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 Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:17 pm
Stories
Eponine makes up stories at night. She cannot sleep, but she can dream- not truly dreaming, just imagining.
One day she asks Estrelas about making up stories about yourself. Stories in which the world pushes you on, adventures in which the world wants to you succeed. Estrelas passes her a set of knitting needles and launches into a discussion about these stories. (Estrelas shifts conversation to smoothly- from drapery designs to daydreams without the slightest hesitation.) Eponine loves the life crackling from one end of Estrelas to the other. It fills both of them up, like a supernova fountain of the pure blessed idea of life. Estrelas' hands move independently from the rest of her body. Sparks bounce off with every movement of those hands- Eponine loves those hands too.
So Estrelas explains that everyone makes up stories- because the world is a bitter almond, because the people are bitter almonds, because life is a bitter almond. In stories life can be smoothed out, contemplated, stretched into shape, and reflected. Stories reflect life back at you, Estrelas tells Eponine. She herself uses stories as a mirror to look behind and ahead of her when gazing directly at the absurdity of life is too painful. Eponine asks if stories with yourself so important are selfish. Estrelas doesn’t know what Eponine is asking. Why selfish? How? In what way?
Eponine suddenly catches a fireball of energy and begins flooding out her stories, blotting out the details too personal and too fragile to say aloud. She gives an abstraction of the stories- the idea, not the concrete points. She makes stories where life is a top-rated musical, where she is the main heroine, the lead female singer, not just a supporting role. All the other parts revolve around her, all adding to her. She makes up stories where she is like other people- perfectly human, or she makes up stories where everyone is a robot like her. She makes up stories where she can sit in the sun without the darkest of fears prowling about her prone body.
Estrelas tells Eponine fantastic stories. Estrelas imagines life as a great adventure, where she is the main heroine, the lead woman, not just another farmgirl from just another farm. She gives all the specific details- how many hands high her mule would be, how she would make a traveling pouch for Angel, how exactly she would speak against evil and injustice. She makes up stories where she blazes the sun and whip over the land in the fireball of her own momentum. She makes up stories where she smites down all the evil of the world.
Then Estrelas laughs. The world does revolve around her to at least one person. Life is a great adventure, and in her own life she is the starring role. How are the stories not true? Do they not all sprout from the seed of reality? All people are made of reality, after all.
Eponine feels like a person before remembering she is not.
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Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 2:51 pm
Fill Me Up
By The Velveteen Violinist
One Person RP
Eponine quietly tiptoed on little cat feet down the deserted hallways, and right as she spied the door outside, she swung her head from side to side, checking for anyone watching, and then with a loud thump, shot out the door with an acceleration nothing natural could have achieved.
Feet pounding the ground, she turned on a dime and scuttled around the next wall, ducking under an open window and crawling on her belly all the way around a corner. Just as suddenly as she had bolted, she stopped, her eyes flickering around nervously.
Eponine extended her mechanical senses, sense sharper than a human’s, sharper than an animal’s, clean as a cold machine. She reached out, straining at the farthest lengths, and heard the soft rustle of feathers in the trees, the brush of flower petals, the hum of insect wings, the sound of a pebble sliding, saw every last detail for yards away. No one was there to interrupt the lazy afternoon.
Her eyes still darting around worriedly, she seized an old garden hose coiled on the ground and swept her hair aside. She rubbed the back of her neck until her fingers found the familiar straight ridge and screws embedded in the “skin” there. Hurriedly, she picked the screws off and pried the metal door on the back of her neck open.
It was a window to her insides. Pulsating, riveting, snapping, spinning, opening, closing, moving things glinted in the sunlight. Everything was a smooth, silent, calculated. There was a tiny, tinny hiss in the air, but that was all that served to show evidence of her metal innards.
Eponine felt around, groping and muttering in her insides until she felt the knob to her water tank. It was an unwieldy process, as she was not designed to complete the task herself. She quickly unscrewed the top and let it hang on its holder, then stuck the muzzle of the hose into the opening and turned the water on.
She sat down for a few minutes, feeling the water slosh into the empty tank. She felt strangely exposed, all alone and shrouded in sun-spangled greenery.
When she was filled up, Eponine turned off the water, carefully coiled the hose back, and methodically screwed the lid and screws back on. Then she stood perfectly still for a moment, then with a muffled thump, bolted like a flash back into the building.
The water was necessary to keep herself running. The tank was separated into two parts. The larger Tank A was used to operate her finer hydraulics, the little mechanisms such as blinking and twitching and moving around her facial muscles, the little things that made her seem so human. Tank B was smaller and was used for more special effects- her tears, her sweat, anything that made her seem more lifelike.
Back in the theater, at the end of the day, one of the human workers would always stop by and refill her tank for her. All she had to do was sit and wait for the tank to fill up. She had tried once to speak, or to talk, or anything, but many of the workers were unaware or her “special traits” or emotions- longing, loneliness, sadness, emptiness. They had assumed that she was just still switched on.
