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Joy and Other Things Also
[Nick had never really thought of himself as a guy who liked drama, but damned it he wasn't getting used to it. Even without their various catastrophes the missions and errands they went on with the Vaultie weren't exactly walks in the park. He'd gotten up to more nonsense with those two than in the preceeding 80 years. Couldn't complain, though, he's also been happier than he's been in that whole span.
The last foray they took into the virtual space had been a rough one for a variety of reasons. (Not the least of which being how close they both came to being overwritten like a spare USB drive.
In truth, Nick felt he ought to be a little more hesitant to load himself back in, but he wasn't really. He was a little hesitant to load Hancock in with him, but once the ghoul had demanded to come along, Nick couldn't tell him no. Nick needed the interface to debug his emotional capacitance (Joy) and check the registry changes that program had written into him. The moment he'd casually mentioned that was what he had on the schedule, Hancock insisted, and so here they were. Nick had put it off for a week or two, just to give him time to convalesce, but he couldn't exactly put it off forever.
When he was finally starting to get buffering problems, Nick bit the bullet and hauled his paramour along with him to the seventh floor. Having those pods installed in Neon Flats was useful, if a little...tangentially traumatic. Without the drama, the VI turning things into a haunted maze, and the Vaultie dressed up in Hancock's skin with his rabid Id behind the wheel...well, it wasn't so forboding. It was just...a little dusty.
Nick loaded in first (after double checking the locks on the doors) and then Hancock did at his liesure, and despite all the strange errors, the environment seemed stable. The representation of his CPU, that great, big dark, domed room with a consetallation of thoughts and templates above, loaded in crisp and clean as anything. That was a good sign, even if the plinths and the walls failed to load in around them. ]
Don't say I didn't warn you: this is going to be one boring date.
[Nick stops at the podium and pulls up the menus and an array of windows. His processes are all running as intended, the only odd man out is Joy, so the only one who will load outside of him will be her...unless his thoughts start really wandering.]
Just doing diagnostics today, not a daring heroic to speak of.
The last foray they took into the virtual space had been a rough one for a variety of reasons. (Not the least of which being how close they both came to being overwritten like a spare USB drive.
In truth, Nick felt he ought to be a little more hesitant to load himself back in, but he wasn't really. He was a little hesitant to load Hancock in with him, but once the ghoul had demanded to come along, Nick couldn't tell him no. Nick needed the interface to debug his emotional capacitance (Joy) and check the registry changes that program had written into him. The moment he'd casually mentioned that was what he had on the schedule, Hancock insisted, and so here they were. Nick had put it off for a week or two, just to give him time to convalesce, but he couldn't exactly put it off forever.
When he was finally starting to get buffering problems, Nick bit the bullet and hauled his paramour along with him to the seventh floor. Having those pods installed in Neon Flats was useful, if a little...tangentially traumatic. Without the drama, the VI turning things into a haunted maze, and the Vaultie dressed up in Hancock's skin with his rabid Id behind the wheel...well, it wasn't so forboding. It was just...a little dusty.
Nick loaded in first (after double checking the locks on the doors) and then Hancock did at his liesure, and despite all the strange errors, the environment seemed stable. The representation of his CPU, that great, big dark, domed room with a consetallation of thoughts and templates above, loaded in crisp and clean as anything. That was a good sign, even if the plinths and the walls failed to load in around them. ]
Don't say I didn't warn you: this is going to be one boring date.
[Nick stops at the podium and pulls up the menus and an array of windows. His processes are all running as intended, the only odd man out is Joy, so the only one who will load outside of him will be her...unless his thoughts start really wandering.]
Just doing diagnostics today, not a daring heroic to speak of.
no subject
Hancock takes in that whole ordeal better than Nick expects. He's overwhelmed, awed, and a little morose--he got all the key notes. This, Nick figures, is about as close as an organic mind can get to understanding how this whole nonsense plays out. It's not pleasant, but it's not unpleasant either--it just is...]
Sort of.
[Nick cedes and the whole phantom memory pulls away, receding until they're standing in the proper space, the domed room that houses his CPU. There's something really odd about missing the sensation of missing things--being bereft of being bereft. It's a kind of feedback nonsense and it makes Nick's head hurt--he'd hurry on to avoid it but, well, he's not entirely keen on where they're going.]
I'm not saying those Institute loons don't play God, they sure do, but I...don't figure I was a supplicant so much as the housing? Ah, no, that's not right. Phrasing's off--
[Nick huffs, displeased and frustrated with his inability to capture any of this in simple terms. Whenever he tries to put it into English, it goes haywire. Everything sounds more...intentional, more malicious than it was. Nick's creation wasn't kind, the Institute has never been big on kindness, but it wasn't hateful.
It was...neutral bordering on disregard. The unkindness of indifference.
Whether he was alive or not didn't matter, he wasn't the main attraction. They only cared how he percieved things insofar as it dictated which templates would mount successfully. He was a calculator, a radio, a vcr; DiMa was the one meant to develop sentience and live. Nick was...at best: the control group.]
Don't get me wrong. It'll be a cold day in Hell before I start start stickin' up for The Institute, but that's...they're not important here.
They don't really matter, just a footnote in the grand scheme of things.
