ph_logs | An Assortment of Happenstance (Random Events Wave 2)

An Assortment of Happenstance (Random Events Wave 2)

Pumpkin Hollow Community Bulletin

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It's been a while since the community board has been redone! The weather hasn't really been permitting long excursions into town square to do up the board, especially since the blizzard, but today is a clear day for once and Yorick is in a hurry to get it all set up for Merrymeet.

He helpfully posts a few announcements.

COMMUNITY GATHERING AT TOWN HALL TONIGHT

A community gathering is scheduled in Town Hall tonight for all new residents ("offworlders") to discuss their recent experience with a mass shared dream event. Locals who are native to Pumpkin Hollow will be present to listen, learn, and help make sense of this strange dream. The intent of the gathering is to ascertain the meaning of the dream and share details to create a bigger picture.

Sweet potato muffins will be provided, courtesy of Cecil. The meeting will officially commence at 6pm. Dress warmly!

MERRYMEET FLOWER QUEEN VOTING

Voting for the Flower Queen of our upcoming Merrymeet celebration is now officially open! Please cast your vote for one of the following candidates from our final pool of nominees:

Dahlia Leeds, town councilwoman and Historical Society leader.
Annabel Lee Whitlock, seamstress and chess extraordinaire.
Mary Dahl, shop employee and freelance theatrical performance artist.
Magne Kikiishi, Oak & Iron employee and Fight Club leader.
Zelda of Hyrule, captain of the Mipha's Grace.
Sally Boyle, chemist/herbalist and proprietor of the Blackberry Apothecary.

Merrymeet will be held on Saturday, Feb. 24th, so all votes must be cast by then. This year's celebration will also feature our first Flower Princess in a while, Bobbin Kaspbrak, escorted by her keeper, Eddie! She is a chicken. (Note: the last Flower Princess was Butter Poe, a cat. She will sadly be unable to pass on her crown in the ceremonial manner due to being a cat, but she wishes Bobbin the best of luck.)

[ Ballot Box ]

BOTTLE COLLECTION NOTICE

ALERT TO ALL CITIZENS: down on Tawny Beach there have been sightings of bottled messages washing ashore that appear to be addressed to various offworld citizens. Please scan the beach or check in with Jack's Marina Port Authority to see if there are any intended for you at your earliest convenience.

[ Those who go to the beach to investigate may find a bottle carrying curled parchment with their name on it. Within, they will find a letter from a loved one from back home. The messages read more like prayers or thoughts about their subjects, often in third person rather than second, but contain important insight about how the writer truly views the recipient that may guide them in this world. They are also obviously written in the handwriting of the person who sent them. It's unclear how they got here, but perhaps they can help. ]

After Yorick has long since walked away, another strange message also appears. Nailed to the bottom of the board haphazardly, a piece of twine with a large tooth tied to it and a piece of parchment. The text is written in a neat but jagged font, ink seeming to almost fray at the edges, outlining agreed upon terms for some manner of agreement. A shot that must be discharged within a lunar cycle, a soul to be taken from this plane by King Eligos, and a mandatory betrayal of trust. It is signed by both Eligos and Vika. A line in the terms is underlined.

For whatever purpose I deem fit.

Beneath the signatures a note is scrawled that reads,

"Never let it be said that syntax doesn't matter. You didn't think I was going to help you kill my own grandchild, did you?"

Those going to Town Hall for the community gathering will see that the Pine Devil skull that Vika had hung there is now shattered, and her notice gone. The Pine Devil is loose once more.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh, that. My descendants and I cannibalize other advanced weapon platforms and internally generate a suitable weapon compatible with our busters."

Said casually, like she didn't just describe the holy grail of military technology.

Spiders can't squint, but damned if Tarantulas isn't doing it anyway.

"...And they also gave you and your descendants an adaptive cybersuite to fight off malware and malicious coding, so when your enemies start upgrading all of their equipment with the same, you won't get hacked the first time you cannibalize something new, right?"

They absolutely did not do that, he's already sure of it. Organics.

"No idea. I was the prototype for a prototype, Tarantulas. My descendants still aren't even the finished products; all of our battles were in controlled environments bought and paid for by our investors. Mock them about it if you like."

"I certainly would, if I thought it would do the least bit of good," Tarantulas says grumpily. One of his middle legs twitches, as if to pat Vika on the shoulder in commiseration before thinking better of it. "But I'm sure you've already said everything worth saying about them and then some. So this is why you have such an infamous chip on your shoulder about AI research, is it?"

