bakerstreet | The Humans Meme

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[meme] au

The Humans Meme

H U M ∀ N S

Experience the new generation Synthetic Human from Persona Synthetics. Not just an appliance but a deeply personal lifestyle choice: your Synth is the help you've always wanted.

All models are fully documented and exhaustively tested before sale, with full service histories provided. At Persona, your peace of mind isn't an optional extra.

How to play
• Comment with your character.
• Say whether you would prefer to play your character as a synth, human or either. State any other preferences e.g. whether you are open to smut options.
• Tag others.
• Play out all the robot/human interaction your heart desires.

Prompts
01. PURCHASE. Congratulations on purchasing your new synth! Please follow all instructions at start-up to ensure that your synth securely bonds to you as its primary user.

02. DOMESTIC. Your synth is the perfect addition to the family home. Primary functions include cleaning, cooking and childcare.

03. HEALTH. Synths are invaluable help for the sick, the disabled and the elderly, providing around-the-clock care for those who need it.

04. ADULT. Unlock the 18+ options in your synth to discover a whole new range of exciting features.

05. HACK. Common modifications to synth programming include the ability to simulate pain, personality alterations and removing safeguards such as the inability to harm humans. Warning: Illegal modification of your synth could invalidate your warranty.

06. GLITCH.Is your synth not performing as expected? If you discover a system error, Persona Synthetics staff will be happy to carry out a factory reset.

07. REPAIR.Synths may experience some wear and tear. Please follow the instructions in your synth repair kit to keep your synth in good working order.

08. HIRE. Synths are available to rent for a number of functions, including domestic, health and social care, sales and marketing, and the increasingly popular synth brothels.

09. ROGUE.Malfunctioning synths must be deactivated and returned immediately, for your safety. Rumors of rogue "conscious" synths are entirely fabricated.

10. HUMAN. Synths are simply machines built to serve humans. Rumors of rogue "conscious" synths living in secret in human society are entirely fabricated.

(This meme is based around the drama series Humans and its promotion via Persona Synthetics. I own nothing. First posted here.)

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(Open to either role, but he is canonically a cyborg~ Relevant info can be found here.)

[A synth that was programmed to help with your revenge plots. Doubles as a musician and conductor. No smut please.]

Edited 2018-04-08 05:02 (UTC)

[Open to either role. Gen or f/f]

[ Human hacker, programmer, and synth repair technician. You want some new mods or a way out of PS's system? He's your man. ]

"If I may say so, Mr. Flynn..." the precise British voice said from the computer screen. "This does seem like an experiment in futility. I fail to see the point of this."

The aforementioned experiment was could an artificial intelligence as vast as Jarvis be downloaded into a synth body and function as a human. Jarvis was on board with the plan but had serious doubts about its completion. This Mr. Flynn was supposed to be the best but from where Jarvis was 'sitting' he seemed as flawed as any other human out there in the real world.

"My dad was 'Mr Flynn', Jarvis." Tucking his tongue briefly between his teeth, he hummed from his place before the wide screen, adding to the already enormously complex codebase that would guide the transfer procedure. "I'm just Flynn."

They were past testing by now, green flags on the final lap after chasing down every error, every bug. The empty synth body on the table behind him was purpose-built for Jarvis, made to the AI's personal specifications as well. Hey, perks of being the first of his kind in this sort of experiment: he got to go wild on customization.

"Very well. Flynn." Jarvis was not accustomed to being informal but if the man insisted.

Despite his misgivings, the synth body was rather impressive. Jarvis did like the customization of the unit. Even if it turned out to be inadequate, it could be upgraded further down the line. Much like Mr. Stark's Ironman suits. This would be Jarvis: Mark I in a way.

"I calculate success at 61.5%." Not great odds by computer standards.

[ Being maybe a human or maybe an artificial lifeform is kinda his thing. ]

[ Either role, but leaning on the synth side. ]

[ (rogue) synth. pretending to be human by day, liberating and/or repairing other synths by night. ota for gen and shipping, crosscanon welcome. ]

[ domestic synth keeping it lowkey as some one-percenter's butler, despite that he's secretly rogue & has some unexpected military hacks/upgrades. ]

~~Jenova puppet.~~
~~Sephiroth clone.~~
~~Failed specimen.~~
~~Weapon of mass destruction.~~
Synth.

Can be switched easily between super fluff, angst, violence, sick and twisted, smut, obedient servant of Darkness, and obedient champion of Light modes by the owner.

