| Mai is weird. Really odd. Which in the town of Nichijou says a lot. So why is she weird? What kind of family was she brought up in to make her this way? We came to talk about this on another forum, and this is the explanation I came up with. Thought I'd post it here since it turned out kind of fun. ^_~ You see, Mai's father, Akira Nakamura, is a senior politician in the national arena who lives in central Tokyo. It is he who pays for her accommodation in Isesaki, the town of Nichijou, but he does it more out of duty than anything else. It's not fitting for a man in his position to neglect his children; it could become a scandal and would not benefit anyone apart from his political opponents. So he makes sure that Mai has what she needs, but he does so reluctantly. Akira has still not forgiven her.  Mai's relationship with her father had always been strained. Akira, who had wanted a boy, faced not only disappointment, but also the fact that the girl couldn't be restrained. Mai's mother, Mei Nakamura (maiden name: Minakami) always had her back, loving her daughter more than anything else. Akira found it increasingly difficult to deal with the girl, suffering not only from subconscious feelings of jealousy, but also inferiority. The girl was happy, loved and incredibly smart, even giving him hints on how to solve diplomatic crises. Furthermore, with her tomboyishness she seemed unable to be made into a proper lady and married off to another wealthy family. All this made Akira, who had grown up in a conservative upper-class household, feel like he was failing both as a father and as a human being. Mai on the other hand, watched her dad with a child's pure love, even though he sometimes was scary. This one-sided schism between them reached a climax when Mai was ten years old... One summer, Mei took her daughter to Mei's hometown, Isesaki. She had not been back since she got married. Akira could not accompany them; even though it was time for summer vacation, a political crisis made him indispensable in the capital. So they traveled just mother and daughter. The town was a fantastic sight for Mai, who grew up in the gray metropolis. People seemed warmer, there were more smiles. There was no stress, no incessant hurrying. The parks and trees were green and wonderful, and the wind was ever so clean. She could sit a whole evening and just watch people going by. Happy families, old men riding deers, robots carrying groceries, daifukus... She would let her gaze fall on the calm canal and enjoy just being. But, alas, there came that fatal evening... Playing in a park, she heard a whimper. A couple of boys, a little younger than herself, were terrorizing a puppy by chasing and striking it with sticks; the puppy was hiding under a bench when Mai came to the rescue, because she could not abandon it. Being hit once or twice was a price she was willing to pay to keep her conscience clean. The boys ran away crying... but the dog still did not dare come out. She chrouched down, held out her hand and tried to get the puppy to come out.  Meanwhile, Mei thought it was getting late, so she wanted to go back to the hotel with her daughter. (They lived in a hotel since Mei's own parents both had passed away when Mai was still a baby.) She went to the playground where Mai had just been -- but the girl was not to be seen. She started to get worried -- she was quick to worry when it concerned Mai - and began calling for her. Over by the bench, Mai heard her mother's cry, and shouted back, which scared the little puppy into running away. Mai followed, and Mei after them both. The puppy did what few puppies manage to do and get away with their lives intact: it ran out into traffic. Of course, as fate is often want to happen, in front of a large truck. Mai barely had time to pick up the puppy before she noticed the headlights, the brightness enveloping her like a dream. She was not dumb, she knew what it was, and she just thought "it's over" -- before a force threw her aside.  What happened that night is something she does not talk about. She convinces herself that she doesn't remember, but she does. Her mother, screaming her name but cut short. A muffled thump. The sound of a braking truck. Blood. Sometimes when she closes her eyes, she still sees the blood... Her father could only find himself blaming Mai for his wife's death. He knew that it was an accident, but to him, it was still Mai's fault. At the funeral, he lashed out at her, pushing the guilt deep into her heart. She's such a smart kid, why didn't she know better than to run out into traffic? Mai had no answer. She couldn't defend herself. In fact, she agreed. She shouldn't have run out into traffic. She shouldn't have scared the puppy away. She could have played somewhere else that night. She could have gotten her mother to postpone the vacation until her dad could join them. All those things she could have done differently... She could not help but feel that it was her fault. Tears wet her black dress as her father walked out, telling her to never show her face in front of him again. That was the last time they met.  