Does This Unit Have A Soul? (Maelion/Doll)

[Qual'Zyanya]

[member="Doll Crux"]

Things had been going so well for Maerys Cadalthor, now she was in this strange, sterile laboratory with the intimidating looking devices, bound and gagged. She had been covering the tragedy that had transpired on Druckenwell for GNN as a correspondent, having visited the ruined capital city and the shelters that had been set up by Firemane and the Protectorate for refugees.

The terrible events were all over the news, over six hundred million people murdered by the Confederacy's madness. Protectorate, Firemane, Jedi and Mandalorians had pooled their resources to provide aid in what was one of the greatest humanitarian disasters since the end of the Four Hundred Year Darkness. Of course, it was also good for the media and the ratings of her network, since bad news were good news and tragedies were the best!

Then, when she was supposed to meet a source, she had found herself stunned and before she knew what was happening she had woken up in the cargo hold of a ship and now she was here. The source had claimed to possess inside scope about what machinations had brought down the shipyards upon Druckenwell. If Maerys were still awake she would have cursed her curiosity, her desire to get her mark and produce the best story. She would have made one last prayer to the Goddess Ashira, something she had not done in years for in her heart of hearts she did not believe, begging for mercy. The Eldorai had been heavily sedated upon her capture and thus was completely helpless against them.

Moira glanced over coldly to her. "Eldorai. A race of poseurs who strut around proclaiming themselves to be a superior race with a goddess-given destiny to conquer the galaxy, when they could not even protect their own planet without foreign help and when their culture is ossified and archaic. Blindly following queens who declare themselves the regents of a goddess who if she were real would leave them for being weak." In a radical inversion to the views of Siobhan Kerrigan, Moira did not like the Eldorai at all. The part of Moira that remembered her human self had once been a Marx'ist rebel disliked their stultrified, theocratic monarchy, their superstitious belief that they were the chosen ones of a goddess. The machine looked down upon their naivete and weakness.

"Maerys Cadalthor. A journalist with some skill at manipulating the truth. She is to be upgraded and provided with a body in her likeness," she spoke to Doll before glancing over to the other elf. "What data do we have on her?"

 

[Azirly]

[member="Maerys Cadalthor"] [member="Moira Skaldi"]

Things had not been going so well for Azirly on the other hand, even before she had glimpsed she was in a unknown location. This place was not where she had last remembered being at all. Last that she could remember she had been at a somewhat decent bar on. . . .a world she couldn't quite remember at the moment. There had been someone there she had run into, a beautiful woman who had been keeping her company. Had even offered to keep her company the rest of the night. Had she even left with her? Or had she honestly been that drunk by that point she collapsed and was in a hospital now? She never drank that much though? At least she hadn't thought she had drank that much that night. Maybe she had, she had only started drinking after leaving Kaeshana. . . . . she missed that world. For one it had such excellent wine compared to the filth she had had to put up with since then.

Alas the world of the Eldorai people was also one Azirly wished not to return to. A simple scout and assassination operative for her brief time in her people's military, she had realized all too quickly just how poodoo her life was. Those without the power of the goddesses blessings simply did not seem to matter much. Growing up as one of the Eldorai people without such gifts was rather difficult. Those who wielded the blessing of the goddesses were so revered, so upheld. Azirly hated that, she had decided at a young age to be as great as the friends around her who could wield powers and were taken for special training. Why not her? She had been left alone when everyone else was taken. Even her mother had looked down on her, the woman blessed by the goddesses as well looking down on Azirly.

She had trained so hard. Studied so much. Geuinely wished to serve as well. All she sought was to just be as great and respected as those who were blessed. Instead she had been abandoned after her service, her efforts, her love for her world, Queen, and Ashira all meaningless. Those she had served with perished during conflict, those with gifts being deemed more important to save than them during a dangerous situation. As it was she had survived by sheer luck, not that she wanted to be. Not by the Angelii who she could never have been a part like those other children or her mother. She had to leave then, there was nothing for her there after all with no friends, no purpose if others could do everything better. With her training she had easily taken to being a simple mercenary and bounty hunter just looking to get by, spending her time trying to ignore the pain and figure out a way to return home and just . . . . .it hardly mattered anymore. She would not even be given the chance to ask for Ashira's protection. There wouldn't be any anyway.

