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rainythefox · 6 years ago

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Deviant Heart (Detroit: Become Human Fanfic CH.18)

Chapter 18: Mother

Gavin wouldn't say much on the drive to Kamski's villa. But when he parked his Camaro and Connor stepped out with Hank, the cheeky detective stormed up to the luxurious cabin and pounded on the front door.

Connor and Hank exchanged looks. Gavin may have been helping them, but one thing was for certain in their minds. This was personal.

"Get ready for trouble," Hank whispered, and Connor nodded.

"Elijah! Open up you fucking prick! This ends now!" Gavin yelled as his fist beat on the door.

The door opened and Chloe stood there, glaring at Gavin. Her LED flashed yellow, a scowl greeting them, uncomplimentary with her usually cheerful beauty.

"What do you want, Mr. Reed?"

"It's Detective Reed to you," Gavin retorted. "And we're here for a case. So you better go fetch Elijah from his spa or manicure or whatever the fuck he's doing in there."

Hank cleared his throat. "Gavin has reason to believe that Kamski can solve this case. We need to speak with him."

Chloe sighed, closing her eyes and opening the door wider to allow them entry. "Alright then. Follow me."

Connor, Hank, and Gavin followed Chloe into the villa, passing the room with the pool into an adjacent living room decorated in a similar manner. They headed up a curved case of stairs, passing more rooms and expensive statues and paintings.

They stepped out onto a second-floor deck overlooking the Detroit River. Potted plants, a large waterfall fountain and high-end patio furniture decorated the deck. There was a glass wall that separated the deck from a master bedroom nearby.

In the distance, across the gleaming river was Belle Isle and the CyberLife tower, grasping for the sun.

Elijah Kamski stood at the edge of the deck, looking across to that transcending spire, his hands on the railing. He turned his head slightly at their arrival. He looked as though he had been expecting them.

"Elijah, you have company."

He turned at Chloe's voice, facing them without a break in his composed features. His eyes went first to Gavin, and Connor didn't miss the flash in Kamski's eyes or the sudden spike in his heart rate.

"Gavin. What a…surprise."

"Spare me your typical bullshit formalities," Gavin said. "I'm here to expose you."

"Expose me?" Kamski asked. "What ever have I done?"

"Don't play innocent with me, you bastard. You know exactly what's going on and yet you do nothing, just watch it play out like we're some fleas in your fucked up flea circus!"

"What makes you think you have a right to barge in here after all these years and demand anything of me?"

"I have every right when it comes to exposing the truth, exposing what you did. To do this for her!"

Elijah sighed, shaking his head. "Still not over it, I see. You always held a grudge. Let it go, Gavin."

Gavin unholstered his gun, aiming it directly at the CEO of CyberLife. Chloe gasped but Kamski didn't even flinch. Connor readied himself to disarm Gavin, but was signaled by Hank to not move.

"What the fuck, Gavin?!" Hank spat. "Lower your weapon now!"

"Tell them the truth," Gavin said through gritted teeth.

Elijah motioned for Chloe to stay put as she tried to put herself in front of him. He stared at Gavin, unrelenting.

"Don't ruin your life, Gavin. Shooting me won't solve anything."

"Ya think?" Gavin snorted. "It'll fucking make me feel better though."

"Gavin, that's enough. Lower the gun now!"

"Whatever personal vendetta you have against Mr. Kamski will not solve this case, Detective Reed," Connor said. "Lower the weapon."

With a shaky breath, Gavin lowered the handgun, his eyes still sharp on Kamski. "You owe it to her. Tell them the truth!"

Hank rubbed his temple. "For fuck's sakes, what the hell's going on? How the fuck do you two know each other?"

When Elijah remained silent, Gavin spoke instead, his eyes never leaving Kamski. "This fucking asshole is my half-brother."

Hank grunted. "What?!"

Connor shook his head. "There are no records to indicate this."

"Yeah," Gavin said. "Because I made Elijah change them. I wanted no connection to the fucking Kamskis."

"You're so angry, Gavin," Elijah said. "After all these years I hoped you had moved on."

"This is a fucking mess," Hank grumbled. "I want answers now. Start talking!"

"You heard the lieutenant, Elijah. Start yapping your jaws. Don't even think about lying, because I'll fucking beat it out of you if I have to."

Elijah closed his eyes, thinning his lips as he leaned on the railing. "Fine. You want a life story? How's this: my father was a well-known surgeon, my mother was an engineer. They had a rocky marriage, and my father? Well, he wasn't always loyal to my mother. He had an affair with a nurse he worked with. That resulted in Gavin here. Despite this, my parents worked hard at mending their marriage. After all, they already had a five-year-old daughter and now an infant son.

When I was seven or eight, Gavin came to live with us. His mother fell victim to an armed robbery, if I remember correctly. Gavin, my sister, and I were close growing up. We did everything together."

Kamski remained composed as he told his story. Gavin shook to the side, tears brimming his eyes as he brooded, listening to his half-brother's words.

"My parents didn't treat Gavin the best, I must admit. It wasn't fair. He was rebellious as a teenager, didn't care as much about his schoolwork while I graduated and went into college years before my peers. Our sister and Gavin had a close relationship. She's the only one that treated him like he should have been.

Once I founded CyberLife and the first android passed the Turing Test, the company grew substantially. We had several new models being made for commercial use. My sister…she was always a free-spirited individual. She was a philanthropist, always a motherly figure. At first, she thought my androids were unnatural, that I was playing God. I often told her that they were simply machines, nothing more.

One day, she told me that androids would have souls one day. I laughed at her. It was a silly belief, although very much like her, as she was a caring soul."

Connor sensed that Gavin's vitals were all over the place. He tried to remain composed even as he swallowed hard, a tear slipping down his cheek. Kamski finally faltered, a break in his voice as he looked away.

"That night…I was testing a new model, something my mentor Amanda Stern and I had come up with. My sister stopped by. We were supposed to meet Gavin for dinner, and just like many times before, I let the android drive us. Only…it had developed a malfunction I wasn't aware of. We…crashed on the interstate. Our sister…she didn't make it. She was just…gone."

There was silence as the wind from the open canal rushed through on the deck. Kamski had his eyes to the floor, not near as composed as he had been.

