[Pemigrade]

Wow frost, good job not necroposting, but great job playing that piano cover!

[CreeperKing309]

Wow frost that was actually really amazing! Nice job!

[skyrimed]

This was something that I wrote a while back after a really cool dream I had. It's kind of long and I can't figure out how to turn it into a spoiler or something so you can hide it. If anyone can tell me how to do that I'll edit it right away.

The Robotics of the Afterlife

"You sure this is gonna work?”

"That needs to connect to the core."

Click. "Oh, hush, Reed, I know what I'm doing."

"Hush..."

From somewhere in the room, or perhaps everywhere, there came a collective gasp. It couldn't quite see, yet, but it felt the sensation of blood running through its veins. Cold, cold veins. A subtle humming took the place of an absent heartbeat.

"Okay. Hold on, buddy... Almost done here."

"Hush..." it said again. For that was all it knew.

Something clicked in its chest. Its eyes were granted the sight of three people staring, completely attentive and eager. The room was a small white tube, with complex pieces on the walls and handles to help move around. Gravity had no effect here. It was strapped securely in a seat against the wall, arms pinned to the arm rests and feet strapped in place.

The people smiled strangely. The closest to it was a large man whose stretch suit was covered in grease and oil. The other two were women, one with lighter skin and one with darker skin, who were also covered in grease and oil.

"Can you move?" the man asked.

It did not know how to respond. With its limited vocabulary, it said, "Hush," again. The excitement in the atmosphere came to it in an overwhelming rush. It was unable to express this, however.

"Let me get you loose," the lighter woman added. She untied its hands and moved the mobile table back into its holster. Then she undid the feet, and though she was gentle, it feared the worst.

It jolted forward, free; the people dodged from its wake. Compulsively, it began to tear at whatever it could reach, all the while emitting a high pitched squeal. The people flinched and began to panic. They acted.34

An instant came and went, everything disappeared. Its sight, feeling, sound, the people could not be detected.

---

            "Okay, let's try this again."

            Once again, it could not move. The humming in its chest worked at a steady pace; a calming, numbing pace. The people hesitated long enough that it questioned whether or not they were still actually there.

            Then, very softly from somewhere in the room, "Hush."

            They were staring at it again, hopeful. The lighter woman was closest, hands on the wires that made up its circulatory system.

            "You're scaring him," she warned her colleagues. "Don't look too interested."

            "He's not going to... erupt like that, again, is he?"

            "It depends on how we treat him. He has wooden feelings."

            The darker woman lowered her eyebrows in confusion. "What's that supposed to mean?"

            "Means we can't get over excited." She closed the door to his chest and stared into his eyes. He focused in and out a few times, blurring her face and bringing it back to his attention.

            "Hush," she said again.

            He didn't respond.

            "Did you leave out his voice box?" the other woman asked as she searched a box of spare parts.

            "No, I saw her put it back into place after she fixed it," the man said. "We tested it three times and it worked perfectly fine."

            "There's no reason it shouldn't be talking," the lighter woman grumbled. She looked away.

            Focusing. In. Pock marks, freckles, deep brown eyes. Out. All the details melted together. In. A face of disappointment. Across the room, the lighter woman tapped a monitor to life and began to record. The screen showed the reflection of the entire room. She began to make a log.

            "Day forty in the shuttle, test twenty-three, final..." She looked to her colleagues longingly. They stared back, busted in a sense of sadness. They were remembering.

            Turning back to the camera, the woman resumed her log, "Eli is stable. Playing with vision, not vocal, responds to the word 'Hush'. We have a long way to go but I believe this project is going to pull through."

            She faced Eli again. The name sounded strange in his ears. Their eyes met, his were focused on all the details in her iris. The strings, the colors, the pattern...

            "Go ahead, you guys," she said without looking away, "Let's introduce ourselves to our new friend."

            The Man waved a hand. "My name is Joseph," he said awkwardly, "but you can call me McCoy."

            The darker woman took her turn. "Call me Reed."

            "I am Vali Fritz," the first woman finished.

            McCoy, Reed, Fritz. McCoy, Reed, Fritz. McCoy, Reed, Fritz. McCoy, Reed, Fritz.

            He found that they were still watching him. They would not look away. They seemed to be amazed, astounded; calm but excited.

            "What's your name?" Fritz asked.

            He did not respond.

            "Your name is Eli." She spoke in a certain way, as if the name meant more than the name of a robot or the title of a project.

            In spite of their eagerness, Eli stayed silent. He continued to focus in and out. The colleagues appeared to grow frustrated with this behavior; they began to work on their own things. Not enough time would pass before any one of them cast a glance in his direction.

            And he watched them patiently. Time did not exist to him.

