Anyone interested in (joining me in?) a rant about “the utterly uncanny valley and terrifying physics of paranormal occurrences” or am I the only one that uses that one as an earmark of When Shit Is Actually Going down?
I went digging through my own blog for this, just to say: I just watched a piece of unfired clay jiggle around wildly and then drop through the concrete sidewalk and my dudes… WTF.
What makes this DOUBLE freaky is the thing I read about how the human brain will just strait up composite stuff and whole-cloth make up visuals to explain seeing (or not seeing) something.
Somehow that piece of greenware that should’ve fallen and shattered was not there anymore… so my Game Dev brain went: Someone turned on noclip and since it’s a physics object it went fucky before dropping through the world model.
I will NEVER actually know where that greenware went. It’s nowhere to be found. Not in the shop, not anywhere else, not in the dozens of bits it should’ve shattered into. It’s not in the grass. It’s not in my hands. It’s not where it was. My brain, however, supplies the happy answer: It’s fine. It just glitched out. Don’t worry about it.
Maybe that’s why paranormal occurrence vocabulary changes over time. Once, it was Fairies and Demons… now it’s video game glitches and signal degradation. Not because it ACTUALLY looks like that, but simply because that’s as close as we can get to something we have zero native ability to process or explain.
Full body shudder.
Full-throated roar of YOU GET IT, YES, IT HAS UPDATED WITH THE TIMES.
BUT THEN SO WTF DID I ACTUALLY SEE?
This is the Lovecraftian stuff – what could I have observed that was so incomprehensible that THAT was the thing my brain covers it with? Should I be grateful my bowl Bethesda’d instead of me actually catching a glimpse of what occurred?
Devil’s advocate: Let’s say I had a little absence seizure or something. Let’s say that stress made me WILDLY hallucinate. Okay. Cool. I’d be behind that 100% AND… not but… AND where the shimmering fuck is my bowl?
This day is fired.
I’m not saying that the Goodly Neighbors made off with a pot that is both an incomplete spell and in a state of transition of it’s own between Formless and Immortal….
……but it’ll show up on your doorstep in approximately three days with a new design addition.
Spinflask tended to hyperfocus on his work. Most chemists did. Having explosive blood tended to make one rather cautious when working with corrosive chemicals and fire.
However, most chemists probably did not make a sound like a robotic duck being stepped on if someone were to unexpectedly re-occupy their chair. But Spinflask did, and had, and it was adorable.
Looking a bit like his thought processes had shorted out, Spinflask blinked and automatically placed both servos against warm plating, staring up at the bot who’d distracted him in such a strange manner. Even if he’d noticed the approach, the last thing he would have expected was being picked up out of his chair and then placed back- in someone else’s lap.
After a moment’s staring, he shook his helm and blinked hard, seeming to reset himself just enough to speak. “Um- hello? Can- can I help you?”
Having lived the majority of her life around those who lived more for their work than they did for themselves, Shard was going to make sure Spinflask took care of himself. Even in such a short time period of being around him, she had picked up on some of his less than stellar eating habits.
And as such, she was going to take advantage of her position of familiarity to manhandle him in such a way that he wouldn’t be able to easily ignore her or make excuses to keep working.
Keeping a stern look on her face was far more difficult than necessary with the noises he was making. She completely is not going to save that audio clip for later, no not at all. Nor save a picture of his utterly baffled expression looking up at her, he was far too cute for his own good, the scamp’s already catching at her sparkstrings without even trying.
At the feel of small fingers gently placed against her chasis her engines give out a happy little purr, what can she say, it’s a weakness of hers. In return she smooths large hands down his sides to calm ruffled plating and sooth any worry.
A small huff of laughter escapes her, breaking her professional veneer. “Ya can help me by drinking this,” she waggles a small cube of fuel in his line of sight. “When was the last time ya ate or had a break? A proper break that is.” Arching her optic ridge and giving him a pointed look.
