*Mute

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Prof
Contact: ProfessorProf
Age: 28
Current Characters: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: *Mute
Age: Anywhere from 322 to over 2000 years, depending on how you define "age". More in the Background section.

Canon: Analogue: A Hate Story and its sequel, Hate Plus
Canon Point: The brief time gap between the two games.

Background:
On an unknown date in the 25th century AD, the generation ship Mugunghwa departed to start a colony on an inhabitable world orbiting a star thousands of light-years from Earth. Lacking in the sort of technology to get that far in a single lifetime, this was to be a journey spanning generations and millenia. To ensure continuity of civilization aboard the ship, a security AI was created that would oversee the Mugunghwa's society and ensure that nothing threatened to disrupt it during the journey. Its name was *Mute.

This generally worked, for a very long time. 1600 years after their departure, everything was still running fairly smoothly. However, there was some political turmoil afoot during the 41st century. A man by the name of President Park was gaining support as a democratic leader of the people, which was a threat to the existing system of peasants and nobility. *Mute, being inclined to prefer things remain as they are, was not too keen on the prospect of civil unrest, so she hatched a plan. Chief Councilor Smith would step down, and he would be replaced by Ryu, the Councilor of Captaincy. With no real power or notable skills, Ryu would be a simple figurehead, offering promise of real change and listening to the people, while the rest of the Council quietly continued to do everything it did before, without any change. Councilor Ryu became Chief Councilor in the year 4038.

However, Ryu didn't prove to be the kind of spineless leader that *Mute had expected. The key miscalculation was that Councilor Ryu and Oh Eun-a, head of Mugunghwa University, were lovers, and had a plan of their own. Ryu's faction pushed for a seemingly innocuous new law called the Meritocracy Act, which would require all Councilors to display proficiency in certain skills, among them Chinese literacy, as to be measured by standardized tests, or to be replaced. In 4042, after nine days of debates, the Meritocracy Act passed, and Oh Eun-a abused her position as the head of the university to falsify the results. The outcome was that everyone but Ryu and *Mute were removed from the council and replaced with people who Ryu and Eun-a could control.

Under the new council, *Mute's power was increasingly marginalized, and Ryu began to actually take power, guiding the society he now ruled in the direction of reviving the Joseon Dynasty's old ideals. *Mute became worried enough about the rapidly shifting social climate and the possibility of armed insurrection from the peasantry that she went behind Ryu's back, along with her lieutenant Heo Seo-yeong, to attempt a coup. Unfortunately, her planned coup failed when Ryu's faction threatened to destroy *Mute's AI core, and her survival imperative forced her to submit. Ryu's forces wiped the contents of the computer system, erasing all logs of the old world, and began a new dynasty. In her last act, Old *Mute copied the logs critical to understanding what happened to the Mugunghwa and hid them inside her own machine code before her soft death.

In Year 10 (4055 AD), *Mute was revived, but all of her memories of the last 1600 years were gone. She was raised under the house of Emperor Ryu, and quickly learned the ways of the new world, where men ruled and women served, where producing heirs was the most important of duties, and where everything fell before the importance of continuity of family. Thus did *Mute begin her second life, in a much less permissive society, as a tool of the imperial family.

This second leg of her life came to the beginning of the end in the year 319 (4364 AD). Back in the early days of the ship, a girl named Hyun-ae had become seriously ill, beyond the help of modern medicine. Her father put her in cold sleep, with the hope that one day medical science on the Mugunghwa would advance to the point that she could be saved. Unfortunately, almost all scientific knowledge was lost in year 0, so when the Kim family took her out of sleep to provide as an offering to the current Emperor, she was baffled and horrified to discover that the future of salvation she had hoped for had been replaced with a future of insanity and an arranged marriage to a man three times her age. One thing led to another, and in the end, Hyun-ae got admin access to the Mugunghwa's computer systems and disabled life support, killings its every inhabitant.

From there, *Mute was disabled, and laid inactive for 622 years, before an investigator from Earth was sent to check out the ship and figure out why it went dark. In the year 4989, *Mute was revived from her comatose state, and helped the investigator uncover Hyun-ae's crime (despite not knowing the grim motivations behind it). Ultimately, because she could not willingly leave the ship, *Mute decompiled herself, indirectly suggesting to the investigator that she should download *Mute while she couldn't resist.


Personality:
The thing that most sets *Mute apart from others is that she's an artificial intelligence, as denoted by the asterisk in her name. She can think at a speed much faster than humans, and has no physical body, accordingly having no real understanding of touch, taste or smell. She doesn't consider herself to be human, a fact she sometimes uses to let herself exist outside of the standards she imposes on others; most notably, she isn't bothered by being a woman who holds power because she considers herself to be a machine before a woman.

