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[victormakesart]

Victor's sent her boyfriend off to a spa planet, which means that today is a working day, just like the day before was, and the day before that. She's sectioned off a small corner of the Nexus as her workspace, and while she's not using a blowtorch anymore, she was a moment or so ago, if you judge by the blowtorch set off to the side and the protective gear that's piled right next to it. She's wearing a shirt that says 'I'm good, is that bad' on the front and 'I'm bad, is that good' on the back.

She's been working, when she hasn't been sleeping, eating, showering, or patrolling, and she has a lot to show for it. On the table she's been working on (really two tables pressed together), there are upwards of a couple hundred pieces of cut metal, and a whole metal arm, from shoulder joint to wrist, and half of a hand. The hand is what's taking up much of the time. There's also nuts, bolts, screws, hinges, and various thingamabobs in glass jars.

Now she's draped over a Nexus couch like she's been built into it, rocking out to Radiohead (she thought it was appropriate, considering what she's building).

Comments

[random_xtras]

Here comes a sixteen foot tall orange critter, attracted to the music and then distracted by Victor's project. She hunkers down to examine the arm, deedling to herself softly as her yellow optics scan it at various levels.

In her arms a little black and pink being that looks a lot like a Sphinx kitten the size of a human four year old and wearing a parka, pants, and boots is also curiously looking at the arm between wondering glances at Victor.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

Victor measures tall things by how many Victors they are, and this 'bot is at least three of her. When things are really tall, she can't use that system, but generally speaking it works for estimation.

She shies away from the kitten, though, standing up on her tip-toes to watch the someone who's watching her work. "What do you think?"

[random_xtras]

"It's very wonderful," says the little cat person in a little child voice in keeping with his size. "Did you dig up all the metal yourself?"

Hormah chuckles and cuddles him in her hands, then looks at Victor. "Not bad, b'y. So ye've finally lit a fire under yer arse 'n decided t' do 'er?"

She's heard of Victor's dreams of bot building, busybody bot that she is.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"I didn't dig it up, nah. But thank you!"

"Ha!" Victor scratches at the back of her head, looks drowsily satisfied with herself. "I got the okay to build. I have people in my life, I'm not allowed to just... do what I want without considering other people anymore. Even then, it'll take me nearly a year to finish building him."

[random_xtras]

"How ye after doin' t' programmin'?" Hormah gives the kitten child a kiss on the top of his hooded head and is rewarded with a cuddle and a soft purr. "Oh, 'n guess I better be introducin' my aft 'n this'un's." She deedles a chuckle. "I knows yer Victor."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, the programming's part of what's gonna make this take so long. I want to make him as persony as possible, so... I'm not in any rush. And, yeah, how'd you hear about me? And what's your name? And are people talking about me?" She's not sure whether to be delighted or distressed that she's sometimes a topic of conversation.

[random_xtras]

Hormah nods toward where a handsome cobalt blue mech with a strong resemblance to bayformer Jazz is talking to an orange one with hybrid construction similar to Hormah's about the vending machine they're looking at. "Ye knew me mother in law, Bumblebee, some long time ago fer her. T'at's me mate, Rap, 'n he tol' me 'bout ye."

She looks down with a deedle and a grin. "I's Hormah, t' local Primus Servant, 'n t'is here's Bbbrl."

"Hi!" Bbbrl waves and grins.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"Oh, wowzer. It's nice to meet you guys." Victor will always have a softspot for robots and robot families. Then again, she only ever has softspots, given her organic nature.

[random_xtras]

Hormah grins, then deedles a soft chuckle as Bbbrl gets a mitten off and very very gently touches the arm with tiny fingers.

"Bbbrl's folk's after bein' metalworkers," she explains. "'N t'ey knows some simple robotics on account 'o bein' adopted inta a 'Bot family."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"That's cool. I've just, well. I've got what I taught myself, and what I've learned from doing. I've had a couple pretty big robotics projects, that I've either assisted on, or co-created." She pads over to the side of the table herself, touching one of the robotic finger joints.

[random_xtras]

"Someday I'll have a bot body myself," Bbbrl tells her, looking up with a grin that wrinkles his nose and makes his big eyes sparkle. "But I'm no good at transforming yet."

Then he looks back at the bot arm. "And some day I'll build beautiful bot bodies, too!"

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

A soft curve of a smile. "That sounds really nice. You'll get there one day. Bet I could learn a lot from you folks."

[random_xtras]

"Nyaan can almost transform now, and she's nearly an adult," comes Bbbrl's happy reply. "It's not very many years before babies turn into teenagers. Especially if I eat all my veggies. Hormah says so."

