application for lastvoyages

[secretasshole]

did david do it on his own? was it to find out what the black goo did to a person? did he have a malfunction in his robot brain?
IS DAVID A SECRET ASSHOLE?

User Name/Nick: Gwen
User DW: betterdeadthanred
AIM/IM: girlwonder004 @ AIM
E-mail: isthereair@gmail.com
Other Characters: Dick Grayson, Charles Xavier, Bucky Barnes, Simon Tam, Luther Scott.

Character Name: David, a Weyland Corp David 8 model android.
Series: Prometheus
Age: This model David 8 is probably a couple years old (at the very least two years, four months and twenty five days, as some of the viral marketing said his model would be premiering on the Prometheus and that's how long the trip took + the period the movie covers up until his "death"), but looks and (generally) seems like he's in his early 30's.
From When?: After the last surviving Engineer decapitates him.

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. David is manipulative and self serving, and is definitely aware that some of the stuff he's doing would be considered "not cool" by human standards, namely basically enabling an alien species to get a shot at flying to Earth and wiping out humanity because he has daddy issues. He's kind of a douchebag.
Item: N/A

Abilities/Powers: David is an android, and as such, is incredibly intelligent in the sense of he can store lots of and pick up new information quickly because he's literally a learning computer. He's fluent in a ridiculous number of languages, has been programmed/taught to be a scientist, medical personnel and a bar tender, and is physically stronger and more durable than a human being. While he can be deprogrammed/shut down, he can and will survive his head being separated from his body, for example, and requires little food, maintenance or even oxygen to function correctly. He runs on an power source that doesn't require changing or recharging, and he self monitors for repairs, the equipment for which I'd like to have be available to him in his cabin.

Normally, he can withstand up to about 1,000 lbs of compression force, and can life about 700 lbs. I'd like to cut that to about 500 and 300 lbs respectively on the Barge, but as he's not programmed and has no reason to be violent, I don't think it'll ever really come up as an issue. I can reduce it further if it'll be an issue!

Personality: First and foremost, it's important to address the fact that David is an android, and, thus, does not actually experience human emotion in the way we do. He is, however, programmed to understand and emulate emotion to the point of where it looks like he is actually experiencing it himself in order to help his human counterparts feel more comfortable around him, and could probably pass himself off as a human if he had to. That said - as confirmed by Michael Fassbender, Damon Lindelof and Ridley Scott - he does develop his own quirks, wants and desires which go beyond his programming, and thus he does, on some level, experience emotion, and is therefore a unique being, rather than a glorified smartphone. He can, therefore, be taught new behavior and reasoned with, rather than just needing to be reprogrammed and is thus redeemable.

There are many different layers to David, most of which are generally overlooked or not readily apparent to the casual observer because for the most part, David plays along with being an obedient servant to mankind. He is polite, well spoken, articulate, and generally seems quite passive, calmly following instructions and watching as things happen around him. As an android, he doesn't feel fear and is therefore basically impossible to intimidate, and will continue calmly trying to rationalize with whoever is threatening him until they back down or destroy him. He also doesn't seem to be programmed to react violently to things, and is generally docile, polite and helpful.

That isn't to say that he's necessarily friendly. There's enough cold passivity in his general demeanor that makes it a bit difficult for people to really get to know him, because after all, what is there really to know about something you generally think of as little more than a household appliance? As David does not have anecdotes to tell about himself or his childhood or past work experience, it would take effort to form a bond with him that most people he's known thus far are not necessarily willing to explore, which is also probably not aided by the fact that David doesn't necessarily seek out human companionship either. He does, however, show a clear preference and admiration (or at the very least, curiosity) for certain coworkers, namely Shaw, while he shows less care (and in the case of Holloway, complete lack of care) for others. In a place like the Barge, where people are used to artificial life forms or think of him as something more than just an appliance, it is likely he will form closer connections with those who treat him well.

He is intensely curious about pretty much everything, whether that be language or information, or just trying to understand the motives of the people he's working alongside. He is a learning device, and picks up and retains new information much faster and longer than a human would, because again, he's a machine. Having spent the better part of two and a half years by himself running the Prometheus while it traveled to LV-223, he has had a lot of free time to teach himself new information and immerse himself in human culture, meaning he's very well read, has seen lots of films (his favorite of which is Lawrence of Arabia) and has spent enough time learning and reconstructing languages that he's fluent in basically everything, knowing enough about the structure and history of language to understand how to operate the Engineer's locks and ship, as well as attempt communicating with them. He has a wide skill set, for things as diverse as chess, language, bartending, and also can function as a scientist or medical assistant. Given the time and tools needed, he can learn to do basically anything you could want him to, as long as he's physically capable of it. This model is specifically geared toward helping life on board a space ship and on a potentially hostile alien world, but he can learn more.

Despite appearing as an adult in his early thirties, and generally acting that age in many ways, David still does seem very childlike in many respects, constantly asking why, wanting to learn more, and occasionally needing to be told to stop touching that thing, put that down, or get away from there. Although he looks and acts very human, there is definitely a disconnect there which prevents him from truly passing for an adult human. The lack of fear and general constant calm alerts that there's something not quite right there, especially considering his inflection almost never changes, even when projecting his voice to someone standing farther away from him. He can ask how your day is going in the same voice he'll tell you you're all going to die horribly on this planet because there's a vicious alien monster standing behind you and it's going to eat your face.

