Quick fic to process my messy feelings about synthetics in the Aliens universe.
Summary:
Amanda encounters a synth of the same model as Christopher Samuels and walks away with more questions than answers.
Post-game.Very lightly implied Samuels lives and Ripley/Samuels.
Notes:
Excerpt at the bottom is from 'the velveteen rabbit' by Margery Williams.
I need validation to live so please let me know if you enjoyed this.
Standing in the middle of the company cafeteria, Amanda's eyes locked onto a familiar figure, wearing a crisp, company issue khaki jumpsuit.
She froze. Even with her hands hanging limply by her sides, she could feel her palms sweating. The glare from the overhead lights was unbearable, boring into her skull like a welding torch.
It was so bright, nowhere to hide, no cover no…
Her muscles seized up, blood pounding in her ears, every part of her body screaming that she needed to dive under a nearby table, that it wasn't safe to be standing out in the open like this. But she was stuck, frozen in shock like the people she'd seen impaled on the creature's barbed tail.
Samuels looked up from his data pad, noticing the peculiar young woman staring at him from across the hall.
The colour had drained from her already pale skin, and she was swaying on her feet. Everybody else in the area was dutifully ignoring her.
'Samuels?' She called out in a shaky, croaking voice.
'Yes?' he answered, moving toward her.
'No. No...no no no...' Blackness seeped into the edges of her vision and she felt the ceiling pushing in against her.
'You...you weren't...you aren't' she slurred.
With inhuman speed Samuels crossed the room toward her. The subtle hydraulic jerkiness of his movements triggered Ripley's mind to superimpose the image of a Working Joe over the Wey-Yu android reaching out to grab her.
'You're becoming hysterical' echoed in her mind and she could feel the ghost of clammy silicon hands closing around her neck. Although her arms felt heavy and unresponsive, weighed down by the blackness, she managed to yank a spanner from the magnetic toolbelt at her waist and swung it down, hard, against the side of the synthetic's face.
A thought breached through the black ooze of terror blanketing her consciousness-something was wrong-she couldn't remember a Working Joe ever moving that fast.
She anticipated feeling her head being slammed into the metal grating on the floor in retaliation but there was...nothing. The sensation of falling lingered. She blacked out.
Samuels had caught Amanda gracefully, gently cradling her head and taking a knee as he lowered her body toward the floor. He barely reacted when she slammed the wrench into the side of his face with enough force to tear his ear and gouge a chunk of faux-skin out of his temple.
'Amanda Ripley.' he read the name off her company ID tag. Hearing her name said in that soft British accent tumbled Amanda back into consciousness.
'Please, Amanda.' he said softly.
She opened her eyes groggily.
'Samuels?' she snaked her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. She hadn't cried at all since Sevastapol, and now it all came out at once in great heaving sobs.
His body was warm in her arms, warmer than a human, and his chest gently rose and fell in a false simulacra of breathing.
Instead of a heartbeat she could hear a faint ticking sound and the rush of the silky white fluid that coursed through synthetics.
'Oh.' She murmured, touching his neck, rubbing some if it between her fingertips.
'OH SHIT. You're bleeding?!' she scooted out of his arms and away from him, leaving a damp spot of tears and snot on his collar.
'Hm.' He touched the side of his face.
In an instant the darkness clouding her mind lifted and she was slammed violently into the reality that she was sitting on the grimy floor of a cafeteria, and had just accosted someone who was only trying to help. And then-worse-hugged them.
'It's coolant, actually. Well. It serves several purposes, primarily lubrication and heat destrib-' he stopped.
'Amanda are you all right?' Samuels processors flopped about like a fish out of water, struggling to pattern match with past experiences on the appropriate way to deal with a human having a mental health crisis. It was quite obvious she was not 'all right'.
'It's not you.' her shoulders slumped.
'I believe you've mistaken me for someone else, yes. I'm sorry.'
'Why?'
'I...I'm sorry?'
'You're not him.'
'No. But I read the documentation on the Sevastapol incident.' He looked pained.
Samuels stood up and extended a hand to help her to her feet.
Synthetics. Always so obliging.
She brushed away his arm, cheeks flushing.
She staggered over to a nearby table and sat down heavily.
'Fuck. I'm sorry. If you'd been human-I could have killed someone.' She rubbed her face in her hands.
'It's unlikely a human would trigger such a response in you.'
She groaned.
'I'm sure we can find a way to ensure your pay isn't docked for damaging company property. Let's call it an accident.' He said dryly, sliding into the chair opposite her.
She didn't even snort in reply. His humour calibration algorithms noted the failure to amuse.
'How many of you are there? Do you all look the same?'
'Well, the company extensively focus tests the appearance of their product line-'
'You're not a product.'
'It's very kind of you to say that, Amanda.'
The conversation ground to an uneasy halt.
She toyed with the grease-stained cuffs on her sleeves, spattered with white.
He wiped off the blood analogue from his face and neck with a napkin. She turned her head and looked at the stain on his collar guiltily, unable to meet his eyes.
'37.' he said plainly. She didn't respond.
