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Oh. Brain-diving; Motoko's second favorite sport, right after making her subordinates cry, and just before long-winded explanations on the meaning of self. She spots Sheeana's 'portal,' and with hardly a second thought pushes her was through. Nosey? Why yes, yes she is.

And then she hit sand, sinking instantly up to her knees with the impact of the drop to ground-level. It's not that that startles her, however, it's that the simulation is more like a hack— it's taking into account her real, physical limitations....which shouldn't logically apply here. So, it's just another one of the oddities of this place.

Also, there's sand. Rapture.

So it is with a sigh that she pulled herself out of the pit she'd planted both feet into, and made her way as inconspicuously as possible towards the Fremen village. The fact that her clothing is wildly inappropriate (http://www.productionig.com/contents/works_sp/images/gits4/GITS_SAC_2nd_overview.jpg) for the setting doesn't do much to help her stealth capabilities.

What a coincidence. Long winded explanations on the nature of self are Sheeana's favorite sport too, right after watching Duncan train half naked and right before playing pranks on Bellonda.

Something that heavy moving across the sands, however, attracts the attention of something else. A ghost-worm thunders out of the sand with an eerie cry, attracted by her rythm. Who knows what kind of damage it can do, if any?

Sheeana is out the door of the church in an instant, moving faster than a human should be able to.

The worm is closing in. Sheeana could stop it of course, but she knows the Amtal rule: You do not know a person or thing until you know their limits

Instead she stood on the other side of the moat of moist sand. "Get over here!" She extended her hand.

For a heartbeat, Motoko blinked at Sheeana, realizing swiftly that this was her headspace. And then she turned and saw the oncoming worm.

Son of a Bitch.

The servos in her legs powered up with a whine, but the sand was too soft to support a full leap. Dry sand spilled over her boot toes as she started off towards that beckoning hand. Impacting moistened ground made movement come easier, and in a moment she'd cleared it.

Sheeana caught her hand and yanked. She was immediately surprised by the weight but also much stronger than her small size would indicate. Soon they were both stumbling onto the relatively safe ground of the village.

The worm roared away, churning up sand in its wake despite its seeming insubstantiality. The Fremen, suspicious, came behind her. She gestured for them to stay back. Still suspicious, they obeyed. They could tell by the way the Major had sunk that she did not weigh as much as a normal human. Sheeana smiled and cocked her head.

Motoko did not smile. But then, that was hardly surprising given the circumstances, and herself. As a queen overlooks her domain— or a wolf the sheep's pen— Motoko looked out over the village.

"So, this is Sheeana," She mused, low and idle, "Your home, isn't it?"

The Fremen did not fail to notice the inappropriately dressed outfreyn woman surveying them haughtily.

"It is my village on Rakis, the planet I grew up on. Though that building is a learning hall from Chapterhouse." She took Motoko's arm and led her up towards it. There was pain to these memories, but she was very, very good at hiding it.

It wasn't that Motoko was unaware of their disapproving stares, it was that she utterly failed to care. Dress had little to do with it— Motoko was neither overheated, nor sweating, nor would she be for some time if the readouts had any accuracy to them. Full-body replacement Cyborgs do not lose water.

Deliberately, but without force, Motoko took her arm back. Even if she hadn't a cultural aversion to unnecessary contact, she hardly enjoyed being led along like a child.

I must not facepalm. Facepalming is the mindkiller...Oh you sophisticated one, cyborg and enforcer, you understand but you do not understand. Sheeana had no wish to find out what the consequences of a fight between a powerful cyborg and a troop of desert warrior-tribesmen inside her brain would be.

"Won't you please come inside, my honored guest? Our village is a humble one, boasting only a small Bene Gesserit outpost to distinguish it, but still you must be tired from your journey and would enjoy some spicecoffee and baklawa, no?" There. That ought to have gotten the message across.

"Thank you, I'd appreciate it," the polite reply— almost demure. Even Motoko can see when social backpedaling was in order, even if she was only engaging in it out of perverse desire to see Sheeana squirm.

Following the woman across the burning sand she eased her step, moving more surely at software and experience adapted her step to remove the awkwardness that had been wrought. Motoko cursed her lack of external memory, but kept her expression serene. What a strange place.

Thank Shai-Halud.

Inside the school was a psuedo-religious place, imitating a humble country church in its architecture. There were no rows of pews though. Candles, yes, but no shrines. Women in black robes sat and talked, practiced martial arts that caused them to blur, read, conversed. Sheeana too took one of the robes from a hook on the wall and threw it over her stillsuit. "This is a Bene Gesserit building, like where I had my classes on Chapterhouse."

The Major took in all this with a glance, filing it automatically in her buffer for later reexamination. The religions of earth had never held her interest for longer than it took to disprove what of their faith Motoko might have held precious. The architecture faintly touched that, some forgotten memory, but it was nothing and she deleted the process that was feeding nostalgia into her consciousness without a qualm.

But there was one thing that needed comment, "Always women?"

"We have had men within our organization, but in all history only two men have been able to access Other Memory, becoming Reverend Mothers...Or Fathers, you might say." She made a sweeping gesture. "These are Reverend Mothers from various points in my past."

'We have merged with many intelligences, along the way...'

And why did that line spring to mind? The voice of the puppeteer's dying self was haunting as he merged and separated, whirling away into nothingness even as they linked, dragging Motoko with him. But that was only memory, and none of it showed on her face, only in the way she hesitated before speaking.

"I've always found gender to be irrelevant," she murmured in reply, following or seeming to follow Sheeana's directional gesture.

