Fanfic: "OK Computer" by Cesperanza . [McKay/Sheppard] . [N9]
"OK Computer" by
cesperanza
Summary"Don't shoot!" Rodney yelled, leaping up, onto his knees, and waving his hands, afraid that Sheppard was going to blow his alter-ego to blazes. "He's me! I think!"
First read: 26-06-2008
Second read: 08.2009
Third read (I think there must be a mistake with my records since there would have to be a mistake with my brain for me not to have read one of the few N9 stories I have even once in four years.): 21.01.2014
Comments: 35.000 words. Now, I don't want to give anything away but remember that story Cesperanza wrote with Shalott, "Time in a Bottle"? Where they both got trapped in a virtual reality while their bodies where in stasis and had to make do so as not to go crazy? Well, this story is more dramatic, more tragic and it has a better VR with more tricks and possibilities. Rodney discovers and Ancient VR whose only apparent use is very intense porn fantasies, he shares it with Sheppard, who doesn't seem very interested at all but finds him the control interface and tells him to have a good time. Rodney goes back in and finds that Sheppard has left an afterimage of himself in the thing's cache (having sex with a couple of "lesbians", Rodney knows is wrong but can't stop watching it. That's all he gets to do because then future!Rodney shows up to tell him he did a lot more than that after Sheppard died, he recreated John from that one image inside the VR and filled in the blanks with SG data and extrapolation. It's mostly the story of Mckay, his AI!John and his dead!Sheppard (so present in his absence) but present Rodney and John have their own screen time too, so it's like Mcshep x 2.
[super spoilery analysis-review (2014)]“OK Computer” goes beyond the love story by literalizing the issue of how essential another human being can be to your very sense of self. Sheppard´s death doesn´t just hurt Rodney but makes his whole universe pointless. The science, the people, Atlantis… nothing matters anymore in John´s absence. Rodney does not believe himself capable of getting over his grief and a combination of circumstance and genius allow him to use the remains of Sheppard´s persona stored in a Virtual Reality to replicate Sheppard himself inside the VR. Rodney is well aware that what he is doing in insanely unhealthy but it is also rather obvious that he would rather die than stop. Were VR!John actually a machine or incapable of his own decision making, that would be the inevitable end but although VR!John is not John Sheppard, which endlessly frustrates Rodney, he has opinions of his own about the matter, even as he accepts Rodney´s data uploads with the information he supposedly acquired in college courses and flight training… VR!John starts to modify his own code. He also insists that Rodney go away and take care of himself and coaxes him through slowly spending time outside the VR. This is the moment when it becomes evident to the reader that he is a person in his own right, growing and changing and deciding, conscious of his own existence and Rodney´s. But Rodney, for all the obsessive feeling that led him to creating VR!John in the first place, is himself too much of a scientist to understand that John is real. John´s reason´s for denying himself personhood are less clear but mostly seem to focus on the fact that he does not have a physical body and Rodney does and so Rodney should not be living in virtuality to be with him.
Is John a figment of Rodney´s imagination? When Rodney timetravels to tell the past John Sheppard how to avoid his death, past!Rodney definitely thinks so. But VR!John is more than capable of demonstrating his own autonomy not just by wiping the VR and making Rodney believe he must live his life in “reality” and forget about him but by NOT killing himself, uploading himself instead into the Atlantis interface. Rodney himself is so marked by his time with VR!John that when offered the chance to get a complete copy of past!Sheppard uploaded into the VR instead, he refuses. John is a person to him and uploading anything but external data (ie newspapers) would be akin to murdering the man he loves.
Furthermore, “Ok computer” answers, whether VR!John is more a product of Rodney’s mind than of John Sheppard’s upbringing and natural inclinations (VR!John is a brilliant mathematician, but still suicidally self-sacrificing and obsessed with things that go fast), it is Rodney, “the person”, who is so changed by him that his entire life is derailed, the conclusion of this extreme influencing is that Rodney gives up the mark of his humanity, his physical body, to become a program in the Atlantis computers just like John is. Even then, neither of them stops caring about not just Atlantis and their people but their own pride and recognition (both VR guys leave clues for the physically there past versions to find in the work they do for them).
[SUPER SPOILERY QUOTES]SUPER SPOILERY Quotes:
"I don't want to," Rodney blurted. "John, I love you."
John flinched and turned away. He laced his fingers and stared down at the white knuckles. "Don't say that," John said. "You don't love me because I'm not Sheppard," and before Rodney could protest, John said, "And I can't love you because I'm not real."
John looked hard at him, then kissed him on the mouth, and that was it, game over: he didn't give a good goddamn if John was real or not, because everything outside of this was just negative space.
"I didn't save your life. I didn't build a time machine. I didn't rescue what was left of you or devote my life to building a world whose only virtue was that you were in it. I just-" The words were tumbling out of him now; he had to confess this, they had to be clear about this, otherwise he'd never know if he was just the stand-in for the insane geezer who had done all those things. "I just showed you the VR. And I saved your file for-all right: totally prurient reasons. I liked to watch those girls having sex with you. I used to watch it all the time. I'm not a hero, I'm a pervert, I-"
-AI/Robot, 2009, 2009: sga fic, sga fic, fanfic-2009, @read in english, fanfiction, sga fic: McKay/Sheppard, *fanfic-novella-2009, 2008, fanfic-2008, *fanfic-novella-2008, sga fic: recs, fanfic: read2, author: cesperanza, june-2008, fanfic-june-2008,
cesperanza
Summary"Don't shoot!" Rodney yelled, leaping up, onto his knees, and waving his hands, afraid that Sheppard was going to blow his alter-ego to blazes. "He's me! I think!"
