Shinji Ikari Raising Project

[LynnInDenver]

"I'm... not quite like most of the others, in one regard, Shinji. While many of us awoke aware of our nature from the start, I was given... the memories of more than one of myself, in a way."

"More than one?" Shinji asked, looking somewhat confused.

Nene nodded. "It's both a blessing and a curse. There's a lot of commonality involved, so it's likely somewhat easier to deal with, it's not multiple personalities, but I can remember at least eight different sets of distinct memories besides my, well, primary for lack of a better term. It made at least one meeting slightly more awkward than it needed to be, with one of the writers that was responsible for some of those memories." She sighed. "At least when I met Marty for real, it was just with one of him that didn't quite match the reality... I had to deal with THREE with Ben... that's a very long story there, to be honest. Just be glad you've only got the one set of memories to contend with."

"That sounds more than a little strange."

"It does, doesn't it? Believe me, though, I'm not the strangest AI out there. Not by a very, very long shot."

"So... how much do you know about me?"

"Mostly just the broad strokes... when Myk got his stuff from the U.S., when they finally figured out that it wasn't contaminated, he had a copy of Eva in among the videos... I watched it one week when there was a serious negotiation happening that required me to 'mind the store' for Jeph." She shivered. "I don't know what Anno was on or not on during that time, but... that was a horrible set of events. I'd not wish those on the worst of the people I recall from the series I was in." She looked at him, sympathy and caring visible in her eyes. "Here, at least, you won't have to deal with anything nearly that bad. It's not an easy world to live in here, Shinji, but at least you're in a position that you won't be made to do things for reasons you can't even comprehend."
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[Dartz]

*adds to the melting pot and begins to stir
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[Black Aeronaut]

Hrm... now I'll definitely have to write something up.  I still think it'd be kinda fun to sneak up on him with it.  First hitting him with Mayonaka without her telling him who she's with (she'll say she's a Roughrider and pretty much leave it at that), and then Ben working on the Dragon Wagon ("Hey, you must be the new guy.  Do me a favor and hand my that hydrospanner over there.") and then the big reveal with Gina.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Speaking of cooks, if Shinji hits Prometheus Forge with Jet he could always trade recipies and techniques with Kasumi and Roberta while waiting for Jet's servicing to be done.

[robkelk]

"Before your time? This is your time, isn't it?"

"Oh, no. My time is the year 2167; this is only 2022."

ACK! Data Error!

2167 is when the prologue to Uchuu no Stellvia took place. Yayoi's "now" is 2357.

Sorry about that...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Noted and corrected. (Also, should Kohran take a look at the batteries inside Shinji's Judy.... she'll find something rather...interesting about them and what they were roughly reverse-engineered from.)

Shinji on the Forge sounds like it could be interesting... but the way this is meandering I have no idea if I can fit it in. Jet definitely thinks it's a good idea for A.C. to take a look at him, believing that a fresh pair of eyes might show up any latant hardware glitches that might've been missed.
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[robkelk]

Shinji on the Forge sounds like it could be interesting... but the way this is meandering I have no idea if I can fit it in. Jet definitely thinks it's a good idea for A.C. to take a look at him, believing that a fresh pair of eyes might show up any latant hardware glitches that might've been missed.

If an idea doesn't work for this story, save it for a later story. (Guu knows I've had to do that with more than a few good ideas that just don't fit in LoGG...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Well.... I'll have to file it away along with all the other things I have rattling around up here. I've got more a few rattling around.... and a few snippet ideas. (And at least three half finished not including this one). There's another one called Gatecrash, then something that's now being called Cloudburst.... then that story with Ford and Anika that I liked. And I'm certain I'm forgetting things in that....
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[robkelk]

The type of person the BNF are trying to keep away from Shinji at the moment

(link because embedding would break forum-width on practically all monitors)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Well, that brightened up my day.

If only because I am the person who owns the Platinum edition, and has some of the models. And the panel I'm giving is about modeling, not Eva...... Nope, I haven't fallen *that* far yet.

Meanwhile, to add more content. this is What Shinji receives as his starting gear:

Bahamode Prototype.

Nothing apparently remarkable, one of a number of transforming motorcycles that began to appear from small garagiste gearheads after the introduction of the production Motorslave series by Atalante.

