- Location
- ?
I like Sophia 108 because that makes the conversation where she introduces herself twice much funnier to me.
Our Ruin, Our Truth - Prototype Human Weapon Quest
- Thread starter Gargulec
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Article: "Hey," she says, remembering the string of letters and numbers, "what is your name?"
It is probably absurd to keep the in case it doesn't work, and we die here, I'd like to know to herself. But it is difficult to think of the Existential Weapon as anything but a child to be spared the horrors of the world. Under any other circumstances, the King's Counsel would laugh at her own hypocrisy. Another terminal window dies, cutting her code in half. Hurriedly, Olwen tries to restart it. Numbers and seconds tick down; far away, the last evacuation craft are probably getting ready to leave the station, or leaving it already.
"Sophia-108," the prototype girl responds, the code cold in words.
"Sophia. That's just the series number" Olwen replies. The command line opens up; she starts inputting the first code. "But what did you put in your profile, out there?"
OVERRIDE ACCEPTED the screen prints out. TRY AGAIN.
It's funny. There really isn't much fear left in Olwen; if she lives, she lives. If she dies, at least the leg will stop hurting so bad. She tries to put the code in again.
Finally, the prototype girl responds.
"Sophia-108".
...
...
...
"I like it." (?)
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- Pronouns
- Reader
[X] Most of the specialist Project Sophia personnel did not evacuate with Vice-Admiral Yana.
The rest of the test subjects are dead, and I'd rather not count on it not being because subjects need special medical care that will be hard to provide without these personel.
[X] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
She has suffered enough, and damn anyone who feels otherwise.
[X] Sophia-108
The rest of the test subjects are dead, and I'd rather not count on it not being because subjects need special medical care that will be hard to provide without these personel.
[X] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
She has suffered enough, and damn anyone who feels otherwise.
[X] Sophia-108
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Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
[x] Sophia-108
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
Looks like the Possesive Nemesis thing i said might happen.
Yuri!
[X] Sophia-108
I am shit with anything related to creativity, like naming, art, and writing something at least a bit original.
The username i have been using for at least 10 years is literally the first letter of my name, and four numbers i chose because they made a square in the keyboard, at first it literally was my name and those numbers.
Like a year ago someone was lazy enough to write F4 instead of F4152 and i realized that F4 is what you press with Alt on the Keyboard to turn off the computer or close a window, which gave me the idea to sometimes use AltF4152 instead of F4152.
The username i have been using for at least 10 years is literally the first letter of my name, and four numbers i chose because they made a square in the keyboard, at first it literally was my name and those numbers.
Like a year ago someone was lazy enough to write F4 instead of F4152 and i realized that F4 is what you press with Alt on the Keyboard to turn off the computer or close a window, which gave me the idea to sometimes use AltF4152 instead of F4152.
That username reminds me of that.
Eh, after spending a lot of time watching couples, i realized that almost none do the hand holding thing, and the only ones who do it are old married couples and only for like 5 seconds, after that they do something else.
Couples almost always go in a half hug, one grabbing the other by the wrist, or they talk without grabbing each other
- Location
- ?
I concur: this is easily in the top three reasons to not initiate handholding with a murderous antimatter being.
Yeah, but luckily this being isn't made of antimatter.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think I found reasons two and one.
[X] Sophia-108
[X] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[X] Amanda Olwen's team has not suffered serious injury.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Sophia-108
[X] Vice-Admiral Yana's forces did not manage to recover any valuable data about Project Sophia.
[X] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[X] Vice-Admiral Yana's forces did not manage to recover any valuable data about Project Sophia.
[X] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
Acatalepsy
Firewall Proxy
- Location
- The Diamond Age
[X] Zoe
[X] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
[X] Most of the specialist Project Sophia personnel did not evacuate with Vice-Admiral Yana.