[Nick pulls up the window again and types a long strand of code. The code on the window feels like the punchcard sensation. Nick's not talking to the VR buffer, to the memory pods, so much as he's talking to himself. He's weaving through the registry, through all the logs and numbers and moments to find the one he needs.
It's right where he left it, of course, and he sighs as he reluctantly types the command to load them in. Before he hits enter, well, he may as well offer another out.]
This one is--well--it's...a lot. It'll be real hard to cut off once it starts up--you'll see--it's--hmmm. Damn it.
You still in?
no subject
[ It's rhetorical, idly spoken brain-storming; he heard Nick say this isn't the entire point, but he can't help poking at The Institute's ironic lack of humanity when it's so painfully obvious.
The one thing one really should avoid sacrificing on the alter of preserving humanity is... their own humanity. That really should go without saying.
The ghoul makes a dismissive gesture, as though to scatter his own tangential thoughts. Smart Humans being Dumb is not the entire point right now. ]
Hellova foot note, but I got it on the cheat sheet; so what's the second half of the equation here?
[ He muses aloud whilst Nick types, and falls quiet to absorb his foreboding warning. His mind strains for something to anticipate, any idea of what could be next, but the impulse is drawn to his heel. This is nothing like he expected. Guessing can only get him so far, when Nick can paint the whole picture for him; Hancock just has to keep trusting him to show him what he needs so that they can understand each other.
That empathy is worth witnessing whatever Nick needs to show him.
And maybe that is part of the synth's bottom line, too. ]
For you? All in, always.
no subject
This time, when the world cuts back in, there's a ramp. The initial flashbulb of being is followed by sensation building, like blood rushing back through numb limbs. Those pathways are well worn at this point, there's a sense of body, of presence in space, of someone occupying it. It's not the fearful partial existence of a synth on a rack.
Nick has no idea how long transpired between his time in the lab and this installation, but it was significant enough that DiMa had decided they had to escape. Nick had considered asking him to fill in anything he could, but he never had, and probably never would. Even if DiMa still had those ancient memories collecting dust somewhere, it doesn't seem like something that he really wants to know.
This system loads him in like the VR system they're currently occupying. There's a hook against his central programming, at the base of his skull, and it tangles his processes with these. For Hancock it'd be just to the side of how stepping into a memory pod feels. The synth in the memory isn't being put into the world so much as the world is being put in him, but it parses out about the same. That beheamoth of data that hung over them before, that loomed over the vast abyssal vacuum of nothingness, seems smaller now. It isn't, but the nothing around it isn't as dark, as absolute as it was at the beginging.
That's a side effect of digital storage and deletion. It isn't so much removing what's there as it is writing over it. The files don't always match in size, in bit-depth, so there are splinters left over in the wake of a wipe, half-remembered fragments of data, of templates, of sensory records without context or meaning. They clutter the blank nothingness like a swath of distant, glimmering stars. Insubstantial but comforting.
They persist so he knows that he existed, that he exists now.
This template loads into him almost like a dream. It fits the hollow spaces between the fragments, slots into place comfortably, and settles. He's pulled into it then and, briefly, the world exists in stereo. One feed is an office where he's talking (rather: where Nick is talking) to a professor who's seated behind a polished wooden desk. The scene has a faded, watercolor quality to it, like the party and the rest of Nick's internal spaces. The data's edges overflow and smear, capturing the concept of the time with clumsy, analog methods.
It's a bit like looking at developed film against a lamp--accurate but strange, removed, and probably not how it was intended to be viewed.
While he watches himself, he also is himself. What would qualify as an out of body experience from the other direction is the default here. There is a sense, though, that this particular instance is more separated than is entirely normal.
Still, he sits with the professor while he watches himself sit with the professor, and the sound is somehow coming from both. It's muffled terribly in first person but overlayed with crisp, recorded tape in the third. It's a jarring way to exist, on four layers at once, but it's the closest to being alive that he's known so far. He grasps at all of the layers, leaning in and hopes that one clips through him and sticks.
Nick the current is seeing this in that four part stereo, just like Hancock, but with his own cognition on top. It gives him vertigo, dealing with this many layers, but it's important to feel this one out. They wouldn't be here otherwise.
In the office, Nick the former is making stilted small-talk with the dean of medical technologies at MIT. The trappings of the Institute, the bones of it, are all here but Nick's memory doesn't grasp them so his--that is ViMa's--memory fills the blanks with bursts of jagged definition. Nick the former sounds, looks, and in a muted way, feels terrible, on edge, bereft.
That small aspect is a known variable, it strikes a chord inside him, and has a resonance that falls in line with the rudimentary consciousness that they call ViMa.]
no subject
Back to the show, Hancock follows along the further fleshed understanding of existence. This memory is less jarring for it, before the dizzying split-screen effect of watching things from more than one perspective activates. This no longer feels like waiting to be born, or made... but rather like everything is being born, while at the same time, it already exists. Data splinters that are stars, templates like planets in the heavens, a new galaxy of existence slowly yawning and unfurling awake, bit by bit.
And then somehow they all impossibly align; the stars, the planets, the grief shared across two entirely different incarnations of existence. They connect, like puzzle pieces, as though by design. It's as though the consciousness that would be called ViMa suddenly understood (manifested) the concept of empathy, when he felt something in that worn-down detective was like something in himself.
