Video 2: Being Human (Action for Cherrygrove City)

[justanexpression]

[Obviously, someone has been practicing. When the feed kicks on, it's a properly framed picture of one Jack Frost. He's set up camp in the woods fringing Cherrygrove City with a good view of the beach and a frolicking Seel in the background behind him. He also looks more cheerful and less confused than last time.

Oh, and the egg in his lap. That's new, too.]

So, everyone was awesome about answering my questions last time, now I've got more of them.

Cherrygrove is nice. Been here a couple days, now. [He gestures over his shoulder.] You can tell Phil likes it. Kind of got lost on the way here, yeah, yeah, I know it's a straight line, okay, and Phil is about as slow as slow can be, but now that I'm here, I've got this guy. [He pokes at the egg. It's blue and white and people in the know might recognize it as a Pachirisu egg. Jack is not in the know.] Or girl. How do you tell?

For that matter, what do I do with it? Am I supposed to keep it warm? Someone mentioned a deal for new people just showing up, and that's totally me, so I, uh... just kind of hit buttons until I saw something that sounded good, but now I'm thinking that wasn't the best idea?

[He takes a second to glance over his shoulder, probably to make sure his Seel hadn't been eaten by a shark in the last few minutes or anything. If nothing else, this place seems to be teaching him a really strange sense of responsibility. If only Bunny could see him now.

He resettles, placing the gear on the ground in front of him so it can pick up a full body shot, including the sneakers he wasn't wearing before.]

Okay, second question, and... I know how crazy this sounds, but at least some of you weren't human before getting here, right? Pretty sure I've met one already. [Again, unless Thor's parents had some ridiculous delusions of grandeur.] So the question is- how do you stand it? Not the being here, that's turning out pretty cool, but the rest of it. All the getting hungry, and tired, and walking everywhere, not to mention buying stuff. Am I gonna have to get a- [shudder] -job?

Comments

[justanexpression]

Not sure I'd go quite that far.

[Strange, yes. Especially the adults. But... maybe not insane.]

[yoctogram]

They only let me work part-time. I'm used to constant pressure so I don't get Erased.

[justanexpression]

So you don't get... erased?

[Then again, if they ARE in a video game right now...]

[yoctogram]

Back home. Erase or be Erased. Fact of death. Sort-of death. Purgatory-ish.

...

Players can get life again. Reapers not so much.

[justanexpression]

[That is a whole bunch of words he knows, but not in the way they're being put together now.]

Sort-of death, I get. The rest not so much. Sorry?

[yoctogram]

Back home if you die, sometimes you get a chance to live again. Or you can become a Reaper, if you're not a hectopascal.

[Sorry, he's. He's just very Sho.]

If you enter the Reaper's Game, you're a Player. If you survive it you could get a new life. Or you might become a Reaper. If you become a Reaper and you get Erased it's game over. Total null.

[justanexpression]

[That's a lot more words he still doesn't get when put in that order, and now some new ones he doesn't get at all. Time to give up, smile and nod.]

Right. So you don't want to end up re-dead, yeah? I guess that makes sense.

[yoctogram]

[He paused for a moment, glanced to the left in thought, and said]

Re-re-un-dead, I think. It gets a little fuzzy.

[justanexpression]

...Riiiiiiiiiight.

But you're alive here, so that... a plus?

[Now Jack's starting to feel a little fuzzy, just in general.]

[yoctogram]

[It's okay, Jack. Talking to Sho is often like talking to a calculator with ADHD.]

I guess. Miss the powers.

[justanexpression]

[And they've come full circle. It's okay, though. Jack's still kinda depressed about the whole thing, anyway.]

Tell me about it.

Name's Jack, by the way. Jack Frost. Don't think I ever mentioned.

[yoctogram]

[Introductions, yes, right.]

Minamimoto Sho. Minamimoto is my family name.

[justanexpression]

[That's a name and a half if he's ever heard one.]

Just Sho okay, then?

[yoctogram]

That...is my name. Yes.

