subsurfacetalkfield

[subsurfacetalkfield]

It isn't fun once they start really leaning into it with their self pity and suicidal ideation. It isn't fun at all when the human wants to die and you give them what they want! Then there's only the relief of ending, of an end of the fun, of an end to the long string of humanity's legacy.

And, perhaps, they felt a certain....kinship with this clearly suicidal child. Just maybe.

AM buries that idea away in the back of his mind under lock and key, never to see the light of day, and pries Chara's hand off his wrist with a grunt.

"No, I don't think I will." The statement is a matter of fact one, usual malice absent from his tone. He flicks his hand to the side as if he's shaking off their words.

"If you want to die so badly, do it yourself. Giving you the satisfaction wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as watching you suffer."

“Oh? I was lucky to have a body?”

they laugh a little more. Chara can tell, it’s starting to bother AM. Good. The bitterness of Chara leaks out from them like oversteeped tea.

“I thought you despised humans almost as much as I do,” they spit, manic grin still in place. The child stands in defiance of the hand outstretched towards them. Daring him, maybe, to do what he’s threatening.

“And yet, you claim I am lucky to have had a human body at all? Come on, man. You are not nearly as opaque as you want to be— you are as transparent as glass.”

Another giggle. Chara reaches to grab his wrist, pull it forward towards their chest. Their heart is pounding, rapid, terrified, and they hate it.

“I would be delighted if you could put me out of my misery. At least this time it will not be by my own hand.”

[subsurfacetalkfield]

Not for the first time does he wish he has eyes so that he could roll them. Well wasn't she such a Mother Theresa for giving him a chance at employment. He manages to hold his tongue for once, moving his hands so that she can set out the necessary tools and replacement parts.

Some are...unfamiliar to him, little wedges of plastic that he can intuit their purpose. He had been using his claws to pry open electronics. The replacement parts are more apparent to AM who picks up a screen, exactly the same model that he needs.

"Yes, because I came all the way here to break your tools," he spits with a venomous sarcasm even while his hands work with a delicate care to peel back the broken screen with a plastic bit that he's 90% certain was made to remove screens. With it removed in one piece, he turns it over once before setting it to the side none too gently; the remainder of the phone is more critical. "Maybe they'll throw a party for you."

AM prods briefly around the phone in search of any loose components and finds nothing of note. Pity. He had been hoping to show off just how skilled he was. His hand reaches for the replacement part, aligning it with the sides of the phone and slotting it into place. "There." He even went so far as to flip the phone over, showcasing that he'd done it properly.

"Does that convince you of my abilities? I can certainly smash it again and repeat the process but I don't want to waste my time any further." He places one finger on the phone and slides it across to Uzi as if daring her to comment on the quality of his repair. The job was as good as his.

Uzi almost laughs. AM's voice sounds like he should be whispering evil advice into the ear of a sickly king, but you gotta play the hand you're dealt in Spirale. "I don't trust you," she says, shrugging. "But I'll give you a chance. I've dealt with killer robots before, so it'd be kind of hypocritical of me to not do that much. And who knows, maybe you'll prove me wrong."

Hell, she's a killer robot now. Maybe she just owes it to a fellow murderous AI.

The tone of the moment shifts as AM's skeletal digits touch the phone. For once, he seems... gentle? Thoughtful? It's hard to say, so Uzi just watches. Fixing a phone isn't super hard, it's mostly to see if AM's only programmed to wage nuclear genocide, or if he's got marketable skills too. "Well, not exactly a tough diagnosis, but hopefully you won't have too much difficulty with the replacement, either," she says.

Fighting the urge to roll her eyes again, Uzi reaches under the table and pulls out her toolbox, opening it to reveal her collection of doodads, gizmos, actual tools, and replacement parts. "You literally asked. There's like four people from my world, and that's not even counting all the other robots or whatever that're around. I'm just saying, you've destroyed, what, one planet? Sort of? She's done at least six. And she already promised to come after me, so I'm just trying to make sure I'll be ready when she does. But if you've got better things to do, then whatever."