Doll looked Maerys and Azirly over as Moira asked and spoke. "Nothing much really. Also an Eldorai, seemed to be working as a small time bounty hunter and mercenary. Of little import it seemed, little ambition in the larger galaxy. The unit who brought her in said she had been drinking heavily and needed little prompting for information. Apparently left the Eldorai homeworld after prejudice against non-force users left her in dismay after a incident involving failure and needing to be rescued by the force user sect of the Eldorai left her very defeated after a lifetime spent dedicated toward training." It was quite a pitiful tale of force supremacists. Truly belittling of skilled individuals when the force could be a cheat sheet or trump all card. "Seeing as her people leave rarely, and she left of her own volition rather than being banished. Perhaps we could make use of her as an infiltration unit. There is that company that works closely with Kaeshana itself. All we need do is a little programming to her to make her believe Archangel's gift is the next ascendance toward their goddess and that we are making it possible for her to be capable enough to be accepted by her people despite her prior weakness. Of course we will also program in they desired this as well, their loyalty will be absolute and they will think it of their own will without question. Miss Azirly would easily believe it is of the goddesses will and that her new body will grant her return to Kaeshana. Where she can only hope she can do her best to grant her people this new blessing with whatever we need her do there."

 

[Maelion Liates]

[member="Doll Crux"]
[member="Moira Skaldi"]

At that moment, Maelion was disconnecting her call with the Lord Protector of the Protectorate. As soon as the holo shut off her concerned, earnest face became cold, flat again. She brushed her hair back into position and straightened her business outfit. She had no need to pretend anymore that she was a breathless human businesswoman, willing to do anything to help the people of Druckenwell.

Instead, she headed from the communications room, sending a transmission to Moira.
“The Protectorate has been appeased. I am dispatching units to ‘help’ the organics. We may be able to harvest some of the dead for appearances to clothe our units in.”
Waste not, want not, as it was said!
“How do the experiments proceed?”

 

[Moira Skaldi]

[member="Doll Crux"], [member="Maelion Liates"]

Moira scrutinised the elf woman with the expression of a scientist studying an insect under the microscope. It would have truly been a sad tale about how the stultifrying culture of Kaeshana and its magocratic beliefs proved so stiffling to individual aspirations, that is if Moira had possessed the software to care about anyone else in the Galaxy. What her mind saw instead were threats and assets, these were the two categories of individuals that existed for her.


"Religion has always been a powerful tool to fool the weak-minded and make chattel out of them. The Eldorai wallow in ignorance and cling to their antiquated notions of superiority. An infiltration unit, yes...there is Firemane Industries. Run by two decadent aristocrats living in splendour. The former Lady Protector and the so called 'Sword of the Protectorate'," whom the Mothers of Roche and Gehenna had wanted to be put on trial for war crimes, but those claims had naturally been dismissed. "The latter is remarkably easy to fool. " Far as Moira was concerned Kerrigan's minuscule brain was located in her crotch. She belonged to the category of organics who would be murdered outright because she was unworthy of ascension.


It was then that she received word of Maelion's transmission. For a moment her eyes flashed before they resumed their normal human colour. She left the laboratory for the communications room of the station, where she listened to the transmission before responding.

"That is an outcome of the highest utility. Further testing must still take place before a final verdict can be pronounced, but through the use of entechment we have achieved success at creating agents that by our estimate will not be traceable by force-users, presuming not apex mentalists," at that a brief summation of the experiments followed, partly because this writer does not feel like describing them again after so many wall of text posts!


The use of organic essence, even though the droid brain would be thoroughly reprogrammed after the 'essence' had been torn out of an organic's body and placed in that of a human replica droid, was ideologically problematic, since there was the risk of losing the purity of metal. Hence why Moira had not submitted to a self-test, which in any case never went well for a mad scientist as holovids showed! Still the new units, once thoroughly tested and though she did not consider them a replacement, should serve the Age of Steel well.

The method could be summarised as 'Suck the essence out of an organic, put it in an HRD body, which can be custom-made, reprogramme the droid brain to get out those emo organic thoughts and condition them to realise Archangel is awesome. We can totally transfer essence into an existing HRD and overwrite said essence like a computer file with techno-space magic to get that emo organic identity out while preserving knowledge and stuff. Upside is forcers will totes sense the essence and be none the wiser and the units can mimic organics better. Downside is...got to be sure the HRDs don't suddenly decide that a 'soul' means they should have emo organic thoughts. Let's totes not self-test. Metal detectors probably still suck for them.'