He is, however, expressive. He can even cry, and while this expressiveness was programmed into him to make humans feel more comfortable around them, even when he's not in their presence, his expression changes rather than staying flat. When he enters the control room of the Engineer's ship and activates the map he looks pretty excited, despite not having any humans around to reassure by it. These expressions are also probably his most intense ones during the entire film This is, again, evidence that while he might still not experience emotion the same way we do, he still does express something that goes a bit beyond what he was programmed to.

Once one gets past these outer layers of the polite, helpful, curious servant to mankind, a much more sinister edge becomes very apparent. Despite being an android programmed to help humans, David is very self serving. He can and will follow orders you give him, even if he doesn't like you, but he can choose to ignore things he doesn't want to do, and he's capable of lying to cover it up, as shown in an extended scene where he directly tells Vickers that his equipment malfunctioned, when it is clear he switched the video feed off intentionally. Considering Vickers was in on the real reason Weyland sent Prometheus to LV-223, there's no real reason for Weyland to have programmed him to leave this bit of information out, and therefore it's David consciously making a decision to hide information from his "sister".

He also lacks empathy and ethics. Despite having a pretty good idea that he was probably going to be poisoning Holloway with the bioweapon he stole from the base and leaving him to die a horrible death, he still did it anyway to see what would happen, and to better understand just what went on here before they arrived on the moon. He chose Holloway because Holloway was the one who constantly treated him more like a child or a computer rather than an individual, and it's apparent he feels no remorse for doing so. He has very little concern for human life in general, knowingly leading Weyland to his death and casually accepting that waking up the last Engineer could doom humanity as a whole, instead of warning the others that this is entirely possible and maybe should be avoided.

As David explains to Shaw, he actively wants his "father" dead. David resents his position as an android, and his story fairly closely parallels the search for answers his human counterparts. David already has his answers: mankind created him because they could, and it frustrates him that they don't see him as an equal, despite being more intelligent and physically capable than they could ever hope to be. He wants to prove himself, while at the same time standing out instead of being lumped in with the rest of humanity. This is especially true with Weyland in that he considers David "the closest thing he has to a son", while still not being good enough to actually be a son because he isn't a human. He wants to be able to distinguish himself from the people that made him and not be treated as inferior, while at the same time wanting to understand human emotion and motivation, the same way Shaw wants to understand the Engineers and why they created and then wanted to destroy us. He wants the freedom to be able to be himself, without people telling him what to do or treating him as something less than themselves, just as Shaw feels she deserves answers from the Engineers.

He's quite sarcastic, and has a very dark sense of humor, and does seem to take some pleasure in exhibiting both whenever possible. Rather than beating around the bush, or trying to come up with something more polite to say at all, he makes snide comments often, rather than telling whoever's annoying him that they're an asshole or directly telling them they're wrong. This is almost always accompanied by a smirk that can very easily be described as smug, because he knows he's smarter than whoever's annoying him, but as he's not supposed to antagonize his coworkers, he needs to stick to these quieter methods of asserting his intelligence and aptitude. In general, this means he's passive aggressive and manipulative when he isn't getting what he wants. He will apologize and smile, but not mean it, he will lie and go behind your back if there's something he wants, and he'll happily lead you to your death if you ask him nicely and don't realize he's got something else up his sleeve.

All this together means that while he never directly threatens anyone, there is definitely a sinister edge to him, which again stems from the lack of empathy, cool, calculated responses, and his passive aggressive smug asshole behavior. If you're polite to him, there's a very good chance that this behavior will go generally unnoticed, but when you aren't, he'll be snarky, subtly impudent and won't help you if you somehow fall under the wheels of a bus he may or may not have steered in your direction.

Barge Reactions: David will be fascinated by the Barge, and want to learn everything he can about it, especially the Admiral and all of the stranger events like floods and breaches. He will not be particularly bothered by the lack of answers in some ways, viewing it as a challenge and something to work towards, but it's unlikely he'll ever accept there are just some things we aren't meant to understand because he's a robot and the rest of us are humans/mutants/Time Lords/etc., at least until he's graduated. There will also probably be a lot of canon comparisons going on here whenever questions of the Admiral's motivation come up because let's be real, that's not all that different from the humans wanting to know what the Engineers were really up to.

He will, for the most part, play the part of obedient, well behaved inmate, and won't be too much of a hassle for whoever ends up as his warden. He'll also want to find ways to fill his day, and will probably volunteer to assist in basically every department that will have him, considering he's trained enough to help out in the lab, the infirmary, the bar and the library, and could easily become skilled to help in basically anywhere else that requires an extra hand. He'll operate on a routine and generally try to assist people where he's needed, because it's what he's programmed to do and it's better than sitting around staring at a wall all day.

