[ open ] have you ever wondered

[lyingheart]

WHO: Annie Leonhart & OPEN
WHERE: NONAH, HEROPA, anywhere
WHEN: 1st - 16th of May
WHAT: Annie takes Rex out for runs; Annie carries a giant stuffed squid; anything else is in the cards.
WARNINGS: n/a

NONAH | IN NONAH, DOG WALKS YOU
[ There's an almost full grown brittany spaniel trotting up to you holding its own leash in its mouth. Annie's still sprinting up the path Rex had taken off up ahead of her; she rounds the bend even as Rex sits in front of you and wags his tail.

He's a good boy, right? Right? Give his head a pet, he's taking one of his owners out running. He's such a good boy. ]

Rex! Stay!

HEROPA, A TRAIN, THEN NONAH | I'M 10,000 FEET AWAY FROM THE SEA
[ Don't ask. Annie has no good story to tell for why this has happened, but it has.

And she is walking down the sidewalk with a giant stuffed squid in her arms. It is so large she can't keep its arms from dragging on the ground behind her, mostly because each time she's wrapped them around herself a few have come loose anyway.

This is Annie, resigned, all of five feet tall and carting along a squid that's twenty feet of stuffed, tentacled goodness. And if you end of stepping on a tentacle: ]

... Will you get off the tentacle please?

[ Whereas if she runs into you at an intersection, she might ask: ]

Will you hit the cross signal button?

[ Or if you catch her on the train, she may simply throw tentacles across the seat in front of her and sit next to the darn thing with an unimpressed look on her face. ]

WILDCARD
[ Hit me up via PM and I can start something out for us, or make up your own here and roll on out! ]

Comments

The squid one

[hunterrabbit]

[It takes a second for Touka to realize what Annie's asking her to do because- giant squid. It's kinda distracting.]

Oh- right. [She hits the signal button right after that, and tries to keep herself from staring at the squid, but...i'ts too hard to resist.] Do you want any help carrying that? The, uh...tentacles will get dirty if they keep dragging on the ground.

tentacles at you

[lyingheart]

[ Annie hefts the squid body in her arms, craning her head back to look over her own shoulder with a view partly blocked by a tentacle. ]

They keep unwinding... I need to get to the train station and then up to Nonah. It's a long haul.

[ She's not refusing help, but she's making the itinerary known. ]

If you feel like carrying them for a little way, that'll be appreciated? Who even made a twenty foot long stuffed squid in the first place...

nonah dog and robot rebels against owners

[pyms]

[ hank lives next door. occasionally, he sees the neighbours but he is largely unaware and too often too focused on one thing or another.

the thought right then was focused on taking his helper bot (ignore the rolling LED light saying TURDBOT 5000 because it's not called turdbot) to a park and do some test with this new search and retrieval algorithm he planted in - completely safe.

but he looked down and there was a dog at his feet.

a minute later, after a pat on the dog's head, he's chasing his helper bot, who is now chasing the dog. ]

Hey-- Hey!

[ good lord, he's in bad shape. ]

[daimeinashi]

[Did you miss your weirdo ninja art buddy, Annie. You probably didn't, but if you did at all you'll probably regret it as he continues to be a weirdo at said intersection.]

You should try the rooftops. They're far more convenient.

[Intersections are complicated and confusing, roofs are way more straightforward. But at least he presses the button? And doesn't even ask about the elephant squid in the room.]

[lyingheart]

... I haven't found them as easy for walking when it comes to intersections.

[ Has she needed to be up on rooftops? Sure, but not while carting along the twenty feet of giant squid. She shifts the weight of the whole thing, tentacles flopped over her shoulder. ]

Thanks.

[cartesianspidertank]

[Rex seems to have stopped to socialize with a little girl! She's fallen down onto her butt as the dog licks her face. She seems rather nonchalant about the whole thing, remaining motionless as the dog covers her in saliva. She turns to Annie as the owner approaches.]

Hello there! Are you this creature's owner?? The leash normally indicates that it is property! Does it qualify as 'cute'?

