JR005X | text | d019;

[1797]

[Guess who has been trapped alone in a building with four sticks of raw sugarcane and a map he wants to copy. All he has available is a tiny ass screen, so we must suffer the limited ASCII together. Fake screen boundary included bc otherwise it's even less decipherable.]

┌──────────────┐
│-`;-./`o\/\_,_│
│ (        -<- │
│ )   *        │
│(  x_x<-   ^n │
└──────────────┘

[There's a handy key of what some of this nonsense means if you keep scrolling:]

o start?
* jail (again)
-<- plane
x_x<- dead

Comments

[salamanca]

You need to talk, man?

[ There are some things that make even Lalo Salamanca go, "That's dark." and matter-of-factly talking about being a manufactured product is one of them. ]

[obeir]

[ The offer is so surprising that he isn't sure what to do with it at first. ]

That's kind of you.

It's just a fact of my existence. And I've learnt that it doesn't have to define my life.

[salamanca]

[ Nobody has ever said that to Lalo before, ever. First time for everything! ]

Oh, please. Don't make me blush. It's nothing.

A fact? Why you say that? What makes you a "product" and not me? Maybe you were just born different.

[ Sometimes, lack of human empathy comes in handy! The idea that a robot or an AI or a cyborg or... whatever it is that K is... should be considered something apart from a human isn't something Lalo can comprehend. Or, at the very least, if they're something apart, he does not understand the idea they would be something lesser.

If it walks and talks and thinks, it's all the same to him. That is, still less important than Lalo himself, but no more or less than any walking, talking, thinking thing. ]

[obeir]

It's not nothing. Not to me.

[ And he's going to remember this moment of kindness, particularly when certain future events come to pass — because there's really nothing for Ben to "gain" from this interaction, K probably won't retroactively assume he was being insincere. ]

I call it a fact because that's the thing, I wasn't born. I have no lineage, no culture of my own. I'm not legally recognised as a person where I'm from and have no rights there. I'm the legal property of my human owner, I was manufactured to her specifications. A product in a literal sense.

But like I said, I no longer let that define my life or who I am. And if you did happen to feel that you're also a product in any sense of the word... You don't have to be that here. You can choose who you want to be in this place, too.

[ Because who could stop either of them? They're no longer in their respective homeworlds. Of course, K does still have his programming to contend with at times, but he's already well surpassed his original limitations. ]

[salamanca]

[ Ah...

Well, this is embarrassing. Lalo is 100% sure this "choose who you want to be" is just a nice way of calling him gay, which makes him want to cringe inside. Is he really that obvious here? ]

Perdon, I'm not sure what you mean! No serial numbers anywhere, I'm afraid. Just checked. Maybe in my next life, I'll get to be an android like you! That'd be something, wouldn't it? But for now, I'm only human.

[ He will aggressively pretend not to get any references to his sexuality. And if K is referencing anything else, he will actually not get it. ]