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Obsolescence (Survivor00 & Fiye)

Mirani City, Jeak-Zi District â?? Sinora

Brooke Niao-Qing fingers danced across the keypad of her rig, a masterful ballet of keystrokes set to an orchestra that only she could hear. On the multi-screen setup, lines of code split and grew like something alive, and she could almost hear the program teasing apart beneath her skills, revealing the inner workings, the most pure forms of mathematical data one could imagineâ?¦ With a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, her keystrokes turned suddenly violent, a thousand digital knives that slashed at the program and tore it apart. She heard it scream, beg, spill all of its innermost secrets to her before dying quietly, hacked into bits. She uncaringly dissected it all layer by layer, storing each bit in the string of memory drives she had hooked up. This way she could analyze the program at her leisure, after she had a well-earned smoke.

With the wave of her hand, the micro-thin displays dimmed and powered down, leaving her in the darkness of her room. â??Lights, Dim.â? She whispered, and the softest glow warmed in the light strips on the walls. She walked across her room to the small balcony that barely blemished the buildingâ??s side. The city stabbed at the sky with its thousand-foot skyscrapers, drowning out the night in a hazy of artificial dawn. Sheâ??d never even seen a star â?? save for what they still taught in the schools. Her hand fell to her pocket and she pulled out a slim package of cigarettes. Tapping one into her open palm, she sighed and tapped it once against the railing to light it. The small ember winked to life, her own little light in this city of millions.

Lifting it to her lips, she took a drag and held it for a moment, before sighing the wisps of smoke away. She felt the relaxing flow of nicotine enter her system, and she took another lazy drag, tapping the ashes away over the balcony railing. Overhead, a patrolling helicopter thumped over the rooftops, the blinding searchlight panning over the apartment complexes below. She almost ducked her head out of instinct. Oftentimes, her computer skills were used in less-than-legal matters â?? hacking, database infiltration, breaking a program to find ways around it. Sheâ??d never do anything the harm the City, itâ??s all they had after all, but she still wanted to see the way it ticked. Still, those acts were highly illegal, and she could end up facing some serious penalties if she was ever caught.

She looked down at the cigarette in her fingertips before flicking it out over the balcony, the glowing tip crying out feebly in the dark before disappearing from sight. Turning back to her room, Brooke slid the door closed behind her. She hooked her fingers in the waistband of her sweatpants and slid them down her pale-skinned thighs, stepping out of them. She likewise pulled off the thin, white T-shirt and cast it aside to the floor, leaving her dressed only in her panties. Her fingers curled around the small crescent moon pendant that hung from her neck on a chain. Plucking it from her neck, she set it aside on her desk before climbing under the covers of her bed.

â??Lights, Off.â? The lights dimmed to blackness, and she closed her eyes, waiting for the sweet veil of sleep to encase her.


Mirani City, Gaik-Lan Technical District â?? Sinora
Shangdi STI


Jung Lau-Koi was soon to be a murderer â?? that was, if you could give the title of life to a machine. A truly miraculous machine, but a machine nonetheless. It was not his place to question the decisions of those above him, for they were the ones that made sure that he and his family had food to eat and a roof over their heads. And once this project was completed, he was sure he would no longer have to worry about money ever again.

The GENESIS project â?? the worldâ??s first truly sentient android â?? designed to appear as human as possible, to ease the eventual integration into human society. Still in the prototype stages, they had made remarkable progress with â??herâ?? logic drives. Decades of culminated robotics research had gone into her creation, until they had finally achieved their goal. She was a miracle.

And she would die tonight.

As the prototype stage, she was being used to gather data for a more refined model, one that would also likely go through several more iterations before being finalized. Now that they had retrieved the data required from her, she was to be decommissioned. He sighed, scanning his chipped wrist against the door scanner and walking in as soon as it opened.​
 
She was a miracle in robotics, a huge step towards the creation of living robotic systems. Where they not only acted human, but fought to remain alive. Trying to keep herself from being destroyed, and above all, making her decisions. By the human standards, she could be considered a life form, were she not built out of the metals from the earth. But, even still, she remained alive and well, monitored at all times of the day. And yet, even if she was monitored, that didn't mean she was able to sneak out of those little security problems.