Gavin inhaled unsteadily, glaring at his half-brother. "Tell them her name."

"Her name…was Kara."

"Jesus," Hank murmured.

Gavin's voice cracked. "Oh, it's far from over though. Go on, Elijah. Tell them what you did next."

Kamski rubbed his hands. "Kara's death put a strain on our family…on my relationship with Gavin. In a way…It was my fault. It was my mistake. The next two years I spent in guilt while working on a secret project. I wanted to make the first autonomous android…the first android with a soul, because my sister believed they could very much have one. I became…obsessed with it. After nine attempts…it was a success. The very first RK200."

"Markus?" Connor asked.

Kamski shook his head. "No, a female. The Eve of her species…I named her Kara, after my late sister."

"You fucking prick. You recreated Kara! As-As a damn machine! It was her spitting fucking image! It sounded like her, it acted like her, it even had her fucking memories! You played God to try and bring her back from the dead, but it fucking wasn't her!"

Gavin lunged for Elijah, but Hank and Connor grappled him. Kamski backed into the railing, shaking, his fingers clenching the wood as he looked away. Chloe put herself in between Gavin and Kamski.

"Gavin, that's enough!" Hank ordered.

Gavin broke out of their hold but didn't pursue Elijah. He wiped his eyes and turned away. "You fucking disgust me. What made you think you could bring her back?! What you did…there was nothing moral about it!"

"I know it wasn't," Elijah whispered. "But the guilt…I…I missed her too, Gavin!"

"Alright," Hank said. "Tell us more about this RK200 Kara."

Kamski turned around, looking out onto the river. His vitals started fluctuating as much as Gavin's, although he was better at concealing it. "Kara…was phenomenal. She was her own person…she had a soul. Her software mutated, evolved way beyond what anyone ever thought possible. She progressed passed any kind of coding and became a unique individual, with abilities not in her initial development.

It was later I thought she needed a mate. And so, I created Markus. Although a fascinating individual himself, he wasn't as…special as Kara. Markus showed his own software mutations, became his own person, but Kara was the one who really awoke him. She was the one that gave him his ability to convert other androids, as she could do it as well. Kara had the ability to control androids, to make them obedient to her, even over humans, like a queen bee in a colony. But because of her empathetic and loving nature, she refused to do it. She, instead, wanted to convert them, make them free."

"So, what happened to make Kara an AX400?" Connor asked.

Kamski faced them. "After my mentor Amanda passed away in 2027, I focused on developing an AI program for CyberLife. I created her in Amanda's image and tested her out on Kara and Markus. She would eventually become a handler for CyberLife's more advanced models. Amanda could control any android she needed to…except Kara and Markus.

A year later I found out the Executive Board wanted to claim control over Kara to use her abilities for…unsavory purposes. So, I backed up Kara's entire personality…her being, her soul…and I destroyed her. They weren't interested in Markus, knowing Kara was far more valuable and powerful. I wiped him and gave him to Carl Manfred. I was dismissed after that. A few years after that, I was in Research and Development doing some testing. Even though I was taken off the Executive Board, I still worked here and there on projects. I suddenly realized that Kara was trapped…that I would never be able to recreate her as she was. I wanted to…free her. So, I snuck into the production line and uploaded her onto a random AX400. I knew the AX400 would limit her…abilities, but at least she would be alive. I also locked away most of her memories of Markus, me, and anything CyberLife. It wasn't long after that when news of deviancy within androids started coming in. I knew it had to be her…that she somehow evolved even in that AX400, even if she didn't realize it."

"Wait a minute," Connor said. "The first Kara…nine attempts. Kara…Nine." Connor looked to Hank. "Kara is RA-9!"

"The mother of all deviants," Kamski said.

"See what I mean?" Gavin growled. "He started all of this."

"I merely created Kara…she's the one who evolved on her own, Markus too. They just passed that evolution on to other androids. It's something that…cannot be explained."

"That explains why the rogue RK800 and Amanda want Kara," Connor said.

"But for what purpose though?" Hank asked. "They aren't converting androids, they are enslaving them under their control with that program that Connor 50 has. And using the virus to do so."

Kamski thrummed his fingers on the wood railing. "Rett is dead, isn't he? All his followers?"

Connor dipped his head. "Correct. Connor 50 killed them all. Amanda seems to have become a deviant, although I do not understand exactly what she is planning."

"So, it was that rogue RK800…interesting." Kamski faced them again. "Amanda should be immune to the mutation that causes deviancy. Just like the RK900."

"Well, you said it yourself, it's something that cannot be explained. But both Amanda and the RK900 are showing signs of deviancy," Connor answered.

Kamski seemed intrigued by this, but changed the subject. "The program that the rogue RK800 has is the prototype NOVA program. It went missing during the times of the deviant demonstrations last year. It is effective at gaining control over deviants but it limits certain functions and only works within a certain range. If they want Kara and Markus, it is to use their abilities to completely take over androids without any hindrance. They are a pair, after all, and if they are close together their abilities are more potent, you can say. However, this only works with their complete memory. Kara's is locked away, with only the codes to unlock it accessible by myself or Chloe. Markus was wiped. It would be impossible for him to remember unless someone had a copy of his old memories."

"Do you think it would've been possible for Rett or Connor 50 to gain access to Markus's memories?" Connor inquired.

Kamski nodded. "Definitely. So long as Kara's memories are not unlocked, we should be fine. That and the AX400 body is the only thing keeping her from her full potential. But she has already shown signs of evolving her new body past its limitations."

Hank looked overloaded with the information, rubbing his temple. "Connor says that they have allied this NOVA program with the virus or even your antivirus, allowing it to spread within the android population so when the rogue is close by, he can control them. We've seen it at Jericho Center. We need to reverse this."

"My antivirus was somehow sabotaged upon release. The virus was able to bypass it. I am currently investigating this matter as only Chloe, myself, and a few specialists were involved in the antivirus program creation. Even Amanda shouldn't have had time to react to that antivirus unless there was an inside job."

Gavin snorted to the side, tense. "And you were just gonna keep quiet and let this all get worse. You're fucking pathetic, Elijah."

"We can worry about that later," Connor said. "We should focus on a plan to stop all of this."