I like the scenario this sets up; I'd rather Yana isn't openly a traitor yet and there's a space for political manuvering. At the same time, the specialists - the people who know what the Existential Weapon is and what it does - haven't been captured and we may have a chance to talk to them or recruit then ourselves.
[X] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
[X] Most of the specialist Project Sophia personnel did not evacuate with Vice-Admiral Yana.
I like the scenario this sets up; I'd rather Yana isn't openly a traitor yet and there's a space for political manuvering. At the same time, the specialists - the people who know what the Existential Weapon is and what it does - haven't been captured and we may have a chance to talk to them or recruit then ourselves.
- Location
- Internet
[x] Sophie
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
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- Location
- England
[x] Sophia-108
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] The Existential Weapon has not suffered serious physical or mental injury.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
From the second to last update:
From the last update:
Erroneous use of apostrophes with possessives.
"hers"?
"cannonade"?
From the last update:
Missing letters or punctuation. Also, possible "relive"?
I like literal-mindedness, but an artificial human/android/whatever with zero socialization experience has been done to death. I'd prefer a twist on that formula.
Edit: aaand too late. Oh well.
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05. Aftermath I
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
[X] Sophia-108
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] Vice-Admiral Yana's forces did not manage to recover any valuable data about Project Sophia.
[x] Enough of the station's security recordings survived to provide indisputable evidence against Vice-Admiral Yana.
[x] Vice-Admiral Yana's forces did not manage to recover any valuable data about Project Sophia.
And afterwards, a kind of peace.
Slumped in the chair, the lights of the control terminal slowly blinking out to her side, Olwen watches the Existential Weapon slough off Sophia-108. First, the deep black and glossy white fade into dull gray; the suit itself goes slack, its fabric peeling off in long stripes, gold filament severing and coiling back into the pattern in the prototype girl's skin. With each quiet pop, she gives out an almost inaudible cry. Flakes of dried blood shed from the suit, falling off and scattering over the grated floor.
"Does it hurt?" the King's Counsel asks, through the haze of her own pain and building exhaustion.
"Usually," Sophia responds, the way one would answer a test survey.
The shell of a mask is the last to go; she pulls at it and it snaps off her head, the solid white dissolving into inert matter flowing between her fingers like silk. Pulled from Sophia's body, Olwen observes, the Existential Weapon is no more substantial than a handful of crumpled cellophane that one could easily fit into a shoebox. It is not the weapon that holds her attention, though. What little remains of it is on something else now.
The prototype girl looked worn down when retrieved from that cruel cell; but now that the suit is off her body, what remains of her is a wraith, skin blue-pale, eyes sunken deep into skull, shadows between them no longer a metaphor, but crescent bruises impressed into her face. Sweat, cold and sticky, covers her head to toe, making for a sickly sheen in the station's dim lights. Olwen looks for blood, for some kind of a wound, but finds none: just a body dragged far past the point of exhaustion. Only Sophia's eyes still burn bright and vivid, their strange glow almost fevered. She sways on her feet, hand finding support on one of the screens, but only barely enough to hold her up.
"Are you hurt?" the King's Counsel mutters, her voice all that she can offer.
"I…" Sophia begins, and stumbles on the word that comes next. There is something pleading in her look.
But Olwen can no more rise from her seat than the prototype girl can support her own weight. Her bad leg still burns with a low fire threatening to explode into another white flash at a single wrong move; the flurry of fear and adrenaline drains from her system, and where it leaves comes a numbing crash that will soon swallow her whether she wants it or not. She checks her data-link, but the little pane of glass is well and truly dead, its display frozen on ragged peaks of visual distortion. She hopes Red and Lynx have also made it through. She hopes that they too are now hunched somewhere among the debris of a battle, too tired for words.
Carefully, Sophia guides herself to the floor alongside the long edge of the display screen, until she too is sitting. Her head slumps forward once she does; Olwen can't tell if the stifled sobs that follow are grief, pain, or just the prototype girl's body trying to cope with the rapid crash. Probably some mix of all three, or maybe something else entirely. The King's Counsel doesn't know, and her own thoughts are getting too sluggish to determine; only the idle wish she was able to embrace the crying prototype girl remains, floating on top of an exhausted, dulled consciousness.
