kicking, squealing gucci little piggy [ closed ]
who ; Raimi Matthews and Clu.
what ; "A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner."
--Francis Bacon
where ; One of those lobster places in Zone 07.
when ; Sometime beyond a hypothetical 8/8:30ish time window, after slithering occurred for some more of your regularly scheduled backdated slithering.
warning(s) ; Creep/ ( Read more... )
what ; "A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner."
--Francis Bacon
where ; One of those lobster places in Zone 07.
when ; Sometime beyond a hypothetical 8/8:30ish time window, after slithering occurred for some more of your regularly scheduled backdated slithering.
warning(s) ; Creep/ ( Read more... )
He could see it in the mannerisms and speech patterns in everyone. Raimi familiarized himself with a variety of personality types in Coast City, albeit their type had the tendency to to fall less into chivalry and deeper into the categories of crudeness. He couldn't help but wonder just how far that charisma had gotten Clu in the end.
After all, he did mention something about being derezzed. Raimi hadn't forgotten about that.
"Long as I have all my body parts where they're supposed to be, I'd like to call it a good day."
Raimi didn't need to be asked again before taking the menu, although his gut was giving him a hard time allowing him to even bat an eyelash at its contents. It was certainly a good thing he'd learned to usually keep his food down before bedtime.
He then glanced out the corner of his eye, the automaton servers strolling his way, before shifting back at Clu. "You'd think that someone would have that fixed by now."
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He wondered just what it was the young man saw. But Clu was good at smiling to cover those pensive moments.
"That is a good start." His gaze was momentarily locked to the motion of Raimi's hand. He blinked. "You could always ask for more, though."
He huffed out a tiny, dry laugh, never once looking at the server drones. "Some of us are working on it."
Systems access was a pain in the processor around here, fat stack of liberated credits, or no.
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"I think I'll pass. I don't see there being much profit in the potential Napkin Monopoly." Suppose he should probably put it on his lap or something, though. Raimi was not very fond of eating out, but when he did, that seemed to be the thing to do.
Having hardly skimmed through the menu yet to see what would remotely stay in his stomach for more than a few hours, Raimi had to wave off a passing server trying to pester an order out of him.
In spite of this, he shrugged and added modestly: "I don't know. Now that I think about it, there's some kind of charm to them. Kind of makes them a little quirky, or something."
Came to show just how equally flawed machines could be.
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A cutthroat market, either way.
"Oh, in life in general." He shrugged a little. "Seems to me--no offense, I hope--but I don't think you're quite getting everything you deserve."
"Quirks." Slowly, trying not to say it in the same tone as bugs or glitches and not quite succeeding. "Just watch. Tell 'em you need a minute. Fifty-eight seconds later, he'll be here."
Flaws in the machinery were easier to exploit. In his experience, it took some real tinkering to pull out User quirks.
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"Is that right?" He always did genuinely take certain flattery with a grain of salt, as much as he practically fucking preened for it. "And, just out of curiosity, what do you think I deserve?"
The server did, in fact, return soon afterwards. On an impulse, Raimi simply ordered the first thing he knew he wouldn't regret later in the morning, and asked for a breadbowl of soup for now.
"Well, you know what they say..." No Raimi, what do they say? "If you're not two seconds early, you're sixty-thousand milliseconds late."
No Raimi, that isn't quite how that idiom works.
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"Lead analyst, with eyes like yours. Write your own paycheck, tell your ex-supervisors where to stick it--for a start."
For a start.
Gonna quirk an eyebrow, but not crane his neck with interest, because that would be creepy.
"Heh. Something like that, yeah."
The best idioms in life are the ones that get misquoted back at you by your software. After all, a stitch in time gathers no moss.
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Not to mention all of the other perks that it would entail. Raimi entertained the thought of Benjamen Palmer having his small dick shoved down his sick, sorry throat. Fucking cockhound.
Raimi Matthews? Maybe a little bitter?
Of course not.
A brow raised in return, followed by a casual elbow rest over the tabletop. "Only 'something like that', huh?"
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"Sure." It's bright with amusement--is there an edge of cruelty there? "I know you could think of better things for them to do."
There were advantages to being at the top of the ladder. Not least was getting to shake everyone else off, laughing as they fell.
Nothing wrong with a little bitterness.
"Estimates serve a purpose, sure." Some would be shocked to hear him say that. Jarvis would have dropped--and shattered--a perfectly good datapad. But Clu was relentlessly pragmatic. If he could use something? He did. Corrections were an inevitability of post-process, nothing more, nothing less.
"I mean, you've gotta use something to calculate projections, otherwise you're waiting on every single floating point. Line of best fit, my man."
Working approximations were much better than anything being left up in the air. Or to chance. Users forbid.
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He is starting to think of how he sat there -- the scent of salt and electricity and the plans underlying the patterns in cryptics and code. The emperor's wide grin. The sticky-entwined fingers. That fucking smug look and sketchy words.
Raimi listened, and he understood a little bit, more and more.
"More or less. Besides, you can always find ways to fine-tune the anomalies, once you've got all of the flaws sorted out. There are always ways."
Catching those little off numbers also had a way of factoring into his task when coding tracking software -- and then some. Good results are such a high achievement, since BIOCOM didn't settle for relative probabilities.
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