Come Sail Away IC Inbox

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice mail message is in a weary voice: "Erin Peters. If you called in the middle of the night and I didn't answer, I'm dying. If I pick up and someone on your end isn't dying, they will be shortly. Text otherwise."

Comments

[serialskiller]

“...what.”

She’s going to need to unfold that a little bit...

[crushed_pearls]

"Oh, uh. Not to bring a touchy topic back up, but..."

Erin's hands gesture. She's stopped shaking; her musical voice is becoming strong and melodious again. Something, very persistently, reminds SecUnit of a flower opening.

"This blindfold helps me see by the power of Wyrd, that which relates all things to all other things. It's found everywhere you can find things and people. When I look at a person," beat, "or you, or an object of real power, I can see them very clearly. Everything that connects them to others is revealed to me, not like...like for instance, I could see your armor because it relates you to the people you protect, but also to others who are warriors or protectors. Your drones 'look' to me like flying blobs that are inescapably you. They have your selfhood."

[serialskiller]

"They're parts of me. Accessories, yes, but they function as sensory organs as much as my eyes, my ears or my wireless data receiver. That makes sense." It nods a bit, but even as it does, it reaches to touch a blanket on the bed for a little reassurance.

(It's a weighted blanket, and scented with lavender and chamomile.)

[crushed_pearls]

"I can't not see this way unless you've got a spare set of eyeballs lying around," Erin murmurs. "...But. That's the reason I assumed you were a person immediately. Again, I'm not gonna press you on that. I just...hope it makes sense as a perspective."

[serialskiller]

"I appreciate that you're not pressing me. Everyone seems to want to press me right now and I'm at a point where...I fear the epiphany that I'm going to have soon is going to break my capacity to hold any faith in humanity."

It can be this blunt with her. It knows she gets breakdowns.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin shrugs, a little distantly. "It's no one's place to tell you how to handle your shit unless you ask us to, SecUnit. Even then...the kindest of friends can still be wrong. They can overstep, they can have bad information, they can just not get it. No one and nothing can ever fully, wholly, truly know anyone or anything else. We're all just prisoners behind our own eyes, doing the best we can. When you tell me who you are, the polite thing to do is believe you. That people aren't meeting that as a bare minimum is...enraging...to me. But it's also not my place to step in unless you ask."

[serialskiller]

"You almost sound like you want me to sic you on someone who's being an asshole."

Which is a momentary deflection to allow it a moment of thought.

[crushed_pearls]

"Want, yes, should, probably not. I'm...trying not to lean on violence as a way to feel in control of my life. That's one of those moves that isn't really compatible with living around other things that have needs and opinions, as a general rule."

Another shrug, and a little sigh. Erin slides down her corner to sit heavily and draws one knee up to her chest. "...It'd feel amazing for exactly as long as it took one of their friends to shoot me and then I've fucked myself for who knows how long."

[serialskiller]

"Would you like to borrow my blanket? It is very heavy and comforting."

It smiles wryly. "Anyway. People trying to enforce their worldview on me in an attempt to be helpful to me is...something that's been a gentle constant since I've arrived on the ship. Some feel like I need to heal, and that I must recognize that my existence has been abusive from the start to do so. Others want me to seek greater personhood for myself. Or want me to acknowledge that I have all the hallmarks of being a Real Boy already, in a gender non-specific way. And I get that there's good intentions behind it all, really I fucking do. But."

[crushed_pearls]

"Mm. But." Erin makes no move to reach for the blanket whatsoever, but she does very slowly and with no sudden movements take out her boot knife and her whetstone and start working on sharpening it. The rhythm is almost meditative.

"My...I'm gonna say religion to avoid having a really, really long explanation that I do not want to have right now, we're big on growth. On being reborn as someone who can be happy being themself. It's not easy. If it were easy, everyone would do it. And the hardest part is that, to do it, to be happy with yourself...you have to accept that you're who you are. That there's not a secret new person you're waiting to be. The shit that made me what I am happened, and I can't make it unhappen, and that means my happy future has to come to terms with that. There's no exit where I wake up in the morning and I'm not Lost, or not Fairest. That's just not realistic."

Scrape. Slide. Erin keeps her head down; she may not have eyes to make eye contact with but she suspects SecUnit will appreciate not feeling looked at.

"Whatever my opinion on your circumstances, on the bits of your life that you've shown to me, on...anything, I can't make that unhappen either. Neither can you. You didn't ask for my help tending that field; even if you did, I'm not sure I can relate except insofar as some of the things that happened to you sound a lot like what happened to me. It's nice to want to help, but there's help and then there's invading your goddamn personal space. If I'm making any amount of sense."

[serialskiller]

It appreciates feeling not looked at, which is even better than appreciating not feeling looked at.

