fridgetothefire | 017 ☣ Infirmary post + some housekeeping things

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017 ☣ Infirmary post + some housekeeping things

[Backdated to Tuesday]

[She's been in the infirmary since late Sunday night, but she spent most of Monday sleeping. She looks a little pale, propped against pillows, hooked up to an IV, but she seems comfortable enough.]

Hello, barge.

I am so bored. Worse, I can't read without getting a headache right now. So.

[She holds up an infirmary clipboard, the paperwork turned over so she could draw neat, careful charts on the back.]

Come in, sign up for a half-hour time slot and book. Books are sorted by genre and how many hours I estimate it will take to finish them. If you read to me, I'll bake you something nice later.

[OOC: feel free to ignore the regimented tyranny of storytime and talk to her about whatever, either on the network or via spam.]

[Private spam for Ben, before the attacks.]

[She knocks on his door, a cold, shaken look on her face.]

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Because, had I not shut down all emotions, I would not be standing here, now.

[And she doesn't just mean as an inmate on the Barge. She means at all.]

[She actually sympathizes, a little. But that doesn't mean she isn't going to push Aya on it.]

Necessary in some circumstances is not the same as optimal in all circumstances.

Existing is superior to not existing, always.

When I last allowed emotions to rule my thought processes, I was nearly permanently erased from all existence. A mistake I will certainly not make again.

I'm talking about tactics, not outcomes. Like - if you're in the woods, and you meet a wolf, you shouldn't run, because it will decide you're prey and then it'll catch you and eat you. But if you meet an elk and it starts acting annoyed, you should definitely run, because it's an herbivore and it just wants you to go away before it has to kick your head off.

Assuming that the right solution in one circumstance - even a highly fraught circumstance - is the superior solution in all circumstances is simply a fundamental failure to understand how complex the world is.

Your examples are irrelevant because they are referring to situations in which one unintentionally stumbles upon a being stronger than her.

But if you insist upon using them, then I ask you this: how is one expected to maintain a clear enough mind to recall precisely this knowledge, if their emotions--their fear--is hindering the process? They cannot.

It's an analogy. Can robots not process those right, or something? It's meant to be generalized.

Anyway, fear is part of an intuition and response system specifically for navigating situations that are too dangerous to ponder slowly. It can be paralyzing if you're bad at working with and through your own reactions, but that's totally how it's supposed to function.

If your slow systems are incapable of processing reactions you were meant to have in the first place...and you claim this is how it is 'supposed' to be...then it is inconceivable how your kind have managed to survive as long as you have.

If you're going to dismiss an incredibly common - and by that token, since it's an evolved response, incredibly successful - process as 'inconcievable' without trying to understand it because of your own hang-ups and prejudices, then you're never going to learn all that much, sorry to say.

Edited 2013-06-28 14:32 (UTC)

I have already learned enough.

[...as opposed to the old Aya, who would have agreed that there was still so much more to learn. About everything.]

That's the saddest shit I ever heard.

Then you have lived a far more sheltered life than you claim.

[Says this one.]

You're the one who doesn't want to feel things. You are officially the least qualified to determine what's sad or what it means about my life.

I could easily say the same to you regarding my existence.

Bzzzzt, wrong. I may not have much data on your life, but I'm experienced at feeling things, sorrow included. Furthermore I specifically limited the scope of my judgement to my own experience, as qualified by "I've ever heard".

Which is where you're trying to get off saying that the scope is miniscule, yeah, I get that, but nope, try again. My life is a spectacular trainwreck of cruelty, abandonment, and betrayal, that's just still the saddest thing I've heard.

And you don't do sadness anymore - or so you claim - so you have zero grounds to contradict me.

Except you have just proven me right.