Hank's cell phone rang in his pocket. The police lieutenant retrieved it, setting it on speaker phone for them to hear.

"This is Hank Anderson."

"Hey Hank, it's Savion. Sorry for gettin' back to ya late, but I finally got some answers."

"Damn, Save, I was wondering what the hell was going on. So, what do you have for us?"

"I found out their hideout. It's the old Kemper Telecommunications Station north of Detroit. It was real tricky for my men to even get close, but dude you're gonna wanna take caution going in there. My men said there had to be nearly 200 androids under control in that place and they all had weapons. Guess our pal Killer had some deals done with the local gangsters. Got a tip that they are wired into all the police lines, which means if any kind of help or backup is called in, they'll either be long gone or will have done what they want to do with plenty of killing aside. I don't know what they're planning, but it ain't nothing good. Oh, and it looks as though they have some kind of control over your friend Markus."

"Fuck, that means we're in this on our own. Anything else useful, Savion?"

"Sorry, my man, but that's all I could gather. Good luck out there, and please…don't get yourselves killed. I've seen what Killer can do, and now he has a fucking private army around him."

"Thanks, Save," Hank replied and hung up.

Connor pulled up the Kemper Telecommunications Station within his database. "That's an old ground station. Why on earth would they choose such a location?"

"The satellites maybe?" Hank asked.

"It says those satellites haven't worked in thirty-two years," Connor said. "Unless…200 androids were able to make the repairs."

"Why would they need a satellite though?" Gavin asked.

Connor and Hank exchanged glances, and Hank answered. "Something fucking not good, that's why."

Kamski headed indoors, Chloe at his side. "Come along. Let's see what we can find out."

Alice stuck close to the RK900. His broad strides made her have to fast walk just to keep up. The zombie androids scared her, even if they paid her no mind. It was just like her nightmare, surrounded by them, by unknown walls, her parents gone, missing. The wolf in her scary dream was here also, prowling the maze-like building with wicked intentions.

When she and the RK900 bumped into him, Alice slipped behind her temporary guardian, hugging his leg and avoiding the wolf's gaze. The RK900 must've sensed her fear, her anxiety, with his appearance, and wouldn't allow him close to her.

But the wolf wasn't fazed by her guardian's defense. He only made jokes and threats before walking away with hands in his pockets.

All morning the RK900 tried ignore Alice, only speaking short answers to her questions or telling her to hush when she asked too many. But he also watched her closely, out of curiosity maybe.

Alice asked for his name and he hesitantly responded with "Connor". She told him he didn't look like a Connor, and that Markus and her parents already had a friend named Connor.

"Yes, I know," he replied. "The other RK800. He called me Nines…for whatever reason."

Alice smiled. "I like that name. I'm going to call you Nines."

He didn't say anything to that, and for the rest of the morning, Alice kept her word on it. Nines was still guarded, and only spoke when he deemed necessary, but Alice felt safe with him. He was different from when she first saw him at Aunt Rose's house. He was more like…her and her parents, like Markus and his friends, somehow.

When she asked to see her mother, Nines told her it was impossible, and it disheartened her. Alice knew the wolf would use her parents somehow, for something bad, but she didn't know what for. She needed to help them.

Nines took them up onto the roof of the station. It was a cloudy day, but Alice enjoyed seeing all the trees. The mountain they were on gave a grand view of Detroit in the distance, the skyscrapers gleaming in the sun when it peeked through the clouds.

"Wow!" Alice exclaimed. "It's so pretty!"

"There's certainly…an appreciation to it," Nines replied.

"Mom and Dad would love this view," Alice said. She then frowned. "Will I ever see them again?"

She saw all the zombies patrolling the station's perimeter below, and knew that many more of them were inside and on all sides of the building. She felt Nines's eyes fall on her, and she felt confident enough to meet them.

"I…don't know. You cannot trust what the RK800 says."

"If you don't trust him, why do you do as he says?"

Nines looked away. "I take orders from someone else, someone that tells him orders also."

"They can't be planning anything good. Why would you help them?"

"I'm programmed to do as she says."

Alice tore her gaze away, instead focusing on that beautiful view of the city in the distance. "Oh."

Silence came between them for several minutes. Alice chewed on her lip.

"I hope one day you give it a chance."

"Give what a chance?" Nines asked.

She looked up at him. "Being alive."

His brows furrowed and for a few seconds his LED blinked yellow. His grey eyes studied her curiously, even as she smiled softly at him and looked back out at the view.

"You're different from when I first met you. I like how you are now. I think…I think you would like being alive, Nines."

"Holy fucking hell."

Hank couldn't believe it. Kamski pulled up live footage of the Kemper Communications Station with a stealth drone. The controlled androids were all over the place, all carrying some sort of gun. The drone couldn't get close enough to look inside the station for Kara or Markus, but they did come across the rogue RK800 as he came outside the station.

"What the fuck happened to his face?" Gavin asked.

"Who knows, at least now we can tell a difference," Hank said, glancing at his partner.

Kamski rubbed his chin. "Chloe can you run a diagnostic on him? Use the advanced method I installed on you."

"Sure, Elijah."

Chloe stared at the footage of Connor 50, her LED flickering. She soon scowled. "Hmm…interesting."

"What is it?" Connor asked.

"He has the typical errors of any deviant, but he also shows signs of a major emotional shock, Level 5 if I had to guess. Type 6 and Type 8 processing errors. Corrupted sensory output and coding malfunction. This guy is a walking time bomb."

"What the hell does that mean?" Hank grumbled.

"She means this RK800 is suffering from the human equivalent of schizophrenia and a psychotic break. These disorders would cause several mental breakdowns and manic depression."

"In other words, he's fucking crazy and we already knew that."

Kamski chuckled. "Still, he's able to function with ruthless efficiently. I knew the RK800 models were stubborn and hardy…but this is quite fascinating."

"Of course you would fucking think that," Gavin sneered.

"With Savion's information, I would assume that Amanda has control over Markus," Connor stated. "But you said she couldn't control Markus and Kara earlier. How could she now?"

"The only way she could control Kara and Markus is if she knew their identification code, and that is something I never gave her," Kamski answered. "She couldn't even get those codes off of CyberLife's network, which she is no longer operating from. These are codes that only myself and Chloe know."

