#v:post-AI

[chegadesaudade]

@visiodei​​ - from here!

Iris cautiously tiptoed her way forward, each little tap coming with the grace of the professional dancer inside her. She didn’t help him up just yet - she had no idea how much he weighed, first of all - but the very least she could do was to take his glasses and properly set them back across his face. Poor old man. Poor, innocent old man!

“You might not believe me,” she said, “but I’ve got contacts in the MPD!! Whoever did this... we’ll find them, and we’ll put them behind bars, for sure!!!”

Her voice was a little too chipper for someone viewing a shooting victim.

“Sooooooo... do you want a cab to the hospital? I've got JapanTaxi on my phone. I bet they’d get here super fast!”

[notevenjupiter]

@psyncin-in-the-restrain​ - continued from here!

“You’re actually stopping? I’m mildly impressed. Most guys in this joint have a much harder time saying no to a little bit of the bubbly.”

No, he hadn’t been getting too rowdy. But there was a row of empty shot glasses on the table in front of him, and the bartenders at this place didn’t give a shit as long as their customers paid the tab, so... Phi had decided to take one for the team and engage the weirdo in conversation. He reminded her of Dio, but with a less punchable face. That was good.

“Last week,” she continued, “There was this big, burly security guard. Between jobs, but he still had those dumb security guard glasses on. Said he used to work for some asshole called Sejima. Anyway, he was pounding down Asahi Blacks until he passed out. I didn’t want that to happen to you.”

[chegadesaudade]

“Hey, did you know... the reason I know so much about the inner workings of NAIXATLOZ is because.... I’m actually one of their highest ranking members? That’s right!! If this is 1984, then I’m actually the O’Brien of this story, and you’re all the Winstons that I’ve been leading astray...”

“April Fool’s! I was just kidding, I’d never work for NAIX in a million years. Kid, kid, kid, kid, kid, kid, kidding!!”

[chegadesaudade]

eludum replied to your post: "hey, hey, are you gonna go to the shrine on new...

“um… visiting my grandparents… that’s about it. nothing particularly exciting… i guess.”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to do something exciting. Sometimes it’s nice to keep things quiet, you know?

I remember my old producer, Renju - he’s the guy that discovered me! - came to work one morning with this huuuuge hangover. He’d been out all night in Golden Yokocho, drinking at four different bars, and he had this massive headache when he eventually got to work. Seeing how grouchy and sad he was, it kinda turned me off of that sort of wild partying. Besides, I think I’d have a lot more fun playing ShovelForge instead!”

[chegadesaudade]

@eludum​ - continued from here!

An audible sigh came from Iris’s end of the phone. Yes, Iris loved having someone to listen to all of her ramblings on NAIX and the Wadjet System, and of the dozens of other organizations that could easily pose a threat to the world order. Yes, she dominated the conversation close to eighty, maybe ninety percent of the time. But that wasn’t why she called - she didn’t call just to have an audience. She wanted to hear the voice of her childhood best friend, an experience that texting couldn’t always deliver.

And Chiaki didn’t seem like she was getting the picture.

“No! I’m not talking about ShovelForge!” No one else but Iris could see it, but her free hand had balled up into a fist, and was shaking. “I’m talking about you... about your intrinsic value as a human being!”

She let out another huff. 

“You could quit ShovelForge tomorrow if you wanted. You could never upload a single piece of content ever again. You could disappear from the gaming world entirely. And you would still matter. You would still matter!!”

[chegadesaudade]

“Now that I’m thinking about it... it’s someone’s birthday today, isn’t it?

...

No... no one I care about. Nothing important. Forget I said anything.”

[chegadesaudade]

“Haaaaaaappy New Year! Whether or not you had a happy 2019, remember that you’ve got a whole decade ahead of you, and all the time in the world to accomplish all of your goals! You don’t have to let your dreams be dreams. Make your dreams come true! Just do it!!”

“That is, unless you’re a member of NAIX. I’m pretty sure that, whatever you’re dreaming, it’s probably not all that nice for the world, so... maybe tone down those plans for interstellar conquest? Please?”

[chegadesaudade]

❝ all through my life i’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was. ❞

“I know exactly what you mean. I’ve felt that way my entire life, too.”

Iris was sitting down, a little more subdued than usual. But the way her hands gripped each other showed just how barely-contained that energy was.

“The very moment I learned how to read, I was looking for the answers. And everything I learned about in school, or had to study for exams... in the back of my mind, I felt like something was fundamentally wrong, and none of the adults were telling me anything about it. But... now that I’m almost an adult, I feel like they didn’t tell me because, well... they didn’t know either. They couldn’t sense anything was wrong.”

She sighed, letting her head dip into her chest.

“So, since you’re more of an adult than I am... do you know what’s going on?”

[chegadesaudade]

You don’t have a boyfriend though.

“Of course not, silly. You can’t date if you’re an idol. Everyone knows that! 

Besides, even if I weren’t an idol, I’m not all that interested in finding a boyfriend. I don’t want flowers, or chocolate, or to be showered with gifts - unless it’s a brand new cache of WikiLeaks documents.”

