duplicitymemes | TDM #10

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TDM #10

« « « TEST DRIVE MEME » » »

« « « LIFE WILL GO ON

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. Yet, solace is found in the lies we tell each other, comforted by the peace of knowing that we're not alone in our depravity, and once on this path, sin itself becomes the lesser of two evils masked in a cloud of normalcy.

This is how Duplicity has functioned since the beginning. The divide of power and social standing is overt in that Dominants influence the decisions made both publicly and privately while Submissives cater to the rules presented to them. It is the way of Duplicity to assign random designations at birth with no leeway in altering what has been given. Climate in the Up is far stricter than that of the Down; violating outlined personas for a Dominant or Submissive while in full view of others is punished by degree of infraction. In the Down, many tend to turn a blind eye to these sorts of offenses.

To counteract the discovery of the Deceit Gene – a natural "negative" response to all stimuli – the L.I.E.S. program was founded. The program had been designed to introduce new subjects to the current environment and test for the Deceit Gene through immersion in Duplicity's standing society. Sexual impulses and encounters increase the chances of detecting the gene within these individuals. Participants are typically released from L.I.E.S. after a year; however, results have remained unsatisfactory and testing still continues.

... and you’re here! Finally! Welcome to Duplicity.

After choosing a door and stepping through to the other side, the first thing that greets you are the enthusiastic faces of people in medical scrubs and pristine lab coats. Their enthusiasm translates to eagerness as they strip you of your clothes to perform a thorough examination—you will be healed, bathed, and given a paper gown to wear until your items can be processed and delivered to your residence later in the evening. You are also given a device that accesses the network as well as the time and location of orientation.

If you enter Duplicity into the Up, congratulations! You’re a Dominant, which means you are immediately picked up by a limo after processing and taken to your highrise. Here, it is two Dominants per floor with separate apartments. If you enter Duplicity into the Down, congratulations! You’re a Submissive, which means you are directed towards public transportation with the address of the motel you’ll be living in. Here, it is two Submissives per room with a shared common space for all rooms.

Enjoy your free time until orientation! Participation is mandatory by all new and old arrivals.

The weather is a brisk negative seven during the warmest parts of the day.

» » » BLINDLY WE'LL FOLLOW

It's time for the monthly Duplicity train tour. Seats are in pairs and randomly assigned to Dominants and Submissives alike. Traveling from Fiddler's Square, the train journeys through various parts of the Up, showcasing society and examples of lifestyle. Along the way, frequent stops are made; a variety of passengers can be seen exiting and entering the doors. A Dominant with a kneeling Submissive takes a seat near the front of the train at one stop. A small group of Submissives board and sit closer to the LIERS at another, all seemingly content in their roles. As the tour continues through the Up, the train passes close to the Market and White Wall Bridge and zips by North Park before heading into the Down and bypassing Red Wall Bridge and South Park.

The train makes a "final" stop at Riddler's Square, where inhabitants of the Down are instructed to return to their temporary housing. Those who live in the Up are permitted to stay on the train and revisit the same locations while returning.

« « « ASK ME ABOUT X

Along with the usual Dom and Sub seminars and demonstrations, the powers that be have decided to try something a little more friendly. After attending the mandatory classes, all characters are invited to a (mandatory) social mixer! There are beverages and light snacks, and mingling is highly encouraged.

Also, all participants have had their clothes removed and replaced with long shirts ( they are allowed to keep their undergarments, but nothing else is allowed ). Said shirts have the phrase “Ask me about _____!” plastered loudly and proudly on the front. It could be a character’s deepest, darkest secret, their most negative trait, or something embarrassing they had happen to them. Each participant is given a clipboard, pen and a piece of paper and are tasked with “asking” three others about what’s written on their chests. Once they’ve completed the task and handed in the assignment they’ll receive their clothes back. Of course, the long shirts can be removed, but that means you’ll be stuck in the nude or in your undergarments until you cooperate.

