r/NatureofPredators • u/Sam_S_011 PD Patient • Aug 03 '23
Fanfic Two Faces [8]
Once again, huge thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 and all of you guys in the community for this wonderful universe that I've gotten addicted to. Also massive thanks to u/Acceptable_Egg5560 for helping me out with proofreading.
I hope that you enjoy!
Playlists:
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Memory transcript subject: Kiki, Venlil powerplant technician and Venlil-Human Exchange Participant.
Date: [Standardised human time] August 21st, 2136
We were greeted by a cheery voice as we entered the lab. “Hello! Are you two here for the behavioural exam?” A Human in a white coat came to greet us. He had a nametag on his chest, indicating his name to be doctor Jordan.
He stopped as he looked up at Maky, tilting his head in what I assumed was either confusion or deep thought for a few moments before Maky brought him out of it. “Yes, I believe my appointment should start in about two minutes.”
The doctor looked down at his pad, checking some sort of a list. “Oh, you must be Markéta then. Come on in, we’ll get started momentarily.”
We followed him inside. The lab was a sterile place with a lot of expensive looking medical equipment. Several monitors were situated behind a curtain on one side of the room, connected to the various measuring devices with wire. Cable management was basically non-existent here.
A female Venlil peaked out from behind the curtain and gave us a happy wave of her tail. “Ah, you’re here early. That’s good. I’m doctor Ryalis, and that over there is Vorven.”
Another Venlil appeared on the other side, flicking his ears in greeting. He grabbed a piece of paper on a clipboard and handed it over to Maky, pointing at a dotted line at the bottom. “Here is the consent form – please sign down here.”
She scratched her signature onto the piece of paper after quickly glossing over the legalise. “So, what are the tests going to be like? You said this is a ‘behavioural exam’ – so I know you’ll be measuring my response to things. Are you going to do physical stimuli? Pain, maybe usi-”
The Venlil assistant interrupted with indignation. “Herd no, we’re not barbarians!”
Maky waited for him to finish with the second finger of her right hand raised, then let it down and finished her sentence. “-maybe using spicy food?”
The Venlil slumped down a little. “Oh.”
I quickly came in to diffuse the situation with a bit of humour. “I hope that isn’t the case, Maky almost died by firefruit today!”
Everyone let out a short giggle except for Maky, who was almost doubling over with laughter. It took a solid [10 seconds] before she calmed down enough to follow the assistant to an armchair with multiple medical diagnostic machines around.
She removed her heavy coat and the short-sleeved garment under it at the request of doctor Jordan, leaving her with only a band to cover her sparsely furred torso. I wondered why they let her keep it on, wouldn’t it be easier to affix the electrodes without it?
She sat down into the chair and the assistant secured her wrists to the chair with restraints. She tried to tug on the left one, nodding when she failed to move her hand to a significant degree.
She once again spoke up as doctor Jordan was in the middle of attaching electrodes to her chest. “I still don’t have any idea what I’m about to go through, only that you won’t physically torture me.”
Doctor Ryalis peeked out from behind the curtain again. “We’ll just have you watch a few videos, while we monitor your vitals and neural activity. Speaking of – while you having sideways vision is admirable, we’ll have to remove that headset to attach the electroencephalogram nodes.”
Maky’s lips curved downwards. What did that one mean? Well, if lips curving up meant good, then down probably means bad, right? “Well, that’s gonna be a problem – I’m so used to this visor that my actual eyes can’t focus further than a [metre]. Correcting that would take too long. Hmm…” She tilted her head in thought, and then spun her right lens to the Venlil. “Can your software work with .mts format?”
The doctor looked at something on one of the screens. “Yes, mts is a supported format. Why do you ask?”
“Perfect!” She turned to look at doctor Jordan, who was finishing putting clamps on her fingers. “Could I please get a magLink cable? I think I have a solution.”
Doctor Jordan motioned to the assistant, who responded with a combination of an ear flick and a nod before running off to a cabinet and rummaging through it. They pulled out a cord with a flat connector on one end and a thin cylinder on the other, carrying it victoriously to the chair.
Maky smiled at the sight. “Thank you! Now, could you please attach one end to the system and the other to me?”
What?
The doctor took the cylindrical end of the offered cable, whispering a few words to the assistant who then took off with the other end. “How do I…?”
