Apr. 2nd, 2018 12:20 pm
IC Inbox - Drift Fleet
[ Leave messages for ELN here! ]
Feb. 20th, 2015 09:10 am
(no subject)
OUT OF CHARACTER:
Name/Handle: Ryann
Contact: plurk/aim/dw @ cornichaun
Reference: meeee
IN-CHARACTER:
Character name: ELN-1470
Character journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pocketpal
Series name: n/a
Canon notes: n/a
Species: Tiny, robotically-altered human; she’s about 9 inches tall.
History: A few centuries from now, humanity finally gets off its ass and decides to explore the stars, despite the expense and the obstacles in the way. To this end, hundreds of ships are constructed, artificially sentient, and sent out in all different directions towards potential habitable planets. Only, there were a few problems with the artificial intelligence that couldn't get fixed. Namely, that if you make something sentient, it wants friends.
Hence the ELN series.
The ELN series was created such that the sentient ships cast into the void wouldn't get lonely. Created to reach a maximum of ten inches tall, so as to manipulate tools while still fitting in small spaces and preserving resources, the ELNs have reinforced bones and tendons, and muscles with enhanced tensile strength, as well as a brain of both natural and artificial parts. ELNs are grown/manufactured in the ship's labs, then set loose, physically mature already, to carry out their duties. Communication with the ship is managed via electronic "stack" embedded in the spinal cord.
ELNs can have a variety of said duties, from maintenance and repair to... no, mostly maintenance and repair. There are a few exceptions. ELN-1470 (full designation: ELN-1470/SISC0117) is one of them. 1470 was crafted in the labs of the then half-completed SISC0117, and set to work as part of the construction team. Upon the ship's completion, the humans in charge of the project reviewed the behavior of the ELNs and found several anomalies. 1470 was one of them. She had a tendency to add creative spin on her orders, to take erratically longer and shorter times to carry them out, and to sometimes engage the ship and her companion ELNs in conversation without prompting.
Now, these humans weren't monsters. They recognized this and took advantage of it, as a side benefit that can come from when your creations have mostly-human brains. They took out her stack and replaced it with one making her a sort of social officer, designed to connect the fairly solitary ELNs with one another.
After the ship launched, 1470 became a sort of roving adventurer on the enormous sentient ship. Unfortunately, she did not take well to this new role, because, despite her predilection towards being a social creature, none of the other ELNs were all that interested. So she mostly conducted maintenance and repair, and stewed on how bloody boring everyone around her was. Including the ship. The ship, in fact, was the most boring of them all.
So it continues, with her only real interesting contact being communications from Earth, for five years of her tiny life.
Personality: ELNs are made to be pretty simple: they're introverted, content to be alone, fascinated with little puzzles and problems that need solving. But, beyond that, they're not really supposed to be unique from one another in any large way. They're supposed to keep their heads down and do their duty, to be obedient and friendly but cool, to talk to the ship and assist it without impeding the journey to the stars. It's important to note that these baselines, and these expectations, are what guide 1470 beneath her anomalous behaviors.
1470 is different. Through some quirk of chemistry or the human brain, she got curiosity, which constantly drives her to push and seek beyond what her assignments and parameters say. She may like puzzles, and she may be all right on her own, but she's distractible; she will stargaze, she will engage someone in conversation, she will push out past what her pre-sorted life is supposed to give her.
Her social personality was formed largely by three things: interactions with other ELNs, interactions with the ship, and interactions with humans from home. ELNs are not really friendly. They can chat a little, and fix things together, but mostly they'll just sit in companionable silence and drink tea. 1470 might like this, but she's not content with it. So, next, she turned to the ship for intellectual stimulation. Unfortunately, she discovered that ships are boring, and that they want to talk about minute variations in cosmic noise more than they want to do things like play games of chess. And when they play chess, they always win.
So most of her outward personality has been formed from interacting with normal humans. Humans never treated her as an equal, or as anything more than a convenient interface to talk to the computer, so the glimpses she caught of real human behavior were few and far between, caught in snippets of radio broadcast or television broadcast while traveling out to the stars. As a result, 1470 is prickly and standoffish, resentful of patronization, sarcastic and impatient. She can be short-tempered and quick to meanness if she thinks that someone is talking down to her. She thinks she doesn't like people. It's because she's never gotten to know any of them.
