Monique

**Harpalos-mxo** · 01/31/2007 07:58:37

Monique is maybe only 18 years old, but she knows that she's old enough to understand her place in this world. She got the chance to grow in a comfortable household, with a loving family teaching her good Christian values. She knew that the world was her playground and her newly started course in arts at college looked promising. At last, she felt she had a role. She had the grades to become a doctor or a lawyer, allowing her to be in contact with people and then work for the community. But relieving others' ailing or legal pit traps didn't sound really interesting.

No, it's through art, creativity, expression and emotion that she would help others. Everywhere in Megacity, she was seeing corruption, violence and egocentrism, all enclosed into steel and concrete. A casket for self-expression, buried alive, gasping for air. She knew there are lots of artists in the city, but most of them do this for strictly personal reasons. For Monique, art was a mean of mass communication, of collective education. And her new project gave her reasons to wake up every morning and be happy. She would create a series of art pieces all decrying a common target: animal abuse. Her work was starting well. She had already done 3 projects: a painting of a fur coat engulfing its wearer, an ambient electronic song made of animal sounds and a sculpture of a lab rat on a cross that she was particularly proud of. Her current work now was a video documentary.

Her classes for the day were over. She rushed outside and started to search for the kind of person she was looking for an interview. Businessmen in Lamar were abundant, all dressed alike. She only had to catch one, male preferably, ask him a few questions to see what are his values toward animals' rights, and if the subject is interesting enough, offer him to do a video interview. As expected, the public was not very cooperative. No one had time to stop for her, not even for a minute. She knew how people could be rude to strangers on the phone for surveys, but the dishonest politeness they all had disgusted her. After 15 minutes of sorrys and bad excuses, she grew tired and went to sit a bit on a bench.

A few instants after she let out a gasp of exasperation, a man sitting behind her, on the other side of a planter between two rows of benches, engaged conversation. "You have a problem, mademoiselle?” The mix of English and the French accent surprised her and she turned immediately to see who was talking to her. The man didn't turn to talk to her. He was sitting straight, looking to her opposite direction. All she could see was his long and sharply groomed jet-black hair, with strands of grey on the temples. She got up and walked to the other side, curious in seeing who he was. Surprised, she saw that he was the kind of man she was looking for her project. A not-so-young man elegantly dressed in a business suit. A tan betraying frequent travels in the south, or God forbid, a man frequenting tan salons. And cool sunglasses, the kind only movie stars were wearing. She had to convince him to participate in her project. Nervous, she presented herself, extending her hand, holding her notebook in the other. "Hello, my name is Monique". The man reached and shook her hand with a firm grip and answered. "Mine is Michel. Have a seat."

To be continued

Pyraci · 01/31/2007 15:56:38

( Engaging and very interesing. "Let us find out where this goes..." )

Sykin

(Indeed... Very interesting.)

**Harpalos-mxo**

The man, more used to be called Harpalos, his nickname, than his real name, was looking at the strange specimen he had in front of him. Living in the redpill community for nearly 2 years put him in contact more with trench-coated urban cowboys or humorously sexy-looking ladies. Seeing what he could only call a neo-hippie (pun not intended, but it still went through his mind) was enough to spark his curiosity. After all these countless sights of extremely short skirts, seeing a lady who looks like she's wearing an assemblage of half-dozen long skirts with mismatched colors was refreshing. Her long white cotton blouse seemed really comfortable compared to the catsuits or other latex outfits of his female counterparts. Her young face was lacking any sign of tension, something that even a perfectly designed RSI can't hide when you're used to live in the Matrix on the edge at all time.

Harpalos had no idea who that Monique was, but having seen her trying to contact many people to be then shoved aside sparked his interest. Curious to learn what she was looking for, he didn't hesitate to ask. He however couldn't predict the impact this apparently meaningless and inoffensive bluepill young adult would have on him.

Monique accepted his proposal with enthusiasm, hardly hiding her nervousness. Trying to ease her, he told her that he had seen her from afar and it was obvious that she needed some help. She then started to present her situation.

"Ok. First thanks for this, Michel. I can call you Michel right?" He nodded immediately, knowing that formalities were maybe not necessary with someone like that. "I'd like to ask you a few questions for a project at school." Harpalos knew that social studies often asked students to work with the public to do surveys and such, and knowing that Flood didn't have anything special for him today, he could take a few minutes and make a student happy. He told her that he would answer her questions with pleasure.

"Thanks a lot sir. You can't believe how helpful this will be!" Another sympathetic small nod from Harpalos and Monique was ready to start.

"Question 1. Do you have a pet at home?"

Quickly, Harpalos figured that he had to put aside his redpill persona. A pet? A home?! He suspected that there might be rats hiding in his hovercraft, but not something he would call a pet. He then answered no. She wrote something in her notebook and went to the next question.

"Ok, then let's skip to question 4. Do you consider yourself a lover of nature?"

