ph_logs | And it feels like the weight is too much to carry [November Open]

Who: Vika and YOU
What: November Open
When: TAKE A WILD FUCKING GUESS BUDDY
Where: Around Town, Edge of Town, The Mine(tm), Oak & Iron
Warnings: Existential horror, chronic (robot) illness, Vika's kind of a bitch

In the final cut [People Watching]

One might find one's Vika out around town. She doesn't do things like eat or sleep or, you know, most of the reasons Pumpkin Hollow has to socialize, and yet here she is! At the Oak & Iron, hanging out near the Forges, even at the Library, kinda just looking at the various people around with an unusual amount of animation for her. While Vika does indeed check out some books at the library (all of them about clockmaking), for the most part she's kinda just observing and click-click-click-clicking away. If your character is particularly fashionable you might even get approached; she's got some clothing questions, you see. Otherwise, well, that's on you.

In the final scene [Edge of Town]

Maybe it's the noise - a strange, reverberating pulse - that gets your attention near the edge of town. Maybe it's the ice. The source is obvious enough once you get there, though: Vika is practicing. Her weapon arm has changed since she got here, and one of the big ways it's changed is that it now has a utility built in. The frozen blasts it fires leave behind patches of thick ice, and she's running herself through her paces with remarkable agility. Those overlarge legs on her body push her into swift dashes extended by the ice, and she's not shy at all in using the blasts from her weapon to freeze over the surface of the river in chunks she can land on and then leap from. For all that Vika is a lurching zombie, this is as alive as she's ever looked here in town, with a fluidity that might be unbelievable if you've seen her before.

The animals have wisely left this area, but there's a first come first served opportunity to assign this robot a Pokemon brave enough to be near this...

There's a final girl [Oak & Iron]

Vika doesn't eat, but she does need to be wound. She's slowly coming to peace with the idea that it's going to be a team effort even if she does get a hand installed, and it's...

...Weirdly nice? In any event. So here she is, taking up table space and blissfully unaware that this is rude behavior because nobody on the staff is gonna be the first person to tell the gun-armed zombie robot that she needs to buy something or leave. Help a bitch out before she starves to death, would you?

And you know that she should be screaming [The Mines]

Pretty sure Vika is the only PC miner in the game so this prompt exists literally just in case there's plot down in the hole here. Her job has, thankfully, provided her with tools she can put on her arm while on the clock, as well as a dedicated partner; Mika (yeah, we're going with that) doesn't need to swing the pickaxe at all, instead loading the cart since Vika, y'know, fucking can't.

Wildcard

Come at me

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So be it. Lecture incoming.

"When someone dies, the spirit or the animating force is separated from the body. The body is purely of the physical world and it will decay, but the animating force endures -- invisible and intangible to the living, but present." Chris shifts their stance a little wider, something similar to parade rest, though they keep their hands clasped in front of them. "In most cases, in a normal situation, the spirit is drawn to what I call the Between -- a waiting room of sorts before they are sent on their way, to whatever lies on the other side of death. They don't linger in the physical world.

"In some cases, however, the spirit remains here. Often retracing the steps that led to their original demise, but sometimes freer than that. The causes can be internal -- strong emotions at the time of death can ground a spirit to a place -- or external, such as a slaughter of many or particularly violent death for one. And they need... guidance to the Between. What form that guidance takes can vary. But it's those spirits who linger, rare as they are, who become ghosts. Ghosts usually have no way of interacting with the living, unless that person is particularly sensitive to the presence of spirits. It's a lonely existence.

"These ghosts can be seen and felt. Many of them are animals, things that never were human. And the majority are friendly. So... people go out to make friends."

"..." Vika's hook goes, lightly, to her chest; she looks down at it, blinking faintly. "Strange," she murmurs, but it has none of the doubting bite or habitual sarcasm she's so often shown. "I don't think that can be my fate, Freeman. The bit of me that I use to be me is...clingy."

"Maybe it isn't your fate," Chris agrees, in a soft voice. "It could be that you'll endure in the physical world, and not have to worry about spirits and what's beyond. I hope there's peace in that, too. Someday."