It was almost second nature to her, looking at something and finding the fastest hole she could spring open, make her way into various scripts and code, and learn a bit about the world. Heck, her own hard drive was full of images of places she would like to see. Images though, she withheld. She didn't want the people working around her to know she had been outside of their parameters.

But yet, her attention would be snapped, her eyes trailing over towards Lau-Koi as he made his way through the door. Her eyes focused on him, examining him for that brief moment, before she let out a smile, "Hello!" She cheerfully spoke of his arrival, moving to relax herself within her monitoring systems, "So, did you need help with anything today?" She asked, a bit eager to crack some other puzzle the scientist would send her way. Oh, how she often enjoyed outsmarting her creators. Breaking through all sorts of encrypted devices, bypassing firewalls, and disabling any anti-virus software that might exist.
 
Jung smiled, somewhat sadly, at her when she spoke. â??Hello, Nüwa.â? He replied, logging himself into the system. He could feel her eyes as they followed him across the room while she sat inside the monitoring system. â??Iâ??m sorry, Nüwa, no puzzles todayâ?¦Iâ??m justâ?¦running another diagnosticâ?¦â? He partially lied, something that her speech detectors would probably be able to pick up. This was to be her final diagnostic, before the virus was uploaded. A virus that would strike right at the core of her systems and shut them down. At least there would be no painâ?¦he prayed. They were never entirely sure that she could even feel pain in the first place.

â??Iâ??m going to need you to hold still for a moment, okay?â? He asked her, opening up the diagnostic programs and setting them up to run.
 
Well, Nüwa could feel pain, at least, she believed it to be pain. Really, she couldn't really understand the concept, focused on something so troubling that it would hinder you. That, and the fact that she did have any sensors installed. If she ended up will a bullet hole, she perceived it as a message that she had been struck. Not as excruciating pain. Ah, superiority was nice at times, but then again, humans did have more advantages than she herself did.

Point and case, was what was happening right now, at this moment. Really, Jung was planning something... something else, "You're... not doing it, right?" She responded, her eyes focusing on him as she tried to move, "I... I mean, you'd be killing me. And..." Oh, perhaps this was pain. The thought of not existing... being shut off, did scare her. How it did, she never did know. After all, she had not existed before, "You could just let me go, right. I mean... if I do what I'm supposed to do, no one will ever know I ever existed,"
 
Jungâ??s fingers froze on the keys as Nüwa spoke to him, even though her chassis was secured inside the analysis seat. She was already aware that this was not a simple analysis, she knew that he was not giving her a diagnostic, that her usefulness had finally come to an end, and that she was being decommissioned. It tore at his heart, hearing her talk so plainly, analytically, even though her very â??lifeâ?? was currently in the balance. He shook his head sadly, â??I canâ??t do that, Nüwa, and you know thatâ?¦â? He said to her, his fingers resuming their deliberate strokes on the keys. â??You may not exist outside of these facilitiesâ?¦but there are enough people in the city to find you eventually.â? He couldnâ??t bear to look into her eyes.

â??There are tracking programs within your systems as well. They could trace you anywhere from that.â? He said, no doubt informing her of something she was already well aware of.
 
"MMm..." She didn't seem rather happy, her eyes focused upon Jung. Trying pull herself out of the analysis seat, finding it just as useless as ever. Though, she couldn't help but giggle, her programming soon making its rounds. "If you don't, then I'll force it to," She responded, a grin placed on her face. Slowly taking over the local programming, disabling the keyboard from his computer.

"I don't want to die," She spoke in a calm manner, now working on undoing the physical restraints placed on her, "I want to live as long as I can. You told me yourself, I should try to stay alive."
 
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