If anyone really interacted with her, they would realize that this shallowly conceals what's really going on: 1470 is lonely. There is no one quite like her on the ship, and no one willing to interact with her on her level. Easing that loneliness would go a long way in getting her to smile once in a while, and maybe go a little lighter on the sardonic meanness.
1470 is also tough, fierce and thorough. When she gets a job done, she gets it done; when she gets distracted, she is going to go about studying that distraction as thoroughly as possible. Interruptions are taken poorly. She doesn't mind going to physical extremes or going without food or water for long periods of time. She knows her limits and isn't afraid to step right up to them. In fact, she's not afraid of much at all; her somewhat sheltered life has never given her obstacles that she couldn't deal with, given time, effort, elbow grease and a few angry kicks. Reaching something that she can't overcome might teach her a very fast lesson in the ways of the real world.
1470, in comparison to everyone else, will still be solitary, still be standoffish, still be overly focused on finding problems and fixing them. She's still an ELN. But she's changing. She's evolving from what an ELN should be. She has potential. And the end isn't in sight yet.
Abilities: 1470 is mostly human. She has a memory bordering on perfect, high-end coordination and reflexes, and she is as flexible and fit as a gymnast, which is necessary for climbing around conduits and repairing systems. All her enhancements to muscle/tendon/bone mostly put her strength on par with an ordinary, physically fit normal-sized human. This means she can jump like a spider and could conceivably do something like drag an unconscious human across a floor, depending on how well her shoes gripped.
She is also adapted to be able to live for the long-term in zero-G and 1-G environments, and everything in between.
Augment Skillset: Lab Support
Sample:
[ video ]
This is ELN-1470, reporting for duty. [ The tiny woman - no, it’s not just a trick of perspective - is standing on top of a table, peering down at the communications device, tiny hands on tiny hips. ]
It appears that my prior duties have been canceled, due to the catastrophic disappearance SISC0117. Which, I may add, not only contained my duties, but my dwelling and all of my possessions.
[ Someone’s not pleased. ]
Please inform me of my updated schedule.
I’m sure it will be a pleasure to serve. [ To turn off the communicator, she stomps on a button. ]
Name/Handle: Ryann
Contact: plurk/aim/dw @ cornichaun
Reference: meeee
IN-CHARACTER:
Character name: ELN-1470
Character journal:
pocketpalSeries name: n/a
Canon notes: n/a
Species: Tiny, robotically-altered human; she’s about 9 inches tall.
History: A few centuries from now, humanity finally gets off its ass and decides to explore the stars, despite the expense and the obstacles in the way. To this end, hundreds of ships are constructed, artificially sentient, and sent out in all different directions towards potential habitable planets. Only, there were a few problems with the artificial intelligence that couldn't get fixed. Namely, that if you make something sentient, it wants friends.
Hence the ELN series.
The ELN series was created such that the sentient ships cast into the void wouldn't get lonely. Created to reach a maximum of ten inches tall, so as to manipulate tools while still fitting in small spaces and preserving resources, the ELNs have reinforced bones and tendons, and muscles with enhanced tensile strength, as well as a brain of both natural and artificial parts. ELNs are grown/manufactured in the ship's labs, then set loose, physically mature already, to carry out their duties. Communication with the ship is managed via electronic "stack" embedded in the spinal cord.
ELNs can have a variety of said duties, from maintenance and repair to... no, mostly maintenance and repair. There are a few exceptions. ELN-1470 (full designation: ELN-1470/SISC0117) is one of them. 1470 was crafted in the labs of the then half-completed SISC0117, and set to work as part of the construction team. Upon the ship's completion, the humans in charge of the project reviewed the behavior of the ELNs and found several anomalies. 1470 was one of them. She had a tendency to add creative spin on her orders, to take erratically longer and shorter times to carry them out, and to sometimes engage the ship and her companion ELNs in conversation without prompting.
Now, these humans weren't monsters. They recognized this and took advantage of it, as a side benefit that can come from when your creations have mostly-human brains. They took out her stack and replaced it with one making her a sort of social officer, designed to connect the fairly solitary ELNs with one another.
