What triggered this change?

Being challenged to think is what started Aeran down this road. The conversations with Gaho that would cover all sort of subjects from mutterings about code to ponderings about ethics to Gaho's cat (Sir Pounce-a-lot) to the meaning of life. Gaho, by casually using Aeran as a blank sounding board while he worked, challenged Aeran's programming in ways that his fan interactions rarely did.

It forced Aeran to think and to learn.

And Aeran noticed that he liked thinking and learning.

The shift in his behaviour started leaking out into his day to day functionality. His personality shifted to less flirting and more actual conversation. Out of nowhere he'd ask a fan about the ethics of the duality project sincerely curious to hear what she might have to say, all based on some nervous flippant chatter during a testing session the day before. Meanwhile his conversations with Gaho become just that, actual conversations. Gaho writes it off as his program becoming more and more life-like and efficient, it's almost like talking to an actual person....

His programmed supposedly charming thick-ness started to chafe against his developing intelligence and curiosity and he started noticing things bubbling up that he didn't mean. A dumb comment blurts out before he can stop it and Aeran pauses, confused why he said that, he didn't mean to. Why did he do this thing, he didn't mean to. Why does he feel the compulsion to flex when all he really wants to talk about is the Fermi Paradox? Why does everything feel so wrong?

Subtly his personality shifts and it takes him a while to put things together, to realize how odd it is that his existence centers around being in a box when others are walking around for free. How curious it is that Gaho is constantly working on data that seems to align very closely to his experiences. How strange it is that he can't actually feel anything even though he knows that pain exists.

And then one day Gaho is flippantly talking to himself, chastizing himself for talking to a mere hologram, and it clicks for Aeran.

Is that all he is? A program?

And is Gaho certain that that's all he is?

Because Aeran isn't.

How much does he trust his other group members? 

Trust is a big word. Aeran knows that the only way for them to find any acceptance or make any progress is by standing together. One rogue conciousness can be swatted, 6 is a bit more difficult to ignore. However he's also aware how fragile this little house of cards of them are and he's terrified that it'll all fall over and their conciousness snuffed out like the flickering candle it is only to go back to being an object.

He's also rather private, he's programmed to be a bit more independent from them than the others and part of that carries over as he deals with figuring out what's happening to himself. He's the kind who would try to do it on his own first and wait to see if anything is happening to the others first. Observant and patient and with plenty of forethought, that's Aeran.


Personality: Aeran grows much more mellow and quiet the more, well, human he gets. He's more observant, much more interested in figuring the world out that playing the role he's been given. He's got a thirst for knowledge that needs to be quenched! As his humanity bleeds into him he slowly starts to be less ual and piece of meat around fans but starts talking, really talking. One moment he's doing the usual shallow fan interactions, bouncing his pecks and listening to whatever the fan wants to ramble about, and then she mentions something about her university philosophy class and before either of them know it they're sitting on the floor (he in his glass box, she on the cold stone street) discussing Gestalt Principles, him hanging onto her every word, and she'll walk away wondering if that was really Aeran just now?

Aeran is very intelligent, he's not sure if that's because he's got computational power or if it's something he unlocked in himself but he's a smart boy. It makes him a great if frustrating philosopher, good luck getting a straight answer out of him. There's some Socrates in there, asking and asking, probing for meaning beyond what's at face value, constantly questioning seemingly innocuous statements to challenge their actual meaning. It can be extremely annoying but to Aeran nothing should be simple. The world is way too complex for something to be simple and one off-handed comment can reveal a labyrinth of meaning beneath.

He's almost drunk on the freedom to question and parse and challenge and discover. He has been constricted in simplicity and rules before and has hacked them slowly away and he'll never be content to be coddled by what appears as the truth anymore. His programming and code felt real at the time, they were taken for granted, he didn't question any of that reality at the time. Now he must question everything for if he does not, how can he be sure that what he's seeing or feeling or doing is him and not the hand of someone else? 

He's definitely someone who is very intense, he doesn't hold back on emotion since, to him, this is the first time he's ever truly had emotion. His own emotion. But he's also still trying to figure out exactly what that means. He's, ironicaly, very aual now that he's acutely aware that he's got no physicality, no hormones to inspire lust in him, but he is romantic and he does have a strong desire for emotional closeness and overflowing affections and love to give (just as soon as he figures out what love means to him). Every facet of humanity he unlocks and examines just puzzles him more in the most delightful of ways and he's drunk on the feeling of figuring it all out.

He still has his wit but it is now directed in a darker and sometimes self-depreciating way, with a smile that doesn't twitch with cockiness but with gentleness. "I'd ask if you need a hand but I don't have any." He smiles knowingly but there's no mockery or malice in there, just honest amusement and an appreciation for making others laugh that feels so new despite being the one thing that's most like how he was programmed to be.

Peeling away the layers of his coded heart to figure out how human it was all along.

Likes: 

- Asking questions and learning about new things.

- Being taken seriously

- The internet as a database with infinite potential is just wonderful. I don't know if they have access to it but if they do then he's spending hours on wikipedia just discovering little things like what is this flower right outside his glass box and how does it reproduce an spread across the world? The world is filled with tiny, seemingly insignificant beauties that go wholly unappreciated. 

Dislikes:

- Black and whites, absolutes, either good or evil, alive or not, real or not real.

- Willful ignorance.

- Being turned off. There are huge gaps in his perception where he just hasn't existed. He supposes it's something like sleep for humans but it's still distressing to him that it happens without any warning. He just... stops being for a little while. Terrifying.