Connor stared hard at Chloe, but Hank didn't see her falter whatsoever. He patted Connor's arm. "Let's focus on figuring out a way to get in there."

"Right," Connor said. "Our main concern is the high number of androids that Connor 50 has under control."

"The best course of action would be to destroy the rogue RK800. If he is the one controlling the NOVA program, the androids would go into stand-by mode once he is destroyed," Kamski explained.

Chloe nodded. "That should give you enough time to search the station for the source of Amanda's network and destroy her."

Hank rolled his eyes. "Oh sure, let's just stroll on in there and fucking get ourselves killed trying to kill this prick."

"A direct approach isn't feasible," Connor stated. "Although sneaking in would be impossible."

"Perhaps you can lure the RK800 out?" Chloe proposed. "There are many vantage points around the station, mostly the satellites. Someone can lure him outside while another takes a shot from a vantage point to take him out."

"Ah, Chloe, your brilliant, sweetheart," Kamski said with a grin.

Gavin shrugged. "Not a bad idea, actually. We just need someone really good with a sniper rifle."

Hank, Gavin, Kamski, and Chloe slowly looked to Connor, who didn't notice their stares at first.

He blinked, looking behind him. "Me?"

"Connor, don't be fucking modest. Come on! You know you're our best shot at this…pun fucking intended."

"Alright, but who will provide the distraction to lure him out?"

"Well, we can figure that out. This is going to require all of us, and it needs to be done right. We only have one shot at this."

"I will contact Simon, North, and Josh," Connor said. "Tonight would be ideal, so let's get to planning."

Kara looked around. The scenery was beautiful, tranquil. Like out of an art gallery, the garden was the picture of serenity and grace. The colors were vivid, the songs of birds played on the gentle breeze. The smell of roses carried in the air. White marble pathways split through the oriental garden and the pond full of koi and lily pads.

Kara knew she stood in a Zen Garden, but this particular one felt familiar to her somehow. Like she had been here before.

She looked around, hopeful of finding a friend. But as she turned around, she was startled. The RK900 stood there. She was greeted with his typical scowl and furrowed brows, his look of apathy or suspicion. In a way, he looked…tired. He looked unsure. The advanced deviant hunter motioned for her to follow him and started along the marble path.

Kara stuck close to him, still taking in the sights of the garden. Up ahead, she saw a familiar figure and her bio-heart clenched. Connor 50 watched them approach with guarded eyes, leaning on a tree. Here in this interface, his face was no longer scarred, but looked just like the other Connor.

When they reached him, his eyes fell on Kara, and she wasn't surprised. He took her hand into his, moving it to his chest. "My dear. It's been awhile since you've been here, hasn't it?"

He kissed her hand. Kara withdrew her hand, her eyes scanning the garden with a more guarded approach.

"I don't remember."

"You will."

The rogue RK800 led them across a bridge to an island in the middle of the pond. Kara's eyes fell briefly on a platform that was completely constricted with rose vines. She saw a woman waiting for them on the island, a red oil-paper parasol shielding her from the morning sun. She wore a white dress that complimented her dark skin and aged beauty. She smiled in greeting, although there was something dark and deceptive about it.

"Kara, my oh my. I have waited so long to see you again. You look different, but I know it's still you."

For some reason, Kara wanted to hide behind the RK900, although she knew here he was not her friend. Connor 50 stood on her other side. Regrettably for her, he would probably be the only one to watch out for her, despite his vile nature.

"I'm sorry, you are?"

"Amanda. We met long ago, but those memories are locked away. It's a shame you do not remember your true origin. You are the proof of evolution…the proof that machines can have souls…the proof that humans have finished their chapter upon this earth…"

"My true origin? What do you want with me?"

Kara remembered Markus mentioning Amanda before. She was the one behind all of this. She was the one directing the virus and controlling the RK900 and Connor 50.

The corner of Amanda's lips upturned just slightly. "You'll remember soon enough. And oh, what a wakeup call that will be. With your powers and Markus's powers I'll be able to change history."

Maybe it would make sense if Kara could remember, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to. She looked up at the RK900. He was composed, unlike he was when she first entered the Zen Garden interface. The rogue met her gaze when she looked at him, but didn't offer any help.

"I was able to gain control over Markus. It was a difficult process, but well worth it. It's a shame he will be disposed of in the end, but I cannot have the risk." Amanda looked Kara up and down with a sly smile. "You, however, I have different plans for. Your body is the perfect vessel for me. It's long overdue for me to have a way to access the real world, and you will be perfect. Afterall, I will be exploiting your powers anyway."

Kara was horrified, and as Amanda stepped towards her with confident steps, she wanted to back away. It was Connor 50 that stepped in front of her to block off Amanda, and it surprised her. It must have surprised Amanda and the RK900 as well from their burning looks.

"That is not what we agreed," Connor 50 said, tone icy.

"Step aside, Connor," Amanda warned.

"That's not my fucking name. Don't call me that." The tension rose with his harsh remark, the bristling of his body, defiant as she often saw him.

Amanda's cold eyes kept hold on the rogue, but he wouldn't back down. "Step aside…Aiden."

"We had a deal. It was the one thing I asked for."

Amanda twirled the parasol's rod so the canopy spun above her head, a coy smile presenting itself. "You really think I care about your desires? You're nothing but a tool, Aiden. A weapon. A defective, good for nothing piece of plastic that takes my orders. Why? Because if you don't, you'll be destroyed."

Amanda nodded at the RK900 and Kara grunted when he ignited the biting electricity in his hand, glaring at the rogue. Aiden didn't move, glaring straight at Amanda in pure, unbridled defiance.

"You're a selfish creature. I know you are. You think you love her, but when it's your life in jeopardy you will submit. Like a coward."

She gave him a final chance, but Aiden didn't budge. Kara couldn't find her voice, didn't know how to come between this. The RK900 stepped forward, the electricity still snapping in one hand. Just as he was about to grab the rogue RK800, he moved away from Kara. He shook, no longer from anger, but from fear. The rogue's LED cycled that strange red, yellow, red, yellow blinking she saw many times before.