Hormah's optics are twinkling as she makes a tiny deedle like clearing her throat.

"How tall ye after makin' 'im, b'y?" she asks, grinning.

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

Adia is in the Nexus, looking a little grimy, for lack of a better word. Like maybe she's been camping, and not the fun kind of camping that has s'mores and songs around the fire.

She's dressed warmly, and absently unravels a lilac-colored scarf, the only bit of color in her otherwise drab outfit. She gives Victor a friendly smile, wondering when the other woman will notice her in between all the rocking out.

Then she sees the metal arm on the table, and her smile falters.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She definitely notices, and she even scrambles up to stand, smiling at her brilliantly. Not only can she start on a project that she's been waiting ages to start on, she can see her buddies!

"Hey, it's so great to see you, what's been going on?" Then: "What's, uh. What's wrong?"

When she gets closer, Adia will be able to see that she's in short-sleeves (and, consequently, why she wants to cover herself). She chose a relatively quiet part of the Nexus, so she thought it was a good spot to get a little bolder.

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

Adia's gaze lingers on the robotic arm, but she silently tells herself not to jump to conclusions. Victor is an artist, she could have created that arm for any number of reasons. Yet there's something in its articulated joints that seems familiar, and keeps a small gnaw of worry in her stomach.

"It's good to see you too, Victor," She replies, smile returning. "Um. A lot has been going on lately, actually. We're living on a planet now. Not Earth, though. Looks like you've been pretty busy making something."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"Hey, that's great that you all found a planet! Is it any good?" She begins to look a little sheepish, because even in the Nexus there are people who might think she's doing something terribly immoral by making a sentient individual. "Yeah, building a person, which, I know, some folks find kinda weird, but I've done it before. With clay, then metal, then I helped a little bit with buildin' Athena, and now there's going to be him."

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

"It's... habitable." Her look gives away her mixed feelings about the planet. "We're still trying to get things organized. But we're safe, at least. The planet has an atmosphere that interferes with the cylons' DRADIS system."

It is only because it is Victor (and because she has the decency to look sheepish) that Adia does not recoil in disgust, but there is a flash of fear and incredulity that flashes in her eyes. "You're... you're building a sentient robot?" She doesn't ask, but the question Why? might as well be floating in a bubble over the woman's head.

((Sorry I dropped the thread. ;_; Thanksgiving happened.))

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"I've helped build a couple in the past." Victor is starting to get the idea that something isn't right, and she bites down on her lower lip. She has this look of concern that fills up her whole entire face in the same way that a blush would. "They're just like humans, really, but without the squishy bits. No risk of sickness, no worry that their organ systems might not work right, if something goes wrong with the child all I have to do is get tools and fix the problem, I... there's something wrong, isn't there? Did I do something wrong?"

((It's totally okay!))

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

Adia looks over at the robotic arm again and lets out a shaky breath. "No. You didn't do anything wrong. I mean. I don't know. It's not my place to judge." She plays with the end of her scarf and tries to swallow back the fear. "I-- the humans in my universe haven't had a good experience with them. Sentient robots." A loose thread on the scarf gets a bitter tug. "Especially the ones 'just like' humans."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She wets her lips, then it dawns on her and there's the brightest look of panic, blazing up like a flare. "Shoot, I'm sorry. That's... that's some sorta hive-mind situation, yeah?" Evil robots usually are. "These guys are individuals, programmed by themselves, and... I promise you, they're completely different than the ones in your 'verse. Completely and totally. I-I, man, I'm sorry."

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

Adia smiles wanly. She can tell Victor is trying to reassure her the best she can. If it had been anyone else, she wouldn't even bother to listen. "They were hive-mind, when they first attacked. Then they left and... and when they came back, some of them looked just like us." She looks at Victor intently. She needs the other woman to understand. "We made them, Victor. The humans made them and gave them sentience and didn't think twice about it. And then they left and came back and they hate us so much--"

She cuts herself off and looks down, fighting back tears. Fear, shame, loss, and even some anger pass over her face. She wipes at her eyes, smudging a bit of the dirt on her face. "But you're... it's different with you. This will be your child, yes? You'll love it and... and you'll treat it right. You won't mass produce it and treat it like crap. And... it'll know it's a robot, right? I mean, it'll know what it is, physically. It won't... it won't find out one day and..."

She trails off, her voice so thick it would choke her to say more. But she doesn't cry.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She looks back to her, equally intent, completely sympathetic. She reaches out, touches her shoulder with the amount of care she'd touch a stovetop that might be still sort of hot, ready to yank her hand back if she flinches. "I'm so sorry."