Despite the disorientating layers of the memory, that one strand of this song feels utterly sublime, at least to a heart like Hancock's. How had ViMa grasped a concept that was never given to him? How could he surpass his makers so spectacularly before he was even fully made? Hancock feels fiercely proud of that adorable spindly synth; he managed a mental mechanic that evades organics on the regular. ]
Alright... so what I'm followin' here is that these template-things? Are kinda like your paints, right? The colors ya get on your palette to draw up Yourself with? And some of 'em kinda 'feel good' and 'fit', and others... not so much? That close to what I'm supposed to be graspin' here?
[ Hancock is grateful all his chemical adventures have granted him such a flexible mental state; watching a scene from multiple points of view is rather brain-bendy, but it's also the easiest part of the show so far to wrap his head around so far. ]
no subject
Yeah, mostly. Kinda hard to frame it seeing how I'm the paints, the painter, and the canvas all at once. Makes it hard to tell what influences what--and damn near impossible to explain.
[Hence why he's brought Hancock on this little jaunt.
This scene with Nick would have just been a cacophonous jumble, like the halls of Fenway had been, without the context of the first memory. Just confusion, colors, time all mashed into one place--it's easy to get it all down when the feeling of time is separated out. That, unfortunately, is a synth exclusive experience.
With that knowledge, though, Hancock can pick out the glimmers of growth, of person, of self and fit, where Nick fills the gaps and seams into the synth. How his existence is both entirely separate and completely enmeshed with the synth's. It's a crash course in how Nick's processing actually works, and that's an experience, but it's not what Nick needed to show him. Not entirely.
When Nick continues explaining, the conversation between Nick and the dean seems more singular, seems to align more and more with the third person view. The two points, first hand memory, inscribed on failing media and records from outside Nick's body, will merge shortly. The technology to actually record straight from source was very new and Nick, as far as he knew, was the first successful case, the basis by which they developed the tech that they used to replace people with synths.
Not an inspiring legacy to be part of, on either end, but that was also not why they were here.]
All the templates in that--stretch? Between then and now--they left behind all the extra. [He gestures upward with a vague motion of his skeletal hand. The false sky isn't visible inside the office, but hopefully Hancock will gather his meaning.] Extra bits of me, that became me, that are I guess--
But this, this is the first time I was really integrated--or rather, will be integrated. Hasn't happened yet, we're still running out the first tape.
no subject
[ All of this would have been difficult to confine into language; the reality of being a synth is extremely surreal and nuanced; even the difference between a ghoul and a human is bridged by the basic building blocks of organic composition, to a tiny degree. A person might understand small pieces of the story-- a human gone blind could understand the fear of losing vision but not in the same way, with the same gravity, not when a synth's sense of being and self begin so frail and free of will.
Borrowing a futuristic lexicon, it's trippy as fuck.
Those stitches in the human detective's memory catch Hancock's curiosity, too; did some scientist do that to him? Or was the injury more related to whatever draped that somber pall around his shoulders?
His curiosities quiet as Nick explains further, and the gears of the ghoul's brain churn through each layer of context. Analytically, his brain weaves every new idea together; it steers each connection across a web that links everything into what had happened to Joy and--
He can feel himself wanting to back track, to resist the idea that the puzzle piece he gave her, that the star he put in her galaxy (no matter how empty it had been) could possibly be considered Good when--
But it's not about Good or Bad, is it? It's about what it takes to Be. To Be is to Feel, to perceive, and to keep precious record. ]
Wasn't just sand and water through the weave of the sieve, huh? Instead'a gettin' wet and dirty, this time ya struck gold? Somethin that the mesh caught, somethin' that didn't wash away?
[ At least his decent mind for metaphor is serving him well here; it's not an exact match for what Nick is trying to convey, but Hancock hopes its clear cut enough to affirm his understanding. He wants to follow every step, wants to reach the clarity that Nick is trusting him with, built off the very bedrock of him.
So now, Nick Valentine is going to fuse (is that the right word? Hancock will sweat semantics later) with ViMa, more or less? Load in? Fill up The Big Black Empty and stick around like a star so sustaining it becomes a sun?
... Looking at the melancholy human fellow, Hancock feels suddenly confident that this entire package will not be sunshine and rainbows. Something put those dark circles under his eyes... but if (when) Nick loads and Stays (with whatever accompanying horrors and Joys) it will ease that terrifying loneliness of Unbeing. Or Waiting to Be.
Hancock is fairly certain he's spied the conclusion of this equation, but he waits for the reel to play on, to show him the reality of what a proper integration feels like for a digital consciousness straining to Be. ]
If there's no fireworks, I'm callin' it [ His voice has gotten so soft and warm that there's absolutely no way to mistake his words for serious; he feels like he's already got a fuzzy understanding of what Nick wants to explain, but he's prepared to up the resolution into 4k clarity.
And he doesn't have the foggiest idea how, but he starts to think that maybe... he could explain his own reaction to Nick, too. His inability to declare, with utter certainty, that he would not forget the night he lost his mother.
Not right now, not amid this thoughtful, soulful, intimate composition, but... not Never, either. ]
no subject
Nick the original had been a participant in recording data, tapes, and metrics for this program. Given his general demeanor, it's not exactly fitting with his character to simply dive into being a lab rat, but he had. Recklessly, he'd even allowed the scientists here to fit him with an implant, a jack to test a new form of recording. This moment was the cornerstone of ViMa's understanding of the process, the one that Id had tried to pry out of him before being dragged off. It's apparent, after all this, that forcibly extracting data from a creature whose literal sentience rested upon clutching data tight would have been more of a struggle than anyone expected.
