And more SIRP.
Identify the animé I've been enjoying recently, if you can.
It was the order I had planned. Shinji's with Anika and Nené overnight when the others arrive.....
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Identify the animé I've been enjoying recently, if you can.
Quote:----------
Shinji closed his eyes and inhaled one long deep breath. This was the real world. And he was an android, programmed with the memories of a fictional character. Everyone he knew and cared about had never existed.
And he still ached to see them once again.
Shinji exhaled a sad sigh. He slipped the helmet over his head, locking the chinstrap. Beside him, Anika’s scooter rasped into life. It was an old Vespa in a fresh white with carefully polished chrome trim around the mudguards.
He took one look at her, fiddling with her goggles, trying to fit them in under her open-faced helmet. She wore a heavy orange overcoat which, he decided, really suited her with that flower on the breast.
“Take it slow with that monstrosity Shinji,” she said, her voice carrying up above the pok-pok popping of the Vespa’s warming engine. “They call it a SuperSport but it struggles to top sixty.”
It was filling the shaft with the sweet smell of burned two-stroke oil.
Shinji turned the Judy on, instruments coming alive. ALL GET FREED! flashed up onscreen for a second, before dissolving into what he guessed were the usual array of readouts which made just as little sense as they had earlier.
He settled into the saddle, taking another few moments to convince himself that he actually owned the machine and that they really were letting him use it. And that the cute girl on the Vespa going by was actually his Sister.
It didn’t feel that way. She smiled at him as she went past and it made him feel just a little warmer inside. He gripped the throttle and rolled forward after her and her rasping scooter trailing a few metres behind the red tail light.
The Judy whined along beneath him, hydraulic suspension smothering the imperfections in the tunnel floor. It wasn’t even trying while the Vespa was straining itself along. if he thought about it though, for the first time since arriving on Frigga....
He actually felt pretty good, considering.
There was something enjoyable about losing his mind in the concentration of keeping the machine steady beneath him. It was a challenge to get it around corners without grinding the skidplates mounted on the edges of the panniers. Digging trenches in the concrete wouldn’t endear him to the locals either.
The Vespa may have been stuck at sixty, but it didn’t have to slow down to take corners. Anika traced a wide sweeping arc around the corner, banking that little scooter over like a little miniature fighter jet.
Shinji didn’t dare touch the throttle while turning, visions of himself being ground down to the bone on the belt sander below had that effect. Shinji didn’t care to test how tough his jacket was against the ground.
It took fifteen minutes to get down to the main landing bay, both of them pulling up outside what was supposed to be a machinery access hatch large enough to drive an ore-hauler through. A chevroned sign warned in letters taller than Shinji himself that there would be vacuum on the other side of the door when the yellow lights overhead were flashing.
One was. Another had been smashed and the third had a little reflective tag on it that looked to be fresh. A dull roar reverberated against the door, hundreds of tons of metal groaning and creaking. Shinji imagined the space beyond flooding with thousands of tons of water, the door bowing and straining to hold it back.
He didn’t want to stand beside it.
“We’re just waiting for the bay to pressurise again,” said Anika, noticing his discomfort. “The recuperators are above our heads so it’s pretty loud.”
He couldn’t help but look up at the roof far above him.
“How long does it take?”
“It’s being going since we left.”
“Oh.”
Yet another way to hammer in the sheer industrial scale of the place. Or its inefficiency.
“It took three minutes to flood the cages,” he said.
“Those probably weren’t as big as our landing bay though.”
She was starting to boast. Shinji tapped open the port on his wrist, the burst of data flashing through his cons
“Can’t we just go in there? If we’re robots, why do we need air?”
“Androids,” she corrected mildly. “Robots are nothing more than tools. We’re androids Shinji.”
Shinji’s head dropped as he stared at the open port on his wrist once more. His reflection warped around the freshly polished metal, stretching and melting his face into an unrecognisable blur of tanned skin-tones.
“Anyway,” Anika continued. “We need to breath air to cool or core processors. Otherwise we overheat and shut down.”
He swallowed, holding his breath momentarily. The warmth building in his chest confirmed it.
