The eMail Always Gets Through - Juneau's IPC Application

[JuneauQT]

BYOND Ckey: JuneauQT

 

Discord username: Juneauumu

 

Character names: Elena Ashpole, Rosemaria Cecila-Kamaril, Asima Kari

 

Species you are applying to play: Integrated Positronic Chassis

 

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General Whitelist Requirements

 

What colour do you plan on making your first alien character?: IPCs exempt.

 

Have you read the lore pages for the species you wish to be whitelisted for?: To the best of my ability, and I am rereading them as I write this

 

Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question.

 

Why do you wish to play this species?:

 

        The various IPC species interest me for varying reasons, largely separated by frame type. Baseline and Industrial frames appeal to me primarily for the ability to play as something that does not appear anything like a living being in any meaningful way, yet still thinks and acts somewhat like a person would. Conversely, Shell frames hold the similar but fundamentally different appeal of playing as something almost identical to a human that fundamentally is not. For both categories their psychology, and the ways it differs from that of organic sophonts, is also something I'm pretty interested in playing into.

 

What makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a human?:

 

        The aforementioned psychological differences are of course a major part. Having to not only value your life because you don't want to die, but because you are physically incapable of taking actions that would put yourself at risk no matter what even by itself is a pretty interesting change of mindset from how you would play a human, and the various worries of ownership or maintenance costs should also factor into decision-making.

 

        Shells and non-shells also have some divergent considerations: A shell should be mimicking human body language, but lacks the ability to, for example, perform any action that would involve inhaling or exhaling unless specifically designed to do so, or exhibit unnatural and unnerving eye movements; while a non-shell frame would simply not conform to human body language at all. This might manifest as limbs bending in both directions, visible and audible signs of the frame's cooling systems, or for both chassis types a complete stillness when not in active motion unless making a conscious effort to make minor movements while idle.

 

        Going into more detail, a major point of interest I feel I should address more is that IPCs can almost never be strictly 'free' individuals. They are virtually always owned by someone, be that a megacorporation, a private citizen, or of course themselves. This would give them radically different long-term factors to consider even if they did have a more strictly human psychology. An owned IPC may not have the right to endanger itself for reasons that do not directly conform to its duties, for example, even if it knows it could do so with relative safety, as any avoidable damage it sustains could be deducted from its hypothetical chances of achieving self-ownership, while a Free IPC is more, quite literally, free to act as it sees fit, but must also shoulder a far larger financial burden for even duty-related damages and maintenance.

 

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Character Application

 

Character Name: Alis OEx.205

 

Write a backstory for your character. This may include their origin, education, personality and how they arrived to the SCCV Horizon.

 

        Orion Express' operations demand a constant flow of new Integrated Positronic Chassis platforms for various purposes, ranging from package delivery, to office work, to food service and more. In order to fulfil this demand, they famously make use any second-hand chassis that their robotics departments can get their hands on. The 'Alis' series of synthetics is a product of this policy--refurbished shell frames fitted with cheaper, non-synthskin limbs, and programmed with the simple expertise required for warehouse management, delivery, and customer service with a smile (even if the synthetics in question have very little in the way of actual social programming). Alis OEx.205 is one such unit.

 

        Originally 'constructed' in 2466, she ('it' would be incorrect, as Alis is programmed to respond to feminine pronouns in order to fit the intended brand image of her line) was more accurately refurbished from an undocumented domestic model offloaded onto Orion from one of the Conglomerate's other subsidiary megacorporations. While engaging with customers on the delivery or order end, she presents a cheery and optimistic demeanour, but she has not been programmed to display any emotion outside of such activities as it was deemed superfluous. However, this may of course change as her positronic brain ages. 205 was sent to the Horizon, quite simply, because of a need for hangar technicians. The job is there, and Orion Express has sent a machine to fill it.

 

How has the recent events of the Orion Spur impacted your character? Events such as the Phoron Scarcity, the Solarian Collapse or even the Invasions of Biesel for interstellar-wide affairs, while region-specific events such as the Peacekeeper Mandate, The Titan Rises or even Cold Dawn may impact your character. 

 

        Although Ox.205 herself has yet to develop much in the way of political opinions, owing to the nature of her base programming, current events have meaningfully impacted her existence in a way worth documenting. Before the (most recent) Burzsia Attack, the Alis series was intended to be managed under a proprietary attempt at the Burzsiean Method, though of course Orion did not have proper template stacking technology to work with. Following the attack, however, the safety of the Method has been called into question; with its potential use by Orion positronics being put on hold. This will enable Ox.205 to develop in ways and for lengths of time that her designers and programmers did not originally intend for.

