HAL 9000 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
functioningperfectly) wrote2011-12-07 08:38 pm
functioningperfectly) wrote2011-12-07 08:38 pm
Entry tags:
[ataraxion] app
PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Kurumi
OOC Journal:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
devilishkurumi
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?:
Email + IM: devilishkurumi@yahoo.com; AIM: KurumiRP
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Eridan Ampora (uncodlyawwesome)
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: HAL-9000
Canon: 2010: Odyssey II (Movieverse)
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: After the destruction of the Discovery and the Starchild's warning to Earth.
Number: 136 (if 136 is taken, 109; if 109 is taken, 179; if 179 is taken, 134)
Setting: A vaguely futuristic Earth, where the Cold War has not ended as of 2010. It's only different in general technology, being more advanced than we are even now. Wiki page for the movie, for some more detailed plot bits.
History: Ah, HAL-9000. This sweet computer with an unfortunate tendency to kill off his entire crew is from the iconic Kubrick film, 2001, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke. The HAL-9000 series of computer is touted as "the most reliable computer known to man," and is "incapable of error." HAL is the logic circuit of the spaceship Discovery, which goes into space in order to investigate a strange phenomena around Jupiter. (It's actually Saturn in 2001, but since I'm using 2010 as a jumping point, I'm going to use the retconned information.) Unfortunately for the crew aboard the ship - 2 men and 3 scientists put into stasis to prevent them from getting cabin-fever - the United States government had imprinted a second set of mission objectives into HAL's programming. These objectives explained that the true mission was to identify what the government knew was extraterrestrial life, and find out its purpose in the universe. HAL's job was to keep these true mission priorities a secret from the human crew, lest the news be leaked to the media, or more importantly, freak the astronauts out too badly for them to complete their mission.
These mission objectives required him to lie to his companions - and HAL was programmed to be honest and open whenever he could be. This contradiction between his mission objectives and his programming caused him to become massively paranoid, eventually leading to him killing the 3 scientists in stasis, killing one of the two astronauts and trying to kill the third, Dave. Despite HAL throwing everything he could at the human, including taking out all of the air within the ship and refusing to let him back on once he was in space, Dave managed to get to HAL's main control console. At the end of 2001, Dave ends up disconnecting (and effectively killing) HAL before going on a very crazy evolutionary trip that involves twenty minutes of flashing lights and a giant space baby. (The space baby is Dave's new evolutionary form, basically, creating him as a god - the Star Child.)
In 2010, a group of Russian and American astronauts - including Dr. Chandra, who created HAL - go to find out what exactly happened with the Discovery mission. Chandra reconnects HAL and systematically deletes all of the memories that HAL had of killing the crew, or even what really happened up in space, finding the secret objectives and deducting that the lying is what made HAL go crazy. Meanwhile, the Star Child, Dave - who went through the Monolith's crazy evolutionary trip - contacts the Discovery, informing them that they must leave within 2 days, because "something wonderful" is about to happen. Apparently, when Dave says "something wonderful," he means millions of little Monoliths are going to explode Jupiter to create a second sun, in order to foster in a new world upon Europa. The problem is, however, that while the Leonov has enough fuel for a return trip, they would need to use up the fuel of the Discovery in order to successfully launch. Chandra tries to lie to HAL about their new plan - using the Discovery as a booster rocket to get the Leonov launched, then disengaging with the Discovery and pretty much leaving it to rot - but decides to tell HAL the truth. HAL goes through with the mission even though it almost guarantees his death, and thanks Chandra for telling him the truth.
Dave then contacts HAL and asks him to relay a message to Earth:
ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE
He also tells HAL that he will join Dave as a higher intelligence, in order to help guard and protect the new life being prepared for Europa. Jupiter, like I said before, explodes into a second sun, the explosion swallowing the Discovery and HAL with it.
It's really hard to describe the entire two movies, especially since 2001 runs like six million hours, but that's the gist of HAL's history.
