a low activity, 18+ canon divergent A.I. turo from pokémon violet.
loved by ghost / harbour, 29 y/o, italian, any pronouns.
sideblog of ghostories.
this blog will contain triggering content, such as discussion and graphic depiction of violence and death, isolation, and a heavy focus on unreality, time paradoxes and time altering events. reader discretion is adviced.
[ TEXT > ??? ] It does help, yeah!
[ TEXT > ??? ] Wait you've never heard of someone eating a pizza this fast? Maybe I already set the record without knowing, then!
Probably not, but one could dream.
[ TEXT > ??? ] Margherita pizza is pretty good! Simple, but good!
[ TEXT > ??? ] People hate me for this but one of my go-to's is Pinap on pizza
Lillie especially hated it for some reason...
[ TEXT > ??? ] Oh! My name's Hau, by the way!
[ TEXT > ??? ] Figured I'd let you know who you were talking to!
[ txt ] Oh, possibly. I'm sure there is somewhere this kind of record is kept track of. You can try and check!
He could look it up himself, but as much as he can multitask without a problem, replying to these messages while still working to maintain the Paradise and checking for possible malfunctions, he'd much rather have his entire mind focusing on the task instead of splitting it to a stranger who wrote to the wrong number.
Still, these discussions are pretty useful to him. He is annotating the way the other writes and how much time it takes between messages, all to be carefully studied and used if another situation like this were to happen, to look as human as artificial intelligency possible.
[ txt ] I never tried it, I will admit. Maybe one day.
Set memo: make research on this pinap on pizza.
[ txt ] Ah, yes, of course. Sorry, I forgot to ask you your name, actually.
[ txt ] Hello Hau.
He hesitates for a fraction of a second, there. Should he reply with a fake name, to avoid the other making connections? He pings quickly that number's position and makes a rapid research on the face associated with the number - it takes him barely a few instants to find out the caller is from Alola.
This should make the name relatively safe to use. Furthermore, other 17 people are called Turo in Paldea, he is pretty sure he can lie was the professor's name so famous.
fascinating. but beneficial in many ways to them. the location, the population of one; that singular individual before them having micro-actions that they certainly noticed. they knew a human might not, so they didn't react to it, simply continuing to watch. their gaze occasionally drifting between what he was working on, and turo himself. perhaps luckily for them--and even for turo--they didn't require that reassurance. they felt no fear; nor would they ever possess that capability. it simply wasn't necessary for their function, and they would never desire to really even try to experience it as real. fabricating it, and all other emotions, was good enough for them.
they could see right through him, literally, with the lenses of their eyes adjusting to stare through x-ray, then thermal, then back to x-ray, then finally settling on visible. he wasn't human; nor were they. they sort of assumed he knew what they were. it was funny, how similar the composition was; although they were made from a different web of crystals, a different system than his. black-purple crystals that were hidden beneath bundles of fabric in the form of their gloves and sweatshirt.
" that's fine. "
their own words seemed lacking in any previous emotion present. it happened when they were around those that were either not worth pretending for; or those that would not be fooled by the act. those similar, often, were the case of that. machines that lacked emotions that could ever be fooled by another machine faking it.
" how did the master ball break. i assume it was one of the pokemon outside. which. "
The drop of tone is noticed immediately by Turo, and noted mentally in the file opened in the back about the visitor. He opened a file for every single living creature he encounters, even when for just a fraction of a second, and the other certainly isn't any different. When they first arrived in Area Zero, the artificial intelligence could immediately notice the slight but very much present ping coming from them, a sign of an artificial life - paradox pokémons have them as well, when coming from the future. That alone could tell him that they were not a human, but with the nature of Area Zero being paradoxical itself after the forced reset, he always leaves the smallest doubt open, just as a precaution.
The other's voice dropping emotion and the automated way he talks with seem to dissipate even the last hint of doubt.
Better. He can stop pretending to be what he is not.
