Upon Vestia: Chapter Eighteen

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(Starts on day six at the Guild of Scribes.)

"Sounds nice," Asher said, smiling. "It's good to see more people setting up shop here."

Sawna was glad for the help in cleaning, taking the dishes to be put in the dishwasher, out of sight of the main part of the room then coming back out

~~
Starr nodded "Come along if you want to see it with me" She offered as she stood, getting the two babies to sit on her shoulders

Danika moved closer to Kay, chirping at him.

Kay shrugged. Might as well check it out then.
He put out a hand for Danika to climb up.
[Well if nothing else it gives people somewhere to congregate that's not the medical room.] He wrote. Wouldn't THAT be nice.

Asher laughed. "Oh good, we can encourage people to hang out somewhere else." He followed Starr.

Danika eagerly climbed up Kay's arm to settle on his shoulder again. Today she was curious and wanted to watch the world move by

Starr chuckled and led the way, carrying the bag in case her two wanted to nap.

Kay picked up his tablet, made sure Danika was secure and not digging her claws into him and followed the others.

---

Amity smiled happily, helping was good! Helping stopped his programming nagging at him.

Ethan watched Amity, amused. "Are you even capable of not smiling?" he asked.

Danika had secured herself with her tail again, as had her brood-mates on Starr. The only need for claws would be if he dropped suddenly or something.

Starr led the way to the new cafe, waving to those inside as she came in

Amity shrugged. "Does it bother you?" He forced a serious expression. "If you would prefer, I can adopt a more neutral expression for your comfort."

Esk snickered and then shut up as Starr, Asher and Kay walked in.
"Oh look who it is, you look way too well slept for a new parent." He told Kay and Asher.

Kay frowned at his brother and went to see what Sawna had set up.

Ethan rolled his eyes. "I don't care what face you make, it's just weird." Hey, his face was constantly bitchy. He wasn't going to judge too much if someone smiled all the time. He looked up as more people came in, and tensed a bit at the sight of Kay before making a conscious effort to return to a state of calm. No, he was SO not going to let Kaylr's memory fuck this up for him.

Asher smiled at Esk brightly, and looked around at everyone. It was weird to be in a cafe when he couldn't eat, but the place seemed nice enough anyway.

Ellie muffled her silent squeeing by drinking her coffee too fast and burning her tongue a bit.

Esk snickered at Ellie.

Kay averted his gaze from Ethan, it was always pretty dang awkward for both of them. And tried to ignore Ellie's squeeing. Damn he hoped he didn't make that noise himself, that'd be so undignified and humiliating.
He focused on Sawna and forced a weak smile. There were a few too many people who made him uncomfortable here for any smile to be really genuine.

Amity went back to looking cheerful. "As I understand it, a cheerful persona and upbeat tone usually sets people at ease and makes them less wary of you." He waved to those who just came in. "Though not everyone will agree. Some guests prefer a less positive interaction. I log individual preferences to better be able to interact with those I serve and work with. If you would prefer me to be less upbeat please just say and I will log your preferences accordingly."

Ethan forced his eyes away from Kay and scrubbed a table studiously for several seconds, forcing his thoughts into order. Not Kaylr, he reminded himself. That man is as much Kaylr as you are Asher. Different people, same face. He relaxed slowly and returned his attention to Amity, "By all means, keep being cheerful. Although I'm sure it would be entertaining to see you act sad."

"Why would you want to see me sad?" Amity asked. "I could if you would like, but I should inform you that as I can't feel genuine emotions it would be a fairly hollow imitation." Sad, sad... now what did sad look and sound like? Hmm.

Ethan shrugged. "Just curious." He watched Amity with mild interest. "They didn't program your hologram with emotional presets other than happy?"

Amity shook his head. "It wasn't seen as being important I suppose. I can't really say what my designers were thinking." He chuckled. "It's likely they never thought we'd be needed in any capacity beyond our brief and simple encounters with guests. Emotional responses aren't really necessary when relaying information, arranging wakeup calls or booking people into events and classes."

"Well at least they're not neurotic." Esk reasoned. He was totally listening in.

Amity smiled to Esk. "Neurosis is certainly not a part of my programming. It would be detrimental surely?"