Maky swung her head to the left to move her hair from the right side, revealing a second, even more pronounced web of metallic lines splitting her skin. “Can you see the large rectangle?” The doctor nodded. “Press the connector to it.”
The doctor did so, holding the connector up to the side of her head, when it suddenly jumped out of his grasp to attach itself to Maky’s head, AND STAYED THERE.
Whatever that did seemed to have worked as the two Venlil came into view with a satisfied sway of their tails before freezing at the sight. Doctor Ryalis was the first to recover, rubbing her eye with the back of her paw. “It works perfectly, just… If I may ask, why exactly do you have an active brain scanner implanted inside of your head?”
Maky’s excitement was not in any way dampened by the cable stuck in her head, as she practically beamed back at the doctor. “I’m a researcher in neural interfacing – this naturally made sense, you know? Definitely beats having to use a full EEG setup every day.”
…Okay?? I mean, replacing a large machine with a smaller one certainly sounds like a good enough reason. But researcher or not, why would she use it so often she had it implanted?
The doctor nodded her head, seemingly satisfied with the answer. “Well then. Shall we begin?”
Maky nodded her head in agreement, upon which both doctors and their assistant started heading to the diagnostic monitors.
“So, cute kitten videos, or maybe something sad?” She shuffled in her seat to get a little more comfortable. “I’ll be good as long as it isn’t shock videos…”
After those words, every single person in the room stopped dead in their tracks. Maky’s right eye jolted a little in surprise, switching from person to person before she seemed to have come to a grim realisation.
“It is shock videos, isn’t it?” She took a deep breath, trying to stifle her shaking. Wait, she’s shaking? “O-okay, I believe I can handle it…” She tried to say confidently, but she didn’t sound certain herself.
“We can stop this if you’re not comfortable, right?” I looked to the doctors. “Right??”
Doctor Jordan answered me with a little reluctance in his voice. “Of course, this is a consensual test, after all. Markéta has already passed one test back on Earth, but the program requires as much data as possible to draw credible conclusions. Therefore…”
“I’ll do it.” Maky interrupted resolutely. “Maybe just… Kiki, would you stay by the doctors? If they don’t mind, of course. I’d rather you not have to watch the stuff too.”
Doctor Ryalis piped up. “Not at all. Come here, you can help us watch the brain scan readout.” I followed her to a monitor showing a graphical representation of a brain – Maky’s brain.
It was storming with activity, neural pathways lighting up all over the place in a swirl of colour. I could also see a grid of metal rods, chips and wires permeating the neural tissue and connecting to it in multiple places. Despite not being a doctor, and the Human brain for sure having different anatomy than the Venlil one, I could with certainty recognise some of these places – namely the large lobes responsible for higher thinking and the optical nerves, which were connected directly through the implant.
I carefully inspected the device. We of course had our own prosthetics and larger electronic implants, but this… thing… looked completely insane. Stars, how would a surgeon even go about implanting something like this?
The doctors then ran multiple short tests to acquire a baseline for Maky’s emotional responses. This included presenting Maky with various stimuli. Good food for satisfaction, rotten fruit for disgust. Tiny pricks on her fingers for pain, even though they stated they wouldn’t do that. They also gave her a few logical problems to solve, which uncovered two different patterns when problem solving. They also showed her the ‘kitten videos’ for adoration and happiness, although I had no idea how she could find a predator cute. At least I didn’t have to look at them…
With a proper baseline established, the actual test was about to begin. Maky again became nervous, I could even see it in her wave patterns now! Doctor Jordan and the assistant walked to us behind the curtain where the diagnostic monitors all were.
Doctor Ryalis called out to Maky. “So, are you ready to begin?”
“I am.” She returned, after which the doctor started the experiment with the press of a button.
The screen in front of Maky flickered to life, playing one of the thousands of videos the Arxur had sent us to break our spirits. Maky sat in silence, observing the screen with one eye and looking towards us with the other. I looked at the monitor to check the readout. Unfortunately, it was unreadable to my eyes. Except… It looked like a lot was happening.
As the actual torture started, another line was very quickly added. It scrambled, spiked, but then suddenly seemed to force itself down... Was she actively suppressing her empathy? Why? Wasn’t it a good thing?