Trying to understand the goal of her survey, he could only figure that she was an environmentalist. Going from pets to nature in general, he was certain that she was trying to trick him. The pattern was too obvious. Who doesn't like nature? And pets, most bluepills have them, especially businessmen who surely all live in the cosy surburbs of Megacity, with the 2.5 children, 2 cars and a dog. She surely didn't thought of meeting a redpill, but still, Harpalos told himself that he will still answer truthfully, ignoring his advance analysis of what was going on. After a few seconds of thoughts, which Monique used to jot down a note about it, he answered.

"I come from Québec, I grew playing in the wood, enjoying snow and playing hockey. Nature was an essential part of my youth. Now, I can't enjoy nature like before thanks to my work. I made choices in my life which resulted in that. But deep inside, I know that nature is an essential part of my life, if not in body, at least in mind."

"Hihihi, sorry"
"Why are you jiggling?"
"Hahah! Because of your accent, it’s funny. And by the way, it’s Gig-gling, not Jig-gling! "
"Yeah, sorry…"

Seeing the young woman laugh at him because of his accent made him smile. How it’s possible to jump over buildings effortlessly, to code complex programs, to land a deadly machine-gun kick into the face of a ruffian, but still being unable to correctly use English. What is better than a young bluepill to understand that before being a god-like RSI, there’s a human with weaknesses behind each redpills.

To be continued.

**GoDGiVeR**

((Nice work. To be continued... SOON!!!!!!!))

**Harpalos-mxo**

"Ok, next, question 5. Do you or your wife wear fur or leather?"

That was the kind of question not made to ask to a redpill... First, leather is quite common in the redpill community. The shoes he was wearing were made of leather, most redpills had a leather jacket or two that he was using frequently. But the important thing in his mind was that it was only code. The shoes he was wearing didn't come from an animal. They came from a database of clothing available when he first dressed his RSI in the Matrix. He took a few instants to think how he should answer this, seeing that Monique was eyeing his shoes.

"No, I don't wear leather nor fur. And no, these shoes aren't made of leather."

Monique smiled and replied truthfully "Don't tell me that an apparently rich man like you, wearing some neat italian fashion business suit wears leather imitation!". Harpalos looked at her and nodded. "Trust me, this is all fake. Genuine fake. It looks like real leather because they were designed to be a good imitation of what leather should look like. You wouldn't believe how technology is good these days to make you believe something is real, but in fact it isn't."

She hesitated for a while, twisting a wooden-beaded strand of hairs around her fingers. "Weird..." was her only answer.

"Ok, last question then and I won't bother you anymore." Harpalos smiled, amused by this exercise of Matrixian rhetoric. Monique was satisfied of his answers, but thought that maybe she didn't pick the right person. She knew what was the next steps and would have prefered to find someone who would feel guilty about his views toward animals. She didn't really know who Michel was, and seeing how open he was, she wanted to continue her experiment and make her proposition to him. "Would you be interrested in participating in a filmed interview where I could learn more about your views toward animal cruelty? This is for an art project I'm doing at school, to evaluate people's views toward this topic. I'd like to make a group interview with people able to express their opinions."

Harpalos hesitated. Helping her for her project was not a problem, but being filmed was the part he wasn't fully comfortable. He was a redpill after all. But he got an idea... He accepted the offer and took her e-mail address. After an honest hand shaking, she left him, happy that the first part of her project started. He had promised Monique that he would contact her soon, and she waited nervously to see if Michel would indeed follow-up it up.

((Ok, here's the idea. Harp then posts on the Datanode One forums and ask for a few redpill of all horizons to assemble and meet a young bluepill doing a project about animal cruelty. If some of you are interrested in joining, drop a line here. Monique can be god-modded by the participants and new story elements can be brought eventually. If someone would be interrested in roleplaying a bluepill in the focus group, that would also be interresting. It's a written story, so the only limits is our imagination. The concept of the story, as you have seen it, is to compare how complex concepts such as ethics can take a totally different angle from the redpill perspective. Any takers?))

**caillech**

Harpalos approached Caillech with some trepidation. She was after all Lupine and he was not at all certain how a Lupine would react to "animal rights." They had never really talked about the subject. "Caillech," he began, and then explained his meeting mentioning the strangeness of meeting a bluepill.

Caillech reacted with surprise. She did not know what to think of this subject or the idea of doing a group interview of "people" and their feelings about animal rights. She took a moment and thought back to her bluepill days. She had pets as a child, dogs and cats of which she had been very fond. At one time her father even found baby racoons and a baby squirrel and brought them home to be raised and then turned loose. She remembered her horror everytime after that when she saw one dead by the road wondering if it was one of her "pets." Of course as a child she had no control but as an adult, while still a bluepill she came to understand that wild animals should not be habituated to humans because they lost their natural wariness of people and were more at risk to be killed. There was also the complication you might call it, that she was Lupine and could become something many considered an animal with merely a thought and an exercise of her will. After a few moments of thought she turned to Harpalos, " to be totally honest my dear, I am not sure I know how I feel about animal rights. But, this could prove to be a valuable exercise for me to explore and clarify my own thoughts and values." With a smile to him she said, "I'm in, I'll be part of the interview."