« Yes, it had been a pokémon. » he replies, just as apathetically, fingers moving carefully and efficiently to click a piece back into place. He tilts slightly his head, going for the next piece, zooming in while staying still with his back, instead of drawing physically closer to the masteball. It would have been useless. « Miraidon. Paradox pokémon. Approximately 200 years into the future. It was trapped inside the masterball, managed to escape by breaking it. Barely repairable. »
No.
No she isn't.
Not one bit.
It's a terrifying thought, knowing that there are multiple realities -- than in at least one of them, everything went to shit.
Her fingers clinged on her shorts, taking a deep breath.
"I think? Maybe?"
--and, biting the inner side of her mouth, she let herself just.
Fall down.
Slowly, sure, she didn't want to hurt herself-- but down she went, letting out the longest loudest sigh out there.
"I don't want to know about our defeat... it's scary.
It's terrifying, actually.
But-- I think my imagination is much scarier."
He waits for her answer. Not patiently, but as a mere coding mechanism. A machine needs an instruction, and despite him being able to create his own, for this one task he will need her word, or he simply won't "work".
Which is why her first answer leaves him silent for a moment, processing her words as if trying to find the command inside a wrong verbal code. Humans perhaps understand those words and the hidden meaning in them, but what is not in plain sight or understandable through a scan is completely foreign to him.
« Fresa, your answer does not make sense, I am sorry. » he can't but say after a few moments of silence, way too long for his own standards. If it sounds like the common replies a phone's artificial intelligence would give to not understanding, it's because it is: and it makes him feel strange to use such a programmed reply he hasn't used in so long. Every thought that perhaps his processors were starting to act a bit more "humanly", for as absurd it could have sounded, suddenly draw back.
He hasn't felt this much a machine in a very long time.
He cannot understand if his words make her rework her answer, or if she even heard him to begin with, because her next words are just as confusing as the first ones she used - but as he processes them again, he nods slowly, getting one of those hidden meaning.
That is a very confusing way of saying "yes".
He attempted to persuade her once, he won't do it again. Humans somehow keep returning on their actions, but his own line of action had been of trying only once. His emotionless, fakely human voice replies with a simple: « Okay. », and he starts to tell what happened.
It is simply a recount of what is stored in his memory files, almost a list of what happened. There are no pauses to help her process his words, unless she asks him to stop; there are no attempts to make her feel better about his own words, no questions about how she's feeling as he tells her the story.
He speaks with apparent apathy of his attempt at stopping the Paradise by calling down the four young ones, how it seemingly started well, how the Paradise Protection Protocol took over when everything seemed to be over. He tells her of the rising platform, of his memories becoming a bit corrupted as the Protocol took over him, of his... desperate? attempts at breaking from it only to be unable to. Of his arm rising to catch the first masterball, of it lowering to release the pokémon inside. Of the process that kept going, over, and over, and over again, pokémon after pokémon, move after move, fall after fall. He could not break free, and he could only watch as the young ones' pokémon fell. How the paradox pokémons started to attack them, untrained to stop at trainers.
How the Protocol worked perfectly, for there was no one surviving the battle. The platform lowered, and the program switched off, letting him free to move again.
And he did not move. For such a long, long time.
Only staring at what little remained of the four people he doomed.
He stops, there. More words were meant to follow, but he finds himself weirdly unable to tell them, as if something had blocked his voicebox all of a sudden. He stays motionless like that day, his eyes staring emptily at the Paradise, nothing crossing his artificial mind and yet... something making him slow down. Something he can't quite understand.
He doubts it's an emotion. And if it is, he doubts it is a sincere one. They are just a coded projection of what the professor used to feel.
Perhaps it is because he remembered Arven's face.
« ... »
He can't turn away. The Protocol stirs silently in his mind at the memory of what happened. It threaten to activate, for a moment, out of nowhere - then realizes there is no reason to, and returns in sleep mode.
