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apocalypsehowcomm2023-06-05 02:59 pm
failedpromise) wrote in apocalypsehowcomm2023-06-05 02:59 pm
Entry tags:
One very belated log post
Who: Cortana and you (+ a couple closed prompts)
When: Throughout May
Where: Various
Summary: Various backdated event and non event prompts.
Warnings: Body horror and infections in the artifact prompts. Will warn for anything that comes up otherwise.
A)
Wanted posters, really?
Cortana lets a little curse out under her breath when she finds the images of herself on the posters she's been seeing around town. Despite knowing they're targeting employees at random, despite having seen such ridiculousness leveled at people she knows haven't done a thing, she can't help but feel a surge of panic that someone might believe this, that it'll be just like rampancy, that someone is going to come to take her for final dispensation...
You can find her angrily crumpling the paper in her fist as she calls the number listed and berates the person on the other end of the line.
"Cortana here. I gave up a lot to escape the hold of the entities, and if you want information I'd recommend you stop dragging my name through the mud."
B) (for Donnie)
Well, this is a disaster.
One might think that all the shit going down might dissuade Cortana from getting her maintenance done, and one would be wrong for that assumption. As far as she's concerned, Cortana needs her body to be in top shape during situations like this, so proper maintenance is more important than ever.
Currently, she's unconscious and depowered-she has to be in order for Donnie to do his work-so she can't tell him why there's a flash drive in the bag with her replacement parts or what she wants him to do with it, but it should be fairly easy to guess it's some kind of coding upgrade.
There couldn't be any other reason it's there, right?
C1)
It starts ...with an itch. She was able to detect the bogus code the moment she woke up and removed the unwanted flash drive basically immediately, but there's a strange itching sensation in her hand that won't go away. As the day wears on she finds herself absentmindedly scratching at it more and more, and while she's not going to panic over an itch, it's definitely worrying.
That is, until she looks down and sees that her skin is beginning to peel. Transfixed, she pokes and prods and discovers to her horror that the synthetic 'flesh' beneath is beginning to flake and crumble.
There was something beneath it...
"Ow!" Cortana practically shrieked as her attempt to get at whatever appeared to be growing inside her arm resulted in the bones of her middle finger snapping like they were soft wood instead of steel. As she shook her broken, hurting hand, cursing up a storm and trying not to scream or cry, the damaged finger crumbled away entirely to reveal another. Wet, organic, and distinctly monstrous, the appendage was full sized despite having been buried inside a seemingly normal and not at all enlarged finger. Cortana stared at it, eyes wide with hotror.
"Oh goddammit."
C2) (for Edalyn)
It hadn't stopped with her finger. The itching and crumbling had continued over the next several hours despite all attempts to stop it. The arm at this point is near completely wrapped in duct tape, all shiny gray and still coming apart to reveal its very much unwanted replacement.
She could feel the new appendage... squirming beneath her taped together skin, as though fighting to get out. Coupled with the pain, it's nearly unbearable. Cortana finds herself picking and scratching compulsively at the edges despite the damage this does, and soon enough the tape is peeling away and taking chunks of her with it until finally she's forced to remove it entirely, and the new arm is revealed in all it's strange, slimy glory.
"Maybe it can be removed?" She holds up the foul smelling appendage, staring at it. At least it looks mostly human, she thinks to herself... if humans were slimy and constantly bleeding water.
That flash drive was likely an artifact, she knows now. Removing it didn't fix the problem. Will the disease continue to spread? Take her over? She should probably talk to the people in the ADI research department, but with what's currently going on...
No. It doesn't appear to be spreading beyond her arm. She has time.
She also doesn't seem to care who might come across her standing in some random spot on ADI grounds, musing about possibly cutting off her own arm.
D)
Now sans one arm and having experienced multiple periods of struggling to get a decent charge, Cortana is really getting fed up with dealing with all this shit.
She doesn't have roommates to take care of, or any real attachment to living in the apartments now that Bonnie's is clean, functional, and has reliable access to electricity. So she's decided it's time to move.
She's got... okay she's got a decent amount of stuff to move once she's managed to get everything sorted and is able to start moving into her new room, actually, but hey, it's not like she's unable to carry it. Moving things is something her robotic body is especially good at.
Still, when she finds herself narrowly avoiding bumping into someone due to her current load blocking her vision, she finds herself reassessing her ability to do this alone... at least without risking hurting someone.
"Can you help me?"
When: Throughout May
Where: Various
Summary: Various backdated event and non event prompts.
Warnings: Body horror and infections in the artifact prompts. Will warn for anything that comes up otherwise.
A)
Wanted posters, really?
Cortana lets a little curse out under her breath when she finds the images of herself on the posters she's been seeing around town. Despite knowing they're targeting employees at random, despite having seen such ridiculousness leveled at people she knows haven't done a thing, she can't help but feel a surge of panic that someone might believe this, that it'll be just like rampancy, that someone is going to come to take her for final dispensation...
You can find her angrily crumpling the paper in her fist as she calls the number listed and berates the person on the other end of the line.
"Cortana here. I gave up a lot to escape the hold of the entities, and if you want information I'd recommend you stop dragging my name through the mud."
B) (for Donnie)
Well, this is a disaster.
One might think that all the shit going down might dissuade Cortana from getting her maintenance done, and one would be wrong for that assumption. As far as she's concerned, Cortana needs her body to be in top shape during situations like this, so proper maintenance is more important than ever.
Currently, she's unconscious and depowered-she has to be in order for Donnie to do his work-so she can't tell him why there's a flash drive in the bag with her replacement parts or what she wants him to do with it, but it should be fairly easy to guess it's some kind of coding upgrade.
There couldn't be any other reason it's there, right?