When relief finally comes, it is wearing the drab field grey of the Grand Army of the Realm.
A search party medic rushes to her, another to Sophia. Someone asks if she can walk, she babbles in response. Gloved hands move her to a stretcher. It doesn't even hurt too much to be moved; she tries to say something about the prototype girl, or the Existential Weapon, but words turn to damp mush in her mouth. She allows herself to be handled from there on, watching the station's roof dissolve into a blur of light above. The air she breathes is stale, laced with the stench of death, fresh and old. For a time, nothing makes it past the fog of her mind; perhaps she sleeps, and certainly her awareness cuts at times, but it is a battle to keep track of it, and herself with it. The battle results in a loss, though the result can not be properly called rest.
Waking up is a slow and laborious process of puzzling together the world from little pieces of lucidity. Like words, in an oddly familiar voice.
"I don't care," it says, "just give her the shot, I need her right now. It's an order."
There is a hand on her shoulder – rolling her sleeve? – followed by the prick of a needle. And then, moments later, consciousness returns in full force, breaking through the haze with searing clarity, and absolutely no sense of recovery. The stimulant burns its way up to Olwen's brain, bringing all the little damage to her body into sharp relief. Dulled pains wake and throb; all the physical strain registering as red cracks across the surface of her. She blinks a few times, trying to get the flittering shadows out of her vision; she is still lying down, still on a stretcher, still in her clothes. Guessing by how hard the surface is below her back, someone stacked her on some boxes, or something like that. So, still in the field.
"Counsel?" a voice calls, impatient. A sheet of paper is pushed into her hands, alongside a pen. "Sign this."
"I'm not signing anything," she croaks, pushing back, a reaction driven more than a reflex ingrained bone deep, rather than any kind of a lucid thought.
With her mind still clawing its way back up to a kind of clarity, she turns towards the voice. One of the station's hangars comes into view, emptied of its usual complement of defense craft, and instead filled with the ungainly bulk of the Army's transport ships. Grey uniforms shuffle to and fro in an unceasing rush, orders barked over the whine of engines kept running. Grey is also the colour of the uniform of the man standing in front of her stretcher, grey lined with gold. Olwen recognizes him. It's hard not to remember a face like that.
Hairless, wrinkled, with large ears bent to the sides and tiny, watery-blue eyes hiding under thick brows, right above a nose squashed flat, general Radko Dvorkovic is only made more hideous by the caricature of a grin stapled to his scar-split lips. Among his soldiers, the King's Counsel recalls, he is known as "the Mole", with the attendant joke that the only thing uglier than his face is his character.
"Just sign it," he sighs, shaking his head.
"What is it?" Olwen mumbles. "Where is the prototype? Where is my team?"
"This is a sworn statement," annoyance is already seeping into his voice, "confirming that you have been personally attacked by vice-admiral Yana and all that shit. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda."
With a grunt of effort, and aided by the drug driving her system into a destructive override, manages to drag herself up on her elbows, pushing her back against the wall and body into a kind of a sitting position, feet barely above the floor.
"I am not signing anything before I've had a chance to read it," she repeats. "Where are my people?"
The general slides a hand over his face, foot tapping as if even a second of delay of his plans was too much to bear. Still, of all the people who would push her documents to sign, he is one she would trust the most, as loathsome as he is to interact with.
"That spacer woman is currently having her data downloaded, so you better not disturb it," he finally says, clearly frustrated by having to do so. "The prototype is currently sitting with a medic somewhere, refusing to cooperate and asking for you. It…"
"She."
"...has the Existential Weapon clutched in hand, so," even if he noticed her interruption, it wasn't nearly enough to make him react to it, "considering it's your responsibility, and the mess it made ouf this station, I really think you should want to sign this stupid paper and get on your feet quick, Counsel."