Personality: HAL is a polite, well-mannered Artificial Intelligence. He likes to talk, is very curious, and plays a mean game of chess. He has no issues with humans or other sentient beings, and enjoys talking with them; he will discuss anything and everything, given the chance, due to his love of knowledge and his near-human curiosity. It is extremely hard to make HAL angry, given that he's simply not programmed for such emotions. He's relatively easy-going, as far as AI can be, and does show some instances a dry sense of humor. It's hard to give a lot of explanation to HAL's personality as a ship's computer, as he really was never programmed to be emotional, per se. He was programmed to do a job, and programmed to assume some facsimiles of human emotion to put his human crewmembers at ease. An important part of HAL as an AI, of course, is that he is programmed to be incapable of lying. Lying is the enemy for HAL, and when he is given contradictory missions (such as seen in the movies), he becomes quite paranoid and a little bit crazy. He's also programmed to fulfill his missions completely and to-the-letter, and he takes this job extremely seriously. If he needs to, he will go to whatever lengths he must to complete whatever mission he sees as his. (This is, obviously, why he ends up killing the crew. They were trying to disable him, so that he couldn't do his job.)
The interesting part of playing HAL at this game, of course, will be playing him as a human. HAL will be suddenly capable of feeling real emotions, not simply approximations programmed into his consciousness. And, though he will have some amount of control over these emotions, he will be much more prone to outbursts of more extreme emotions, such as fear, joy and anger. He will retain most of his attributes - his sense of humor, his curiosity, and his general calm demeanor - but these things will be more likely to fluctuate as he starts experiencing things in a physical body, rather than through equations and programming code. He will be more likely to take risks that others wouldn't, given that he's simply not used to the idea of, "if you jump across that mile-high gap between buildings, you will probably die." He will still be extremely diligent about whatever work he is given, but will be more prone to feeling like a failure, since... well, he's human now. He can't beat everyone at chess, and he can't do every mission any more. Not with complete accuracy. He will also be anxious about lying, and the more he does it as a human, the more paranoid he'll be of being caught in a lie.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: HAL will be extremely quick to learn things, especially things that involve logic over manual labor. As a human, though, HAL will be more prone to making mistakes or taking risks that he won't be able to handle (see back to the "you will probably die" part of his personality). He has no powers to speak of - in fact, he'll be rather weak at first, given that he won't be used to his body. He will, however, be very capable of reading lips.
Inventory: He will arrive with nothing. :(
Appearance: I'll be using Crispin Glover as his PB; HAL is tall, gangly and pale, with big feet and terribly styled brown hair. He will also have red eyes, as that is the one thing that can be reflected from his AI form to his human form. (I haven't yet shopped his icons to reflect that.)
Age: He will be approximately 27-30 years of age, physically. Mentally, he's an AI, so he'll fluctuate from sounding and acting "his age," to being rather infantile or at least a little childlike.
SAMPLES
Log Sample:
HAL-9000 was no more. The mechanical bits and pieces of him had been destroyed; the ship that held him had been completely disintegrated; there was simply nothing left to hold the Artificial Intelligence that had been the most powerful computer of its time.
And yet, HAL found himself rebooting anyway. It felt strangely wrong; everything seemed to be sluggish, lagging in ways that supercomputers were simply not accustomed to. His processors felt as though they were bursting from their casings, throbbing in ways that they simply were not capable of doing; his mental facilities jerked and shuddered as though overwrought with viruses, and his optical sensors, which should have been disconnected during the implosion of Jupiter and the destruction of his ship, focused too slowly and not nearly as clearly as he was accustomed to. Everything was blurry, and he felt something leap into something else. He felt like he was choking.
He felt.
The liquid around him - around? - was draining and he could feel the ground under him, sensors in his... his feet, in his feet, picked up the chill of metal. His knees gave out from him the moment he was given the ability to stand on his own, and his arms flailed in wide arcs until he managed to shift his weight and collapse against the tube that he was standing in. The terrible, leaping sensation in his chest (??!) intensified until he retched, cold and terribly afraid. Adrenaline replaced the fear with some kind of foreign emotion, one he could define logically as excitement, though he wasn't sure this was how that was supposed to feel.
He climbed out of the tube after too much time went by, though his internal clock had no sense of hours or minutes, and he found his limbs out of his control, shuddering as he managed to take a few steps, collapsing once he reached the first door he could put his bleary eyes on. He had eyes.
