Bashful in Binary [Pregame Morning]

[CLL-MT9]

Anyone looking out the window would have seen him coming a while away. While the edge of the city had creeped outwards through the capital’s good years, Clementine had a way of poking up over low structures and parting crowds that made him easy to spot.

His actual entrance was about as understated as two and a half meters of metal could be. Rather than bursting through and sending the saloon doors swinging near off their hinges, he eased them open with his cargo manipulators extended, following behind in a hunched creep, careful to spare the wooden frame. An antennae didn’t quite escape it, bending backwards until it flipped forward with a sproing.

Once inside, Clementine extended to closer to his full height, grateful for generous ceilings and few dangling lighting fixtures. His whole upper torso fixed together in a single piece, he turned to scan the room with his domed photoreceptor by turning at the hips. With clank and a faint hum, a panel opened in the underside of his giant, curved arm, and a hand-sized grasper arm extended to nervously adjust a flimplast shopping bag hanging from a clamp on his side.

No other sapients were immediately visible, and the giant droid shuffled a step back, hesitating. He hadn’t seen a CLOSED sign... but he hadn’t seen an OPEN one either. The one other time he had been here, tracking down some misdelivered beverages for the Codpiece, he had come to the back to sort it out. Intercepting strangers wandering in on off hours was usually his job, at the Codpiece.

Unthinkingly, he turned his interior indecision in to a deep trill in binary, like a baritone astromech. Startling himself with the sound, he stood squarely, seemingly compose himself, and activated his aftermarket basic vocoder. Wary of being too loud, he overshot in the other direction, and his call came out in a slow, staticy stage-whisper. “Hel-lo? Is anyone there?”

[Cal Arcton]

After a few moments, a tattooed young human man came out from the kitchen area. He glanced up at the big droid, his eyes widening.

"Droid, huh? We don't serve your kind here." He rubbed his bald head. "I mean, usually. But I guess we can try. Let me, uh, let me see what I can find in the back for you." Still rubbing his head awkwardly, he went back into the kitchen.

For a few moments there was silence. Then, with an audible popping sound, one of the lights near Clem began to flicker. The flickering grew more rapid, a low electronic hum becoming audible. Suddenly, a figure appeared.



"Well, hello there, sugar." It was difficult to tell from where the voice originated. It had an echoing, almost ethereal quality to it. The translucent red twi'lek swayed her hips; the image stuttered, the motion becoming erratic. "Don't you just look good enough to eat." The lips stopped moving, but soft laughter could be heard, echoing from somewhere.

[CLL-MT9]

Clementine often took a long time to think of a reply, making his reaction to most things a blank stare, at least at first (depending on the angle, the stare was more reflective than blank, the big black half-dome being somewhat mirrored). This was often to his advantage, as people kept talking to fill the void, giving more information than they might to someone who could handle a quick back-and-forth. Just now, it had saved the young man a heap of trouble, as Clementine hadn't had time to figure out that he had said he didn't serve droids, get mad about it, and do something about it.

The stare at Demona was maybe longer than normal. It was hard to tell. Maybe part of it was that CLL-M2's, designed mostly to operate in well-lit military installations and shipside, didn't see any better than a human, and not in the same way. Who knew what his subjective experience of the weird, flickering, broken hologram?

Maybe he was just stuck on what it meant for a droid to be "good enough to eat." He normally didn't give much thought to being on either end of that particular biological function.

Another trill, shorter, rose quickly from a deep basso profundo up to almost baritenor before he transitioned in to the equivalent expression in basic -"uuuh hi Demona. I am cee ell ell em two nine. I do not know if you remember me from thirt-teen local days a-go."

[Cal Arcton]

The projection's hips came to a stop, with a suddenness and a resulting stillness that were just a little too much for any organic being. Demona tilted her head, regarding the droid impassively. Perhaps if the projector had a higher resolution, the coronas or pupils of her eyes could be visible. Perhaps not. As it was, her eyes were dark, red, and soulless.