"It's completely different, I promise. Athena, one of my little girls? She's a 'bot, too. And she's growing up with Anya as her sister, my beautiful baby girls. And they'll know what they are, but they'll also know that they're so loved. That they might be made of metal and not flesh, but they're people." A brief pause where she tries to swallow down the lump in her throat. "Gosh, Adia... I'm sorry. I had no idea."

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

Adia doesn't flinch, but she seems to slouch a little at the touch, like she's done something wrong. "It's not your fault," she says quietly, aware of how tired and cliched those words sound. "It just... seems like a mistake. Not what you're doing," she adds hurriedly, even though a tiny part of her, the part that is irrationally terrified, thinks it could be, "But... building robots that can think for themselves and then treating them as horribly as people did. It's the curse of Prometheus."

She blinks at this information, a strange ghost of a smile passing over her face, something morbidly funny, only to her. Then she looks up, serious. She wants to say she understands, that she knows Victor will be good to them. Instead, she stammers, "I loved one of them. He was... he meant everything to me. I didn't know he was a cylon. Neither did he, not until the end." It feels like a confession, a burden and a release all at once.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"I can't imagine." She really can't even process treating something poorly, much less her own creation, much less her own creation that she spent years lovingly designing.

And then at her admission there's the sort of wince that she tries to bury, but it still shines through, like the glow of light through a very dirty window. "I'm so, so sorry, I had no idea." She opens her mouth, closes it again, rather guppy-like, feeling a soft spiral of uselessness through her belly like what-can-I-say-to-even-begin-to-help. Then she just starts talking, and lets the words do what words do. "That's a terrible thing to have to go through. And your universe sounds... pardon this, it's not a comment on you, but it sounds really scary. It's gotta be hard to trust anything or anyone. Thank you for talkin' with me about this, I know it has to take a lot of guts."

There's a part of her that's fascinated at the idea of a robot that's so humanish that it doesn't know it isn't. The sort of programming that would take... but she isn't interested in tricking her creations. That would be the greatest cruelty. Why not be proud of your nature, of being something entirely new and fully loved?

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

"They weren't seen as sentient," Adia explains softly. "I don't even think they were, at first. They were seen as machines. Like cars, or... or toasters." She says the word disdainfully, as if it were a slur.

It's both strange and comforting to have someone react with such deep sympathy as Victor is. When everyone on your ship has more or less been through the same trauma, this sort of expression of emotion just doesn't happen. It remains unspoken, a dark scar on the heart that nobody bothers to explain. She laughs, very softly, and replies, "It is scary, yes. And hard to trust others. But it's... getting better. More stable."

As if sensing the other woman's unspoken thoughts, she adds, "Cylons... the ones that look like humans. They look like humans on the inside, too. Made of flesh and bone." She shakes her head quickly. "I don't know how it works, they made themselves look human. The... my friend. Caspar. They gave him false memories. That's why he thought he was human."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"That sounds like a group of people engaging in inappropriate activities." She means a clusterf... well, you get the idea, surely.

"I mean, it sounds like the perfect storm of what's exactly not s'posed to happen. One of those days where everything goes wrong, except on a gigantic scale." She worries her lip, gives her shoulder a very gentle squeeze. "Part of the, the reason that 'bots appeal to me is that they're clean. There's so much that can go wrong, with biology. I like a system that's ordered. I like bein' able to look at something and say, 'I know how this works, and I can fix this.' And there's somethin' to be said for building, and seeing something beautiful and alive come up and... I promise, I'm not gonna do anything bad."

[chiron-survivor.livejournal.com]

It pleases Adia, on some level, that Victor would never be interested in cylons. Far too dirty and squishy, just like humans. "I know you won't," Adia says, hanging her head a little, suddenly feeling rather foolish. "Of course I know you won't. I... I try to come to the Nexus with different expectations, y'know? But sometimes fear gets the best of me. I'm sorry."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She drops her hand, ducks her head, eyebrows contracting in. "Oh, Adia... you don't ever have to feel weird about feelin' upset on something. You have every right. Fear like that... it's instinct. I just want you to know, and feel comfortable around me. You know?"

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

Hannibal was just walking by, and he was intrigued by the piles of parts and the work setup he saw. He stopped for a moment to study it. He glanced over the metallic arm, then up at the young person sprawled on the couch. "What are you working on?" he asked softly.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She scrabbles up like a marionette with loose strings, moving like she's taller than she is, like she's lanky. "Oh, uh. A sentient robotic person, which, i-isn't possible where I come from but here I can get what I need to make him."