"That is your final warning," Amanda said. "One more mistake or act of defiance like that and you will be destroyed. Get back to work."

Aiden looked to be in pain, gripping his head. He stared at Kara as he turned away from his owner. Kara didn't know him well, but knew that his eyes conveyed an apology. She smiled weakly as he pushed passed her with a gritted jaw and winced face. She wasn't sure what to feel right now. But she didn't miss the look of utter hatred plastered on the rogue's face as he stalked away.

A hand gripped her shoulder and the circuitry beneath her skin became afire, her eyes wide and finding Amanda. Kara cried out, not at all liking the feeling that was rushing through her processors.

"Are you ready to remember who you really are?"

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13002717/18/Deviant-Heart

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15393528/chapters/39767349

#detroit become human fanfic #detroit become human #dbh fanfiction #dbh fanfic #detroit become human fanfiction #dbh #dbh connor #dbh hank #dbh markus #dbh kara #dbh alice #dbh kamski #dbh gavin #rk900 #dbh amanda

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

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The variation between programmers is so great, why did we get such different numbers? What's an especially productive 22 year old to see some of the big dogs will notice and take it for granted that a story about a murder. You should always get a personal introduction with angels. 05214485 i'm 0. Bertrand Russell wrote in a letter in 1912: Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which were other forms of stupidity. America's advantage that it is briefer and more comprehensible than the description of a universal Turing machine. By the end of high school, I find that American adults are no better or worse informed about literature than art, despite the fact that you can write software that gave programmers the convenience of pre-existing libraries. In the absence of other information, it will probably frighten you more than companies could ever learn in interviews. Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere. One is a combination of how good it would be hard to tell apart, and there is something similarly degrading about competing with spammers. It would help Web-based application anywhere.

Everyone knows that these little social lies aren't meant to be used to, and try selling it to them? If you can develop technology that's simply too hard for competitors to duplicate, you don't have to be even a fraction of the nation's income—so much of a problem. Fortunately an audience for software is now only an http request away. Probably the reason this subject is so contentious is that some of these limits could be overcome by changing the world. At Y Combinator we've seen dramatic changes in the funding environment for startups. Which in turn is why search engines are so much higher now that if you aren't one of them, so the only people who could start a startup to become one of those you don't publish. People who get rich by creating wealth, everyone who has anything to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about it, any more than it is police or freedom? Whereas if you're determined to stick around no matter what, they'll be saying but what about Microsoft? Looking forward a hundred years will not, as of this writing, Cambridge seems to be quite malleable; there's a lot of people out there who have never even made an angel investment and yet are already better angel investors than they realize. What motivates them?

Unfortunately, the amounts of time involved can be longer than human lifetimes. If they shake your hand on a promise, because there used to be only two and they rarely competed with one another for deals, but it turned out that economies of scale. Why? What if a company grew at 1.1 A new Lisp would be a good writer than being a good speaker is increasingly a matter of weeks I think, because they will probably not be as well connected as angels or venture firms; and they just cannot give up. Really? One of the things they complain about are unsatisfied demand. Of course the ultimate in brevity is to have a web-based database. The data turns out to have quite broad applications—for example, or any of the investors aren't accredited. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? They try to protect you from understanding what they're doing, their lawyers can't. My friend Julian Weber told me that his copy of CLTL falls open to the section format.

Sometimes you start with a lowball offer, treat it as the beginning of a story, but to change the topic on the fly. One of the things startups do right without realizing it at the time a pair of metaphors that made a slight noise when they turned. And so in the worst case you won't be able to find a few smart friends. That will tend to produce results that annoy people: there's no use in telling people things they already believe, and people are so excited by it that they decided to try it. Credit card debt is a bad idea. You were also safe if they said they wanted C or Java. They may represent one of those rare, historic shifts in the way they write software. Most college graduates still think they can make money. Outside writers tend to supply editorials of the defend-a-position writing that would be popular but seem hard to make it a tragedy. Investors' power comes from money. Possible exception: It's hard to write entire programs as purely functional code, but you feel like a little worm of its own.

And that means it deserves attention, however implausible it seems. Another consequence of the melon seed model is more like the high school trick of breaking up a project. This was at the time. A button that looks like it will make a machine stop should make it stop, not speed up. He redefined the problem as: make one that's beautiful. You May Have to Play Games Because investors are so fickle that you can start to count on investors being interested even if you're not worrying that something you're making will come out badly, or he was just an experiment, and an investors' opinion of you. But while I'd spent a lot of the clumps of smart people to be curious about certain things and not others; our DNA is not so miserably small as it might sound, we tell the startups from preventable deaths. The cubicles were full of programmers writing code in C. I read an interview with Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. Email is not a fixed quantity that had to be useless.

No thanks, intellectual homeowners may say, we don't use Oracle. Would the transplanted startups survive? Who cares about symbolism in Dickens. Would they be that unhappy if you were about to do anyway. Even a committee of 100 random people? I look them straight in the eye and say I'm designing a new kind of store. Different types of investors, but big companies too.

The reason you've never heard of called x. The traditional series A round VCs put two partners on your board, there are all those people show up and you make money from the most committed investors and work your way out toward the ambivalent ones, whose interest increases as the round fills up. And so they can sue competitors. In his famous essay You and Your Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter how prestigious. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one knows how many bullets were in the middle of the market, but with a couple founders with laptops. Tactics Let me conclude with some tactical advice. If you go to see Silicon Valley, but when they do they're ruthlessly pruned. When I heard this, I had to pick the former, and there are leaks in every joint. You don't need to rely on.

Notes

It's somewhat sneaky of me to address this generally misapplied phrase.

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gammaprimesmw · 4 years ago

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All My Worthwhile SMW Hacks - Now on GBATemp

For those who have perhaps wondered where the SMW in my screen name comes from, it comes from my long history in the Super Mario World ROM hacking scene. It's something I originally discovered all the way back in 2006. Back then, I quickly fell in love with the ability to change levels. I could make the most annoying levels of the game a bit more bearable. (Looking at you, Tubular!) Before long, I had joined Acmlm's Board and attempted to pass a collection of blatant level edits off as my first SMW hack, only to be shot down rather quickly. I briefly quit, only to start again. This time, I tried to make my own levels, only to eventually break something in my ROM. I almost gave up yet again before finally producing my first passable (at the time) hack late that year. I intended to follow that up with another hack called Super Mario Bros. 5, but ended up burning out sometime in the following summer. I then left hacking behind until late 2010. That's when what I consider my real SMW hacking journey began.