Unlike the motorslave series, the Judy is fitted with a single-person cockpit when in humanoid mode, so it can be safely operated by a pilot without a hardsuit.

Power is supplied by a hybrid powertrain consisting of a series of batteries, and four modified light thrusters to generate electricity and propulsion in open space, augmenting the standard wheel-hub mounted gravity-rotors. Ground power comes from a pair of electric motors, one in each wheel.

The Friggan MZ-23 differs slightly from the standard Bahamode template. It still provides the usual dual operating modes.

In Maneuver mode, it resembles the Highway Star motorcycle with the same low-slung, stretched out look. A pair of panniers straddle the rear wheel, which actually make up the legs of the 23’s humanoid form. Each contains a storage compartment, just large enough to fit a full-face helmet

In ‘Baha’ mode, it resembles a motorslave with a slightly enlarged torso to accomodate the pressurised cockpit for the pilot, formed from the forward part of the fairing and the aft tail unit and saddle. Lift is provided by the split front wheels, the same as a motorslave, with added thrusters increasing the top speed.

The main differentiator between the Judy and the other Motorslave and Garland replicas are the batteries. The advanced Tanalloy batteries used in the 23 took up much less space for the same energy content, reducing the weight, improving performance and allowing some of the saved space to be used for equipment storage.

What wasn’t widely known Tanalloy is shorthand for Tannhauser Alloy. It was created by crudely reverse-engineering a sample of gate-metal taken from the ruin of the Iconian gate. By no means the first to try, or the first to have a success, but the first to try market it . They’re pretty certain it’s stable within some conservative limits, and safety lockouts added for when the batteries look like exceeding those limits.

Fenspace at large only learned of this when an anonymous informant leaked a comparison of Tanalloy and samples of genuine gate metal to Walter Cronkite.

It is reverse engineered Gate-alloy... but it's crude. It works as a high energy, fast charge battery, without any of the wormhole or dimension-bending effects. It's missing one or two elements and is somewhat watered down. They're further down the tech-tree than the people who might actually be able to understand it and what's going on inside the metal.... while just about high enough up to be able to figure out how to copy it and make it work.

Though compared to the real gate alloy, is like comparing an F1 engine to the one in a lawmower.

Unless of course, anyone objects. But it surprised me that nobody'd done it yet. Although the only thing they're able to contribute to the ultimate research into how the alloy works however is the name 'Tanalloy' for gate-derived alloys.

And I'm stuck for quirks.
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[robkelk]

No objection here. This is world-changing tech, not world-breaking tech.

(Explanation: Change is good, as long as the change doesn't break things for the other writers. This doesn't break anything, as far as I can tell.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Well see what the bigger smarter technology people make of it when they get the formula and actually understand how it works.

I didn't really see it as world-changing myself.... which suggests that maybe Jet/Mackie/Ford/Anika wouldn't either. They just thought of it as a more powerful battery to save some space in a robot. That, and they have trouble producing them in more than small batches.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

And more SIRP.

Identify the animé I've been enjoying recently, if you can.

----------

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.”
----------

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?

[Dartz]

Okay.... maybe I am just forcing it, using the scene fro Jferio. But got to keep the plot moving.

They're probably going to be spending the night together watching random TV shows and animé while wolfing down snacks..... and getting Shinji a basic wireless VOIP comm that'll hook into his wrist dataport and let him talk to others over the local network, if they're on.

We're going to cut away to show other arrivals soon enough.

----------

Slave Mode Disabled

Shinji didn’t know why carrying Nené as a pillion passenger caused that to flash up on the instruments, or what Slave Mode was. An indicator showing the passenger flashing in red alongside the message confirmed the reason why it had been disabled.

It bothered him all the way back to Anika’s apartment. He rolled to a stop outside the door, parking up opposite Anika’s scooter. Nené thanked him for the lift before fetching the bag out from the left pannier.

The trio sat themselves down on the couch with a table full of snacks, Shinji staking himself out a spot at the far end, closest to the television.

Nené insisted they go to episode 3 of the Bubblegum Crisis TV series first.

“Skip forward to the hardsuit, this is so funny.”

