Chapter Text
November 25th:
I did some more building.
I think that
November 26th
Sorry for not writing yesterday (Who am I apologizing to?).
I'm seriously considering tearing this whole damn cabin down, I've been at this for so long and I feel like I'm not making any progress, why even settle down anywhere? I have nothing and nobody to return to, maybe I should go back to being a nomad.
Doesn't help that I very intelligently decided to build my home next to the place of one of my greatest failures.
I was hoping that there would be some survivors that might return but at this point it might just be wishful thinking, I don't know if any machines survived and even if they did I doubt they'd want to return here.
Maybe I should grow up and just go back to the resistance camp.
So what if I'm pathetically attracted to someone I can never have? It can't possibly hurt that much right?
Maybe I'll try that tomorrow, yeah I should do that.
November 27th:
They came to visit me, all of them.
Luna, Nova, and jackass too.
If it was just Luna then it'd be fine but having the two other people with whom I have complicated relationships here was not my idea of a fun time.
Whatever, I couldn't ignore them so I finally came out and said hi.
They all seemed to be wearing work clothes, or well Luna was, the other two were just wearing standard resistant gear, but I could get a pretty good idea as to why they were here.
“Well sis it took you long enough, I was starting to think you were too good for building”
Nova approached me and asked if he could check my progress on the cabin, and he looked to be satisfied with my work, which unfortunately made me really happy, not that I would tell him.
He said that if we gave it our all we could get this finished today, so the division of labor was decided:
He and Jackass were going to work on making the floorboards, whilst me and Luna should go and find out a few more tree trunks that would help with the ceiling.
I had no complaints, but Luna then made a suggestion.
“I know me and Freesia are the strongest amongst the 4 of us, but I'd also like you two to spend some time together, so even if carrying heavy objects like that would be easier for me, I think it would be fun to split up like this! Come to think of it I never really spend time with jackass”
“I guess we could, but doing it like this would take considerably longer” Nova argued “I projected around 12 hours for completion if we use my optimized plan, and changing it like this could mean we'd need a second day, and that's without considering the time it would take us to go back and forth from the camp”
“Why not just stay here?” I suggested, I could see Luna was surprised to hear me say that “Unless you got something better to do it's not like I own the forest, you can just stay here for the 2 days you say it would take and then leave once we're done”
“I see no problem with that,” Luna agreed “we can work for the day and then take a break before continuing tomorrow, right?”
“Suit yourselves, but don't go bailing on me if it gets too tough” I added
“Is that a challenge?” Luna said competitively
“Only if you want it to be” I snarked back at her.
This whole “sister” thing has its appeal.
Anyway, so Nova and I went to look for the last few trees we'd need for the roof of my house.
“First we need to scout the area and get a general idea of the size of trunks we have access to, we want them to be mostly the same girth to have a symmetrical ceiling, but depending on the height we could get away with chopping down less trees” he explained we walked deep into the forest.
I could see the castle ruins in the distance, the place where we met. Well where this particular 9S met me I suppose. I wonder if he was also thinking about it. I hoped he did.
“So our first assignment for the day is to take a romantic walk through the forest?” I asked before realizing what I was saying. Lucky for me he took it as a joke, because he chuckled and said.
“Well we don't want to end up cutting down trees that we can't find pairs for right? We need to make sure we have a complete set before we do unnecessary damage to the forest”
“that makes sense” I replied “I suppose this gives me time to interrogate you on some things I'm curious about”
“That's usually my job, you know?” He said snarkily.
That is the moment where I realized that he might actually be fun to be around, but that thought also terrified me, it didn't stop me from enjoying the conversation though.
“Well they say that variety is the spice of life” I said trying to be charming.
“Oh yeah? Who's they” he asked sarcastically
“You think you're cute?” I asked matching his attitude
“Well I try, especially with- ooh, first tree!” He interrupted himself as he found a tree that met his standards, pulled out a knife and marked an X on the trunk, “if we get 2 or 3 more of a similar girth and height we are golden. Sorry what were you saying”
Instead of finding his distraction annoying I found it charming, but I know exactly why. Luna felt this way too.
“Um… I didn't Say anything” I replied resisting my urge to smile
“Oh I see” he said as he continued to look around. After a bit he spoke again
“It's funny how certain phrases seem to have withstood the millenia, like the one you just said right now, it's interesting to think that we as androids use idioms that don't really apply to us isn't it? Like, spice is not something that we commonly used since we don't need to eat but we understand what it means thanks to our programming” he explained
“I have thought about that actually” this was an interesting subject for me “Looking back, there's been a bunch of situations where me or somebody else has mentioned things that differentiate us from humans, like not needing to eat or sleep. But isn't it weird that having never even met a human we still call attention to it?”
“I've thought about that too!” He turned back to look at me, his face lighting up, which yeah… it made me happy to see that.