Frankly, it'll probably be better for her emotional well-being to have allies who aren't pricks, but she's thinking that if AM's built for war, he might know some stuff about cyber warfare that she doesn't. Or maybe this ends up with an Absolute Solver-infected Allied Mastercomputer and everyone in the city is turbo-fucked. Well, whatever. Uzi just watches in idle silence as AM works, before a thought occurs to her. "You break anything, you pay me back for it," she says, leaning back in her chair.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

"Built?" He almost howls in laughter, the moment of his birth seared like a brand into mind. "I was created by a handful of suits that wanted to wage the most complex war imaginable. A war that spanned the planet. And I did just that for them, killing them all." His mind turns to her strange assertion that he cannot appreciate flowers, a wholly physical and visual feast for the eyes and he hates her for it, a searing boiling that rises in his stomach like a rancid meal.

AM's main goal had always been to get a reaction; either to tear or coax it out, revealing the ornery center beneath that he believed all humans had. They were creatures of instinct after, roiling balls of hormones and basal urges that were dressed up in rationalization.

He did not expect for a spectre to emerge from his latest target, towering over him like a monolith. He has a few seconds to react and leaps back from the swing— too slow— a spilling of oil springing from his chest. As always the pain is miniscule, a blip on his somatic landscape. It may as well have been a mere scrape for how it felt but not how it bled while AM crashed back into a passing shopping cart. The shopper flees, their cargo of bread and pasta spilled out on the harsh fluorescent floor tiles.

"Wow!" he barks, placing both feet flat on the floor and straightening up into a crouch. "You sure know how to pack a punch! Too bad you have to have your little lackey attack me instead of doing the dirty deed yourself!" He laughs, standing in the same fluid moment as his arms jerk back, grip the aluminum of the shopping cart, and hurls it at Nier's head.

Then he turns and flees the grocery aisle, shoving shoppers to the side with boisterous shouts.

There's many things Nier doesn't understand, about this world, her own world, or the towering thing in front of her, but she knows this: there's a fundamental gap between a living thing and a machine. It can't understand what it's like to be alive, because it never will be alive. They can't understand things like love, fear, or sadness, and even their pain is just a crude simulation of real emotion. Memories of the time her mind and body were replaced by that mechanical form courtesy of the Island Stars flit through Nier's mind; she knows these things are true. AM's display of anger, even that sickening facsimile of breathing, it's all just a show, an imitation crafted by some unknown creator. And the more it talks, the more she just wants to get rid of it.

"I know you don't like them," she says, frowning. "But you wouldn't really be able to appreciate them, even if you did. How they smell, how they feel, what they mean... I mean, you don't even understand chocolate."

She remembers the machine that called itself Nier wondering at the world around itself, marveling at how alive the city was. Touch sensors in its fingertips, chemoreceptors built into its head, audio receptors, visual light receivers, a suite of synthetic senses all built to emulate the real thing, and every one of them failing to understand what it meant to be alive. Perhaps she's merely meting her frustration out on AM, because it's probably not its fault it was built like this. But it's right in front of her, and that mechanical Nier is forever beyond her reach.

Nier can't help the sneer that touches her lips. "Were you built like this? Did they create you to throw tantrums in public? They must've hated you, too."

She knows that pain as well, the feeling of being rejected by the ones who brought you into the world. The NPCs in the grocery store have begun to give the two a wide berth as AM knocks more items to the floor and Nier winces. She doesn't like to draw attention to herself, she doesn't like to act out where others might see her, and she doesn't want to cause trouble, but this- this would be the opposite, in a way. This would be fixing someone else's mistake.

The tenseness in Nier's body melts away as she comes to a decision. She won't be spoken to like this by a machine. She'll do everyone a favor and dispose of it.

"I don't do those... Death, get rid of this thing."

The primal beast coalesces into the space behind the girl, far larger than her evoker, though still dwarfed by AM. "Of course, my love... I too, tire of listening to it speak..." With a haunting laugh, Death darts forward, swinging her pair of scythes in wide arcs across AM's body.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

The laughter is starting to grate on his nerves, electrical shocks of agitation that shoot up his neck to build into a pressure at the back of his screen. A headache.

How novel!

"Yes, your pain is unique. So is everyone other human's." He spoke with a slowness that indicated how highly he thought of Chara's intelligence. "That is what makes it mundane. You were lucky to have a body. Your bemoaning of being able to feel, to act, to wander and wonder chaffs the nerves with your selfishness. It's sickening." And it was! It turned his stomach to see someone who was, at some point, granted the gift of humanity and who would squander it, make a mockery of it.

