Forums » Sci-Fi Roleplay » Travellers (Semi-Open RP between Tara and Catrin)

Catrin giggled, covering her mouth with her paw. "There you have it. Teachers are always sexy." She cleared her throat. "So, realistically speaking, is there any chance of getting an intelligent male who would enjoy travelling with you and meeting new people, and cultures? Within your cultural constraints is what I mean - does anyone like that exist?"

She Tara snorted, "The perfect male? I wish." She then laughed, "But I'd settle for mostly perfect." The scholar drank more of her wine and grinned, "So now it's my turn! You met anyone special on your universe-hopping? I bet you get more choice, considering how far you can travel."

Catrin smiled. "Oh dear. I'll need something new to drink before I start answering that!" With a grin, she got up and selected the same creamy mixed drink she had got at first, then she settled comfortably in her chair, looking thoughtful.

"Many special someones, I'm afraid. Usually one at a time," she continued with a small smile and a sip of her drink to give her time to think, "but it's not like I ever expected to spend an eternity with someone. Their lives are usually so short."

Tara nodded, "I see... I've always tried to avoid getting too attached to aliens. They barely live long enough to have a serious conversation, never mind anything else." She shook her head, "It makes my work hard. You can't help but form attachments to people you have known for many months or years, but perhaps it is blessing that I rarely spend long enough on a world to watch those I've known die." She smiled to herself, "But I wouldn't change my life for all the stars in heaven. If I spent too long back home the boredom would drive me crazy!"

Catrin laughed. "Oh, I'm afraid you may be misunderstanding. I've had hundreds of short-term relationships, up to five years. Everyone changes, after all, me, the partners... so we usully parted ways and the issue of longevity never came up. Then there were the longer term ones... hmm, maybe fifty of them?" She smiled a bit, nodded and drank a little of her mixed drink.

"Not all of those ended in death either. Many did, and those were often painful, but I almost never lingered on the pain for more than a year or two. The deaths... most of them had to do with danger rather than longevity - people killed in battles, by assassins, through accidents." Catrin didn't seem sad, merely stating facts. "You could say that I do get attached, and then I get unatacched. A painful process, perhaps, but as you say, without pain, there is no joy. I could have opted to stay out of relationships, but then I wouldn't have experienced all their positive aspects.

The choice as it stands, then, is between neutrality and experiencing some extremes, both negative and positive ones. But one does not learn much from this sort of neutrality," Catrin finished with a smile.

"You say you are wary of even casual attachments, and yet, nothing ever lasts. A long life span is no guarantee of a long friendship." She closed her eyes and recited out of memory. "Thou shalt know joy and happiness, but this shall fade and pass away, thou shalt know fear and grief, but this too shall fade and pass away, thou shalt have a time of peace and prosperity, but this too shall fade and pass away, thou shalt have a time of war and famine, but this too shall pass and fade away." Opening her eyes, she looked at Tara, her lips curling into a small smirk. "Or, 'Enjoy things while they last and be aware that they will not last forever, no matter how you try to ensure their continuation. If bad things shart happening to you, don't worry, they won't last forever.' Now, I'm sure that your version has more ring to it, but mine seems more useful," Catrin winked at Tara.

Tara nodded and smiled, "You're right, of course... maybe I'll try out the whole dating thing when we get to Aerin. I mean, we'll get there for the Millennial Festival, so there will be plenty of opportunity." She sighed and smiled to herself, "It says something when the most attractive male I've ever had a lengthy conversation with is an AI's hologram!"

Catrin laughed. "Well, at least you get to train speaking with an attractive male," she said with wink. "That might make you less nervous when you actually meet a more corporeal specimen."

Tara smiled slightly, "Maybe, but I'm not sure if it would help. I mean, I've known Thyr for three hundred years, so I'm pretty comfortable with him already. Although... his new...uh... appearance takes some getting used to after all this time." She shook her head with a laugh, "Maybe you made him too sexy when you helped him pick out an appearance."

"Oh, but I don't mind sexy," Catrin said with a chuckle. "And getting used to it might do you some good. Besides, why rob him of the pleasure of having an aeshetically pleasing hologram? This way, if you meet someone similarly good-looking at the festival, you might even be able to speak with him instead of becoming nervous and running away... or anything else you usually do to avoid attractive males."

Tara laughed, "The Ilendis never run away!" She declared, "We only attack towards the rear!" She laughed again, "Or at least, that's what my father always said." Tara smirked, "It's just too bad Thyr's a hologram. It seems a waste of sexiness." She giggled at that.

Catrin grinned. "Oh dear. Poor people in the rear. 'tactical retreat and regrouping' is also a nice phrase." Then her grin grew even more entertained. "Well, he is quite solid now, the force fields and all that. I wonder if anyone's ever had a relationship with their ship's AI?"