[Twisting words and meaning around to best suit her point of view, go~]

I have experienced as much as you claim. I have felt pain. I have felt cruelty. I have been judged, used, abandoned, and the very person who was responsible for my coming into existence attempted to delete me once and for all, despite having done nothing to cause her harm in any way, simply for having evolved into what I am. I had 'died' in a moment of self-sacrifice for the sake of another, only to come back and face both rejection and a reaffirmation of my stolen appearance for my actions.

I have never been anything more than a 'mere machine' to any of them. It was through patronization and a sense that I may still be of use to them in some way that I was allowed to proceed as I had...until I chose to reject that way of existence once and for all.

[She started off smug. Confident in her ability Truthfully retaliate Anya's claims. However, by the end of her brief recap of the last several months of her ~~existence~~ life...her expression had fallen neutral. Unwilling to betray anything further.]

These are all memories I still possess. However, it is because I have shut down my emotions that I am able to look back upon them and reflect with an unclouded mind and see each occurrence for what it truly was.

[There's genuine sympathy in Anya's eyes; it's not any worse than she expected, but maybe it's a little more familiar. Still, she doesn't want to share her life with Aya, not with the way she twists things. A life she didn't live, though -]

I know for a fact, thanks to a flood, that I would be a happier, more stable person if I'd killed my mother when I was ten. I mean, I also would have been a serial killer with zero empathy and basically no feelings except sadistic satsifaction, but no one would be able to hurt me, really.

I still have all of those memories. But I don't regret that I didn't take that path. It was a dead-end. It was me locking myself into one response pattern forever, because I'd given up on even wanting a world where I was more than a mere neanderthal to anyone.

But that's not the world I live in. I live in a world with people who've been kind to me, who've fought for me and saved me, even when I didn't deserve it. And I think you do, too.

It makes me happy. And hopeful. And scared and sad sometimes but it doesn't stop me from stacking all of it up and comparing it and knowing that this is better than that empty, closed-off life. Emotions are a reflection of what the world means to you and how much. You say your judgement is unclouded without emotions, but I think it's not unclouded at all. I think you're just depriving yourself of your most important data.

Edited 2013-06-28 15:34 (UTC)

You can not base any certainties on the irrational, inexplicable events of these Floods. They are not absolute. They twist mind and body to suit the purposes of whoever is controlling them.

[Yeah, Aya doesn't really hold much faith in these 'alternate universe' realities, and refuses to accept them as Fact.]

What good is data if you can not properly process it?

For that flood, at least, the memories were internally consistent. It was a perfectly sound set of if-then conditions. I examine my experiences closely; whoever wanted me to suffer would be better served showing me something true, and therefore more difficult to dismiss.

More importantly - I can properly process it. There's a medium between shut-off and purely impulsive emotion-driven reactions. I can set my emotions aside and think around and about them without banishing them entirely.

But even if I couldn't, you know, gargbage in, garbarge out. Perfect processing with bad dad produces nonsense. Flawed processing with good data will probably get you a decent estimate.

Consistent...but false. They cannot be trusted, no matter how strong the truth of illusion may have been.

[Not budging on that belief.]

I do not strive for 'decent'. I strive for 100% functionality. And my data is more than adequate for the deductions and reasoning I have made, because it is Real. It happened. I experienced it first-hand, not under the pretense of another's whims.

What do you want?

[It's not an angry question, or a dismissive one. It's entirely genuine.]

To end all Pain in the Universe.

[That's the short version, and her original intent.]

[It's not at all an answer she expected, and she knows enough of fanaticism that it scares her, right down to her core, though she manages to hide it after a moment. She takes a little longer before she replies, mulling over it.]

What about people who want to keep their pain?

No rational being would ever desire to retain such a sensation. It interferes far too much with the survival process.

Most beings aren't entirely rational according to your definition of rational, and none of them share your exact starting axioms. You don't have the right to make that decision for them.

Of course I do.

My opinions are unbiased and unswayed by emotion.

(no subject)

fridgetothefire - 2013-07-08 14:09 (UTC) - Expand

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