“Like, why do we feel the need to talk to each other about how we don't need to eat, sleep, or discuss our own physiology as something strange. Even when it is standard for us. When I see animals going through their normal routines I see that as something completely natural. Even back in the bunker it was tradition to greet each other with good morning or good night despite the lack of day and night cycle”
He was so passionate about this. And it was infectious
“but then I made the connection, and there might be a simple explanation as to these odd behaviors, you know how we're modeled after humans right?”
“Yeah, from what I've been told we look mostly indistinguishable from humans” I was trying my best to show interest
“Well it turns out that Androids were initially developed as part of a larger project that aimed to save humanity from a global pandemic that eventually wiped them out. I'm skipping a lot of details here and please stop me if it becomes too much, but part of the project depended on certain android models blending in as humans themselves and overseeing the development of the project” he explained
I was a bit confused so I asked “But what does that have to do with the other thing?”
“I'm getting there” he assured me as he found another trunk and marked the X on it “When an Android first comes online they have a defined base personality, formed by fake memories implanted into their systems. For example I remember growing up with a strict but loving mother who was always pressuring me to do good at school and would bake cookies for me when I got good grades”
The irony of this situation completely eluded him, but I was actually having a great time talking to him, and I wanted to add my own two cents (another idiom) so I added.
“Yeah, I have memories of growing up in a farm with my grandmother, and how she was always there to console me whenever the other kids would be mean to me”
¡Exactly!” 9s looked satisfied, which in turn made me really happy. It's not wrong to have a good time with a friend like this, right? “But these memories are based on salvaged information from real humans, which means that the core data from which our personalities are built are memories that make us think of ourselves as humans to a certain point. Coincidentally if an Android had to interact with a human, being able to explain our differences might be helpful for them, while at the same time, if we are to communicate with humans, having an innate knowledge of how they work helps us relate to them better and facilitate communication!”
Me and most other androids were always curious about humans, how they acted, the things they liked, their traditions and relationships, but thinking about it this way makes me wonder if we really are that different.
“I'm curious about the fake memories you mentioned” I asked him
“oh by the way that tree over there looks like it might be a match” I interrupted myself, he then went and took a good look at it and marked it with an X.
“Nice catch Freesia, it's not quite tall enough but we just need one more now. So you were saying?” he said
“Oh yeah, I'm curious as to what how those fake memories you mentioned” I explained
“What do you mean?”
How could I ask my questions without revealing to him what I actually meant? I wanted to see if there was a way to deal with my 2B memories but I was not about to ask him that.
“I know I was never a little girl” I began to explain “I know I have no parents or family and that those memories I was built with are not something that happened to me, but at the same time those were the base for my personality, I guess my question is, how much do those memories really matter in the long run?”
9S looked confused for a minute, I worried that maybe I didn't do a good job explaining my question, until he replied.
“Hmmm, I'm not sure if I have an answer for that, but I will try. We tend to refer to our memories as simple data, but our memory cores aren't just filled with a bunch of video files, because they encompass more than just the audiovisual information, they also contain the emotions and sensations we felt at the moment, but we are programmed to prioritize stronger inputs, for example you might not remember yesterday's temperature, but if 3 months ago there was a particularly cold day you're probably going to remember how that felt, right?”
“Yeah” I replied, I wasn't very sure where he was going with this.
“It's a way to make our systems more efficient, if we retained all the information that enters our sensors without any filtering it would slow down our thinking and make it harder to understand what information is more important, so when our minds don't focus on something as it happens we're more likely to forget it, which in turn means that when stimulus goes beyond a certain extreme, it is very likely to become a very detailed memory”
“Nova I'm not sure I understand what this has to do with-”
“it's gonna make sense in a second! So basically these fake memories are implanted on certain models with the intention of creating a personality that will be a good match for the model's designation, so in my case, my memories were chosen to give me a great sense of curiosity and a desire to be thorough with my studies, so the memories of getting positive reinforcement, like freshly baked cookies made me associate doing a good job with reward”
Was this really the easiest way to answer my question? Even I was started to forget what we were even talking about, which I still found to be oddly endearing on his end.
“But” he continued “Those base memories have to exist in a segmented part of our minds, as to not have us think of ourselves as something we're not, imagine the chaos that would happen if YorHa androids came online believing that they're actually other people suddenly trapped in android bodies”
“That doesn't sound convenient” I replied
“Oh no, so within our psyche we have engrained certain ”truths” that we accept and internalize from the beginning, things like “I am an Android, we serve the true humans, my model name is 9S, we must stay loyal to YorHa” which are in a higher level hierarchically than any other information we're built with, so basically anything that contradicts those primary truths will still be stored in our minds, but we rationalize it as fake”
“Then how come we managed to stray away from those directives?” I Inquired.
Talking about how our minds worked was maybe too complex of a topic “You don't go by 9S anymore, and you know that humans have been extinct for millenia now, doesn't that contradict those primary truths you mentioned?”
He let out a mischievous chuckle “Well you see this is where things get interesting. Creating an artificial intelligence like ours isn't something that can be done manually, like coding a program. It's closer to growing an organism like a plant, and to create our minds they have to feed them inputs and information for it to develop into a consciousness, which leads us back to your starting question. How important are our initial memories in the long run?”