Esk shrugged.

"My point is, my designers had very set ideas for what the Host units would be doing, i'm certain they never expected one of us to be all the way out here just as they never really anticipated the series of catastrophic events that lead to the evacuation of the cruise liner."

"No, neurotic hosts wouldn't be much use," Ethan agreed. "Obviously your creators were pretty pragmatic in building you. You'd think they'd want to make you a bit more complex for dealing with guests though, guests are demanding, finicky people."

Sawna smiled at Kay, Asher, the babies and Starr. "What can I get for you?" She asked cheerfully. Her first day open and she had so many visitors. She was happy with this.

Starr came to the counter to look at what was offered also

Amity shrugged. "My social adaptions seem to be sufficient without the unwanted side effects of a more complex neural code. You'd have to speak to the Felid or someone else about how it all works though because I have no idea. I now that we log preferences and learn how to interact through experience, but as each guest is unique in their desires and whims, we never really stop adding to a library of learned behaviors." He nodded. " When that guest leaves, their preferences and any other useful information is uploaded into the central database where it can be retrieved by any other Host that encounters that individual. That way we can provide continuity of care across our cruises, allowing our guests time to relax knowing they will not have to remind a new host of their preferred routines and rituals. Many guests appreciate this, it makes them feel welcome and at home on any of our ships or resorts."

Ethan nodded. "Sensible. Do all hosts use the same form by default, or do they use different ones?" he asked. He looked amused, "I think I'd get worried if every host knew everything about me already. Too much information." Heh, that was sure to end up in Amity's preference logs, wasn't it?

~~
Asher smiled at Sawna. "I was just curious to see what was happening," he said. "It's always nice to see something new on this ship."

Amity smiled softly, yes, that was going into the logs. It was an automatic process he didn't really have much control over.
"No, we use a variety of forms to give the illusion of diversity. It was found that people responded better when hosts didn't all look identical. A whole ship of duplicates was deemed unsettling to many of our guests. We have a database of forms and those forms are selected at random, unless our allocated guests have already been with us, in which case for continuity, we take that already familiar form. For all intents and purposes, we are the same Host, even if our drone projector is not the exact same one."

"Can you look like anyone you want then?" Esk asked.

"Theoretically if I was given a database of holographic forms to select from yes, I could upload a different form into the projector and use that." Amity answered pleasantly.

Esk looked thoughtful.

--

Kay ordered a coffee just because he hadn't had one yet and it seemed rude not to.
Black, no sugar.

Sawna got the coffee for Kay, handing it to him, but listening in on the other conversation. She smiled at Asher though, nodding "Yes, and with a place to gather, they won't need 'Confrence room 1', now will they?" She teased gently. Yep, even she had seen the signs

"Do you have any non-Aketi forms in your database?" Ethan asked.

~~
Asher grinned. "Any way to keep uninjured people out of Conference Room One is a gift to us."

Sawna chuckled again and looked to Starr, getting her a coffee without sugar also. Nope, no sugar-drunk mama dragon for her cafe. She also got a bowl of water for the babies to drink

Starr moed to take a seat and people watch with the babies, letting them get down to drink their water on the table

Kay nodded in agreement. [We fully support this idea, in fact, I nominate this to be the new conference room 1. ]

--

Amity nodded. "not currently. My memory storage isn't overly large so for efficiency alternate forms are kept on external databases and accessed over the network. We only have on loaded at any one time, though if I had access to your ship's holographic library, I could upload another. Do you believe it would make interacting with the guests easier if I had a form more appropriate to their species?"

"I second the motion," Asher said. "This is a much better conference room."

~~
Ethan shook his head. "You're really tall, but that's not a big issue here. Stick with your default hologram unless it gets awkward, people get used to certain appearances fast."

Amity smiled. "I can be shorter if that helps. The scaling of my form is easy enough to manipulate though it does directly correlate with how high my drone flies."

--

[Maybe we should lend you our sign.] Kay suggested with a smirk.

"At least at this height you don't need to worry about people bumping into your drone," Ethan said. He reached out to pass his hand through Amity's hologram, "As long as the drone doesn't bump into door frames, you're fine."