subsystem | 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. ]

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( there's a brief pause, and then a dry, slightly startled laugh from mila's end. )

That's a very flattering guess. I'm afraid I'm starting to push forty fairly hard.

Oh!

[ Honestly a little surprising. But, cheerfully: ]

Well, you've got a beautiful voice, definitely. I bet it's an elegant forty. So - was I wrong?

( light and wry, ) I never mastered Spanish, but I can do a good impression of a Spanish speaker doing broken English.

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. )

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. ]

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)

[ 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?

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.

Do you...know how the Matrix interface really works? I mean, like - the details of it? How it works with our minds?

As it's relevant to my job, yes.

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