App for TLV
User Name/Nick: Meredith
User LJ: Shiplizard
AIM/IM: Tejarik (AIM)/Shiplizard (Gtalk)
Email: Shiplizard at gmail dot com
Other Characters: N/A
Character Name: Vasilia Aliena
Series: Asimov's 'Caves of Steel' series (Caves of Steel through Robots and Empire)
Age: 250; the middle of her useful lifespan. (A combination of carefully selected genetics, sterile living, and plastic surgery conspire to leave her looking in her mid-twenties/early thirties)
From When? The end of Robots and Empire, some weeks after having her memory tampered with by R. Giskard (and the death of R. Giskard).
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Rabdily xenophobic, hostile, and readily commits scientific and political espionage in her own self interests. While she has a strong taboo against violently committing harm-- that's barbaric and disgusting-- she'll readily stand by and allow people to die, or assist those who plan to turn the Earth into one large nuclear reactor. In short: Murder? tacky. Slow genocide? Just good sense.
Abilities/Powers: No superhuman powers. Extended life expectancy in her natural environment. Genius roboticist and mathematician.
Personality: Vasilia is a misanthrope of the first water, her hatred for the rest of human race as hard
and finely shaped as diamond. She loathes humanity in general, Earthers specifically. Fellow Spacers she can interact on decent terms with, but Earthers and their spacefaring offspring, Colonists, are savages, infectious and mildly amusing at best. This distrust is traditional for Spacers, but filtered through Vasilia's innate paranoia it becomes nearly religious. And not even her fellow spacers are spared; she trusts no-one and regards most people she meet as potentially hostile.
She correctly identifies much of her social disfunction stemming from her treatment- well intended but misguided-- at the hands of her father, Han Fastolfe. Auroran society has no context for familial bonds; in trying to raise her in the romantic Earth tradition, he as a father and she as his daughter, he instilled an identity dissonance in her that distanced her from him and from Auroran society both. It came to a head when she reached puberty, and the fallout left her feeling rejected by her father figure. She loathed him when he was alive and she does not mourn his recent death
Unlike most Aurorans, she is not casually sexual. She dislikes intimate contact with people she does not care for (so far, everyone) and would-- in another world-- probably identify as asexual/homoromantic and not really care either way. In this world, feeling under constant assault by the idea of 'correct' female Spacer behavior, she identifies as the only non-hormonally-stupified being on the planet and much prefers the company of obedient, undemanding, logical robots.
The only being she had anything like affection for was the robot Giskard, her companion when she was a child. His recent death she mourns extremely, to the point of privately referring to it as 'death' instead of 'roblock' or 'mental freeze out' as it is culturally appropriate to call the permanent deactivation of a mere robot.
History:
Vasilia is a Spacer-- specifically an Auroran. Aurora was the first planet established and teraformed more than fifteen centuries ago, and the unofficial head of the movement that wound up severing ties with an over-populous Earth ten centuries ago. The Spacer movement embraced robotics where Earth rejected them, with the result that Spacer worlds have a low human population-- all screened for potential genetic abnormality before conception and for actual defect before birth-- and a high servant class robot population. (Earthers regard this as an appalling form of Eugenics; Spacers regard them as a bunch of filthy primitives who would breed indiscriminately if there weren't populations laws in place. The average Spacer is as racist and high-minded as any British colonial, differentiated only in that a Spacer doesn't go by your skin color, rather your genetics. For a supposedly scientific people they embrace an astonisthing amount of supersition and hearsay about Earthers.) Spacers embrace robot servants and robotics, safe in the unshakeable knowledge of the Three Laws:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Vasilia was born to genius roboticist Han Fastolfe and his wife at the time, that marriage long since dissolved and Vasilia quite properly having no knowledge of her female parent. Fastolfe is notable for being the inventor of and strongest opponent to the use of humaniform robots-- unthinkably, robots that could mimic humans in society (though they would not withstand medical examination or extreme observation). He was also notable for his romantic attraction to the customs of Earth, mined from old fiction and historical texts. He wanted a child in the Earth sense and decided that unlike the rest of her peers, Vasilia would be raised by a 'father' instead of as a group with specialized teachers. Academically, she neer suffered for his eccentricities-- she was raised adoring math and the study of robotics. Her dearest childhood friend was the robot he designated for her personal use, R. Giskard Reventlov; combination caretaker and guinea pig, Fastolfe would allow her to make certain modifications to Giskard's programming after carefully screening them to be sure that they would not affect Giskard's function. Only one modification she made without his permission-- a set of modifications she found so instinctually appealling that in her young mind she was sure that they couldn't harm her friend. In fact, they produced something like telepathy in Giskard, an ability to sense the emotions and intent of humans and robots around him-- and to affect them.
