Maid to Love You - A Clockwork Romance

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  • Informational
    • Maid to Love You
    A Clockwork Romance

    Miss Jane Eleanor Polestar
    The player character. An 18 (nearly 19!) year old woman, next in line to the County of Polaris, wandering the galaxy in search of love aboard MSY Mercury. You vote on her actions, but her perspective here is limited.

    Mark Butler
    Miss Polestar's robotic butler, and head of the servant staff. He is tasked primarily with management, but also acts as valet to any male visitors.

    Marie Lady's Maid
    The viewpoint character. A newly activated robotic servant who acts as Miss Polestar's lady's maid. Though witty and sharp, some quirk of her construction has intensified both her physical and emotional sensitivity. Is inexplicably French.

    Pierre Chef
    Miss Polestar's robotic cook, responsible for the kitchen and larder. He is noted to have loose association with many lovers in many ports.

    Tom Mechanic
    Miss Polestar's robotic handyman, who also helps to maintain the other machines.

    Tessa Mechanic
    Miss Polestar's robotic handywoman, who is hired later in the story. She has greatly modified her own body, and has a complicated history.

    Hans Messenger
    Miss Polestar's robotic messenger, who manages the mail, prints newspapers, delivers messages, and manages the property of guests. Is inexplicably German.

    Amber Housemaid
    Miss Polestar's robotic housemaid, who keeps MSY Mercury clean and tidy. Noted to have two large, orange headlamp eyes. Is inexplicably American.

    Polly Kitchen Maid
    Miss Polestar's robotic kitchen maid, who assists Pierre in making food. Also the head of the serving staff's union, a position she does not take very seriously.

    Content Warning
    This quest is an erotic romance. There will be sexual content, and it will not be separated from the main text or spoiler tagged. You have been warned.​
     
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  • Informational
    • open_sketch said:
    Oh, total side note.

    I wrote a roleplaying game set in this universe?
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    Article:
    Look at what you wrote. You're doomed, simple as that. You can't ever let anyone know about this. DO NOT SHARE YOUR WEAKNESS.
    Source: Industrious Revolution

    I love this.

    What kind of comments do you want, and if any, where should I leave them? Minor inconsistencies, English nits, what bits of it I like the most, none of the above? Docs, here, email of some kind, PMs? :)
     
    Vebyast said:
    Article:
    Look at what you wrote. You're doomed, simple as that. You can't ever let anyone know about this. DO NOT SHARE YOUR WEAKNESS.
    Source: Industrious Revolution

    I love this.

    What kind of comments do you want, and if any, where should I leave them? Minor inconsistencies, English nits, what bits of it I like the most, none of the above? Docs, here, email of some kind, PMs? :)
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    Corrections and nitpicks in the comments, and uh.... maybe I should make a thread?

    EDIT: I made a thread.
     
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    [X] Racks and racks of empty space suits, revealing the strange body plans of the alien creators of this station. A whole room full of them. Empty. Dark. Going on seemingly forever.
     
    XXX - Evolution
  • Threadmarks
    • With the squeal of metal on metal, a clang resounded within the door, and the hiss of escaping air, the door began to open. Stale air washed over us, and I'll admit I immediately turned off my chemical receptors. Jane, of course, was not so lucky.

    "Oh… that's foul. At least it's not poisonous." she said, glancing a moment to her wrist. "Or at least, not any poisons the sensor recognizes."

    "That's good, at least." I said, stepping cautiously forward and raising my lantern. For a brief moment, I felt a pang of fear as it crossed over what looked for a moment like dozens of alien forms… before I realized the light was reflecting off of bubbled glass visors.

    "Ooh! Space suits!" Jane said, stepping forward eagerly. Dust flew with her every footfall as she entered the room, raising the lantern high to illuminate the room. It was a sort of vast cavern of suits, at least five shelves high, stacked with spacesuits hanging from hooks and receding into the darkness, limbs hanging down everywhere around us.

    "I think we have a good idea of their body plan now, don't we Marie? Look!" she said, indicating to one of the suits. I took a moment to study it: it had a head, a body, and limbs, but that was where the resemblance to the human form ended. It's six limbs emerged from the sides of the torso, the joints folding unsettlingly downward, though it appeared they could pivot in nearly any direction.

    Each pair ended in a differently shaped manipulator. The lowermost appendages were heavier, bifurcated feet, while the uppermost were more recognizably hands, with two sets of three opposing fingers. The middle limbs were something of a hybrid, four fingers which still looked as though they could manipulate things with some precision but were also more than robust enough for movement.

