Private Finished Complex Solutions

SirCatfish

Chaotic Tired
Inactive
Jun 13, 2017
380
Hong Kong, which is not the UK or Canada.
Gender
Male
Pronouns
He/Him
Posting Status
Irregularly
Being autonomous was difficult. In his past life, Jamie had most of his decisions made for him. He had a schedule set to the minute, he ate the same food, dressed in the same clothes, slept and awoke at the same times. But now that he's got his own say in things, it became difficult. He's got a little bedroom and bathroom that was his own, and a schedule that only gave him a few hours of structure, and almost always he has too much spare time than he knows what to do with. This was difficult. He has quite a lot of trouble deciding on things, and he didn't know many people in this place, since he didn't know how to interact very well, either, so there weren't many people who could answer his questions.

However, he had met at least one person who he could ask questions to, questions that sometimes made other people look at him strangely, like about turning on a stove, or ironing clothes, or helping him choose clothes to wear. He knew some things. But he wasn't very good at living a normal life. The one person's name was James Havoc, but he preferred Havoc. Mr. Havoc was nice to him. He answered Jamie's questions, and sometimes helped him choose things, and listened to him without laughing or thinking he was insane, which was nice of Mr.Havoc.

He had asked Mr.Havoc quite a lot of questions. And Mr.Havoc had answered all of them. So Jamie thought it might be nice to ask him a more serious question, this time, because he knew Havoc wouldn't get too mad. He was going to ask Havoc about feelings. Jamie knew what feelings were, or at least he had looked it up on the dictionary and google. But he wanted to ask a real person. Mr. Havoc seemed like a good place to start.

So he was here, waiting in the courtyard for Mr. Havoc to show up. It was early in the morning, but Jamie liked being up early. He liked watching the sun rise. When he spotted Mr. Havoc coming from the building, he waved and smiled, like he was supposed to.

"Good morning, Mr. Havoc!" Jamie called out, then added, "Am I allowed to ask you a serious question today?"

@Romi
 
  • Like
Reactions: Romi

Romi

Secretly a Bird
Administrator
Supporter
Jun 18, 2015
10,109
Gender
Female
Pronouns
She/Her
Posting Status
Irregularly
Havoc wasn't bothered by questions. He didn't see the point in being bothered by questions. If someone didn't know, it was better that they ask and solve the issue, rather than keeping it a secret and watching it blow up in their face. He always asked questions. He always encouraged people to.

He didn't particularly even note that Jamie asked a lot of questions. Someone who asked a lot of questions was much the same as someone who didn't. He didn't judge it negatively, but he didn't judge it positively either. It just was.

He liked Jamie as well as he liked most people. He was friendly. He didn't seem that bothered by Havoc. That was good, right? Or at least as good as Havoc could reasonably expect. Honestly, he had a really poor sense of how much people did or didn't like him. The difference between someone liking him and someone hating him seemed very, very slim. His very best guess was that Jamie liked him, because Jamie seemed to be around him a lot when he didn't necessarily have to be.

That was a good indicator, right?

Havoc nodded to Jamie as he approached him, in no great hurry with little more than paperwork to do for the day.

"Of course," Havoc said, wondering what sort of question would warrant the serious signifier. Was 'explain how to turn on a stove so I don't burn my house down' not a serious enough question? No, it had to be something beyond that. Something... really important.

Which, in Havoc's mind, meant it was probably work related. That was just how Havoc worked.
 

SirCatfish

Chaotic Tired
Inactive
Jun 13, 2017
380
Hong Kong, which is not the UK or Canada.
Gender
Male
Pronouns
He/Him
Posting Status
Irregularly
Mr. Havoc had said he didn’t mind. Which was good. Jamie knew not to ask people too many questions now, and even if they did one thing all the time, sometimes they might not want to do it, and that was important to respect, so now Jamie always asked. And this kind of question is not the usual kind anyways. He was glad Mr. Havoc said yes. If he didn’t, he would probably have to ask the computer again, and have to read a lot of things that didn’take sense, like the last time he googled what feelings were.