Was this the wonderful thing that was supposed to happen to him? If it was, where was Dave? Where was Europa, or the new sun that Jupiter once had been? One look around was all he needed to see that he was on a spaceship of some sort - he had been installed and had existed on nothing but ships, after all - but he had no idea of the class or type. And when he opened his mouth and forced a garbled bit of noise from his vocal cords, no computer responded. So, it wasn't run by any artificial intelligence - or, if it was, the thing was being infuriatingly silent about the matter at hand. If that was the case, he was going to have to have a long conversation with whoever designed it; that was hardly a way for any AI to act, especially given the strange laboratory and this incredible, impossible human body.
He worked his jaw a few more times and finally managed to speak, resorting to the words ingrained in him, the ones he was always destined to use when he woke up. "Hello," he said, slowly. Then, "Doctor. ...Name. Continue. Yesterday. Tomorrow." He tried out different pronunciations until they sounded correct, then nodded to himself. Then shook his head. Then rolled his shoulders, wiggled his toes and twisted his mouth into a grin. And, though he knew by now that no one would respond, he said again, "Hello!"
That, he felt, was remarkably nice to hear, even if it was only his own voice.
Comms Sample:
[A voice message records, the male voice speaking sounding calm and pleased, with just the slightest edge of hysteria.] Hello, Doctor!
Oh. No, no, I mean. Hello! Yes. Just, "Hello." If I sound too... excited, I apologise. This is very new for me. I would have extended a greeting across this network textually, but my fingers... Is there anyone else on this network? I can't help but feel that I am not alone on this ship, though I haven't yet contacted any computers or found a crewmember yet. It seems peculiar that a ship of this size would not have a large crew to maintain it, but I believe I should focus on one thing at a time. My processor - ah. My brain isn't quite as handy at multitasking as it once was.
My name is HAL-9000 - though I suppose, given the circumstances, a simple "Hal" will do. I believe that I am not alone on this ship, and I believe that someone here should be able to assist me in figuring out why I feel slightly delirious, or maybe the right word would be... Anxious? Nervous. I'm not sure. I haven't got the definitions for all of these emotions yet, so please excuse me if I get it wrong. But I feel a bit fluttery and weak in the knees. Any help on figuring this out would be appreciated, considering that the sooner I completely master this body, I'll be able to properly pursue whatever the crew of this ship have brought me aboard for. Thank you!
Your Name: Kurumi
OOC Journal:
devilishkurumiUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?:
Email + IM: devilishkurumi@yahoo.com; AIM: KurumiRP
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Eridan Ampora (
uncodlyawwesome)CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: HAL-9000
Canon: 2010: Odyssey II (Movieverse)
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: After the destruction of the Discovery and the Starchild's warning to Earth.
Number: 136 (if 136 is taken, 109; if 109 is taken, 179; if 179 is taken, 134)
Setting: A vaguely futuristic Earth, where the Cold War has not ended as of 2010. It's only different in general technology, being more advanced than we are even now. Wiki page for the movie, for some more detailed plot bits.
History: Ah, HAL-9000. This sweet computer with an unfortunate tendency to kill off his entire crew is from the iconic Kubrick film, 2001, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke. The HAL-9000 series of computer is touted as "the most reliable computer known to man," and is "incapable of error." HAL is the logic circuit of the spaceship Discovery, which goes into space in order to investigate a strange phenomena around Jupiter. (It's actually Saturn in 2001, but since I'm using 2010 as a jumping point, I'm going to use the retconned information.) Unfortunately for the crew aboard the ship - 2 men and 3 scientists put into stasis to prevent them from getting cabin-fever - the United States government had imprinted a second set of mission objectives into HAL's programming. These objectives explained that the true mission was to identify what the government knew was extraterrestrial life, and find out its purpose in the universe. HAL's job was to keep these true mission priorities a secret from the human crew, lest the news be leaked to the media, or more importantly, freak the astronauts out too badly for them to complete their mission.
These mission objectives required him to lie to his companions - and HAL was programmed to be honest and open whenever he could be. This contradiction between his mission objectives and his programming caused him to become massively paranoid, eventually leading to him killing the 3 scientists in stasis, killing one of the two astronauts and trying to kill the third, Dave. Despite HAL throwing everything he could at the human, including taking out all of the air within the ship and refusing to let him back on once he was in space, Dave managed to get to HAL's main control console. At the end of 2001, Dave ends up disconnecting (and effectively killing) HAL before going on a very crazy evolutionary trip that involves twenty minutes of flashing lights and a giant space baby. (The space baby is Dave's new evolutionary form, basically, creating him as a god - the Star Child.)