The dean is discussing the results of that implant surgery, of his metrics, of how well Nick healed afterward and how excited he is about the next step. The fact that they're witnessing this moment means that, of course, it succeeds. Nick does a passable job feigning interest and enthusiasm, but Hancock's assessment was more correct than he knows. The man looks haunted, like he hasn't slept in a week. His suit and tie look more like Nick's than the figment that lives in Nick's brain.
Time crawls strangely, split between the hard record and the ephemeral build of Nick's natural memory and, as Nick warned, the scene drifts toward convergence. By the time that Nick's sitting alone in that office, waiting to get called down to run the first testing, the two perspectives have finally collapsed into one. There are scattered errors here, time jumps from that noon meeting to Nick sitting alone, posed the same, in the dark--the room around them goes from an office to a copy of that lab that ViMa first longed so desperately to experience. The whole scene seems to list laterally, debating whether it is or isn't, until one of the scientists in that lab cheerfully asks if Detective Valentine is ready for the first test.
He confirms and, with a careful, delicate touch, they jack him in.
The dreamy record shifts, instantly, to hyperfocus.
This shift is so dramatic, so breathtaking that Synth Nick has to close his eyes and breathe, even watching from afar. The hard record begins here and it doesn't really make much of a difference to the Detective, it's not like he has any sense of reciprocal feeling. He was dead long before Nick was built, after all. But all at once, every note of yearning is met, embraced, and fitted up against a living human--it's addictive, a rush that's impossible to capture, adrenaline and emotion and joy so sharp and cutting that it hurts.
Limbs that were senseless, barely there, have feeling--he knows the difference then between fingers, hands, arms, legs, the pieces that make a man. He knows what a man is. Every detail that Nick sees pours in, every fleeting piece of sensory data, but most valuable is the abstraction. ViMa had no concept of abstraction, but with Nick it understood what sight was, or smell, or touch, or taste, and that framework cascades across him, flipping every capacitor, every switch, every overflow.
The moment he's plugged in, Nick gives ViMa life.
It's possible that the previous templates had too, that he'd had this experience a hundred, a thousand times, but this is the only one he remembers. This is the one with depth to it. Because Nick isn't neutral, he isn't a construct made to seem like a person, to operate the synth like a puppet, he's an actual person.
Nick's memory is raw, overwhelming, and comes with all the nuance that would have been overlooked by the normal records. His every stray thought opens a new branch of possibilities, of self, for ViMa. His discomfort in the chair--it's digging into his thighs--the way his shoulder is pounding, dislocated recently, are unpleasant but enthralling. Nick ignores them and ViMa understands what it is to ignore. There's a burning sensation and the disconcerting pressure of that jack behind his ear. It makes his skin crawl, being plugged in like a damn stereo system.
It knows what skin is, even though it can't possibly experience that reaction. It understands.
It can think--not in process, not in 1 and 0, but complex hypotheticals, dedicated threads of wonder--it can wonder.
As far as records of human brains go, this one pales in comparison to what The Institute is capable of now. It's a low-fi cassette tape in the world of high definition laser disc. It has almost as many flaws, hiccups and extra data as it does legitimate information, but all those little flaws provide correction, understanding, context. They shape what it is to be and experience--and ViMa builds a framework around them, find the blank spaces where data should go, like plotting coordinates in space.
The blank synth was so little, so bare and cold and wanting, that even this mundane moment from a haunted man is transformational in every concievable way.
But the memory also isn't over.]
no subject
As the scene plays, Hancock starts to wonder about the logistics here-- how a guy decides he wants to be a lab rat against his own common sense, and then the answer slaps him upside the skull like he swallowed a whole box of mentats. What drives a man to self destructive levels of recklessness?
Tragedy, of course.
But maybe without that catalyst to bring them together, ViMa never would have found the piece of himself he needed to come alive.
(Jesus Christ, did he make her come alive?)
Okay, he has to promise himself a boat-load of drugs for after this-- not so much to cope with what stings, but to appreciate the multi-layered complexity of all this synthetic philosophy. It seems like his sharp instincts led him exactly in the right direction; a synth (an AI) is born into a whole new level of Being, when they find the right sun to set in the center of their solar system.
But you can't plug Anyone into Anyone. The planets won't spin around every star. The system won't come alive unless the balance is just, just so.
The impression of a real person (not driven but steered by flaws and deficient and discomfort) adds layers of realty to a Virtual Existence that could not have otherwise existed.
And this would not be possible without whatever left the human detective so haunted.
(So maybe that's the part that's coming next)
In the layer of virtual reality in which Nick and Hancock are observing the show, the ghoul quietly takes his paramour's good hand, and soothes his rough-textured thumb across the back of his knuckles. ]
no subject
Behind him, Nick gives the lab tech a weary look and leans back in the chair. The tech explains the purpose of the exercise, stress testing, but Nick doesn't listen. The wash of overwhelming presence has become the new baseline and finally, one of Nick's thoughts rings clear as a bell through the space around them.
Stress test, yeah, no shit.