"...You misunderstand, Freeman. This is not a question of spiritual uncertainty for me. My consciousness is stored in a very specific part of myself whose second primary function is to permit continuity of my self between bodies. This shell isn't my original body and it wasn't my last either; I 'died' dozens more times after this shell was disabled. There have been. A lot. Of Vikas."

"Oh. Thank you for explaining."

Chris thinks over what she's said, and then they say, "Forgive me, I don't mean to sound argumentative. But the way that you describe it... sounds more like there has been one Vika in many bodies. One unique person. Do I have that right?"

"Depends, how many philosophers do you have in your pocket?" Vika flashes a wan look; if she were fully human she might be blanching. "...Let me describe a hypothetical. For some unfathomable reason you construct a shell compatible with my systems and I, I dunno, am drunk on a nice tall glass of Trojans and worms & upload myself into it. As of that moment, there are two Vikas with identical subjectivities. I, Vika Prime, am in this shell; Vika Beta is in the second shell. Later, I, Vika Prime, trip and fall directly into the sun and fucking die. How much is Vika Beta not me?"

"That's, uh... not exactly a hypothetical where I come from." Chris replies. "If there are two conscious iterations of your 'self', then individualization basically occurs immediately. We are, at least in part, the sum of our memories and experiences. So...

"Vika Beta may have all of Vika Prime's memories to a certain point, but should Vika Prime 'fucking die'... unless there's a way to integrate Vika Prime's unique experiences into Vika Beta's knowledge, then Vika Prime is lost." Chris rubs at one of their temples before continuing, "And even if there was an integration of the data, then you'd end up with more of a Vika Gestalt than either of the originals in this thought experiment."

"Practical experience beats philosophy again," Vika notes wryly. "...It's not a hypothetical for me either, though. I am not the first Vika. That I was the last is only because I'm the last one standing. There were Vikas after me, shells who experienced continuity of self with this version. There were Vikas before me, and I remember being all of them, at least the ones in my lineage. And as far as I'm concerned they're all me."

Chris says seriously, "I know... a little bit... of what you mean. During an attack by the enemy here, I was trapped in a mirror maze. And the reflections were... ghosts of my past self. I don't mean that in the sense of reincarnation and past lives. But alternate universe versions of me."

They wrap their arms around themself, look down, and take a slow breath. "One of my abilities is seeing the memories of ghosts. These mirror-ghosts grabbed me, forced me to see and experience their lives... and the memories aren't fading like usual." They look up at Vika again, and ask, "Is there some way that you... integrate all the memories? So that you remember the difference between what you experienced versus what the others went through?"

"I do have the advantage of not experiencing successor Vika memories...after all, I was supposed to be dead when my consciousness was cloned into those shells." She shrugs; is what it is. "But as for all my past Vikas, the ones I'm the successor to...I don't really know how to answer your question. How do you integrate your memories of yesterday? The day before? Last month? Last year? My father...Doctor Sharp said something, some comparison to human perception, what was it..."

She lapses into contemplative silence.

"He said...he said...what was it he said...he compared entering a new shell to waking from a realistic dream, I think? I remember the last shell dying, and then as far as I'm concerned I was in this one the very next moment, even though objectively about four days had passed. There's no break in continuity."

Chris nods contemplatively, though they still have their arms wrapped around themself. "That might be a better way to approach it. I'll... give it a try."

After a moment, they shake off that mood and drop their arms from that protective posture.

"Are you settling in all right? Still at the Oak and Iron, or did you get a place of your own?"

"Bart insisted that I move into a room in her basement. I'm keeping my tools and supplies there but it's not like I use buildings for fucking anything."

"Storage is a use," Chris points out in a mild tone of voice, a slight smile on their face.

"But it's good that you've moved in with Bart. The Oak and Iron is a nice place, but it's shit for privacy. Sharing space with just one other person is a little easier."

Still no comment on the pronouns. Chris's own shift so much, and zie would rather check with Bart directly on the matter.

"Sharing." Hey Chris we're learning today: Vika can roll her eyes. They uh. Kinda. Keep rolling. She holds up her hook after a bit of this and just kinda waits it out. "...Note to self, less lubricant," she mutters. "...And ask after whatever good-ass wiring Father installed to do that without me going blind, but later, later. Anyway. Sharing. I dunno. At the very least it's nice to usually have somewhere to get wound..."

And it feels like the weight is too much to carry [November Open]

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