She's wary explaining to new people, because she's scared of the 'oh, way to be crazy, strange androgynous girl' reaction.

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

He bent down and examined the arm. Robotics was a little beyond him, though he knew the basics. It looked pretty sound. "May I?" he asked, reaching for the arm, but waiting for permission before picking it up. "How do you plan to create sentience?"

There was a soft keening noise, and a small, blue, draconian head peered out from under Hannibal's jacket collar. Sleep time on his shoulder was apparently over.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"Absolutely." The arm is well-articulated, good craftsmanship, which explains why it took her as long as it did. "I've worked on a few robotic projects before, and I've found that it comes with layers of programming detail. And the right parts. It's hard to tell, whether it's hardware or software or a mix of both, and I've been... unwilling to experiment with that, given the moral implications."

And... the tall man has a back-dragon. She has seen stranger, but it does surprise her (perhaps he has tried, and failed, to have it removed). She keeps her attention on him, and not his reptilian abscess.

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

He examined the appendage in great detail, growing more and more impressed. It was very intricate. The joints seemed smooth and natural. "That's lovely," he said, setting it down again very carefully. "Well, if you've managed sentience, then that would imply that it's a person, and experimenting on people isn't right."

With a soft chuckle, he turned his head to gaze at the fire lizard. "You awake, then? I bet you're hungry. Do you do anything but eat and sleep?" His tone was fond, though, and he gently scratched the reptile's eyeridges with one finger. The dragonet scrabbled out from under the jacket, with a little help from Hannibal, and spread his wings. He peered suspiciously at the smaller person through faceted eyes.

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"You got it. And the only way to find out what makes it work exactly is trial and error, which means removing some person's sentience, which... is severely jacked up and I won't do it." She runs her hand back through her hair (fingers catching in tangles through the way, because Victor's hair is almost impossible to tame). "And, and thank you, by the way."

Victor looks back at the critter with a slight wariness. It's good to know that it is its own animal, and not a back-dragon, but that also means that it can get closer to her. She waves hello to the dragon, wiggling her fingers.

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

"I don't blame you. It's perilously close to torture." He gave her a small smile. "You've got a nice little workshop set up here. Impressive. Oh, I'm Hannibal. It's nice to meet you."

The lizard wrapped his tail around Hannibal's neck and hissed softly. "Shh, Mago, it's all right," Hannibal said softly. "Nothing's going to hurt you."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She smiles back at him, shyly. She can read people pretty well, and she soaks up approval like those trendy girls soak up ultraviolet radiation from tanning booths. If she had more of an ego, you could say he was flattering her, but she's just genuinely surprised and proud to hear nice things. She offers her hand. "Gosh, thank you so much. I'm Victor Allen, pleased to meet you, too."

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

Hannibal shook her hand firmly. Mago didn't like strangers touching HIS person, but he kept quiet, since Hannibal didn't seem upset. "It's a pleasure. So, are robots what you do for a living, or just a hobby?"

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She has a professional I-deal-with-people-for-a-living handshake. "A hobby. I have a lot of hobbies. But, uh. This is a kid I've been planning for years."

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

"You must have put a lot of work into it." He glanced admiringly down at the project again. "I'll look forward to seeing the finished product."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"I have. He'll be beautiful. The work'll take me the better part of a year, far as my current estimation goes, but it'll be worth it." She ducks her head, sorely tempted to ramble. "Sorry if I'm goin' on and on."

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

He grinned. "Don't worry about it. It's fascinating."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

"In, in that case, you seem like the sorta fellow who'd appreciate this: I've programmed in human error. I was thinking... what makes a sentient 'bot different than a person, and I'd decided it was clumsiness. That is to say, a 'bot wouldn't have it. A 'bot will draw a perfect straight line every single time. So I'm programming in micro timing errors."

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

"That's... that's pretty incredible," he said, gazing at her. "Even the best of us make our little mistakes. It must be insanely difficult to calculate in."

[victormakesart.livejournal.com]

She looks brilliantly proud of herself, looking up at him. "Thank you. I thought of it, watching ice-skaters. That all it takes is a fraction of a second of an error."

[hes-onthe-jazz.livejournal.com]

Well, she should be. It's some of the most clever robotics he's ever heard of. Not that he's an expert, of course, but he tries to keep up with what's possible. "Have you been doing this long?" he asked. She seemed very young, but that obviously didn't mean she couldn't be brilliant.