Shinji frobbed the touch-sensitive remote control, stroking at what he guessed was the right ‘button’. The animation scrambled forward, flickering through what seemed to be a restaurant, a city-scape at night

“Here, here!”. Nené placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him, her other hand pointing at the screen. Shinji fumbled with the remote for a moment. “I remember this.”

There was an excited light on behind her eyes. She was acting more like she was showing him a secret home movie. The same voice was speaking onscreen, complaining about how a green suit was a little bit too advanced for a starter suit. The animated counterpart even looked alike.... the smile was a dead giveaway.

“But it never happened.”

“But I still remember it. I remember doing all of this and more.”

“More?”

"I'm... not quite like most of the others, in one regard, Shinji. While many of us awoke aware of our nature from the start, I was given... the memories of more than one of myself, in a way."

"More than one?" Shinji asked, looking somewhat confused. And feeling somewhat like an idiot for only being able to ask questions rather than answer them.

Nene nodded. "It's both a blessing and a curse. There's a lot of commonality involved, so it's likely somewhat easier to deal with, it's not multiple personalities, but I can remember at least eight different sets of distinct memories besides my, well, primary for lack of a better term. It made at least one meeting slightly more awkward than it needed to be, with one of the writers that was responsible for some of those memories." She sighed. "At least when I met Marty for real, it was just with one of him that didn't quite match the reality... I had to deal with THREE with Ben... that's a very long story there, to be honest. Just be glad you've only got the one set of memories to contend with."

"That sounds more than a little strange."

"It does, doesn't it? Believe me, though, I'm not the strangest AI out there. Not by a very, very long shot."

"So... how much do you know about me?"

"Mostly just the broad strokes... when Myk got his stuff from the U.S., when they finally figured out that it wasn't contaminated, he had a copy of Eva in among the videos... I watched it one week when there was a serious negotiation happening that required me to 'mind the store' for Jeph." She shivered visible

Shinji just stared. How could anyone just sit and watch? What sort of person could sit and watch his mind fall apart?

"I don't know what Anno was on or not on during that time, but... that was a horrible. I'd not wish those on the worst of the people I recall from the series I was in." She looked at him, sympathy and caring visible in her eyes. "Here, at least, you won't have to deal with anything nearly that bad. It's not an easy world to live in here, Shinji, but at least you're in a position that you won't be made to do things for reasons you can't even comprehend."

“No, it’s only the world I don’t comprehend, not just the reasons.”

Shinji wanted it to come across as bitter and angry, but it just fell flat. On screen, a brunette was enjoying her first few moments in a green power-armour. Nené went quiet, not quite sure how to answer that. Pangs of guilt filled Shinji with the urge to apologise for killing the conversation.

Both of them sat there in silence, while Anika rattled around in the kitchen, stirring up something before pouring it out onto a tray.

“Hey, why don’t we watch something else then, rather than something we’re in?” Anika chipped in, still waiting for the oven to heat up. A tray of brownie-mix was sitting ready for baking on the counter beside her. “Cannon God Exaxxion?”

“Ew,” Nené winced. “I knew you guys had that Sonoda thing? But Episode ten is just creepy.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Shinji, although the -ion suffix seemed uncomfortable familiar.

“Oh. Aliens invade Earth. And an ordinary boy who’s called by his arsehole of a father to pilot a massive superweapon built underground in secret using reverse-engineered alien technology that’s barely understood, but is humanity’s only hope for survival against an alien attack.”

“Okay, I think I have seen it,” the boy deadpanned.

To his relief, Nené actually giggled.

-------

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[HRogge]

Having more than one set of memories sounds creepy...

[LynnInDenver]

Having more than one set of memories sounds creepy...

There's a reason she doesn't bring it up in most company. It's something of a side effect of her creation. And I actually doubt she's the only one. Of course, we could argue that watching yourself in an anime would be creepy for some of the AIs right off the bat.

Meeting Ben "Gryphon" Hutchins was creepy for her, given that she had THREE versions she had "known" (UF Gryphon, the first BGC centered version, and of course the Iron Age Ben Stark), and NONE of them quite matched the reality.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[robkelk]

Having more than one set of memories sounds creepy...

There's a reason she doesn't bring it up in most company. It's something of a side effect of her creation. And I actually doubt she's the only one. ...

Oh, she definitely isn't the only one. Any AI based on a game character is likely to have multiple sets of memories as well (one for each of the possible paths the game could take). And BGC wasn't the only anime that was ever re-made.