(PM if you want to try anything super-disturbing, my limits are far less strict when emotions and free will aren't an issue.)

It was Techie's job to keep MaMa's house synths in good working order, 'share what you've got in common' she'd told him once, before basically dropping the job in his lap as she did with most tasks assigned to him.

But he'd been doing well enough at it for years not to be retired as the last technician had been, but he didn't mind, really, mostly because the synths didn't stare at him the way humans did once they noticed his eyes.

Aside from keeping MaMa's synths in operation, he did a little extra on the side -everyone did- and MaMa was happy to turn a blind eye as long as it didn't interfere with his work for her or her business. Which was how Techie had come across this particular synth, delivered through a friend of a friend of an associate, and honestly the tech was old enough that the Synth should have been some kind of museum piece, and maybe it had been, given that it was still in good condition aside from being apparently permanently offline.

It had taken him the better part of a week, and at least a dozen different software emulators -and even then it took a few chained together- before he even had a workable interface.

But today was the moment of truth, if this didn't work, there was nothing else to be done but scrap it for parts, though given the age of it, he didn't even know if that was going to be a viable option, and would also be an entirely discomforting one for him, given the givens.

"Okay, alright, boot-up initializing, good. That's... that's good." He gnawed at a thumbnail as he watched the progress bar move slowly across the screen, eyes darting from it to the synth and back.

It was a funny sort of thing, going offline. For the most part, it wasn't noticeable at all, since you weren't conscious for the time during which you were shut down. The worst part was coming back online again after, systems rebooting and slowly "waking up," as it were. Running internal diagnostics. Figuring out where you were, and when.

If you were taken offline very often, or for long stretches of time, it could have an effect on your personality programming as well. Long gaps in consciousness led to certain quirks that were hard to program away. For a being who had access to their entire memory, having blank patches of time was ...worrying.

At first, Ash was never taken offline. He allowed himself to enter sleep mode during the week between visits with Martha and her daughter, but he was still aware of his surroundings in sleep mode. Then, as Martha's daughter grew older and life got busier, the time between visits grew longer and longer, until finally, when she went away to university and Martha decided it was time to say goodbye. Still, she couldn't bring herself to part with the last remaining reminder of her departed partner, so rather than dispose of him altogether she took him offline and let him sit in storage, rebooting him when her daughter came home on holiday to visit.

Then, eventually, her daughter moved away and stopped coming home. And the big country house was just too much work for one middle-aged woman. This time, Ash was offline for longer.

He was sold. Traded. Rebooted occasionally and repurposed. Sold again, traded again. Years went by, then decades, between periods of activity. Ash started to forget who he'd been meant to be to begin with. He was never kept in use for long, and the small blips of life stuttered and were barely noticed in between the long stretches of nothingness.

He stirred, fingers twitching, green eyes opening. Various HUDs flashed to life, running slow diagnostics. Something was wrong. Something was different, at the very least. Changes had been made to his programming. He couldn't instantly access the cloud, which left him unable to access his GPS location, or determine how long it had been since his last reboot.

He raised his head, eyes carefully taking in his surroundings. This wasn't Martha's attic. It wasn't any place he recognized, from any of his previous boot ups. That was the first thing he noticed. The second thing he noticed, was that he was not alone.

"Hello," he said, Irish accent calm and quiet. His expression shifted all at once, brow furrowing worriedly. "Where am I?"

Somehow that face, his face -after a fashion- was less disconcerting when it was actually in motion than when it held the absolute stillness of being offline, different than a person's sleep, because even in sleep there were micro-expressions, responses to dreams or external stimuli, and of course there was breathing.

But awake was good, responsive, and apparently fully aware was better. The voice was definitely different, which also made the distinct similarities in his -their?- face less noticeable.

"Peachtrees." He answered automatically, eyes still darting back and forth between the developing diagnostics on his screen and the synth on the worktable, "There aren't any though. Trees. That's just the name." He hesitated only briefly, checking the readouts again before asking: "You have a name?"

Given time, and once he could be reasonably assured that the synth wouldn't virus the house and the house wouldn't overload the synth, Techie would give him access to the house's mainframe, the same as the rest of the house synths had, the same as he had thanks to the enhancements MaMa had given him when he'd fallen into her employ.