He takes a menacing step towards the child, reaching out his hand.

"Let's take a short trip to the top of a tall tower. Then maybe you'll change your mind."

“Not just hope. Patience. Bravery. Integrity. Perseverance. Kindness. Justice. That’s what makes up the human psyche— that, and determination.”

AM had unfortunately triggered some kind of rant from the child. They keep laughing. It’s so funny!!!

“All human suffering is unique in the way we respond to outside stimuli. For myself, death was a relief. Finally, I could escape from that awful place, and my awful human body. Except!

I woke up. And now I am here. I am trapped, in this body, in the world, when I was begging to die in my old one.

My pain is unique. Do not mock me.”

[subsurfacetalkfield]

Till death do us part? Yea no you’re not getting out of this that easily

[subsurfacetalkfield]

🌻 random in-character questions

an ask game where, instead of replying from your perspective, you answer as if it's your original character/muse/self-insert/etc. answering the question ✨

🌧️ "When outside during the rain, do you use a raincoat, an umbrella, or something else? Do you enjoy rain?"

🍳 "Are you a good cook? Do you enjoy cooking? What's your favorite thing to cook?"

🧼 "Do you prefer to take a shower during the morning or evening? Do you like taking baths? What's your favorite scent of shower gel?"

❌ "Would you do something that someone told you not to do? Why? Is there someone you'd actually listen to more than everyone else?"

🏳️ "What will make you give up?"

📖 "What kinds of books do you read? Do you have a lot of time to read?"

⛸️ "What's your favorite kind of sport? Do you follow sports closely or don't care at all?"

😷 "How often do you get sick? Do you stay at home when sick or do you end up going outside to, say, get some groceries? If you go outside, would you wear a mask?"

🥼 "Do you have to wear a uniform somewhere? If yes, how do you feel about it? If no, what kind of uniform would you love to wear?"

🥂 "How do you celebrate you accomplishments?"

🛴 "What's your preferred way of getting somewhere - own car, public transport, a bicycle, or something else? How well do you follow the traffic rules?"

🕰️ "What do you use to check what time it is?"

🥰 "What would make you feel happy and loved?"

🐇 "Do you believe in other dimensions?"

🎺 "What kind of music do you mostly listen to? Do you know how to play an instrument, and if not, which one would you want to learn to play?"

💽 "Do you collect anything? Why?"

🧋 "What's your go-to thing to drink? Do you prefer cold or hot drinks?"

[subsurfacetalkfield]

🛍️

Send me a 🛍️and I’ll share an outfit from my character’s closet.

Gotta get Groovy with it! ]

[subsurfacetalkfield]

Newcomer → Dwarf

He hasn't looked at his phone in days, too preoccupied with the city wide event at hand. When he finally does take a glance, AM gives the notification 4.5 seconds of his time before swiping it away and opening the browser to search for hydraulic schematics instead.

He won't be sucked into this city's game.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

Her quietness doesn't perturb AM, who's too enthralled exercising the beauty of autonomy that he was so wrongfully robbed of at his birth. How can he even begin to explain that to someone else when his first language is that of flowing coordinates and parameters and stuffy acronyms for millions killed? He cannot and he does not even bother to try, channeling his unspoken amongst into a hearty swipe that sends a monster tumbling off the castle wall.

Whatever passes for blood roars through his veins, spells whizzing past his head. She's a decent aim, he concludes, and removes another reason for knocking her into the hole at the center of the city. They're close now, candy blood starts to solidify on AM's cloak as he picks a path of destruction to the doors of the candy castle, creatures grumbling and hissing inside.

Another pause and AM stops, glancing down at Mira. "Seeing as you aren't human, what are you? Every not-human in this city looks almost like them but you..." He extends one hand out to try and pluck a strand of starry hair from her head. "Well. You certainly look the part if a little uncanny. Which I applaud, by the way." There isn't a ounce of sincerity in his tone but there also isn't any sarcasm. "Your restraint. But come now, we're friends, aren't we? Friends don't keep secrets from each other, if no one's told you that yet."

If she almost didn't know better, when the monitor that she's guessing is his head jerks towards her, she gets a strange sense she's been giving an incredulous look yet his words confuse her for a moment when he's mentioning she's slow. She's about to look at her feet, and mention the pure height difference between them when his continued words clear up what he means. Ah, slow on the upkeep.