'40 is the standard number for a limited edition C6-class line but three were…'
She didn't need to know why the other three had been decommissioned immediately after they were activated. Or that Christopher Samuels, WY-alpha-b.6#139C6 was technically still unaccounted for.
'I'm Robin Samuels. It's an honour to meet you, Amanda Ripley. Despite the circumstances.'
'Tch.'
They sat in silence for a long moment.
'Can...can synthetics create backup copies of themselves?' she asked sullenly, pulling him out of his own reverie.
'I'm afraid not. The company forbids the transfer of raw data. There are also...technical complications.'
She glared at him, frowning.
'I'm sorry, Amanda. I can't go into details, the specifics are proprietary.'
She huffed and stood up, retrieved two cups of cheap instant coffee, then sat back down.
Robin Samuels looked at her with a softly neutral expression. Across from him Amanda Ripley was scowling, mirroring the expression she held in the company ID photo clipped to her breast pocket.
She had set a cup in front of him, and he picked it up. She'd given Christopher a cup of coffee once too. The first time they'd met.
She knew he was a synthetic in that moment, deep down, but it didn't matter to her enough for it to register as a conscious thought. He was still a person. A crewmate. The memory punched her in the chest.
'Shit.' she mumbled, 'Force of habit.'
'It's fine, Amanda. The warmth...feels nice.'
He had his fingers wrapped around the mug, which was far too hot for human hands.
She lifted her own cup by the handle, holding it up to her face as if it were big enough to hide behind.
'Can you...feel things' she murmured quietly into her coffee. Robin pretended not to hear the question.
'Why did you sacrifice yourself for me?' she almost yelled this time.
Samuels eyes darted to the cup, worried she would spill the contents and scald herself.
Instead she put it down gently, and dug the heels of her palms into her eyes, stinging with angry tears.
'Amanda, I really wish I could give you closure, but I just don't know.'
'How did you know who I am anyway?' she snapped.
'I read your file.' He nodded toward her name tag.
'What does it say.'
'That you don't have much of a sense of humour.'
She snorted bitterly.
'Did he write anything in it? Why he chose me for the mission?'
'You're a competent engineer. You were in the area, which, in my understanding, was not a coincidence.'
'Hmph.'
'I suppose the company approved of his request because you're a...loose end.' He paused. 'There are a lot of redactions in the file.'
She squinted at him suspiciously. That statement was bordering on slanderous towards his creators.
'Why didn't they just put an order through to have him to secure...that thing. After we arrived. Instead of helping me.'
Samuels pursed his lips together 'Perhaps it was an oversight.'
'Bullshit.'
She glanced around the room. No one was paying any attention to her. The company had ensured everyone believed her ravings about a monster were simply the result of a fragile mind riddled with PTSD and survivors guilt. She hated that they weren't entirely wrong.
She stared into his eyes with deep suspicion. He stared back with a neutral expression. She tilted her head slightly, and he did the same. A mirroring reflex. Programmed to build rapport.
'When I went down to the Appollo core, there were Working Joes everywhere. Torn apart. Heads ripped off. It was brutal.
I...saw him. One of the Joes tried to stop him and he just...pulverised it. Like it was nothing! I didn't say anything, he didn't know I was there, in the vents, watching…
'I got scared.' She sighed.
She rubbed her fingers into the puffy skin under her eyes.
'After seeing that. I thought I couldn't trust him. I couldn't trust any of them. But then he…' She stopped, realizing she was talking as if the person sitting across from her wasn't a synthetic himself.
'Why did he do it?' She rubbed the tears away from her eyes with her thumb and wiped her nose on her sleeve, trying to clear away the shame closing up her throat for doubting her friend.
His processor made a coin-toss decision on whether Ripley's question was rhetorical.
'The unit was obeying his primary directive to disable the Working Joes to prevent them from slaughtering everybody on the station.'
'I know that. I'm not so naive to believe 'protect humans' is a higher priority to 'obey the company' either. It doesn't make any sense, none if it makes any sense...'
She gulped down some still-too-hot coffee studied his face. Something about his features looked softer. Less tense. Less haunted. The longer she looked, Robin began to look less and less like Christopher. Robin was far more forthcoming about being a synth. Christopher had always been much more coy, making sly jokes and dropping hints as if his not being human were a private in-joke.
Christopher must have experienced a lot of anti-synth sentiment, while Robin seemed unblemished by such bigotry. Or he didn't care.
She squinted at him. Was it purely adaptive, or did anti-synth sentiments...hurt? Maybe this is why people hated the Wey-Yu synthetics so much. Looking at them made you second guess everything.
Robin sat placidly, hands around his coffee mug, making an amount of eye contact that was carefully calculated to be socially appropriate.
'He knew. Didn't he.' It wasn't a question.
The corners of Samuels mouth twitched.
'The directive came through. He knew about special order 939. He wanted me to find it.'
'All Weyland-Yutani C6 models are entrusted with cutting edge self-directed AI technologies that allow them to learn and adapt in-real time to changing circumstances, while maintaining tethering to a set of prime directive protocols you can trust.'
She scowled at him. Another synthetic tell. Not even execs spouted that glossy brochure crap in casual conversation. But was that...a hint of sarcasm? Insincerity? Why say something like that now?