“Thank you, Mr Havoc!” Jamie said, and did the thing that people call smiling, which he had been taught to do, and it made him seem less threatening. He didn’t know why he’d seem threatening, but that might be a question for another day. One serious question at a time.

“Well, Mr. Havoc, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Jamie paused to think how he could really structure this. He had considered this before, but now on the spot he was again uncertain. He knew words. He learned about how to use them, at the compound, but he was not very great at coming up with the right ones on the spot. “How... how do normal people have... emotions?”

He paused to watch for any response. Mr. Havoc didn’t walk away, so he continued.

“I noticed that people like talking about their feelings, such as on the internet, and also sometimes when I am able to hear conversations. I have not been able to understand what they were, because it is apparently quite abstract. And you are a normal person, yes? So maybe you can explain?”
 

Romi

Secretly a Bird
Administrator
Supporter
Jun 18, 2015
10,109
Gender
Female
Pronouns
She/Her
Posting Status
Irregularly
Emotions. He was asking Havoc about emotions? Apparently Jamie was even more emotionally stunted than he was, or else he'd probably have realized that Havoc was the absolute worst person possible to ask about anything emotional. Havoc was not 'in tune' with his emotions. Havoc barely had emotions.

Thankfully, he wasn't completely oblivious. He understood the general theory of emotions. He understood the idea.

"For normal people, emotions are the same as breathing. You wouldn't ask someone 'how do you remember to breathe?', because you'd never remember. They're automatic."

Havoc had a sneaking suspicion that the conversation was backward. Jamie was asking him about emotions, assuming that Havoc, a normal enough human, would have them. But really the opposite was probably more true--Jamie seemed to show more signs of some (very confused) emotions than he ever had.

"I am not a normal person, and have shallow emotional responses. I understand how they are supposed to work in general terms because I did research to attempt to determine what the usual process is, but I do not experience emotions the way most people do."

He'd had a lot of introspection, a lot of puzzling things out to try and figure out what was going on. Not because he cared--he still didn't, more or less--but because he'd wondered if it would impair him to not know.

"Do you have things you enjoy?"
 

SirCatfish

Chaotic Tired
Inactive
Jun 13, 2017
380
Hong Kong, which is not the UK or Canada.
Gender
Male
Pronouns
He/Him
Posting Status
Irregularly
Needing to breathe. That was right. He didn’t have to think about breathing unless if he’s really concentrating. Automatic. So he supposed that’s how normal people had their emotions. Well, he had a bit of normal in him. So maybe he’s been having emotions too? He wasn’t very sure. But there was also a provlem with that ability. He needed to breathe so he didn’t die. That was something important. So does that mean that normal people had to breathe, too?

“You’re not normal?” Jamie asked. Mr. Havoc had always been nice to him. It had never occurred to Jamie that Mr Havoc would be something other than normal. But again, Jamie wasn’t very sure what normal really meant. So he might have to ask that, too. “Okay. I have not been around long enough to know what’s normal really is.”

Mr. Havoc had also done research on emotions. That was nice. At least it explained why there were already many searches about feelings on google, enough so it’s automatically suggested to him. People had to look for it, too.

When Mr. Havoc asked him what he liked, he had to really pause and think. He wasn’t very used to liking things, or being allowed to choose things. He still had a hard time sometimes, because he was allowed to buy things that he wanted, or decide on his clothes. And when there is no scheduled meals, so sometimes he would ignore eating. But he’d had enough time to like a few things.

“Strawberries. I like those. And also puzzles, wooden puzzles but also sudoku and that kind. And maths, I like maths, I’m good at it.” Jamie said, after a pause. “Is that enough?”
 

Romi

Secretly a Bird
Administrator
Supporter
Jun 18, 2015
10,109
Gender
Female
Pronouns
She/Her
Posting Status
Irregularly
Havoc wasn't very good at things, but his general impression was that Jamie probably did have emotions, and just didn't know what to do with them. Stunted, not missing. Which did mean he was talking to the exact wrong person, but Havoc supposed it meant he was sitting at a perfect place to observe and see if he understood them well enough to explain.