Gently she pushes her field against his with light concern/fondness flowing through it, running a single hand down his back, careful to keep things loose so he doesn’t feel trapped. The two sips he took were heartening, but was still so little fuel. Barely repressing a sigh, she looks him over as he studiously avoids her gaze, fidgeting with the still nearly full cube. “Recharge is resting, which you should be doing on a regular basis.” She fights to keep a reproachful tone out of her voice. “Still, it’s good to hear you’re doing that, sleep loss doesn’t do anyone any good.” Here her field flickers with thankfulness/gratitude to lend weight to her words, it’s always good to reinforce these behaviors.
He’s hiding things, it’s plain to see. Trauma most likely, a bot without some sort of emotional scaring these days is an extremely rare thing indeed. Her hands itch to fix and she stamps down on the urge, she’s got the feeling pushing with this one will result in him only closing himself off at best. And she doesn’t have the type of relationship with him or personal knowledge to begin demanding actions from him.
“A lot of bots don’t do well idle nowadays,” she allows, quietly, thoughtfully. Idly she lightly drums her fingers against his back. Then she shakes her head with a little snort of laughter. “Yeah, Duo are quite the, ah, handful. Certainly keep ya distracted though.”
Lightly grumbling, she shifts underneath him, easily lifting the both of them into a more comfortable position, contemplating how to approach the situation in a quick manner before he must be occupied again.
“Maybe correlate some fueling with lighter work? Keep ya busy, keep ya fed?” She slowly makes the offer. During all this she makes no effort to force eye contact either. She starts to say one thing, bites her glossa and says another. “While I’m around the area, I could always grab ya while I’m on break and get ya out into some fresh air? Clear the head a bit, yeah?”
Oh, so that’s not a break. Spinflask’s old supervisors counted it as one, but he’s more inclined to trust a medic as to what actually counts. Especially a medic who likes when he does healthy things- Spinflask’s own field lifts into hers, acknowledgement/greeting/friendiness, and he lifts his optics a bit at the positive emotions and friendly gestures. Still not meeting her optics, and it’s unlikely that he will, but he’s no longer actively looking away. Shard is being friendly, and he likes it.
Delicate servos tap-tap lightly on the edges of the cube and he takes another couple of sips, contemplating the suggestion. And waiting to be sure she’s done speaking, he is very determined not to interrupt her. He doesn’t interrupt people who are speaking, it makes them upset with him. He especially doesn’t want to upset Shard, she’s… nice, and she’s concerned, and he likes her.
“I… do like the idea, but I… especially don’t do well on my own when I’ve fueled recently. And I’m very easily distracted from fueling, I never have much of an appetite. Side effect of most emetics,” he shrugs, not quite catching what he’s just implied.
He’s too busy trying not to think about the things that creep into his mind when he has a full tank, the thoughts about how they never had full tanks, how I don’t deserve one. Because nausea is one of the first effects of dark energon contamination, the frame’s desperate attempts to get rid of the toxin. None of his test subjects could ever keep anything down. The guilt sinks in deep when his tank is full, so sometimes he… just doesn’t fill his tank.
But he does have an idea. He’d like to fuel, after all. “Could I, perhaps… come with you? I’d rather like some conversation, and I can potentially help you with something you need done. I have no medical training, but I learn quickly, I have nimble servos, and I am familiar with how to prevent contamination of equipment. I… do have some time, none of my current tasks are urgent,” Spinflask ventures, glancing up at Shard’s face- and flinches slightly at her expression.
“What you’re looking at is a salt circle, a traditional form of protection—from within or without—in magical practice. In this case it’s being used to arrest an autonomous vehicle—a self-driving car, which relies on machine vision and processing to guide it. By quickly deploying the expected form of road markings—in this case, a No Entry glyph—we can confuse the car’s vision system into believing it’s surrounded by no entry points, and entrap it.”
-James Bridle
using salt circle motor runes to trap driving AI is the most cyberpunk thing I’ve ever seen
I feel like this shares an important connection with the “make a cat sit in a specific place by making a square out of blue tape” Phenomenon, namely that self-driving cars are secretly cats and both are def magically imbued beings, susceptible to glyphs.
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