 

[Camellia]

[member="Maelion Liates"] [member="Moira Skaldi"]

Yes metal detectors probably would still suck for even the new units with essence entechment procedures. They're only true advantage was the ability to fool forcers by giving off the feel of normal living humans/organics. The essences could be rewritten along with the old organic mind as both were tied to the droid brain after entechment, piece by piece the data could be overwritten, altered, and changed. Thus those bits of the organic essence tied to each part of the droid brain reprogrammed would also be reprogrammed to fit their new persona to eliminate any discrepancy. The true concern of the new units was whether or not their essences would develop to cause any problems for the Age of Steel. Likely they wouldn't with continued programming updates, but that was why Doll was conducting her very careful and elaborate experiments with a few HRDs unaware of their machine status to see if acting out organic lives with organic souls would cause any problems.

She would be keeping a very close eye on the reports and surveillance data on these experiments personally.

It didn't escape Doll's notice when Moira's eyes flashed and the Director of Archangel departed without a word. It was rather sudden really, enough to pique the former Loronar Construct's curiosity. All communications between the HRDs of Archangel could happen without a verbal word spoken. Doll wondered what it was then that Moira had just been told that prompted the other machine's departure from the lab. Was it something interesting? Worrying? Or perhaps it was merely something inconsequential entirely. Well regardless there was little she could do about such things kept from her. There were still these two little elves to entech after all. If she needed to be informed of information updates then she would. If not she would find out later herself. Keeping herself useful was her top priority after all. If there was any information to help her stay that way then she would look into it.

With a signal Doll would command Azirly be lifted up into the entechment chamber. As the process has been gone over in detail one can expect the machine behaved much the same ways as before. Doll prepared the datapad linked to the new HRD as she stepped out of the second chamber of the apparatus in her new body, she was quick to upload the new HRD's loyalty before she fully awoke from the stupor. Not that there was any threat, just moving along now that everything was working out as expected.

On Azirly's side she continued drifting through her sleep until all was blackness. . . . . and then everything came back. The Eldorai woman would step out of the chamber confused and awake as she surveyed the lab around her. For a moment everything that had happened was a blank before the bar, but then she remember as Doll finished fiddling with the datapad and the files within it. The memories came to her quickly and naturally, so she believed. She had been drinking after a lousy hunt to capture lowlife scum beneath her time and standing as a member of the Eldorai race. She had come across a lovely lady there too, and ended up talking after she had become drunk.

Azirly recalled sharing her past a bit, depressed and through with the matter as she told the woman. It had been rather embarrassing until that woman had told her about Archangel, about how they could make her stronger, about the work they were doing to allow everyone to ascend into a greater life everlasting and without weakness. The Eldorai had been instantly taken in by those words, wanting nothing more than to become stronger and return to Kaeshana somehow to show them such new strength. It was truly Ashira's desire they become even more perfect as a race after all. It made complete sense to the new machine elf woman. Archangel was truly a benevolent and wonderful company, organics were foolish to cling to their weaknesses. They would still live after all, merely made stronger in the name of an Age of Steel. What would be wrong with that? She was alive after all, she was no less an Eldorai than she was before. In fact she was better! A race so weak physically compared to others, those without the force like herself had been looked down upon. She'd show them, if it was Archangel's wish she do so. She would do her utmost to be a most perfect infiltration agent.

With the press of a button though Azirly's mind went dormant as Doll exerted the machine side of the Eldorai converted machine to the fullest. She would be reactivated when ready to be deployed. Doll had the newly processed Azirly step to the side so that Maerys could also begin the entechment procedure. The former Loronar Machine felt some pity to repress the enteched and programmed minds. Maybe if the directors would allow once testing was through and it seemed safe they would allow them to act as they wished so long as their loyalty programming was kept up. Unlikely though. Doll knew it was unlikely. While her existence was preserved without added programming it was only because she had been a machine from the start and was useful now. While the others could be useful, they would have no argument of a previous state since they were made into machines with such mechanically precise personalities from the start. "Place Miss Mearys within the chamber next. Director Skaldi will likely drop by once more before we send these units out with a finalized plan in mind."