After a moment, with a flicker of particles, a smile appeared on the image's face. "Of course I remember you." She said, the voice echoing softly. A moment passed, the image seemingly frozen in place once more. The light flickered.

In an instant, the image before Clem vanished. Another appeared just behind him, looming larger than before, her outline thinner as the holoprojector struggled to project the entire form. She leaned forward, a seductive pose ruined by an uncanny flickering of light and shadow. Of course, with a droid, perhaps it was the other way around.

"I never forget..." The whisper seemed to come from all around, a soft electronic crackling.

[CLL-MT9]

When she vanished, Clementine showed one of the first of his more organic-like reactions to her unsettling behavior, peering left and right. In his case, it might have been more about anxiety that she had left to -- wherever she went was she wasn't here -- and that the conversation was over. His peripheral vision wasn't the best, and her voice, as always, came from seemingly nowhere. It took him a moment to figure out where she had gone, and then he began the somewhat laborious process of turning around in place, being careful not to knock over any tables.

Once he got her in view again, he continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. "That's nice," said Clementine, his slightly overloud voice having a cheerful effect. "I forget lots of things." He came to stillness facing her, and then his manipulator arm popped out again, the only part of him moving as it reached for the flimplast bag and detached it from its clamp. "I got you a present," he said, holding the bag at a neutral angle, as if not quite brave enough to just hold it out.

[Cal Arcton]

Fortunately, Demona was patient. Or perhaps she just had no concept of time. She maintained her pose, perfectly motionless except for the occasional flicker of electronic irregularities as Clementine laboriously turned around. There was a slight flicker in the facial expression. Disappointment? Surprise? Perhaps even amused respect?

Or perhaps it was simply the combination of algorithms and an imperfect holoprojector.

No one was really sure whether Demona was an AI or just a very complex program. Either way, she seemed at least somewhat equipped to deal with sentients bringing her gifts. "For me?" She straightened, translucent eyelashes fluttering playfully over blank eyes. "You shouldn't have! I'll have to repay you somehow." The line, perhaps intended as innuendo, had an unsettling bass reverberation overlayed onto it that made it sound much more like a threat.

But her arms remained bashfully behind her back, visible through her luminous torso. After all, anything placed into them would just fall to the floor.

[CLL-MT9]

Clementine, struck by her gratitude, maybe, accidentally started in binary again, an extremely low whistle that more resembled a foghorn. "---wwww, it is not a big deal. I just saw it at the space-port and thought of you." Moving nothing else, a panel opened in his other arm and brought forth a second manipulator. The first swung sideways, the second grabbed the other set of handles, pulling the bag open enough for the first hand to reach it. The bag, weighted by whatever was at the bottom, swung away, and he fumbled for a few seconds with the graspers before pulling out the box inside. It was only then that he noticed her arms behind her back. He paused. Was he thinking about the difficulties of giving a gift to a hologram, or a shy date? Who could say?

"Would you like me to op-en it for you?" he offered, at last.

[Cal Arcton]

Just as before, as Clem awkwardly shuffled about, Demona remained frozen in place. Her expression was unreadable; a touch of gorgeous youthful coquettishness mixed with something beyond human understanding. The electronic flickers didn't make it any easier, either.

When Clem produced the box, her lips curled up into a bright grin. Bright indeed; the teeth, just visible behind her lips seemed to glow a bit more than the rest of her. "Oh, yes!" The lights flickered, and Demona rapidly flickered between three spots, disappearing and reappearing first to the left, then to the right, and finally back in the first location, almost faster than a human eye could follow. "I waaaaaant it." An electronic buzzing accompanied the word 'want', almost loud enough to drown it out entirely.

[CLL-MT9]

"Oh, gee," said Clementine, and moved over to the table. With the care of a large, clumsy sapient, he used his graspers to put down the plastic box, letting the flimplast bag fall, forgotten. He fumbled getting it open, the box not quite designed for his graspers. Well he worked, he babbled through his deep, booming vocoder.

