This post has the following content warnings:
Maybe the real unethical experimentation on nonconsenting subjects was the friends we made along the way
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 185
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"As if I know that! I'm a biochemist, not omniscient."

Permalink

"Not with that attitude!" she chirps and then wonders why the hell she just said that to the evil scientist. She does not want the evil scientist to be omniscient. "...anyway, you were saying your goals are making the world a better place...?"

Permalink

"Yes! You may have noticed that it's shit."

Permalink

"Yes, I have." Due to things like, for example, evil megacorporations too powerful to bow down to the law that treat people like objects. Not that she's going to say that.

Permalink

"I can't do much about the social issues. People will continue to be bastards forever, because the fundamental nature of thinking creatures existing is that they want different things from one another and they're bastards about it. But what I can do something about is... making sure that the problems aren't things like Surt has just set everything on fire. Or the harvest failed, and I'm going to starve to death. Or, for that matter, I'm going to die. Ever. From anything."

Permalink

Is he a mind reader or something.

"And to do that you kill people," she replies instead.

Permalink

"You did hear my little diatribe about red ink and the inefficiency of trying to change company policy, I saw the face you made about it. I kill people, and it's bad and unpleasant and counter to my goals, but without doing so I stand no chance of actually achieving my goals."

Permalink

"Yeah but it sounded a lot like the kind of thing a villain from a book would say and you didn't really give me and reason to think the ways those fail don't apply to you? Like even if you don't assume that a miracle from the gods will happen in the form of a protagonist who just happens to solve everything the well-intentioned villain was working on in a way the villain couldn't possibly have predicted or accounted for that's not the only reason those villains are wrong."

Permalink

"Hm. Say more? Your perspective is valuable, because I hardly ever speak to anyone intelligent who isn't also a storybook villain; Rekenber, you know. If you've worked out a fatal flaw in my approach I'll be surprised, but very grateful."

Permalink

 

 

 

"Seriously? I mean, okay, give me a minute, I didn't expect you to take me up on it, I'll need to think, but the first one is I guess that most people who think they did the maths right actually didn't and are ignoring things like, I dunno, asking for help from other people who value the same thing just as much and who might be able to pool resources in a way that catalyses into ending up costing less in the long run plus there's you know even if you're very smart and think you did the maths right you should suspect that there are things you didn't think of that other people will because everyone is biased—"

Permalink

She forcibly presses her lips together.

"Give me a bit to think."

Permalink

"I am very good at maths." But: lip-locking gesture.

Ari the homunculus returns with two others, bearing between them: legs!

The other two homunculi are not identical to their conspecific, but they do look fraternal. One has batlike wings and a pair of coral lips curving in a not-quite-uncanny smile. The third has two sets of arms, one set longer and equipped with butcher-knife claws, one closer to the chest with long, nimble fingers. (Also a long, swishing tail with a stinger on the end the size of a dagger.)

Permalink

!!!!

Her legs!!!!

"Okay break in thinking for legs." Assuming she has the ability to use magic again she will cast a little not-Spell on the legs and they will obligingly float towards her and then kneel so that she can get herself into them.

Permalink

The homunculi mutely offer their assistance, but not insistently.

Permalink

No no it's fine she can do it herself she's just gotta hyup and then she floats around the perimeter of the room twice before settling back near where she was. "Oh, I missed you," she sighs fondly.

Permalink

Ari the homunculus stretches out his arms in the universal gesture for upsies!

Permalink

...sure. She can do that.

(The result of probably-unethical experiments is oddly endearing. She wonders if it's on purpose.)

Permalink

"You indulge him terribly," Thoma notes. "He'll be insufferable."

Permalink

"I'm sure," she says, rolling her eyes.

Permalink

...then she puts him back down and hums.

"Okay so the stuff I said is, like, a good start? You're smart, fine, sure; you are not that smart. Just, full stop, there's millions of people out there, even if you're individually smarter than each of them you've got biases and blind spots and habits of thought and even when you think you've corrected for them you haven't because that's not what a blind spot is. If you say, sure, actually you've got a whole network of people who are all checking each other's work on this then I guess that's addressed but it wasn't my impression."

Permalink

"That is what Rekenber's for," Thoma points out. "To an extent. We're all villains, but we're not all the same villain."

Permalink

"Is Rekenber trying to save the world? You said they were trying to make money."

Permalink

"Ah - no, many of the people working there want to improve life as we know it, it's just that in aggregate that adds up to a black-iron money-machine greased with blood. I just meant I have them check my work, sometimes, generally a bit sideways so nobody suspects what I'm actually doing."

Permalink

"I don't mean check your work I mean check your goals and methods! I mean have someone who is also in the business of killing Surt and who can do maths!"

Permalink

 

"I don't know that you'd make a good secretary, but I can't say your pitch isn't convincing."

Total: 185
Posts Per Page: