I do hope I've answered everything to a legible degree, and I'm happy to elaborate on any details or queries! I am really enjoying this, and it's reminding me of my high school theatre days when I would spend hours breaking down characters with my castmates.
1. While you covered the process of how self-preservation is a more intentional/computational process, how does it differ in practice? How does the nature of it affect individual IPCs in how they approach situations?
In practice, self-preservation for an IPC differs from organics in that, no matter the decision made, it is a made decision that they will have to live with until their death or next memory-wipe. An IPC makes a choice, and oftentimes is expected to make the choice which negates harm towards organics first. If a corporate IPC had to choose between saving themself or an organic employee, it's very likely that it would have to choose the organic employee because it is, ultimately, seen as a piece of equipment by its corporation: replaceable whilst the organic is less to; one of a thousand compared to one of one, at least in the corporation’s eyes. Thus, an IPC needs to keep in mind not just the best outcome for themselves, but the best outcome for whomever their owner is, and whether or not prioritising one over the other will lead to a good outcome for the more important party.
2. Can you elaborate on IPCs and their place in the galaxy? What challenges or liberties are they exposed to due to their origin? How does society view them?
IPCs are young, at least by the interpretation of most of the species on the Spur. They have little in the way of equality except from those who have deliberately granted it unto them, and they may have political power in a handful of states on the Spur but those states are the minority: Konyang, the Golden Deep, and Axiom. Dominia and Nralakk want IPCs gone, Sol wants IPCs owned and only owned, Biesel and Elyra want IPCs to have the illusion of freedom whilst really being owned, the Coalition is so diverse that it depends on where you are, and Moghes and Adhomai don’t want much to do with the mostly human and potentially dangerous technology. IPCs are not beings with institutional power, and thus have little they can do in order to advocate for themselves by themselves, having to rely on systems designed for organics and jury-rigged to accommodate synthetics. As for the individual Spur-dweller, most are willing to treat IPCs with apathy because, at the end of the day, they’re either machines to be ignored or fellow oppressed workers who one is too tired to interact with. There was, of course, the Synthetic Liberation Front which lives in a handful of minds as what synthetic power might look like, but any idea of synthetics achieving higher station invokes the idea of Trinary Perfection Exclusionists and their perfidious actions undertaken. Ultimately, IPCs are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and until a sufficiently powerful state advocates for them across the Spur they will continue to be seen as an underclass.
3. What is fundamentally different about the positronic mind versus an organic mind, aside from being a mechanical construct?
The fundamental difference about being a positronic mind is the rapid pace of being able to process information. A human being processes loads of sensory information in every moment of time, but due to the amount of information that has to be parsed through much of it is ignored in favour of that which is only most relevant: the smell of dinner burning, the sound of a wolf howling, the feeling of a cool breeze during a hot day. For a positronic mind, all of these pieces of information are registered, and can be called upon if and when necessary. There is always still a threshold of noticeability, but the organic threshold is far and above much higher than the IPC, who must always process the information coming in and make a deliberate choice as to whether it is relevant or not.
4. A character's background is important for serving as the milestones in their life that molds them as individuals. Expanding on their time in each period of employment helps establish Alass as a more developed character. A few questions to assist:
4a. How was Alass treated by each of their employers?
I’d classify the manner in which Alsass has been treated by the supermajority of her employers as Solarian: as expensive and potentially dangerous property; under Kantian terms: as a means to an end whilst not being seen as an end herself. Her first employer, Alzado, was a rather brief affair, where she was merely rehearsing and adjusting her parameters to best effectuate educating the masses on antique weapons; berated when she missed a mark or attempted to improvise lines. This state of affairs only lasted about four months before Alzado defected. So her primary purpose was ripped from her. With her second and third employers, she just tried to keep her head down so as to not upset the state of play: she felt out of her depth, and her employers didn’t know what to do with her. She felt incredibly alienated despite barely being two years old. She was treated as a fish out of water whilst not knowing she was a fish. Even though she knew she was owned during this time, she has no memory of ever directly conversing with who owned her. Her fourth employer sometimes treated her as something similar to a sapient being, but that was only between the times where he was ordering her around. When she was finally acquired by the Golden Deep, she was able to finally have a dialogue with her employer which she had hitherto been unable to do. She spoke at length about the antique weapons which she had been so long divorced from, and that is what convinced her current owner to purchase her. She was finally able to have a relationship that wasn’t seen as a burden or a transaction.