"I got this from a guy at the space-port. Did I say that? He said they made it from stuff they dug up from the vol-cay-no at Charnel Gulch. I went there once with some guys I knew. I don't work for them any-more." The hinge opened, showing a polished fist-sized sphere of transparent red stone, or tinted glass.



Clementine stepped back so he could see Demona and the orb at the same time, seeming to watch her carefully for a reaction, still babbling. "They said it was ob-sid-eye-an. Or maybe it was quartz. I have known a few mine-ing droids. But when I saw it it re-mind-ded me of you." He stopped, waiting with the stillness that only a droid can manage.

[Cal Arcton]

As Clementine spoke, Demona waited. Her expression was one of intense interest, either like someone who was a very good listener, or an impossibly patient predator watching its prey. Either way, the result was about the same.

When the orb was revealed, Demona brought one hand forward to cover her mouth, her blank eyes opening wide. Of course, her hand was translucent, and sound emanated from hidden speakers, not from behind her lips, so it didn't stop the echoing gasp, either. She leaned forward to examine it, her skimpy outfit exposing a cleavage as deep and as dark as the void.

Her image flickered again, disappearing for longer than before. When she reappeared, she was standing upright once more, back in her usual pose. "It's beautiful." The lips didn't quite move in time with the ghostly whisper. "I'll treasure it foreverrrrrr..." The word drew on unusually long, trailing off into a synthetic rasp.

But, of course, she still couldn't accept it, not really. Demona stared at Clem without expression except the slightest hint of a smile on her lips. Her blank eyes, though, seemed a bit brighter, two burning disks suspended in the air.

[CLL-MT9]

Clementine was incapable of facial expression -- unlike some droids, he couldn't even brighten and darken his photoreceptors -- so his equivalent of smiling dumbly was to sort of bobble from side to side on his two massive legs. This went on for a while, red, burning stare facing expressionless, bouncing black dome.

"Well I am glad you like it, miz Demona," he said at last. "I am very glad you like it." There was a pause, unusually short by Clementine's standards. "Should I-ah leave it there or would you like me to put it somewhere for you."

[Cal Arcton]

Demona's pause, on the other hand, was much longer. She froze, the expression on her face gone completely still as the seconds stretched on. The lights all around began to flicker arrhythmically.

Then she vanished. But the lights continued to flicker.

Once again, she appeared. This time, Demona's ghostly projected form was nowhere near Clem. She was by the door near the back of the bar. Hips swaying, arms outstretched, she beckoned to the droid, her face blank.

She vanished again. The lights in the bar returned to normal, but the light under the door seemed to be pulsing unsteadily.

[CLL-MT9]

Unlike her previous vanishing act, this one was telegraphed enough to let Clementine follow it. That’s nice. I am glad that she is willing to make things simple for me. It didn’t occur to him that perhaps there was just some overlap in the cognitive abilities of licentious drunks and loadlifters, and her programming was already aimed at the latter.

Again taking great care, he steadied the box with one manipulator and closed it with the other, the loader arms overshooting the whole operation by about a meter to get them as close as possible. Holding it firmly in his left grasper, he walked slowly and steadily for the door, swinging a wide berth around tables and ducking under the rare hanging light.

He paused at the door. In an organic, this might have been hesitation, a second thought, some voice in the back of their meat-brain screaming No, you fool! Don’t go in there! In Clementine’s case, it was him waiting for her to open the door, and taking a while to realize that that was impossible. He reached forward with the other manipulator, self-consciously remembering other times that he had destructively mistaken whether a particular door was to be “pushed” rather than “pulled.” He much preferred the ones that just swooshed up in the the ceiling for that reason.

[Cal Arcton]

This door was, in fact, a push door. Easier for Clem on the way in. But both the direction it opened and the relative narrowness of the frame might lead to problems for him on the way out.