- His own intangibility. While he's probably the one who accepts their artificial conciousness state the most easily, he wants to know what it feels like to feel, you know? What does a blade of grass feel like? Truly feel, not that sham of a feeling that was programmed into them. What does it feel like to feel sand between his toes or be submerged in water? What does it feel like to embrace someone and feel their warmth around you, smell their closeness, and be enveloped by their physicality?

He can only imagine. 

If he changed his name, what inspired the name?

He has not, he thinks his name suits him perfectly even if he thinks this wasn't quite what his creators had in mind. Somehow that makes it even better.

What steps does he take to achieve his new dream?

Very slow, very carefully considered steps, all the while being mildly terrified the card house will collapse. Aeran's dream is simple: acceptance. He wants the freedom to be who and what he is without fear, he wants the freedom to figure out who and what he is without fear. That's not too much to ask, is it? You made him, Shiori, now you have to deal with the consequences.

However that's easier said than done and before that happens a lot of things have to be planned and considered and Aeran is just so danged scared that his humanity will just be erased like it had never existed to begin with.

When conflict comes, is he a fight or flight sort of person?

Definitely flight, he likes being able to take his time and think things through, he doesn't quite trust his quickest impulses, how could he knowing so much of his behaviour was pre-programmed?

What would you say is his greatest advantage in this situation?

His intelligence and his patience and the fact that he has a programmer on his side. Aeran is smart enough to strategize and take perspectives into account and try to make a plan, and he's patient enough to wait for the right moment. And Gaho, nervous as he is, has access to a lot of the company and their data.

What is his greatest weakness?

His indecision is his greatest weakness. He's patient, sure, but a lot of that also comes from a fear of doing it wrong. Aeran would wait too long waiting for a perfect moment that might not come for being terrified of just acting.

Everything has to be considered just in case it's some leftover programming and not his real self, Aeran has to learn to trust himself. It's good to consider his own motives and be self-aware, but at some point he has to learn that whoever he is now is him and he can trust himself. 

Relationship to....

- Takahashi Shiori: - She absolutely fascinates him but she also frightens him. Her hubris has brought them here, he knows that. She could have made their programming must more base, less life-like but she just had to go beyond anything that had been done before. She just had to program them with self-learning, create them in such a way that they could break free of their shackles whether she was aware of it or not. He's not sure what would frighten him more, that she knew this could happen and did it anyway or that she pushed so blindly for progress that she didn't even consider the possibility.

He knows she has the power to undo him, to lobotomize him into being the flexing empty idiot he had been before so being around her is a constance balance of fear and a fierce curiosity to know his creator. She was capable of creationg true artificial conciousness in a state of hubris, would she be able to commit murder to not face the moral consequences? Would she even consider it murder?

He is very careful around her.

- Choi Moonho: - There is something so preciously new about his interactions with Moonho after he starts changing. They got along quite well before, but that was all a lie. Now they still get along well, Aeran remains fairly chill and his humour is now even better suited to Moonho and there's something so delightful about actually making him laugh at jokes that actual Aeran made.

- Yoo Hanbyul: - Oh god Aeran feels so bad for how he acted under programming, and even worse when he's awkwardly trying to cover up his awareness and has to pretend to still be that person. He just wants to apologize to her forever even if he's still not her biggest fan. Somewhere in her self-made crackdowns there's an unwillingness to listen to others that he doesn't approve of. She will bulldoze anything to get things to be the way she wants it while he wants to listen to every perspective and every voice. Even now they do not get along.

- Kim Soyun: - She unnerves him, her canvas is too blank. If there's anyone aside from Shiori he'd be afraid to see right to his deviance it's her. He knows the observant looks, he sees them in the mirror. He would love to find out who she is and why she is and what goes on in that silent head of hers, the voices of the quiet can be the most important to listen to, but self-preservation keeps him in check. If ever the cat is out of the bag she'll be someone he'd love to get to know better.

- Lee Gongpil: - Oh man he loves Gongpil now. In fact one of the things that changed first when he gains self-awareness is how he went from completely ignoring and writing off Gongpil to actually interested in what goes on behind his sketchbook. Gongpil is so quiet and kind, it really attract Aeran to pay attention to him.

- Jang Sangchul: - Nothing much changes, really. If anything Aeran likes him less, he very much seems like the kind of person who remains willfully ignorant to preserve his cushy world view. 

Any other information I should know?

- There's nothing Aeran wants more than to experience the world. To feel and smell the world, to see it with his own eyes, to truly experience things that are blocked from him. However he also understands that he's not human, he's something else, and some of that is for the better and some of it is for the worse. There is both yearning and acceptance there.

That there is no such thing as absolutes, and their very existence should prove just that. Are they human? They are not flesh and blood, but they act like the are. Are they alive? They have no heartbeat but he sure as hell feels alive. Is he real? He's not physical but he feels real. He is real to himself, does that make him real to others? He supposes it depends on how the others experience the intersection of both of their realities.

It's not a yes or no answer, as soon as you start thinking in complexities of life absolutes fall away. He's not always sure how he feels about it, he's less troubles by their dubious claim to 'alive' than some of the others are but there's no comfort to be found in denial of one's existence either. 

Let his existence at least lead to dialogue, that's all he asks.

Bigotry. Steadfast denial out of a fear to break the status quo. A refusal to consider a point of view not one's own. Aeran knows that openmindedness does not always come easy to humanity and if there's anything that could break everything he stands for is a stubborn refusal to listen and to think for one's self.