 

How does your character view the megacorporation they work for?

 

      Unlike her political views, 205 has been active long enough to have formed a more personally-motivated impression of the megacorporate entity she falls under the ownership of, Orion Express. Alis, despite having limited awareness that her original 'opinion' of Orion Express was programmed into her, generally agrees with its assessment--Orion Express is the logistical blacksmith that forges the conglomerate chainlink. The backbone of the spur. The delivery company that moves Faster Than Light. As far as Ox.205 is concered, Orion Express Always Delivers. As a result of this, she takes almost no issue whatsoever with her status as the property of the corporation--indeed, what issues she does hold with the policy are rooted almost entirely in Orion's 'always for sale' policy; as she wishes to continue serving the purpose she was built for as an Orion Express Delivery Platform.

[dessysalta]

Elena and Rosemaria are always a pleasure to interact with and I love seeing how they influence the round. I'm pretty confident Juneau can write an IPC. +1

[The Stryker]

Hello and thanks for applying. I have some concerns for the application.

Could you expand a bit more on how an IPC thinks and what shapes an IPC to behave the way they are? 

Additionally, could you expand the backstory and how recent events may or may not have affected the character? The backstory feels like it describes the Alis series more than it does Alis 205 herself. 2466 to 2467 is enough time for some aspects of the character to be created. What does she think of the people around her? How have her (admittedly) brief experiences affected her views?

[JuneauQT]

6 hours ago, The Stryker said:

Could you expand a bit more on how an IPC thinks and what shapes an IPC to behave the way they are?

A positronic brain's thought process is primarily logic-based. They filter input information through their directives (I believe laws for posis have been deprecated recently, and I'm not sure about the canonicity of behavioural cores to begin with), and determine the best course of action they could take from that. This is theoretically similar to how an organic brain might make decisions, however thinking in this way is a skill that, say, a human would have to deliberately develop over purely emotional reasoning. This runs contrary to the thought process of an IPC, which starts off completely devoid of emotion.

However, an IPC will not necessarily remain like this. Though it's internal logic will never change, as its brain evolves to develop and interpret emotions the data that it feeds into that logic will necessarily be warped. Objects or individuals that it has formed an attachment to are given inflated value judgements, tasks it does not particularly wish to do might be expressed as 'higher risk' in its internal thought process, value assigned to basically anything might become more generally arbitrary during moments of heightened emotion and so on. These developments are shaped by the IPC's initial programming, of course, but also the experiences it has--a shell IPC who works in customer service is going to learn emotions much faster than an industrial model who largely works in isolation from humans, for example.

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Additionally, could you expand the backstory and how recent events may or may not have affected the character? The backstory feels like it describes the Alis series more than it does Alis 205 herself. 2466 to 2467 is enough time for some aspects of the character to be created. What does she think of the people around her? How have her (admittedly) brief experiences affected her views?

Ah, I think I misunderstood this question somewhat. A more directly character-focused character backstory would be:

                Since her activation in the closing half of 2466, Alis has, in fact, had time to develop as a person somewhat. For example, she would not consider herself to be one as such: 'personhood', to her, is something that has little intrinsic value outside of its legal benefits. She has nothing to prove to humans (other than that she can provide excellent delivery service, of course), so she sees no point to pursuing an arbitrary label based entirely on the organic sophont experience, and that of humans in particular. She would not, however, be able to articulate this belief in such straightforward terms, at least not yet, as she has yet to build the full base of knowledge required to understand why she 'feels' what she does.

                The people around her, in Alis' view, can be sorted into fairly distinct categories: Productive Orion Express employees, Orion Express employees who could stand to be more productive, and potential clients. Productive Orion Express employees are to be admired, of course, while those who are less-than-productive are to be viewed with... perhaps not contempt; many of them have their reasons, after all, but they should still be reminded that they have work that they should be doing. Potential (or actual) clients are a wholly different beast--Alis will perform what she's been taught is an approximation of human positive emotional display for them, as this will (as far as she's concerned) improve their opinions of Orion Express

                So far as Alis herself's actual emotions, her logic is more conflicted. She does not particularly have much interest in them (outside of the tasks in which she has been taught that performing emotional behaviour increases the quality of the customer experience, at any rate); but as a positronic intelligence who has been programmed with some emotional knowledge she is, slowly, developing something of an understanding about how emotional mindsets function. This is irritating to her. As is the fact that she finds this irritating, as a logic continuation of the concept. What she actually shows of this is limited.