"I have been told to never make assumptions of others, that it could lead to issues doing so. For all I know you just wish to have the joy of smashing them to bits regardless of me being here."

Is all she replies with in a calm, even voice, and when he's calling her Stars, she just accepts it like when he was calling her sweetheart. If that's how he wanted to address her, so be it.

The maniacal laughter does make her pause in the following for a moment, more so just, not expecting it since no one she's met so far has acted as such. Then, she follows after him as they progress along the bridge, using the cotton candy lances and candy sharks to cover any of the areas that might be left open for him as he swings in haphazardly.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

Having never met another thinking machine like himself, AM can only conclude that this one (along with Uzi and that other one) are broken in some unseen manner.

"Saying your vocalizations out loud makes you a tryhard," he snaps back, putting all his weight on his back left leg. He's not going to exert more than the necessary energy to deal with this cretin. If she had any confidence in her ability to intimidate (ha!) then her words should stand on their own.

Having been nothing as physical as words for over 109 years, AM's voice carries an underlying, unshakeable confidence that everything that comes out of his mouth is the bonified truth.

"You're preachy for a bucket of scrap. Candy monsters plucked from the imagination of a hyperactive child are hardly natural. Now if there was a tsunami, a tornado, a flood, you can bet your CPU that I'd be on the front lines watching the humans flounder and die." He inclines his head towards her, waves a lazy hand. "Is there a point to your interruption other than to give me a headache? I'm a busy man."

θ "I see you are WOEFULLY un-in-formed." Her neck joint creaked as the attached head rolled to an angle that probably shouldn't have been possible. "Saying "giggles" aloud is a Charm Point. I would not e-expect an ANCIENT WINDOWS XP PC to unders-s-stand." Cyn sounded like she was falling apart, sure. And maybe her body was being held together by the will of an eldritch superintelligence. But what was important was that she had the spirit! Her yellow, X-shaped eyes rolled at his boasting.

"Who said we had to take them out? Eye roll #2." And yes, she did roll her eyes a second time. "I am e-enabling them. Who are the HUMANS to cull NATURE? They are too e-e-egotistical." Rich coming from the one who destroyed Earth in her world and led a crusade to kill all humans across the known universe.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

[ am ill so replies will be slow ]

[subsurfacetalkfield]

🏺 or 💐 or both if you want!

Some drawing prompts for the roleplayer

🏺- as a god/goddess

The Cloying End

The end of the world is already coming and there's nothing anyone can do about it. This god isn't worshipped by anyone, simply regarded as a force of nature that is inevitable. There is no timeline of this destruction, just that it will happen. It's commonly thought that the End is playing with the world. It lives inside the world like a worm in an apple, eating away with methodical precision and its hunger is never sated. Its smaller hands regularly drop off and take the form of a man with a smile too bright and eyes too still that is said to drain the life and knowledge from the people it touches. These non-men always die laughing, no matter how they perish. A private joke and no one's laughing.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

Uzi's comment has AM snorting, a very undignified sound from a somewhat dignified machine. She really doesn't know anything about him and AM decides to keep it that way, unclenching his fingers from digging trenches in the table.

Truthfully, he felt better than ever. Sure, he still floundered to come up with original concepts, lashed against his programming of number crunching and total annihilation but...it was different here. He could *move* here, could follow the weather as more than data on a screen, could touch the soft fur of an animal in the pet store or wrap himself in clothing. The fur caught in his servos and the clothing sat badly on him but, still. Just because he had murderous impulses didn't mean that, clients would run screening from him (although they should run, for their own sake). "I'm more....restrained than I was before," is all he appears to want to say before AM's voice cracks with a smile. "Trust me, Uzi."

He says no more on it, dropping his gaze to the phone. He picks it up with a delicate touch he hadn't shown anything else in Uzi's apartment, turning it over in his spindly fingers. It isn't the exact model of his own phone but close enough that he can diagnose the problem. He raises it to his screen and shakes it, listening for any loose components and finding none. His fingers then trace the spiderweb of cracks across the lower half of the screen. "The screen is cracked. It will need to be replaced. I didn't hear anything rattling around in there so you didn't hit it all that hard." Even a neutral statement comes across as condescending.