[size=smaller](Hmmmmm... game character, multiple anime versions... Kohran qualifies here, on both counts.)[/size]
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

-------

Chris Marsden leant forward in the driver’s seat, peering up at the cruiser suspended from the gantry crane above, still with a missing nacelle.

There was something vaguely unsettling about being in a small RV, in a massive landing bay that should have been full of people milling about working. There should’ve been heavy-haulers driving up from below, while the crane above loaded a bulk carrier with raw ore.

“It’s a damned shame what happened to this place,” he concluded.

Yayoi looked at him over the top of her eReader. “I’m just glad we made it here as fast as we did.” Considering the faster alternative being the Virgil Samms.

Rei was her usual conversation self, sitting in back waiting patiently with a book on her lap as the landing bay repressurised. Inside the insulated passenger compartment it sounded like a jet airliner passing distantly overhead.

Chris checked the gauges on the instrument binnacle, watching the pressure slowly crawl back up. He tapped at it impatiently, eager to get out outside the RV that’d been his prison for the last two days.

Rei stood up. “She’s here.”

The knock at the door came a moment later.

“I’m right outside,” her voice hissed from the radio.

“Let her in Rei,”

The blue-haired girl hadn’t waited for Marsden’s order before opening the outer door. The cyber’s feat thunked into the airlock. The outer door latched shut, air hissing into airlock. The inner door opened a moment later, the cyber carefully picking her way aboard the RV. There was something mildly comical about her trying to pick her way through the RV’s interior without smashing anything.

“Jet, it’s good to to see you again,” Yayoi said.

“Likewise. Thanks for coming so fast,” Jet responded. Her expression was a tired crossover between relief and gratitude.

“Rei insisted on meeting him as soon as she heard,” said Marsden, standing up. He performed a Picard maneuver to adjust his jacket .”And I can’t refuse a request from her.”

“Where is Ikari?” Rei asked. Everyone looked

“He’s with Nené Romanova and Anika up in Anika’s apartment right now. He’s probably staying there overnight.”

Marsden checked his watch. “It’s midday.”

“We use Martian standard time here,”

Yayoi made a quick calculation. “Well, that suits me then. It gives me time to catch up and get ready for tomorrow.”

Chris nodded. “Yeah, I’d like to get some rest after such a long journey.” He took a deep breath. “And it’d be nice to stretch my legs.”

Jet offered a wry smile. “I know that feeling well. We just need to wait for the pressure to equalise before the doors can be opened. Then I can show you up to your apartments.”

“You can fill me in on what’s happened today along the way.”

Jet nodded. She gave a tired sigh. “It’s been a long one.”

-------

Anika dangled what looked like a plain ordinary wrist-band in front of Shinji. It seemed to be made of stretchable pink fabric he couldn’t identify, with a single metallic plug sewn into it.

“It’s a VOIP communicator. I built them for myself to interface with my dataport so I wouldn’t have to wear an ugly headset. It works over the local network.”

“Go on, try it,” Nené urged.

He tapped open his wrist and slipped it on. The plug snapped into the socket on his wrist.

It burst into his mind, configuration data racing through his thoughts. In microseconds he felt his mind reach out, interrogate it. It answered with a burst of data, flooding his awareness with installation data, then chasing it with the information on how exactly to use it, followed moments later by his own I.P address, hostname and the fact that he was online and available.

A small widget popped up into his peripheral vision, picked out in green wireframe, letting him know his own status, location, while offering him a few settings to play with at a thought.

Anika Daini. Loc: Apartment. Status: Online Busy.
Jet Jaguar: Loc: Tunnel 01 | Control Room. Status: Online.
Ami Shinohara: Loc: Apartment. Status: Sleeping!

He blinked and flicked at the corner of his eye to try and clear it before realising it wouldn’t go away. Shinji took a sharp intake of breath, giving wide eyed glances at the women looking at him expectantly.

It was running, right there, as unignorable as an itch. He scratched at the pink band instinctively, confirming that it really was connected to him.

“Welcome to a wider world.”

Anika’s voice burst through his awareness, clear and crisp. Her lips never moved. She was just smiling softly at him. Nené watched expectantly.