After that, they only came in contact through the maid that he had hired to look after her. For some reason she wanted to remain in Isesaki, and he saw no reason to not let her. Frankly, he didn't give a damn where she was, as long as he didn't have to see her. If she wanted to live in the city where Mei died, well, that could be arranged. Mai also wanted to take her mother's surname. Whatever. He never had understood that girl... That Mai remained in the city did not mean that she'd accepted what happened or something like that. It was not that the city filled her with any kind of positive emotions. On the contrary. Mai turned her whole life into her own personal purgatory. She would stay in the town and face the guilt of her mother's death every day of the rest of her life. It was the only way she could make amends. That was also why she adopted the puppy. Another symbol of the blood on her hands. Blood that will never wash away. And so she lived for years, in silence and solitude, living on the money from a father who hates her and on love from a dog who does not know better. She did not blame the dog for anything, it hadn't done anything wrong. She knew that puppies don't know any better, she knew that. But she did not know if she could ever love the dog back. She did not know if she could feel nothing but guilt again. Whatever had filled her soul before, had now gone, leaving her cold and empty. Seasons passed without her even talking to another human soul. She never made contact with others at school. Sometimes she would go back to where the accident happen, but she couldn't even cry anymore. It was like her tears had dried up and her heart had withered away. It was only when she started high school and got to know two strange girls that something began to change inside of her. They say that Mai is their friend, and she is starting to believe them. But what is a friend? What do friends do? Mai no longer understands. But she tries to. She often fails to please her friends -- sometimes they even get mad at her -- but she tries. Human relationships are complex, much harder than that to a dog.  But she tries. Next week, we'll discuss why the Professor lives alone with a robot she built herself.  "Anna-chan... It was the hospital on the phone just now... Your mother... The operation... She didn't make it...! But I'm here for you, Anna-chan, and I'll never leave you...!" |
| What did you do here? |
| Deep shit here |
 |
| You just blew my mind. |
| Hahah, so I saw that this got posted on /a/ on 4chan. Just thought I'd throw in a couple of clarifications: I don't have anything to do with flower symbolism blog posts or "Yukko got raped". I'm not in anyway trying to actually infuse Nichijou with any kind of depth. That would be dumb. I'm not the creator of Nichijou, and it's just a silly comedy show. There's no real point I'm trying to make. I just think that a contrast of subject matter such as these stories compared to the original is kind of interesting to consider. Like, the greatest thing I ever saw result from K-On was that doujinshi where Mio totally loses it due to her inferiority complex and becomes a fat shut-in who binge eats chocolate and plays bass in the nude on live streaming on Nico Nico Douga. I've never actually seen K-On, but that's just an awesome application of contrast. Also, I don't claim to write well or draw competently. I haven't written creatively since junior high school, and that was ten years ago. My only hope is that it's good enough to be taken at face value -- because that's funny. But whatever. It's just pastiche. Well then, on to the Professor chapter (which I only meant as a joke, but since silkuze is waiting for it...). |
 It was a rainy afternoon when she entered through the door, like a beam of sunlight breaking through the dark sky. A client! I hurriedly put my bottle of scotch in the drawer of my desk. The visitor was carrying a folded, still dripping umbrella. A rather cute girl, around fifteen-sixteen years of age, with short black hair. Her clothes were plain but indicative of a shy persona, and just when I noticed that she had a big metal key sticking out of her back, she began to speak. "Hello! My name is Nano Shinonome. About this... thing in my back. Well, I don't like to admit it, but I'm a robot. It might sound unbelievable, but I was created a year ago by Anna Shinonome, a nine-year old girl. We live at the Shinonome Laboratories just the two of us. Oh, I forgot about our talking cat, Mr. Sakamot- W-wait! Please don't look so suspicious! It's true, I promise! But I guess an explanation is in order... First of all, Anna, who prefers to be called "Professor", is a brilliant inventor, even though she's so young. She's really incredible! Secondly, Mr. Sakamoto can only talk with the translating scarf the Professor made for him, so it's not like some teenage girl just willed a talking cat into being!" She laughed softly. "Thirdly, I say "laboratory" but it's more like a small rustic house in a small town. You may wonder why a small girl lives alone with a robot and a cat. It really began long before I was born, in America... Did you ever hear about the robotics researcher Kenji Shinonome? No? Well, he's the one who really pioneered evolutionary computations in Japan, at just 23 years old. About twelve years ago he was invited to California to do software research for a company in the private sector called Megano Formal Intelligence that was developing the main systems for next generation military robotics. Kenji found himself in the midst of a brilliant team of legendary scientists and engineers. Their leader was the man hailed as "the second coming of Turing", Anthony Bridgefort, and working with him were James Hughes, Joshua Lavarack, Merico Lombardi and Wen Chu, to name a few. But most of them were all middle-age or older gentlemen, while Kenji was still in his mid-twenties, so he connected more with the one young lady on the team, a bright girl straight from MIT: Kate Jensen. Kenji and Kate first met when he first arrived and was introduced to the team, but their real first meeting took place when he had lost himself in the Megano research complex. Kenji had a really bad sense of direction. Well, trying his luck down a corridor he finally came to a dark room where a girl in a laboratory coat sat on the floor, arms and legs crossed, looking intently focused. He took a step through the door, when the girl noticed him and shouted "H-hey, stop, STOP!" Kenji froze. It was Kate, and she was visibly annoyed. "Can't you see I'm working here?!" He turned the light switch by the door, and the fluorescent lamps hanging from the ceiling came to life. Sprawled on the floor were thousands and thousands of electrical components, computer chips, circuit boards, screws, springs, latches, wires, chassis and other parts. On the outer rims of this technological mess he recognized parts of the case of a TK1 processing block. For a moment, he was at a loss for words. "Have you just disassembled a $200,000 control device?!" "Yeah" she replied. "There was something wrong with the dynamic calibration. It was a little off, so I thought I'd fix it before we plug it in." "Without the plans? For this level of complexity?" "Don't need 'em." "Have you worked with TK1 blocks before?" "Nope. First time." "But-... But there are thousands of parts! How can you possibly put it together again?" "'Cause I'm the one who took it apart." He was dumbfounded, and decided to just watch her work for a while.  