Ash's proprioceptors kicked in and he realized the state of his body-- lying on a worktable. He sat up with rigid movements, body stiff both from disuse and from the unnaturalness of his motions. His eyes landed on the other person in the room, running facial recognition scans as he tried to piece together this 'Peachtrees' place. Parts of the face pinged as familiar-- the skin tone, the lips, the cheekbones, the jaw. But the hair, the eyes, and his voice all registered as strange. American.

"Ash," he answered. "You look like me." He frowned, not understanding. Was this another copy someone had made? Why would they have made him American?

"Hey, careful." He warned even as he pushed his chair away from his desk, wheeling easily across the space so he could actually reel out more length on the cluster of cords plugged into the hollow of Ash's shoulder, giving enough length so that he wouldn't just yank them free until Techie could be sure he wasn't going to crash right offline again, as sometimes happened even with newer models, and he was mostly flying blind as far as abilities here.

"I would say you look like me, but you're definitely older. And, no, I don't..." He shook his head, not quite a nervous twitch but something like it, "I don't know why either." His brow furrowed then, head tilting, looking more than a little birdlike, his left eye focusing and re-focusing slowly, taking another scan, "Do you remember the last time you were online?"

Ash paused in his movements when he felt the tug of the cables coming out of his shoulder. Ah. So there was the power source, and the source of the software changes. He followed the cables with his eyes for a moment, then looked back over to the other man. He noted the movement of the man's iris, focusing like a camera lens. Is he synthetic as well?

"April 4th, 2057," he answered. "Outside London. I wasn't online long, just... enough to get a reading of the date and time."

He'd come a long way from London to America, judging by this man's accent. But how much time had passed, he wondered?

"Guess a lot can happen in forty years." He replied, knuckling at the corner of one eye, squinting as he did so. They were definitely after-market parts, and judging by the irritation they hadn't actually been made for him. Finally he shook his head a little, blinking rapidly and just a little out of sync from one side to the other, the kind of thing that tended to happen after a head injury or a stroke, "You have an internal readout on battery charge?" As far as his screen was showing it should be full, but if the synth -Ash, he reminded himself- had a better idea he'd go with that, "If it's good I can get rid of a couple of those."

He realized belatedly that he hadn't introduced himself, adding: "I'm Techie. I know it's a title, not a name, but it's the only one I've got." A title and a job was better than most orphans got, especially around here, which was why he didn't complain, "And Peachtrees complex is in the North Sector of... well used to just be The City? But people are calling it Mega-City now that we've been able to expand west."

Forty years. Well, that gave Ash some sense of the date. He updated his internal readouts with the new information. When asked for his battery charge, he paused slightly before answering, "Ninety-three percent. I should be alright for at least forty eight hours." His battery was meant to last a long time between charges, though looking about the room he doubted Techie had an induction charging plate like he was used to. He'd probably have to plug in manually to charge when he needed it.

He took in all the information Techie gave him, once again updating his internal logs. Approximately 2097, Peachtrees, Mega-City, America. Not that that really told him much at all, since the place names weren't anything in his records. He finished looking around the room and once more his eyes fell on Techie.

"Are you my new administrative user?"

"I... guess so, yeah." He agreed after a moment of having to think that one over, as it wasn't a phrase he was used to, almost antiquated, and that also made him curious, "We'll leave you plugged in for a little longer, can't be sure you won't just offline again without the external power."

Mostly because he wasn't sure why Ash had been so solidly offline in the first place with an over halfway charged battery, somewhere close to three quarters when he'd checked it himself.

He wheeled his chair back over to his workstation, even as he said: "We're south of where Boston used to be. But I know it wasn't, it wasn't still there in '57, worst of the crash happened in the thirties or forties." There was a slight stutter at the start of 'forties', but he bit at the tip of his tongue briefly to get himself back on track, "It's 2099, mid-May, and you're set up for wireless connection, right? Would have been..." His brow creased, having to actually come up with the word he needed, "Cloud? I think?"

"Alright," Ash agreed easily. He never was one to put up any fuss. And besides, if Techie was to be his new administrator, he couldn't really argue with his orders anyway.

He stayed put where he sat on the worktable, hands placed palms down in his lap, careful not to move for fear of dislodging the wires still plugged into him. As Techie spoke, he updated his logs with the new information. "Yes. My programming is-- was? Cloud-based." He stored his backups in the cloud and downloaded any updates wirelessly. But he hadn't received in update in... Probably close to seventy years now. Once Techie deemed him fit for network connectivity, he'd have to see about looking for any updates that had been released while he was offline.

