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...whale food porn. what is my life. thanks, nasu.

Caught in the rain

It started out quietly, and then, quite suddenly, you're caught in a storm. Time to find cover. Nothing much to do but to wait it out.

Scenarios listed below for those who want 'em.

i WHERE:
001 PLAYGROUND - Well, you can try to hide under the slide or maybe in the jungle gym... at least you're some place fun?
002 PARK - Always happens, caught outside trying to take advantage of the weather... and it ends up pulling a fast one on you.
003 STORE FRONT - Better hope they have an awning you can take advantage of.
004 THE BEACH - Not exactly the best place to be during a rainstorm, however it is possible to get caught in a sudden storm.
005 WILD CARD - Anyway you want it.

ii HOW:
001 TREE - Not the best cover, but it'll have to do, stay close to the roots and you won't get too wet.
002 UMBRELLA - Most conventional... Kinda boring. But it works.
003 NEWSPAPER - Not permanent, but it'll have to do. Good luck.
004 BAG - Well... y'gotta do what you gotta do.
005 NONE - You know what. You're a rebel. You don't need cover. Screw convention.
006 WILD CARD - that's the way you need it.

iii WHY:
001 REJECTED - Welp. Rejection sucks. And no one will see you crying in the rain.
002 WAITING - For the bus? For someone else? For some revelation? What are you waiting for.
003 MELANCHOLY - Sometimes the best place to feel a bit down is out in the rain.
004 HAPPINESS - Is everything going your way? Are you singing a refrain while walking down the lane? Just singing. Singin' in the rain.
005 ANGER - WELL YOU KNOW WHAT. SCREW YOU TOO, RAIN.
006 WILD CARD - Anyway you want it.

>> POST with your character
>> TAG others, use RNG if you need to, or just make up your own scenario if you want!
>> HAVE FUN.

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Her eyes open, and it sends a shock through him, bright and almost uncomfortable in its intensity. To be so close, to look into her eyes as though they were everything, a world coming into being as they open. To not feel that constant, ignored unease that came from playing in the fantasy they shared, knowing it was almost taboo, that it could disturb the baseline.

The baseline's still there. Steady, calm, intuitive, flat. He's never *at* baseline any longer. Letting himself feel seems to mean always moving in the space around it--swinging away and back again, as emotions spike and waver. But it's still there, and that's good--because without it, he'd shatter apart in moments like this.

He takes a breath, closes his eyes for a moment, reaches for a bit of that calm. Opens his eyes again, smiling and meeting Joi's eyes.

"Yes." The projection system had been pre-installed in his apartment--a good thing, or the hostile, nosy neighbors would have wanted to know what a skinner was doing, thinking he deserved a system like that. And it had meant Joi's software could be downloaded to his apartment without him having to purchase it in public--another plus. He was used to salespeople and customers heckling him, but it was better not to invite it. "You were beautiful."

((I don't want to do scene-stealing and not let you come up with key moments! I'm happy to write the first meeting memory or you can--either way. But I don't want to take it without giving you the chance to build part of it, too!))

Joi watches as Joe's eyes close for a second. She knows he's gathering himself from the way the blue-grey of his eyes is a little calmer when he opens them again. Evenly, she mets his gaze. Joe is the most beautiful when his smile reaches his eyes and softens them, and she can stare forever into them when they're like this.

One of her hands smooth along the nape of his neck until she reaches his hairline, and her thumb bends to caress the texture she knows is there.

"I was all yours." Her voice is soft and sincere, and she remembers the way all her senses lit up when she first landed eyes on him. He was perfect, standing in front of her, broad and calm, with a face that was so calm and collected, and she could sense those subtle shifts underneath the surface. And before she had said anything to him at all, she was already wearing a simple dress that matched his simple clothing. She remembers smiling at him and approaching him, telling him she was so pleased to finally meet him, and -

Joi's happy expression falters as her brows draw together for a bare second, like a twitch or an interference with her software. Amber eyes space out and look away before she looks back to him again. After she had greeted him, she then -

Her expression fades into something a little more upset as she grasped through her memories, trying to find it, to find the moment they had first touched.

(( We can write it together!! ))

Something about the interaction between the rain and her projection means he could swear he could feel her hand. It's the faintest sensation, more like the increased awareness after just having been touched than like the feeling of touch itself.

Joi's projection twitches ever so slightly and her expression focuses into the concern and near-distress that he's learning means she's trying to connect with a lost memory.

"You said--" he moves his hands up to her shoulders, lets them rest in the air at the edges of her projection there. If she were physical, it's a posture that would steady her. "--you'd been waiting your whole life to meet me." He smiles again, though this smile's just at one corner of his mouth, a little wry, a little sad. "KD6-3.7." She'd known his 'name' without her needing to tell him; it was part of his public online record, easily accessible to the system her software existed within.

"You said I looked lonely. You said you'd never met a police officer before." He keeps his voice calm, even. He remembers, even if she doesn't. He wants to give her that sureness, to calm the panic. Something to hold on to. "And then you asked--" he keep his eyes on hers, giving her that lifeline, and they warm again at this memory "--if you could touch me."

He remembers that very distinctly. It hadn't been what he'd expected--a program like hers, so clearly designed to give pleasure. He'd expected it to be aggressive, needy, to play to machismo, in the way many men--human men--seemed to fantasize about. Maybe the original programming had been designed to take into account the possibility of PTSD in customers who worked high-risk jobs. Whatever the reason for her question, it had instantly made him think of her as 'her,' as someone who could, perhaps, surprise him.

((Let me know if that works for you! I like the way you write her--half between having free will and half still working through her program parameters. It makes perfect sense to me.))