[Dipper only said that small things, or animals with hats, were cute. Maybe this one was too big!]

[lyingheart]

[ Does it qualify as cute? Annie has a screwy sense of cute, but she supposes that Rex is; he's not uncute, so to speak. ]

He's misbehaving is what he's doing. Rex, sit.

[ Tail thumping, the dog pulls back and sits down, looking up at Annie and canting his head to the side. He still loves meeting new people. At least he's not holding his leash anymore. ]

If he's cute or not is up to personal taste. Are you okay?

[ ... child? She's a little perplexed, but not overly so. No one's running up screaming about MY CHILD so they're off to a good start as far as she's concerned. Annie crouches to pick up the leash, Rex licking at the air beside her when she does. ]

[cartesianspidertank]

[Hmm, I was afraid of that! Tachikoma would have to figure out what cute meant for her. So many subjective definitions!]

I am receiving no pain signals, so I am likely undamaged!

[Tachikoma unsteadily leans forward and pushes herself up to her feet with a criminally cute little waver]

Can I pet him?

[daimeinashi]

[Sai merely shrugs.]

I prefer avoiding the cars, myself.

[A beat. He tilts his head contemplatively for a moment.]

Would you like a hand with that thing?

[lyingheart]

[ Annie comes to a stop, taking in the unfolding chaos before her. Rex continues to run in a rousing game of chase and not be caught, tongue lolling as the helper bot zooms in close. ]

... Can you call your thing off?

[ She gestures out to the helper bot as she calls out for Rex, the dog (still more puppy than not) galloping straight toward her. ]

[lyingheart]

Yes, most of us do.

[ For the sake of not being crushed by any of them... still, Annie tries to look back to Sai. She almost manages. ]

I've got enough tentacles to fill at least two.

[lyingheart]

[ That... is a peculiar way of speaking she's heard before. Annie looks at Tachikoma with increasing curiosity (and a touch of puzzlement). ]

You're not just a child, are you?

[ Question. She's absolutely not certain. ]

Rex enjoys the attention, so if you want to, then yes, you may.

[cartesianspidertank]

[Tachikoma wanders over and starts to lightly pet Rex, trying to emulate behavior she's seen before. The texture is nice and the dog seems to enjoy it. It's not an unpleasant experience!]

I think I would not qualify as a child at all, since most definitions assume 'human'... although 'humanity' as a concept is a bit subjective! Sentient creations of humanity occupy an ambiguous area of society and language! Given time, artificial beings might be redefined as simply another subcategory of humans - or perhaps 'human' will become deprecated and a more accommodating label will come into use that better represents the various forms of sentient life! But setting aside that debate, 'child' first and foremost refers to immaturity! That poses more serious questions since while I am much younger than what most humans would consider adult, my growth doesn't follow human biological patterns, and may in fact be unlimited! On the other hand, maybe AI do eventually reach a 'maturity' and we just haven't seen it happen yet!

[daimeinashi]

Ah, I meant...avoiding them as an issue. Entirely.

[Have you seen how many idiots race their stupid flying metal carriages, he'd rather just not...step foot in the same streets they operate in even briefly, ugh. But whatever, moving on.]

How about a couple talons?

[Sai's been developing an...odd...sense of humor while he's been here--he grins as if he's said something amusing before he pulls out that scroll of his and draws a bird, bringing it to life with his jutsu. It's not nearly as large as the one that picked up the car that time during the Hornet attacks, but it's still decently sized, and flapping patiently in the air between them.]

2! Hope you don't mind the set up

[lucke]

Oh my. Seems like someone's gone and taken their fate into their own hands.

[Cu bends down and gently pats the friendly dog on his head. Cu has always had a great rapport with the canine kind. But this time their chance meeting is likely due to the wolf sitting beside the bench Cu's currently occupying. A wolf with the height and girth of a small horse.

The big black beast tips it's nose down to meet the new comer with gentle curiosity that belies it's size.]