    "Looks like they couldn't quite make up their mind if they were bipedal or quadrapedal." I remarked. I didn't exactly know how I knew it, but I felt intuitively that the word evolution mapped to this process. It's still a little strange, knowing things without knowing how you know them.

    "That is curious, isn't it? My biology classes indicated that specialization usually wins out over a long enough time period, as species settle into one role or another." she said. She must have seen the confusion on my face, because she continued. "Evolution, Marie."

    "I know the word, I just don't quite know to what it refers." I admitted, "Species changing over time?"

    "Well, yes. As organic creatures act, the stress placed upon the cells generate gemmules, a sort of packet of relevant portions of their Punnett strings. These bias the traits of the offspring of the next generation toward whatever actions their parents found themselves specializing in, over millions of years of course." Miss Polestar explained. "Lamarckian inheritance!"

    "... what do you suppose humans are specializing toward, in the modern age?" I asked.

    "Intelligence, I suspect, as we always have. Turns out being smart is a very good evolutionary strategy. That said, we have more than a bit of control over the process now: genetic editing is rather faster than evolution." she said breezily. "Hand me the holocorder, will you?"

    I obliged, and we took a full scan of the suit, and a few of its neighbours, though they looked very much similar to one another, likely mass produced for convenience. They were not large, I suspect the creature would have stood just about four feet tall in life, without the spacesuit hanging limp and empty.

    "Why do you suppose they needed so many suits?" I asked, staring up at the racks stretching above our heads. The draft from the open door was causing the suits to sway gently in position. At least, I think it was the draft.

    "Perhaps there were a lot of them in this section of the station?"

    "... if they needed so many, and these are working spaces… they must have been doing the labour themselves. They wouldn't need so many suits if they had machines to do the work for them." I pointed out. "The poor dears."

    "They do seem to have tabulators of some kind, at least. I think we ought to stop here, though. Let's take one of the suits back with us, that will surely entice some eager University." Jane said, popping up on tiptoes to try and study the mechanism. "How do you suppose this releases?"

    I put my greater height to good use studying the mechanism, though it was still just a little too high, and I spotted a small pin holding together a clasp. Gripping it in my fingers, I pulled, and with a bit of resistance it slid out, the clamp opened, and the suit dropped to the floor. At the same time, a blue light winked on at the clamp, flickering a moment.

    "... oh, there's electricity!" Jane said, looking up at the light. "I wouldn't have thought anything on the station would work at all, that's fascinating. It can't be a Volta generator, it would have long run down, what source of-"

    At that moment, there was another sound that rung through the room, echoing off the sides of the vast chamber. A clunk, following by a sort of hiss.

    Glancing through the racks of empty suits, we saw a small, rectangular light at the other end of the chamber, slowly growing. A door, opening, to a lit hallway on the other side.

    An invitation.

    ---

    Well that's concerning.​
    ​
    And interesting!​
    ​
    [ ] Come, Marie, let's investigate!​
    [ ] You know… we are not prepared for this. Let's take the suit and go: the professional adventurers can take a closer look later.​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!

    Certainly, the fact that the door opens only once you've grabbed a pressure suit, can't imply that there's a need for such a suit.
     
    It's almost certainly a bad idea, but I just feel it's more in character for Jane to decide to investigate.

    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!
     
    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!

    Seems to be an automatic response. Maybe we triggered a sensor, maybe something else.

    Anyway, Adventure Awaits!
     
    open_sketch said:
    "Well, yes. As organic creatures act, the stress placed upon the cells generate gemmules, a sort of packet of relevant portions of their Punnett strings. These bias the traits of the offspring of the next generation toward whatever actions their parents found themselves specializing in, over millions of years of course." Miss Polestar explained. "Lamarckian inheritance!"
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    Horrifying.



    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!
     
    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!

    "Oooooh, shiny!" Jane has far too much Kiki the Ferret in her to resist this.
     
    open_sketch said:
    "Well, yes. As organic creatures act, the stress placed upon the cells generate gemmules, a sort of packet of relevant portions of their Punnett strings. These bias the traits of the offspring of the next generation toward whatever actions their parents found themselves specializing in, over millions of years of course." Miss Polestar explained. "Lamarckian inheritance!"
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    I'm torn between wanting to complement the worldbuilding and wanting to strangle whoever came up with this.

    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!
     
    Hakazin said:
    I'm torn between wanting to complement the worldbuilding and wanting to strangle whoever came up with this.

    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!
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    you'll hate to learn that this person was Charles Darwin.