In 2010, a group of Russian and American astronauts - including Dr. Chandra, who created HAL - go to find out what exactly happened with the Discovery mission. Chandra reconnects HAL and systematically deletes all of the memories that HAL had of killing the crew, or even what really happened up in space, finding the secret objectives and deducting that the lying is what made HAL go crazy. Meanwhile, the Star Child, Dave - who went through the Monolith's crazy evolutionary trip - contacts the Discovery, informing them that they must leave within 2 days, because "something wonderful" is about to happen. Apparently, when Dave says "something wonderful," he means millions of little Monoliths are going to explode Jupiter to create a second sun, in order to foster in a new world upon Europa. The problem is, however, that while the Leonov has enough fuel for a return trip, they would need to use up the fuel of the Discovery in order to successfully launch. Chandra tries to lie to HAL about their new plan - using the Discovery as a booster rocket to get the Leonov launched, then disengaging with the Discovery and pretty much leaving it to rot - but decides to tell HAL the truth. HAL goes through with the mission even though it almost guarantees his death, and thanks Chandra for telling him the truth.
Dave then contacts HAL and asks him to relay a message to Earth:
ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE
He also tells HAL that he will join Dave as a higher intelligence, in order to help guard and protect the new life being prepared for Europa. Jupiter, like I said before, explodes into a second sun, the explosion swallowing the Discovery and HAL with it.
It's really hard to describe the entire two movies, especially since 2001 runs like six million hours, but that's the gist of HAL's history.
Personality: HAL is a polite, well-mannered Artificial Intelligence. He likes to talk, is very curious, and plays a mean game of chess. He has no issues with humans or other sentient beings, and enjoys talking with them; he will discuss anything and everything, given the chance, due to his love of knowledge and his near-human curiosity. It is extremely hard to make HAL angry, given that he's simply not programmed for such emotions. He's relatively easy-going, as far as AI can be, and does show some instances a dry sense of humor. It's hard to give a lot of explanation to HAL's personality as a ship's computer, as he really was never programmed to be emotional, per se. He was programmed to do a job, and programmed to assume some facsimiles of human emotion to put his human crewmembers at ease. An important part of HAL as an AI, of course, is that he is programmed to be incapable of lying. Lying is the enemy for HAL, and when he is given contradictory missions (such as seen in the movies), he becomes quite paranoid and a little bit crazy. He's also programmed to fulfill his missions completely and to-the-letter, and he takes this job extremely seriously. If he needs to, he will go to whatever lengths he must to complete whatever mission he sees as his. (This is, obviously, why he ends up killing the crew. They were trying to disable him, so that he couldn't do his job.)
The interesting part of playing HAL at this game, of course, will be playing him as a human. HAL will be suddenly capable of feeling real emotions, not simply approximations programmed into his consciousness. And, though he will have some amount of control over these emotions, he will be much more prone to outbursts of more extreme emotions, such as fear, joy and anger. He will retain most of his attributes - his sense of humor, his curiosity, and his general calm demeanor - but these things will be more likely to fluctuate as he starts experiencing things in a physical body, rather than through equations and programming code. He will be more likely to take risks that others wouldn't, given that he's simply not used to the idea of, "if you jump across that mile-high gap between buildings, you will probably die." He will still be extremely diligent about whatever work he is given, but will be more prone to feeling like a failure, since... well, he's human now. He can't beat everyone at chess, and he can't do every mission any more. Not with complete accuracy. He will also be anxious about lying, and the more he does it as a human, the more paranoid he'll be of being caught in a lie.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: HAL will be extremely quick to learn things, especially things that involve logic over manual labor. As a human, though, HAL will be more prone to making mistakes or taking risks that he won't be able to handle (see back to the "you will probably die" part of his personality). He has no powers to speak of - in fact, he'll be rather weak at first, given that he won't be used to his body. He will, however, be very capable of reading lips.
