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apocalypsehowcomm2022-12-04 06:58 pm
failedpromise) wrote in apocalypsehowcomm2022-12-04 06:58 pm
Entry tags:
It's hard for me to come up with good titles
Who: Cortana and ...you?
When: Early December
Where: ADI building
Summary: Cortana is still adjusting to the constraints of her new body… and she’s very much not adjusting to the sudden weirdness that is going on with the ADI building.
Warnings: Mentions of drowning, possibility of Cortana doubting/not trusting her own experiences, will warn for anything else.
A)
"You know, I hadn’t really considered the possible issues of this particular challenge." Cortana muses to herself as she watches other people learning to swim in survival class. She’s sitting this one out for now – her body is a little too dense for actual swimming – but it’s brought up some questions that she might want to get an answer to sooner rather than later.
Getting wet won’t destroy her, she knows. She can even submerge herself for a little while before it starts to cause damage. But. She’s physically incapable of breathing, of experiencing oxygen deprivation (The literal kind, at least. The general sensation of being out of breath is something she’s unfortunately entirely capable of feeling, albeit stemming from not intaking and processing data instead of air.) as an organic would, and she’s discovered that abilities that go beyond what is typically defined as humanly possible might affect her breaking her connection with the Eye.
Even if she can’t just stay under water, even if it’s damaging to her, even if her inability to swim actually means that bodies of water pose an incredible risk… will that lack of actual breathing compromise her efforts? And what will she do if she gets stranded in the middle of a deep pond or lake or caught in a flood? Give up and die?
She sighs. She really ought to figure out some sort of protocol for this sort of situation, even if she currently plans to avoid deep water entirely.
B)
She might have had to give up a lot of her abilities when she transitioned to her new form, but memory is one thing that Humans can possess on a level to rival an AI (even if such a thing is extraordinarily rare), and so that is one part of herself that she’s kept.
Even if she has some trouble with trusting herself nowadays.
It is thus quite jarring when she turns into what every part of her mind says is the hallway that leads to the stairwell only to find herself at the door to the canteen. Immediately, she comes to a halt and stares, blinking.
What? She wasn’t even on the right floor. Seeing someone else nearby, she attempts to catch their attention.
"Excuse me. I know this is a bit of an odd question, but can you tell me what floor we’re on?"
C)
Well, that sure was an experience.
She’d spent a whole day having to re-memorize her internal map of the building she’d been working in for almost a year now, only to have things abruptly return to their original layout. It was ...deeply disconcerting, especially as most people she had questioned seemed to think that nothing was amiss, either during or after the switch.
The evening after her experience finds her in the library, looking through every scrap of information she can find on the ADI headquarters building and its layout. She’s found or purchased a notebook somewhere and has copied down everything about how the building is supposed to be and all the changes from her experience, including simple hand drawn maps of the areas that she explored that day and the normal building layout for comparison. She doesn’t have the experience sketching and drawing things that Dr. Halsey has, but she does have the basics of the skill and the previously mentioned perfect memory, so the maps aren’t pretty but they’re easy to read and accurate. She’s poring over them and muttering to herself obsessively. She doesn’t even look up at anyone who approaches.
...Wanna bother her?
When: Early December
Where: ADI building
Summary: Cortana is still adjusting to the constraints of her new body… and she’s very much not adjusting to the sudden weirdness that is going on with the ADI building.
Warnings: Mentions of drowning, possibility of Cortana doubting/not trusting her own experiences, will warn for anything else.
A)
"You know, I hadn’t really considered the possible issues of this particular challenge." Cortana muses to herself as she watches other people learning to swim in survival class. She’s sitting this one out for now – her body is a little too dense for actual swimming – but it’s brought up some questions that she might want to get an answer to sooner rather than later.
Getting wet won’t destroy her, she knows. She can even submerge herself for a little while before it starts to cause damage. But. She’s physically incapable of breathing, of experiencing oxygen deprivation (The literal kind, at least. The general sensation of being out of breath is something she’s unfortunately entirely capable of feeling, albeit stemming from not intaking and processing data instead of air.) as an organic would, and she’s discovered that abilities that go beyond what is typically defined as humanly possible might affect her breaking her connection with the Eye.