He then stopped walking and turned around to look at me, he looked so excited about this, like it was his favorite thing to do, to discuss how the things around him work, scanner models really are something else.
“What makes those initial memories important is not the events that you may remember per se, rather how those memories informed your own actions, because as you accumulate your own experience, you become more and more of an individual with a completely unique personality, even if you were built the same as another identical model, having different combat and mission experiences will inevitably make you two very different from each other.
however the way that you react to whatever events may happen to you is entirely dictated by your past experiences, which in an android’s first deployment are going to be those fake memories. So basically those fake memories are the groundwork from which your entire personality is made, but as time goes on and you gain new real memories, that initial personality base morphs into something more personalized and unique.
So what makes you be you and not another A2 are the real things that have happened to you and only you. Does that answer your question?”
That was a very long explanation to what I thought was a simple question, so I was still processing everything he said, but the thing that stuck with me was when he said “...the real things that have happened to you, and only you…” does that mean that the 2B data was diluting my own personality?
“So what would happen if somehow the fake memories were to be deleted?” I asked, trying to not sound worried.
“I'm not sure that's possible,” he shrugged. “It'd be like trying to remove the foundations of a house while keeping the structure. I mean sure you could maybe delete some things here and there the same way our own minds forget about unimportant things, but with how much those memories inform who we end up becoming, they're just too ingrained in our beings to even try to remove them.
But the way memories work is that whenever you consciously recall something you create a memory of that memory, if you were to tell jackass about the conversation you had with me, when you told her about you explaining your grandmother memories, you would be recalling having recalled them, so to completely get rid of those fake memories you'd have to also remove any other ones that might be associated with them”
So if I want to get rid of 2B's memories will I have to forget about how they made me want to help 9S when he was in pain? Or the time I told her about them? It sucks that I couldn't just ask him about this but at least I got my answer.
‘How about when androids transfer memories to each other?” I asked as a last ditch effort, maybe he would know something more useful.
“oh that's easy, Android memories are marked with personalized IDs that prevent shared data from being confused with personal data”
The simplicity of that answer stunned me.
So are you telling me that all of these problems I've had lately were because of some typo? That somewhere inside my brain there was some ID check that confused an A with a B?
Maybe I should've asked him about this more directly, but then I had an idea about what I could do to try and fix this, but it would have to wait until the rest were asleep.
For the time being I simply said:
“So simple it's almost funny”
To which he replied with
“Couldn't agree more”
Finally we found the last tree that met his requirements, and after marking it with its respective X he asked me for one of the saws.
We ended up doing a little competition, we had 4 trees to cut down, whoever cut down 2 trees first would be the winner, the reward for said victory would be decided later, I told him he could get started with the one he had in front of him and I'd go back to the earlier ones, as a weaker scanner model giving him that advantage was only fair, he seemed like he wanted to argue but ended up agreeing to my terms.
And so our little race began and to nobody's surprise by the time he finished chopping down his first tree I was already done with both of mine, (to be fair I did use berserk mode to work faster but I couldn't help myself).
The look on his face when he saw me walk back to him as he just managed to finish his first tree was priceless, the tree started tilting towards him as he was distracted by me showing off, he likely could've gotten out of the way himself but my protectiveness kicked in and I swooped in to carry him to safety.
“For a scanner model you could have better spatial awareness” I said as I put him down.
He dusted himself off looking adorably embarrassed.
“When my senses fail me I usually have someone stronger to protect me. But you really got me by surprise! I know you're stronger than me but I thought that with proper technique I could put up some competition”
“perhaps if you work out you can grow up big and strong like me!” I teased.
Nova sighed “so did you think of what the winner's reward would be?”
“I'm actually curious about what you were thinking you'd want to get if you win” I admitted
“So is your reward me answering that question?”
“Nice try little one”
“Hehe, well… I didn't think of anything concrete but I did thought about the possibility of asking you to maybe let me take a look at your body”
That was completely unexpected, was he saying what I thought he was saying? Before jumping to conclusions I asked him to clarify what he meant by that. He then explained that he wanted to cross compare me with 2B, since she had received some damage to her limbs and resistance androids are too different from her to use any spare parts they had, he thought maybe by looking at a less damaged body part of a similar body he could find ways to help her.
And that was just so sweet of him, that his first thought even in a silly bet like this was to help the woman that he loves, Luna really is lucky to have him.
Because she has him
Her nines…
I don't care anymore, he's fun to be around, I enjoy spending time with him and I'm gonna have fun while I can. So what if my feelings are one sided? They're not real anyway, they're no different than the fake memories I was built with, if what he said is true then I just have to hold on until the feelings fade away.
Actually I do have an idea, I will fix this today. Luna and Nova are curled up under a tree and are falling asleep right now, no idea where jackass is but I doubt she'll barge into my house now.
I'm gonna give this a go and hopefully next time I write I won't even remember I was ever interested in him.