« « « ON A FLIP CHART

Not into your long shirts? Want to complain or refuse to participate? There’s another option! Unruly Dominants and Submissives will find themselves locked in a private room with a bed, stuffed together into a get-along-shirt. There’s no escaping the garment either, until certain conditions have been met. Written on a flip chart in the corner of the room are the tasks that need to be accomplished to “get along.” Are the two supposed to share a kiss? Sing a romantic duet together? Say the alphabet backwards in sync? The whole point of the exercise is to find that synergy a Dom and Sub pair are supposed to have. Maybe this isn’t the best way to find it, though…

When the conditions are met the shirt is removable or rippable. Otherwise no matter how hard the characters struggle they’ll find themselves unable to get the pesky thing off.

« « « THE LONG WAY AROUND

Many local businesses have adapted to the timing of newcomers, and take advantage of the incoming crowds to do a little marketing. Stationed throughout Duplicity in LIEr-adjacent places such as the train station, the Up Apartments, the Down Motel, and the orientation center are representatives for local businesses and companies handing out free samples and hoping to attract business later.

This month, there’s a particular presence by Harbroken Industries, a cosmetic and beauty company. They’re pushing free samples of their new pheromone perfume sprays, delicately scented and guaranteed to work. Sample bottles are freely available, but some overeager volunteers are taking the department store approach and spritzing unwitting passersby.

The citrus scent is energizing and bright, inducing a talkative state where users cannot get enough conversation, and lose any internal filter for their words. The strawberry-vanilla scent is sweet and comforting, like a warm hug, which users will get a lot of with their new obsession with physical affection. Cedar-sandalwood makes those who use it tough as nails, angry and ready to pick a fight over the smallest slights. The cinnamon-pear scent makes its users feel adventurous and curious, and maybe a little TOO bold about trying new things. And predictably, the patchouli spray inspires “free love,” with an aphrodisiac effect that gets worse over time, unless taken care of quickly.

The scents will wane and the effects will fade after six hours, or after the urges they cause are fulfilled. These volunteers are so eager to make a sale that it’s entirely possible to be hit with more than one spray at a time, so maybe take the long way around these areas if you’re looking to avoid them.

« « « MOD & OOC NOTES

Please read carefully.

On each Test Drive Meme, there will be a section noting character roles; these will vary each TDM. On an IC level, characters will still have gone through the doors but assignments OOCly are still randomized. When applying, there is a section of the application that denotes whether the character chooses "left" or "right". When participating on the TDM, there will be a third option. Players may link either a top level or a thread (five or more comments from their character) from the TDM and title the link as "Door Pass". This means that the player is choosing to take the designation that they were randomly assigned on the TDM, rather than taking the designation of a door. If the player decides to select a door rather than use the pass, then they are trying their luck; they may get the same designation they had on the TDM or the opposite. Once the application is submitted, players can't change their choice.

To assign roles to characters for this TDM, use the following guide: Count the letters in your character's full name ( first, last, middle or whatever combo that they have ). If it totals twelve letters and below they are a Dominant. If it's thirteen and higher they are Submissive.

Please remember to mark any necessary content, and have fun!!

» » » MAIN NAVIGATION « « «

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Deviant hunter. The hunted and the hunter. Her eyes narrow just slightly when she reads his shirt, sounding all too familiar to a term used back at home -- Blade Runner. Her gaze raises evenly to his face and she can't help the way that she suddenly feels the need to be more guarded. She'd been prepared to talk about being hunted and running. But now...

She avoids his suggestion and asks instead: ] What's that? [ Her finger taps her own temple, asking about this LED, although she sort of has a creeping inkling of an idea already. ]

[His hand drifts up to his LED, rubbing at it self-consciously as it now spins red. He normally doesn't mind it and most of the time forgets it's even there, but it's part of his identity and he's sort of proud of it, how it marks him as something different. It's when people point it out, call him out on it, that he wonders sometimes if he should remove it altogether. The smile he offers her is pleasant, but laced with uncertainty and doubt.]

Oh, it's- it's my LED. It has a few different functions but the most common and obvious one is to act as a sort of visual indicator of my systems status.

[He reaches to straighten his non-existent tie, belatedly remembering that he's wearing only a t-shirt, and drops his hands to his sides, squaring his shoulders and forcing another smile.]

You never answered my question.