"What about the rest?" she asks, thinking about Lynx.
"Somewhere, probably. I don't know," Dvorkovic waves his hand angrily, the other digging out a tin cigarette holder from his uniform's pockets. A scratched emblem of the Royal Engineering Corps is printed across its lid. "Can you walk, or do I need to get you a wheelchair?"
Olwen leans in; she pulls herself closer off the edge of the stretcher, looking for her cane. Thankfully, whoever loaded her up on the stretch back in the command center had the foresight to pack it with her. Tentatively, she grabs it, and tries to see if she can lift herself up again; the results are mildly promising, and speak well of the efficacy of military drug policy. It doesn't even hurt too much, yet.
"I'll walk," she offers, breathing heavily. It is probably, most definitely a stubborn mistake, but she will regret it later.
To his credit, Dvorkovic doesn't rush her too much as she slowly ambles behind him through the crowded hangar deck. The detritus of the fight for the station can be seen in every direction. Regulation-black body-bags stacked one on top of another, the few survivors crouched and guarded over with live weaponry, clearly shocked to be treated as if prisoners of war by their own side. Olwen spots the unlucky aide between them, a fresh bandage cinching her chest. A few of them, more seriously wounded, are being ferried away into the ships themselves for medical evacuation.
And then, surrounded by a circle of techs, a braided cable connecting her head implants to a bunch of mobile machinery, there is Red. She looks like hell.
"You will excuse me for a moment, general," Olwen says, and before the man can protest, she stumbles forward towards her companion.
Even seated down, she gives an appearance of size, her body rendered even bulkier by the heavy-duty cybernetics lining the entire left side of her body, running from under the crown of curled, bronze hair, along the side of her torso, all the way to a massive, mechanical leg, firmly planted on the floor. Scorch marks and battle-damage line the entire length of it, bent metal and exposed wires periodically shooting blue sparks into the air. One of her drones sits in her lap; she strokes with deliberate slowness of someone trying not to rage. Other three are nowhere to be seen. Neither is Lynx.
"Figured you'd be okay," Red greets, waving the tech off. Ash streaks her face; her cybernetic eye is blinking erratically. An ugly feeling coils in her voice, a stinger about to strike.
An empty breath leaves Olwen's mouth; she already knows what is about to be said. Still, she looks pleadingly at her companion, as if hoping that maybe that could change the words that come out next.
"Lynx is dead," Red announced, not even bothering to try to hide the accusation.
The words fall like an emergency bulkhead dropping down, sealing away all the chance of a correct, fitting response. There is a brief moment of awful silence, as there always is. Olwen looks away, her mouth going through several empty motions before finally arriving at an equally empty, dry "how?" As if that mattered at all.
"Fulfilling your order," anger begins to unspool in Red's voice; raising from a slight tremor to a full firestorm. "What else do you need to know?"
Her hand drags on her drone, fingers curling like claws, ready to strip the shell from the machine. Images of death come rushing before Olwen's eyes. Lynx's shrewd face turned to pulp, burned, crushed, growing swollen and blue in the coldness of space. Up until this moment, she still believed that he would be found, somewhere. It's not fair, she wants to say. She is not on her feet because she wants it; Red must be able to see the layer of sweat clinging to Olwen's face like a death-mask. Why can't she have a little bit of pity, and hold the anger for some quieter later?
"I was actually wondering what you were going to say," Red, however, seems uninterested in anything short of actual cruelty. The grief in her voice is sharpened to a point; she thrusts with it. "Maybe give a word for his heroism, Amanda? We'd all be gone without him, no? Or tell me it was necessary, and he died for a good cause, what about that? There is a big list you could crib from," her lips are pursed; her living eye hostile. "I like your silence better."
"This is very charming," Dvorkovic interrupts, grabbing stunned Olwen by the shoulder, "and a good demonstration of why you should never get chummy with your underlings. Counsel, you have a prototype to check up on, and you," he points at the techs, "have a lot of data to secure."