            Overtime, he observed their behavior. Occasionally, the colleagues would attempt to teach him how to speak, but never got very far. He wouldn't say anything more than, "Hush."

            "Why does he do that?" Reed had asked once.

            "I think it's the first word he heard," Fritz explained thoughtfully. "Babies as well as artificial intelligence tend to grip onto something that they’re familiar with."

            "What does a robot need comfort for?"

            "Do you remember when I said he has wooden feelings?"

            Reed nodded slowly. "I still don't know what that means," she commented. She had been organizing computer chips and labeling them based on their content.

            "Well... That's the thing. When I was writing up the program for him, I added in some files from other projects. Not everything is brand new. I was digging through some folders and I found a copy of Eli's personality. This isn't just a project for space travel, it's for the sake of robotics."

            Reed paused, as if processing what Fritz had to say. "That's why you wanted to name him Eli? You didn't actually put that file in, did you?"

            Fritz flinched at her hostility, but she nodded slowly.

            "Fritz! That's illegal! What the hell were you thinking?"

            Fritz only managed a sigh.

            "You can't just use robotics to bring your brother back. You, of all people, should know that. You know it's not actually him, it's just a copy. A hard copy."

            "Would you rather shut down this project and go home?" Fritz challenged.

            "We can't do that! Not after we've spent millions of dollars on the hopes of space nerds!" Reed expelled a breath in frustration. She pulled her dark hair back into a ponytail. "I'm going to delete that surveillance clip before anyone sees it. You better write up a new personality program for Eli or something. I'm not going to jail over this shit."

            "What about Eli?"

            A moment before she was out of the room, Reed spun around to face Fritz. "What about him? He doesn't understand anything we're saying. He's as dull as a rock."

            Then Fritz was left alone with the robot. He focused in on the details of her face, on her damp cheeks and her puffy eyes. She had been crying.

            Wiping her face, she said, "She doesn't mean that." She sniffled.

            "Hush."

---

            Eli hadn't said a word since then. The colleagues put a pen in his hand and a piece of paper on the mobile table in front of him to see if he could draw shapes.

            McCoy held up a drawing of a sloppy square and told Eli to draw what he saw.

            Without looking at his paper, Eli drew the scene before him, detail over detail. Square, hands, pock marks, freckles, shading, details, details, details.

            When he was finished, Eli could not quite understand why the colleagues were very vocal about his drawing.

            McCoy recorded an exciting log that day. "Day forty-three, we asked Eli to draw what he saw," he showed the picture of the sloppy square, "and instead he drew what he saw." Then McCoy presented Eli's drawing. “He hasn't said anything for a while, but at least we know he understands commands!"

            Out of the corner of his eye, Eli saw the two women exchange an uncomfortable glance with each other. Though he was externally emotionless, Eli pretended not to notice.

            Often times the colleagues would idle in Eli's room and tell stories. He had taken that time to further understand his flesh and blood peers.

            From a distance, McCoy had a rather intimidating vibe. With a large build and incredible facial hair, one might assume that McCoy was a bouncer or a hit-man. But underneath all that muscle, McCoy turned out to be a playful teddy bear.

            He was raised in a strict household, where he was forced into long hours of nonstop studying. He was encouraged only to excel in school. In his late teen years, he had dealt with a long episode of depression.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a rebellion for McCoy. There was still a load of stress on his shoulders but he managed to graduate university and came to NASA with a passion for astrological science.

            Reed explained how she was born into a rather violent family. As a child, she'd never learned how to channel her feelings and express them. She would always act out, and she had to learn the hard way how to control herself. She came into NASA with a degree in engineering and knowledge on how to program computers.

            Fritz had grown up a privileged girl. She looked up to her older brother and wanted to follow him into innovative engineering. He was well known throughout NASA for having a simulation project which was used to copy and store data from human brains into hard drives. He was killed before he could see it happen; the project was deemed unsafe and had been abandoned.

            It seemed that the colleagues already knew these stories. Eli thought for a moment, only a second, that they were possibly telling these stories again for his mechanical ears.

---

            Computers think, too. That's what the colleagues did not understand. They had programmed Eli to act like a human, yet they expected him to act like a computer. Eli had the voice, but he did not have the words. He could recognize sentences, but he could not build them.

            That's why it took him, from the final test, eleven earth days to speak.

            The colleagues were becoming more and more frustrated with his active silence. There had been talk about shutting down the entire project should they be unable to verbally communicate with Eli. The stress pressured even him.

            On that last day of silence, while the other two colleagues slept in their cabins, Fritz was the one who stayed awake, constantly running tests.

            "Come on, Eli," she was whispering, but it was more to herself rather than the robot. "The future needs you."