« ... do you need anything else? »
added an interest checker for who wishes to fill it! <3 it's not obligatory, and one for all my blogs. you will also find in there one blog i still haven't talked about, but... shhh.
@vitrumbra
" is anyone else here. or is it just the pokemon outside. "
( hehehe taro :) )
Turo knows perfectly the answer to that question, but programmed perfectionism pushes him to check all the cameras and sensors of Area Zero, just to make sure. It's a process that involves the entire place, but for a construct takes merely a fraction of a second. A pause that a human wouldn’t even notice.
The result is negative, exactly as he thought.
« No. There is no one else. » he gives voice to a string of data - a flat and emotionless voice, while he never moves his eyes from the broken Master Ball on the laboratory table in front of him, and the slow and methodical movement of his hands as they slowly work to fix it. He doesn't turn towards the other and doesn’t activate the codes to imitate a reassuring smile, because he doesn't see the point of doing it. By previous experience, no one ever felt really secure once they entered Area Zero, so by his calculations it was a useless thing. « The laboratory's doors are deadlocked and secure at the 98%. The 2% of possibility of the Pokémon outside breaking them down is not considerable high enough to worry. »
He pauses there, for a moment. His movements cease as the only one remaining is of the head, lifting a bit, thoughtful. That was… very not human, wasn't it? He's not sure it's even necessary, seen the situation - however this situation even started and could be explained -, but… He doesn't turn, instead returning to work on the Master Ball, but he attempts to rethink the data in a more normal way.
« It's going to be fine. » he eventually says. His voice just as flat and detached as before.
Oh, well. Professor Turo was as awkward with social interactions as he appears right now. Maybe he is looking more human.
examine! / @skullkxd
examine: a photo of your son.
INPUT INCORRECT: IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND ITEM “PHOTO OF YOUR SON”
REDIRECT TO CLOSEST RESEMBLANCE
REDIRECTING…
…
Item name: Photo #0015 / LR-C3
It's a photo of professor's Turo son, Arven.
He's been immortalized in a photo of him much younger, sitting at the table of a restaurant you don't know. His arms are crossed, and he's pouting at the camera, evidently not wanting to be photographed. It doesn't appear the cameraman listened.
Your gaze lingers on it just for a moment, musing that he's been eating all the fries on his plate but didn't even touch the broccoli. You wonder why humans seem to despite that vegetable so much.
Then you take out of the library the book you need, resting just beside it. You turn as you open it, and you don't think about the photo anymore.
examine! / @infernalpursuit
examine: the master ball.
Item name: Master Ball 07-F3P
The very best Poké Ball with the ultimate level of performance. With it, you will catch any wild Pokémon without fail.
Artificial intelligences fit into the description, you suppose. Your eyes linger on the object on your palm: it's broken, the pieces barely held together by a few thin cables on the inside, keeping it together enough for it to not be confused with anything else. You wouldn't mistake it for anything, though, even if you wanted to. Its memory is buried inside your artificial brain, perfectly stored in your inner archive.
It's wild Miraidon's Master Ball. The one you used against the group of kids that you called in to stop the Protocol.
And that couldn't, because you couldn't stop yourself.
It almost seems to weight differently between your fingers, as if it is somehow heavier - which, of course, doesn't make sense. If anything, this Master Ball is perhaps lighter, ergo this is a completely subjective sensation that you shouldn’t be feeling. It implies a mistake in your processors. So you start a diagnostic.
In the meantime, you think of what you should be doing with this Pokéball. Honestly, you want to throw it away, and never have to see it ever again. Somehow, you don't like the memories it calls back.
But you can feel the Protocol nudge at the back of your head, whispered codes describing the object as vital, as not so many resources to build a new one can be obtained now that Area Zero is a paradox. The Master Ball needs to be repaired. It might serve as an extra wall of protection against intruders.
So you move to the laboratory's table. And without any question, any hesitation, any contrasting thought, you start working on repairing it.