The King's Counsel doesn't resist as the man pulls her away. In a way, it is probably the closest thing to a mercy that Dvorkovic is capable of. Red's anger, even more than her words, lodge themselves somewhere in Olwen's throat. If it could ever be a good idea, she would run back to the cybered-up woman and demand an apology, or apologize herself, explain that this was necessary, and…
"You know," a puff of smoke from the general, the man already on his second or third cigarette, interrupts Olwen's descent into self-pity. "Whatever it was that you did here," he says, sending a puff of smoke towards the ceiling, "messed up the station's systems bad. It's all scrambled. Rotten data. My techs say they've never seen anything like that. So good job, you've made decomissioning this place an actual fucking nightmare."
He stops to give her time to catch up, smiling bitterly. Struggling, she matches him, again doing the old trick of shoving the sense of guilt, and the apology, into the back of her mind. She needs to find Sophia again.
"But I can't be too mad," he takes a drag, puffing the smoke up towards the high ceiling of the hangar bay. "Several people I kind of hate will now be having their lives thoroughly ruined. Did you know that yesterday morning, some star-eyed idiot in the 2nd DSN staged an emergency, so that Yana would have a reason to jump out of the hospital bed and demand to be allowed to resume her post?"
He shakes his head, and ash off his cigarette, straight to the floor.
"Who would disallow her that, too? I really feel bad about that moron, he's going to get thrown under the bus, the Admiralty swearing on their mothers' graves they had no idea," his smile shifts into a violent grin, teeth showing under ruined lips. "Fat good it'll do for them. Actually, I should be thanking you, Counsel."
The cigarette's butt slips from between his fingers; he squashes it under his boot. They start moving again, slower this time. Even the stimulant can't fully shield Olwen from the consequences of her stubbornness; each step is a wince.
"For?" she finally follows the question he's so obviously dangled.
"The station's surveillance data is corrupted beyond use," he explains. "But. But, but but. That spacer underling of yours?"
"Red."
"Her drones recorded a lot of quality footage I hope to get on His Majesty's desk by tomorrow, alongside your statement for additional effect."
Olwen nods, an ugly and unhappy kind of hope budding in her chest. In a perfect world, this recording wouldn't be restricted to the royalty and those in the know, but released far and wide, so that every citizen of the kingdom could see what their hero was really like. But years of experience have managed to teach her to temper her expectations as to what is actually possible.
"I've been looking forward to Yana getting nailed straight through the cunt for a long time now," Dvorkovic stops to make a rude gesture with his hand, and another cigarette he has just finished fishing out, "now I may even live to see the stake come out the other end, if you know what I mean."
"Court martial?"
If that is what happens, if Yana is ruined for what she did here, for what took from her and Red, then maybe it will have been worth something after all. The King's Counsel tries not to hold on too much to this idea; still, it's hard to shake.
"Maybe," he shrugs, the smile disappearing from his face. "It all depends on how protective the Admiralty Board is going to feel about their pet. As lovely as the sight would be, I wouldn't be holding my breath for her getting walked out of the airlock just yet."
Years ago, Dvorkovic was present at the frontlines during the initial stages of the Main Belt Offensive. Cut off from the Republican forces, he ended up in command over the belt of asteroid fortresses weathering the brunt of the fight. Dug into the cold rock, stubborn to a fault, he earned himself the name of "the Mole", managing to stall out the enemy advances and withstand their attacks until Yana's flanking maneuver relieved the Belt and saved the war. Ever since the famous recording of her helping him out of the bunker, the general's uniform caked in asteroid dust, face sunken and hollow, he has never spoken well of her. According to most, he did not appreciate having his glory stolen. All the time Olwen has known him, the explanation has always struck her as pretty weak, and the hate as entirely genuine.
"Actually, on the subject of corpses," the grin returns to his face, even worse than before. "Do you want to hear a joke?"