Sometimes she wished that now, at LOTUS, there was someone to fill up her tank for her.
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Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:01 pm
Gala Robot
By The Velveteen Violinist
One Person RP Over there, near the ice sculptures!
Where? I can’t see!
There! Do you see? In that darling black dress!
Omigawd, you’re serious?
Yeah! Come on! Let’s get closer to see!
Wow, it looks so real!
Yeah! You can’t even see the joints or anything!
Don’t be silly! It has a poly… Polytera… Poly… It has a plastic skin thing over it! And look, it moves so smoothly! I would never have guessed it’s a machine!
Me neither, wow, wow! Is the hair real?
No, it’s made of the plastic stuff too!
Wow!
Yeah, wow!
You know, I’ve only seen it on stage. Think of how complicated the programming is, that it can actually interact with people in real life! This stuff’s a lot more than just programming to memorize lines and actions!
I bet! But gosh, I love that dress!
It’s so cute! Makes it look like a little doll. So sweet!
Basically is a little doll! Aww, I want one. Do you think that they make little ones that you can put in like, your purse or something?
I dunno. I heard that this model cost… Cost… Cost a lot.
I bet. It’s just like a person!
Awww, look, it’s blushing! How sweet!
Let’s go a bit closer! I wanna see!
Look at the eyes!
Whoa! I’ve never been this close to a theater robot before! Good thing your uncle got special invitations to this gala!
Yeah! But wow, they’re so… So detailed! She’s even got little crinkles on her eyelids!
Wow, but I really love those eyes! They look so real!
Yeah, the robots all have like special water tanks for like tears and sweat and stuff. They’re really detailed.
Can it pee?
Hey- I don’t think so, but who knows? These things are so… So… Cool!
Really, look, it’s acting all shy and sweet! Isn’t it so cute?
Yeah! Probably part of the programming. Being cute and all.
Well, it is really cute. Are there any other robots around here?
Yeah, but they’re on display and you’re not allowed to touch them.
Omigosh, it’s Evita! And the Tin Man! And Greaseball!
None of them are the same model as the Eponine though. She was the test model, I think.
Are they going to make more?
Yeah! They made massive orders already!
Hey, what’s wrong over there?
Oh look, it’s crying!
Awww, isn’t that cute?
Errr, I don’t think it’s supposed to be bawling like that for no reason at all.
Probably a program bug. They probably haven’t ironed out all the kinks in the programming yet. Meanwhile, what are they going to do about it?
Oh look, the theater manager’s putting it away.
Yeah. Oh darn. I wanted to try talk to it.
It’s a real good model though. It looks so sad and unhappy!
Hahaha! It’s a theater robot, afterall. It’s supposed to be.
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Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 10:33 pm
Real
By The Velveteen Violinist
One Person RP
Her eyes look so real. Somehow, they are even more realistic than real eyes.
Eponine stares into the mirror and pulls down one eyelid. Little metal circuits crawl around the moist layers like so many ants. She sighs and let go.
Any person would think that a robot’s eyes would be blank and emotionless. Not so for her. The engineers had designed her specifically to not be that way. They gave her a vivid shine and sparkle, a certain, sheer depth of emotion that no normal human could duplicate. So realistic. So expressive. Moreso than the real eyes they were supposed to imitate.
The universe loves irony.
Her eyes are fake. They take in light and give her sight like a human’s eye, but they are made from some sort of resin and plastic. Her tear ducts are made from a type of stainless alloy. And she cries like a real person should- but somehow her tears seem more real than a real human’s tears. Every gesture is just part of her programming- a bare imitation of the human world. Yet she feels the gestures as part of herself- every nod, every wave.
She is an imitation human. Isn't it funny when the imitation is more real than the actual thing?
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Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:30 pm
Eponine's Power Source
By The Velveteen Violinist
One Person RP
Her power source was a compound from the depths of space. It was a substance found in the hearts of some nebulas or wherever massive amounts of a certain random debris congregated. It had been snatched at great cost by a deep-space machine and sold at great price to engineering companies, who had made something out of it. Part of it was sold for a large amount of money to the company designing an emotional robot for a theater company.
So out of the depths of space where a million millennia meant nothing, where dust floated forever to the end of time, a little deep-space droid caught the compound and flew back to earth, where twelve Barbies were sold every half-second.
It was one of the most powerful energy sources known to mankind. But it gave off no light and no heat. She placed a hand over the area where it was nestled amongst her robotic innards. She thought that she would feel something- a heartbeat, a warm pulse, something. That was not the case. It felt like any other part of her body. Eponine thought that it would have felt special.
So it was from outer space. Did that make her an alien? Did that give her a right to herself, if she could possible be classified as a being beyond human comprehension? Perhaps she was so exotic that they had to grant her being status anyways.
That was not the case.
She didn’t run on batteries, or electricity, or coal or uranium or hamsters. She ran on stardust and dreams, stolen from the far reaches of infinity and turned to the tides of time.
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