Shinji swallowed, opened his mouth to speak, but wasn’t quite sure what to say.

“This is strange.”

It was as easy as speaking. Just fire a thought at her.

>>“You can also use text messaging. If you’d like."

It was raw text, flashing through his mind. He read it in a microsecond, and understood it fully an instant later. Shinji glanced at the timestamps appended to the messages, and saw that less than a second had passed since he’d come online.

“I’m a machine.” He barely heard himself say it. The others didn’t

“You are an android,” Nené corrected

“I’m an android,” he stated. “I am an android.” He tried the phrase on for size. It wasn’t right.... but it was less-wrong than it had been.

“I’m an android.” He meant to broadcast it to Anika alone, realising moments after sending it that it’d gone out onto the wider network

“Congratulations,” Anika smiled

“He’s an android and he’s okay,” Nené sang along to a tune Shinji failed to recognised. “He rides a bike and.....” she trailed off completely, unable to think of any way to finish that line. Her cheeks started to go a little red.

Shinji gave a light chuckle.

She pouted, placing on hand on her hip. “I’d like to see you do better.”

Shinji’s response was interrupted by another voice bursting into his mind.

“Thanks for waking me up!”

Ami Shinohara. The cyborg from earlier. He didn’t need to recognise the voice, the owners identity was carried with the metadata.

“Sorry. I’m not used to using this yet.”

He hoped it sounded as apologetic as he wanted to.

“Be careful next time then, okay? Some of us are still human enough to need sleep.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

He could feel his cheeks starting to warm.

“What?” the others enquired. They seemed to loom over him, like predators sensing weakness.

He shrunk down into himself .“I accidentally woke someone up.”

For a moment, he swore Anika’s attention had been somewhere else, but where he couldn’t tell. She gave him an amused smile, but Shinji could tell it was almost forced. She glanced at Nené who seemed to genuinely find his little error mildly amusing at best....

-------

Why do I do this so late?

Hopefully I'm getting everyone right. Writing other people's characters is hard. (At least when they can complain). And, in case it matters, the original mine failed because of chronic poor management.... they didn't invest in new mining processes when they had the money to do so, and got caught out when the large deposits dried out. They struggled to modernise and start digging smaller pockets economically, but failed to get up to speed in time and the banks called in the loans.
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[Black Aeronaut]

Made some serious progress on another project of mine (fifty pages written in a day and a half!?) so I'm gonna try and divert some of this creative outburst towards writing some stuff with Gina and Ben for this. I'll try and catch you on IRC later, Dartz.

[robkelk]

Anika dangled what looked like a plain ordinary wrist-band in front of Shinji. It seemed to be made of a pink

Either it's amazing what The Jason can do with flowers nowadays, or you cut off the end of that line before posting...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Fixed the problem, thanks.

Right now, the plan is for Shinji to speak with Yayoi, Rei, Jet, Gina and maybe the Catgirls and get some advice and differing perspectives on things, before coming to his own conclusions. But my stories rarely go according to plan.

And I just realised, Yayoi has either met the real Rei Ayanami, or is at least aware that she exists somewhere out there.

Insane random plotbunny: Giant robot (Gundam replica?) with Tanalloy batteries. Shinji finds out that, somewhere out there there really is a Rei Ayanami. One berserker incident later, an awakened AI (Isaka Minagata), it somehow manages to forcibly tear a hole through the barriers between realities by triggering a resonance cascade within the battery metal and disappears from Fenspace, taking Shinji with it......
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[Bob Schroeck]

And I just realised, Yayoi has either met the real Rei Ayanami, or is at least aware that she exists somewhere out there. 

Well, a real Rei.  There are multiple Evangelion timelines grouped together into something Marller calls a "skein" in an unreleased scene from DW6.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

And I just realised, Yayoi has either met the real Rei Ayanami, or is at least aware that she exists somewhere out there.

True, Yayoi has met a Rei.

However, she's not going to mention that to Shinji unless he asks specifically – she has enough empathy to know that would be bad for Shinji's psyche at the moment. (The alternative: "Oh, yes, I met your friend a few years back. No, she wasn't an android or a biomod. No, I can't tell you how to reach her." And Shinji goes into a funk or a shutdown.) She won't lie to him, but she won't say everything she knows, especially if she thinks saying what she knows would hurt him.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Ace Dreamer]

Should I mention the "Rei Gun" here? [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Dartz]

It's helping me set some dialogue.

