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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

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Mr Zoat said:
He's not especially popular with the Norwegian government,
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Is it because of the Einherjar? Because that's the only thing I can remember the Illustres having direct involvement in the area. I think he also fought Finality Man somewhere around there as well, but would it be that? I don't know what else it could be.
 
Coltsguy said:
At some pount, I wonder if Paul is going to get nominated for a Peace Prize and then we have an entire episode about the ethics around that, combined with a vendetta grudge against him that rears its head for the parallel storyline.
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A vendetta grudge? Why? Because of his unusually violent methods for a superhero?
 
On the Marvel stuff, as mentioned, there are a lot of bad future timelines. I think I remember it even being kind of a gimmick for the likes of Cable and Bishop. Traveling back in time to stop <insert apocalypse here>, thinking they'd saved the day, and returning to the future only to find some other apocalyptic event doomed either humanity as a whole or just the mutants. Usually mutant stuff, because the X-Men only really care about mutant issues and rarely help with anything beyond the scope of mutant stuff. In fact, if you ask for their help and you aren't a mutant they're likely to be massive assholes towards you. At least in the modern comics.

Though to be fair, the non-mutant heroes also tend to ignore anything that can be considered mutant issues.

The future that Paul described to Trask is from the Krakoa era. Which was when mutants as a whole were increasingly being portrayed as kind of massive dicks. With even the X-Men spouting mutant supremacist rhetoric, and the answer to the use of mutants as expies for <insert civil rights issue here> was apparently that we should totally bring back segregation.

To get to the future bits . . . If I remember right . . . Moira, one of Xavier's girlfriends, was apparently doing mental time travel where she'd live out her life, die for whatever reason, and then her mind would go back in time and overwrite the mind of her past self. Just doing a bunch of loops to try to avert some terrible future, and enabling shady shit to try to do so.

This terrible future? Human technology would advance to the point that humans could just freely give themselves superpowers and a bunch of other really cool stuff. Humanity became super awesome and the future was super cool. So naturally you might ask why this was terrible. Because the "normal" humans that could do anything left the mutants behind. No horrible apocalypse. No genocide. The rest of humanity just left the mutants to their own devices, to develop however they wished.

This future was a "bad" future because, in the end, it turned out the mutants were irrelevant and people like Moira, Xavier, and Magneto couldn't handle that.

I hear things went in an even stupider direction after that, but I didn't really bother keeping up after that. I'm not big on the X-Men. They're kind of boring.
 
Meanwhile, on Earth 8096 New
16th June 2012
19:12 GMT -5
Earth 8096

I glance up the stairs, and then back at the completely patient Aaron. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure what's taking so long."

He's wearing a tuxedo which is… Probably a bit much for something like this, though I respect the effort. His eye holes are covered by red glasses, and he's carrying a bouquet of flowers. "Having consulted with everyone at the Broadhurst Center for the Advancement of Mechanized Research who was prepared to answer me in a way which did not trigger an alert for lying, I assumed that a female would take longer to prepare herself than made rational sense. As such, I have budgeted a further two hours before I will assume that I am being 'stood up'."

In the living room, Anthony leans back in his chair to better watch us through the door. I'm… A little surprised at how restrained he's being. I'm hoping that it's because he recognises that Anne Marie is really sensitive about things like this. I'm sure that he'll mock me after they leave. Maybe gently nudge Anne Marie tomorrow if he gets the impression that things went well.

"That.. shouldn't be necessary. Is there..? Anything you wanted to ask me about before you leave?"

He remains entirely motionless for a moment.

"Will you be on comms with Father?"

"I won't be monitoring you, but I will be available for the entire evening if you want to speak to me."

He nods stiltedly, his head-. Ending up slightly inclined. That's deliberate for an android. I just don't know him well enough to know what it signifies.

"I have another question."

"Yes?"

"Do you think that I am a man?"

Yikes, yes, chasing Trask away was definitely the correct thing to do if he's reached the stage of questioning his existence.

"I suppose that depends what you mean by 'man'. If we take the normal definition of 'adult human male', then no. Based on what you father told me, your mental and emotional development is roughly equivalent to a human adolescent rather than an adult. You are not biologically human; you are.. not biological at all. And since you are not biological, you lack the physiological attributes which define being male."

"That is-. Logical."

"However, what I suspect that you're actually asking is: 'am I a person?'. Now, I haven't known you for long, but I've seen you respond in complex ways to your environment without external prompting. That strongly suggests that you are taking in information about your environment, processing it, and then deciding how to react based on an established personality. The files your father shared with me suggest that your ability to do so has grown significantly as you've gained experience, meaning that you are able to expand your mental models based on what you've learned and thereafter change how you behave. I've learned from Doctor Pym's… Issues with Ultron that A.I.s can have trouble with abstract thinking, and given that you are chronologically younger than you appear and as such have less experience to work with, I don't want to penalise you just because you process information differently to me. Therefore, I have provisionally concluded that you are a human-equivalent sophont."

He doesn't move for a moment, then his head moves back to the 'neutral' position.

"I see."

"Thoughts? Feedback?"

"I was lead to believe that this conversation might involve being threatened with a shotgun. An acknowledgement of my agency is a significant improvement."

"Maybe, but the downside is that I consider you to have the capacity to be responsible for your own behaviour. The shotgun is for if you don't bring my daughter-."

"Back by midnight." He nods. "Father was very clear."

"That-."

There's a buzzing noise, and Janet buzzes down the stairs in wasp-mode before regaining her usual size. "Okay! Problem!"