First read: 26-06-2008
Second read: 08.2009
Third read (I think there must be a mistake with my records since there would have to be a mistake with my brain for me not to have read one of the few N9 stories I have even once in four years.): 21.01.2014
Comments: 35.000 words. Now, I don't want to give anything away but remember that story Cesperanza wrote with Shalott, "Time in a Bottle"? Where they both got trapped in a virtual reality while their bodies where in stasis and had to make do so as not to go crazy? Well, this story is more dramatic, more tragic and it has a better VR with more tricks and possibilities. Rodney discovers and Ancient VR whose only apparent use is very intense porn fantasies, he shares it with Sheppard, who doesn't seem very interested at all but finds him the control interface and tells him to have a good time. Rodney goes back in and finds that Sheppard has left an afterimage of himself in the thing's cache (having sex with a couple of "lesbians", Rodney knows is wrong but can't stop watching it. That's all he gets to do because then future!Rodney shows up to tell him he did a lot more than that after Sheppard died, he recreated John from that one image inside the VR and filled in the blanks with SG data and extrapolation. It's mostly the story of Mckay, his AI!John and his dead!Sheppard (so present in his absence) but present Rodney and John have their own screen time too, so it's like Mcshep x 2.
[super spoilery analysis-review (2014)]“OK Computer” goes beyond the love story by literalizing the issue of how essential another human being can be to your very sense of self. Sheppard´s death doesn´t just hurt Rodney but makes his whole universe pointless. The science, the people, Atlantis… nothing matters anymore in John´s absence. Rodney does not believe himself capable of getting over his grief and a combination of circumstance and genius allow him to use the remains of Sheppard´s persona stored in a Virtual Reality to replicate Sheppard himself inside the VR. Rodney is well aware that what he is doing in insanely unhealthy but it is also rather obvious that he would rather die than stop. Were VR!John actually a machine or incapable of his own decision making, that would be the inevitable end but although VR!John is not John Sheppard, which endlessly frustrates Rodney, he has opinions of his own about the matter, even as he accepts Rodney´s data uploads with the information he supposedly acquired in college courses and flight training… VR!John starts to modify his own code. He also insists that Rodney go away and take care of himself and coaxes him through slowly spending time outside the VR. This is the moment when it becomes evident to the reader that he is a person in his own right, growing and changing and deciding, conscious of his own existence and Rodney´s. But Rodney, for all the obsessive feeling that led him to creating VR!John in the first place, is himself too much of a scientist to understand that John is real. John´s reason´s for denying himself personhood are less clear but mostly seem to focus on the fact that he does not have a physical body and Rodney does and so Rodney should not be living in virtuality to be with him.
Is John a figment of Rodney´s imagination? When Rodney timetravels to tell the past John Sheppard how to avoid his death, past!Rodney definitely thinks so. But VR!John is more than capable of demonstrating his own autonomy not just by wiping the VR and making Rodney believe he must live his life in “reality” and forget about him but by NOT killing himself, uploading himself instead into the Atlantis interface. Rodney himself is so marked by his time with VR!John that when offered the chance to get a complete copy of past!Sheppard uploaded into the VR instead, he refuses. John is a person to him and uploading anything but external data (ie newspapers) would be akin to murdering the man he loves.
Furthermore, “Ok computer” answers, whether VR!John is more a product of Rodney’s mind than of John Sheppard’s upbringing and natural inclinations (VR!John is a brilliant mathematician, but still suicidally self-sacrificing and obsessed with things that go fast), it is Rodney, “the person”, who is so changed by him that his entire life is derailed, the conclusion of this extreme influencing is that Rodney gives up the mark of his humanity, his physical body, to become a program in the Atlantis computers just like John is. Even then, neither of them stops caring about not just Atlantis and their people but their own pride and recognition (both VR guys leave clues for the physically there past versions to find in the work they do for them).
[SUPER SPOILERY QUOTES]SUPER SPOILERY Quotes:
"I don't want to," Rodney blurted. "John, I love you."
John flinched and turned away. He laced his fingers and stared down at the white knuckles. "Don't say that," John said. "You don't love me because I'm not Sheppard," and before Rodney could protest, John said, "And I can't love you because I'm not real."
John looked hard at him, then kissed him on the mouth, and that was it, game over: he didn't give a good goddamn if John was real or not, because everything outside of this was just negative space.
"I didn't save your life. I didn't build a time machine. I didn't rescue what was left of you or devote my life to building a world whose only virtue was that you were in it. I just-" The words were tumbling out of him now; he had to confess this, they had to be clear about this, otherwise he'd never know if he was just the stand-in for the insane geezer who had done all those things. "I just showed you the VR. And I saved your file for-all right: totally prurient reasons. I liked to watch those girls having sex with you. I used to watch it all the time. I'm not a hero, I'm a pervert, I-"
-AI/Robot, 2009, 2009: sga fic, sga fic, fanfic-2009, @read in english, fanfiction, sga fic: McKay/Sheppard, *fanfic-novella-2009, 2008, fanfic-2008, *fanfic-novella-2008, sga fic: recs, fanfic: read2, author: cesperanza, june-2008, fanfic-june-2008,