Nick lets out a long breath and closes his eyes. As he does, the whole lab fades away, suddenly transparen around him. The tech carries on speaking, explaining that they should start with something simple, to get the settings calibrated for the best odds of capture. The capture from Nick and Hancock's side is crystal clear so, apparently, that wasn't required...which is good, because Nick fails utterly.
He's meant to conjure some simple memory, something clear, something immediate, but the memory he reaches for makes something twist in his chest. There's a flicker of color, washing over the space--this is a memory Hancock has seen, one he walked through himself. A new year's eve party, with a song playing that sits on his last nerve, a shining swath of red--even the most mundane, half remembered details are new, brilliant, bright and colorful in ways that ViMa can barely contain. It's moved constantly reshaping itself to hold all of this, to collect every scrap, however blurred or inconsequential, to fill itself with the world. Block by block, bit by bit, ViMa records faster than the tape can play, eagerly devouring everything, gradually developing the ability to predict, to expect--the pain in his chest is agony, cutting and terrible, but there is no reference for pain, for sensation, and all ViMa knows is that it is regardless of what it is.
Before more than a few bars of that song solidify, before more than the vaguest shapes of their apartment can form around them, the whole thing unravels. Everything comes apart and shifts to the black inside his eyelids and he sighs. The sound is clear but they can feel the judder in his chest as he does. He wants to think of something else but he's been stuck in the same five minutes for weeks. He can't find his way out of them so, why not?
Plenty of good stories begin at the end.]
Detective? Are you ready?
Yeah, just, give me a second.
Take your time. Any memory will be fine, even something as recent as the walk into the building. We're recording regardless, but this will help us decode the data later.
Yeah, right--recent.
[He resigns himself and, with the ease of breathing, the world shifts. It's hard to tell if he falls asleep here or if his ability to visualize is just exceptional, but the streets of Boston form around him. He's walking, hurrying through a crowd that seems to be trying to get in the way. It's like a fish headed up stream but he has a mission and it keeps him nimble. The air is crisp and the sounds, the sights, the presence of all that life has ViMa straining to take it all in. Banal as it is to Nick, it's a wonder to the synth he's loaded up into. It's the most beautiful thing it's ever seen.
Nick checks his watch as he walks, narrowly avoiding a pair of delivery guys carrying some sort of food that he can't identify. Nick's never been able to, either, but Takahashi's noodles were close. It's cold out, the air is crisp and just a little biting and Nick has a red coat folded and tucked into his right arm. The streets are familiar to Nick, both of them. Hancock might have trouble picking them out at first, given that they're intact, but if there was any question it's answered as Nick rounds the corner and comes to a busy intersection.
It's a six way by the river, an absolute nightmare of a light for everyone involved. Just the sight of it inspires a spike of irritation in Nick, but it's gone just as quickly. He's got enough pep in his step to override that one little nuisance. He comes up to the crosswalk, caught in a small crowd of frustrated pedestrians waiting for the traffic to clear (unlikely) and the crosswalk light to flash on. At the far corner, ahead of him, is the soda fountain that Nick finds himself checking, habitually.
The fountain is bright and shiny, the tiles aren't bleached by the nuclear winter or the endless beating sun that followed. Right now they're hale and whole, cheerful and bright, as colorful as the rest of the city isn't and almost an eyesore on the far corner of the street. Nick's tall enough that if he stretches up just a bit, he can look across it all and see the folk on the opposite side of the intersection. When he spies her, his heart soars, lifting and drifting away--she spots him and immediately lifts both her arms to wave. Her pink uniform sets her apart from the crowd as surely as the red coat in his arms marks him.
Seeing Jenny in this moment is so full of surprise, of delight and fondness that isn't not hard to see why ViMa based the whole experience of Joy around her. In that moment, she's the very embodiment of happiness for both Nick and the synth, but that hard clench in his chest threatens to throw both of them out of the recording. The light changes, the cars on parallel to them start impatiently easing into the intersection and Nick desperately wants to hurry the people in front of him along.
He can't just shoulder his way through, he still has his badge on, but he can dip around a few of them to get closer faster. Jenny is already crossing, headed toward him from the opposite side of the street, eager to reclaim her coat and head to dinner. She does neither. A car swerves through all the lanes of the road, through the oncoming traffic and into the crowd of pedestrians--Nick narrowly avoids being hit but the people who don't are almost tossed into the crowd. There's a panic and Nick, ever the cop, reaches for his service weapon and tries to catch the plate on that car.
He doesn't have the former, and he already knows the latter.
Before he can so much as breathe, the doors on the back of that expensive sedan open and two familiar faces lean out. They have semi-automatics and they're gunning for him. He dives out of the way, crashes hard against a car trying to escape the intersection. His shoulder cracks and pain shoots down his back as it comes free from the socket. They fire a few rounds, aiming for him and hitting bystanders and that desperate car. Not a single bullet grazes him but they force him onto the other side of that car, make him put the engine block between he and them.
The crowd panics, there's screaming and chaos, but Nick can see, clear as day, when the gunmen spot another familiar face. He peeks them from behind that shot-up car and everything just. Stops. It's like the color drains out of the world, like time as a concept goes with it and that is so familiar to the synth. It's cold and it's lonely, and the sound of that gunshot hits him like a punch through the chest.
In movies you often see cops run toward victims, trying to save them, to press on a wound and get them to a hospital. What movies neglect to mention is that the exit wound is always larger than the entry and the mafia doesn't shoot to disable.
