"Blaine had a degenerative condition called 'going insane'," Little Blaine says. And the very observant might note he didn't specify Big Blaine that time. The insanity had started first, after all. "Big Blaine was very dangerous," he adds. And that's a difference. He nods when going anywhere is mentioned. "Some of Quint's family want to teach me other games, like soccer. And how to climb trees." The last he speaks of as an especially surreal concept. Monorails do not run up trees.
Quint rubs the back of his neck and looks sheepish as he realizes he's going to have to explain Rock's issues after all. Though two of them come something close to right. "He wasn't designed that way. Rock was just a lab-tech, like Roll was a cook and housekeeper. Noncombatants. Even the Alphas were just industrial work designs until Wily's first attempt at taking over the world..." He sighs and picks up a decently large candy bar. "Remember I said he died because of a First Law issue? It's... more complicated than that." He looks over the candy bar with an odd expression, as if it's something sad and bitter, and yet something he's almost managed to view as nostalgic in a twisted sort of way. "This is your brain," he says, mocking an ancient anti-drug commercial. And then he snaps the candy bar in half. "This is your brain when First Law insists you have to go fight, and probably kill, your younger siblings because they got reprogrammed into killing humans."
"Sometimes AI can learn and adapt to a situation a little too much. Mega exists to do what Rock couldn't. At first, he wasn't much more than... a kind of mental state where Rock would suppress the parts of himself that hated fighting. But by the time he got to the first of the Alphas... They aren't the same person any more than Castor and Pollux - the two halves of Gemini - are. But since he wasn't designed to be that way, it's dangerous if they argue too much. If they fight over who's active. It causes parts to overheat that can't be replaced. It's not usually a problem, since they don't deal with the same things. But at the first end... Mega caught the virus. Rock didn't. And he fought him all the way. They froze up and got blown up by the explosives Mega was going to set."
Their recognition of the name thing helps distract him from bad memories, and he smirks a bit as he nods in confirmation. "The American games never mentioned Rock's name, just calling him Mega, so most people out of Japan missed the joke. We have a shared older brother named Blues... who they called Proto in the American games, and who we call Proto only if we want to get smacked. And on the Wily side, it continued in the RKNs. Like I said, my name's short for Quintet. The two younger RKNs are Punk and Ballade. And I have an older brother named Enker... Enka is a type of Japanese music. And then there's Forte, and his wolf Gospel..."
That amusement keeps him from getting too down when the topic's back to the complexity of the paradox. He nods. "And he can't get infected now. We wiped out the virus. Even if something else killed him, the memories wouldn't be the same as the ones I had." But the rest, he nods. "That's what worries me. I mean... I don't think I could have done anything differently even if I had known. I couldn't have just let everyone die. Maybe I would have tried to find a way to fake it all so it would still make sense... But I thought it was all just precognitive nightmares up until the day Zero went on an Omega-induced rampage. Even then... I wasn't sure until Wily's little surprise unlocked." Which hadn't stopped the whole thing being creepy, even thinking back... watching Rock do and say the same things he'd been doing in his dreams, and realizing it was all from the persoective of his family's worst enemy.
"Sometimes, I still expect I'll disappear... or everything else will. But nothing's happened. Sometimes I think that's because of the Nexus. The most rational possibility would be that the Timeskimmer actually jumped timelines instead of doing actual time travel. The last parts of it were in the same closet that the first portal to the Nexus opened up in... But... I don't like that answer any more than I like thinking we're all supposed to vanish from existance. Because... if that was true, everyone still died." And there was enough of the hero left in the Wilybot to find that unacceptable.
It was a lot easier for him to just avoid thinking about it... And that's shielded him from knowing that the reason the broken time-loop hasn't collapsed is that they aren't at the end of it. They have until the point the Timeskimmer would have gone to to find a way to fake what would have been found and possibly repair the damage. Even then, there will be a minor time hiccup in the whole 'but where did it come from to start' sort, but at least the loop would be closed.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2018-06-16 09:59 am (UTC)Quint rubs the back of his neck and looks sheepish as he realizes he's going to have to explain Rock's issues after all. Though two of them come something close to right. "He wasn't designed that way. Rock was just a lab-tech, like Roll was a cook and housekeeper. Noncombatants. Even the Alphas were just industrial work designs until Wily's first attempt at taking over the world..." He sighs and picks up a decently large candy bar. "Remember I said he died because of a First Law issue? It's... more complicated than that." He looks over the candy bar with an odd expression, as if it's something sad and bitter, and yet something he's almost managed to view as nostalgic in a twisted sort of way. "This is your brain," he says, mocking an ancient anti-drug commercial. And then he snaps the candy bar in half. "This is your brain when First Law insists you have to go fight, and probably kill, your younger siblings because they got reprogrammed into killing humans."
"Sometimes AI can learn and adapt to a situation a little too much. Mega exists to do what Rock couldn't. At first, he wasn't much more than... a kind of mental state where Rock would suppress the parts of himself that hated fighting. But by the time he got to the first of the Alphas... They aren't the same person any more than Castor and Pollux - the two halves of Gemini - are. But since he wasn't designed to be that way, it's dangerous if they argue too much. If they fight over who's active. It causes parts to overheat that can't be replaced. It's not usually a problem, since they don't deal with the same things. But at the first end... Mega caught the virus. Rock didn't. And he fought him all the way. They froze up and got blown up by the explosives Mega was going to set."
Their recognition of the name thing helps distract him from bad memories, and he smirks a bit as he nods in confirmation. "The American games never mentioned Rock's name, just calling him Mega, so most people out of Japan missed the joke. We have a shared older brother named Blues... who they called Proto in the American games, and who we call Proto only if we want to get smacked. And on the Wily side, it continued in the RKNs. Like I said, my name's short for Quintet. The two younger RKNs are Punk and Ballade. And I have an older brother named Enker... Enka is a type of Japanese music. And then there's Forte, and his wolf Gospel..."
That amusement keeps him from getting too down when the topic's back to the complexity of the paradox. He nods. "And he can't get infected now. We wiped out the virus. Even if something else killed him, the memories wouldn't be the same as the ones I had." But the rest, he nods. "That's what worries me. I mean... I don't think I could have done anything differently even if I had known. I couldn't have just let everyone die. Maybe I would have tried to find a way to fake it all so it would still make sense... But I thought it was all just precognitive nightmares up until the day Zero went on an Omega-induced rampage. Even then... I wasn't sure until Wily's little surprise unlocked." Which hadn't stopped the whole thing being creepy, even thinking back... watching Rock do and say the same things he'd been doing in his dreams, and realizing it was all from the persoective of his family's worst enemy.
"Sometimes, I still expect I'll disappear... or everything else will. But nothing's happened. Sometimes I think that's because of the Nexus. The most rational possibility would be that the Timeskimmer actually jumped timelines instead of doing actual time travel. The last parts of it were in the same closet that the first portal to the Nexus opened up in... But... I don't like that answer any more than I like thinking we're all supposed to vanish from existance. Because... if that was true, everyone still died." And there was enough of the hero left in the Wilybot to find that unacceptable.
It was a lot easier for him to just avoid thinking about it... And that's shielded him from knowing that the reason the broken time-loop hasn't collapsed is that they aren't at the end of it. They have until the point the Timeskimmer would have gone to to find a way to fake what would have been found and possibly repair the damage. Even then, there will be a minor time hiccup in the whole 'but where did it come from to start' sort, but at least the loop would be closed.