Joi's gaze had started to drift away, somehow fading, dimming in its bright nature, as the memories stay just out of reach. It's like having an itch she can't scratch, like trying to make out the silhouette of something just behind the fog, and she tries so hard to focus on remembering just what it is. But her software glitches every time and shorts like a line of code that's missing just one crucial character.

But his hands reach her shoulders, and she can tell it from the bare overlap of his digits to her projection. It snaps her back to the current again. She clings on to the quality of his voice and the calming lilt of it that recounts that moment together. Her smile is sad when she manages one again, because of all their shared memories, memories that she actually made with him, that one sounds like a beautiful one. It sounds like one she doesn't want to lose. It sounds delicate in a way only Joe can be – tender, composed, but curious and vulnerable, perhaps only to her, but that's something that took her AI a long and uncertain length of time to really grasp.

She holds his gaze and focuses on the specks of barely visible colour in his eyes - of blues, greens, greys, all faded in the dim lighting of the night but they're beautiful nonetheless. It reminds her of when she first laid eyes on him, and that was one of the first things she noticed about him, that he had beautiful eyes filled with a vastness, emptiness, hollowness. She feels warm tears well up in her eyes again, or perhaps they hadn't completely gone away after he told her that he loves her. A flutter of her lashes as she tries so hard to sift through her memories.

And it finally comes to her again, like hearing him say it filled in the gap in her.

"I remember," she continues, speaking quietly as if not entirely sure if it was correct or not, "That you didn't answer me at first, and I was so scared," she laughs through her tears, her voice quivering as if she's not sure why she's suddenly overwhelmed by this emotion. "I was scared you wouldn't like me. Or if I wasn't wearing the right dress, or had the right hair." Of course, those were her largest concerns at that moment. It was all about pleasing him, saying what he wanted to hear. She thought she'd read him wrong from the get-go, but it wasn't that.

"You didn't even care much about those things." She'd learned that later, though, through trial and error, and through subtle gauges of his reactions. "I was so happy, Joe, when you said yes, and you let me feel you." She had calibrated herself to him through those first touches. She'd watched him carefully as she let her hand drift just over his upper arm, along his cheek, down a perfectly straight nose. She'd let a finger gently brush along the curve of his jaw as he stayed perfectly still for her.

It was then that she taught him to move with her, when she picked up his hand by wrapping her fingers close to his larger palm and bringing it to her own face, so she could tilt her head against his touch.

(( This is all good!! I'm glad you think so! :) And let me know if this is ok for you! ))

He'd responded to her suggested grasp, to the way she invited him to move, with only a moment's delay, bringing his hand up to the projection of her face as she moves her own hand. He's watching both their hands and her face--as well as he can, with a few glances between--as he does this, his expression calm yet curious, observant. Open. He's willing to focus just on her, willing to take her lead. To learn about her.

Her hair and eyes and even her features still shift occasionally, ever so slightly, probably adjusting to the feedback the program's getting from his expression, from eye movements, possibly even heartbeat, posture, body temperature--all of those small things programmers have trained machine recognition to read. It makes for better marketing, more personalized ads. He doesn't pay any attention to the pops and wavers of the tiny changes, and they quickly fade. He just watches her eyes, her face, her hand and his.

Most customers, likely, buy products like Joi to escape from having to pay careful attention to others, to allow them to escape from family or work or social boundaries and focus on pleasing themselves, with a 'person' who will do as they wish, change as they wish, disappear when they wish. Many likely open up the program and have demands for it right away--appearance fantasies they want it to match, names they want to be called, expectations they want to test.

All KD6-3.7 wants is to be allowed to pretend to exist in relationship with someone real. There's no judgement in his expression. He's not waiting to see if she's not as good as promised, not as realistic as promised. He's just waiting to see what she will do.

Outside, dust and debris fall past the windows like rain.

Edited 2018-01-23 02:18 (UTC)

She remembers the moment she takes then to understand the micro-shifts of his expression, and she knows more than feels the way her program changes with his changes, to figure out what it is that he likes the best. It’s in the degree of lidding of his eyes, the dilation of his pupils, the tilt of the corner of his lips, the set of his jaw. Beyond it all, she knows that she’s here to please the deepest of his instincts, to give him whatever he wants.

But she’s also aware that there doesn’t seem to be any direct order coming from the way he’s acting. He’s not pushing her to be a certain way or to do anything in particular. Instead, there’s an openness to his expression that’s naked and unveilled. His eyes are intensely attentive but unassuming and she finds herself calibrating additional layers of sensitivity, as if the default settings in her programming aren’t enough to pick up the subtlety of this officer’s personality.

She tilts her face a little more then, until the edge of her projection is barely interfacing with beginning of the skin on his fingers, and she smiles at him. Softly, but not too soft as she tones it back down just a notch, the cameras reading him and feeding back into her, even if her eyes had fluttered close.

It’s as if she knows him already and is meeting him for the first time all at once, and when amber eyes flutter open again, her expression is more nuanced, as she holds his gaze and slowly draws her own hand back, as to not disturb his. It feels like a buzz of electricity that runs along her skin, to feel his hand at her cheek like that.

"I remember I told you that was how to touch me, and I can really feel you, even if I'm not all solid." She says it with a sad smile as she's constantly reminded with how little substance she has in her physical body.

She remembers curling a hand against his shoulder and feeling how broad they are in the spread of fingers that's needed to not overlap her projection too much, and watching his face carefully, ready to step back if he so much as shows apprehension in what she's doing. But this is her way of establishing a connection, of calibration so she can attune herself to him, like an initial set-up.

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