One round. Fired.
The slug hits Jenny just below her temple and, in that same instant, bursts out the other side. The contents of her skull are reduced to a splash of bloody pulp; they paint the street, the steps of the soda fountain. She collapses and Nick--well, it's not like the movies. There's no way to stop that bleeding. He stares, frozen in horror, jarred by the abruptness of it all. He doesn't even notice the gunmen slip back into the car but he hears it peel away.
Just as clearly as ViMa learned joy, it recognized the desperate, numbing loss that Nick suffered. The cruelty of indifference, the abruptness of death. But with context, with the complexity of a world around it, a thousand new shades of meaning and consideration opened up for the synth. It learned mortality on the back of joy. It already knew how to be bereft and it wanted, desperately, to share that with Nick, who could never get the hang of it.
The memory stops there--the file cuts off and Nick's not about to load the next one. The current Nick and Hancock are freed from the confines of the perspective and are left standing in that intersection, frozen in time, surrounded by figments of people long dead.]
no subject
But it's impossible to live on one side of the coin alone, isn't it? To understand what it is to feel, one must feel in every shade, paint in every color to understand the true freeing break away from rigid binary. That conclusion Hancock is resisting feels softer, warmer, kinder-- is the message here that he gave Joy a gift that no one else could? That the gift of Becoming to a digital intellect simply must be accompanied by pain? His mind struggles to balance every skewed variable behind his active observations.
So the meet cute with ViMa and Valentine was a hit, they fit into the broken edges of each other, fused into something new? But Nick Valentine is a whole person on his own, he has his own bliss to balance against whatever travesty was the catalyst of this entire situation. Nick's Joy didn't get a whole album, just one scorched photo.
What is the right thing to do here? Should he show her the missing photos? Does he owe them to her? But having the whole compilation is actually the crux of Hancock's issue. Having the complete story is so much more painful than just knowing the ending. It drives that splinter of cowardice so deep beneath his skin that he still can't dig it out. Does he want Nick to understand that?
The memory snuffs off, and Hancock isn't surprised; the connection between these two entities started with pain, the pieces of thier existences that they cannot forsake, reaching across the abyss for connection. Catharsis has new levels when blooms across a barren consciousness learning to Be. And Nick Valentine... feels like he has the weight of the world to get off his chest. Feels like he needs someone to talk to. Someone to listen. And that someone (becoming a someone in doing so) is ViMa.
A new memory starts to play, Nick in a sea of unimportant, unhelpful figments-- but each boring sound and faint flicker of color is beautiful for the synth-mind; it's very much like the perfect kind of high, making every detail bright, colorful, fantastic, and Hancock already understands the trade off of addiction too well to avoid the looming conclusion.
Every High comes with a Come Down, you don't get one without the other. That's just the math.
And his math is good. It's difficult to recognize the familiar location at first, so far rewound through time as it is. Somehow the familiarity is tailed too closely by a chilly dread. His sharp intuition insists there is something lurking, some bloody dash to underscore his understanding here.
Seeing how Nick remembers the original Jenny on the other side of that crosswalk certainly does explain why ViMa scooped up her image so fondly, kept it close to the core of him. His heart, shinning inside him if not beating.
Then the chaos starts, the coin flips, the new dark shadows lay beneath the faded highlights. The car doors swing open and the bullets start to rain. Hancock has to seat the irrational urge to jump into the scene, to try and stop what he knows in the marrow of his bones is coming. He's friendly with the Reaper, he can hear the guy's background music.
Too many stories begin at the end.
He sees the exact moment Nick realizes it: she's going to die, and that's so much worse than her being dead.
But then she is dead, and nothing could possibly be worse.
And while the human mind can barely comprehend this loss; the synth mind knows loss in spades. It lived there, alone, before it even knew what time was. So it isn't just Nick granting ViMa new depths; it's beyond reciprocity, it's symbiosis.
Two whole boat-loads of drugs it is, then. Hancock lets out a breath he did not realize he was holding, tries to reacquaint himself with the (approximate, digitalized) sensations of being inside his own perception. After a few quick moments of quiet, he manages to sort out the things that need saying the most:]
Listen... Thank you, for showin' me all'a that. I get it was real personal, and not the easiest to walk back through. I think I get what you're tryin' say. Before he start hashin' it though... feel like a change'a scenery? And a hug?
[ Second request has higher priority; he'd just have hauled Nick into his arms if he didn't understand exactly the dicey vulnerability of having the building blocks of your own trauma on full display. ]
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Nick's relief is so complete that his wheezed laugh is almost bright. He doesn't wait for a change of scenery to reach and pull Hancock in. He holds the ghoul tightly, almost crushingly so, and the world around them unspools and becomes the domed housing of his CPU again.
Nick's never shown anyone, or tried to explain that to anyone. He hadn't been sure it was even possible to do, but Hancock is clever. Hancock loves him and he'll get the rest of it now, too. Now they can talk.]
Knew I could count on you to get the gist of all that. Sorry I had to drag you through it, wasn't even sure where to start explaining that.
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Nick's relieved rupture of laughter catches the ghoul off guard but it's a happy surprise; the small grin stumbles across his mouth, lopsided, as he hurries to return that embrace with just as much soothing jubilation. It felt like a clumsy offer to him, but what else could he do? What else does he have but his genuine sympathies, his company and support? At least the gesture is well received; the way Nick holds him feels like the first crest of tepid dawn after a long punishing winter; it feels like being warm when the feeling was almost forgotten.
