angleofscience | 004 [Video/open commentlog]

[After helping Ironhide, Jetfire had went to get his journal. He'd merely intended to ask a question... But since he'd attempted to challenge himself again when it came to the absolutely dreadful weather, the image that pops up is simply of Jetfire standing at one of the entrances to the barracks, staring out at the snow, for several minutes.]

I... That is...

[He seems to zone out again, having stretched out one arm outside the protection of the doorway, watching snowflakes melt as they meet his armour-plating.]

... Has anyone been here... for long enough to have the data to say for how long this weather is going to last? Or, if not that... The experience to extrapolate how long this colder weather and snow could last..?

[He's not once looking directly into the journal, and his optics are dim, nearly offline. It's hard to say what actually turns the image off when it ends, but whether anyone replies to this, or comes wandering around the barracks, Jetfire is probably quite obvious where he's standing.

He's at least pulled his arm in against his frame, though the small pool of water on the floor would reveal he apparently didn't do it until he got quite a bit of snow on it.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mmm, I see. Unfortunate; I can see it being a very useful discipline to know.

[There's a slight chuckle.]

Children... young humans. Not exactly equal to protoforms, but one does need a particular... patience, dealing with those newly onlined... or, er, brought into the world.

[This pause, and what Kloe says next has Jetfire tilting his helm, frowning slightly.]

I... assume this is different from the normal, but rather short, human lifespan?

[Since if the majority didn't live to have children, they'd soon die out.]

[Kloe is going to pretend she understands whatever he's talking about. rotoforms wat?]

Hunters like myself live, on average, to about forty years. Most don't make it to their thirties, and if they do they don't bother to have children considering the dangers of their job.

The majority of the population can live into their 70's if they aren't stupid.

I only treat Hunters. Not normal civilians.

[Well, have some confusion back, because while the word "hunter" in general isn't hard to understand, he can hear the capital letter there, and that makes no sense at all to him.]

I see. And what do you, and other... Hunters, hunt then?

[Did Earth have something large, and/or dangerous enough to have a particular 'job' to which said designation was used?]

Zombies.

[Have... a few minutes of silence. Not that it took him more than less than a second to find the word, meaning and connotations (at least Starscream's language file had been extensive), but... that concept is pretty much impossible.

And then Jetfire sort of rubs a hand over his face, having settled against the wall beside the doorway out.]

... And you mean actual animated corpses? How... does that work?

[You'll have to excuse the disbelief there, but he isn't discarding the idea out-of-hand. Too many strange events both lately and earlier in his function.]

[And now it's Kloe's turn to be silent. It's a 'wtf are you even' silence.]

No. That's impossible. They're alive.

[Aw, they can go and be confused at each other! Because there's certainly more of that from Jetfire.]

Hmm... is the definition and, as I've understood it, general meaning of the word wrong then? Certainly, zombies being alive would be a lot more logical regarding locomotion and ability to make autonomous decisions, but that doesn't seem to the the... cultural... definition of the concept of a zombie.

[As Jetfire has understood what little there's offered in the file as an explanation. It's not something that has an... equivalent, so he assumes Starscream's done some cross-referencing and putting his own translation and explanation to it.]

Oh. Right. Whatever zombies you're thinking about are what my "Zombies" are named after. When N₂₁ broke out 80 or so years ago, that's what survivors dubbed them, almost as a joke. Or that's what our flimsy history tells us.

Ah. [You hear that near-relief? Yeah, that makes a lot more sense, to Jetfire.]

What's the... difference between them, and the similarities, that that concept and name would be appended to your "zombies"?

The only one I can think of is that they eat people.

... curious. So they're, technically... cannibals, made so by a virus?

[To him, that doesn't really sound anything alike to the bits of myth and commentary Starscream had appended to the word.]

Technically, but I really wouldn't consider them human at all.

[Because all the zombies in her time are all the offspring of the original zombies! 8D]

By disassociation, preferring to categorize something unpleasant as removed from yourself, or relying on evidence that the virus has changed their genetic makeup?

[Jetfire could understand the first urge, truly (and his tone implied no accusation, merely curiosity); some have done that on both sides of the conflict as it wore on, but that didn't make both Autobots and Decepticons any less... of the same species.

Procreating zombies? Amazing and terrifying!]

The virus has become genetic in nature, as well as spread through outside means. Zombies produce offspring already infected. They don't even look very human anymore.

They're the equivalent of animals. They have no upper level consciousness and run on pure instinct. They are not human.

Doesn't surprise me. There are viral diseases among humans which attack the genetic code, isn't there? I assume this is a varation of that? Or it caused mutation in the genes.

Do you know how the change to the genes happened?

No. All I know is that the virus mutated and everything went downhill from there. There isn't any sort of cure, either.

It doesn't surprise me. Finding a cure for something that has settled in your species' genetic coding and branching a part of the population off from the main one would be difficult at best. I'm sure you were doing your best.

They better have been.

004 [Video/open commentlog]

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