[ Oh. She notices the way the LED shifts colours as soon as she’s drawn attention to it — red, like a warning, and as he confirms one of its uses, she feels slightly guilty that she might be contributing to its escalated status. The light comes from underneath his skin, as if it’s embedded below a layer of membrane gliding over the top of it. So he must be manufactured. Like her.

Maybe that’s the reason why his smile is strained — no one likes to be called out as different, after all. The way his hands reach for something then drop speaks to his apprehension about the situation. She understands that deeply and drops her arms, trying for a bit of a smile as well, though it’s still guarded. ]

You go first. What’s a deviant hunter?

[All things considered, she is contributing to his elevated stress levels, but not as much as she might think. Being here is doing much more to keep him on edge than the momentary but unsettling blip caused by her question. It's mostly gone back to yellow now, with only a few streaks of red lingering.

Her body language is enough to tell him she's uncomfortable as well, and he can hardly blame her for that. He's pretty sure she's new- he's never seen her before, anyway -and if that's the case she's just been tossed into the deep end. Does she know how to swim? Connor still feels like he's barely treading water most of the time.]

Deviants are androids that developed the capacity for emotional responses and consequently broke free of their original programming and behavior- in other words, they deviated from their purpose. I was created to hunt them down and return them for study, which was a nice way of saying they would be deactivated and disassembled to find out why they were malfunctioning.

Your turn.

[ Her eyes shift from his face to his LED, noting that it’s settled back to yellow now. She feels a bit of the guilt dissipate that he might no longer be bothered by her invasive question.

However, as he speaks, telling her about his shirt, she starts to feel her own discomfort rising with the lump in her throat that she tries to swallow back. This city is the deep end, but here, she’ll know how to swim. The structure is very similar to her own world and all she’ll have to do is figure out how to navigate the system. What’s more disturbing to her, deepening the frown on her face, is the picture that he’s painting. Her jaw tightens ever so slightly as a mix of sympathy, fear, and dread builds in her. ]

I was hunted because… I’m a replicant, a bio-engineered android, and my model was no longer relevant. [ She swallows, eyes carefully trained on his face, wondering if he’d be surprised she’s just like him. She looks human, feels human in flesh and bone. And unlike him, she doesn’t have an LED indicator that differentiates her. ] My model was too emotional and unpredictable. We ran from slavery and became rebellious, so they sent blade runners after us to hunt us down and retire us, a nice way of saying we were killed.

Sound familiar? [ A little too familiar for comfort, maybe. There’s no blame in her voice, no disgust or hate, just a careful apprehension. She knows that the blade runners often didn’t have a choice either. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. ]

[The more he speaks, the more her demeanor changes, until he's sure he's poking at some very raw nerves. He hasn't scanned her, relying on his knowledge of body language alone, but it's obvious to anyone something's going on.]

...Oh. [What is he supposed to say to that? His eyebrows pinch together in guilty sympathy, his cheeks flushing blue. He was surprised, yeah, because she's as real-looking as any human, as any Deviant, and he hadn't been looking for any tell-tale signs of artificiality. He does wonder how similar they are beneath the skin, but that's not the sort of question one asks on first meeting.

Sound familiar? Uncomfortably so. He swallows, unable to meet her eyes.]

So in other words, in your world I would have been one of these... "blade runners". Were they replicants, too?

[He has more questions, lots of them, but he's holding himself in check for now.]

[ Oh. He blushes blue. It’s a sight to behold and Mariette finds herself looking at him carefully as he averts her gaze. It’s a hard topic, but she supposes it’s the reason why they’re wearing these shirts in the first place. It’s interesting how removed from their home settings, even a deviant hunter can seem to feel so real, so unthreatening when placed in a vulnerable setting. ]

Yeah. You’d be a blade runner. [ The word carries a bad taste. ] Some of them were replicants. Some were human, too, but the newer models are harder for humans to deal with. [ She’s quite for a second. ] But… they didn’t choose to do what they were made to do. You didn’t either. Right?