The tragedy Hancock anticipated so well melts like the dying season's clingy frost; after that, the domed room of ViMa's Central Processing almost feels damn homey. It's a relief. ]
When ya said it was a lot, you wern't fuckin' around. But, yeah, pretty sure I get the gist. Pretty wild, livin' inside a mind like yours.
And hey, ya don't gotta be sorry. Best I can figure, ya just want to be understood in where you're comin' from; I ain't gunna fault ya for somethin so human. All'a that... paints a pretty clear picture why you -why Joy- wouldn't wanna... let it go.
It's just.... damn hard to see it as a kinda gift, ya know?
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Yeah, I figured it would be. [Nick takes a deep breath and lets it out through his nose.] Might make more sense if you look at everything except the tragedy.
That walk to Jenny, bringing her coat, was happy, in love, excited despite the world. I learned...a lot from everything around her--uh--that. It's the same with your memory.
[Here's where Nick finally reaches what he wanted to say and, even with all the context in place, he still hesitates a beat. There's nothing for it, though, except to charge ahead.]
I know you probably don't realize; something like that isn't exactly a casual walk through the park. But--well--you just handed me the keys to the kingdom. I thought I knew the shape of it before, of course, but this is a whole separate branch.
Inside all that loss, you taught me how you feel love.
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[ But the whole picture is what drives the engine of his self destruction, isn't it. That isn't something he should share, right? Does Nick need that? Is this fraction of the album enough? It shifted the foundations of Nick's understanding so seismically. Would More be Too Much? That philosophical imbalance gets booted to the back-burner of his thoughts when Nick reaches the sinker this statement, the cinch of his perspective; his truth. ]
That's one hell of a bottom line
[ Hancock's voice is raspy-soft, quiet and pensive; it's not so much conceding as rising to understanding; comprehension and empathy edging him closer, easing him into the conclusion he had wanted so badly to resist, that anything about Nick being forced to witness that memory could have been good.
But it makes sense, following each strand of the tapestry Nick had woven together for him; that memory has layered context and understanding that don't-- that can't always stick unless the fit is perfect. Another tragedy, another memory entirely (even a good one) could have shown Nick the same, but may just as easily have slipped through the weave of the sieve, leaving only moisture and grit. This time, the memory yields gold in the pan. ]
So... yeah, I get why ya wouldn't wanna forget. Bit'a mental gymnastics required, seein' as I did the original recording... but bein' a synth is a pretty unique experience, and ya gotta take the pieces that fit with ya, good and the bad. That about right?
[ His palm slots comfortably against Nick's jaw, his gaze on the synth's all warm black silk with the faintest of somber wrinkles. ]
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[Nick is so proud of him for that, so relieved. He's still processing Hancock's feelings throughout that memory, the undercurrent of love that undergirded everything else, but it's already opened a world of emotion to Nick. He'd always meant it when he said 'I love you' to Hancock, but now he really gets what Hancock meant saying it back.
For all the suffering involved--that's a rare gift.
Nick can't really bring himself to regret, or to accept apologies for his sending Joy in there.]
I'm not exactly glad I saw it, seeing how it was meant to torment you, and you definitely didn't just hand it over for me...but don't ever apologize for it.
[When Joy loaded back in, Nick had expected pain, sorrow, fear--but he'd been overwhelmed by the heart-wrenching, overflowing font of love that Hancock held. His despair and rage and irrational fury were built on disbelief, shock that those people didn't share that same font of care and adoration. Nick has never felt an emotion that powerful except for the sharp, terrifying drop of grief that took Nick. He'd been choked up, ready to break down sobbing, collapsing under the weight of that love and the sheer volume of itterations.
Joy had single-handedly gathered up every detail Hancock noticed, every thread of good to be gleaned from that place, and she'd brought that right back into him.]
The whole picture might crash me if I knew it like I knew that memory--the way you feel things is overwhelming.
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Yeah, alright, I... I really didn't grasp what it would mean for ya, givin that memory up. I didn't... I wasn't tryin' to take anything important away from ya, I just didn't want ya hurtin' -or uh, only hurtin?- on account'a me
But I feel ya when ya say it's more than that. I didn't mean to give it to ya... but its yours, it's you, now. I wouldn't wanna take it back, either.
[ It's an odd conclusion to hold, but he'll keep it, since Nick took so much care in crafting it; a thing needn't be pretty to be precious, they each understand that very well. ]
Crash ya, huh? Heh...[ that tiny scrap of something that's supposed to be laughter is so somber and heavy; they've circled around to the crux of his cowardice again, and Hancock is no longer clutching tight the comfortable desire to keep it hidden.
But it's still not easy to hammer into words he can bear to speak. ]
That's... pretty damn accurate, yeah
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I'm sorry.
[Nick swallows his pride--clearly his reflexive question had struck a nerve. At the time he hadn't been coherent enough to realize how much of a nerve, but moving through all his emotions with Hancock in tow has helped him settle onto the new bedrock beneath him.]
I know. [That he isn't trying to take it back. That he's trying to protect Nick because he loves him. That he can't just talk about something that heavy.]