It was difficult, not to tremble. Tools that were reminiscent of when she was little, walls that were of a differing colour yet somehow felt the same. Silva had done her best to stay still, even if occasionally her amber eye wandered a little too far, recognized a little too much, then quickly forced herself to forget. It was a constant push and pull and intention and memory.
What a wonderful skill, to be able to forget. Whar a wonderful skill, to be able recognize, register, then promptly remove the worst parts and only see the best. Silva looked at people that way...ignoring their errors and impurities; ignoring what could perhaps make them bad or ill intentioned...instead focusing on their eyes, their expressions, their heart if she could hear it. It helped, to put her focus on smaller details, rather than looking at the bigger picture.
Equipment was nothing to the a lab or something that bore such resemblance itself.
" i thught... "
Silva's words were slow, at first, before she shook her head. It was amazing how fuzzy her mind felt. Let it be Area Zero itself, the paradox hearts beating in her ear, or even the man set before her. His heart, his...whatever she heard...it was suspicious but curious. The entire place was, if she wasn't sitting on a medical bed she would perhaps feel more apt to explore.
" ...it just luked like yu were luking fur sumething else. "
The construct lifts an eyebrow, again a coded instinct to imitate interest, confusion. He can't appear any more human than that, though, the rest of his body perfectly still, the programming for a reassuring smile absent from his database.
« No, I wasn't. » he replies flatly, a simple statement. « I was just performing a general exam to check on your conditions. Making sure everything is as it should be, if you will. I wasn't looking for anything in particular. »
His gaze lingers on her a moment longer. He sees her distress, her difficulty in speaking and settling her eyes on something in particular, small acts of anxiety he keeps not understanding. He frowns.
« Are you… feeling sick? » he asks, uncertain, failing to connect her uneasiness to the place and the medical instruments. For what he's seen up to that moment, she's fine. Perhaps she's having a fever and he didn't notice? His hands are unable to perceive cold or heat after all. « Do you need… hm. Water, maybe? »
She gulps, taking a deep breath.
He's nice. He's too nice.
The A.I. in her world was nice too, she remembers that. Fresa wasn't his biggest fan at first, thinking he was so distant whenever he called after each Titan battle, but after meeting him down there, in Area Zero...
...
...it's unfair he had to go.
"The me of... your time.
You said nobody died, but... in my time, Reza-- Cereza, she got almost killed.
You said the Protocol was too powerful, that we- we lost.
I want to know... exactly what happened."
She wanted to know the worst case scenario outside death.
Maybe that will make her think that they didn't go that bad.
… oh.
Once again in just a few minutes, he finds himself surprised by the young woman. Considered her reactions at their first call, this… is not what he expected her to ask him. Then again, he didn't expect her to call him again in the first place.
She hesitates, and he doesn't say anything in the meantime, unsure of what to… do. Letting her continue with her own time while his mind listed possible courses of action and their possible outcomes, and doesn’t consider any of them truly good. The only one with a semblance of being better is, honestly, to not tell her anything at all.
But she called. Despite not liking him, despite the anxiety attack of last time. She called, specifically for that one question.
She wouldn't leave without an answer.
« … Fresa, are… are you sure? »
But he still has to try. Just for a moment, just once. But he has to try. His hands hide in the lab coat's pockets, his artificial gaze glancing sideways in a coded instinct to try to look at something during a conversation like that. Ironically enough, it lands on the Paradise in the centre of the room.
« Last time, your heart rate increased so much I thought you were going to black out. Your parameters went all over the place. ». He pauses, just a fraction of a second of a somewhat insecurity. « Are you sure you really want to know? »
[ TEXT ] Wait this isn't who I thought it was
[ TEXT ] Oopsie, sorry!
Must have mistaken the number he received from the person he met the other day. Well, no worries! This is just another potential pal!
[ TEXT ] I did enjoy it, yeah!
[ TEXT ] I was hungry too, though
[ TEXT ] Maybe I'll try to set a record one day!!! What's your favourite pizza?