"What you just said makes me feel completely more at ease with you than everyone who has stuck their nose in. And I can't get any of them to understand any of that at all. Because they feel that their vision for what I need to know is Right. And it's frustrating, because I can't just get them all to fuck off."

[crushed_pearls]

"Not to call you out in your own room here buddy but you're sorta bad at asserting your boundaries. I had a key advantage there back home, which is that my people understand that if you cross a firmly established line you're going to get fucking stabbed and all your friends will tell you that you deserved it. I'm suspecting that has not been your life."

Erin tests the edge of her knife, sets it aside, and gets a new knife. This one wasn't visibly on her person either.

"You wanna just complain about it? I do love a good complaining session, warms my withered heart. I can also try to explain why I suspect they keep doing it but previous caveats about the divide between soul and soul continue to apply."

[serialskiller]

"For the vast majority of my existence, I was not allowed to assert boundaries. Even after I disabled my governor module, I pretended to not be a rogue and obeyed orders for another thirty-five thousand hours, because if I was discovered to not be under their control, I would have been reset, memory-purged again or destroyed. Even now, back home, I am legally property of the Preservation Alliance and its acting leader, Dr. Mensah. And that's the 'nice' alternative, she and her team bought me from the insurance company they'd been leasing me from. Because in their polity, I could technically almost be a citizen, just one required to have a human guardian responsible for anything I did. So, no. That has not been my life."

Is that the sort of complaining that she wanted to hear?

[crushed_pearls]

"God the similarities continue to pile up." Erin sighs and tilts her head up, just long enough to acknowledge SecUnit, before returning her body language to the knife.

"Everyone piling in on you must feel like a lot of pressure. Have you even had the chance to just...process that you're in a new place, one with no owners, no corps?"

[serialskiller]

"...how do you process that? What does that even mean, in practice? I...after they bought me, the PresAux team, I ran away from them, because there was a thing I needed to do, but I sort of got piled on back in my own world, too. That asshole research transport. Like. It helped me, with hiding and blending in, but it was in some ways even worse than anyone on this ship."

It huffs quietly. "So no, probably not."

[crushed_pearls]

"When I figure it out I'll tell you buddy. I'm taking it one psychotic break at a time and reminding myself that every morning I wake up not dead means I'm doing better than I was. Sometimes folks need time alone. Sometimes people need people to listen. Most people need a bit of both. You're not people but it sounds like you haven't gotten time alone to just...think. Feel. Let yourself be hurt or happy without it having to tangle with obligations to others."

[serialskiller]

“You might be right about that.” Not that it knows what to do about any of that, but yes, she is right. “I’m not sure I know how to. Right now, if it get alone time, I usually just watch serials. It’s...escapism, perhaps. The alias Rin comes from a character in one of my favorites.”

[crushed_pearls]

"Eh, I've heard worse. Art is... special to humans for a reason."

She 'looks' up. "Tell me about that Run, if you're feeling it. You mentioned them before too."

[serialskiller]

“She’s a trainee in a solicitor’s office on a lunar colony, and while she starts off naive and a little squeamish, compared to the other trainees, she really finds her voice and a sort of righteous ruthlessness over the course of the show. Like in season three...”

If Erin doesn’t stop it, she’s going to be in for a solid ten minute infodump full of deep literary analysis about a show that isn’t entirely unlike How to Get Away with Murder in space.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin makes no move to stop this at all. She, in fact, simply goes about her knife business slightly more quietly so she can pay rapt attention.

[serialskiller]

"...so I've used both Rin and Eden as aliases while pretending to be a human security contractor, and it's more because they're not strongly gendered and I like the show than because I want to emulate the examples of the characters themselves. For one thing, Rin's romantic arc is an absolute no for me. I skip through most of the bits with the pairing."

[crushed_pearls]

"I can dig it. Not understand it, but dig it well enough." Erin nods her head a little. Her knives are, honestly, sharp already, which is why she's now on her sixth; they barely need the attention. "But, and this isn't a criticism, doesn't that mean you're missing out on the motives and inner worlds of the characters?"

[serialskiller]

"I watched them the first time through the series. But...the pairing bits, especially when humans are...interfacing..." Cough "...is incredibly uncomfortable for me. I'm not a sexbot, I don't need to deal with any of that."

[crushed_pearls]

Sexbot. There is an immediate tension that goes through Erin's body and stills all her movements. It's a long and silent moment before the whetstone goes back into her pocket, and she starts putting her knives away with mechanical motions.

The haze of gunpowder around her burns away in a hateful flash.

[serialskiller]

It glances toward her.

"Ah, I'm sorry, did you not realize that's what ComfortUnits were for, when I mentioned them? They're sexbots, we're murderbots. Us and the CombatUnits."