[Nick gives a hm in response, saving that question for later. He has to stifle some inward discomfort; though he's been here for years and lives with a synthetic who looks human enough, the fact there are more out there, possibly world of them, will never cease to unsettle him. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, especially when that dog has been dealing with the Institute for far too long.]
You're not the first synth here who looks downright human. I'm starting to wonder if folks like me and Oscar are the exceptions to the rule when it comes to how human a machine can be.
[The tone makes it clear that it isn't an invitation for him to do the same, but synthetic applied as a general moniker for people who are created feels off, somehow. It was never a term used by anyone at Delos.
She leans across the table, extending trust and a hand - palm up - for perusal.]
[He takes a look at her hand as she offers it, his eyes tracing the lines worn into her palm. Veins, wrinkles, the texture of real skin -- it's all there, able to fool even his eyes.]
The later generations where I come from are like that. A couple of people here, too. They bleed when you cut 'em, sleep and eat like any normal human. Some of them, ones that've escaped the Institute -- they don't even know they're not the real deal. Needless to say, I don't really have that luxury.
[He holds up his own hand, one that's completely devoid of the torn skin that covers most of him, albeit in bits and pieces.]
[An early iteration, then. A prototype. Some of the oldest hosts in the park are still around, she is certain, but most of them have been put away into cold storage. Maeve's expression tips mildly sympathetic as her fingers curl back into her palm, looking at the metal endoskeleton.]
Is that where you came from? The "Institute?"
[It doesn't sound all that dissimilar from the Mesa, but everyone sent out into the desert believed in their reality. She did, once.]
It's the place in my world that makes folks like us, though they're more you than me these days. Seems a lot of worlds are like that.
[And that's something that rattles him to his very core. It seems like every place that has such realistic synths is plagued with the same problems: people don't know who counts as real, who they can trust, where the artificial lives stand among the organic ones. Machines are able to replace the living so easily, but even with programmed memories, are they the same individuals they once were? Can they ever have lives of their own? Or will they always just be cheap facsimiles for the genuine thing, trapped within whatever boundaries their programming dictates?
And where does that leave people like him, who are neither wholly one, nor the other?
His brow tightens with momentary discomfort.] Who makes them in your world? And why?
[She wonders, sometimes, if that was the point. Replacement, over entertainment. Maeve cannot imagine that the park has a particularly effective business model. That there are other worlds like this is not news to her, based on Connor's existence, but the intent of the creation seems to be different, varied. Nick has yet to inform her on why he was created, but it may be that even he doesn't know.]
A company called Delos. We were built to populate a very large amusement park. [She smiles, but the expression doesn't quite reach her eyes.] We thought we were people. That we were the same as the guests who paid handsomely to visit an authentic experience of the old west.
[The words taste bitter. Live without limits, the banner had said, after she persuaded the technician to show her the different levels of the lab.]
They would give us stories and roles to follow, put us in loops of activity that guests could interrupt if they wanted to fuck or kill something. Erase memories and clean us up and drop us back into the park, as if nothing happened. I don't know why we were made, originally. Probably to prove that it could be done.
[An amusement park? Nick has formed a lot of hypotheses over the years as to why the Institute makes synths, but he's got to say that putting them up in Nuka-World to entertain the masses isn't one of them. Whatever the reasoning for the creation of synthetics from world to world, there's one constant that hits close to home: they're used like tools, same as some of the others like him he's met in Hadriel. Being given memories, having parts rewritten as though they were an old recording rather than an individual capable of independent thoughts and feelings -- it's been a tough pill for him to swallow, and he can only imagine Maeve has seen plenty of the same. That's what makes the commiseration such a relief at times.
However, learning more about artificial people from other worlds puts him at such odds internally. He wants a better life for synths like that, like Maeve and Rey; however, he can hardly bring himself to trust some of the ones he's met back in the Commonwealth. Those helped by the Railroad just want a new life, but for every one of them, there are so many still programmed to follow the Institute's orders, replacing people without so much as batting an eye. How many of them knew what they were doing? And how many were given such vivid memories that they believed they were real, never knowing they were manufactured like any other machine until someone flipped a switch and set them to work?
It's questions like those he ponders often when he's walking the streets at night, and one he's not sure he'll ever have solid answers to them. There are good and bad apples in every bushel; digging deep enough to find the roots of the rotten tree is the hard part.
His disgust appears on his face, cutting into the wrinkles of this skin.]
Is this place still in operation? Or did you escape?
[She is certain there is more to it: the technicians made it abundantly clear that the hosts were strictly maintained and moderated intellectual property in every respect, that they didn't provide comfort and succor and excitement alone. What they are - what she is - can just as easily be made into a weapon, something programmed to not stop before doling out irreparable harm to a human. Something programmed to infiltrate, to gather information.