If her social upbringing had been as tranquil as her academic one, Vasilia would be as well-adjusted a Spacer as ever revolutionized robotics. Unfortunately, Fastolfe tried to instill his take on traditional Earther family values into her without accounting for the cultural and identity crisis that this would create in her living in a society with no concept of family and no incest taboo.
To make a long and painful story short, Vasilia-- young and just of the age when she was expected to take her first steps into sexual experimentation-- propositioned the member of the opposite sex who she felt the most trust and affection for. Fastolfe gave her no context or explanation for his horrified refusal and subsequent distance towards her. She was decades older before she understood the taboos that he had internalized and the (to a Spacer) unnatural parental relationship that he had wanted with her. She had no particular recourse for her self-hatred and the equally intense loathing she felt towards her father-- Spacers having assumed for generations that good genetics and an environment tailored towards human comfort could take the place of psychiatric care.
She has since strived to be an ideal Spacer-- becoming an unusual if not rare female roboticist, and one with the potential to rival Fastolfe, devoting her life to scientific pursuit and not-so-secretly to her own success above her colleauges (another fine Auroran value). She was left in relative peace, visiting Fastolfe's estate only to visit her childhood companion Giskard, until the arrival of Gladia Solaria. Gladia, an immigrant from sister Spacer planet Solaria, was young, and sweet, and lost; she craved the affection and companionship that her own planet had denied her and quickly became the daughter that Fastolf had dreamed of.
Vasilia, used to men who wanted their women to be pliable rather than intelligent, was still hurt. She cooperated with Fastolfe's rival, Kelden Amadiro, to mine the secrets of one of Fastolfe's humaniform robots-- one that he had assigned to naive Gladia, easily distracted by the attention of a suitor who Vasilia had turned down. The two women bore a more than superficial resemblance and Gladia was a far warmer creature; Vasilia's would-be swain was easily turned in her direction.
When Amadiro's interference caused a shutdown in Gladia's humaniform robot (and scandalously, lover), famed detective Elijah Bailey was brought from Earth to turn things upside-down and solve the case. Vasilia's part in the scheme was exposed, to her natural humiliation, and she allied staunchly thereafter with Amadiro and his anti-Earth faction.
Some hundred and fifty years later-- after her father's death (and after, unforgivably, he had given Giskard over into Gladia Solaria's care) - Vasilia remembered the changes she had made to Giskard and correctly deduced that Giskard was genuinely telepathic, and more, that his subtle mental interference in the service of Gladia and at the orders of Fastolfe and Bailey was the unseen force turnin gthe tide against Amadiro's cause, she confronted and attempted to reclaim him. She failed. Giskard knocked her unconscious and wiped what memories of his abilities he could without doing irreparable harm, and fled. She enters play from this point.
Path to Redemption:
Vasilia's path to redemption is paved with respect and ungrudging honesty of someone she can consider a peer. Good luck convincing her you are one; even for a Spacer she's unusually convinced of her comparative excellence. It will be a long slow grind: there's very little that could suddenly 'trigger' her into sudden revelation; people (including her father) have been trying to manipulate her by any handle possible for centuries now. While there are things she loves (Most of them start with r and rhyme with gobotics) she's paranoid enough to construe any offer as a bribe and be unimpressed. Theoretical discussion is going to win her heart and mind a lot faster than signs of affection; she could about enjoy the company of someone she thought wasn't trying to get something from her.
Work in programming and engineering is gratifying for her and if she ever stops quietly wishing that everyone but herself would go die in the proverbial fire she could be a fairly potent force for good. However, the ability to build robots/ the potential to escape could also be used to induce her to commit mass mayhem.
Ways not to win Vasilia's heart include bribery (she'll take it, but hate you), open affection (she won't take it, and she'll hate you), and attempting to force a heart to heart before she's ready. Telepathic interference is Right Out; she's very touchy on the subject.
Sample Journal Entry
There is no magic; only technology significantly advanced.
That said: the difference between Spacer technology and the barge is enormous enough to startle me as badly as any superstitious Earther. The grasp of cloning necessary to create an echo of an individual by the so-called 'death toll' is alarming. The facility with which the memories of the dead individual are integrated with the new one is unthinkable. And even that is more feasible than the idea that-- by fine-tuned manipulation of time/space, individuals can be returned from the dead.
