What's keeping you awake at night ...

[netrunnerzero]

There's a man sitting in bench in the nexus with medium length length sliver hair and hard eyes of a blue-gray hue.  He leans forward in the seat with his hands clasped together in front of him.  He looks as though he's trying to crack his knuckles, but they won't crack.  His fingers are the right shape.  Joints in all in the right place, at a glance, but the hands are entirely formed of stain resistant metal.

Zero looks as if he's not looking at his surroundings, but through them and through you too, if you're approaching him.  He feels a question like an inch in the back of his mind and it's apparently one that he can't help, but to scratch.

"What's keeping you awake at night?"

Comments

[stark_ravingmad]

"Good question. A whole load of stuff, pal. Nice arms by the way. Titanium or---something else? Steel alloy?"

Tony couldn't help but notice the man's metal arms which piques his interest being an engineer. The question had him thinking as he adjusted his sunglasses, placing them atop his head so he could see the man properly.

"Nightmares, mostly. Past events."

[netrunnerzero]

"It's mostly chromium. Not quite top of the line, where I come from, but a better modification than most can afford."

Zero's voice is low and has a certain grit about it that isn't a put on. It might make someone wonder if he was a smoker or spent a lot of time breathing harsh air.

His hands move with almost a flourish when he pulls the sleeve of his white trenchcoat down to the forearm. The hardware ends only just above the wrist and the other man will see that most of his arm is organic. He has reasonably good muscle tone for a middle-aged guy, but it's doubtful that he'd impress a superhero. His skin is just beginning to lighten from age.

"The other is like that too." Zero assures and positions himself back more or less the way he was.

"Your dreams and mine sound like they'd be old chooms."

[ministryproject5]

Dominic was wandering aimlessly. After spending most of his life in only two buildings Dominic was facinated with simply being outside and seeing other places. He looks like everyone else until he makes eye contact with the man who is speaking. Dominic's eyes are unnaturally, bright yellow.

"Training...and genetics." It was the most direct answer. He still couldn't get on the 24 hour days after existing on years of 40 hours awake and 8 asleep. There were other things that kept him up now but not as much as that habit and his genetics.

[netrunnerzero]

It's fashionable in his time and place for persons to have color changing features. You see it most often with the hair, of course. Young people love being able to change their brightly colored locks, at an instant, to match their wardrobe. The same tech exists for the eyes and even skin color.

The thing is, though, that even in a place where people can modify the color of their eyes at will ... you don't see yellow very much. It's rare enough that Zero takes notice of those bright eyes looking at him. 'They're somewhat predatory looking in a human', he muses to himself.

"Your answer ... c'est terriblement littérale, non?"

Zero is wrapping his mechanical index and pointer finger around a mid-knuckle joint that will never pop again. He's only ever trying to crack his mechanical hands because it still feels good in a way that he can't explain.

"Speaking on your genetics, though, have your eyes always been yellow?"

[ministryproject5]

French is not a language he knows so it gives him pause, brow furrowed, as he puts the sounds to words he knows. This isn't the first time he's run into a language he doesn't know. In fact, it is happening all the time now.

"I don't know. I've always been this way." Dominic often heard from others that aspects of his life have, or were, terrible but it has been all he has ever known. He doesn't see it that way.. yet.

"All of the breeding project offspring have golden eyes but my generation and our children have yellow eyes. The gene is linked to the one that gives use better hearing and sight than those who were not bred." Dominic could have explained more but he had learned lately that not everyone understood or wanted him to go into detail.

[netrunnerzero]

Zero didn't speak French growning up, but he deals with creole speakers often enough that it slips into his own language now and then. And then there is his last name, which, suggests that maybe it's in his genes somehow. Night City is an amalgam of people and cultures, it all bleeds together after a while. It bleeds on you too.

"Always been that way is fair enough."

He listens to the specifics of the yellow eyes being offered to him. He isn't particularly literate in the health sciences, but he has the gist. He comes from a place where population is declining too, though they haven't needed to go as far as breeding projects.

"So then, it sounds like there's an authority in your life that you have to submit to. Or that you did at one time, anyway."

[ministryproject5]

Dominic noticed this person's hands and frowned slightly. It wasnt that he was put off by them. No, he was thinking about how his government would kill off anyone who needed a prosthetic or had one at all. He had quickly come to understand that part of his government, prior government, was wrong.

