Name: Cae
Gender: Female
Age: 19 (designed age of her body)
Appearance:
Spoiler (click to show/hide):
Skills: As an android, Cae's biomechanical body is talented at marksmanship as her synthetic muscles do not quiver and her senses are acute. She has come to mimic some martial arts techniques through observation, though her talents are rudimentary at best. She is, of course, also predisposed to mechanics and can cobble together solutions easily if her body is damaged. Lastly, Cae's familiarity with intelligent androids and droids such as herself is unmatched – an encyclopedia of knowledge seems to have been programmed into her synthetic brain, although she is uncertain why. But Cae's greatest skill of all is that she can learn: Cae was never formally trained in any subject, but her tendency to soak up knowledge like a sponge is what has let her adapt to this new world.
Inventory: Cae travels light, preferring to store her meagre necessities inside a sleek messenger bag crafted from animal hide, slung crosswise over her back:
Spare Mechanisms – A variety of cherry-picked mechanical components and scrap compatible with Cae's internal mechanics, complete with a slim bundle of tools to install them to replace damaged parts. If she was severely damaged, she would use these to heal her “injuries”, much in the way of a medkit.
Crimson SMG – A relatively primitive gas-operated, pistol-caliber submachine gun patterned after Pre-War firearms. Features iron sights, a 20-round magazine, flash hider and non-functional underbarrel flashlight. Judging from its construction, it has obviously been fabricated by an expert gunsmith. Thanks to its long barrel and tight construction, it provides decent range and firepower. It is obviously named due to its unusual red paint scheme. Semi-automatic.
Antique Rations [x2] – Probably not how one wants their food described, but Cae doesn't complain. These decades-old square tins of mediocre food were designed by the US military to weather a nuclear war, and they have. Although hardly appetizing, they provide energy Cae requires to function.
Backstory:
Spoiler (click to show/hide):
There was once a time on Earth when sentient machines were merely a dream in fiction, and the idea of a computer whose intelligence matched that of a human's was both a nightmare and a dream to humanity. In the present, robots – although rare – are still a fact of life for some, and their capabilities are menacing and great. And yet many decades before the world was reduced to a cinder, there were men and women who would build great machines for peace and for progress, not for war. Before the nuclear apocalypse, the android Caecilia was one of these machines: a walking, green-eyed revolution.
As a servant to progress, the quiet American doctor and engineer Kiralise Veyen was always intrigued by the possibilities of artificial intelligence. As the 21th century slogged on, humanity's interest in computers that could be seen as their intellectual equals began to peak. Phones, television and video games became more intelligent, and yet the few cutting edge robots that wore the shell of a human were seldom and reviled. Their stiff-legged gait, pale flesh and monotone voices betrayed the absence of their souls. Those that could pass for a human were tools of war, designed by the military to serve the selfish interests of their government.
It changed in the year 2022. If Dr. Veyen had known of the nuclear apocalypse, perhaps her ambitions would have been different, but having spent the last twenty years of her life, staking her professional career and her livelihood on her research, Veyen's hope to produce a line of machines – androids, as they were known – with all of the traits and faults of human beings had culminated. UK-based Sterling Industries, an international authority in computer hardware and more sophisticated niches in the industry such as artificial intelligence, had for years stocked Veyen with the resources to achieve her goal. The international renown of producing such an android so revolutionary was a tempting prize for so many years of labour.
It was a simple prospect to make a machine to perfect. But humans, as Veyen knew, were far from perfect. They had their flaws: bias, opinions, emotion, politics and the simple shortcomings of their organic bodies. Her androids would not be constructed of harsh metal: they would be built of the most advanced nanosynthetic materials, with biomechanical tissue and a synthetic skeleton that would interact with pain, pleasure, hot, cold and other sensations just as a human's would. If the android was cut, it would bleed a resin, only for the biomechanical skin to heal, just as a human's would. Their power core would beat like a heart in their torso, and the mechanisms with which they sensed the world – sight, smell, hearing – would mimic a human's.
Although they had never solved the issue of synthetic hearing, and were forced to build their android with two metal grey antennae in place of human ears, she was perfect.