Hell, she gathered information on people every time she spoke to one, saw one in the Mariposa, the data slotted away in neat little files. It would be idiotic if Delos wasn't already monetizing that in some way.]
They have precautionary measures to prevent hosts from leaving. I had the technicians print a new body for me, [she says almost carelessly, like an afterthought.] -so I wouldn't detonate after passing the perimeter.
[A beat. She swallows the reason she changed her own internal directive.]
I was almost out, before I came here. The park is still there, but...something was wrong. I don't know if it was widespread, but the power went out in the labs minutes before I arrived in Hadriel. That doesn't happen.
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no subject
Date: 2018-07-24 11:16 pm (UTC)You're not the first synth here who looks downright human. I'm starting to wonder if folks like me and Oscar are the exceptions to the rule when it comes to how human a machine can be.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-24 11:27 pm (UTC)[The tone makes it clear that it isn't an invitation for him to do the same, but synthetic applied as a general moniker for people who are created feels off, somehow. It was never a term used by anyone at Delos.
She leans across the table, extending trust and a hand - palm up - for perusal.]
And I'm mostly organic.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-24 11:59 pm (UTC)The later generations where I come from are like that. A couple of people here, too. They bleed when you cut 'em, sleep and eat like any normal human. Some of them, ones that've escaped the Institute -- they don't even know they're not the real deal. Needless to say, I don't really have that luxury.
[He holds up his own hand, one that's completely devoid of the torn skin that covers most of him, albeit in bits and pieces.]
no subject
Date: 2018-07-25 12:13 am (UTC)Is that where you came from? The "Institute?"
[It doesn't sound all that dissimilar from the Mesa, but everyone sent out into the desert believed in their reality. She did, once.]
no subject
Date: 2018-07-25 07:26 am (UTC)[And that's something that rattles him to his very core. It seems like every place that has such realistic synths is plagued with the same problems: people don't know who counts as real, who they can trust, where the artificial lives stand among the organic ones. Machines are able to replace the living so easily, but even with programmed memories, are they the same individuals they once were? Can they ever have lives of their own? Or will they always just be cheap facsimiles for the genuine thing, trapped within whatever boundaries their programming dictates?
And where does that leave people like him, who are neither wholly one, nor the other?
His brow tightens with momentary discomfort.] Who makes them in your world? And why?
no subject
Date: 2018-07-25 05:09 pm (UTC)[She wonders, sometimes, if that was the point. Replacement, over entertainment. Maeve cannot imagine that the park has a particularly effective business model. That there are other worlds like this is not news to her, based on Connor's existence, but the intent of the creation seems to be different, varied. Nick has yet to inform her on why he was created, but it may be that even he doesn't know.]
A company called Delos. We were built to populate a very large amusement park. [She smiles, but the expression doesn't quite reach her eyes.] We thought we were people. That we were the same as the guests who paid handsomely to visit an authentic experience of the old west.
[The words taste bitter. Live without limits, the banner had said, after she persuaded the technician to show her the different levels of the lab.]
They would give us stories and roles to follow, put us in loops of activity that guests could interrupt if they wanted to fuck or kill something. Erase memories and clean us up and drop us back into the park, as if nothing happened. I don't know why we were made, originally. Probably to prove that it could be done.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 08:57 am (UTC)However, learning more about artificial people from other worlds puts him at such odds internally. He wants a better life for synths like that, like Maeve and Rey; however, he can hardly bring himself to trust some of the ones he's met back in the Commonwealth. Those helped by the Railroad just want a new life, but for every one of them, there are so many still programmed to follow the Institute's orders, replacing people without so much as batting an eye. How many of them knew what they were doing? And how many were given such vivid memories that they believed they were real, never knowing they were manufactured like any other machine until someone flipped a switch and set them to work?
It's questions like those he ponders often when he's walking the streets at night, and one he's not sure he'll ever have solid answers to them. There are good and bad apples in every bushel; digging deep enough to find the roots of the rotten tree is the hard part.
His disgust appears on his face, cutting into the wrinkles of this skin.]
Is this place still in operation? Or did you escape?
no subject
Date: 2018-07-31 06:00 pm (UTC)Hell, she gathered information on people every time she spoke to one, saw one in the Mariposa, the data slotted away in neat little files. It would be idiotic if Delos wasn't already monetizing that in some way.]
They have precautionary measures to prevent hosts from leaving. I had the technicians print a new body for me, [she says almost carelessly, like an afterthought.] -so I wouldn't detonate after passing the perimeter.
[A beat. She swallows the reason she changed her own internal directive.]
I was almost out, before I came here. The park is still there, but...something was wrong. I don't know if it was widespread, but the power went out in the labs minutes before I arrived in Hadriel. That doesn't happen.