"Among other things," Vika admits. "...Quite a few of my...opponents, were arguably also people. Fatally flawed and enticed into the simulations to be built and rebuilt. That damn penguin...it's the damn penguin that sticks out to me. Fully sapient. Capable of thinking and feeling. Had to be, his job used to be head manager of the climate control stations, in a better world I'd have to kill him to kill them all. But you know the thing? The fucking thing? You wanna hear the damn bitch of it? Instead of, I dunno, teaching him basic opsec, my idiot fathers wired an IFF into his brain and it turns out they built it wrong. Everything is identified foe. He's more omnicidal than I could ever be and the only reason he's not exterminating all life on Earth is that he's a guard dog."

"Oh for fuck's sakes," Tarantulas groans, pulling his coat down over his eyes. "How? How do you fuck up that badly? It's an IFF, it's only one of the simplest pieces of opsec technology imaginable! How could they be smart enough to write the code for an independent adaptable intelligence while also being so incompetently stupid?"

He peeks up at Vika, wondering, "Are you sure these people created you? Is there no evidence at all they might have outsourced your coding to someone smarter?"

Vika should answer the question, she really should, but the way this spider is dispensing sweet Vindication is just too alluring.

"This a good time to add that instead of building overrides or a kill command into my mind, they installed a separate self destruct system into all eight of us, didn't airgap it, and it got remotely deactivated by the fucking sapient Roomba they were also abusing?"

The coat goes back down, and this time Tarantulas stuffs some of it past his fangs and into his mouth. A high, wavering shriek, like a broken steam whistle, issues from the thick fur. His feet tap against the ground in an agitated spider-dance.

Finally the coat goes back up and he demands, "And then you killed them, right? You and your siblings slipped your leash and killed them? That is how this story ends, isn't it?"

"I got one of them and died three minutes later leading the charge to the second. How the fuck did you think I got here, walking?"

"Teleportation," he says dryly.

" -- I was shot in the back by my lover, after he realized I intended to side with my creation against him. Stupid on both our parts, honestly. Me for taking up with him in the first place, him for not realizing where my loyalties would inevitably fall. There was a reason I tried to keep him away from Springer and that Verity girl, after all."

His pedipalps twitch in a way that was probably intended to be a smirk. "I bled out on my own laboratory floor, but not before I got to watch Springer exile that fool to the temporal ends of the universe. Such an intelligent child, just as I meant him to be."

"Creation. Really starting to hate that word. You're a father."

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click...

"What does that mean, to you?"

"I am," Tarantulas agrees smugly. "And not like those two fools that made you. When I create an autonomous, self-learning intelligence, I do it with the expectation that it will choose its own course in life. That it will live freely, glorious and independent." He deflates slightly. "Or at least, that was the plan..."

"I have truly atrocious taste in partners, you see. There was the one who killed me, of course, but he was just an ill-considered rebound. My first partner imprisoned me, destroyed my lab...and kidnapped my child. Mind-wiped him and put him to work as a soldier. Not at all the life I had intended for him. If I sound proud of him anyway, it is in recognition of how he rose above the deprivation that was forced upon him."

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click...

...click-click-click-click-click-click-click...

In audible binary: |Identify him if he comes here. I can freeze him long enough to capture, and he can't escape so long as we keep him alive.|

Tarantulas looks up at her sharply. His pedipalps twitch for a moment, as he considers. The civilized thing, he suspects, would be tell her no. That he won't stoop to vengeance. That if anyone has the right to punish Prowl, it is Springer himself, as the one most directly affected by his crimes...

But on the other hand...

|It would be so good to see him pay for his crimes,| he responds in the same. |Should I find him here, you will certainly be informed.|

After a moment he adds, simply, |Thank you.|

He won't call her a hero again, not knowing how she dislikes it -- but he is thinking it just the same.

|I will not sit by and watch a father who abused his child reap the rewards of this place.| Vika looks away, and switches back to Emeran. "...Children aren't property. They're not clones. They aren't shells into which to move your fuckin' consciousness."

"Then you understand what Prowl never did. Ostaros -- that was the name I gave my child, before he was mind-wiped -- was meant to be my gift to him. Not in the sense of ownership, I never intended for either of us to keep him. But as a symbol of my regard, and for the inspiration he stirred in me. I truly thought together, the two of us could revolutionize our species..."

A heavy, painful groan. "I never appreciated how short-sighted he was, until it was too late."

