Extended a thing I was working on. The characters felt a bit lifeless, probably because I'm really not used to the personality of these three. I'll probably change it later after I have fleshed them out.
A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.
Unfortunately for androids, they already weren’t men.
There were many theories on why a Vivant (They would just call it an ‘Android’, but some tools already copyrighted that for market usage) was less likely to be a criminal than a human. Some people believed that their servile disposition made them more likely to comply with the authority. Some believed that they were good people and it was just humans that are dicks.
Right now, floating in the void of VR, Hazel Foley thought that it was because the ones that do break the law gets their mind reprogrammed. When this was done to a human, it usually had the effect of crippling them for life. The same couldn’t be said for a Vivant, so it was acceptable to tinker with their brains, ethics be damned.
Except he didn’t feel any different. He wasn’t sure if he could feel different, since he never had his mind rewritten before. Hazel just thought that when somebody’s mind was being rewritten, they’d feel less, you know, conscious.
And they definitely didn’t get woken up feeling exactly the same.
“That’s…. That’s it?” he asked skeptically, his eyes adjusting to the harsh white light of the workshop. It would be an operation room, but for a Vivant it was a workshop. His handler was standing there, and there was a fat, round-faced man with a neatly coiffed hair. That description could fit many people working in the Inner Sector. But in this case it fit Bole Vaans, MD, Mayor of Rosebed City.
The Mayor had an amused expression on his face. To Hazel, this really could mean several things, some of which include contradictory conclusions, so the vivant just stared blankly at the man, hoping that his reformatting had given him telepathic abilities to let people take a hint without him having to be ‘rude’. It seemed to work, or Vaans realized that he wasn’t really answering the boy’s question, so he finally answered after an awkward silence, “Well, no, you’re exactly the same. All we did was make a backup, as we always do with reformatted vivants. But, we didn’t reformat you.”
“Thanks?” Hazel ventured when the man appeared to require a reply before he would continue talking.
“You may be wondering why. Here’s the deal, we believe that most of your models have been unjustly prejudiced against from a few, ah, incidents. Due to how different your models are to other vivants, reformatting appears to- for lack of a better word- kill you,” Vanns said, reiterating what Hazel had thought anyways. It was strange to hear it from a government official, though. His caretaker also seemed uncomfortable, and had not said anything. That alone gave the vivant some apprehension, though possibly not as much as being dead or in jail.
“You’re still responsible for assault, however, and it would cause undue publicity to just send a vivant to jail,” he stated the obvious, “So instead you will be sent back to perform your original duty as a scout, working with the police. And this time- we’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
Hazel took some time to digest this information. The Mayor didn’t seem to care much about saying anything else, excused himself, and left, presumably to say the exact same thing to another “reformatted” vivant.
He and his caretaker exchanged glances.
“He literally just pardoned me and a bunch of criminals, and said he didn’t want the public knowing too much about it,” Hazel stated, for the record, “That’s… uh. Sound like some weird shit is going on.”
“It was better than you dying,” his caretaker spoke finally, “I felt you’d like this option better.”
“Well, yeah! I like not being dead! But… what now?”
[/quite]
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Topic: Cinder's Extremely Infrequent Creations Thread: 480 works (Read 90345 times)