            Fritz presented a ballpoint pen. "What is this?" she demanded.

            Eli's fingers twitched. Fritz shook her head and sighed. "You're not gonna draw it. You're going to tell me what this is and what it does."

            Eli stayed silent. He zoomed his vision in and out of the window, examining the view of space. All that could be heard was micro mechanical movement, a sound you would hear in an expensive camera.

            "What's that?" Fritz persisted. "What are you looking at?" She followed his gaze, waiting impatiently for his answer. Eli blinked and turned his attention to her.

            "Maybe..." Fritz began to undo the straps that held him in place, though she was very hesitant. They hadn't let him loose since he went haywire.

            He was free, and he didn't act out this time. Instead, Eli rotated his wrists, moved his arms and shoulders, and let the weightlessness move him about. It was a strange feeling, to be floating without a falling sensation.

            Fritz showed him the monitor which they used to record logs. "Do you know who this is?" Eli saw his reflection in screen, a delay in movement. He looked absolutely human.

            Eli grinned.

            He touched his face, felt his flesh though it was rather cold and rubbery. He looked at his teeth, artificial ivory, and looked into his own glass eyes. They were blue, and he stared until he could see the laser-sensor cameras installed in his pupils.

            He was as human as a robot could be. He could not say he was disappointed. In fact, in a way, he was proud of how he appeared. Though he could not define that pride.

            "Who is Eli Fritz?" he asked suddenly. He did not stammer, his electronic voice did not give feedback.

            Fritz nearly jumped out of her skin. She covered her mouth and stifled nervous laughter. "Where did you hear...?"

            "The files."

            Puzzled silence.

            "The files you programmed into my system. I am designed to repair issues, which gives me access to all of my files. While you were attempting to get me to speak, I researched my abilities. I have also overheard some thrilling conversations."

            She responded with a form of wet anger. "You mean you could've talked that whole time? You didn't respond when we needed you to. We just wasted thousands of dollars spending more time up here!"

            "I am designed to repair issues, but I cannot fix that attitude of yours."

            Fritz covered her face, wiped her eyes, and looked into the void of the universe. They were small compared to everything else.

            "Why didn't you speak?" She was quieter this time, just barely grimacing.

            "You had asked me obvious questions I assumed you already knew the answer to. I did not think they needed to be answered."

            "You sound just like him."

            "Who is Eli Fritz?"

            She told him, quietly, privately, the ambitions of Eli Fritz. The man who wanted to save the memories of the dying, who wanted to document personalities and make copies of actual brains. The man who had spent long hours alone in his room making draft after draft, doing endless research and writing down notes. The man who, at the peak of finishing his project, was electrocuted in an accident during experimentation. He had been deeply respected by NASA, and honored well after his death.

            Fritz never took it very well, so it seemed. He could still see her internal destruction, her resentment at the mention of her brother.

            Some part went unspoken. They both had a mutual understanding that a piece - a copy - of Eli Fritz lived on in the robot. As was the reason Vali Fritz was so very attached to a piece of fine machinery, perhaps the very last thing she had of her brother.

---

            Fritz's project was deemed a success after they had landed back on earth. Eli was taught everything there is to know about computer science, astrology, and engineering. Without anyone's knowledge of the illegal files that Eli possessed, he, a robot, had received a Nobel Peace Prize. Eli went on to travel the universe in search of earth-like planets billions of miles away, to prove the existence of life elsewhere.

            Eli had no perception of time. Long after all known life had been purged by the plague of pollution, Eli could be found still active in his shuttle, humming songs to NASA long after they're dead and gone.

[OrlandoQuinn]

I always love Art Threads! Looks like lots of talented folks on this server!

What is everyone up to now? I'd love to see more!

[ThatChicken1]

https://imgur.com/a/4dF1uTg
Nice to see some various forms of art in here, Frosty and Skyrimed.  Seeing this thread brought back from the dead had me rummaging through old sketches. I've not improved a bit, but found some half-decent ones in the portfolio.

(if it's not been suggested already, live performances over the discord could be a possibility, MrFrosted. Plenty of requests that way, too)

[Penguin]

I'd love to share some of my music with you guys! Perhaps I'll upload to youtube or something...

Here's an example of some of my stuff:

[Pantoria]

some of these are old and like absolute crap. lets home the transparency works ;')

[Penguin]

It's 1am and I was supposed to do work tonight

[_notmyprob2]

Monika because why not. I’m having trouble attaching the post so I’m working on that

[Vek_Stonebeard]

Seeing this thread and the amazing works within, I thought I would contribute. However, I did not want to flood the thread with large images. So here is an album of my artwork. I am not exactly prolific. But I do them here and there. 
https://imgur.com/a/gPKcQ3Q