Second Floor Common Room; Saturday Evening [09/09].

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer had made the usual bowl of popcorn that accompanied her when she wanted to be lazy and just chill out in the common room with some television, but it was barely being touched. She had found a marathon of How It's Made and became completely and utterly entranced, forgetting even to blink most of the time as she marveled at the repetitive, seamless motions of the machines on the screen, working together, so efficiently!, to make a variety of useless and dumb things. She didn't care about the things so much as just the sheer majesty of the process itself, the mechanics and the smooth transitions from one machine to another, over and over and over.

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It almost moved her to tears. And it certainly did bring a little blush on her face, too, feeling a bit rebellious for sitting there at a school dormitory, watching something so...so....explicit.

A-hem, indeed.


[[ this is what work does to my brain. it's open, of course! ]]

Comments

[thatsweirdright]

"Hey, Summer," Jason greeted as he sauntered in and found a spot within reach of that popcorn. "Whatcha watchin'?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Hm?"

Summer turned her head toward the sound f a other person, but her eyes didn't follow, not at first. They didn't want to leave this beautiful, majestic mechanical ballet. But thry did, blinking slowly to focus on something warm and organic.

"Oh, Jason!" The blush increased, but she tried to laugh it away a little. "Hi. Have you, like, seen this? It's, like, totally mindblowing. They're making, like, coffee thermoses."

[thatsweirdright]

Something about Summer's behavior over the past couple weeks had kinda seemed... weird, to Jason, but he couldn't quite pinpoint it, and until he could, he just wasn't going to mention it. But it was kind of niggling at the back of his mind just now. "Oh yeah," he said in recognition. "How Shit's Made, or whatever?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Yeah." Summer's smile blossomed, her bright eyes shining. "Totally. It's so incredible. Theyre, like, so totally perfect, just look at them. Sometimes, I, like, wonder if...I mean, like, think about ot. A robot will never feel hate or sadness or betrayal. If it makes a mistake, you just, like, totally reprogram it, and it's all better. But then, a robot will also never feel...happiness. or love. It will never feel pride in this perfect, wonderful thing it's created. It's entire purpose is to produce something it can never truly understand or apppreciate."

She sniffled, tears dancing in the corner of her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but one slipped out,down her cheek, and she didn't even bother brushing it away. "It's totally, like, so beautiful, and, like, totally thr saddest thing ever."

[thatsweirdright]

"Uh," Jason said, suddenly feeling as if he'd stepped into some sort of minefield. "I don't, uh. Know if that's true about all robots?" he offered, thinking of Alpha 5. That little guy definitely had more emotional responses than one could shake a stick at.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Really?" Hope suddenly surged in Summer's heart, which was just weird. Why did she care so much about these machines? What did it matter to her? It made no sense, but she couldn't help the way she was feeling. She brushed the wetness from her cheek and regarded the machine on TV and its endless stream of mugs to be completed.

"Do you really think so? How do you know it's not, like, just totally a really complex programming? It may, like, totally seem like it's happy or excited or sad, but what if it's just all ones and, like, zeroes? It's all just, like, code or whatever. Just mere shadows, mere imoration of humanity..."

[thatsweirdright]

This was... more philosophical than Jason was accustomed to getting, honestly. But he was just gonna roll with it. "Well," he said slowly, "when you get right down to it, we're," because, of course, he had no idea that this Summer was not the 'real' Summer, "taught about how to respond to things too, right? Couldn't that be considered kinda like programming?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Like," said Summer, because any good philosophical diatribe started out with 'like,' right? "I guess it could, like, totally be a kiND of programming, but human emotion totally gets in the way. Humans are, like, always going against programming because of emotional override. How many times are we, like, told to be patient, but we so totally get angry, anyway? That we shouldn't do drugs, but we ignore that because they're, like, fun. Thay sex is bad, but we're all just animals in the end. Humans try to program other humans, but it rarely works, because it's human to defy programming. We're nonsensical, imperfect creatures. And that's, like, totally beautiful and sad, too, but in, like, a totally different way."

But she didn't sound too sire. "Isn't it?"

[thatsweirdright]

That was like... so totally way more 'likes' than Jason was accustomed to hearing from Summer, yeah.

"I guess that's kinda true," Jason said. "I mean, I did a whole bunch of dumb shit that ended up screwing up my life, but... it also pissed my dad off, like, a lot." And wow, he was starting to become super-conscious of peppering his own speech with 'likes' now. "But at the same time, even though I was doing dumb, unpredictable stuff, I knew what reaction I would get. Same way I know that pressing a button on my computer will turn it on, you know?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer processed this point, narrowing her eyes at the TV as she thought. They'd moved on to something else, baseball mitts, treating her to the wavering pattern of a blade deftly cutting the shapes out of the leather. "Like, simple machines," she said, tilting her head and pointing to the television. "And complex machines," she pointed at herself this time, blinking as if something pinged within her with some sort of deep, unfathomable truth, then blinked again and it went away. "Hm."

She opened her mouth to say something, closed it, considered the baseball mitts, and opened her mouth again. "I think it's, like, more than that, though, y'know? I don't know why. I just feel, like, that humans are just really special, we're more than just machines. It's, like, something deep inside me just intrinsically knows."

Which she couldn't help laughing at. "That's, like, some totally good programming I've got, that's, like, totally for sure!"

[thatsweirdright]

Jason laughed too, although there was a hint of unease in his laughter. The sense that something was off with Summer had only seemed to grow now that he'd had an actual conversation with her. He still couldn't quite pinpoint why though. "Totally," he agreed.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"I'm sorry," Summer chuckled, shaking her head a little, "was that, like, a totally weird conversation? I mean, like, robots, programming, whaaaaaat?"

[thatsweirdright]

"I mean," Jason shrugged. "I've had weirder." Like the time he'd learnt that the magical crystal that sustained all life on Earth was buried underneath the Krispy Kreme in his hometown. "But I'm not an expert on that kinda stuff or anything. That's really more my friend Billy's thing."

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer's head nodded and she considered it a little more before she drew herself away from the tantalizing vision of robots perfectly stitching up the leather to better focus on Jason, shifting her body towards him a bit. "So, like, tell me something, Jason," she said. "Do you, like, ever totally miss where you're from? Or do you like it here better?"

[thatsweirdright]

Jason laughed. "I was half-seriously planning to get the hell out of my hometown just a few months before I came to Fandom," he admitted. "So no, I don't really miss Angel Grove. It's boring as hell. I do kinda miss some of the people there, though." The groupchat on his phone just wasn't the same.