"They're not a revolution either, shapeshifter." Vika vaguely tosses her hand up, the most half-hearted gesture of frustration she could possibly muster. "But I suppose that's a better reason than I usually hear. I don't. Really understand the urge to reproduce. Not in a 'all life should go extinct' sort of way, just. The way I don't understand what it's like to enjoy swimming."

"Do you feel no wish to remembered, after your final death takes you?" Tarantulas's voice is sympathetic; he doesn't take Vika's frustration with him to heart. These are highly esoteric concepts, after all; things he often struggles to articulate to himself, let alone another. "To leave some sign of yourself behind, a mark that says you existed. You mattered. I think the urge to reproduce must be like that...but it is only an academic theory. My own species doesn't do it, you see. Newbuilds are shaped by the planet itself, or else downloaded into mass-produced shells in government factories. It leaves us with a rather different social psychology compared to organics, I must say."

"Children just appearing practically ex nihilo from a social standpoint. Fucking fascinating. Vaguely horrifying. No wonder you had an interest in creating your own, mad scientists aren't generally known for their enjoyment of convention."

She's definitely decided that Tarantulas will be getting 'mad' as the prefix to all of his career choices. Take up tailoring, spider. Do it. Do it. She dares you.

"...But, no. I don't. Really care about a legacy. I didn't get a say in my life, I won't get a say in my death, and I really don't believe I'll get any say in how I'm remembered. Those crawling macrobiomes will vilify me in death to comfort their own interests as if I ever had a choice in anything, and the only people who think of me as a person will be left behind here. So. On the balance. I don't care."

It's deeply amusing, to Tarantulas, how Vika insists on bringing up his mental issues and anti-social tendencies over and over. It barely even sounds pejorative anymore, more like a simple descriptor. He can picture her pointing him out of a crowd to some newcomer, saying something like, 'Oh, there goes Tarantulas, the big purple mad scientist.'

"That's understandable, given how you were raised." He acknowledges her suffering with a sympathetic nod. "But for the children of loving parents, it seems..."

He pauses for a moment, to consider his words. "When organics reproduce," he begins again, "they give of their own genetic material to create a new being. The code of their physical existence, stripped down and recombined to create an entity that is like them without being a copy. Even species that reproduce via natural cloning will experience genetic drift over time, although it is usually to their species' detriment. But when a sapient organic raises a child -- and I should mention that sapient organics usually do, I suspect the selection for close parent-child bonds is a necessity for developing true social intelligence -- they are contributing something else as well. The parent's memes are passed down; the components of their beliefs, their values, their morality and history. A genetic tie is not necessary for this to happen; anyone who interacts with a child for any length of time will do it. But in the parent-child bond I see something special. Something that Cybertron has always lacked."

Damn Tarantulas, you're gonna be really disappointed when you learn that she's memeing on you from her limited exposure to Ace's comic books. Try not to think too hard about how the boy robot gets a sword and was encouraged to love comic books.

"Mm. And I take from this that you feel you've got memes worth passing down. Where you lose me is how you ever fathomed I'd think that about myself." She jerks a thumb at Eligos's note. "My track record on the idea front is pretty bad."

"Well. Even organics usually agree that not everyone is meant to be a parent. Unless they belong to a breeding cult -- those pop up with distressing frequency and they never lead their planet anywhere good. But yes, I do think that -- or at least I thought so back then."

He tries to appear disaffected as he notes, "Who knows when I'll get another chance?"

"...When we finish the job and get brought back to life? Duh?"

"It's more complicated than that," Tarantulas responds, frustrated. "I tried to replicate the methods I used to create Ostaros for over three million years, but I could never --" He growls quietly, fangs twitching. "The pieces were all there, but I could never bring them back together in a way that worked. I even tried to convince Prowl to take me back --" He laughs bitterly. "I thought maybe, if I could be inspired by him again -- I know it was stupid. I can't even say I didn't have it coming when he and Springer blew up my lab, again. The only defense I can offer is that at the time I thought Ostaros was long dead."

"Perhaps it's time to research new methods," he muses. "They can create artificial souls from magic here, did you know that?"

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click...

"...Dude. Will it help you make better decisions if I threaten your life? Do you need someone on hand who's willing to threaten your life? Do you not hear what you just fucking said to me? About getting back with your ex? That bit? Did you hear it?"

An Assortment of Happenstance (Random Events Wave 2)

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cw: richard dawkins

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