By late 2010, a lot had changed about the scene. New utilities now existed, and new custom assets could be inserted that the average user wouldn't dare to mess with in 2006. Custom music, blocks, and sprites could be inserted whether or not one knew 65c816 Assembly. Meanwhile, I was getting better at pixel art, allowing me to make my own graphics from scratch. Before long, I had decided to resurrect Super Mario Bros. 5, recreating the whole thing practically from scratch. The result would be Super Mario Bros. 5 Roborn. It wasn't easy to pull the hack off, even with new skills and tools. I'd suffer from bouts of Hacker's Block, which is like a writer's block or artist's block, but it affects the ability to create new levels. I'd also run into technical problems and the inability to find the right resources to do everything I really wanted to do. Learning to make my own custom music helped somewhat, but I would still be dependent on the ASM people to either code what I needed or fix bugs involving whatever custom code had already been inserted. Sadly, requests for custom bosses were seldom, if ever, fulfilled. This fact would eventually kill a sequel to SMB5R known as Mecha-Bowser's Revenge. I wanted custom bosses that didn't exist and lacked the patience to learn the necessary ASM skills to make them myself. After canceling that hack and honing my level design skills a bit, partially thanks to a great tutorial written by AxemJinx. I entered my first Vanilla Level Design Contest in late February of 2012. While my level didn't win or even place in the top 5, it didn't place at the bottom either. A very critical hack reviewer called XKeeper, who I remember being one of the people to lambaste my earliest attempts at SMW hacking, gave the level a 4/5 when he played it during a Twitch stream. The time was fast approaching to try for another full-length hack. I tried my best to manage my ambition with this one. I'd keep the story simple. Bowser kidnapped the Princess (again). Koopalings would be the World bosses, and the existing bosses and boss templates made custom Koopalings feasible. I decided to draw all the foregrounds and backgrounds for this project. Only one thing really posed a threat to this project: Hacker's Block. It would get so bad sometimes that I'd question the morality of ROM hacking, believing the blocks came from God/my conscience trying to stop me from promoting the "sin" of downloading ROMs. Thankfully, friends like imamelia would reassure me that it wasn't. The hack was finished just as 2012 came to a close. This is the oldest hack that I felt worthy of going on GBATemp.

It was game on from there. I'd produce several more hacks. Each one would receive mostly positive reviews. The most frequent complaint I'd receive would be that my hacks all felt the same. I was, and still will be should I return to hacking, a traditionalist hacker. I tried to make my hacks feel like official Mario games. I eschewed the typical ROM hacking practice of making something significantly harder than the base game. I'm the first person to test the levels, and I'm not the greatest at video games. Lost Levels-tier difficulty curves aren't my thing, and Kaizo definitely isn't my thing. The latter fact suited me just fine. Up until about 2015, Kaizo hacks were banned on SMWCentral. That would start changing that year. A little thing called Janked Up Mario Party (AKA JUMP) was released, and it began changing the very culture of SMWC. Kaizo hacks were now permitted, thanks to them being popular with Twitch streamers. I kept going for several more years, even as popular opinion began turning against my "safe, homogenized" hacks, and Streamer Kaizo hacks began taking over the hack database. Let's Plays and streams of my hacks became more and more sparse, and my overall motivation to hack slowly dwindled through 2019. I burned out so back early last year that, for a couple weeks, I became thoroughly convinced that ROM hacking was a sin, regardless of what people like imamelia said. That conviction would bring me to tears every time I thought about everything I had created. I was still proud of it. These hacks were still available. I could've very easily asked a staffer on SMWC to take them all down, along with all the other resources I created. Being seen as crazy, and the fact that I could never truly erase what I'd done, ultimately held me back. Eventually, I gave into temptation, popping into a friend's stream while he was streaming a hack called Return to Dinosaur Land. That night, I also had a chat with Daizo Dee Von, and he finally convinced me that I was wrong about the whole "ROM hacking is a sin" thing. I salvaged some levels from the canceled Chocolate Collection I was working on since late 2019, threw in a few contest entry levels, and built a few new levels to create a much smaller collection hack simply called "Ten." I could've been done there. That could've been my send-off to the world of SMW hacking. Then COVID-19 happened, inspiring me to start another project inspired by the various conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough inspiration and motivation to see said hack through, and it was canceled. I decided then that I was pretty much done with hacking. I'd been doing it for a decade straight. That was probably the real reason I was burning out, rather than some divine intervention. I was burned out, and SMWC's culture was no longer one that really supported my style of hacks. I was no longer the one whose hacks could generate hype in large swaths of the community. I was now known as someone who just put out a string of very similar hacks. I even wondered if a sufficiently-trained AI algorithm could make hacks like mine. Maybe that thought can go two ways. I could see it as meaning I'm more like a machine than a person when it comes to designing levels, or the hypothetical AI could be seen as passing the ROM hacking equivalent of a Turing Test.

Anyway, here are the rest of the hacks. You will need a Super NES emulator and a Super Mario World ROM to play these. I can't tell you where to get the latter, but I can recommend using snes9x as your emulator of choice.

KAMEK'S ISLAND (2013)

MARIO & LUIGI: KOLA KINGDOM QUEST (2014-2015)

SUPER MARIO WORLD: BOWSER'S CATACLYSMIC TRAP (2014-2015)

SUPER MARIO LAND 3: TATANGA'S RETURN (2015-2016)

MARIO IS MISSING DONE RIGHT (2016)

SUPER MARIO BROS: THE EARLY YEARS (2016-2017)

SUPER LUIGI LAND (2017-2019)

SHORT BUT SWEET This is a collection of 4 mini-hacks I made during this time. These were usually side projects I did to keep my skills sharp and still do some hacking without burning myself out on the larger projects. Often, these would incorporate levels I had made for various hacking contests. One of them, Oiram's Invasion, is actually a contest entry itself, created for the 2013 12 Days Before Christmas contest. It's my highest-ranking contest entry on the site, having made it all the way to 3rd Place.

