elnysa | video | un: Mercy

Hello there! ( the image that appears is of a smiling blonde woman, healthy and bright looking, dressed now in pristine weight to present herself, projecting poise and elegance and friendly invitation to hear her out. her German Swiss accent is quite strong, though, so hopefully no-one is overly attached to their w's. ) I hope everyone is doing well this evening. I am coming onto the network to reach out to anyone I might not have been able to yet. My name is Angela Ziegler, and I am a doctor from Earth. Human, as you can see. ( a light, pleasant laugh and an even more pleasant smile ) You may also know me as Mercy. It's my agent name from when I was in service to a global peacekeeping organisation known as Overwatch.

I'm from the 21st century, so the treatment that I can offer you is science based ( a slight pause here as if she's considering one last time how to phrase this ) rather than magic based, but I have a good deal of practical experience with general medicine so there's almost nothing I haven't seen or dealt with. My expertise is in applied biotics, and I also have experience with gene therapy, prosthetics, and cybernetics, if there is anyone here who may need more specialised care. My qualifications also include emergency and trauma response so, if you ever find yourself wounded and in need of immediate attention, please do not hesitate to contact me. Think of me as personal 999 for refugees!

If you do come to me for any kind of care, I promise to do the best I can help you, while upholding all the oaths I've taken as a doctor to do no harm and to protect my patients. I'm not charging anything at this time.

And, if you'd like to humour me and help me to understand our group a bit better, I have a set of questions: do you believe you have a soul? What makes you think you do or don't have one? And is such a belief common where you're from? ( she doesn't mention religion, because it isn't strictly speaking a religious idea. she's known plenty of atheists and nay-theists who thought there was something beyond intelligence that made people paramount to other species. whether they called this unique internal animating light a soul or not, it didn't really matter. )

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[ It probably doesn't, but he thinks it might be nice to have one. ]

I don't think a soul was included in my schematics. I have something similar, but it really depends on what you think a soul is.

( she considers this a moment. there are other definitions, but she goes with the one pretty standard to what's believed in her own world, even by machines who claim to have one. )

Well, in my world, omnics were never created to have something like a soul, and yet now there's a religious movement, started by them, based around the idea that both humans and they have one. And that's why they should be treated as equals.

I don't think we need to call this self-aware consciousness a soul. Just having that is enough to make you a person. Omnics weren't meant to have consciousness, and yet here we are. Or were. Sharing the world with millions of new people.

A religious movement? [ Hopefully it goes better than the ones the machines tried out.

He takes a moment to think about this. Androids were supposed to help humans, though they weren't necessarily equals. YoRHa was definitely less than that. Being treated as an equal would be nice, but did he deserve it? Was he one of them? ]

Androids were meant to have a consciousness, but I don't think we're the same.

[ He kinda wishes he was. ]

Yes. The Shambali Monks. They went away to a mountain top, mediated, and came back down with the essential truth that humans and machines both have souls. I don't believe in souls, as I said, but I do believe their logic is sound. If someone is a person, they should be treated as such.

( she considers this a few moments, both curious, and a bit confused. wasn't he an android himself? he certainly looked like one to her. )

You don't consider yourself an android?

That logic is pretty solid. Hmm...

[ He pauses, shifting a little bit and looking away. Maybe he should've reached out over text. But Angela has been really kind to him so far in talking about all this stuff, and thought he should be treated like a person. She'd put a lot of thought into all of this, and she wasn't bound by the war that had so consumed him. That had to count for something. ]

Not... entirely. It's a long story, but we YoRHa models were built to be disposed of eventually. The androids didn't think it was humane to build more android models just to destroy them, so the parts that store our personality data are built from machine cores. Machines... were the enemy.

[ He's completely at a loss about this. It was pretty straightforward back in his world, but then the Natha decided he was worth saving. What the hell did that even mean? ]

I guess I don't really know anymore.

( It doesn't seem all that complicated to her, really, but then she has a personal relationship with someone who had to struggle with his identity when he became more man than machine. She always had accepted him, plain and simple. This wasn't a hill she was prepared to die on, just because she's too practical to believe in dying for causes, but she would insist on it being common sense. )

That's all right, Nines. Part of life is being uncertain. We can never have all the answers.

( She offers him this in a soft voice--and she's not really sure what it is about him that makes her soften so. Perhaps because he strikes her as so innocent? )

If you don't mind me asking, were you built to be sentient? Or is this something they didn't think you could achieve?

[ He'd always been a top of the line android until he wasn't an android at all. Before coming here, his world had been turned upside down. 9S was good at pretending things were okay, especially with so many new and exciting developments. His role and purpose had always been well-defined.

9S can't help but grin a bit. Even though he's seen the consequences of getting all the answers, he still wants them all. ]

I've never been all that great with uncertainty.

[ Her kindness helps him feel safe around her. There wasn't nearly enough room for that back home, and it makes him feel like he belongs. ]

We were built to be sentient and mostly autonomous, but we were always meant to serve humankind. I still want to help people but... things are different here.

Well then, you'll just have to keep learning, won't you?

( Of course no matter how curious he is, he can't learn everything. Or can he? Maybe he actually could, or at least have capacity to keep all the trillions of zetabytes that make up the universe. )

Different how? People aren't making you serve them, I hope. ( She actually frowns a bit at the thought. ) If anyone asks something of that you, you let me know, all right?

That I can do.

[ He'll try, anyway. 9S doesn't have the data storage capacity of the Bunker behind him. But that's not going to stop him now. ]

It's not that. No one has taken advantage of me like that, but thank you. [ He smiles softly, thankful that she's so considerate of him. It's not something he'd expect of anybody. ] Here, unlike where I came from, I don't have to follow YoRHa protocols. I was programmed to prioritize certain things because of how my world was. Here... that isn't the case. I can choose what matters most to me.

[ Or whether he matters at all. ]

That's the spirit.

( Said with an evident measure of fondness. Not only does she like him already, but she always admires kindred spirits, and is equally inspired by people who are willing to be open. When the situation calls for it she will be focussed on the objective, of course, but she knows how important hope, belief, and drive are. Sometimes they can be the difference in a life-or-death procedure. )

Hmmm.

Is there anything you are curious about, but haven't had the chance to investigate yet?

video | un: Mercy

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