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fallout: deacon

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[Deacon has the wig on today and sunglasses (finally got a pair thanks to the Ingress) and a black suit that was probably once very sharp but after two hundred years and a nuclear apocalypse is very much the worse for wear.]

Hey, science-y people, anyone have experience with laser guns?

[Locked to Medbay Staff]

So, totally hypothetically, if someone wanted to completely change their face, could you do it?

[He should try to hang on to the face he's got for another six months at least, but he wants to know what his options are. And wants to know whether or not he has options.]

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Yeah, most people don't like synths so when it's not the Institute trying to kill us all, it's the good people of the Commonwealth forming a lynch mob against the synths we're trying to save.

I'm not a tech. Some synths are good at technology and some are total crap. I'm closer to the total crap side. Funny enough, our main tech guy is all human and our top synth agent is awesome at breaking things with extreme prejudice and a minigun.

I'm just a runner, which is pretty low on the hierarchy but it's an important job. Runners are the organization's messengers and couriers, so I get around a lot. [He was a runner, once. About twenty years ago.]

Sounds like an incredibly dangerous job, too. For all you know, a message could be faked or you're wandering into a trap. It really is like a suicide mission, isn't it?

[ Ava's quiet for some time, processing everything he's saying. It's a lot to take in and she wishes she could say that the idea of androids or robots looking perfectly human is far-fetched. But hey, she's seen and fought a gargoyle, so. ]

How can you tell that someone's a synth? I mean, you don't look like anything except human. How do normal people figure out someone's a synth if they looks like you?

We lose runners more often than we'd like. Promoting someone from tourist to runner is always a mixed feeling. Like "Yay, another person joining the party! ...man, I really hope they survive." But as far as danger goes, runner is safer than being an agent or a heavy. Especially a heavy. Glory--she's our synth heavy--pretty regularly will face off against twenty raiders single-handed. Runners are trained to go around trouble, but heavies face it head-on. Their job is to smash trouble out of the way, and trouble usually smashes back.

[Deacon intertwines the truth and the lies. Honest about the Railroad and synths, and lying about himself. It's good to talk about the Cause with someone who has no learned bias or prejudice. And it's safe to talk about it here; the Institute's reach is long, but it sure as hell doesn't stretch to outer space.]

It's super tough to tell the difference between a human and a synth. Synths have mechanical components deep inside, but if you go digging for them, by the time you find them you've pretty much killed the synth. And if the person turns out to be human, you'd have definitely killed the human.

But synths keep the exact same appearance they were created with, unless they go in and have surgical alterations done. If someone's watching closely for a couple years, that can be a big clue when extra wrinkles totally fail to show up. Oh, and we can't gain or lose weight. I can eat all the Fancy Lads Snack Cakes I want and not put on a pound. It's awesome.

That's why I have my face done regularly. I can let people think I'm just, like, a crazy human with issues and a scalpel addiction, but really it's to cover the fact that I don't age.

And you use heavies to protect your people and the synths you help, I'm guessing? Or they're the first line of defense if the Institute comes knocking.

[ Doesn't mean runners are completely safe and she can just imagine how dangerous it is. Still, for her to voice concern right now might show too much presuming, and she's content to listen about other worlds - especially one that may or may not be her future. ]

So things basically just turn into a witch hunt, right? People accusing each other of being synths if they think something's weird. You have to be pretty paranoid and attentive to look for wrinkles or...anything like that. That's a lot of effort to go through.

[ She...sort of sighs and sounds totally disgusted. ]

That's...so gross, even if you can't gain weight. All that eating.

[ Someone wasn't into too many sweets even when she was a human. ]

Did the doctor here contact you? Will they...need to know what you are so you can get this done?

A witch hunt is a pretty accurate description of it. Anyone acts slightly off and they could get accused of being a synth, even if they aren't one. Sometimes...things get ugly.

[And he's going to leave that topic there and talk about food and surgery instead, and not about synth-hating lynch mobs.]

The snack cakes are two hundred years old and kind of irradiated too. And I still can't get enough of them. It's bad.

The doc said I'm low priority, so it hasn't come up yet. I figure I'll have to tell her before the surgery, but with lots of people here, like, missing limbs, I'm waaaay down on the schedule.

That is even worse. Oh my god, Deacon, at least try not to irradiate your insides or something.

[ Synth or not, that's so gross and unsafe. ]

Do you think you'll be okay until...until she'd be able to look you over? I mean, as far as I know, the Institute's not here. Not unless the Moira suddenly brought people in without us knowing.

Yeah, it should be safe here. It's almost freakishly safe; I'm not used to it. Even if someone from the Institute did show up, they are seriously outnumbered here. And they'd be stuck here, too. They wouldn't be able to drag me back, and if they tried to make me their slave here on the ship I could tell them to fuck off.

I could probably announce it to the whole network "Hey, secret android here, what's up!" Hell, I think half the ship's crew are robots or AI and everybody seems pretty chill with that. But you keep a secret like that, one your life depends on, for such a long time it gets hard to get out of the habits: changing my face, lying, all of it.

Maybe, in retrospect, the Ingress did you a favor by bringing you here. Not saying some asshole from your world might not show up - but still, you have an advantage here. Especially if you know more of what's going on here than they do.

[ A secret your life depends on... Yeah, she knows what he's talking about. Ava goes strangely quiet for a few minutes, before finally saying: ]

I'm not going to tell anyone. Institute or no Institute, it's not going further than me. I promise.

[ He might not realize or understand or even trust that she's going to keep her word. But she knows so, so well the fear of someone finding out the truth. It gnaws at her stomach to know her own truth could be so easily discovered. She knows she can't hide it forever in such close quarters. Still, Deacon's secret is safe with her. ]

Thanks. Better to be cautious, you know?

[And by keeping his secret, Ava passes Deacon's convoluted little test. There's more than one way to pass, but proving oneself capable of being circumspect is one of those ways. It means that if he needs someone to entrust with a true secret, and not just this fantasy he's concocted, she may be someone he can go to, paranoia appeased through the evidence of her discretion.]

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