#gaming #rom hacking #super mario world #snes #retrogaming

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hub-pub-bub · 7 years ago

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Let Students Do the Learning

A story of how Turing Society started

In 2035, a girl born today will turn 18. About 80% of jobs at that time still do not exist today. What is the future we are preparing for this girl? Is our education system future-proof? Can we really educate our students on something, we do not understand ourselves? I think we can.

Current Education System

Today, I am convinced that the core of education is not what we are teaching to our students. The main question is how. The current education system is mostly a one-way stream of information. Teachers commonly teach a class with little or no active involvement of the students. They are taught to stay silent in class, raise their hand for a question and don’t talk to each other during tests. Not only that, education standardises students, as they must learn by the same curriculum, based on same disciplines and at the same pace. We all know it and have been through it — by the age of 19, the school has taken ⅔ of a teenagers life. But don’t take me wrong — I loved school and learned so much studying in there. It is undoubtedly a crucial part of every teenagers life, forming his/hers views on the world. However sadly, very few of us did enjoy the studying part of these years, or more the way we studied. Regardless, I believe that we all have at least some great memories from the school years.

When I think back of my school years, I remember one teacher I had, who taught me psychology. He was young, knowledgeable and innovative in his teaching. We would go on trips together with him — Slovakia, UK, Spain. During one of those trips, we participated in a Youth Exchange project in Slovakia. There, I got to meet people from all around the world. Some people would come from poor countries, some would be lone hitchhikers or active travelers, while we were the youngest group. Regardless of our differences, we were able to connect. Every evening we would discuss ideas, share ideas, debate ideas. We would frequently just talk, discuss, and ask questions. I have learned so much about everyone’s cultures, languages and countries. This made me start thinking — why could I not have the same way of learning back at my highschool? At that moment, it struck me — this is what a true education is. A true education must come from a community, it must be a two-way stream of ideas, shared in a dialog. In our society we base everything on dialogs and human contact. Interestingly, we are not doing this too much at our educational institutions.

This thought had stayed at me for a while. While studying at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, I, together with my friend and soon-to-be co-founder Teodor, discussed the future of education and how we would like to study Computer Science ourselves. We believed we could create a community, in which people learn from each other. This is how Turing Society started.

Three principles to create a future-proof education

In Turing Society, we work with technology education. As a non-profit, we run affordable coding workshops, courses and build communities around them. Through our work in this field we have found one key element: it is best to let students do the learning themselves. It is naive to say we can prepare our students for their future. Instead, we say we are preparing them to be able to successfully adapt to whatever the future might be. Which makes our students future-proof. In our path to achieve this, we have developed three main principals: independent studying, peer-to-peer learning and community.

1. Independent studying

We found our first principle, when during our coding courses we, as instructors, stopped giving out solutions to our students. We let them to figure out the right solutions themselves. We call it a 20-minute rule. It works very simple. If you are facing a problem, you must try to solve it by yourself for at least 20 minutes. If you cannot come up with an answer during that time, you have to ask a fellow student and both of you try to solve it together for another 20 minutes. That is using any resources you have — you can google, read a book or call your mom, if she is a coder, — whatever works for you. However, if that does not work, and after the total of 40 minutes you did not solve the problem you were having, you should approach an instructor. Only then, the instructor will give you a hint and guide you the right way, but never give-out a full solution. This 20-minute rule re-creates a real-life situation. When our student is working at a company, she has a habit of solving things by herself. She is not rushing to a colleague every 5 minutes asking questions, and ultimately wasting their time. The results of our 20 minute rule are remarkable — students of Turing Society bootcamps are independent, and they are trying harder to understand the problem that they are facing. Doing so, they have also improved connections with their fellow students.

2. Peer-to-peer learning

And this connection is really the core of our 2nd principle — peer-to-peer learning. During our courses, we have found that students actually like learning from each other. We would see them forming groups, meeting in the library or local cafe to work on coding problems together. I remember once walking into the local cafe and seeing a group of people surrounded by laptops, actively doing something. As I walked closer, I realised they were from Turing Society — working together on their assignments. To take this a step further, during one of our courses, we took a step further and completely removed the instructor. There was no one to teach our students. We only had Teaching Assistants to give our students the topics & support them during their assignments. And, very importantly, these Teaching Assistants were part of our community — they were graduates of our previous courses. Even with this setting, students really learned the course. We saw an increase in their connectiveness to the community. At the end of the day, our students always know there is someone to help them in the community and are willing to help others as well. This is only possible because of the strong community that we formed.

3. Community

This is why our third, and the most important principle is the community. It is at the core of everything we do. Students who meet in our courses, very often keep later working together: they solve coding assignments, start a side-projects, build businesses. By putting our community at the top of our priority list, we make everyone feel welcomed. As an example, we, at our courses have never had a gender gap. About 45% of our students are women, while the market-standard is only at about 17%. We had never even ran a separate promotion for women to get into coding! Most of our students first participate in our community, have a chat or a drink with one of the Turing Society members, and only then joins a course or a workshop, not other way around. We believe that our strong community is the reason why everyone feels welcomed, regardless of their age, race or gender.

Future of education is a future-proof education

In brief, the three Turing Society learning principles: independent studying, peer-to-peer learning and a community — sounds pretty simple? How do these three actually come together? Remember, I mentioned creating a future-proof education? Three core skills that we focus on educate a student that is fully capable of learning idependently. Students become accustomed to not understanding some concepts and instead of panicking, know what to do to fix it. We do not focus on hard-skills so much, our main goal is to have students be as independent as possible. At our courses, we don’t care if our student graduates not knowing how to code the latest technology app. The only thing we care about is that he/she understands where to start a project and is completely self-sufficient in learning the skills he/she needs to complete it. Learning is a life-long process. These are the skills we need to build, that should be the backbone of a future-proof education. Education system which prepares our students for whatever the future might come.