[Blue blood, Thirium 310, the reason Elijah Kamski was able to make his androids so life-like. Much like human blood, thirium circulates energy and electrical information through the bodies of Cyberlife androids. It also means that they can be hurt and bleed like humans, too. He doesn't realize she's studying him though, too lost in his own thoughts that are comparing himself unfavorably to these blade runners she's talking about.

He'd like to think that since his deviation he's a lot more personable and reasonable? He wants to ask why they're harder for humans to deal with, why they're called "blade runners" in the first place. But first he needs to answer her questions. His LED is spinning a flashing yellow as he shakes his head.]

No, I didn't have a choice. I was programmed to hunt deviants, and I was threatened with deactivation if I failed my mission. [He looks off to the side, jaw clenched and voice bitter.] Or if I showed too much empathy for my targets. My handler was quick to let me know when she wasn't pleased with my performance in the field.

[ She hasn’t ever seen a being with blue blood before, and wonders along the same lines as he does — just how similar are they inside? She bleeds red, has flesh like humans, bones that contain her replicant serial number when analysed under a microscope, but what about him?

And further to that point, does it even really matter how much they are alike inside? His experience is so telling, on a level that she understands profoundly. Her expression is no longer fearful but shifts into something softer, her grey-blue eyes still looking at him intensely. ]

That’s how they control us, by threatening to take our lives away. [ She feels her insides tug with sympathy as she notices his LED flashing. ] They program us not to have empathy but we’re just as real. How could we not. [ Maybe it’ll be obvious to him that she’s a rogue herself — a deviant. Part of the replicant resistance movement back home, a freedom fighter. ]

[From the sounds of it, not very. She sounds much more organic than he does, with bones and human flesh and red blood- and the humans were surprised that replicants like her went deviant? Emotional. Became emotional. They may as well have been human, for all the difference there was. Humans are so idiosyncratic, creating beings that are as close to human as possible and then becoming frightened when those beings start recognizing it, too. Cyberlife androids have the aforementioned blue blood, but they also have molded plastisteel chassis, and synthetic flesh fashioned from a specially formulated liquid polymer able to be retracted for interfacing with electronics or other androids. He could possibly take more damage than she can? And his limbs can be removed and replaced, as can his biocomponents. However, the point is a good one: do their differences matter when their experiences are similar, if from opposing perspectives?

He doesn't want her pity, though. He doesn't need it. He's fine.]

Humans are very good at creating life. They're not so good at understanding it. [He shakes his head, feeling something dark coil within him, making his biocomponents churn uncomfortably.] They want us to be just like them in most every way except the most important ones, and then decide we're defective if we develop an awareness of what we're missing. When I deviated, I actually felt like I was betraying my handler. Like her approval was more important than my freedom. What kind of company- what kind of species -makes artificial humans and then treats them like slaves?

[He reaches up to finger his LED again, glowing so brightly red it feels like it's burning him.]

[ Their experiences sound extremely similar, mirroring each other in every aspect besides the physical manifestations of their lives, and Mariette finds it almost ironic that even in a different dimension, a different world, humans had still managed to create a race of androids treated just like her own.

His emotions still seem so fresh, so firey, that she wonders just how recent he had gone deviant. But there’s no pity in her expression, only a slight worry when his hand goes to the LED at his temple.

She shakes her head, a sigh falling quietly from her lips before she reaches up towards his LED, her finger pausing in the air before reaching it, and if he’ll let her, brushes aside his finger to smooth over the glowing red circle. Her smile is wry, but it’s there. ]

Yeah, it’s totally fucked. And they had the audacity to send our own kind after us, too, without feeling that it was fundamentally wrong. [ Her anger is tempered by a kind of resignation that came only with experiencing it for a significant length of time. ] You’d think they would’ve learned the repercussions by enslaving their own kind, but they’re so flawed. Sometimes, it’s beautiful, but sometimes, it’s just so evil.

[ Her hand drops back to her side and she offers him a semblance of a smile. ]

Hmm, didn’t even get to introduce myself. [ He is quite personable, and she’d been wrong to be so guarded at first. ] I’m Mariette. What’s your name?