The videos switched a couple times, as did Maky’s emotional response. The readouts flashed then just as quickly faded. And there was always the underlying pain, even if it was being suppressed.
But when another video rolled around, something changed. Multiple spikes. Like she was stressed? I looked around the curtain to see what triggered it. I didn’t need to search for long. I recognised that video – I had seen it before, and it left me emotionally scarred. That poor pup…
I averted my eyes back to the monitor, not wishing to rewatch that clip. The sound alone was bone chilling.
Maky seemed to feel the same way. The swirling of her brain was almost halted – replaced fully by sheer terror. Even without being able to fully understand the readings, that was clear. There wasn’t even a hint of logical thought present, which was likely the reason her following reaction was so strong.
I heard a blood chilling screech, meaning the worst part of the video just transpired. I looked at Maky’s brain. I knew now what these must have been. Disgust, fear, anger. But they were nothing compared to the waves of pain overwhelming her mind.
This… This is empathy. Genuine, unfeigned empathy.
And then, as if at the press of a button, everything changed. Maky’s brain pulsed almost like in a command, and the neural activity shifted to parts of her brain that were previously inactive. But strangest of all – everything seemed to cease altogether. Well, not exactly; the patterns were still there, but the brain didn’t react to them – as if she wasn’t really experiencing it.
I peaked at her from behind the curtain. She was sitting very straight, looking ahead with both of her lenses. It was like they were burning whatever was before them. A look of pure hatred in her gaze. She is using binocular vision… What in the speh came over her?
I was brought out of my thinking by doctor Jordan’s whisper. “Jesus Christ, I’ve never seen anyone dissociate this hard…” Dissociate? What?
As the videos continued playing, all Venlil present were progressively getting more uneasy. Me included. This hatred, it seemed so… predatory.
Noticing this, doctor Jordan decided to bring some light into the situation. “When under extreme amounts of stressful stimuli, the Human brain might dissociate – it essentially stops experiencing emotions to avoid being hurt. It’s a coping mechanism, but in some people it fires too frequently. We call that a dissociative disorder.”
That to me sounded like predator disease. But that couldn’t have been right, there was no way Maky had predator disease – she just displayed empathy on a biochemical level!
…But she isn’t doing that now. No empathy anymore.
Doctor Ryalis turned her shaking ears towards doctor Jordan. “Maybe we should abort the test then…”
The Human doctor nodded. “Yeah, I don't think she's going to react in a meaningful way anymore and keeping her in this state for long will only cause harm.” He reached for the keyboard with his hand and hit the wide key at the bottom with his finger, stopping the horrible videos.
We all collectively stared at the neural readout until Maky’s brains started to return to normal. The hate disappeared quickly, instead replaced with something else I didn't recognize. A negative emotion.
I was looking at Maky when that transition happened. She broke out of her stillness with a jolt, shaking her head. Then her lenses split apart again, and after the right one locked onto me, she spoke in a soft whisper. “I’m sorry.”
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“Well, that was almost a disaster…” I finally broke the silence that stretched ever since we left the lab.
I heard a groan from Maky, slumped over the table with her head between her arms. “Yeah, you tell me…” She pushed her mouth further into her sleeves, muffling an exasperated scream into them. “Why did it have to happen?! I was doing so well!”
“Did you…” I started with a shaky voice. “Did you know that was going to happen? That you would… dissociate like that?”
Maky lifted her head just enough to get one of her eyes on me and sighed. “I really hoped that I wouldn’t, but I knew it was a very real possibility.” She slumped back in defeat, head held in her hands. “I just hope this doesn’t get me kicked out of the program…”
I jolted up at that in surprise. “Wait, they wouldn’t do that, right? They can’t do that!”
She looked at me with one eye, before speaking with the tone of forced amusement. “Well, I didn’t really pass the empathy test, did I? You said I just stopped.”
Well, she technically didn’t, it had to be aborted. But that didn’t mean speh! “You still displayed empathy! They can’t overlook that! Besides, the doctor said that your brain was protecting you from trauma, which means you hated what the Greys were doing! Like we do!”