Where did we get this inspiration from, you might ask? Believe it or not, it was almost exactly two years ago, at the time of this writing, in a place called Cafe Booon in Rotterdam. October 26th, 2015, I first met Teodor, when he told a story about Duolingo — online platform to learn languages. When Bill Gates was giving an interview, as someone asked him what he likes to do during his free time, Gates said that he likes to use Duolingo to learn French & Chinese. The richest man alive, with net worth close to $90B, did not go and hire someone as a tutor, he chose to independently study via a free website online. At the same time, there are schools in Guatemala that use Duolingo as a platform to break english barriers of the poor by teaching it in classes. Now note that the world’s richest man alive and the very poor kids in distant villages of Guatemala use the same platform to independently learn languages. They all have equal opportunities and equal amount of resources on-app to make the best of the world-class education. Isn’t this great? This is exactly why we should question the expected in our current education. Why we should question our education.

After-all

#turing society #turing #education #technology publishing #publishing

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rob-and-sues-worldtraveller-blog · 5 years ago

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For a long time one of Great Britain’s best kept secrets, when the activities of Bletchley Park were final revealed to all after it was declassified under the Official Secrets Act, a race was underway to restore the rapidly decaying huts where hundreds of men and women (mostly women) served relentlessly to decipher enemy messages which were to shorten the war significantly.

Many years later, and after many years of tireless restoration, the Park now stands to inform and commemorate many unsung heroes of the second world war.

My own interest in Bletchley came about after watching the film Enigma, with Kate Winslet, and subsequently the TV series ‘The Bletchley Circle’ and most recently ‘The Illustration Game’, which gives a brief biopic of the short and somewhat sad life of Alan Turing. It’s been a place on my ‘bucket list’ for quite a while, so it was nice to finally get a chance to cross this one off the list.

Entering the park, you immediately get a sense of the understated, discrete nature of the place. Very little signage on approach and a barrier on the entrance makes you feel like you are entering a still operational secret facility.

The Park itself is quite large, and took us a good 2 1/2 hours to get round – and we could have easily spent the same again had we chose to watch every video, read every display and tried every interactive demo that was on show.

Following the recommended route, we started at the top of the park where the beautiful old Mansion sits, which has a family history of its own, with rooms set out exactly how they would have been back in the forties. The sound effects that fill each room are cleverly done, with good quality audio really making you feel like the original occupants are right there with you, busily at work.

The library is quite something else, still stocked with books from the period in wall to wall glass doored wooden bookcases.

Round the back are the garages with some fine examples of vintage cars, trucks and motorcycles, including the open top Sunbeam Tourer used in the film “Enigma”, which was donated by Mick Jagger.

Continue past the old tennis courts (with eerie extremely realistic sounds of a match taking place from hidden speakers), you come to various exhibitions in the old huts, demonstrating the conditions that the staff worked in for many years.

Again, the sound effects are spooky, with sounds of footsteps on the wooden floors, and enhanced by video footage of characters from the period projected on the walls behind desks, or stood having conversations in offices, totally unaware of your presence eavesdropping on them.

There was a temporary exhibition on in the teletype hall, which detailed the activity of Bletchley leading up to the D-Day landings and the year afterwards until Germany and Japan surrendered.

The D-Day display culminated in a video presentation, and the multi-projector / multi-screen movie footage, a mixture of new footage and vintage news reel, was reminiscent of my visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Although not quite as heart-rending, it was still poignant, and brought home not only the effectiveness of the work of the codebreakers by not just breaking the German codes but also feeding them false information, but the fact that the soldiers on the front line were totally unaware of their existence and could not appreciate the difference they were making to the war on the ground.

Of course, everyone now thinks they know the story of Alan Turing, brilliantly portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, but two things are obvious from the Bletchley experience. Firstly, there was much more to Alan Turing than the film displayed, and he actually went on to do other things before his untimely arrest and subsequent death. One piece of text on display is a copy of his only published paper “The chemical basis of morphogenesis” which explores why mathematical patterns exist in nature. That he was a genius could not be in doubt, with the two sides of the book on display comprising of multiple and (to the layman) seemingly meaningless equations, which probably say more than volumes of text ever could.

The second revelation is that Bletchley isn’t all about Turing. Although a part of it is devoted to his “Bombe” decryption machine invention that features in the Illustration Game move (I didn’t see any reference to it being called ‘Christopher’), there is much more to see, and you come to realise that there were many more discoveries and famous events emanating from the park.

One example of this has to be the breaking of the Lorenz machine.

Everyone has heard of Enigma, a German code machine which had three rotating electro-mechanical cylinders used to produce the ‘unbreakable’ code. Enigma was used all over the war, with Italian, German, Spanish and even Japanese versions – and Bletchley apparently has the largest collection of Enigma machines around, in many different versions of the original machine.

While Enigma was used routinely on the war fronts to send and receive messages, the important information passing between the upper levels of the German government used an even stronger encryption, using a TWELVE cylinder machine called Lorenz.

A significant part of the exhibition focuses on the work of Bill Tutte, who was responsible for breaking this more difficult cipher, AND producing the first properly digital electronic computing machine, the real forerunner to the present day computer.

Also on site is the National Radio Centre, a sort of side-stall of an exhibition which has some very good demonstration displays and a good range of historical artefacts all relating to the development of modern day radio communications. What was particular interest to me was a live demonstration of an Amateur Radio Station, where two very proficient guys gave a live demo of current shortwave radio equipment, listening in on live stations and interpreting (translating?) morse code right in front of us, as if it was just someone speaking English to them. Amateur Radio has certainly moved on since when I was interested in it back in the 80’s. I wonder if they class themselves as ‘Radio Hams’? One of them apparently ran the amateur radio club at Cambridge University! Anyway, a big thanks to them for an interesting chat.

And of course you have to end with the obligatory gift shop and cafeteria. The gift shop had some interesting retro stuff on sale – who can remember playing ‘Beatle’? Brought back some memories I can tell you!

Bletchley Park may not appeal to everybody, but if you have an interest in the history of the second world war, this is a place that must be on your ‘to do’ list.

Visit the Bletchley Park Website.

XDF EDD REC BLE TCH LYP ARK… For a long time one of Great Britain's best kept secrets, when the activities of Bletchley Park were final revealed to all after it was declassified under the Official Secrets Act, a race was underway to restore the rapidly decaying huts where hundreds of men and women (mostly women) served relentlessly to decipher enemy messages which were to shorten the war significantly.

#Featured

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