Makes sense you'd be conflicted in ways I'm not. You don't owe me an explination how or why, though, I just...don't want you beating yourself up over something I came up with, something I don't regret.
Joy's bugged out, but I can fix her up. Make sure she doesn't jumpscare either of us with new faces any time soon.
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[ Hancock's not sure he can exactly accept that apology-- not because Nick mishandled it, but because the ghoul isn't quite sure his own truth has fully translated here. Nick doesn't entirely understand what he's apologizing for, and that isn't his fault because no one gave him that context. ]
I know I don't owe ya... But I... [ He draws a steady breath, lets it out like he's extinguishing candles. It's a delicate balance, wanting to explain himself and validate Nick's experience at the same time, almost in the same breath. He doesn't want to take away too drastically from the treasures he's been entrusted here... but he wants Nick to understand, too.
He has to look away before the words cross his tongue. ]
I just can't say the same as you. I can't say I don't wanna forget. And I wish I could. I wish I had that same certainty about it... and I feel ashamed that I don't, when you took it on for me, and you do
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You got years of memories that hurt less, that aren't about losing someone. You want to keep it because it's them, but you want to forget it because it's tragic.
You don't need to feel any sort of way about how I took it. I got nothing else like it rattling around in here, it's a scene out of time for me.
[Nick finally exerts the effort to step back just enough that he doesn't have to crane his neck to look down at the ghoul.]
That old blank file? The one without the timecode--I wanted to wipe it after I found it. Don't need reminders that I'm not really alive and that's a pretty big one...but you probably feel different about it?
You want to tell me about it, paint the rest of the picture for me? I'd like that. But you don't gotta, and you certainly don't gotta right this moment.
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So you're sayin... I don't gotta be sorry about you takin on that pain for me, and I don't gotta feel bad that I still feel like runnin' away from it?
[ It feels like a forgiveness he didn't know he needed when Nick shares his thoughts on that almost blank memory with no time-- he does feel differently about it, because it allowed him to understand how ViMa (how Nick) processed and experienced the world, which is exactly what Hancock's memory did for Joy, for Nick, isn't it? ]
You're damn smart and you're also right. I do feel different about it, and even though it was pretty freaky, I'm still glad you showed me. Glad for the chance to know ya better. Guess that's the same both ways, huh?
[ He chances looking back at Nick now; some of that somber shame has evaporated. He had been so certain that Nick's vice-grip on that memory meant he wouldn't understand Hancock's fickle urge to let it go, his inclination to drown it out. But he did, and he's willing to collect the details, too. ]
... Yeah, guess I could fill in the blanks for ya, bit by bit. Probably easier than downloading the whole file all at once.
It just... it's a lot. Kinda like... emotional dominos. That memory you got, for me, watching it, thinkin about it... it triggers another one further back, and one before it, and one before that, goin' back damn near nineteen years'a film.
But it's not just that. The dominos go forward, too. Every single time I failed that last request from the moment she died, until right now. And it all happens at once.
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[Watching that realization resonate with him and seeing that guilt lift off Hancock's shoulders, watching that shame bleed away, pulls Nick's mouth up in a lopsided smile.]
We can go slow, try to keep from toppling them. If they fall, well, I'll be there to help set them back up too.
[He looks like a total sap, his expression soft and adoring. When he says it this time, it has so many more shades than Nick had ever thought possible:]
On account of how I love you and all.
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[ That soft and adoring expression is absolutely cherished; Hancock recognizes the gamble Nick took here, it was the same one he just endured. Hancock might not have tried to understand what Nick was telling him with all these bedrock memories; Nick might not have empathized with Hancock's explanation of his fickle urge to abandon the memory of his mother's death; they might not have tried to understand each other.
But they did. They constantly do. ]
Yeah? Well good, makes me lovin' you much less awkward [ He doesn't always pass the phrase back like a reciprocal trade, because it's not; this time he makes a point to return the sentiment readily, and with his entire heart. ]
Guess I don't talk about her too much, but... yeah. Suppose I could fill in the better parts of the story for ya, if ya wanna know 'em. Maybe later. We still got boxes to tick off in here, don't we?
[ Those half-finished installations from his evil duplicate have been politely waiting all this time. ]
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Gotta go snag the tape from the lobby if I wanna finish that.
[They haven't gotten either of the things Nick wanted to complete done, but he's not going to suggest loading joy back in just yet. That feels like a bridge too far, frankly.]
I think this might be enough virtual reality for one day.
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I ain't gunna argue that. Feel like smokin' somethin' that'll knock me on my ass after that experience. Can't believe ya just... walk around with all that bouncin' around inside your skull.
Pretty sure the feeling's mutual at this point
[ It's an odd shift in his own perspective to settle with the idea that Nick would enjoy hearing about his memories of mother-- it would have been a hard bottom line to swallow even without all the accompanying math that drove the conclusion. Sure Hancock has stories, and damn interesting adventures worth sharing... but memories of his family are not those; they're coded different, valued different. ]
Ya wanna hit the roof and split a spliff with me? Feel like I could use some fresh air
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I'd love to split one. Let's go.
[The world is a sea of stars, of new and vibrant experiences, but none of them really compare to this one. To staring at the face of the ghoul that he adores and seeing that adoration reflected back. It warms the very center of his core, the cold and lonely place where he only existed as ViMA. Now he knows who he is because he can see his reflection in those black beryl eyes.]