… ah. Right. Humans can make mistakes, like writing to the wrong number.
It would have been much easier if he processed that eventuality sooner. He could have asked him if he simply wrote to the wrong person, perhaps he would have looked even more human - or, actually, he could have also simply ignored the message to begin with. He instinctively tries to reply to everything he receives, being it an alert or just a message from the outside, out of pure coded habit, and he forgot humans sometimes just… don’t.
Whoops.
Well, too late now. Might as well “roll with it”, as people say.
Why roll with it? Why do they say that? They don't roll. He can't understand it.
[ txt ] Don't worry! I'm in the mood to talk anyway.
[ txt ] Good! That you enjoyed it, I mean. Being hungry certainly helps eating very fast.
He supposes.
[ txt ] I'm certain you'd make a great one! I never heard of someone eating a pizza so fast after all.
[ txt ] Oh, I will admit… Not really a pizza guy. I like things simple, a margherita pizza and I'm satisfied.
Certainly not because it's the first and most basic pizza he found on the web while he's been typing and sending his message, carefully taking his time to make sure they would feel like someone human has actually been typing them, and not a construct who could write them all in a fraction of a second, nu-huh.
Before looking it up, he didn't even know what a pizza even was.
@picavecalyx / continued ( after more than a year shh )
All the alarms of Area Zero gave off at the same time. Some had a siren, most were silent, but all screamed full voice inside Turo's head, pushed aside any action he had been doing to gave maximum priority to the emergency. He linked immediately himself to the camera from which the signal started. Just in time to see the child getting killed.
All the alarms of before silence themselves at once, as he feels himself stopping completely. For the longest moment, he just stares at the screen - so many commands initiated, and now abruptly interrupted as what the Paradise was considering a threat simply ceases to exist. The artificial intelligence feels the code slowly letting him go, his conscience returning, and leaving him motionless. Empty, looking at a corpse so small on the screen, and not feeling very much at all. A mistake in his programming, for sure. Professor Turo would have felt a lot of things.
Just a handful of moments pass before the previous tasks return being more important. The artificial intelligence wonders for just a fraction of a second if he should do something about the corpse, but then decides not to do anything. Nothing in his programming really went on how to deal with dead humans; the professor took care of himself after his incident, giving him no previous experience about the matter. He mentally checks his to do list, to return on what he was doing.
And then, the feed of the camera glitches, disappears for a moment, and when it returns he sees the child move again.
And where the professor would have felt surprise, confusion, worry - perhaps interest? -, the artificial intelligence feels the closest he's ever felt to shock. His eyes widen, as the Paradise Protection Protocol has a new peak inside his head, and he barely controls it.
He realises he's running towards the place of the happening only when he's already out of the lab and halfway there. He's not sure who is really guiding his body now, if himself or the Protocol, but by the constant battle to keep track of what he himself is doing he'd say they're both fighting for control. A coded instinct whispers how much he'd want to scream - desperate to keep control, not wanting to have another child getting harmed by his hand -, but following it would just be a waste of time. The real Turo programmed him to be efficient. To be better than that.
Maybe that's why he's going to the child, then? His priorities have shifted again to emergency mode, and they all scream to protect the Paradise, yet he's rushing to a child that, by the Protocol, he was supposed to have already eliminated in a way or another. Perhaps it's actually him fighting against the codes inside of him.
He can only hope. And as a machine, hope is not an easy task.
When he gets there, the child is still in the same position he saw her take on the camera. A small and trembling thing, acting so terrified as the words come out of him automatically, stating just a fact, I saw what happened. It almost looks she can't process what he said. It takes her so long to react, almost a minute that for his artificial mind leaves space for so many thoughts, hypothesis, analysis, all rushing at a computer's speed, all clashing against the emergency protocol. Yet he waits all the time that is needed, patience natural for a construct, and she eventually replies.
