subsystem | voice

Entry tags:

voice

[ Kitty's voice is cheerful, girlish, and energetic. She hasn't been around lately: the effects of getting out the warning about the invasion of Olympus had intense physical effects on her, and a long period of unconsciousness has been followed by a period of working hard to recover from that physical weakness. So this post's chipperness is partially motivated by the fact that Kitty's persona/alias Lizzie is just a chipper person, and it's partially motivated by the fact that Kitty wants to prove to herself that she's recovered and in good health and spirits. So...Honestly, that energy is frankly bordering on manic. ]

Hullo, Zion! Or at least the network-users of Zion. It's Lizzie again.

A few things. The first of these things, I think, is going to make some of you quite happy. I expect a lot of you remember the restaurant I work at - Cafe Modak - it's the one with the best food in the whole city, so you might have heard of it. If you pay attention to those sorts of things. Anyway, Chef and Mrs Dutt - that's our owner - are putting together a little celebration dinner, for the people who helped defend Olympus. And also when I say little celebration dinner, I actually mean that it's going to basically be a feast. Everyone's invited, but people who helped out get to eat free. So if you've got any dishes to request, just request them here, and I'll pass it along to the two of them.

Anyway, the second thing is that we really don't all know each other so well, do we? I mean, we do all use this, but I hardly know any of your names. Or anything about you. So we ought to play one of those silly games like they make you do, to get comfortable with the people around you. So...How about we play a few rounds of two truths and a lie? If you all know that game. Or you could do a little introduction speech. Or just talk about your favorite sims, if you do sims.

[ Translation: let me pick your brains and figure out what sorts of people you are. ]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

It was never proper book, ( with a hint of cautious warmth, not quite as ready as kitty's laugh but making the attempt, ) only letters I write to my parents, from places I go.

Ohhh. Well - that's something, at least. Honestly, I respect anyone who can learn any language at all. All I know is English - and a few words in Czech.

It's well worth doing, but I can't say it was ever my highest priority. And English serves me just fine, out here.

( her accent is fairly crisply british; upper class, well educated, sounds like a snob. although not too much of one to play silly party games on the intranet with random teenagers. )

Oh, but that's good too!

[ There's no manipulation there. No lies. This is the honest, real excitement of a girl who never had the chance to go more than twenty miles from where she was born until she found herself in a new world altogether. ]

Have you traveled many places, then? Many remarkable places?

I travel very much in make-believe places. ( and she is scrupulous about avoiding legitimizing her matrix, however difficult it can sometimes be to separate what she considers to be real in its impact on her (her own choices - her own feelings) and what is simply a false thing, a nothing thing to be left behind and disowned. ) Some beautiful. Some remarkable. Some just roads to other places.

Yeah, but it'd be good, you know. Being able to approach people in their own languages. I don't know how I'd even start to learn one. [ A beat - ] Aside from...uploading an entire bloody program into my head, I guess.

[ Kitty's own accent is English as well, though not upper-class, not well-educated. She's South London, and even if she's pretty okay at manipulating her accent to sound a little posher than she was raised she's not that good. Features slip through. She's clearly from a very different social milieu. ]

Well - tell me about the best one you've seen. Make-believe or real. Or one of each. That can be your next truth.

From my understanding, you can do that, but you'll find that it's only a good start outside of the matrix or a simulation. A leg up, if you will, but not quite so efficient as it is in a program setting.

( mila doesn't seem particularly concerned with reenacting british class warfare. we're all in the gutter now, and no one can see the stars through the layers of rock protecting us all from the apocalyptic shithole that is what's left of earth. )

And that's weird, isn't it? It seems like it ought to just...work. I mean, it's our brains, right? They ought to be filled with what we put in them, both in and out of the Matrix. I mean, thoughts are thoughts. Knowledge is knowledge.

I don't think so.

We're not just jugs to be filled; the mind is an incredibly complex machine, and 'downloading information' into it ... it makes sense that it would rely on assistance that we can receive when our minds are directly connected to another machine, leaving us with an advantage when we leave, but an imperfect one. The matrix is a machine. The way we connect to it is through a machine.

We aren't. We don't function the same way or absorb information in the same way. I imagine it protects against overstimulation and the possibility of being simply overwhelmed to the point of becoming a dribbling idiot full of things we can no longer coherently function well enough to use.

Edited 2015-08-29 03:46 (UTC)

There is tree that I am not allowed to climb, for all the years that I was small. On the grounds, where I grow up. It becomes habit not to climb, even when I am a little grown; I go to it, when I have come of age--

( that is a euphemism for something that involved a knife )

--and I see my home from the highest point to which I can climb. And then I make my papa catch me, like I am small again.

What'll be the alcohol situation at this feast of yours?

Oh - I know that some people don't like it when there's alcohol present. Are you worried about that? I can make sure that there's none near you, if that'll make you more comfortable...

[ She knows perfectly well why he's asking. She doesn't even bother to hide the teasing amusement in her voice. ]

This is hard with the whole 'do things from the Matrix even count' thing that nobody agrees on, so I'm just going to make them all from there. In my home matrix I:

Dropped out of college. Got a pony for my sixth birthday. Could do magic.