“Why do I feel so sick then?”
“It might be the Pinnochio glitch having an effect on your perception to keep up the illusion.”
Anika’s voice was still mild and polite as a teacher. She was just patiently giving out information, without showing any sign of frustration.
“Pinnochio was a puppet who thought he was a real boy.” Shinji said in a voice soft enough to almost be smothered by the sound of the flooding bay.
“Most AI’s know what they are as soon as they wake up, Shinji. Even doppels like you would usually know.”
He was a glitch. An error. An exception from the norm. The boy sighed. The lights above him went out, before switching to steady green.
“Well,” continued Anika. “If you push the green button on the wall beside you, we can meet a friend of mine who rushed all the way here to see you.”
He pushed it. Nothing happened. He pushed it again. Nothing happened. He looked at Anika, who just looked puzzled, then frobbed it a third-time, holding it in until something finally decided to latch.
The floor shook as the door began to lower itself down to the ground. A buzzer on the top gave a chirping warning in time with a trio of flashing red lights on top of the door.
“Probably corrosion,” Anika shrugged. “I’ll put in a red card.”
“This isn’t what I thought the future, or outer space would be like,” he said. He tried to hide the note of disappointment in his voice.
Again, Anika could only shrug. “We tend towards the used-future aesthetic here. If you want shiny-future, try Helium on Mars, or the Crystal Cities on Venus.”
He looked at her, mouth agape
“The crystal cities are exactly what you think they are,” she assured him.
So, probably ‘crystal’ in the same way a skyscraper was made out of glass. That was actually a disappointment. Part of him had hoped she’d tell him it was actually made of solid glass.
The retracted until it was flush with the floor. A wall of cold air rushed to embrace him, his skin tingling comfortably. It was a refreshing cold that seemed to wake him up, crisping up his mind.
The landing bay was just as vast as he remembered, a freshly added sign advising all visitors that Frigga was a former mine and that unlit areas were off limits to all guests without escort. A list of safety precautions followed.
A new green ship had been added to the space milieu, parking itself mid-way along the chamber. It was vaguely insectoid, a fat rear end behind a small sphere for the cockpit standing atop a set of spindly landing struts.
There was an obvious dent on one of the engine pods.
Walking across the landing bay was a smiling blonde in a t-shirt that advertised something called the Jupiter Mining Corporation. A full plastic bag was swinging from one hand.
“Nené!” Anika called, waving her arm.
Shinji rooted himself to the ground, forcing himself to not to run away. The woman jogged towards them.
“Anika!” she called back. “Is this your new brother?”
Shinji winced. He focused his mind on not stepping back.
“Yeah,” Anika answered, followed by an obvious space for him to introduce himself. Shinji stood there and shuffled his feet unable to open his mouth.
“Wow. You two really are the same.”
“Huh?” they both chorused.
“It’s obvious when you look at you together, side to side. You’re both the exact same size.”
The pair glanced at each other. Eye to eye.
“So I’m told,” Shinji managed to say. “We are the same inside.”
And it still felt horribly wrong to say that. It’s one thing to know, another to believe and quite a different thing altogether to have it feel right.
“Oh, Sorry Shinji, I’m Nené, Nené Romanova,”
She offered him an apologetic smile and an extended hand. Recognising the gesture, he took it lightly, being startled for a moment at how warm and soft her hand felt.
“Ikari Shinji.” His head was still bowed. He was barely able to look up at her, peering out from beneath his own eyebrows.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you Shinji.”
He winced involuntarily. Another part of his mind started to wonder where he’d heard that name before.
“I’m like you,” she said with a smile. “I’m an AI, based on a fictional character.”
It clicked
“Bubblegum Crisis?”
She nodded. “I’m 2040 Nené Romanova, rather than the pink-haired OVA Nené Romanova.”
“Why don’t we continue this up at my place,” suggested Anika. “I have cake and snacks!”
Nene offered the bag she was carrying. “And I brought more.”
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It was the order I had planned. Shinji's with Anika and Nené overnight when the others arrive.....
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?