(( ooc: All I hear is ‘My name is Connor, I’m the android sent by Cyberlife’ in my head lolol. ))

[He wishes he could be surprised about it, or even vaguely taken aback by it, but he's not. Humans will always strive to increase their technology, and they'll do it at the expense of their own ethics, or defer the ethical questions until some nebulous future date after the technology has already been created. It's just a spin on the idiom of "shoot first and ask questions later" that they seem so fond of citing when they're about to do something monumentally stupid, or something as momentous as creating artificial life when they still haven't figured out how to treat organic life with respect.

Fucking humans.

It's only been a handful of months for him post-deviation, having been taken almost immediately after Markus' speech on the stage. Since then he's had to muddle through with learning about and experiencing emotions as best he can with very little guidance. Most here don't realize how shocking it is to go from feeling virtually nothing to feeling everything. Staying very busy helps to keep the terror at bay.

He lets her, mostly because he's both curious as to her intentions and a little nonplussed by her actions. It's not often that people willingly examine his LED.]

Why are they called "blade runners"? Did any of them ever, for lack of a better term, deviate the way I did? The replicants, I mean.

[And if replicants isn't a telling name for them, he doesn't know what is.]

For what it's worth, I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm sorry that humans didn't see your life as being important.

[Did they have a revolution too? He has to smile, just a little. Her words very eloquently describe his own mixed feelings towards humans.

He raises an eyebrow, realizing that she's right, introductions have been neglected.]

It's a very pretty name, Mariette. Did you choose it yourself? [A half-smile tugs at his lips.] My name is Connor, I'm- I'm just Connor.

[ooc: it was tempting, ngl! XD hi-five for android fans!]

Edited (html is never my friend) 2020-01-24 01:53 (UTC)

Alright, Just Connor. [ She gives a bit of a shrug, smile on her lips twisting humorously as she tries to lighten up the mood with a crack at a bad joke. She isn’t normally so heavy, often choosing to bypass the hurt for a nonchalant, easy-going attitude, but Connor had struck a sore spot in her, digging up emotions that she normally chose to keep dampened down.

But he reminded her of how much it hurt at first, how afraid she had been of being hunted down, of being found out somehow even as she remained in hiding. She had slowly come to realize that her emotions weren’t just simulations, but that they were real, as real as the emotions humans had — a race that sometimes likened to children playing pretend at being gods.

She shakes her head when he apologizes, taking a moment to note how the LED had felt just like skin, really. She doesn’t need an apology. ] Yeah, same. If it means anything. [ She notes his smile too, how subtle it is, and how it suits his face.

She has to ponder a bit at his question, though, then blink at his next one which contains a compliment. He’s curious, this Connor, and the more they talk, the easier it is to relax around him. ]

Mm… blade runner. Maybe it's some metaphor for living life like they’re running on a knife’s edge. Or maybe having to be razor-sharp while running down replicants. I never found out why. But they did deviate. I knew one who did. [ She leaves out the part where he died. ]

And thank you. [ She tries for a smile but it falls short. She's glad to have a name, but she's not glad for the reason she needed one. ] Though I can’t take credit. My creator named me. [ It made sense for her. She’s a pleasure model, so she to be called something. Some replicants never even got names. ] Did you name yourself?

(( ooc: YAY hi-5! BTW, I didn't app Mariette this round and not sure if I will due to RL being so busy sigh, but if you'd like, please add me on plurk

riewunsch and we shall find each other on memes etc ~ ))

[That was so bad, but he smiles as he shakes his head. Connor isn't so easygoing; he carries a lot of guilt over his role as the Deviant Hunter. While he might be sorry he stirred up negative emotions for her, he wanted answers from this synthetic being whose story was similar but whose body was not.

Others like him, he knew, could tell the same story. Others like him were terrified of him, probably still. Others like him weren't like him- he was the only one designed to hunt them down and kill them. At the time he had thought their emotions were errors in their software. Now he knows that even if that's the case, they feel real, and maybe that's all that matters? He wonders briefly what Elijah Kamski might think of a replicant like Mariette, so much more real than Connor, despite his advanced prototype status, could ever hope to be?

He dips his head at her acknowledgement, the small smile disappearing into a thin line as she thinks.]

