.