Even if she can’t just stay under water, even if it’s damaging to her, even if her inability to swim actually means that bodies of water pose an incredible risk… will that lack of actual breathing compromise her efforts? And what will she do if she gets stranded in the middle of a deep pond or lake or caught in a flood? Give up and die?
She sighs. She really ought to figure out some sort of protocol for this sort of situation, even if she currently plans to avoid deep water entirely.
B)
She might have had to give up a lot of her abilities when she transitioned to her new form, but memory is one thing that Humans can possess on a level to rival an AI (even if such a thing is extraordinarily rare), and so that is one part of herself that she’s kept.
Even if she has some trouble with trusting herself nowadays.
It is thus quite jarring when she turns into what every part of her mind says is the hallway that leads to the stairwell only to find herself at the door to the canteen. Immediately, she comes to a halt and stares, blinking.
What? She wasn’t even on the right floor. Seeing someone else nearby, she attempts to catch their attention.
"Excuse me. I know this is a bit of an odd question, but can you tell me what floor we’re on?"
C)
Well, that sure was an experience.
She’d spent a whole day having to re-memorize her internal map of the building she’d been working in for almost a year now, only to have things abruptly return to their original layout. It was ...deeply disconcerting, especially as most people she had questioned seemed to think that nothing was amiss, either during or after the switch.
The evening after her experience finds her in the library, looking through every scrap of information she can find on the ADI headquarters building and its layout. She’s found or purchased a notebook somewhere and has copied down everything about how the building is supposed to be and all the changes from her experience, including simple hand drawn maps of the areas that she explored that day and the normal building layout for comparison. She doesn’t have the experience sketching and drawing things that Dr. Halsey has, but she does have the basics of the skill and the previously mentioned perfect memory, so the maps aren’t pretty but they’re easy to read and accurate. She’s poring over them and muttering to herself obsessively. She doesn’t even look up at anyone who approaches.
...Wanna bother her?
no subject
She's trying so so hard not to be even more obviously awkward but she can't even look at Beau right now, her not asking Beau to stop is more a refusal to admit how much this is getting to her than anything else. "Not as much as you'd think, actually. I can pick up warmth and pressure-" she's babbling. It's a combination of nervousness and being a huge nerd. "-but not much else. And yet I'm still responding as if..." she's less awkward now and more deep in thought, at least for a few seconds "...some relic of being based on a human, maybe?" At least until some combination of touch and Beau talking bring her back to reality.
"I have to keep my back ventilated to avoid my battery overheating." As to why she didn't wear clothes when she first came here? Force of habit + aversion to being anything like her armor wearing worst version of herself. A non solid hologram didn't really need clothes, after all. The armor had been meant to make her seem powerful when she'd mentally been at her weakest and most broken -- she didn't normally feel a need to look powerful when she could let her abilities speak for themselves.
no subject
"They're nice. But it's still intimate, you know? Touching and stuff. Imagine you didn't get a lot of that as, uhh, a bunch of light." While she can act dumb at times, she's never as stupid as she seems-- or distracted. "And you can have backless stuff. Or just the kinda tops I wear, usually. Might help with being able to y'know, touch people and have them touch you in a way that isn't weird for you."
no subject
...Interesting. She's not sure whether she wants to do further experimentation to see just how human her responses are.
"True." Her nose scrunches up slightly as she thinks about it. A bra wouldn't work, because the band would prevent her from opening her vents. She'd need something totally backless... Eda's wings probably pose similar problems, maybe she should ask her.
"...Though I don't think most people are going to be that brazen about touching someone's breasts." One great thing about Cortana's far future home: for all her parading around naked, she's had basically no creepiness of that sort directed at her. This trend has continued at ADI, so she's a little naive in this one particular area.
no subject
Beau, for her part, just has some binding around her chest to keep her tits in place, and then what is essentially a tank top and harem pants. Loose, breezy, functional. Her moves don't really allow for armor, anyway. "Or just something, y'know, loose. Then there's room for airflow."
no subject
"I'd probably need more than just loose, so I'd likely go with the tied option." Fortunately, situations where she has to strip in public are rare. Not that she's ever cared about that, given how little clothing she used to wear.