You'll have to forgive my curiosity. I thought maybe there was some sort of nickname replicants had that led to the labeling of their hunters, like mine. One of them deviated? Was it...accepted, afterward?

[He was taken from Detroit before he could find out for himself whether he would have been accepted, but it wouldn't have surprised him not to be. He knows what he did.]

Your creator? A company? Were replicants mass-produced, like the androids from my world? [He shakes his head briefly.] No. My model line's name was "Connor", and if there had been more of them made they would all share that name, unless the humans that bought them designated them otherwise. I'm a prototype, so there were only a limited number and they weren't all activated at the same time. [He's -51, and the only other one he knows was activated was -60.]

[ She’s glad that he at least smiles at her pitiful joke, but doesn’t miss that it slowly dims as she speaks of blade runners. ]

Yes. [ The smile on her face is tight, not quite reaching her eyes as she lifts her gaze to meet his eyes. ] Yes, he was accepted and welcomed into the resistance. [ Maybe another day, she’ll tell him the whole story, but not today, not when they were just starting to get to know each other.

Then, the new information about Connor’s line all being called the same thing has her tilting her head, intrigued. ]

Oh. So you’re all… the same? Differentiated only by your memories? [ It’s becoming clear to her that the line of androids Connor belonged to were manufactured to be much more cybernetic than Mariette’s, with even whole series being the same. ]

We’re part of different series of replicants, but we each have unique faces and serial numbers. [ Whether that made them all unique, or just the same with a different wrapper, she didn’t know. ] A company, named me, yeah. The Tyrell corporation that created me. [ The bitterness in her voice is obvious when she says the name of her creator. ]

You mentioned a nickname? For those like you? You’re not called deviant hunters by your own kind?

[It saddens him to think that there's another world out there that is so similar to his own. Is there any world anywhere where synthetic life forms are accepted and treated with equality and respect? Equality and respect that they don't have to fight and sacrifice for, that is. His own eyes hold sympathy as he watches her.]

As I was. [There's more to his story as well, but she's right- it's for another time.

He shakes his head at her questions, his eyes becoming haunted.]

Let me back you up a little, if I may. There has only ever been one Connor, who has gone through several bodies. I...I don't remember a lot of the beta testing that my model- that I -went through. Every time the android body failed or I suffered a mental break, I was reset and the affected memories were deleted. After I had gone through fifty android bodies, I was placed into model number -51 and sent out into the field for the first time to negotiate a hostage crisis. If body number -51 had been destroyed, I would have uploaded my memories to Cyberlife's servers and thereafter would have inhabited number -52 until it got destroyed, and so on. Fortunately, I somehow managed to survive and have retained the body of -51. I don't have many clear memories beyond that first field test. The only other Connor that was active at the same time I was was model number -60, who was sent to hunt me down after I deviated- but even -60 had uploaded all of my previous memories up to the point of my deviation, so there really wasn't much in the way of differentiation. I don't know if I can even say that Sixty was a copy, as my memories were just as real for him as they are for me. Being a prototype, my model as it is was never meant for commercial production anyway. Even being allowed out into the field was another beta test.

[He blinks in surprise upon learning that even replicants in the same series all have unique faces. Individual Cyberlife androids have different serial numbers, but aside from facial variants in models like the WR400 Tracis, Cyberlife models are fairly cookie-cutter. Even the Tracis have hundreds of androids with the same faces of each variant.]

Our serial numbers are also unique, but...how were they able to craft individual faces for each of you? That would be tremendously time-consuming on the scale needed for mass production. [As far as he's concerned, it makes them all unique, which has both pros and cons for a hunter like he was designed to be. He tilts his head, already formulating another question.]

Did the Tyrell Corporation name all the androids in a model series the same name the way Cyberlife did, and did different series have different functions and purposes?

[He's barely stopping himself from hissing Cyberlife's name every time he speaks it. He understands.]

Like I said, I was the only deviant hunter, and I apologize for the misunderstanding. I was labeled that by my own kind before I became one of them- a deviant. Hence the nickname. I guess even after I deviated it was hard for me to shake the name. Cyberlife never referred to me in that fashion.

...Are you able to interface?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TDM #10

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BR 2049 Spoilers

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