[chegadesaudade]

Lotus, Junpei and Mira :>

lotus: who’s the “mom friend” in your squad? do you get along with them?

“Oh, that’s an easy question. It’s Mizuki!

I guess it’s a little ironic, considering she’s also younger than pretty much everyone else I’m friends with. But she’d make an amazing mom! She’s good at looking after everyone, and she cooks the best eggs!”

junpei: what’s the worst joke you’ve ever told?

“Hey. Hey. You know what kind of music Egyptian mummies listen to? 

Wrap music.”

mira: have you ever hurt someone for the sake of curiosity or amusement?

“No, not even as a joke. Maybe it’s naive of me, but…I still don’t understand the mind of someone who’d willingly inflict violence upon other people. It makes some sense if you’re a cop trying to protect innocent people, but… murderers or gangsters or any other kinds of bad people, I just don’t get why they’d do what they do. 

We’ve all got one planet to share. Rather than trying to go around hurting people, shouldn’t everyone be trying to make a world a better place?”

[chegadesaudade]

“Good evening, good morning, and hello! It’s the brand new star of the net world, A-Set! I’ve returned to your screens, just in time for Valentine’s Day!”

Here’s a little life hack to make your Friday easier. Don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day on the actual day. You should celebrate it the next day, when all the chocolate goes on sale! And, if you want an even better money-saving tip - if you’re single, you don’t have to buy anyone anything! You can eat all the chocolate, all by yourself! Hooray!

Of course, I’m not a monster. I got some giri-choco for my mom, and for some of the super duper hardworking people at Lemniscate. And if I could, I’d mail each and every single one of my fans some chocolate! But... I think I’d go bankrupt really quickly if I did that...

Wow! Those were some really good tips, don’t you think? Maybe I could be the next Troom Troom! Okay, that’s enough for today. Please subscribe to my channel! If you don’t, you’ll make me so aggro!”

[chegadesaudade]

Iris x Aiba ftw.

“Well... I really like her, and I appreciate her a lot, but I don’t think I’d go quite that far. I mean, I still don’t trust the Wadjet System, even if it saved her entire existence, and even if it’s kinda like her mom. And speaking of moms... how do you think mine would react if I told her I was dating a one-eyed hamster?”

[chegadesaudade]

eludum replied to your post “Wow I didn’t know you could run that fast. You must have really nice...”

"...i would think wearing pants would give you a boost, since you don't have to worry about... you know... pantyshots..."

“Hey, I’m an idol! And, my best friend’s an otaku that’s obsessed with my legs, my ‘Uncle’ collects super rare limited edition porno mags, and a lot of my most devoted fans seem to be men in their forties...

Let’s put it this way. Those pantyshots are going to happen, whether I want them to or not. Might as well roll with it, right?”

[chegadesaudade]

Wow I didn’t know you could run that fast. You must have really nice leg muscles. (Not like I’m into that or anything.)

“Thank you!! I think I’ve got pretty good leg muscles. But... I’ve got another technique... a super special secret technique...”

“Ta-da!! Not wearing pants!! 

Apparently, the thought of me wearing pants scares people.”

[chegadesaudade]

She smiled softly, tilting her head. "I love your hair!" Looking at the girl with bright pink locks, she smiled a little brighter and nodded her head. "Is the pink difficult to manage?"

“Thank you!! And your hair is really, really pretty too!”

Iris could feel the positive nature reflecting out of the other woman - and it only made her even happier.

“Believe it or not, it’s actually my natural hair color! I know it sounds odd, but... there’s other people in my family with hair just like this. I mean, my agency does pay for a few salon appointments and other things to keep it in tip-top shape, but... even when I was a really little girl, my hair was pink, pink, pink! Pink like a little pink flamingo!”

[chegadesaudade]

Do you think in a parallel world your a boy?

“Sure! It’s more than likely.

Andrei Linde’s concept of eternal inflation, if true, means that there’s an endlessly increasing number of parallel universes, to which we have no human concept to quantify! Infinity is the best word we have for a number that big. And if you have infinite possibilities, then anything’s possible. 

Say I was a boy. The doctors could have told mom at birth, oh, what joy, you’ve got a boy! Or they could’ve been like, it’s a girl, and my brain would have been all, nuh-uh, I don’t think so! Or it could have been something else entirely. Who knows? I don’t know, because that’s not the version of me that’s, well, me!

I talked to this one really, really smart man named Dr. Klim, who explained a lot of this stuff to me. For every major decision we make in our life, theoretically speaking, there’s another universe where we’ve made the opposite decision. If you took this big job opportunity in another city, there’s a version of you that didn’t take it, and that one little decision could have a butterfly effect that could change the entire world as we know it. 

Put it this way - if Mom and Mr. Okiura didn’t become friends in college, if they didn’t go to the same school, or share the same classes, it’s not just that my idol career wouldn’t have started. In that universe, I might not even have been born in the first place! I couldn’t be a girl, or a boy, or anything else, because I wouldn’t even exist. It’s a lot to think about.”