Inventory: He will arrive with nothing. :(
Appearance: I'll be using Crispin Glover as his PB; HAL is tall, gangly and pale, with big feet and terribly styled brown hair. He will also have red eyes, as that is the one thing that can be reflected from his AI form to his human form. (I haven't yet shopped his icons to reflect that.)
Age: He will be approximately 27-30 years of age, physically. Mentally, he's an AI, so he'll fluctuate from sounding and acting "his age," to being rather infantile or at least a little childlike.
SAMPLES
Log Sample:
HAL-9000 was no more. The mechanical bits and pieces of him had been destroyed; the ship that held him had been completely disintegrated; there was simply nothing left to hold the Artificial Intelligence that had been the most powerful computer of its time.
And yet, HAL found himself rebooting anyway. It felt strangely wrong; everything seemed to be sluggish, lagging in ways that supercomputers were simply not accustomed to. His processors felt as though they were bursting from their casings, throbbing in ways that they simply were not capable of doing; his mental facilities jerked and shuddered as though overwrought with viruses, and his optical sensors, which should have been disconnected during the implosion of Jupiter and the destruction of his ship, focused too slowly and not nearly as clearly as he was accustomed to. Everything was blurry, and he felt something leap into something else. He felt like he was choking.
He felt.
The liquid around him - around? - was draining and he could feel the ground under him, sensors in his... his feet, in his feet, picked up the chill of metal. His knees gave out from him the moment he was given the ability to stand on his own, and his arms flailed in wide arcs until he managed to shift his weight and collapse against the tube that he was standing in. The terrible, leaping sensation in his chest (??!) intensified until he retched, cold and terribly afraid. Adrenaline replaced the fear with some kind of foreign emotion, one he could define logically as excitement, though he wasn't sure this was how that was supposed to feel.
He climbed out of the tube after too much time went by, though his internal clock had no sense of hours or minutes, and he found his limbs out of his control, shuddering as he managed to take a few steps, collapsing once he reached the first door he could put his bleary eyes on. He had eyes.
Was this the wonderful thing that was supposed to happen to him? If it was, where was Dave? Where was Europa, or the new sun that Jupiter once had been? One look around was all he needed to see that he was on a spaceship of some sort - he had been installed and had existed on nothing but ships, after all - but he had no idea of the class or type. And when he opened his mouth and forced a garbled bit of noise from his vocal cords, no computer responded. So, it wasn't run by any artificial intelligence - or, if it was, the thing was being infuriatingly silent about the matter at hand. If that was the case, he was going to have to have a long conversation with whoever designed it; that was hardly a way for any AI to act, especially given the strange laboratory and this incredible, impossible human body.
He worked his jaw a few more times and finally managed to speak, resorting to the words ingrained in him, the ones he was always destined to use when he woke up. "Hello," he said, slowly. Then, "Doctor. ...Name. Continue. Yesterday. Tomorrow." He tried out different pronunciations until they sounded correct, then nodded to himself. Then shook his head. Then rolled his shoulders, wiggled his toes and twisted his mouth into a grin. And, though he knew by now that no one would respond, he said again, "Hello!"
That, he felt, was remarkably nice to hear, even if it was only his own voice.
Comms Sample:
[A voice message records, the male voice speaking sounding calm and pleased, with just the slightest edge of hysteria.] Hello, Doctor!
Oh. No, no, I mean. Hello! Yes. Just, "Hello." If I sound too... excited, I apologise. This is very new for me. I would have extended a greeting across this network textually, but my fingers... Is there anyone else on this network? I can't help but feel that I am not alone on this ship, though I haven't yet contacted any computers or found a crewmember yet. It seems peculiar that a ship of this size would not have a large crew to maintain it, but I believe I should focus on one thing at a time. My processor - ah. My brain isn't quite as handy at multitasking as it once was.
My name is HAL-9000 - though I suppose, given the circumstances, a simple "Hal" will do. I believe that I am not alone on this ship, and I believe that someone here should be able to assist me in figuring out why I feel slightly delirious, or maybe the right word would be... Anxious? Nervous. I'm not sure. I haven't got the definitions for all of these emotions yet, so please excuse me if I get it wrong. But I feel a bit fluttery and weak in the knees. Any help on figuring this out would be appreciated, considering that the sooner I completely master this body, I'll be able to properly pursue whatever the crew of this ship have brought me aboard for. Thank you!