"I still have one hundred and eighteen minutes before I conclude that I am being stood up."

She looks at him, eyes narrowing slightly. "Are you a robot?"

"I am a human-equivalent sophont."

She folds her arms across her chest. "That sounds like something a robot would say."

I shake my head. "He's an intelligent android. Like the Human Torch?"

"Johnny's an android?" She blinks. "I thought they were smart!"

"Human Torch One, not Human Torch Two. Ask-." I shake my head. "Ask Steven about it." I glance up the stairs. "Is this the sort of problem where I should go and be paternal, or the sort of problem I should leave her to deal with?"

"I don't know!" Janet shrugs, looking mystified. "At her age I was already there!"

"Okay, I'll go and talk to her. Aaron, please wait here."

"Yes."

I fly up the stairs and head towards her room. I don't really know what I'm going to actually do, specifically. I thought Anne Marie was coping… With things. Not great maybe, but not on the level of shutting down just before something that I thought she wanted to do.

Alright. Nothing obvious outside of the door. I land, and knock lightly. "Anne Marie?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you alright?"

"… No…"

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"… No… … Yeah…"

"Ah..? Through the door, or-?"

The door opens, and-. Okay, she's been crying, and that's damaged her makeup… Dress looks… Nice? Janet's gotten good at maximising skin coverage while maintaining aesthetic appeal. And it's modest enough that no father could reasonably complain. She takes a few steps back, allowing me to open the door as she retreats to her bed and sits down on the floor next to it.

I sit down opposite her. "So..?"

"So did you-? Lend someone your ring..?"

"No, I found someone with a synthetic epidermis. No organic tissue means that you can't drain him." I shrug sympathetically. "He seems like a nice, well behaved lad."

She snorts with something that's nearly laughter. "Raht."

"And passably attractive. Social skills could use a little work, but-."

"Oh gawd. Is he home schooled?"

I… Nod. "Effectively, yes. Anne Marie, what's wrong?"

"It-. Hit me. This is it, ain't it? There's maybe a couple a' guys in the whole wide world ah c'n touch."

The best personal force field we've been able to put together isn't reliable, and the unstable molecule skin suit is basically a whole-body condom that gets really hot. Works in winter, but it isn't really a permanent solution.

"At the moment, yeah. I said it would take a while, and it will. We're still working on it."

"And I.. had t' get mah dad t' find me a date."

"Under the circumstances, that's not unreasonable. Did you imply to anyone at school that you wanted to go?"

"No…" She takes a deep breath. "Ah said ah didn't see the point in gowin'."

"Someone might have asked you if you hadn't made it clear that you didn't want to go. Or I could have gotten you in contact with Aaron earlier so it wouldn't feel so abrupt. Sorry, I didn't realise how big a deal it is; we don't really have proms in Britain."

"Raht." She sigh-grunts. "Okay. Need ta do mah makeup-" I fix her makeup. "-again-. Oh, ah... Thanks."

I stand, and offer her my right hand. "Ready to go?"

She takes it, and allows me to pull her up. "Yeyah. Yeyah. Ah'll give this Aaron fellah a trah, ah guess."

I nod as we leave the room. "The other thing is that he's not used to girls."

She gives me an interrogative look. "No sisters?"

"No sisters and fifty brothers."

…

"Say whut now?"
 
Mr Zoat said:
"However, what I suspect that you're actually asking is: 'am I a person?'. Now, I haven't known you for long, but I've seen you respond in complex ways to your environment without external prompting. That strongly suggests that you are taking in information about your environment, processing it, and then deciding how to react based on an established personality. The files your father shared with me suggest that your ability to do so has grown significantly as you've gained experience, meaning that you are able to expand your mental models based on what you've learned and thereafter change how you behave. I've learned from Doctor Pym's… Issues with Ultron that A.I.s can have trouble with abstract thinking, and given that you are chronologically younger than you appear and as such have less experience to work with, I don't want to penalise you just because you process information differently to me. Therefore, I have provisionally concluded that you are a human-equivalent sophont."
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From a philosophical standpoint, Descartes sums it up best: I think, therefore I am. Meaning that if you can conceptualize the concept that is the self, then you are a being in your own right, regardless of your species. The fact that you can thinj in terms of *I* proves the existence of the self.

Mr Zoat said:
"No sisters and fifty brothers."

…

"Say whut now?"
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Deadpool: "Damn, somebody needs to learn how to pull out!"

Paul: "…Really, Wade?"

Deadpool: "What? You're the one who said it like that, not me."
 
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I admit I have a bit of curioisity, given Wasp's presence here, if she's simply Rogue's big sister figure or if Paul's relationship with Hela didn't work out.
 
this is a different universe than previous Marvel Paul, right? I seem to remember him dating Anne Marie
 
ForeverShogo said:
This terrible future? Human technology would advance to the point that humans could just freely give themselves superpowers and a bunch of other really cool stuff. Humanity became super awesome and the future was super cool. So naturally you might ask why this was terrible. Because the "normal" humans that could do anything left the mutants behind. No horrible apocalypse. No genocide. The rest of humanity just left the mutants to their own devices, to develop however they wished.

This future was a "bad" future because, in the end, it turned out the mutants were irrelevant and people like Moira, Xavier, and Magneto couldn't handle that.
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They aren't transhumans, they are post humans.

Humanity is extinct in those bad futures.

Humanity was so obsessed with not being replaced by mutants that they let the Sentinels design and produce their replacements.
 
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