I could be persuaded that the barge was a catatonic delusion, but the length of my stay here argues against it. Dreams are fleeting, images change. Here I can observe and record the flow of time. There is always mental tampering to be considered. But the fact that I consider it at all makes me doubt. For an extended time after my mental episode I was entirely incognizant of the possibility. I rejected it. Only the extreme mental perturbation when news of the scandals reached me could trigger the supressed memories.
He betrayed me. My Giskard! And now he is deactivated-- unable to susatain that foul humaniform's Zeroeth Law. I know that he is responsible for Amadiro's amnesia, his mental incapacity. Me he made forget, but Amadiro-- that notable will likely never trouble the field of robotics again. A robot, then, telepathically, actively, did harm to a human.
Unthinkable.
Nobody but I and perhaps Levular Mandamus suspect what an unspeakable, ascendant creation he was. It can still barely conceptualize it. No infantile horror-holo is as terrifying-- it shakes the foundations of Spacer society. And yet. Amadiro lives, the unwitting cause of this abomination's demise. I am held captive in savage space and Giskard is dead and Amadiro, somewhere on Aurora, lives, to shame us all.
Murderer! I wish Giskard had killed him!
Sample RP: [3-5 paragraphs, 3rd Person POV]
Vasilia was so accustomed to rising early that the chime of the alarm caught her already in the Personal. She barked a command for it to stop, irritated-- it was not an unpleasant sound, but it was not one of her choosing and design. Its unfamiliar tone reminded her that she was a prisoner, subject to alien justice, arbitrary and disgustingly Earthlike. What crimes had she committed to deserve incarceration among-- Earthers. What crimes at all?
She found herself making a hand motion, unconscious-- the subtle flutter of fingers, one of any hundred distinct signals that would have brought her robots to her or set them on some specific task; in this case, to bring her her nose plugs and gloves. That irritated her too; more than two centuries of habit, useful now only to remind her every morning, along with the alarm, how far from civilization she was,
With a faint sound of disgust, she turned from the sink and went to fetch plugs and gloves herself. The array of humanity on the Barge-- humanity and things like human-- was a dismaying mix. Earthers and Settlers of an alternate history, all unclean and swarming with disease. Not one Spacer among them, but then if there ever had been, incautiousnes had probably killed them off-- one unprotected breath might introduce a thousand fatal strains of virus and bacteria. She had no intentions of being incautious. So: in went the clear, unobtrusive nose plugs, one little capsule in each nostril to filter and clean the air she breathed. This plastic gloves, after that, not as elegant as the Spacer design, slightly more visible than was polite. It would have bothered her, she considered, if she cared about being polite to any of these savage prisoners. But not even her habitual grudging courtesy was in evidence here.
She arranged her long blond hair in a tight twist, close to her head; left sweeping loose it too could harbor infection and bring contaminants into her sterile room. It might behoove her to cut it-- she left it long on Aurora to suit the current fashion and avoid the tedious social friction of gossip and speculation. But though the hair itself was nothing to her, the idea of changing her person to capitulate to this place grated. No, it stayed. until the first outbreak of contagious disease, and then damn social convention; her health far outweighed her appearance!
Now armored against her hostile environment, she stepped out of her room, squaring and martialling every centimeter of her slight body, cutting through the hall as if she was a lazor; sure of her destinaton and not bending for such commonplace obstacles as human bodies. Or nonhuman bodies! she thought, giving a wide berth to one of those so-called 'time lords'-- though she could hardly resist a curious look out of the corner of her eye. The different physiognimy and mental structure camouflaged in a homely, humanoid body were equally repellent and fascinating. And the technology he must have at his disposal-- wasted on him, she was sure. Anyone could use a tool given to them-- it was to build and improve it that was respectable.
Her musings had led her into the path of another body-- a human, she thought, one of the Settler types. She recoiled, giving a sneer in return and brushing the area where she'd brushed against him, as if she could sweep the contagion off. There was no letting one's guard down among this mass of felons and unlawful wardens!
Special Notes:
Vasilia has a depressed immune system--the result of thousands of years of breeding in a sterile terraformed environment-- she is uncommonly succeptible to the common cold, the flu, chicken pox, herpes, and other common virri and bacteria. Without treatment said conditions can and will prove fatal.