In these last days of the world of Ar Ciel, the homeless Reyvateils who slept outside AR's apartment complex are no longer there. She hopes that, wherever they've gone, it's somewhere safe, a warm and comfortable vantage point from which to watch the end of the world. Maybe they returned to their families, finally able to reconcile and put the issues that held them apart behind them. Or maybe some charitable soul was able to give them a new start. Either way, somehow, the atmosphere in these slums feels a little calmer, a little less laden with suffering and doubt, than it did several days ago. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6
Back in AR's small apartment, the room seems cleansed by the still light of sunset, liquidy and gold. Even these dark places are slowly having their pall lifted from them, it seems, in preparation for a new world's arrival. Not a thing can feel too cruel, too cold, or too shabby in these final hours, for cruelty and coldness hover on the brink of banishment. 1 / 2 / 3
A sidenote: The doll is Amarie, the physical inspiration for AR's Mind Guardian. (Named that well before AT2 came out, incidentally! I guess it's a popular name in that world....)
She was actually once somewhat intelligent, about as much so as a household pet; the technology that produced Reyvateil-level artificial intelligence went through a lot of refinements, first creating beings with the mental capacities of simpler animals before going on to replicate humans. This cruder technology, in the modern day, is now fairly cheap, and is frequently used to produce toys for children that cost about as much as a "talking" doll using very simple technology would today.
Through the development of such beings-- possessing the intelligence level of animals, yet capable of speech-- humans learnt a lot about the emotional capacities and needs of various animals, and stronger animal cruelty laws were introduced in many nations. Ironically, however, the dolls themselves are often treated poorly for being "artificial", with many simply discarded when they break or the child gets tired of them. While they don't feel pain, don't take offence, and are generally extremely meek, kindly and non-destructive, in order that they might be fit playthings for children, they still have needs for comfort and security, which can often conflict with the desires of a child who sees themselves as having outgrown toys. Reyvateils are often much more sensitive to the needs of these toys than humans, and many have found them to be steadfast companions whom they treasure as dearly as flesh-and-blood pets.
AR has carried Amarie's physical counterpart with her from home to home since she was five years old, occasionally relying on advice from hobby forums in order to carry out servicing on her that she couldn't afford to pay someone to do. Several years ago, Amarie simply stopped functioning, and there seemed to be no way she could be repaired within the limits of AR's budget; AR debated whether to keep what in some ways seemed like a corpse, but found she simply couldn't bear to part with her. Thus Amarie now lives with her as a silent companion, a continuing source of comfort, yet her only life within AR's own mind.
Oddly enough, the time the doll-Amarie stopped working was around the same time as AR found herself out of reputable work and took up an unfortunate career on the streets. The symbolism of this is not lost on her.
In AR's mind, she wears a small suit of armour and carries a spear.
5 comments:
A bit of information: That's an extremely realistic way for AI/humanoid robot technology to develop. We are already heading in that direction. Right now, you can buy a robot dinosaur that can be trained to act as complex as a pet, is artificially intelligent, learns things, and moves smoothly like a real reptile would with properly articulated joints in the right places. It can also be taught to sing (the irony of this was not lost on me). This isn't your average walking, singing toy; this is something that will take the shortest route towards an object without running into anything that'll slow it down, knows when you're in the room, chirps when you stroke it, knows who you are, and knows its name. This is one smart program.
While you obviously can't download anything as ineffable as emotions for it, as behavioural programs for these creatures become more complex it may learn to act as if it has them. In that case we will have the question of whether we are technically causing it distress when we do something against what it is programmed to react well to.
I'm really glad it worked as a concept! I actually wrote that aaaaages before I heard about those robot toys (or at least, those ones specifically, the ones that demonstrate some serious capacity for learning rather than just being programmable), so it's neat that it clicks.
And the fact that amongst the first thing they've trained basic robots to do is sing is just very, very wow.
Hmm... If they trained robots extensively on what does and doesn't make a good song to the human ear, so that they were capable of tuning any song attempt until it became something nice to listen to, and then threw in a random seed generator for various factors to generate the initial song, maybe they could get them to create hymns. I'm pretty sure they'd need an uber-supercomputer to even try a project like this right now, if that's even at all possible-- like the chess computers but even moreso, it'd be dealing with mindblowing complexity-- but at least I could see how it could be done.
Interesting coincidence.
I've been trying to come up with a way to do a picture of Arisa, but the hair is giving me trouble... I was sure I had something here that would do two-tone hair, but I can't find it now... Might have to do some editing in GIMP afterwards to get it, because I really want to capture how she looked during her "wear a skirt and walk down stairway railings" expidition.
Awwww, I really wanna see when you're done. :) It'll be nice if we can somehow come up with pictures of everybody....
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