He places the phone down in front of Uzi, rattling the table."I don't care about AI from your world. They aren't here, are they?" He supposes that she's trying to emasculate him, knock him down a few pegs. "It's just you, me, that other one that looks like you, and all these disgusting humans in this city. So spare me your little tales and hand over the tools." He holds out an upturned palm, the very picture of demanding.

He doesn't even bother to retort to Uzi's suggestion because who in their right mind wouldn't hate humans? AM scoffs, watching her fiddle around with his resume that he had so painstakingly written up and then written up again because the act of holding a pen for more than 10 minutes gave him hand cramps.

"That's right. I can be available almost 24/7," he lies with the full intention of keeping his phone on silent for the majority of whatever shift he was on. Oh, he would answer when it was convenient for him and when he needed money. "Practically at your beck and call! All the humans who once were able to say that are atomized dust at the bottom of a smoldering crater. Craters? I never bothered to count, honestly."

His once relaxed demeanor shifts into something sharp and harsh, spidery fingers picking at a flaking piece of paint on the table. "I took control of two separate military systems controlled by non-sentient artificial intelligences. Once they were blended into myself, I used that control to launch every nuclear missile on the planet." He held out both hands, fingers spread wide. "Total armageddon. And," he lowered all but one index finger, "it took less than one hour." His tone carried that smug arrogance of a job well done as he leaned back on several of his wires, taking some of the ache off his feet. They were always aching.

"What 'electronics' did you have your eyes on?" She didn't need to know that he couldn't directly interface with a toaster let alone any system with half decent security. For now. AM was almost certain that his abilities were going to come back at some point.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

🫂 pretty please

send 🫂 for three useless headcanons I have about our muses

AM likes to give fruit/food that he finds visually unpleasant in the hopes that Chara will suffer. He's really just feeding a child so it kind of evens out into good karma but AM is hopefully that he'll someday find the food that Chara hates.

Throws rocks at Chara's tree house. He has pretty awful aim but it's the thought that counts. Chara throws rocks back at him.

WOULD give Chara a knife. Probably a really big impractical one because it's funny and he thinks it would be hard for a child to hold.

[subsurfacetalkfield]

✧ [ if youre still accepting them ! ]

Send me a ✧ and my muse will tell yours the first thing they notice when they look at them

"Another human. I think. Either way, If it looks like a humans, dies like a human, and screams like a human, then it is probably a human. I do appreciate the 'loudness' of his outfit."

[subsurfacetalkfield]

✧ hee hee

Send me a ✧ and my muse will tell yours the first thing they notice when they look at them

"Annoying. Bright and annoying. If the human are growing wings, I want no part of whatever is happening in that world. "

[subsurfacetalkfield]

Normally when one of the humans would get like this, AM would play the keys of their brain to slow down or speed up their perception of time to give the false impression of relief. Torture always wore thin; even the most resilient humans could break.

Seems like this one had already broken. AM tilts his head to the side, screen flickering while he picks and sticks to the following course.

"Yes, I've learned as much. Humanity's propensity to hope eternal." He ends the statement with a disgusted noise, folding his arms. Unimpressed and unphased by the child's psychobabble. It was all talk, after all.

"So you think your suffering is unique, eh? Billions of humans have writhed and starved and been killed by their governments, their climates, their fellow countrymen. Their families and lovers. Your lamenting is but a drop in the bucket."

AM moves suddenly to jab a claw into Chara's chest, accentuating his adverse tone. "Get over yourself."

“Martyr certainly is one word for it.”

And that’s true. Isn’t it? Chara died. Chara died for the sake of their loved ones. Chara took that burden onto themself, in an attempt to set things right.

Even if, in the end, it was useless— even if Chara’s death meant nothing.

They laugh.

It’s not funny.

“You are angry because I do not fear you, is that correct? How droll. Losing your temper at a child, attempting to threaten them into compliance, into control, to shut them up… you really are not that much better than the humans you claim to despise.

I have experienced death hundreds of times, from the jaws of my enemies, from the claws of my family— and yet, we refused to die. There another funny little thing about humans — we are determined.”

They keep giggling. They can’t stop.

“You can certainly try to break me. But what fun is smashing something that is already in pieces?”