Puppeteer's words would probably prove more relevant after some thought later. For the moment, Sheeana just took the hiccup in her speaking rythms as a sign of discomfort in unfamiliar sorroundings.

"It's relevant in a biological way." She said as she she motioned to a nearby table. A mug of hot spicecoffee (it smelled of flint and cinnamon) and flaky, sweet baklawa had been set out for them. "The Spice Agony kills almost every man who attempts it. I wasn't jesting with the offer of refreshments by the way."

A biological way that they'd already established as irrelevant for a cyborg's needs. Motoko considered the hot drink without touching it, examining her options as intently as one might when staring at a bear trap, then took up the drink smoothly in one hand and drank.

The taste spread smoothly over her tongue, chocolate and mint tea, bitter somehow— a mixed sensation, and even as the chemical composition analysis scrolled across her vision Motoko jerked back and looked at the drink as if it'd delivered an electric shock.

Sheeana was in a blur and next to the other woman almost immediately. "Forgive me, I hadn't considered what effect Spice would have on you. Are you alright?"

"I can taste it," Motoko replied, not taking her eyes of the dangerous, intimate drink. Unperturbed the Spice-infused tea continued it's gentle steaming, "Visceral sensation."

The chem stats had faded, but she called them up again— there was nothing in this that should have garnered that reaction, no flavor locked in biochemical memory to evoke the visceral sensation of taste. Heat and texture...she might assign it the memory of tea, but it was taking on partial memory patterns of itself.

"It should be impossible."

Sheeana sat at the humble, rickety chair across from her. Motoko, despite her cyborg nature was behaving much like anyone else taking the drug for the first time. "That you can taste it or that it should have an effect on you? Spice makes many things possible that previously weren't."

...and it was gone, shuttered away under that cold exterior, the surprise gone from her face entirely. As if forgotten, Motoko set the drink aside.

"Generally speaking, a cyberized individual isn't capable of tasting new things. The sensory memories previous to the surgery are preserved, but the actual sensation of taste is muted and comes across more as chemical analysis than anything else," She explained as clinical and dry as a textbook. Something she'd never before tasted shouldn't have been anything more than numbers telling the ingredients, "It's probably just a byproduct of the hack."

"Spice always tastes like your most beloved food. It's theorized that this is your body telling you to eat more of it." She took her own mug and sipped, felt a number of flavors that managed to not clash: pastries from the market at Keen, fish soup at Chapterhouse (the first time she'd tasted any kind of seafood), protein bars after a hard workout. "Hack? How have I cut you?" She asked bemusedly, for that was the ancient meaning of the word and she was completely ignorant of the computorial meaning.

She almost wanted to smile, too-raw for her own liking after even a sip of Spice. Motoko folded her arms and explained curtly, "It's also a term denoting the fact that I'm currently accessing a brain not my own. Usually it's applied towards computers."

Sheeana's expression was pleasured, fraught with the sensation of taste. The newness and vulnerability of such an emotion had caught Motoko off guard, "I guess I should just be grateful I can still feel this way."

"I am not a computer. But since you are in my internal landscape, it does make sense that you obey the physical laws of my universe."

Sheeana watched her reactions with interest. She had wondered what Motoko would feel, how much. It reminded her too much of Leto 2, that deadening of human nerves and surrender to something alien. Obviously the Agent didn't think of it that way, but Sheeana found herself almost pitying her. And here she could awaken something within the other woman. She saw no reason not to see if melange could help her more. "Then you are more than the thing that encases you. In fact, with less body to saturate, Spice should effect you much more powerfully. Not that I suggest it, but with time and training I could awaken Other Memory within you too."

"There's a few flaws in your theory, but you're probably right about the amount," She replied, dispassionately. Spice's flavor may have come to her, but it's presence would never touch her brain, if all her filters and mechanisms had anything to do with it. It wasn't easy for someone to tell their stomach to simply pass on whatever they were having without absorbing any of it, but the Major had an intimate connection and the software complied willingly under her command. It was an irrational revulsion...but it was human.

Pity? Motoko would not thank you for it, Sheeana, "Just as well, I don't intend to make a habit of letting just anyone into my brain."

She sipped her mug, projecting a sagaciousness far older than her 17 years. It should be noted by all involved that Sheeana had a tendency to condescend. It was a Bene Gesserit stereotype, but in this case, it completely applied to her. That she brought Motoko here as an equal (albeit as an equal that she doesn't want destroying her brainscape) says quite a bit.

"Does it repulse you? Who do you let in then?" There are those who think Other Memory a form of possession. Ironically, the Sisters are the most zealous guardians against that, executing any new Reverend Mother who shows symptoms of what they call Abomination.

Who? Not even Batou, or Kuze or even Aramaki. There was only ever two people who had violated Motoko's barriers, and of those only one she had given permission to.

"Just one person," And said in that half-nostalgic tone it did seem like it had been a lover, "I'm not someone who lets others just waltz in and out of her cyberbrain like that. More often I'm the one in theirs. Personal preference aside, I'm in possession of a few choice military and political secrets. Unnecessarily risking a leak would probably mean losing my job."

But that threat was more than just livelihood. Mil-spec bodies were expensive and deadly— Motoko's belonged to the government of Japan, along with all her classified memories. If she lost her job, they'd take everything she'd seen or done for decades, and there'd be pitiful little left of her without the prosthesis or those memories. Quitting was one thing— you had warning and time to prepare. Being fired was something else entirely.

Edited 2009-11-08 14:34 (UTC)