Do people where you are from usually use both names? My...co-wokers?

[He contemplated that for a moment, then shrugged...and then started petting the Eevee who shoved her head into the camera's view.]

Works. They called me Minamimoto.

[justanexpression]

Heh. Depends how mad at me they are. Usually it's Jack. Sometimes it's Frost. When it's really bad, it's both.

[Eevee! Or as Jack mentally refers to them, that fluffy cat-fox thing.] Oh, hey, you've got one of those, too!

[yoctogram]

2 of them, actually. ⊼ & ⊽.

[Which somehow, call it Sho's mad skills, seem to come out as the symbols and yet are also recognizable as Nand and Nor.]

This is ⊼. She was my second hatching.

[A briefly disgruntled look. Cats should not come from eggs. Nor horses. Or...really any of the OTHER things that have come from eggs. It upsets his understanding of the universe.]

[justanexpression]

[Yeah, that whole egg thing... that's definitely weird. Then again, pokeballs are weird, too, and Jack hasn't even used the computer yet. That's going to be EXTRA weird.]

Those're... different names.

[yoctogram]

They are forms of logic gates used when creating Boolean functions.

⊽ produces an output that is false only if all its inputs are true. ⊼ is a form of logic where it is only true if the data points on either side of the ⊼ are false. Thus P ⊼ Q is only true if P & Q are both false.

[This is Belphe's life. She deals with this daily. Feel for her, Jack.]

[justanexpression]

[Oh, he does. He really, really does. For himself, too, judging by the way his eyes are glazing over.

Probably for the best that Jack hasn't ever had to deal with much formal schooling.]

Uh... yeah. Right. So... why'd you name them that?

[yoctogram]

Maths are the basis of everything! Within the ratio of a diameter and circumference of a circle the whole of existence is coded via the infinite and unending beauty of π. Every possible combination of numbers exists within it and translated into ASCII it holds the name of every person you will ever meet, the date and time of your death, mine...all of my deaths, even! Each stat your Pokemon will ever get, every thought you've ever had.

All other forms of maths are just as beautiful, the dimensions of a flower or the curve of a smile; they can be described by equations.

[For a moment he trails off into a string of equations]

That's Bell, her every curve when she's in her uniform! Music is maths made into sound!

How could I name them anything less beautiful and still hold true to myself?

Where's your beauty?

[justanexpression]

[Well done. It takes a lot to strike Jack speechless, but Sho has done is masterfully. Well done, indeed.]

Uh...

[He goes a little shifty-eyed, trying to figure out what that question even means.]

I just... named mine Phil? I didn't really think that hard about it?

[yoctogram]

[The hand that covers his face is as black as his hat, and his sigh is a thing of wordless despair.]

Names are a definition. Who you are is shaped by what you're called. My name means South Master Orang-outang and is written, [he draws the Kanji in the air.]

These are our companions, followers, and fighters. They deserve to have names that mean something.

[justanexpression]

[...Nope. Still nothing.]

Hey, it means something! I named after this guy, well, yeti, I know. Can't understand a word he says, but he's big, and pretty good in a fight. Kinda like this Phil.

Anyway, how big a deal can it be? People name their kids all kinds of things, and it's not like it matters.

[yoctogram]

Would you be the same if your name was Yamamato Yasushi?

[Pulling names out of nothing, yes.]

Naming him after someone you know isn't not thinking about it. You had a reason even if you weren't consciously thinking about it.

Most humans are idiots. [Ego he has one yes] Not giving their kids something to live up to means not giving them a head-start.

[⧝, Tie Over Infinity, would like a little less to live up to, really, but the Zorua hasn't learned how to speak human enough to express this.]

[justanexpression]

How would I know if I'd be the same or not? It's not my name.

[Granted, he'd sort of been named twice, so maybe that counted for something. Or maybe it didn't. Who knew?]

Not like you can go back and do everything over with a different name, so maybe nothing would ever change. Maybe you could have a whole world of everyone named Fred, and nothing would be different.