#halo ais

[infinityactual]

I must know about Roland’s fingerprint freak-out

Ask, and ye shall receive. Most of the time.

Context: Roland has a hardlight body now, and has been alone on the Intinity for months. That's really all you need to know.

---

As the ramp descended, Roland made sure he was standing straight and at a proper parade rest and briefly pondered why it suddenly mattered. Sure he'd saluted when he'd needed to in the past but…

"She looks like we never-" Captain Lasky stopped mid sentence in surprise, and Roland felt a burst of neon green joy at hearing Lasky's voice in the hangar again.

"Roland?"

"Yes, sir!" The AI replied, nodding once. He tracked familiar faces and IFF tags from neural interfaces as Captain Lasky and his Spartan entourage left the ramp and came to a stop in front of him.

"Is that really you?" The captain asked, surprise still evident in his voice as he gave Roland a once-over.

"May I answer that with a handshake, sir?" Roland extended his hand and waited as Captain Lasky's face broke into a smile, and he returned the gesture.

As soon as Lasky's hand gripped his, Roland yanked himself free and stepped back, his shoulders hunched in surprise at the almost searing burst of tactile data that seemed to flood him.

"Hey! Are you okay?!" The captain's concerned voice bled through the echoes of the data, and Roland straightened himself up.

"Yeah I'm fine but…wow!" Lasky's eyebrows shot up.

"'wow'?" He repeated. "Wow what?"

"Your hand!" Roland exclaimed as he dug through the new data with the enthusiasm of a Labrador retriever digging though an unattended trash can. "I wasn't expecting it to be so soft and so solid! And covered in weird tiny ridges! Also not as greasy as I expected…but the ridges were more unexpected! What are those even for?" Captain Lasky looked at him for several hundred milliseconds.

"My fingerprints?"

"Oh is that what they are..!" He felt like a new part of the universe had clicked into place. Being made for Astrogation, Roland never had any need to look up why human fingers all had a pattern on them, or what made the pattern in the first place.

"Oh come on Roland, you know what fingerprints are, they're on file for literally everyone who sets foot on the ship!" Sarah interjected.

"I've read the image data, but I've never touched them!" He said excitedly. Commander Palmer considered this for a few milliseconds and Roland turned his attention back to Captain Lasky.

"Can we try again??" He asked excitedly. Captain Lasky smiled again, and held his hand out toward Roland again.

He was careful this time, barely touching his palm against the captain's and gradually increasing the pressure. The flow of data was more metered this time, and he was prepared for the intensity.

"This is…nice. I can see why humans like to spend so much time together, especially when you're na-"

"OH-kay, changing subjects." The captain interrupted. It was now his turn to quickly withdraw his hand and look uncomfortable. "Uh…sitrep?"

Roland smiled and moved back to parade rest as his threads pulled up what little data there was to report. He could pester the crew about their fingerprints later.

[bloodgulchblog]

@poisonheadcrabsalesman you asked me my thoughts on some specific Halo stories, so!

Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian: I was a lot more sanguine about Frank O'Connor at this point in the Great and Terrible Halo Canon Review so I am able to say that I loved this one, it was fun. I was also coming in off short stories that I liked a lot less, which helped. It was grim but interesting and occasionally funny. My initial response to that story is over here.

Also if you wanna hear another AI story from Evolutions thought, here's what I thought of Human Weakness, RIP to past-me who had only read Glasslands of the KT Three and had no idea how angry I was going to become in the future. I pretty much stand by all that.

The other three stories you mentioned are in Fractures and, conveniently, are all in the last part of my Fractures reaction posts together.

Saint's Testimony: This one was heavily impacted by how much more annoyed I was with O'Connor by this point in time. The thing that is most memorable about it for me right now is that I wish it had noted the vast difference in Black Box and Roland's ages, because I think that's very interesting and provides a certain context for their opinions on what came to pass. RIP Iona, glad that character got used for something and a sendoff instead of just kinda forgotten to the Halo character graveyard. What happened with her is much more graceful than what they did to Black Team.

Rossbach's World: I thought this one was really interesting? Loooot of mixed feelings because on the one hand, fuck Halo 5, but on the other it's not like the ideas in the Created conflict were all bad?

While Osman and BB are from one of my least favorite parts of the canon, I thought this examination of the end of things with them was really interesting and sad, and I liked how it left us to speculate on Osman's choice. It's... almost more tenderness than I felt like those characters deserved. Osman's different when Traviss isn't at the helm, the malice doesn't feel like it's there.

Poor goddamn Hood, also. Like yeah, okay, Terrence Hood is UNSC high brass but like. Halo works so hard to establish that Hood is a good dude with good intentions.

Anarosa: They were on a yen for AI stories with ambiguous endings here, huh? I appreciated the fucked up facts of how the UNSC pursues brains for AI donation. I need to get back to playing Wars 2, kinda forgot I was doing that, and I think having a stronger attachment to the AI in Wars 2 would have made me feel more strongly about this one.

Let's see... do I have any other AI thoughts rattling around... oh yeah.

Mack and Sif and Loki were fucking excellentttttt the ending of Contact Harvest with Mack writing devastatingly sad poetry to Sif while he slowly goes dark bit by bit out distributed across all the farm equipment, AAAAAAAA

Also man I wonder what the fuck ever happened to Jerrod.