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Leo's Robot Guide [Background]

1514910645

Edited 1515468012
Bill G.
Pro
Sheet Author
This is a quick, hopefully useful reference for Doyce, Margie, or anyone else interacting with or narrating for Leo's robot friends. If any of this is confusing or merits expansion, let me know! I'll edit the text here to try and clarify. Otto : the big guy. Football and rock & roll jock. Pneuma : one of the two girls. Slightly tougher right now, smart, perceptive. Numina : the other girl. Slightly more cautious right now, empathic. Portrayal They are human unless something says otherwise . Humans can laugh, mourn, do differential equations, sing in the shower, show heroic spirit. Humans can't instantly scan the Internet for a virus, compute a billion missile trajectories, or placidly remain logical in the face of overwhelming grief. Where they aren't human, treat them like trans-human ghost uploads or full-conversion cyborgs . There's a human spirit or identity inside all that tech. They can access computers the same way you or I could, and no more . Both robots have conventional computers in their bodies, but they access them the same way you or I might use Google Glass or some other wearable - it's an overlay on their natural senses. They remember everything Leo remembered up until their creation, but with their own spin . Otto remembers being Leo's childhood friend. Pneuma remembers being the cautious girl next door. But either of them could write a fully accurate tell-all biography of Leo Snow if called on to do so. Importantly, they know as much about robotics as Leo does. They can rebuild or improve themselves if necessary. Otto and Pneuma both would call themselves about 17 years old. They celebrate different birthdays than Leo does. If you asked them "what were you doing 8 years ago", they could give you an answer that made sense for a kid of about 8-9, but they'd each be different answers. On that note, their natures aren't external to their minds . Pneuma doesn't have a "Love Leo" program banging away in her brain. She's in love with him because she's the sort of girl who would love that sort of guy. Their bodies are hyper-tech carbon shells, but they're as close to human-capable as Leo can get . Pneuma can safely gargle with Drano, but she still gets bad breath. Otto's circulatory system pumps oil and coolant, but he can still feel his "blood" pumping when the Seahawks make a touchdown. Assumptions Memory + deep structures = Personality . If you radically rewrote their memories with telepathy or something, they might be radically different people, but some part of their essential natures would remain. The brain is to the mind/soul as paint and canvas are to the Mona Lisa . If you damage or change the hardware, you damage or change the person. They have a key element most humans don't, though: the ability to backup and restore part or all of the self if that should happen.
1514911519
Doyce
Pro
Sheet Author
I don't want to make this a long thread, since we might lose stuff further down, and this is a valuable resource for me. So, check my understanding: with this mental structure, the thing Rossum did by dropping a video file into Pneuma's memory is more like... what?  I mean, is the physical construct that her memories and thoughts reside in the sort of tech that Rossum even COULD embed such crude tech into? I suppose we have to assume the answer to that is 'yes', since it happened, but I want to make sure I understand that better going forward. Is the 'backup' of Pneuma I so blithely tossed out really more of a mental imprint with the heart factory, and DO Otto and Pneuma ever 'routinely' back themselves up in such a fashion? I've made some assumptions with them that were off, I think, and I want to course correct.
1514912283
Bill G.
Pro
Sheet Author
Doyce T. said: So, check my understanding: with this mental structure, the thing Rossum did by dropping a video file into Pneuma's memory is more like... what?  I mean, is the physical construct that her memories and thoughts reside in the sort of tech that Rossum even COULD embed such crude tech into? I suppose we have to assume the answer to that is 'yes', since it happened, but I want to make sure I understand that better going forward. The way you described it, it sounded like a very invasive process. By analogy, then: You have a vinyl record that plays Vivaldi when put on the turntable. The needle and the grooves interact a certain way, and that naturally gives rise to beautiful music. Rossum took the record, carved some of the grooves into Dickbutt, and put the vinyl back on the turntable. Play that section of the record and you'll get noise. But if you know how to look at it as a record - like Leo does - you can recognize it. And you know that only people who know how to turn music into vinyl records - like Rossum does - must have sent the message. Is the 'backup' of Pneuma I so blithely tossed out really more of a mental imprint with the heart factory, and DO Otto and Pneuma ever 'routinely' back themselves up in such a fashion? Those backups would be the same ones Leo can and does make of himself - here's an exact image of a brain, frozen in this instant in time. "Unfreeze" time - by remastering that image back into a living or robotic brain - and you get a person. None of them particularly want to think about death or dying, but if they have ways to live on in some form should it happen, I think they'd take advantage of it. Having a backup of Leo is my device for coming back as a Transformed etc. type of character if he happens to die, so it's fitting for them too.
1514912726
Doyce
Pro
Sheet Author
Thanks! (And Rossum got even more horrible, so... yay, I guess.)
1514913392
Bill G.
Pro
Sheet Author
Doyce T. said: Thanks! (And Rossum got even more horrible, so... yay, I guess.) This is how I originally interpreted it, and why Leo was and is still shaking with rage at both Rossum and Rook. That's a topic for another thread, though.