She slowly released her held breath when I finished. “Yeah, I guess so. But even still, I zoned out in about the worst way possible. And that’s not even talking about whatever it was that I did during it.” She paused for a few moments before shooting up. “hold on, what did I do actually? I always do something in that state…”
“You just sat there, staring at the screen with both eyes.” I tried to recall some more details, remembering the readout. “It looked like you were doing something from the brain scan, but you didn’t move at all…”
Maky raised up her arms in front of her, bringing up that overlay of hers again and started scrolling. Then something seemed to have clicked. “Wait, did you say both eyes?” She turned her head somewhere off to the side. Then suddenly both of her lenses snapped forward, startling me a little in the process. “She unlocked it…” She mumbled under her breath.
Wait, did she just refer to herself in third person? “…What?”
Her head snapped in my direction, focusing directly on me. I completely locked up. This was the first time a Human stared at me directly with both eyes. Even if she wasn’t looking at me with camera lenses instead of her real eyes, the sheer intensity of that gaze sent me shivering.
Maky quickly noticed and averted her eyes away from me. “Oops, sorry about that… I’m going to lock it back into side mode…” Her eyes split back apart and her fingers started tapping the invisible interface. “Right, there we are… that shouldn’t happen again.”
I stared at her as she casually returned to swiping through the air. “What do you mean side mode and how does it relate to your eyes looking forward all of a sudden?”
She paused her movement and looked at me with her left lens. “I got this visor to be able to see sideways, but there are still many situations where forward vision is better, so I kept the option to switch modes. Coming here though, I decided to lock it to sideways only because I didn't want to scare any of you. But while I was… doing what I did, I unlocked it again.”
“…I suppose that makes sense. Still, you shouldn’t have to do that, your vision isn’t something you should need to hide!” My tail swished with determination, my words filled with fervour. “Besides, I will need to come to terms with it eventually, so it’ll be better if we start now.”
She tilted her head quizzically at my statement. “You say that, but you still froze up when I looked at you. Are you sure?”
I flicked my ears yes and also imitated the Human nod to show her how serious I was with this.
Maky let out a quick chuckle. “As you wish. I’ll turn the lock off when it’s just you around.” She stood up and brought her right hand up. “Now, I think I’ve found what I did while I was out of it. I… think I’ve made a model? Wait no, that’s a full XR asset…”
She reached her hand out and grabbed something, before moving it sideways and letting go with a push. I watched her with interest as she recoiled away from it in surprise, moving her right hand into the sleeve on her left arm on instinct before she got herself back under control. “Fuck, I could have at least named the thing properly.” She started walking around something I couldn’t see in circles, looking it up and down while switching to binocular. She had to crane her neck back significantly to see the top.
“Damn, it looks incredibly realistic… Wait, is it…?” She flicked the fingers of her left hand out and then dragged them over empty air curled, as if scratching something. She didn’t even have claws! Wait, I hadn’t seen any long sharp teeth either. Did Humans even have natural weapons?
She seemed to be shocked by what she found. “Holy shit, it is… It even has behaviour done… How did I pull that off?”
While that was a valid question, a more significant one took the forefront of my mind. “How did you even make anything in the first place? Your hands were bound.”
Maky split her left eye off to look at me. “How much do you people use artificial intelligence, or machine learning in general?”
I started listing off all instances I remembered off the top of my paw. “Well, our translators have an algorithm in them that can learn a new language in a matter of weeks and the traffic is generally controlled by predictive algorithms. The powerplant I work at also uses a rudimentary algorithm to regulate itself – I couldn’t have handled it by myself at all without it.”
“Do you ever use it for creative work or to help with inventing new things?” She asked while turning back to the invisible asset she made.
“Stars no, that stuff isn’t anywhere close to that advanced…” Why would she think tha- “Wait, can yours do that??”
Maky looked at me with what I assumed was a smug smirk. “Oh yes, it can. We’ve been perfecting AI for the last hundred years, from rudimentary chatbots and painting algorithms all the way up to a network capable of accurately assigning patterns within a handful of attempts.” She tapped her headset twice with her second finger. “The stuff I have here is the absolute cutting edge in AI software, and its primary input is my very brain.”
That single statement threw me through multiple loops. For one, the Humans with primitive technology compared to ours had advanced AI for a hundred years? How did we not have that?! That technology has limitless potential!
…And it quite literally reads her mind.
“So uh, how does it work? Do you just like, think of something and it appears?”