C1)
It starts ...with an itch. She was able to detect the bogus code the moment she woke up and removed the unwanted flash drive basically immediately, but there's a strange itching sensation in her hand that won't go away. As the day wears on she finds herself absentmindedly scratching at it more and more, and while she's not going to panic over an itch, it's definitely worrying.
That is, until she looks down and sees that her skin is beginning to peel. Transfixed, she pokes and prods and discovers to her horror that the synthetic 'flesh' beneath is beginning to flake and crumble.
There was something beneath it...
"Ow!" Cortana practically shrieked as her attempt to get at whatever appeared to be growing inside her arm resulted in the bones of her middle finger snapping like they were soft wood instead of steel. As she shook her broken, hurting hand, cursing up a storm and trying not to scream or cry, the damaged finger crumbled away entirely to reveal another. Wet, organic, and distinctly monstrous, the appendage was full sized despite having been buried inside a seemingly normal and not at all enlarged finger. Cortana stared at it, eyes wide with hotror.
"Oh goddammit."
C2) (for Edalyn)
It hadn't stopped with her finger. The itching and crumbling had continued over the next several hours despite all attempts to stop it. The arm at this point is near completely wrapped in duct tape, all shiny gray and still coming apart to reveal its very much unwanted replacement.
She could feel the new appendage... squirming beneath her taped together skin, as though fighting to get out. Coupled with the pain, it's nearly unbearable. Cortana finds herself picking and scratching compulsively at the edges despite the damage this does, and soon enough the tape is peeling away and taking chunks of her with it until finally she's forced to remove it entirely, and the new arm is revealed in all it's strange, slimy glory.
"Maybe it can be removed?" She holds up the foul smelling appendage, staring at it. At least it looks mostly human, she thinks to herself... if humans were slimy and constantly bleeding water.
That flash drive was likely an artifact, she knows now. Removing it didn't fix the problem. Will the disease continue to spread? Take her over? She should probably talk to the people in the ADI research department, but with what's currently going on...
No. It doesn't appear to be spreading beyond her arm. She has time.
She also doesn't seem to care who might come across her standing in some random spot on ADI grounds, musing about possibly cutting off her own arm.
D)
Now sans one arm and having experienced multiple periods of struggling to get a decent charge, Cortana is really getting fed up with dealing with all this shit.
She doesn't have roommates to take care of, or any real attachment to living in the apartments now that Bonnie's is clean, functional, and has reliable access to electricity. So she's decided it's time to move.
She's got... okay she's got a decent amount of stuff to move once she's managed to get everything sorted and is able to start moving into her new room, actually, but hey, it's not like she's unable to carry it. Moving things is something her robotic body is especially good at.
Still, when she finds herself narrowly avoiding bumping into someone due to her current load blocking her vision, she finds herself reassessing her ability to do this alone... at least without risking hurting someone.
"Can you help me?"
no subject
Eda's nose wrinkles as the smell hits her before anything else. Something off and rancid, and not even in a way that makes the owl beast hungry. She pauses in her walking past, looking over when she hears Cortana's comment.
Whatever she's expecting to see, it's not the slimy, fleshy arm that Cortana is staring at. Eda's not sure where to start figuring out what's going on, so she just kind of responds without thinking.
"Well... can it? Do they come off?" She knows Cortana is a robot, but she's not all that sure how she's actually put together. It's probably not as easy as it is for Eda herself, but who knows.
no subject
"The construction is a lot like a regular human limb ...just made of stronger materials."
She pauses a moment. "I suppose it's possible that that's changed now." Given her arm is pretty thoroughly changed now.
no subject
"Well, I regretted that immediately," she mutters, though she's still looking the arm over curiously.
"What happened?" It's not like it's the weirdest thing she's ever seen, but Eda still has no idea what would cause whatever it is.
no subject
"Some sort of artifact got slipped in with my replacement parts, and my maintenance person thought I wanted it installed... unfortunately removing it doesn't seem to have helped." She sounds merely annoyed but there's a hesitation in her voice and a wideness to her eyes that should belie this and show the panic building within her.
no subject
"Yeah, this seems... a little past that point." Or at least, that's what it looks like. A lot of artifacts have effects that seem to go away as inexplicably as they appear, once the thing is gone. But not all of them are quite this physical.
"Can you put on a new arm? If you get rid of this one." She's pretty sure that would make sense, or at least it seems like a practical question to start with.
no subject
She bites her lip. "I'm more worried about what will happen if it continues to spread."
no subject
"I'm not sure you ought to wait and find that out." Normally the arm removal might be extreme, but the idea of having a whole body made of... whatever that is, doesn't seem appealing at all.
no subject
no subject
"How strong is the stuff you're made of exactly?"
Removing a human arm wouldn't be pleasant, but at least there were a few ways that probably wouldn't be all that hard. She wasn't sure if it would be quite so easy on Cortana.
no subject
Well, at least she's distracted from the horror of having to cut her own horribly infected arm off... by the logistics of what it would actually take to cut her horribly infected arm off.
It's definitely not going to be quite so easy as it would be with a Human.
no subject
"I don't suppose you know if the ADI has a buzz saw in one of their basements?" That would probably be too convenient, but she might as well at least ask.
no subject
She's so tired.
"To be honest, I wouldn't put it past them. Whether they'd let us use it, however..." Probably with a lot of explaining? She's not sure they wouldn't insist on trying less drastic methods first though, and she really just wants this horrible arm gone.
no subject
But it's true that they might suggest trying anything else first, and she doesn't get the impression Cortana feels like jumping through any more hoops than she needs to.
"But... I'm pretty sure there's a hardware store around here somewhere." She hasn't really needed to go often enough to remember where, but looking it up would probably be easier than dealing with anyone else working here.