    Took him a while to land on natural selection. before that, he spent a lot of time trying to work out how the theory of evolution by adaption worked mechanically!
     
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    open_sketch said:
    Lamarckian inheritance!
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    Ooh, Lamarckian evolution is real in this universe... unless Polestar is wrong? I suppose it's possible that their biological sciences progressed on a radically different route than IRL, so they figured out gene-editing before they discovered survival of the fittest. But they've been to so many planets that independently evolved life that I would think their researchers would have figured out the underlying rules by now... unless they've been overwhelmed by all the data?

    If Lamarckian evolution does work in-universe, it must be very slowly or else you would think we'd see greater physical differences among humans... ooh, unless humans evolved much more recently in-universe than IRL? Or maybe I'm just over-thinking things again and this can all be handwaived away.

    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!

    Now that there appears to be an active power drain on the local batters/generators/whatever, whatever just booted up may be about to shut down forever. This may be the only chance humanity every gets to investigate this matter.
     
    open_sketch said:
    "Well, yes. As organic creatures act, the stress placed upon the cells generate gemmules, a sort of packet of relevant portions of their Punnett strings. These bias the traits of the offspring of the next generation toward whatever actions their parents found themselves specializing in, over millions of years of course." Miss Polestar explained. "Lamarckian inheritance!"
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    yaassssssssss

    god i love it when settings have lamarckian inheritance

    it's just so *silly* but it makes *so much sense*
    ancusohm said:
    Now that there appears to be an active power drain on the local batters/generators/whatever, whatever just booted up may be about to shut down forever. This may be the only chance humanity every gets to investigate this matter.
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    That's a reasonable argument.

    [X] Come, Marie, let's investigate!
    ancusohm said:
    Ooh, Lamarckian evolution is real in this universe... unless Polestar is wrong? I suppose it's possible that their biological sciences progressed on a radically different route than IRL, so they figured out gene-editing before they discovered survival of the fittest. But they've been to so many planets that independently evolved life that I would think their researchers would have figured out the underlying rules by now... unless they've been overwhelmed by all the data?

    If Lamarckian evolution does work in-universe, it must be very slowly or else you would think we'd see greater physical differences among humans... ooh, unless humans evolved much more recently in-universe than IRL? Or maybe I'm just over-thinking things again and this can all be handwaived away.
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    Presumably they've done experiments on single-cell organisms and small mammals to demonstrate the process in practice - between machines with three-hundred-year lifespans and their general skill with biology and medicine and I'm sure someone's actually tried it.
    open_sketch said:
    "Oh… that's foul. At least it's not poisonous." she said, glancing a moment to her wrist. "Or at least, not any poisons the sensor recognizes."
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    Okay, they have tricorders! That's one good step! Now the next: What would have happened if the air had been poisonous? Is Miss Polestar carrying a gas mask? Or have humans been engineered to, like, hibernate to survive a half-hour of hypoxia so Marie would have just clonked her on the head and carried her home safely?
    open_sketch said:
    "I think we have a good idea of their body plan now, don't we Marie? Look!" she said, indicating to one of the suits. I took a moment to study it: it had a head, a body, and limbs, but that was where the resemblance to the human form ended. It's six limbs emerged from the sides of the torso, the joints folding unsettlingly downward, though it appeared they could pivot in nearly any direction.

    Each pair ended in a differently shaped manipulator. The lowermost appendages were heavier, bifurcated feet, while the uppermost were more recognizably hands, with two sets of three opposing fingers. The middle limbs were something of a hybrid, four fingers which still looked as though they could manipulate things with some precision but were also more than robust enough for movement.
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    So you're telling me that there's still a chance that Miss Polestar will end up having to wear an alien spacesuit :p
    open_sketch said:
    Let's take one of the suits back with us, that will surely entice some eager University."
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    Oh boy, 100%. Spacesuits have life support, which means you get every single detail of their biology. :D
     
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    ancusohm said:
    If Lamarckian evolution does work in-universe, it must be very slowly or else you would think we'd see greater physical differences among humans... ooh, unless humans evolved much more recently in-universe than IRL? Or maybe I'm just over-thinking things again and this can all be handwaived away.
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    Humans have a tendency to kill those who look different, so there's a very strong adaptive pressure not to look weird.
     
    The process is not fast, and yeah, natural selection is still a thing in this universe, it just has help. What's replaced here is the mechanism of mutation.

    Also Miss Polestar is wrong, humans aren't getting smarter. They are being guided by evolutionary adaptation to be cuter.
     
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