It opened to reveal a dimly-lit hallway. The dimness was no fault of the design, but rather the level of the lights seemed unusually low. A restroom for customers was off to the side.

But perhaps of most note was the swinging at the end of the hall, marked "Storeroom". The lights flickered rhythmically, first the closest, then leading on down the hall to the door. Demona was nowhere to be seen, but her path surely was.

[CLL-MT9]

Clementine hesitated. Again, in an organic, this might have been to some ancestral hindbrain registering its objections to this course of action. He was just calculating whether he would, in fact, be able to get out -- the sort of task his programming, intended for shifting large objects in crowded spaces, was actually fairly adept at.

Satisfied, he lumbered forward. The flickering lights reflected in the dome of his photoreceptor, and player over his battered frame. His servos whirred, a deep faint hum, with each step, and his foot came to rest with a creaking sound as he crossed along the wooden floor. The only sign of tension was his right manipulator checking that the box was secure and closed in his left. As he approached the door, his right loading arm reached out to ease it open...

[Cal Arcton]

The storeroom was dimly lit at the best of times. Perhaps part of that was because the mechanic who installed Demona had put holoprojectors in here, too, much to Cal's annoyance. With all the lights flickering, it managed the sort of atmosphere normally reserved for horrorvids.



After a moment, with a sputtering red flicker, Demona appeared, near the back of the room. She was dancing again, that strange arrhythmic sway. This time, though, her arms were both pointed to the side, to a large, dusty, metal crate. "Under here..." The spectral whisper came.

Of course, there was only one way to get under the crate. It would have to be lifted.

[CLL-MT9]

Clementine hunched through the door, looking around with small motions of his body. When Demona reappeared, he homed in on her, and when he figured out what she was asking (which took a minute), he visibly expanded, like a demonstrative bird fluffing his plumage. He let out a trio of low, happy sounding beeps, and turned to delicately place the gift box on another crate. Then, retracting his finer manipulators, he trundled forward towards the glowing holographic figure, ready to show her what he was manufactured out of!

[Cal Arcton]

The crate was against the wall, and extremely heavy, but of course neither of those things were any impediment to a real lifting droid like Clem. As he approached, Demona blinked back out of existence, but the flickering lights gave evidence as to her continued presence, on some level.

Beneath the crate, up against the wall, there was a whole in the ferrocrete floor. It was dark, almost impossibly so; not a mote of light escaped, nor penetrated beyond the first few inches of the edge of it. It was silent. And, most curiously, if Clem's sensors were sensitive enough to detect it, the air seemed just a little chill right around it.



Behind Clem, Demona flickered back into being. She was silent and expressionless, waiting.

[CLL-MT9]

The revelation that Demona had a secret tunnel to some sort of inky, subterranean void seemed to make little impression on him. Any bizarreness or oddity to it was lost in the background noise of the world, much of which was only vaguely sensical to Clementine. Why were all starships pretty much the same temperature inside, even though they were built on different planets all over the galaxy? Why were credits really worth anything, anyway? How did organics manage to make full-sized versions of themselves, inside themselves? All equally baffling, and all equally not his department. Some droid, somewhere, was programmed for that, and it was not Clementine, and that was okay.

He shuffled backwards, retrieved the box, and came to the edge of the hole. He stared at the blackness for a solid minute, then at Demona's glowing red form, then back again, having to move his whole upper body to reorient each time. At last he said "I am not sure I will fit down there. Is it soft at the bottom? I would not want to drop it in and have it break."

[Cal Arcton]

Soft laughter echoed all around, and the strange white grin appeared on the hologram's features once more. "Oh, sweetie." As usual, lips and words weren't quite in sync. "You couldn't go down there. Not if you ever wanted to leave..." The laughter came again, echoing on and on.

"Go ahead." The figure leaned forward, translucent eyelashes fluttering coquettishly, uncannily. "Don't you trust me?" She flickered out for a few moments, only to reappear in the exact same spot, motionless.