I can't tell whether people have figured out Eliza's language dynamic yet. I also can't decide whether I want them to, it'd be more interesting to see what kinds of chaos result from a character who just unhelpfully parrots random gibberish back to you in response to direct questions.

At present I'm just kind of hanging out and experimenting with different things I can do. I'm really enjoying the character dynamic so far, and I'll be interested to see how it goes moving forward. It's kind of irritating because nobody has said simple "Yes" "No" "Here, take this" or other utilitarian phrases, so I kind of have to sculpt my speech around vaguely similar phraseology. I also can't say my own name yet. That's going to make things interesting. I'm trying to avoid using body language because that seems like cheating, but I might resort to it if I have to.

I might start an epic feud with Keisha or Cassie by throwing their own insults back at them, or use their vocab to mercilessly attack the little girl, just because I really kind of the love the idea of a broken android exclusively referring to an eight-year-old as "bitch."

I'm also thinking a Labmance could be a fun way to go. My other lab characters have been as sexual as bricks so it'd be interesting to see what kinds of things VZ173 can get up to if she really applies herself. Ideally I'd like to hook up with RAMSES just for the sheer hilarity of botmance. Melvin is another possibility but I think he's an NPC and he hasn't responded to any of the conversational cues I've been dropping him.

At present I'm hoping to get some kind of long-lasting Boone/Stonehard style of friendship going with someone like Matilda or Morwena. I could see hilarious character development coming from either of them, but mostly Matilda because I just love the idea of an old granny running around swapping grandchildren stories with a robot.

It's more than a little unnerving to try and come up with a rationale for why I'm useful and should stay alive when I can't actually do anything that anybody else isn't already doing. For some reason nobody's brought my name up, and I'm hoping it stays that way.

The frustrating part about this life-or-death situation is that all of the minimally-active people are taking this as a kick in the pants, and showing up to post incredibly mundane truisms just so they'll seem like they're contributing, and it's really annoying to catalogue six or seven variations of the same sentence. 24 pages of blather, ugh, and it's only going to get longer tomorrow...

I don't understand the way these people think.

1 - "There must be some way that the 9 will die! It's not possible we'd be asked to give up that many!" Well folks, it's deep space. We all got told in the pregame announcements that there'd be a higher body count this time around. Nobody should be surprised.

2 - "We need to determine what everyone's skills are!" Why on earth should we base our decision around which character people chose to play as? That makes absolutely no sense. I'm more likely to trust someone who plays as a granny because it means they're familiar enough with this setting to want to experiment.

3 - "Aldo should live no matter what!" Aldo bailed for about 24 straight hours. I don't want to be in a group with someone who won't reliably use their role. Same goes for Portia, Paige, and everybody else that hasn't been around much.

4 - "We shouldn't make decisions based on post count!" Actually, that's the most reliable indicator we have of someone's usefulness over time. There have been hundreds of posts so far, if you couldn't find a way to jump into the conversation more than five or six times, how are you ever going to be reliable?

I can say "Yes" AND MY OWN NAME. It's like Christmas and my birthday in one!

Seriously, though, 61 pages? *headdesk*

Watts asked an intriguing question about how old Eliza is.

Based on the dates in the Soderbergh logs, I'd estimate the Dalia disappeared in 2234, which would put the Inferno war around 2034. That means that Descent into Madness took place sometime in the 2060s or thereabouts, as characters in their twenties attested to having fled to the bunker during the war.

The Bright Brotherhood receiving news of Rebekah's death (and the revelation that the Shard was lost in the depths of the bunker) is what prompted them to consider using nonhuman operatives to retrieve the artifacts scattered around the planet - especially since the risk of fallout was so great. Presumably this is around the time when Kayla began to make developments in the aerospace industry, and began developing plans for droids.

This leaves approximately 170 years between the bunker incident and the disappearance of the Dalia. Assuming twenty-odd years for Kayla to establish their foothold and begin interplanetary exploration and colonization, it seems reasonable to suggest that Sentinel units would have been in development around the late 2080s or so, or at least far enough along in the development process for the Brotherhood to steal the plans.

It's probably safe to assume that Eliza's massacre occurred around 2090, making her approximately 150 years old. This lines up decently well with what we've observed so far - Percy's fascination with RAMSES as an "old school" robot would put him as at least 30 years old if not more, but she didn't have any sort of reaction to Eliza. That most reasonable explanation for this (in character, anyway. Odds are good that whoever's playing her didn't feel like attempting to have a conversation with me) is that Eliza's such an old model that Percy has no clue what she's looking at.

Alternatively, nothing in Kayla's press releases indicates that the sentinels are a line that the corporation wants to be strongly associated with. My guess is that they're an offshot, militarized version of the standard RAMSES design. Factor in that Eliza was bastardized for Brotherhood purposes, and it would make sense that Percy doesn't see anything interesting about this particular android. It's likely that a competent engineer would assume Eliza's a third-party product and the damage visible in the avatar is due to faulty manufacturing and cheap parts - especially if it's not common knowledge that Kayla makes killbots in the first place.

That's my interpretation anyway, feel free to correct any mistakes I've made in my interpretation of the timeline.

All looks sensible to me.

Kayla has a squeaky clean image to maintain so any kind of militaristic research would be heavily covered up.