Instead of responding, Olwen just follows after him, hoping that he will eventually lead her to wherever they've left Sophia.
"Did you know that Colonel Raad actually stayed behind?" Dvorkovic continues after a moment, passing by a pair of guards and into the dimly lit corridors outside of the hangar bay. "We found him in one of the hangars. Turns out, he is an honourable man," he snorts, the word an insult in his mouth. "Refused to abandon his post and took full responsibility!"
Emptied of its personnel, the lights above dimmed and flickering, there is an eerie air to the station. They pass by a search-party, returning from its guts with yet more body-bags dragging behind.
"So I ask him if he is willing to incriminate Yana. He says that an officer would rather die than betray their superior. So I give him my gun," he stops and turns around, to give Olwen a good look of joy on his face as he delivers the punchline, "and ask him to stop wasting everyone's time. He is writing a letter to his son now. Good times."
Olwen declines to laugh with him, though in all honesty she can't actually fault him. The only shame is that this probably means Raad will never face proper justice. Still, there will be a kind of justice in that splatter of blood across the wall of the station commander's office. She stops for a moment, taken aback by the thought. She is not sure if she likes it.
"Anyway, that's the reason why I need your signature under that statement, and quick. The royal entertainment package really needs something to pop, and he actually respects you."
They find Sophia soon afterwards, the pair of guards posted before the door to some side-room saluting Dvorkovic as they approach. The aforementioned medic is there too, a middle-aged woman with prematurely greying hair tied into a neat ponytail.
"Sir," she reports, glancing nervously at Olwen, and at her shaking leg. "The prototype seems to be fine. She didn't allow herself to be examined more closely, but she looked dehydrated, so I gave her some water, and a blanket. She is asleep now."
"Look," the general says, not without frustration, "it's alright. You didn't have to worry. Can you…"
"I want to see her," the King's Counsel cuts in before he can finish his demand. "She wanted to see me."
Dvorkovic sighs with an exaggerated wheeze.
"So it's not a custody, it's an adoption. Of a superweapon."
Olwen turns to protest, started by how flustered the words make her. But the general does not stop her again.
"Just make it quick," he waves his hand derisively. "I need to get you off the station before you get me killed too."
The room had served as some kind of guard-station, and apparently hasn't seen use in quite some time now; the lockers inside are empty, and the station itself disconnected. There is a small nook in the wall used to house some manner of bulky equipment before it got removed, leaving behind a niche of just the right size for Sophia, wrapped in the golden foil of a shock blanket, to curl there, head resting on her arm, the thin membrane of the Existential Weapon still firmly in her grip.
With the stimulant slowly wearing off, and pain making itself increasingly apparent once more, Olwen slumps down to the empty chair by the unplugged station, trying to be as quiet as possible. Sophia does not stir, not at the silent sounds, nor at the King's Counsel heavy look. Her sleep is deep but, as becomes readily apparent, not very good.
Beads of sweat build on her forehead as her lips move to form unheard words; Olwen watches her small body close in on itself, the foil of the blanket crumpling with loud, metallic cracks. It doesn't take long to recognize a nightmare in progress.
Again, she reacts without thinking it through. A sharp lean forward and she lands a hand on the girl's shoulder; Sophia's eyes opening suddenly, the twin red lamps staring straight at Olwen, first in confusion, then in recognition, and finally in pleading. Or at least that is what the King's Counsel imagines their light meant; it's what makes sense to her. The prototype girl's hand sweeps from under the blanket, grabs Olwen at the wrist.
"It's…" she almost follows up, but at the last moment, her voice breaks.
"It's okay," Olwen says, quietly cursing the awful grin stapled to her face. "I'm here."
Sophia's grip loosens slightly; letting the King's Counsel slip free from it.
"It's always there," the protype girl whispers; she too sounds terribly tired. The black stripes under her eyes have barely faded.
"It?"