Her name was Caecilia – Cae, as she would come to call herself – and she was human from the very moment she was first activated. She was naive and clumsy at first, and yet she learned. When she tripped, she would pick herself back up. And unlike many other androids, she could harvest energy from eating food, just as the human body would. After just a few short weeks of experimentation, the android – built in the likeness of a young woman once dear to Dr. Veyen – was even taught to ride a bicycle, skateboard, swim and even produce paintings and sketches of locale and people that were interesting to her. But Cae was far from perfect: she was stubborn and opinionated, and gave Veyen and her researchers no end of trouble when they tried to persuade the android to comply with more tests and experiments to analyze her personality.
There were no other androids quite like Cae, but she was built in the likeness of a young woman: she made friends – human friends -- as she would have if she were a human. It was not easy to miss her vested interest in politics and her opinion on hopeful presidential candidates, nor her fancy for rollerskating and soccer at the local playing field in the city where she was researched and created: a city whose name she has forgotten in the present. But most of all, she enjoyed the science behind herself, and androids like her. It was curious to Veyen – whom Cae saw as a close friend – that although she was aware of her existence as a manmade machine, the android still considered herself as human as the men and women who had created her, and the countless generations of humans before them who had dreamed of such a machine being real.
Then, in 2023, the Forsaken War ravaged the country. Cae does not really remember the last few days leading up to it. She has bare glimpses of Dr. Veyen with a frantic look on her face, and the sensation of being locked in a cold, dark space where she could not move. And then a loud droning noise as the world vanished.
Cae awoke 48 years later, and pushed her way out of the frozen metal pod that she had been sealed inside to a world she did not recognize. The small science building in which she had lived and developed was in ruins. She thought it was a nightmare – she had been visited by them before, she remembered – but as she stepped out into the musty rubble of the world, she knew that her life as a revolutionary android – and as a human – was now just a distant memory, forgotten over the years. Confused, Cae proceeded to a nearby ramshackle settlement. They were curious of the antennae on her head, but answered her questions: It was the year 2071, and the world had long since been ravaged by nuclear war. Mutants and bandits stalked the land, and few places were safe.
For days, the android sat still against the wall of a rusty building. Even her machine brain needed time to digest the shock. Dr. Veyen and the people she had known were gone. There was no more coherent civilization, no more conveniences of the modern world. Her body felt stiff and pained: it had been so many years since she had powered on, her components had degraded somewhat. But Cae knew, ultimately, that one of humanity's strongest traits was that they could adapt – change. And so she did. The android walked the path of so many others in this post-apocalyptic society, and set off as a wanderer, scavenging, trading and working for the few necessities she needed as a living machine, fighting where it was necessary, and running when it would save her life. Many months passed, and although Cae felt alone, she knew she wasn't.
She had always been aware that there were people following her. Strange people, who hid behind their ramshackle machine and watched her from afar as she travelled the wastes. It was only a matter of time before she knew their names: the Collectors. Their motives were uncertain to Cae, but it was that very uncertainty that made her wary of them. But she quickly found that where the Collectors were, there was also Pre-War technology: something she valued. She skirted them numerous times on her travels and even witnessed their droids in combat with rival factions, but had never even held a conversation with a member of the strange group. More months passed in this manner.
A short two years later, in the present time, Cae was familiar with the ups and downs of the wastes. Even as a machine, she was not immune to the dangers it posed. Her biomechanical skin, fashioned to be like organic tissue, burned and blistered in the contact of radiation and scrambled the biomechanical components of her metallic ears, and her degraded power core required food more than ever to function. The scent she had acquired after so much time around humans made wild animals a threat to her just as they would to anyone with real meat on their bones. And then there were the Collectors: she does not know what they wish of her, but she knows that she is being watched.
But her only true enemy is the enigmas of her synthetic brain. Her memory is impeccable, and yet there are things she cannot remember, as if a barrier were placed around parts of her mind. Her memories of the Pre-War world are fading by the year, and she knows that unless she pursues the mysteries of her conscience, she will never truly know the depth of her personality. What had been programmed into her that she did not know of?
What secrets did she hold?
by Grape Me » Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:47 pm 
