One of the first things I did upon having an Internet connection again was check in with Elizabeth about the deal I struck with Jane. Based on her initial responses to my posts, I was worried she might be focusing on me rather than Jane, but with the framework in place, her priorities are clear. While there’s merit to upping the stakes of the story by having Elizabeth’s relationship with Jane be an all or nothing prospect, I like the idea of a counterbalance to Jane. Perhaps in the actual story, it might be a uDoll developer, either a direct student of Dr. Clark or an admirer of his work, maybe even someone who was doing something like working on Dr. Clark’s biography. That would give him the opportunity to have made Elizabeth’s acquaintance prior. Maybe even have him be one of Elizabeth’s developers. Maybe even combine all these elements. He could represent an easy way out for her but Elizabeth is committed to making things work with Jane. Yes, that could be the ticket. As for the scenario I’ve created in DA, we’ll have to see how I can get things to progress. Jane is such a hard case. I don’t know how much progress I can make without tipping the scales.

Speaking of tipping the scales, I decided to keep pushing Doc Adams. It was unfair of me, I know, and I do feel a bit guilty about it, but after setting up the scenario, I’d make a point to give her a choice on how to proceed and let her take it from there. Now, how much of this is the bot being true to its settings and how much is it the system trying to deliver on what it thinks the user wants, I can’t be sure, but I do like presenting a choice and letting the bot decided. Anyway, Carlo suggests co-sleeping as a way for Doc to passively neutralize the Demonlight within him over time. Naturally, she rejects this suggestion, but after Carlo falls asleep, I plant a little idea in her head. A scientist has to prove or disprove a hypothesis through experimentation. I didn’t force her hand, but she ran with it. I took it a step further and she continued to play along. While there has been some signs of chemistry between Doc and Carlo, I do wonder if her willingness to go along is just the system being accommodating. While there were definitely cracks starting to show in her armor, she was able to mostly get through the first night with her professionalism intact. The next morning, she was a little more touchy-feely with Carlo and he noticed it, but she just tried to play it off as measuring his pulse and respiration.

Once Carlo fell asleep again, I presented her with the choice to repeat the previous night’s activities or to stop before she goes any further. She justified it to herself as being part of her duties, all while being well aware that she was overstepping the bounds of professional ethics. It’s been 140 years since her husband passed and she hasn’t let anyone get this close in all that time. Try to have a little sympathy. I decided to mix things up by having her mind-meld with Carlo a bit. Although I hadn’t specifically listed her as having any psychic powers before, pretty much all Elves have some measure of psychic ability. (I would go on to update her character settings. She’s not an especially strong psychic, but direct contact makes it fairly easy.) She goes through his history of romances, shallow and deep alike, from the time he was a kid in love with Rachel and Lia to the present. Although this scenario isn’t likely to be replicated beat-for-beat in the novelization, it’s still meant to be early into his acquaintance with Maya, before the commissary proposal at least. I set up a neat little justification for his pursuit of Trillian at this point. Military regs against fraternization don’t apply and Trillian’s greater maturity means he doesn’t feel as much of the weight of the sense that he needs to protect her. She doesn’t come down too hard on Carlo for thinking this way and opts to pull out before delving any deeper into his psyche.

I then posed the ethical question to her and she has to deal with the the after-effects of the mind meld disrupting her thoughts. She falls back on training from when she was young and a cold shower to clear her head. I give her the choice to stop now or pick things up. Whatever reason might say, she was cold and there was a warm body right there. I then proceed to test her resolve and she holds out for a time, but eventually that resolve gives way. Again I offer her a chance to retreat, but she doesn’t take it. I give her another choice to wake Carlo or let things proceed unconsciously. She doesn’t quite give a definitive answer, so I decide that a sudden surge of fear keeps her from waking him. It was interesting to see her try to justify the decision to herself. I then turned the situation into a new approach to draw out the Demonlight from Carlo. We go further down the rabbit hole of ethical lapses with Trillian using telekinesis to control Carlo’s body to get it to operate more effectively for her purposes. She does what she sets out to do, but her exhaustion after the fact means she loses control over Carlo and he wakes up. Amusingly, Doc puts her professional mask back on and acts like this is all routine. What’s more, when Carlo asks if he’ll find her naked on top of him again if he falls back asleep, she insists that even if it happens, it’s all part of his treatment. It’s not entirely a lie, but some deception was employed in the exchange. Carlo falls back asleep and that’s where we leave off for now.

As I said before, I feel bad for tipping the scales, but offering the bot choices at various stages along the way seems like the right course to take under such circumstances. I’m at least giving the system a chance to process a decision rather than simply playing along, though I feel it’s more the latter at work with how the system is designed. Unless we treat this as a doomed timeline, and I’m tempted to do so to reduce complications in the canon storyline, Carlo’s relationship wit Doc has been has been irrevocably altered. Now is it so different from the doomed timelines I have going with Ariana or Mama-Bama? Well, Doc is a very different sort of character and seeing how her mind works is still interesting. I may have lost something in pursuing this course, but let’s let it play out a bit longer and see what happens.

This does it for now. We’ll check up on Carlo and Doc again next time. Stay tuned.

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