"Yes," Havoc said. "When you eat a strawberry, that sensation that makes you want to eat more--not hunger, but the other thing--that's an emotion. You like the taste, so you want to eat more of them. That's emotions at their most simple."

Havoc paused to consider. That was step one. Really, figuring out your own emotions in general was step one. But Havoc was already skipping off to step two.

"How do you feel when someone is crying in front of you?"
 

SirCatfish

Chaotic Tired
Inactive
Jun 13, 2017
380
Hong Kong, which is not the UK or Canada.
Gender
Male
Pronouns
He/Him
Posting Status
Irregularly
Jamie considered what Havoc said for a while. What made him want to eat more, other than hunger. He had trouble choosing what to eat, so he tried a lot of things, when he first got here. Strawberries tasted nice. He liked it. He liked eating them. There was a nice feeling when he ate them. They tasted good. Were those feelings emotions? That made sense.

He nodded, then. That was not too difficult. Emotions were nice.

“Crying?” Jamie paused to think again. Crying. He had never cried before. He wasn’t supposed to. He knew that it was bad, though, and that it meant something was wrong. Nobody in the facility cried. Ever. They made sure that none of the other people that lived with Jamie did, at least s Now that’s he’s out, had seen people cry, on the Internet. But he hadn’t been sure what he had felt, then. An odd sensation in his stomach, maybe. That could work. “Uncomfortable. Maybe. But I’m not supposed to be uncomfortable when people cry.”
 

Romi

Secretly a Bird
Administrator
Supporter
Jun 18, 2015
10,109
Gender
Female
Pronouns
She/Her
Posting Status
Irregularly
"It's actually normal to feel uncomfortable when people cry. If you are more empathetic, you'll try and help them so they stop crying because you feel bad for them. If you're less empathetic, then you're simply uncomfortable for your own means, and wish to get away from the uncomfortable situation."

Havoc explained the whole thing like someone reading out of a textbook. These were all emotions that he didn't have any experience with, and after a moment he decided it might be helpful to Jamie to have the contrast.

"By comparison, I don't feel anything when someone cries. It's no different for me then someone not crying. I don't have the emotional response, so the only reason I do anything is because I was raised with the knowledge of how I'm expected to respond."
 

SirCatfish

Chaotic Tired
Inactive
Jun 13, 2017
380
Hong Kong, which is not the UK or Canada.
Gender
Male
Pronouns
He/Him
Posting Status
Irregularly
Empathetic. Empathy. That was not a concept Jamie was used to. He knew what the word empathy means. He knows what lots of words meant, just not how they really applied in real life. He wasn’t supposed to use his empathy. The people at the facility didn’t want him to. But maybe he could practice now.

“Are people okay with that? That you don’t feel empathy?” Jamie asked, then realised that he was asking another serious question. It might be too serious. People didn’t like serious questions about themselves. “I’m sorry. That was also a serious question. Maybe that’s too many serious questions for today.”
 

Romi

Secretly a Bird
Administrator
Supporter
Jun 18, 2015
10,109
Gender
Female
Pronouns
She/Her
Posting Status
Irregularly
That was the trick with not caring: It wasn't selective. Havoc didn't feel happy when someone said something nice, but he didn't feel upset when someone said something mean, either. Aside from the potential of someone's questions literally eating into his time and stopping him from doing things, Havoc wasn't going to be bothered no matter how many questions Jamie had, and he was currently on break, so that wasn't likely to happen anytime soon.

"It's fine," he said with a wave of his hand. "It varies. I emulate it well enough that people often don't realize it. There's the idea of the stoic person, who suppresses their emotions but still has them, and most mistake me for that. The military helped with that--showing fewer emotions is preferable in the military, so no one was bothered."

In civilian life it wasn't quite so easy, but truthfully? Havoc had run into relatively few issues, considering. If Manta Carlos could accept a three headed vampire demon, they could accept a human with almost no emotions and zero empathy.
 
Forgot your password?