iii. question.

[ex_garroter234]

[The words are written in the centre of the page, halfway down, the handwriting thin and angular.]

What is the cause of your greatest pain?

[MANSION]
[Micheletto is, in a word, bored. Asking questions to satisfy his curiosity (and partly to slake his thirst for inflicting pain; it's a hard world where there is no reason for him to slit throats or poison drinks) can only occupy him for so long.

He's currently wandering his new 'home,' exploring in a way. He does not like it here, and so he wishes to get this -- figuring out the layout, finding any secret rooms -- out of the way as soon as possible in order to spend his days in the city.]

Comments

[whistles_the_blues]

Faulty construction.

[ex_garroter234]

You are an artist or an artisan?

[whistles_the_blues]

Not exactly.

...I'm a machine. I could be an artist or an artisan if I wanted to.

[ex_garroter234]

[wh....at...]

I do not understand. You are a living machine?

[whistles_the_blues]

That is what I just implied.

[ex_garroter234]

Then the magic in this place is much stronger than I had been led to believe. What were you before you lived?

[whistles_the_blues]

I wouldn't say that, I existed somewhere else before I was brought here.

Before I lived? [Okay this was something he hadn't really considers before.]

Pieces of metal, plastic, latex. A good number of things.

[ex_garroter234]

[.........wait.]

Where do you hail from that metal is a living thing?

[whistles_the_blues]

...I assume a world different from yours, or perhaps further along in time.

[This could take some explaining that he doesn't really want to do.]

Metal itself isn't a living thing, I was constructed to be capable of independent thought and action.

[ex_garroter234]

[Oh, right. He forgot that's a thing... different places and futures with fantastical things...]

Why? Is man no longer capable of his own independent thought and action in your world?

[whistles_the_blues]

I don't know the reason why. They're capable of the act, perhaps it's simply to make things simpler for themselves.

[ex_garroter234]

It's a cruel thing, to create life simply to ease one's own burdens.

[whistles_the_blues]

Even if one is lost, another is created to so that the first can be forgotten about. It's the way things work where I come from.

[ex_garroter234]

Such is life everywhere, I think. It moves on despite the protest of those being massacred.

[whistles_the_blues]

Hm. True enough, I suppose neither man nor machine can escape that.

[ex_garroter234]

You are the first machine I have met, but if you have not escaped the cruelties of life, it must be so for your kind as well.

[whistles_the_blues]

Where I am from, I am the first of my kind capable of realizing such a thing.

[ex_garroter234]

Then you carry a heavy burden.

[whistles_the_blues]

Hm. I suppose I did. There isn't much I can do to change that now though.

[ex_garroter234]

There is not much we can do about the burdens we carry and pains we hold, but to use them to our advantage.

[whistles_the_blues]

Hm. I'll have to keep that in mind.

And you? what is your greatest pain? and how do you use it to your advantage/?

[ex_garroter234]

It is the world and life; I use it against the world and life.

[whistles_the_blues]

That's interesting. To say the least.