[ Oh - Kate. One of her favorites. Kitty's voice goes from peppy-perky talking-to-people-she-doesn't-know mode into something a little bit quieter, a little bit calmer - the friendly voice you use for talking to someone you already like and don't have to pretend any enthusiasm for. ]

Oh, I'd say the Matrix counts. After all, even if what you did didn't have any real, physical effect, you still decided to do it. So even if the things you did in the Matrix didn't have any effect upon the world, you were changed and shaped by your decisions, right?

[ So: ]

Anyway, I think... [ Hm. ] I think you didn't drop out of college.

By your decisions, sure, [ Kate agrees easily, the thoughtful note in her tone a little muted, a little indulgent, like this is a conversation she's had before more than once but not one she minds having again, at least with Lizzie, who she likes and who also seems to agree with her which is always nice. ] But like you and Jack were discussing for a second there-- if one of us said we'd eaten shellfish, would it be a lie? That's a slightly different question.

Anyway. [ Does Lizzie's home world have gameshows? Because Kate makes a buzzer noise, errnt! and there's a faint swish of fabric and hair as she shakes her head. ]

I dropped out after a semester. But I'm pleased it seems unlikely.

Uh-huh.

[ He already sounds fond. Baby minx. Adorable. ]

Here's two truths and a lie for you: I've been to all seven continents--as they existed in our heads, whatever--I've been in three sword fights, and I have no qualms about killing minors who get between me and a liquor bottle.

[ Cheerily: ]

Number three! You'd feel dreadful.

Really?

[ That's really surprising. Kate seems so determined - that she wouldn't follow something through...Maybe college isn't worth much? Kitty has only the vaguest notion of what college actually entails - she's talked with enough people to know that in a lot of Matrixes, people go there to just study more, that it's not like her world where it's just for theoretical magicians and barristers - but it seems like a very large number of extracts that she's talked to have been college-educated.

So, because she's quite curious about what would make Kate change her path: ]

Why'd you leave? If I can ask.

[ That...does take Kitty a little while to work through, mentally. She's a smart girl, but also an uneducated one, and so even though she's gotten used to thinking about brains and levels of reality since she's been unplugged, actually thinking about patterns of cognition is a bit more of a stretch for her. Not something she's used to. She'll get it eventually, but now - ]

What, so, like...You think that being in the Matrix actually...changes the way our brains work?

[ There's a weird little twinge of bitterness at I make my papa catch me. The phrasing and imagery raises a faint memory of a bitter speech - talking cruelly of the girl he used to sit on his shoulders when she was small, how she'd grown up into an unrecognizable traitor that he wanted nothing to do with...

Enough, Kitty. She's been having so many flashes of memory like that - since Olympus. She wants them to stop. ]

Yeah? [ If that comes out a little weak, it gets stronger as she continues. ] That's such a lovely memory. Where did you grow up, then?

No. ( the response is brisk - matter of fact, but not unkind. kitty is taking her time, and trying to understand, so mila is willing to take her time explaining to someone young and thoughtful. ) What I'm saying is that being in the Matrix does not change the way our brains work.

The things that we can do when we're connected to machines are related to specific aptitudes that we each have, but ultimately we are human beings, with all the physical and psychological limitations that that entails. When we are connected in that way, we are part of something that is able to surpass those limitations, temporarily enabling us to also do so.

But it doesn't change what we are, or how we work. And that's why, when we're unplugged, we don't retain the information and experiences in the same way as we do when plugged in. There is a reason why operatives train for combat in the real, as well - what their minds know in the matrix means nothing to the muscle memory and physical requirements that can only be achieved by actually achieving them. And that's a benefit to them, when they're working. More than the other way around.

( she has lots of those - lovely memories. some of them she can even think of without wanting to break something.

she misses him so fiercely, and it's so much less complicated than how badly she sometimes wants her mother. and how foolish, to be this old, to have spent this many years running to catch up, and when finally she discovers that ayse had been wrong all along--

she wishes she were here, to turn around and say of course i always knew, benevenuta without turning a hair, and to tell her that she'd been unplugged for many years, obviously, and it had been a program in her place, and see these lines in her face, now she will say mother and no one will think it's strange, and she can show her how to do everything-- )

In France.

( if it's abrupt, so was the first message. )

In what is called France, there. It was - quiet.

( she doesn't sound french - she sounds russian - and stolsbord is not a french name. but there are stranger things in the many false worlds of the matrix than the things in anna's explanations that don't entirely jive. )

Edited 2015-08-31 13:05 (UTC)

It wasn't the best use of my time.

[ Kate doesn't hesitate, no shame and the sense she's had some time already to sort out the best way to explain this. ]

I realized that I already knew what I wanted to do with my life and it wasn't something college could help me with, so it was a waste to spend all those hours sitting in lectures instead of getting on with it. I can always get a degree later if I need one for some reason. Or could've if I hadn't been unplugged.

[ And that is an answer that, of course, begs the next question: ]

Well - what is it you wanted to do?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 2 of 6

voice

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice

voice

no subject

voice.

voice.

no subject

voice.

voice.

voice.

voice.

no subject

no subject