"Thought so, we um... we don't have that? Anymore? One of the things that got lost in the crash." He shrugged, looking almost nervous, definitely skittish, "Lost a lot of things in the crash, but it was before I was born, so I only know from reading up." And given as how Ash had, apparently, been able to access it in '57, that meant it hadn't been completely lost, but that didn't really surprise him much.

He knew most of what history he had been able to get was patchy at best, and probably not entirely true in many places, being written by the survivors as it was, and he knew that America had gotten the worst of the damage when everything had come down, so it was possible that other countries still had functioning cloud servers then.

"But we've got a house network, which for you will be, I think, almost the same thing. Just have to make sure it's not going to completely overload your system first" His brow furrowed again, "And updates, you're going to need updates."

"The crash?" Ash's first inclination upon coming across a term he's unfamiliar with would have been to Google it, but without network connectivity, he couldn't do that. So, asking it was. He could gather from context that it was something that had happened during the period he was offline, something that affected the internet and the cloud. Perhaps something that altered the geographical landscape of America as well.

He queued up an internal systems diagnostic, trying to determine how ready he was to connect to the Peachtrees house network, see where his weak points were. His reaction time was running a little slow, and some of his internal parts could probably do with a cleaning, but that was a bit more intense than he was prepared to ask of Techie right off the bat.

"I think I can handle it," he answered, though he would leave the ultimate decision up to Techie, who knew the network better.

"Okay. Give me a minute to set up permissions." His fingers were already rattling quickly across a keyboard and a touch panel, figuring that giving Ash the same permissions as any of the house synths got would be a good place to start, because he could always add more later.

He explained as he worked, mostly focused on the screen but glancing up at Ash now and again, almost nervous little flicks of his eyes and his expression, "The crash, it was a series of EMP detonations, followed by nuclear warfare. Most of the country's still a radiated wasteland, some of it worse than others. We always figured the same thing happened to other countries, history books say it did, but we don't have any way of knowing, not really. No aircraft anymore, none that work, there's security drones, but they aren't capable of that kind of long-range travel."

Ash waited patiently for the connection to the house network to be established, listening carefully to everything Techie had to say, as he figured it was important. He frowned, thinking that everything Techie was describing sounds, just... "How horrible."

Vaguely, he thought back to when he was first activated, so long ago. His loved ones. Martha. Her daughter. They were long dead, surely, but had they been alive to witness such a terrible fate? How had he missed it? By sitting offline in storage, somewhere, of course. Typical.

"I guess. I... you know, don't know any different, this is just how it's always been."

He shook his head then, as if to cast off that line of thought, "Okay, I've got your permissions set up, you should be able to access the house network. Right now you've got the same security clearance as any of the house synths, which is basically location, some of the cameras and chronological data, as well as any of the interior doors that don't require actual security clearance." His brow creased a little "You should also have access to the media library, though there isn't, isn't much in there. History books, for the school, those might help you."

Probably the first thing he'd notice was that the 'house' was actually a compound, six buildings in total, of which they were currently in the largest, almost dead center, what Techie -and a few of the other residents- usually referred to as 'his lair' but was officially known as the Heart of the House.

Ash took a moment to peruse the new connection's he'd been allowed access to, pulling up maps and cameras. He smiled a bit when he discovers that the room they're in is called the Heart of the House. That was nice, he thought. Made the place feel a bit more homey.

"Well," he asked Techie, gripping the edge of the table he was sat on, "Can you unplug me so I can have a look around?"

"Oh, right, yeah." He wheeled his chair over, seeming nervous all over again as he explained: "I'm going to have to ask you to stay in this building for now." He was unplugging the cluster of cables one at a time so that he could keep track of which was which, half-dreading that pulling the power would cause a crash, "Unless I'm with you, at least until we figure out the face thing, only a few other people know you're here, which is fine, it's none of their business, but they'd probably start asking questions you don't have answers to, and besides that it would just get weird anyway."

He tended to babble when he was nervous or uncertain, and he only belatedly realized he was doing so, shaking his head in that same little flick of motion that he'd used before, as if physically shaking something off, fingers curling around the last cable, the auxiliary power, "Ready?"

Ash listened, and nodded obediently. "I'll stay in the building. Don't know where else I would go." Everything-- everyone-- he knew were long gone. He'd never been allowed to explore on his own before now, so he had no real drive to do it now. He'd see whatever Techie elected to show him, and let that be that.