It wasn't suppused to happen. I didn't…
« I know. »
How ironic. A machine created to help a professor with his research, to protect a machine that could destroy time itself at all cost, who misses the codes for the emotions for they are useless for his purpose. But is perfectly able to lie.
Because he doesn't know. How could he know? Why should he? He just saw a glitching feed on a camera. What should he be able to deduce from that?
« Don't worry. It's okay. »
It’s not. The Paradise is considering her a threat.
« You're safe. »
She's not. Not with him beside her.
She listens in religious silence, occasionally blinking in disbelief.
He talks about a different world. A different reality, so similar, yet so different.
Her fingers instinctively tighten into fists around her shorts when he talks about how they failed, in that world. He remains vague, but her mind starts racing, imagining the worst.
Reza getting hit by the wild Koraidon's blast. Blood everywhere. The fear of not knowing what to do as their Pokèball became unresponsive.
Knowing nobody died is good, but doesn't remove the images from her head.
He could feel hear heartbeat fasten ever so slightly by the second as she swallows that loredump, mechanically gulping whenever she noticed her throat was getting dry, trying to wrap her head around this nonsense.
Whenever she thinks that things are getting normal, that she won't be surprised by anything else, this kind of stuff happens. Every. Single. Time.
"...honestly?"
NO BESTIE SHE IS NOT ALRIGHT.
"I'm-- not sure-
Basically you're saying that the Protocol-- the whole Area Zero, like... glitched? You tried to turn that off?!"
Honestly? I'm not sure.
The artificial intelligence nods slowly, though that is one of the first things he's not sure he can understand completely. From his point of view, her anxiety and contrasting emotions are somewhat similar to clashing data, in which cases his programmed instinct is to run a diagnostic.
( And about that, he should do one for that feeling of loneliness. )
He really can't understand how humans can keep on working without the possibility of making an internal check. How can they just move on even when things aren't going as they should?
His Area Zero after all has become a working normality. It's a paradox, a zero divided by zero, but with an equilibrium he got to understand quickly. If he runs a diagnostic, the results are clear.
He can't understand her completely.
But he will pretend he does, because that's what she needs.
Even if her choosing the words You tried to turn that off? has a really strange effect on him.
Nothing visible from the outside - he's not programmed for that. It's everything in the inside: his circuits seemingly turning with difficulty for a moment, as if almost blocking at chest height. If he could be sure he could feel that, he'd say he feels hurt, his mind briefly clouded and slowing down to repeat those words again. You tried to turn that off? Perhaps it’s the Protocol, trying to take a preventive action on him?
Quite ironically, he's the one not sure now.
He makes that diagnostic start in the background. All while his eyes don't move from the camera, from her, from her anxiety and confusion. He hesitates for but a second, so briefly to probably not even feeling like hesitation to her, but seeming an eternity for a mind so fast like his own, and he doesn't understand why.
« Yes. »
His answer comes out eventually, his voice so apathetic despite he feels the word comes out with difficulty. Just a machine explaining what happened. He wonders if she expects a different tone. Probably not.
« I tried to turn it off. ». It was much more complex than that, but at its core, wasn't it that? « And it went bad. Turo built it too powerful, and me… ». … too weak. « … too loyal to it to do anything against it. ». Too useful to the Paradise. Too useless for the poor lives he involved in this story.
@ecliidse / canon divergent nanu from pokémon sun&moon
@tapumana / canon divergent tapus from pokémon sun&moon
@lovingbeast / canon divergent lusamine from pokémon sun&moon
@heldcosmos / canon divergent rose from pokémon sword&shield
@codedparaiso / canon divergent turo from pokémon violet
@backstatiion / canon divergent ingo from pokémon legends: arceus
@truebeginnings / canon divergent battle legend red
Send “Examine!” and an item or person and I’ll write an RPG description of it/them.
For example, a stormtrooper mask:
“A white mask with a black visor on the front. Putting it on, you realize that the visor isn’t even transparent. How are you expected to do anything competently like this?”