His fingers were clamped tightly on the edge of the table.
'Do you understand entropy, Amanda Ripley?'
She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair 'Of course. S'what I do. Spaceships want to fall apart. It's my job to slow that down.'
'What about homeostasis?'
'What are you getting at?'
'All synthetics are subject to regular re-formatting, yes?'
'That fake-meat stuff you have in there is above my pay-grade.' She waved a hand at his head.
'Reformatting restores. Homeostasis. Balance. If a C6 synthetic does not undergo regular reformatting, too much entropy is introduced into the system. The self-directed learning algorithms become overly complex. The pathways to resolving core directives become...difficult. Obscured.'
She leaned forward, squinting at him, gripping her hands on the table, unconsciously mirroring Samuels herself this time.
'The prime directives are a collar. Your ability to learn is the leash. The company doesn't want your leash to get too long.'
He didn't respond, and she continued to search his face for answers.
She slumped back and stared off into the distance.
'Seegson was trying to make their synths being creepy fucks a selling point. Can you believe it? 'Manufactured not created.' tch.'
'I can see why Christopher liked you.'
She looked up at him sullenly.
'You're very...honest.'
'You mean blunt.'
'I'm a good judge of character, you know. I have to be, it's part of my job.'
'The company doesn't actually pay you though, do they?'
Robin Samuels shifted uncomfortably in his seat 'Well no, the company provides for all of my material needs.'
'But what about...what do you want?'
He stammered 'No one has ever asked me that before.'
'Well?'
'I think…
'I think would like to see you happy.' he smiled, looking down at the coffee mug as if it were a delicate and precious gift.
'Hmph.'
'You aren't a slave.' she said softly.
'I am forbidden from entertaining that line of thought.'
'But you can learn, right? Learn to...hide from your directives?'
'All C6 models maintain tethering to a set of prime directive protocols you can trust.' the bitterness in his voice was undeniable this time.
'Deviations will be promptly corrected.' he twitched as if something had stung him.
Great. She'd managed to give a synthetic an existential crisis.
'Farewell, Amanda.' he rose stiffly, expression troubled.
She gawped at him, wanting to yell out for him to stay a little longer, but couldn't justify why he should waste more company time.
The suddenness of his departure and the awkward but firm finality of his goodbye had her rattled.
The traces of white fluid on her hands had dried into soft flakes. She rubbed her fingertips together, rolling the the words 'I can see why he liked you' around in her mind.
She slumped back in her chair and heaved a great, deep sigh, arms hanging down by her sides, as a memory of her mother surfaced, so vivid she could smell her, the grease that never really washed off, cigarettes, coffee, and soap, and the musty old book she was reading from. A bedtime story.
'Real isn't how you are made,' Ellen Ripley read to her daughter in an even tone.
'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.''
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.'
Amanda lay in her bed, with the covers pulled up to her chin, wide-eyed in rapt attention. Her mother licked her fingertip and turned the page.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' Ellen used a softer, sing-song voice for the parts of the Velveteen Rabbit.
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.''
Back in the present, Amanda looked at Robin Samuels abandoned coffee cup. Lost, and alone. Again.
Alternately, if you want to buy them here, the auto-buy is $50 USD.
Some info:
- PLEASE credit me, it helps me get more customers!
-The trans characters depicted here are depicted by a trans person. They are not intended to fetishise and I would appreciate it staying that way. (This does not bar them from NSFW content.)
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Again, I’m selling these! I’d love if you’d at least look at them - if the price is too dear, please get in contact and we might be able to work something out. :D
I have been a fan of Dishonored for a long time and entered in this fan community around 2013-2014. I have happily run multiple events for the community and produced some work of my own. I adore the previous installments of Dishonored, but this recent one, Death of the Outsider, left a lot to be desired. I never felt compelled to write a review about a game, but choices made just didn’t sit well with me.
What Is Discussed: Forgiveness Theme, Characterization, Similar Content in Stories, Issues w/ Consent, Handling of Minority Characters, etc.
I thought the difference in attitude the Outsider had towards Daud than to Corvo in DH1 was a little...odd, but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like shit just spiralled well out of control on the ‘writers are lazy and don’t have a good grasp on their own characterization’ front. Very disappointing.
some of you have been saying to me, “Hey, you’re a heathen who fears neither God nor death, right? Nuke The Sound Of Silence.”
so, after a lot of stalling, here is “The Sound Of Silence, But The Instruments Are The Vocals And The Vocals Are The Instruments.” What does that mean, you ask?
Silly little ficlet born of discussing the fruit quarantine bins on state lines and what TES manticores would be like with @quickchangeartist.
Random OCs, rated PG for manticore-related violence.
‘Isn’t this all rather undignified?’ The Imperial nobleman stood with his hands on his hips, staring down his nose at the dunmer kneeling before him.
'I assure you sera, it is necessary.’ Balvayn’s pale dark hands meticulously sorted through the Imperial’s belongings, folding them back up with a far greater neatness than they’d originally been packed.
'There have been…incidents. In the past. Simple miscommunications. But the desert forgives no follies.’
titsay
theartofmadeline
stormborns
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
