An incognito arrival

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

Who: Erek King and anyone!
Open: Wide open!
When: Day 247
Where: anywhere in the Bastion
What: An android arrives and skulks about hidden behind holograms before saying hello.
Format: prose preferred, but I'll match either!
Warnings: none

Erek's holographic emitter isn't projecting when he becomes aware he isn't home. That is already worrying, even before he takes in his surroundings while raising the illusion of a human boy around himself. An expression of relief flickers across the holographic face, thousands of years making shifts in expression a well-founded habit. His emitters aren't down, at least.

This isn't Earth, though, and it's the most bizarre planet Erek has ever visited. As he takes a step, the ground shifts around him, creating a path on which to walk. ...Interesting, if concerning. He doesn't think it's based on magnetism. The planet itself probably isn't sentient either. It's a matter for later investigation, though. There are more pressing concerns.

He sees a light in the distance that looks promising and replaces his human hologram with one of invisibility, blending into his surroundings. Erek will wait until he sees what species inhabit the planet and do his best to blend in. He sets off toward the Bastion.

When he arrives, Erek stays out of sight until anyone comes into view. He plans on taking up an appropriate hologram as soon as he's gauged the people well enough. Of course, should anyone human-shaped be present, it's easy enough to duck behind the edge of a building and emerge as Erek King, a fairly unremarkable teenage boy. He assumes that no one will see through his camouflage in the meantime. It hasn't happened so far, his emitters sufficiently advanced that it would take a very specialized sort of eyesight to see anything through the illusion.

Comments

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

Erek, millenia-old android that he is, laughs openly at the clueless teenager comment. "I don't know about fitting in, and I don't think the gap in knowledge when it comes to my current predicament makes me clueless. I'll pick things up quickly enough."

[dontyoujustwish]

"I'll believe that when I see it. Most people have been here for months and still don't know the first thing about enjoying themselves in a post-apocolyptic situation."

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

Even if they are just a hologram, Erek raises his eyebrows. "Enjoying themselves? Are you having fun with it, then?"

[dontyoujustwish]

Anya raises hers right back. "What, do you expect me to stop enjoying life just because everyone I used to know is dead? I'm not dead. Just dying, slowly."

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

"Better to enjoy it than the alternative; it just sounded like you were referring to the post-apocalyptic part specifically."

He pauses for a second, then asks bluntly, "Dying less slowly than the average human, or just the usual aging process?" Anya seems like a very blunt person herself. He isn't dying, nor is he human, but Erek isn't going to tell Anya that.

[dontyoujustwish]

"I might be if it made anyone else horny." Bluntness assessment: accurate.

She also does not bat an eye at the unusual question, because to her it does not seem at all unusual. "The normal human aging. Not that there's anything pleasant about that. You know my skin is going to wrinkle and my joints will start aching and all my teeth will fall out? I mean, whose idea was it to design this kind of body?"

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

Erek stares for only the barest fraction of a second before he bursts out laughing. Really laughing, in a more genuine way than he's managed since arriving. The first comment was surprising, but the second is what he finds genuinely funny. Especially given who and what Anya's addressing it to.

"Evolution's," he eventually answers seriously, though he still allows hints of a grin to tug at the corners of his holographic mouth. "If you're religious, you can take it up with a creator, but otherwise you'll just have to go ahead and accept that somehow the traits making up your body were naturally determined to work better for human life than the alternatives."

Some of her comments about her body, though, sound like those of someone not used to it. She can't be Controller. Her words were hardly Yeerklike. He decides on, "Haven't you had some time to get used to the idea of aging?" rather than how new she is to mortality or a human body. Erek has no proof of that, after all, just the echo of Controllers' words in his memory.

[dontyoujustwish]

"Maybe that's how it is for the rest of humanity, but my body wasn't naturally determined, it was determined by men who decided to strip me of my power and make me mortal."

If you wanted to get technical, it was a man who made her immortal to begin with, but that's not the part she's going to point out.

"I've only been like this for a few years. Long enough to catch the last of the teenage years again, that was a blast."