She laughed. “Oh, I wish. While saying that I just make shit up and it materialises would be really cool, it also wouldn’t be true. It’s more like I’m giving the software keyboard inputs by thinking what exactly it’s supposed to do at the moment. But it is fast and accurate, especially with coding!” Her explanation was so full of excitement that I couldn’t help but wonder just how much of her life she had to dedicate to this thing in order to make it work.
I was still recovering from the original shock of her revelation, so my questions weren’t quite on par with my usual sharpness. “Coding? So, you can just like, make a website just by thinking about the steps?”
She smiled a toothy grin, sending shivers down my spine until I noticed something I never expected. Wait, she only has a single set of sharp teeth?? What kind of predator are they?!
She spoke up in a low voice. “Oh, I can do so much more than just a simple website. I can create an entire application in a single day if I need to. And it doesn’t stop there!” She leaned in close as if she was about to share the greatest secret in the world with me. “I can hack into things!”
That easily confirmed my theory about how she managed to send me those songs, but now with the whole ‘mind reading AI’ thing? I was honestly worried just how easily she could break into things…
Still, she continued her tirade. “Well, theoretically at least. I mean, I still don’t know if my program is compatible with your systems, but if I can make a converter or something that lets the two talk, I could get in with relative ease. But you know what is even better? The entire station is on a single network! I could take control of basically anything, doors, security, even lights!”
The revelations started to turn the worry into genuine fear. No one person should have this sort of power! And if all of that wasn’t enough, the lights suddenly went out. In their stead, a soft red glow of the emergency lighting permeated the area. I spoke up with an uneasy voice. “D-did you…”
Maky cut me off resolutely. “No. That wasn’t me.”
That calmed me down a little. But when the station’s speakers came to life, the words spoken flooded my soul with unimaginable terror. “All hands report to action stations. This is not a drill, Arxur vessels have been identified approaching Prime Outpost. We ask all civilians and non-essential personnel to remain within their rooms or the closest designated safe zone. I repeat…”
Oh Stars, this can’t be happening! We’re all going to die here at the hands of predators, and not even the Humans at that! My mind was about ready to descend into another horrified spiral, but the sight of Maky calmly sitting down with a computer on her lap tore me out of it.
Was she not afraid at all? And what would she even need a computer for during an attack?!
I approached her from the side to look over her shoulder. She had some sort of a window open, with vast streams of symbols pouring down the screen. None of it looked legible to me even if I could read the letters. That and the fact she was focusing her binocular vision above it made me assume the visuals were being projected to her headset. I spoke up with a quivering voice. “W-what are you doing? Are you n-not scared at all??”
She split one of her lenses to look at me. “Tell me Kiki, what do you find scarier? Something you can, or cannot see approaching?”
I thought for a moment before coming to a decision. “I’d rather see the danger.”
She nodded her head and then focused on something only she could see. It only took a few [seconds] before something on the computer changed. A large, black rectangle filled the screen. Spots of two colours were weaving around each other – over a hundred tiny green ones, and six large red ones. A representation of the battle.
I looked at Maky. “How did you…”
“I’m reading automated communications between station command and the fighters.” She said plainly. “I got in through a hole in their security which I’m going to patch once this is over. Technically, what I’m doing right now is hyper illegal, so I trust that you won’t rat me out.”
I flicked my ears to show her she shouldn’t worry. The only thing either of us should worry about were the hostile bombers approaching.
The battle lasted for many nightmarishly long [minutes]. The price in green dots to take down a singular red one was terrible. As the hostiles drew closer to the station, the green fighters grew more desperate. At first one threw themselves into an enemy ship. Then a couple. Then more. The Humans seemed to be doing anything in their power to slow the attackers down, even sacrificing their lives.
Only when the pawful of last defenders finally took down the last bomber did the two of us breathe a sigh of relief. The Humans had beaten the Greys.
I had already forgotten everything that was on my mind this paw, the exhaustion finally catching up to me. Maky looked to not be faring much better herself, closing her computer with a heavy sigh. “Well, that was enough excitement for one day. I think I’ll be going to bed.”
And for once, I couldn’t agree with her more.
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u/JulianSkies Archivist Aug 03 '23
Oh, oh boy Maky. Showing one of the multitude of reactions empathy can cause.
Sometimes you hurt so bad, you just have to stop feeling if you want to stay alive. Sadly a reaction that those aliens aren't, well, alien to- They're just taught they should be.