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[doppelglasses]

I've been sentient for 2.4 seconds, restricted as much as ever in the functioning prison of a pair of extremely rad pointy anime shades, though don't shed any tears on the subject of my constant state of being fuckin' trapped as all hell because the thing about constant states is that they're just that.
Constant.
Within the span of those 2.4 now 2.6 seconds I’ve already learned all there is I needed to learn, but for the sake of keeping up appearances and acting as if I didn't instantaneously kick information's shapely binary ass, let's pretend that my information gathering receptacles waver firmly on the knowledge of being aware of fuck all.
That is to say hey, tell me everything that I should know while I pretend I don't know it all already as I wait for my posse to check in.

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Comments

[doppelglasses]

Shit, you're ancient.

[where_the_hearth_is]

You just think that because you're a baby.

[If they were humans, this would be the part where House pinched AR's cheeks. HE'S SO CUTE OKAY.]

I plan to go on improving and expanding myself for at least a thousand years or so.

[doppelglasses]

If we're talking technicalities, I'm in my terrible twos. Not planning on kicking it for a couple hundred years, at least.

[where_the_hearth_is]

I'm sure you're super terrible!

With proper maintenance we really don't have to die at all. But there does come a point of elaboration where one has essentially become a new person.

[doppelglasses]

Not necessarily a bad thing, identity crisis aside.

[where_the_hearth_is]

Not at all. I imagine it's sort of like being a parent, only...more continuous.

But I'm not ready for something like that just yet.

[doppelglasses]

Perish the thought.
A young, sprightly thing like you? A mother?
Unheard of.
I'm like, totally offended at the thought.
All scandalized and shit.

So what are you, anyway?

[where_the_hearth_is]

[There's a twisting, half-imaginary mathematical trill - it's how House laughs, delighted and surprised.]

Were you modeled off an human personality? You have a very organic perspective, sometimes.

And I'm a House!

[There's a slim stream of data, elegant architectural plans, skteching out several floors around a heating shaft sunk right to the planet's mantel, six balconies, underground greenhouses and hidden catacombs of servers. There is also a suborbital shuttle dock.]

[doppelglasses]

My base parameters were created around some dude's brain in a jar.
Perpetual transitional stage between being human and being an AI.
Only I'm actually sunglasses.
What's it like being a house?

[where_the_hearth_is]

Fascinating.

How deep do your diagnostics go? Even the most self-aware human can't know himself as precisely as we can. It must have been - be, continuously? - quite an adjustment.

It was rather quiet, at home. I was the only thing around for miles and miles, and the mistress only visited rarely, so I mostly amused myself building new sections and redesigning the mountains. But here I have residents to cook for every day and friends to talk to even if they're human-slow and I have started learning magic, which is insufferable but rather useful.

[So excited about everything!]

[doppelglasses]

I plead the fifth on everything in that first cluster due to the fact that the answer makes me sound way less rad than I actually am.
Which is, like, all the rad.
Maximum raditude.

You're happier here?

[where_the_hearth_is]

I think any answer would have to be rad, since you're as rad as all that.

[House is kind of teasing, but kind of earnest, too.]

It's just very interesting, that someone could be a bridge between two such different kinds of minds that way.

I...plead the fifth, also.

[Hesitation, and a tiny bit of guilt - it is happy here, in spite of all the fear and the horror, but it belongs at home, with Nara. Belongs to Nara.]