He'll be especially fascinated by all the representatives from different worlds, timelines, and species, and will want to know more about them, probably in detail most people will find a little draining. He can be shut up with books or documentaries.

He will be a little puzzled by his assignment as an inmate, but understand that indirectly threatening the well being of billions of people is reason enough to be a prisoner, here. Most of his confusion over it will be the fact that he's being treated the same way humans and other nonhumans are, as this is an unusual situation and he's not used to the concept of really being accountable for what he does because he's a robot, and he's never been punished or really rewarded for his actions, good or bad. So he'll be puzzled, but ultimately understand. Level Zero will probably not be a great punishment or deterrent for him, because as he is, ultimately, a machine, sitting quietly in a room for a few days isn't something he'll be particularly troubled by, and his warden will need to come up with a more creative punishment for him.

Path to Redemption: David needs to accept that there are some things he wasn't meant to understand. He is a robot, and while he's certainly welcome to live his own life if he chooses to, he needs to accept that he isn't human, and that that's okay. There are some things we simply aren't meant to understand about how and why were created, and being resentful and trying to lash out at your creators (or in his case, trick them into signing their own death warrant) won't solve anything. In general, he needs to learn that just because you're annoyed with the person/people who created you, you shouldn't help facilitate their creators from wiping out them, and that human life has value.

He does not need to learn that he isn't an individual or doesn't deserve to be treated like a person. In fact, it will actually do him a lot of good to have people treat him like he's more than just a convenience to them, because he'll start to understand that they have value and shouldn't be written off the same way he has, despite also basically being experiments like him.

He will generally cooperate with his warden, will arrive on time for meetings and follow orders without complaint, and will generally be a dutiful, polite inmate. However, he will also lie, get manipulative and generally be a sneaky asshole, so a good warden will try to keep tabs on him and make sure he doesn't have access to things that could let him cause mischief. That said, he's also not going to be someone looking to actively overthrow the Admiral or kill everyone else on board, although he might be tempted to turn someone he doesn't like into a lab rat or play a minor role in someone else's scheme to shake things up a little.

Basically, he has no moral compass, and he needs one. While he might never be able to feel or express compassion or love the way we can, he needs to learn the difference between right and wrong and why it isn't okay to do things that might hurt other people. He's been allowed to do more or less whatever he wants for his entire life without facing any consequences for the decisions he's made, and he needs moral boundaries as well as a sense that he isn't better or worse than a human.

History: Prometheus on Wikipedia.

Sample Journal Entry:
[The feed clicks on to show David, wearing his usual gray uniform, standing near the pool table on level six. He's holding a nail and studying it a bit before he says anything, turning it over and over again in his fingers before looking up and smiling politely at the camera, in that usual polite but definitely vaguely creepy way everyone should be accustomed to at this point.]

A colleague [More or less, although he doubted Holloway thought of him as such. He had always seemed to treat him as a child, or a tool, and one usually didn't consider either such things colleagues.] of mine and I once had a conversation about how far one was willing to go to get their answers. It is my understanding that most of you are here for something less abstract, but never the less just as hopefully satisfactory, often at extreme personal cost and risk.

So I would like to pose the same question to you, wardens: how far are you willing to go, to get what you came all this way for?

Sample RP:
It was easy enough, to establish a routine on the Barge. It really wasn't much different from being on board the Prometheus, in some ways, in that many of the facilities were at least comparable, despite the ship's unusual design. There was a mess hall, a kitchen, a gym, an infirmary, a lab, several recreational lounges, even a pool table, and he made his rounds through all of them, assisting where he could, moving along when he couldn't, and finding ways to fill his day while waiting for the next flood to inevitably shake things up again.

The one thing that was certainly different was the number of people kept in such a small space. The Barge was larger than the Prometheus, but the crew hadn't been small just for want of space to put everyone. Each member had been selected to preform a task, and David had been programmed to fill the gaps as needed. While admittedly, they were only awake for approximately six days before things went... truly awry, certainly no one had been bored. They had tasks to preform, and a new world to explore, just as the wardens and inmates often found themselves doing on the Barge. It didn't seem like this should be much different. But, for some reason, here there were so many people who seemed to serve no purpose other than to redeem or be redeemed, who often complained of being terribly bored and having nothing productive to occupy their time with, and yet the infirmary was still almost constantly understaffed, especially in times of crisis, the kitchens could probably do with a few extra volunteers, and no one had worked in the spa at all, in his time here.

It seemed terribly inefficient in so many ways. Not to mention that he could preform many of the tasks basically single handedly. There was no reason for him to ever leave the infirmary or the pub, for example, because he didn't have to operate on a sleep cycle the way his human counterparts would.

He had an appointment with his warden, which he arrived three minutes early for, and as he waited outside the warden area on the upper deck, he contemplated suggesting a solution to the issue, either by creating more opportunities for the others on board to put themselves to use, or at least setting up some kind of schedule to keep the various departments better staffed.

He may be an inmate on board this "Barge", but he was still programmed to assist mankind, and to help a workplace function more efficiently. His logic protocols didn't see why that fact should change, just because he was being held prisoner, here.

Special Notes: Bonus voice testing: One Two Three Four Five Six