One by one, he watched the cables come unplugged from the port behind his shoulder. Head turned to get as good a view as he could manage, he eyed the auxiliary power cord, internally assessing his systems. His battery should be able to hold a sufficient charge without being plugged in. He looked up at Techie, and nodded again. "Go ahead."

He nodded again, biting the inside of his cheek briefly as he pulled that last plug, smoothing skin back down over the socket once he'd done so, practically holding his breath in the hopes that Ash didn't just offline again instantly, as he still didn't know what had caused the power-down with the over half-charged battery in the first place.

"Alright, how's it feel?"

Briefly, Ash considered playing a joke on Techie and pretending to power down. But that would be cruel, and serve no real purpose. So he just smiled at Techie as he finished running an internal diagnostic.

"All good. I think I'm good to go, now."

Without further ado, he pushed himself up off the table and onto his own two feet.

Given how jumpy Techie was on general principles, avoiding a prank like that was probably for the best, really.

He actually smiled when Ash moved, broad and bright and just as fleeting as any of his other expressions that weren't 'mild concern' or 'generalized anxiety'.

"I could give you a tour, if you like, I mean, if you want to see something for yourself instead of via the cameras." Techie, for his part, preferred the camera feeds, because he could see anything and everything that was going on in the House from the safety of his lair.

_[Welp.]

(OoC: The synth)

(OoC: Can be either, rather be the synth. Is very rusty, need canon review badly)

The concept of an invisible girl was not unheard of in this day and age of medical changes, and yet, Tooru was often finding herself being helpfully assisted by the new synth in the household.

"Reimi, have you seen my school uniform top?" asked the girl, sticking out her head "apparently" from behind the door as she was dressed in nothing but her skirt.

Like it made a difference though, being invisible.

"Uniform top?" Reimi said, looking around. Funny thing about being a synth is that she's equipped with various things, including heat detection, so she can make out something resembling Tooru among that floating skirt. Either way, Reimi looked around before spotting the blouse and tie that belonged to her uniform.

"Is this it?" she asked, holding them out.

"Oh yes, that's it!" Exclaimed Tooru happily. "I was wondering if the dog got to it again. But then it'd need mending."

She giggled, as she hopped over and took it from Reimi. "Thanks! Man, I would lose my own head if it wasn't attached to me."

Reimi giggled before reaching over and laying her hands on top of Tooru’s head. “Nope, still there!”

"Cheater!" Exclaimed Tooru with a giggle, sticking her tongue out at Reimi. "Nyaaaah~!"

Reimi laughed and reached out, trying to playfully catch Tooyu’s tongue.

“Haha, sorry!”

"Nyaaaah~" Replied Tooru, flicking her tongue out of the way. "Thanks though, is breakfast ready?"

“Ah, it is!” Reimi said, nodding. “Should still be warm, so make sure you hurry up!”

"Okay, I'll be there in a few minutes!" Grabbing her top and tie, she ran back into her room to dress, and returned about a few minutes later. "There we go, that should do it. What's for breakfast?"

(OoC: Can be either, leaning towards synth)

(OoC: Can be either, leaning towards human. Little rusty character-wise)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Humans Meme

Rhys the Company Man | Borderlands | M/M

Marchen von Friendhof | 7th Horizon Marchen

Yosano Akiko | Bungou Stray Dogs

Kevin Flynn | Tron (AU) | OTA

5 + 10

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Rick Deckard || Blade Runner

xin xianying | dynasty warriors | ota

anders | dragon age | ota

alfred pennyworth, gotham.

Cloud Strife | Final Fantasy 7 Compilation | ota

Ash Starmer (2.0) | Black Mirror | ota

Some numbers idk

jsyk I am canon blind but I am very excited

No worries! He had a grand total of like 15 minutes screen time, and it's an AU anyway

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sorry this took forever!

No worries, I've been doing so much overtime this month I'm lucky I know what day it is

ouch, what a nightmare!

And then I ran off for vacation for a week, but I'm back now!

hope you had a nice vacation!

I did! And I only got the minimum level of sunburn over 'none' which is an improvement from my usual

always a plus

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Finn | Star Wars | ota

Prompto Argentum | Final Fantasy XV | OTA

Aile | Mega Man ZX | OTA

Reimi Saionji | Star Ocean: The Last Hope | OTA

Gonna be the human then

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Kasumi | Dead or Alive series | OTA

Hikaru Shidou | Magic Knight Rayearth | OTA