c.chun ➤ 001 ➤ text

[arkproject]

Hi, everyone. I'm Catherine!

I've been talking to a few people about our mission, and I've been thinking... Do we have any ideas for how to restructure the government that don't require full-scale fighting? Like, if we could gather evidence of the corruption and expose it to the public, through, say... cyber espionage? It would at least give us more information, even if we don't go that route.

Reconnaissance is a good first step!

I'm not an expert in this, but I figure one of you is. So I want your thoughts! Or if you have experience hacking and want to teach me. It sounds like it would be easier to sneak in and put a physical receiver into one of their central systems, but in the spirit of keeping our options open, I might as well learn.

Even if doing it the manual way is going to be very slow.

Comments

[theseuschip]

”I know him, if that’s what you mean”??

[ wow ok ]

[arkproject]

What? What was I supposed to say?

[ are you being weird again ]

[theseuschip]

What’s wrong with ”yes”? Too embarrassing?

[arkproject]

[ There's a long pause here before she replies. Is this a trick question? What is he getting at? But Simon doesn't really tease that way... They can be sharp with one another, but it's always honest, not deceitful. ]

That's how you'd introduce us? That we're friends?

[theseuschip]

[ he can’t even parse this, there are a hundred possible explanations. Surely Catherine’s not so secretive that she’d have a problem with him saying it out loud to third parties? ]

Yeah...?

What, should I not be?

[ The idea that whether or not they can be called friends could be a point of contention doesn’t even occur to him. ]

[arkproject]

[ First, she has a moment of pure blank incomprehension, and then a burst of frustration. She gets halfway through thinking a response-- ] I said I didn't want-- [ before she remembers they haven't had that conversation yet and axes it. They haven't had a lot of conversations yet, and he still thinks this? Or maybe because they haven't had a certain conversation yet, he can think this... But that leaves her feeling shitty, like she's lying to him.

Which she is. But she doesn't see what good it would do to rehash all those arguments. It wouldn't change anything.

Catherine ends up floundering, glad this is over text, because she knows Simon too well to think he's making this up, but. No way. It's not... No. ]

No. Never mind. It just seems like you have pretty low standards to me. [ This is a self-effacing comment masquerading as a jibe. ]

[theseuschip]

[ is this their most baffling conversation yet? Probably not, honestly, but it’s their newest baffling conversation, so it feels like it. ]

Seriously? Cath, we were the only two people on Earth, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here. I carried your brain across the ocean to launch a computer full of human simulations into space. What are your criteria for being friends? You said you’d miss me if I wasn’t here.

[ because he’s still not certain it isn’t about him. Telling Simon he’s the one with low standards is something part of him knows must have something to do with the shy, withdrawn person 3D Catherine is, who’d call herself “not good with people” in a public conversation. But it still sounds backwards and ridiculous. Simon doesn’t consider himself to have any problems in that department, but he’s not, like, a literal robot martyr who can make digital planets. He was kind of the only sapient thing around. ]

private

[arkproject]

[ Oh... um......... Um. Uh. She fumbles and belatedly transitions to their private inboxes to reply. Even her give-no-fucks public nature has its limit on tolerance. ]

I don't have friends. You know that. [ Wait, does he know that? Ugh, she can't keep this straight. Catherine tries to recover, but she's still totally wrong-footed. To her, there's nothing about the coincidence of meeting Simon, of him being the only sapient thing around, that enters into it or minimizes what he'd done for her. He probably didn't appreciate it, but she'd depended on him completely, wholly, and he'd come through in every way.

He got emotional, he blamed her, sure. Catherine gets incredibly frustrated with him sometimes. But he never gave up on her... Not until the end. And she'll never know what he'd have thought after he calmed down. ]

We're not the only two people anymore. You don't have to be friends with me.

private forever

[theseuschip]

[ Sounds kinda fake because Imogen sounded suspiciously friend-like, but this isn’t really the conversation to quibble over that. Mostly it’s just incredibly depressing, and her explanation is full of sad fallacies and misunderstandings, but Simon spends a minute formulating a response and trying to make it... challenging... but not make her feel like she’s being attacked. It’s difficult. ]

Maybe you didn’t used to, but why can’t you start now? We went through a lot together, you said it yourself.
And that’s not what I meant when I said we were the only two people on Earth. It just gave us a lot of one-on-one time.

[arkproject]

[ There's just another long awkward pause in which she feels painfully torn and almost confused. All of her instincts are that people don't do this with her... and that Simon wouldn't jerk her around... and the opposing ideas are difficult to reconcile, and subsequently swallow.

It scares her how much she wants to have someone who actually cares about her, and at the same time risk losing it when he finds everything out all over again. Catherine isn't the type to keep secrets, despite what she's been doing. She knows it'll come out eventually. But it would be outright mean to deny him here, and she isn't mean, either. ]

I guess. If you want to. I don't know how it works.