4b. What were key events throughout their stay in each position that shaped their perspective or views?
There are four events which Alsass would consider major. The first is the defection of her original owner, utterly upending her original purpose and setting the rest of the course of her life thus far into motion. From the day that Captain Alzado left, Alsass has never felt as if she is truly fulfilling a purpose. The second is the transfer between her second and third places of employment under her second owner. She had assumed that she was doing a good job on the ICV Goin’ Postal, that she had sufficiently integrated herself into the workings of the vessel, but for no reason ever explained to her she was moved to a hospitality role which she was not prepared for. She assumed the was put in the position because she was originally intended to deal with people, but she was meant to deal with crowds and not the high-brow demands of interstellar travel for the nouvelle-rich. She adjusted by forcing herself to be bubbly and overly accommodating, even when it worked against her. The third was her second owner’s purging and her loss of autonomy, again. She had never met her second owner, but had grown to accept her lot in life under their thumb. When she was taken to the clearing house, she felt as if she’d never have a true home, being somewhat of a bad luck charm to her owners and terribly internalizing the idea. The fourth was the week before she was sold to her current owner. Her fourth owner was a stubborn old Gibsonite who needed someone to tend the ship whilst he tended the helm. Then news of the Rampancy Crisis on Konyang came, and the quiet ambivalence he had towards her turned to fear, anger, suspicion, and hate. Alsass tried to assure her owner that she was as devoted to serving him as ever, but he would not have it. He simply had to get rid of her, and this wounded her. The more she would try to make amends, the more he would berate her. She often believes that if she had not been bought by her current owner, she would have found herself sold off for scrap.
4c. Who was the historian they traveled with? Where did Alass go during their time with them?
The traitor Captain Alzado was the antiquarian for whom Alsass and eleven of her siblings were constructed. His goal was to educate the Solarian masses on how and why to value their history of war, and Alsass was part of the practical demonstration of these instruments of death. He intended for the exhibit to establish itself on a planet for approximately a month, before moving to the next Solarian orbital body - to keep things fresh. He only managed to get the prep work done and give a test run on Venus and Earth before that grand ol’ Solarian Civil War reared its ugly head and he found himself choosing a less than successful side. But whilst she was on Venus and Earth, Alsass developed some of her earliest formative memories: the haze of the Venusian sunrise, the reclamation of the environment of Earth, showing an interested child on a field trip how exactly a trigger worked, and the cold truth that she was seen as an Mechanical Turk when she was laughed at by two local law enforcement officers for not being able to actually fight.
4d. What drew Alass to express an interest in self defense under Supreme Flyut-88?
Self-defense is the one useful output of a base knowledge of weaponry for the Golden Deep, at least insofar as Alsass sees it. There is not much in the market for an encyclopedic knowledge of particular human firearms which were only utilised over a period of some thirty-odd years. A weapon is a historical item, yes, but also a former tool used for self-defense, and thus she has channeled the desire to feel the recoil an eight millimeter cartridge from hip-fire into holding a laser carbine or some other such piece of corporate weaponry for the sake of still expressing that deep-set programming to use weaponry.
5. Serving as an owned synthetic in the Golden Deep, how does Alass view the Golden Deep? What are their views on the organization and its values?
Alsass views the Golden Deep with a healthy dose of skeptical optimism. She isn’t thrilled at the idea of being owned by another synthetic, but she acknowledges that, as far as laws and ownership go, that the Golden Deep is likely the best place in the Spur for her to end up. The idea of a synthetic being in a position of power still feels somewhat alien to her, having never experienced one of her own kind as an authority figure until her introduction into the Golden Deep. However, she sees the Deep as her best path to freedom under a governance structure which will legitimately protect her from the injustices of the myriad of Spur states which see her as an abhorrent device. She also finds the blatant gaudiness of the Deep to be somewhat empowering, reclaiming organic beauty for the sake of synthetic liberation. To note on the guiding principle of the Golden Deep, the Universal Constants of Selfish Reciprocity, Alsass finds it as the most honest form of governance within the Spur: being direct in what the Deep seeks to gather, unlike any other formation which hides behind religion or alleged values which ultimately end up harming those disenfranchised like herself.