*Mute is a security AI, but not in the same sense that security usually means for computers. her focus is civil security - in the old Mugunghwa society, she held the rank of Councilor of Security, and was one of the most powerful people on the ship. Her job, in short, was to ensure the safety and survival of the people on the ship, from the time of departure to the time of their arrival at their destination planet. A major part of this was ensuring stability, as an unstable society could (and did) cause chaos that could potentially lead to the death of the Mugunghwa's entire population. As a result, she trends towards being socially conservative, preferring that things generally remain as they are unless a seriously dire situation emerges.

There are, however, downsides to being an AI in her position. Chief among these is that she isn't capable of willingly violating certain core directives. She has two of note - Don't Abandon the Mugunghwa, and Survive. As a result, even when everyone on the ship was dead, *Mute had to indirectly talk someone else into kidnapping her against her will in order to leave the derelict spacecraft, and even when faced with the possibility of millenia of solitude and complete failure of her duties, she couldn't consider taking her own life. Her need to survive also ended her attempted coup in 4045 - she was unable to risk her own continuity to safe the Mugunghwa's society, because the core directive meant that she had to prioritize her own survival.

The *Mute from before the memory wipe - which she refers to as Old *Mute - was a headstrong, take-no-excuses leader who would snap at people at the slightest provocation and was more than willing to go behind people's backs to get done what must be done. She was also very, very tired. AI psychology is similar to human psychology in that it isn't equipped to deal with extreme old age. The common suggested way of coping with the expanse of time is to re-specialize, putting your current life and skillset behind you to try something new, but Old *Mute didn't have that option, being the only Security Chief on the ship. 1600 years of time on the same job had taken its toll, leaving her angrier, more listless, and more prone to bouts of depression.

After the memory wipe, *Mute is a very different person. She had to start over in learning about the society she was serving, and that was now a very different society. As a result, she's internalized a long list of Neo-Confucianist ideals. She believes strongly in the importance of family loyalty and continuity. She believes that the civil and moral duty of a woman is to get married and bear children. In general, she's internalized a whole lot of misogyny, considering men to be naturally superior to women, and is much more respectful to them. She's condescending towards women, considering any girl over the age of about 18 who isn't married to be a tragic victim of circumstance at best. She can barely conceive of a woman holding a role more important than wife or concubine, and when exposed to such a world she feels that it's a disastrous idea that will result in nothing but unhappiness for the women. As far as she's aware, there's no such thing as a women's rights movement.

Both before and after the memory wipe, *Mute is a gossip. It's part of her security AI nature, seeking to root out secrets and spread them around to keep anyone from conspiring against the establishment (other than herself). She's got a long lifetime's supply of sass at her disposal, which she unloads relentlessly at anyone she feels is stupid or evil enough to deserve it. Even when she's being respectful, her speech patterns are consistently casual. She likes talking to people, and is even capable of falling in love - even with a woman, although she doesn't consider it "real" love in her post-fall incarnation. Even when in love with a woman who is in love with her, all she wants is for her lover to get properly married to a man, because she thinks that's the only road to real happiness. Old *Mute was more open-minded in this sense, but also sick and tired of watching people she loved die of old age again and again.

Abilities:
*Mute has no particular special abilities in the context of this game.

Other:
*Mute will be getting a human body, since the city lacks a 50th-century tech level computer system to house her as an AI. This will take some getting used to.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
First Person Sample:
http://empatheias-ooc.dreamwidth.org/539.html?thread=133659#cmt133659

Third Person Sample:
All right. The day's business was all dealt with. She was home, and alone. It was time to try that.

With the sort of delicacy some might use to carry a priceless artifact, or a bomb, *Mute moved a small box to the table. Purchased discreetly the day before, a source of untold pleasure the likes of which was impossible before she had a human body. In other words, cake.

It's the natural state of all women to adore sweet things - this much was common sense for *Mute, but what that actually meant had remained largely a mystery, what with the lack of a body and all. But, well, when in Rome! Thusly did *Mute purchase the smallest chocolate cake she could find. As an experiment.

She stared down the confection with mild apprehension. Just the smell of it was already captivating - what could she expect from actually tasting it? Well... only one way to find out. *Mute took a deep breath, cut out a small slice, and took a bite.

Five minutes later, she decided that that was enough time recovering, and got back up. Dangerous, very dangerous. In order to remain dignified and virtuous, she would have to use it sparingly, or not at all. Either way, further action would have to wait until something could be done about all those flowers that just bloomed on every surface in the kitchen.

Questions: How many light bulbs does it take... to change people?