Tara laughed and shook her head, "I doubt it, I mean it's an AI after all... a... computer program. Complex, sentient, even, but I've never heard of such a thing!" She frowned, "Well, outside trashy romance novels." The anthropologist fiddled with the end of her tail, "Even if he is...um...uh... solid... I don't think it'd really work." She snorted, "Besides, what does it say about someone who starts a relationship with an AI? They can't find a mate of flesh and blood so turn to circuits and holograms..."

Catrin smirked. "Well, in your culture, it could also mean a host of other things, like they want to escape the need to get a lifetime partner, or that they travel too much to be able to find a mate, or that they're looking for s short-term thing without any strings... Oh well." Then her face suddenly lit up. "Or they actually prefer AIs to people. Sexuality is a very complex thing, after all. The idea of having a sexual relationship with something that controls a powerful ship could be very arousing." Still smiling, she drank a bit from her glass and apparently contemplated the whole topic while looking into a wall.

Tara nodded, looking slightly embarrassed by the whole conversation. It was quite obvious that the scholar was unused to talking about this kind of thing, "I...um... guess so." She giggled nervously, "It's a good thing Thyr deactivated his audio sensors, or I'd be dying a death of embarrassment right now." She then looked thoughtful, "Although... that'd be rather interesting to find out; how our cultural pressures influence mate selection and choices for short-term sexual partners..." She shook her head, "But that's more sociology, isn't it? I'm not supposed to study my own culture."

Catrin 'shrugged'. "It probably is. But think of the insights your knowledge of other cultures could bring that no-one without that exposure would be able to come up with. Hmm. Are there any studies on the topic at all?"

Tara nodded, "There must be, I mean my people have been researching this kind of thing for over twelve thousand years." She reached out with one hand and a holographic display appeared in front of her, she 'tapped' on a few of the virtual symbols and scanned through a few pages of text, "Hm... There's a little bit of research, but not much recently, and it's mostly focused on a few other cultures... most of which are extinct now, or so reclusive as makes no difference."

Catrin chuckled and mumbled, "Why doesn't it seem surprising?" She drank a bit before going on. "I don't really think there's anyone brave enough to turn their eye on your culture in this respect. What would their family say? Or anyone else? Things like this usually stir some things everyone prefers to remain hidden."

Tara grinned and laughed, "Academics don't usually like making waves; upset people don't usually feel like giving you your research grants." She looked thoughtful, "I've got tenure though, and I'm pretty well respected by my colleagues... I might just be able to pull off a study like this... ah! But first there's that study on the funerary practises of starborne cultures." She smirked, "Ah well, I've got plenty of time to do both."

"Tara, I was wondering why you were looking up research material on case studies of romantic or sexual relations between Artificial Intelligences and organics?" Thyr asked suddenly, though he didn't activate his hologram.

Tara jumped in her seat and her eyes widened, "Th-Thyr! Uh...uh...uhm... I thought you had your audio sensors deactivated!"

"I did. Your odd search query in the database attracted the attention of some of my archival subroutines. It was not the sort of thing I expected you to search for."

"It's...um... just something Catrin was talking about." Tara said, ducking her head in embarrassment, as if that would hide her from the all-pervading gaze of the ship's AI, "An idle curiosity."

"Ah, I see." Thyr said, "I do hope you are not being a corrupting influence on Tara, Catrin, I'd hate for her to go off galavanting half way across the galaxy on some half-baked expedition into something dangerous, or damaging to her career."

Catrin laughed. "Oh my, you seem to be very adventurous! For an academic."

When Thyr's voice echoed through the chamber, her eyes widened in surprise. "Wait, I thought you were looking for studies about how your cultural pressures influence mate selection and choices for short-term sexual partners?" She turned to Thyr, or rather towards a nearby wall. "I had been wondering if there was a history of people having relationships with AIs. Tara was kind enough to perform a search for me. Does that make me a corrupting influence?" She didn't seem shy or apologetic in the least. "You seem to be destroying the atmosphere here, though," she said with a glance at Tara, who seemed like she wanted to be somewhere else. "Could you ask your questions after we are finished here?" She was just hoping that they weren't finished now.

There was a short pause before Thyr answered, "Apologies. I'll ask my questions later then. Have a good evening, both of you." Then the AI was silent. It appeared as if he was gone.

Tara smiled slightly to Catrin, "Thanks." She shook her head with a mortified expression, "I don't know what he'll think of me now." She snorted to herself, "I should have isolated the search from his tracking programs, but I've never done that before and I bet that would have been suspicious anyway." She giggled then, "Sexy hologram or not, I think Thyr's just too different from an organic for anything like a relationship. I mean, he only ever spares a small part of his attention to anything organics do, and vocal speech is agonisingly slow in comparison to his processing speed."