After the ship launched, 1470 became a sort of roving adventurer on the enormous sentient ship. Unfortunately, she did not take well to this new role, because, despite her predilection towards being a social creature, none of the other ELNs were all that interested. So she mostly conducted maintenance and repair, and stewed on how bloody boring everyone around her was. Including the ship. The ship, in fact, was the most boring of them all.
So it continues, with her only real interesting contact being communications from Earth, for five years of her tiny life.
Personality: ELNs are made to be pretty simple: they're introverted, content to be alone, fascinated with little puzzles and problems that need solving. But, beyond that, they're not really supposed to be unique from one another in any large way. They're supposed to keep their heads down and do their duty, to be obedient and friendly but cool, to talk to the ship and assist it without impeding the journey to the stars. It's important to note that these baselines, and these expectations, are what guide 1470 beneath her anomalous behaviors.
1470 is different. Through some quirk of chemistry or the human brain, she got curiosity, which constantly drives her to push and seek beyond what her assignments and parameters say. She may like puzzles, and she may be all right on her own, but she's distractible; she will stargaze, she will engage someone in conversation, she will push out past what her pre-sorted life is supposed to give her.
Her social personality was formed largely by three things: interactions with other ELNs, interactions with the ship, and interactions with humans from home. ELNs are not really friendly. They can chat a little, and fix things together, but mostly they'll just sit in companionable silence and drink tea. 1470 might like this, but she's not content with it. So, next, she turned to the ship for intellectual stimulation. Unfortunately, she discovered that ships are boring, and that they want to talk about minute variations in cosmic noise more than they want to do things like play games of chess. And when they play chess, they always win.
So most of her outward personality has been formed from interacting with normal humans. Humans never treated her as an equal, or as anything more than a convenient interface to talk to the computer, so the glimpses she caught of real human behavior were few and far between, caught in snippets of radio broadcast or television broadcast while traveling out to the stars. As a result, 1470 is prickly and standoffish, resentful of patronization, sarcastic and impatient. She can be short-tempered and quick to meanness if she thinks that someone is talking down to her. She thinks she doesn't like people. It's because she's never gotten to know any of them.
If anyone really interacted with her, they would realize that this shallowly conceals what's really going on: 1470 is lonely. There is no one quite like her on the ship, and no one willing to interact with her on her level. Easing that loneliness would go a long way in getting her to smile once in a while, and maybe go a little lighter on the sardonic meanness.
1470 is also tough, fierce and thorough. When she gets a job done, she gets it done; when she gets distracted, she is going to go about studying that distraction as thoroughly as possible. Interruptions are taken poorly. She doesn't mind going to physical extremes or going without food or water for long periods of time. She knows her limits and isn't afraid to step right up to them. In fact, she's not afraid of much at all; her somewhat sheltered life has never given her obstacles that she couldn't deal with, given time, effort, elbow grease and a few angry kicks. Reaching something that she can't overcome might teach her a very fast lesson in the ways of the real world.
1470, in comparison to everyone else, will still be solitary, still be standoffish, still be overly focused on finding problems and fixing them. She's still an ELN. But she's changing. She's evolving from what an ELN should be. She has potential. And the end isn't in sight yet.
Abilities: 1470 is mostly human. She has a memory bordering on perfect, high-end coordination and reflexes, and she is as flexible and fit as a gymnast, which is necessary for climbing around conduits and repairing systems. All her enhancements to muscle/tendon/bone mostly put her strength on par with an ordinary, physically fit normal-sized human. This means she can jump like a spider and could conceivably do something like drag an unconscious human across a floor, depending on how well her shoes gripped.
She is also adapted to be able to live for the long-term in zero-G and 1-G environments, and everything in between.
Augment Skillset: Lab Support
Sample:
[ video ]
This is ELN-1470, reporting for duty. [ The tiny woman - no, it’s not just a trick of perspective - is standing on top of a table, peering down at the communications device, tiny hands on tiny hips. ]
It appears that my prior duties have been canceled, due to the catastrophic disappearance SISC0117. Which, I may add, not only contained my duties, but my dwelling and all of my possessions.
[ Someone’s not pleased. ]
Please inform me of my updated schedule.
I’m sure it will be a pleasure to serve. [ To turn off the communicator, she stomps on a button. ]