-------

Jet finished the last of her mug of tea, downing the last of it in one. The sun shone in through the apartment windows as it rose like a flare over the horizon.

“How many times do I have to admit I was wrong?”

"Just once," replied Yayoi, "as long as you know what you were wrong about. Jet, I know what it's like to not say what I was really feeling... all right, that was the original me, not the me that's here in this world, but I still know. Not saying what I should have said caused a lot of pain to somebody I care about."

Jet looked down at the floor for a moment. “Shinji was in for pain either way. I tried to do the right thing. I wanted to do the right thing for him, I just didn’t know what it was.” She crossed her legs, settling back into the couch. “And he’s still going to have a hard time of it when this is over.”

Yayoi placed her mug on the saucer on the coffee table. “Even so, he has people who care about him to help him through it.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I’m still amazed at the response we got from the rest of Fenspace.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant.”

“I know. But still....” She trailed off into her own thoughts.

“What?”

“I was just reminded of something a friend told me a long time ago.” Something that had filled her up with a quiet, illuminating happiness that had come from somewhere deep within. “It’s not important right now.”

“And where is Shinji now?” Yayoi gently changed the subject. “Has he been told we’ve arrived?”

“Not yet,” Jet admitted after a few moments. “He’s with Anika and Nené now, having an ‘AI’s night in’.” A wry grin spread across her lips for a moment before she forced it down. “He seems to be bonding with Anika, and I’m worried about interrupting that too quickly.”

She took a sip from the mug. It was a European tea, a strong one with a sharp bitter edge. It wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t what she was used to. “He might resent not being told.”

Jet answered with a slow nod. “I want to give him a chance to spend some time with them at least, he’s going to need new friendships aswell.”

“He is. But it won’t just be you he’ll resent.”

“I’ll let him know then.” Jet looked away, out the window for a moment, trying to hide how.... incompetent.......she felt. “But. On some level, he’s going to be disappointed, especially if he just runs straight to her.”

“You could tell him they’re tired after the journey.” Yayoi suggested. “And, I’d like to meet to meet him first, by myself.”

“Right, right. “Jet was quiet for a few seconds, her full concentration leaving the room. “I just messaged Anika. She’ll tell him, since she’s with him.” Jet went to take another drink from her cup, before realising that it was empty. “More tea?”

“Is there anything milder?”

“Sorry, we only Breakfast tea, but I can try.” A little less time to brew would do it. The kettle started to warm up, giving Jet enough time to remember where she’d left the teabags. She rummaged for artificial milk for her own cup, then made doubly certain she didn’t mix up the individual mugs.

“There’s one more thing, Jet.” Yayoi broke the quiet. “How do you feel about him?”

Jet closed her eyes for a few seconds turning it over in her mind. The kettle started to hiss as it warmed up.

“I didn’t want to wake him at first,” she answered, quietly. ”But Anika convinced me otherwise and I’m glad to say I was wrong about ot.” A genuine smile crawled across her face. “Less than a week ago, he was just a group of inert parts, and now he's a living person who has a chance at happiness because of us here. There’s something.....” She stopped, taking a few moments to search for the right word. “....I don’t know what it is exactly but it’s exciting.”

The sort of exciting that’d cause any self-respecting Mad to go the full Blue-haired Frankenstein. The sort that sent a giddy existential shudder through her frame just thinking about it. She had made life.

Seven days earlier, Shinji had been a bare shell mounted to a workbench jig for final alignments. Just a complicated kettle, really. Something she woulddn’t have given a second thought about dismantling and just using for spare parts.

And now that shell was a living person. While the kettle was just a kettle, steadily coming to the boil.

Yayoi nodded. “I understand that completely.” She looked up at Jet, then down at her own hands. “And in the next few years, who he is will be shaped and formed by you and those around him until he becomes his own truly unique individual. In fact, it’s already begun.” She covered an alto chuckle with her hand.” I honestly didn’t ever expect Shinji Ikari to be a biker.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that he enjoys riding.” Jet shrugged. “If he’s anything, he’s a fourteen year old boy first.”

End of 'Jet Jaguar in the Steelyard', that's what Jet just remembered.
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