[hunterrabbit]

Someone who knew there'd be people who buy one. And someone did. [Touka bends down and scoops up any stray tentacles that're trailing on the ground - tossing them over her shoulders. They end up draped around her neck like some weird kind of scarf...there's gotta be a better way to carry it than this.]

It's not heavy, is it?

it's all good by me!

[lyingheart]

[ Rex doesn't jump up, but he does stretch his neck out, fur of his ruff coming up a little. He's not sure what to make of what his nose tells him, but the large wolf isn't threatening him, and that... that's reassuring.

He doesn't wag his tail so much as whine low in his throat, waiting for the larger canine to give him cues for how to interact. Rex leaned in to Cu's pat, but it's hard to know which individual he should be watching!

For her part, Annie evaluates both as she jogs up, then settles the bulk of her attention on Cu. ]

Or mouth, as the case may be. Sorry about him.

[lyingheart]

Unfortunately...

[ Now she's carting it back up north. To a gym, of all places. She doesn't get her employers sometimes... ]

No. Unwieldy, but not heavy.

[pyms]

It's not--!

[ he almost says that it's not a thing but a furry then metal object zooming pass him in another direction allowed him the time to see that he would be arguing with a teenage girl. hank takes the rest of the steps to fall in line with her and once rex goes zooming by, he holds an arm out and stops the moderately fast helper bot. hank puts a palm on the damn thing and inactivates it. ]

Sorry, my bot locked on to his movements. Damn thing. [ kneeling down, he analyze what damage caused this. ]

[lyingheart]

[ She gives him an odd look, but it's not one that lasts long - avoiding all cars seems unnecessarily thorough to her - particularly once he's making his oddball joke and...

Bird. Bird! Not a car carrying bird but it's a bird. ]

... Do you have any idea how unnerving that is.

[ Regardless... she hefts the stuffed squid in her arms and glances between the bird and Sai. ]

You're offering to have your... bird carry the squid?

[lyingheart]

[ Hank, do you think one year in this world is enough to give her the vocabulary needed to describe what your bot is? (... No... No it really, really isn't. That side of technology hasn't been her forte.)

She snaps her fingers, Rex racing around her and then coming to sit at her feet, leash dragging along various pieces of plant matter. She glances down at the leash, avoiding looking at Rex. He has to wait until she determines it's time to "pay" him attention again, the little shit. ]

Your bot... if it's locking on to things, what kind of function is it supposed to have? A personal defense one?

[lyingheart]

[ If anything... she finds herself smiling, just the barest little bit. The rambling thought process is one she can only track and understand now because of a year of immersion touching on the topics of what this AI is speaking about, and it's... almost eye opening, to realize how much it is she's absorbed over time.

And how she can agree with the conceptions of children as immature, and how that doesn't always follow properly across cultural, or constructed, boundaries. ]

Experience is a different sort of measurement of growth. If we say every AI has a moment where they become aware of themselves, much like other thinking beings... then I'd believe there is a maturity, eventually. But what maturity of one AI to another AI looks like compared to human concepts? That I wouldn't know.

[ Rex has no idea what is being spoken about, but he's perfectly happy to keep wagging his tail and looking for more attention from Tachikoma. He loves what he's getting... and glutton that he is, he's happy to take on more and more. Love him. He's such a good boy. Right? ]

[daimeinashi]

[Oh come on, Annie, he would've thought it'd be more unnerving if he'd turned into one. Not that he would; it's more chakra and effort than he cares to expend, and this way is more efficient anyway.]

Not really.

[....AT LEAST HE'S HONEST???]

More than just the squid, though.

[He hops on the bird, in illustration of what he means.]

[lyingheart]

[ Look, she finds all sorts of things still unnerving! To the amusement of some... ]

Huh.

[ She comes closer, holding the squid up his way. She's not going to hop on with it still taking up all her arms, most her body, and then some! ]

I hope you're a steady navigator, Sai.

[daimeinashi]

[He doesn't move to take the squid from her yet, though.]

I was thinking the bird could carry that thing in its talons, and us on its back.