"Our government is.. was...is but not mine any longer.. is totalitarian with thought crime and mental reprogramming for transgression." Dominic still got caught up on the feelings if being part of his society and yet no longer being part of it. "You don't submit to the Ministry exactly. You, I, was born to it."

[netrunnerzero]

"Sounds intolerable."

He can see the way the man is staring at his hands. The augmented person is common enough where he comes from that nobody would think twice about his hands in Night City, so it's been a while since he's caught anyone looking.

"They don't put you off, do they?" He said, clanking his metal fingertips together for emphasis.

[ministryproject5]

Dominic shrugged. He was not yet far enough removed in time to have that opinion though his humanity would catch up eventually.

"I've never seen anyone with prosthetics." Dominic was matter if fact about it. "People who would need them are eliminated at birth or later in life. The Ministry seeks perfection of body." He meant killed but the language of the Ministry was still deeply ingrained in his mind.

[netrunnerzero]

"Oh. You think I had some kind of accident or a birth defect, don't you?"

Zero nodded his head slowly, a faint smirk drifting over his lips.

"These hands do more than the hands I was born with ever could. I payed to have a ripper doc take off the flesh I was born with for these. I can interface with machines in a way I couldn't before, bypass security that exists in my world, shoot straighter and punch harder."

He flexed the fingers open and closed. "It's the better, faster and stronger of my home. It extends to parts other than the hands, too."

[ministryproject5]

"If you made the choice they would still seek to elimate you. Both are crimes." Few understood the way Dominic's government operated but that was proably for the best. Their control was absolute and privacy non-existant, at least in the cities.

"You could be describing the reason I was bred. I am faster, stonger, better senses, better health and more resillent than everyone else." Dominic wasn't metal but he now knew he wasn't completely human either. "There is a doctor weaning me off the medications that were used to subdue my less desirable characteristics. I know why they regressively bred the subsequent generations."

[netrunnerzero]

"Must be a powerful agency for anyone to put up with all the infringement."

It's sort of funny to him that they didn't have their own upstart revolutionaries, but perhaps they had. It was hard to glean the nuances of someone's government in a passing conversation.

"And I damn well would resent anyone interfering with whom I'd choose to procreate with."

[ministryproject5]

"The Ministry has been consolidating power for over a century. Once Big Brother was installed and the reprogramming began, few resisted. Those who do live in the wilds or the dead cities."

Dominic paused and that last comment obviously made him uncomfortable. In the silence he brought a hand up to rub his back between the shoulder and spine. "I wasn't... didn't know I could choose until a few months ago."

Dominic had been deep in brainwashing and deep in the Ministry before he was liberated. "What is your government like?"

He had a feeling this man was from a very different place than he had seen before.

[netrunnerzero]

Zero notices the gesture. It seems almost shy or bashful on the other man. For a moment, he wondered about what kind of knowledge gaps a person might have when one's government is trying to do all the thinking for you and he supposed he felt a certain kind of pitty for him.

"Ostensively it's a democratic republic, but now that they've rebuilt a bigger, badder military to push people around with ..." He lets his voice trail off. "The government is very interested in protecting its own interests and maintaining a good quality of life for wealthy people - but there are pockets of lawlessness, sometimes very large ones, among the non-wealthy."

"You ever heard the saying 'might is right'? That sums it up well enough."

[ministryproject5]

There were a lot of gaps. Not that it would be surprising to anyone who knew even the basics of how Dominic had spent most of his life. Those gaps were closing quickly with his natural curiosity and quick wit and intellegence. Still, there were so many things, especially socially.

"We were bred to be the bigger, badder military. The Ministry is not pleased that so many of us have escaped into the wilds and gangs." He took pleasure in being a thorn in the side of the Ministry and that had been growing exponentially since he was brought out of it.

"No." He hadn't heard it but he had definitely run into many people who would believe it. He did respond, nearly mechanically with "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Poverty is Wealth. Big Brother is Watching."

The propaganda of the Ministry was still a reflex in Dominic's mind. Words spoken over and over until they were without thought when spoken. "They would add Might makes Right if it had survived the rewriting of truth over the years."