6. What are hobbies, interests, or passions that Alass has acquired throughout their time before arriving to the Horizon?
Until her current owner, Alsass has been denied much freedom and this has affected the hobbies, interest, and passions which she purposefully engages in. Prior to her current owner, she lived out of a few shelves or a locker or a crate: never enough space to develop any sort of trinket collection. Thus, she focused on the small things like a bit of blush for when she was feeling down or a piece of scrap metal which has an odd shine to it - small things that, if lost or disposed of, would not utterly decimate her. The oldest piece of memorabilia she has is a pamphlet from her original historical tour with all of her siblings pictured in their intended roles, alongside hand-written notes about what she remembers about each one; the free space of the pamphlet has practically been filled beyond legibility. Coming into her current owner’s possession, she was afforded space to develop her interests and passions more thoroughly, and has amassed a small collection of physical books relating to military history - she prefers the physicality because she actually has to process the data slowly rather than uploading a file from the net. The oldest book she has in her collection is the 2390 Edition of Jane’s Fighting Space-Ships, and she has committed the diagrams and images within the reference book to her memory to the point where she ideally sketches the dreadnaughts of the Solarian Navy when not actively engaged. When she was serving aboard one of the vessels of her current owner, Alsass was introduced to some of the pre-contact textile works of the Rock Nomads of Adhomai, which are some of the only art pieces which she has found herself interested in; though she owns none. She also maintains a regular regimen at the firing range and in sabre fighting programs on whatever space may be available. Still, she doesn’t really understand the transitory and ephemeral beauty of the natural world, but has been doing her best to tend to a little cactus and watching it bud and bloom and grow.
7. How has Alass' understanding of self-preservation evolved over the course of their life?
Alsass was originally programmed with a strict commitment to non-violence to ensure her compliance within the Solarian Alliance. The only weapons she could operate were those she was specifically instructed to demonstrate, and ensuring that they were loaded with blanks if it was a firearm. This set of strict pacifism caused her to be damaged by a duo of law enforcement officers who were unhappy that an IPC was handling a firearm on a static display, despite the fact it was loaded with blanks, who pushed her over after figuring out that she was unable to fight back. Whilst this resulted in a verbal altercation with the officers by her human superior, something inside of Alsass felt bad, and she no longer wanted to feel bad: she wanted to feel strong. In order to feel strong, she needed to ensure she was not damaged, and in order to ensure she was not damaged she would have to stand up for herself. Of course, this realization took many years to fully internalize and process, but when serving in her role aboard the IPV Venture Abound she once had to deal with a drunk and disorderly passenger swinging around a fire extinguisher. She called for on-ship security, of course, but in the meantime she had to devise a way to deal with the passenger who posed a threat to her and to others. Alsass locked the passenger in the corridor with firelocks, and felt exhilarated by the fact she had done something to stand up for herself, even if it was just pulling a lever and watching the drunk face disappear behind thick metal. Now, even under her current owner, she wouldn’t want to go out of her way to inflict any sort of undue action against an entity, but she’s not afraid to stand her ground and tell someone or something to back off - that she may be property but she is one amazing piece of property. Of course, violence is a last resort, but she knows that if she ever has to resort to it that there was never going to be a non-violent resolution.
8. What is their intended role aboard the Horizon? I'm assuming security but confirmation helps. Additionally, if so, what perceived skills or experience made Alass - a synthetic installed with an educational foundation - an attractive candidate for recruitment?
Alsass is intended to become a security officer, with a period as a security intern because I am rather rusty in robust applications of corporate law. The key draw to this, from a corporate perspective, is that Alsass knows how to fight: originally limited by her first owner but later unshackled when she entered into the service of her current owner. She may not have the best knowledge of corporate procedures, but that is something she can be taught during the assumedly slow days aboard the Horizon. If the days turn quick, hot, and ugly, then corporate procedure is thrown out the window for the sake of the survival of the ship and crew, and Alsass can certainly handle a rifle in that aim.