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

A small furrow appears between Erek's illusory eyebrows. Anya is something entirely new to him. He has no idea what sort of power could be stripped from someone, making them human and mortal, nor who would be able to do such a thing even if it is possible.

" 'By men'?" he asks. "You sound like you're holding all of them responsible for it. ...What were you before you were stripped of your power?"

He only chuckles lightly at the comment about teenage years. He's lived those repeatedly, but Erek at least never had any of the hormones to deal with. It makes teenage years considerably less complicated.

[dontyoujustwish]

"It was certain men specifically, but the whole lot of you are deplorable." No judgment here, really. None at all.

She draws herself up. "I used to be a vengeance demon. For over a thousand years, I punished men on behalf of the women they had wronged."

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

Erek isn't a man at all, and he's lived much longer than Anya. He neglects to tell either of those facts to Anya just yet. Erek has lived on earth long enough to hear tales of all sorts of demons and creatures, but this is the first he's heard of them actually being real. After five thousand years on Earth, Anya is something new supposedly without being an alien life form arriving there.

"Why vengeance? And why against men specifically? I tend to find that people on an individual basis are equally likely to wrong others regardless of sex or gender, though culturally our society does have a history of sexism and disadvantaging women."

[dontyoujustwish]

Anya arches an eyebrow. "I think you just answered your own question. Women need someone to give them justice if society is just going to excuse, condone, or even celebrate the actions of the men who wronged them. Moreover, they need someone who can understand their pain and the kind of compensation they really deserve. Lawful, mortal punishments aren't very creative."

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

Erek doesn't disagree with the feminist messages in Anya's speech. Far from it. He just worries a little about her methods. "You specialized in creative punishments." It is a statement rather than a question. Creative punishments hardly sounds like a peaceful profession to be in, and Erek is nonviolent by programming.

"Does justice inherently require vengeance?" Erek asks quietly. "I understand the desire for both justice and vengeance. Vengeance won't undo the wrongs that were done, though. Nothing can do that, and revenge seems like a bit of a hollow compensation." He isn't thinking of Anya here, nor of the women she helped. He's thinking of the Pemalites and the Howlers, the annhilation of the species that created him and all of his kind. Erek met the Howlers again not long ago, his pain and anger at their actions still as fresh in his memory as if it had just happened. Memories don't fade for the Chee. The Howlers weren't killed at his hands, nor at those of his allies.

[dontyoujustwish]

Anya is probably too much of a legitimate man-hater to accurately be classified as a feminist. She believes women are better than men, not just equal.

"I'm sure you're about to argue some peaceful, guru-type nonsense about forgiveness and moving on, but that doesn't work for everyone. Do you know how difficult it can be for a woman to move on when the man who hurt her is still living just the way he always has? When he doesn't face any kind of consequences for what he did, not even from his own conscience? If no one punishes him for his actions, she might start to think that that kind of treatment is what she deserves, and it isn't. It never is."

[canismetallusfamiliaris]

"Of course it isn't what she deserves," he agrees soberly. Erek pauses before continuing, deciding to lay a part of discretion and secrecy aside. Circumstances are different here. This isn't Earth, and he isn't hiding with a network of his peers. "I am peaceful, but that isn't the same thing as forgiving. I lost people I care about, and I don't ever intend to forgive the being responsible for it. I've managed, after a very long time and some unique circumstances, to forgive his tools, who were manipulated into their actions and not culpable. They had no idea what they were doing."

Erek frowns, even saying what he voices next putting a strain on his programming. Violence against Crayak would still be violence. Erek couldn't commit it, were to exist on a scale capable of inflicting harm on someone so powerful. "I don't want him destroyed for revenge. I do want him gone. I don't like living with the knowledge that he'll do the same to others."

[dontyoujustwish]

"Well, at least you understand part of it."

Having considered herself to be vengeance incarnate for the vast majority of her years, Anya knows she's more vengeful than the average person. But the average person could stand to be a little further towards her end of the spectrum.