[theseuschip]

[ despite having much less at stake here than in PATHOS-II, they’ve once again ended up in the position of somebody having to pick up the slack of the other’s neurotic psychological drain-circling in a major way. Except usually it’s Catherine doing the latter. What amounts to a terrifying step into the unknown to her is, to Simon, a step backward in time to things that make sense.

Not that this is all making sense, but he’s not deterred by it. Not even when he says, ] Don’t get too excited.

You’ve been doing fine at it so far. What do you think friendship is?

[arkproject]

[ Ha, ha. Catherine is as sensitive as ever to being treated like she's slow. ]

I'm not a child, Simon, I know what friendship is. And I know that some people are nice to anyone. If you're fine with the way things have been, then... fine.

[theseuschip]

[ They’ve gotten this shirty with each other without incident before, so were this not such a fraught topic, Simon might not make this concession, but. ] Sorry. I was just wondering.

Did you really think I’d just drop you now that I have other people to talk to? I’ve been keeping the Omnitool in my desk for four months. If you weren’t here right now, I would’ve brought it with me and tried to get you plugged in somewhere.

[arkproject]

[ It's true that she's extraordinarily vulnerable on this particular issue... but it's also true Catherine has the ability to hold grudges of a forgetful dog. She'd only hold something offensive against Simon for, oh, five minutes. He's been too tolerant of her otherwise. ]

No! I didn't think you'd drop me. The thing with the Omnitool is touching, actually. If a little bizarre. But I know better than to assume that means we're friends. That's all.

[ Because if she assumes, and she's wrong, and she gets slapped in the face with it... Well. Catherine has no urge to ever experience that a second time. ]

[theseuschip]

[ Were they not both like this, they might not be friends right now. Usually you have the luxury of being able to throw a tantrum and then patch things up. But not every time. ]

More bizarre than carrying you across the ocean? I mean, if you had my cortex chip, what would you do with it?

I bet some of your co-workers would’ve called you their friend, you know.

[arkproject]

[ She actually thinks about this first bit for a long moment, deciding what she'd do with Simon's cortex chip if she had it, deactivated. Catherine decides he's always seemed to prefer life even as a WAU creature over silence and death, so... ]

Probably build you something as humanoid as possible and then plug you into it. I see your point.

Can we not talk about people who are dead at the bottom of the Atlantic in a different dimension? I'd rather just leave them where they are. [ That kind of grief is-- too hard to approach. Whatever Catherine's reluctance to claim any friends, thinking she did have some but they're dead now, forever, or on the ARK and out of reach, is going from zero to sixty on the emotional processing scale. ]

[theseuschip]

[ Simon builds an elaborate moat of denial to avoid emotional processing of this very kind but he posits it to Catherine because he’s an asshole. (Unintentionally.) ]

I just mean you can make friends here, too. You’ll be extra cool because nobody else can do the things you can, even the stuff that wasn’t really your specialty.

[arkproject]

Uh-huh. Somehow that little factoid hasn't worked for me in the past.

Don't strain yourself over it, Simon. I'm happy the way things are. Just being here, knowing we finished what we set out to do, and that [ this version of ] you aren't still stuck there without me is enough. That I get to contribute to something is a bonus.

[theseuschip]

I’m not straining anything. That’s just what I think.

But I’m happy you’re happy.
Until we have to leave Drakstaden, anyway. Now that you’re an android, I might need reinforcements when it’s time to go back and I have to pull you away from the computers kicking and screaming.

[arkproject]

Someone told me we don't usually go to places this advanced. I can't believe it! Do you use your money for anything? You should stock up on things with me in case we need to make modifications to one of us later. Or 2B or 9S, I guess. Who does maintenance on them?

Have you all just been going around clunking along with no upkeep?

[theseuschip]

They do it on themselves. I’ve seen it, it’s kind of freaky.

I don’t know what to stock up on. I could just give you money and you could get whatever you need, I guess. I’m pretty good at saving it now that I don’t eat or wear clothes.
Maybe you can build me something cool. A stun gun would be nice.

[arkproject]

So you're the only one wandering around with good intentions and hope that you won't fall apart. Great.

You want a weapon? [ Simon with a weapon ?? ] I don't know... I could try. I've never made something like that before. It's not like I'm planning on spending my money on anything else, either.

[ Catherine probably has four outfits and rotates between them. ]

[theseuschip]

What else am I supposed to do? I’m made of structure gel. I don’t even know how that works, and neither does anybody else.

[ She used to have one outfit. That’s almost like progress.

Totally unlike Human Simon, who was totally not one of those ‘how many clothes even are there... like 3, right’ dudes. ]

[arkproject]

You're not made of structure gel, you're a composite of multiple materials, structure gel being one of them. I'd still feel better if I had a chance to look you over. It's kind of exciting, actually... I'd never have been able to back in PATHOS.

[theseuschip]

Didn’t we do that already with the Compound Examiner?

[ you think the more weird unpredictable (pseudo-)medical scenarios you get into, the more used to them you get, but really they just get worse

guaranteed no ventricular shunts though, just a trusted borderline-mad-scientist friend ]