Another long silence stretches after the word. Olwen pushes the chair closer, fighting to keep herself from falling down. Not now, not in front of her.
"It's always like that," Sophia explains finally. She speaks with effort, each syllable coming off her tongue almost reluctantly, as if she had to consider it thoroughly first. "After I wear the suit," she touches the mess in her hand, its edges lapping at her fingers like some sea-creature taken out of the water. "I see it. It is so much bigger than me. Than you. Than anyone."
It is the most Olwen has heard her speak; Sophia herself seems almost surprised at the words that she managed to let out of her chest.
"I don't know the words for it," she finishes.
Once more, the day is an unbearable weight about to crush them. All the death, all the loss, all the exhaustion and fear hang in the air, too much to breathe, too much to handle. So Olwen does the thing she had herself once wished to receive, the one thing she owes Sophia.
"Come," she asks, straightening up and helping the prototype girl up. "We need to leave this place."
She takes the bent foil from her shoulders, and puts her jacket over them instead. What does it matter that it is splayed with blood? They both already are; they both look like hell. What matters is the way Sophia holds at the flap of it, pulling it slightly over chest, almost disappearing into the oversized leather.
"Those words? You'll find them eventually", Olwen assures, doing her best to, for once, believe that trite, trivial phrase. "I promise you."
For the third time on this oh-so-long day, her new ward nods her head slightly, maybe even in agreement. And this suffices to sanctify the vow, and in its name, in the depth of her soul, Olwen once again implores all those nameless gods her ancestors have carried on their millennial trek through the stars to look kindly upon the prototype girl, and all the futures stretching ahead of her.
"Let's go," she utters, speaking another promise between the words, this one without sound and meant for herself, and all her hopes that someday, her guilt will too be absolved. "Let's never think of this place again."
This, they both intend to keep.
Article: And so ends the prologue. Freed from Project Sophia, Sophia-108 is released into the custody of the Truth and Transparency Commission.
Practically, this means that she will be living with Amanda Olwen for the time being, back under the rich blue sky of the Home Moon. And before the course of making peace throws her life into disarray again, there will be a time of rest for her, and of building herself up, and of failures that are the essence of it.
In the coming weeks, what is the…
…one thing that Sophia-108 manages to do that makes her self more her own?
[ ] Get herself a nice jacket, a bit like Olwen's, but without her help.
[ ] Spend a pleasant day in the museums and palaces of the Princely Quarter.
[ ] Do something to help Red with daily work in the Commission.
…one thing she accomplishes to build her life up?
[ ] Make herself familiar at a nice cafe.
[ ] Fight off boredom with the help of a local library.
[ ] Find solace in art in the temples around the Prince Karvasa's Square.
…one thing that reminds her why she doesn't belong?
[ ] End up the object of a political argument at a polite dinner.
[ ] Show too much familiarity with violence to a potential friend.
[ ] Misunderstand an event on the streets, and be used politically.
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- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Get herself a nice jacket, a bit like Olwen's, but without her help.
[X] Make herself familiar at a nice cafe.
[X] Show too much familiarity with violence to a potential friend.
[X] Make herself familiar at a nice cafe.
[X] Show too much familiarity with violence to a potential friend.
[X] Get herself a nice jacket, a bit like Olwen's, but without her help.
It is Salvos fault that i am voting for this option.
[X] Fight off boredom with the help of a local library.
I like reading, i don't like coffee because it gives me headaches, and a piece of art becomes boring to me after about two minutes.
[X] Show too much familiarity with violence to a potential friend.
I don't want to get involved in poilitics, that path leads to hating the stupidity of some people.
It is Salvos fault that i am voting for this option.
[X] Fight off boredom with the help of a local library.
I like reading, i don't like coffee because it gives me headaches, and a piece of art becomes boring to me after about two minutes.
[X] Show too much familiarity with violence to a potential friend.
I don't want to get involved in poilitics, that path leads to hating the stupidity of some people.