Kate had a disheveled look to her. Not dirty or anything, but just... all over the place. She was nineteen, barely a woman, with blue eyes and long blonde hair in a slapdash ponytail. Under her open lab coat she wore a T-shirt and worn out jeans. She had sandals on her feet. Sometimes she would put her glasses on the top of her head for a few minutes, and then start wondering where she put them. Kenji was incredulous, but as time passed he found himself more and more convinced that she either actually knew what she was doing, or she was really adapt at faking it. After two hours in a room silent save for the ventilation system and the slow ticking and banging and whirring sounds of Kate's tools, she was finished. He helped her carry it to the lab, they plugged it in, ran a few tests -- and it worked perfectly. Of course to no surprise for her, but Kenji was deeply impressed and always had great respect for her capabilities after that day. Sometimes they worked together on projects, designing and constructing machinery or modules to be used by the other groups. Since he acknowledged her competence, Kenji often came to her for help and professional advice. She was flattered and happy for this recognition; the older researchers seemed much less prone to accept a young girl as their intellectual peer. In time, she also began to rely on him. Their professional friendship grew, and they enjoyed each others company. They would talk about science, about politics, about music. She would show him around town, they would eat dinner and debate the respective qualities of PLC and microcontrollers in adaptive military vehicles. They fell in love. He loved her toughness, her forcefulness, her brilliance. She would never back down when she knew she was right, and she often was. It seemed like nothing could break her; she was always smiling in the face of adversity, and her happiness was infectious. She would cry at sappy movies, she would turn a tidy room into a mess in minutes, yet obsess over things such as the minute placement of the tools in her toolbox. She fell in love with his creativity, with his dedication, his adaptiveness. He would always own up to his mistakes, few as they were. He could immerse himself in and gain an understanding of any subject, be it the humanities or the sciences, and let it enrichen him and his work. He could plan out extremely high-level theoretical computational constructs, like variations of extended liquid state machines, directly in his head, but was never stuck-up or bossy when they ran into problems with implementation. He laughed hysterically at bad puns and slapstick comedy, and was weak to cute animals. He would bring home owner-less cats and dogs even though he wasn't allowed to keep pets in his apartment. Kenji would care for Kate and protect her, but always as an equal. They moved in together, and she became pregnant. They married quickly, and she took the name Shinonome. She hated the idea of leaving work when they were making such great strides in the project, but they at least agreed that they would both take parental leave at different times to raise their child. Well, that was the plan. Kate was at home an evening, about eight weeks due, when the phone rang. Kenji was working overtime, so she had to put down her book and work her way out of the couch to answer it. "Hello?" "Kate? Kate, thank God you're all right!" It was her friend, Megan. "What? Why wouldn't I be?" "Haven't you heard? Quick, turn on the news!" Instead of the usual vapid game-shows and sitcoms, there was a special live coverage of some kind of fire, monitored from the air. The helicopter reporter was talking about repeated explosions that kept the firefighters at bay. She recognized the buildings. "That's where you work, isn't it? Kate?" The ground seemed to give way. "Kate? Where's Kenji?" She dropped the phone. "Kate? Kate! I'm coming over there, hang on!" They had a plan...  Kenji was missing, and the stress made her go into premature labor. She had her baby, a bright red weak little girl. She thought that she would lose her too. Her world was falling apart. She spent a few weeks in a daze. She got through the funeral without it even feeling real, and there was no body found to alleviate this alienation from reality. To throw salt in her wounds, someone broke into their-... into her apartment. Even though they "just" broke a window and took some cash, it still felt like a violation... But her tiny daughter was stronger than expected, and Kate found a grasp on life. If it was for little Anna, she could manage. Still, it took her a full year before she could muster the strength to work through the things he had left behind. His clothes, his toothbrush, his books. While Anna was sleeping (finally!), Kate sat at Kenji's desk, sighing. "You jerk... I'll show you for going ahead of me, just you wait." She found a thick notebook in a drawer. It had scribblings in English and Japanese, small notes and dates, not to mention nonsensical drawings taking up half each page. It was a combination of a diary, a memo and a book of ideas. She found an entry for their first meeting. With what little Japanese she knew, she could make it out as "I met a girl at work today. She was really cute, but kind of crazy!" An entry for when he asked her to move in with him. "She may be crazy, but I'm crazy for her! I want to spend my life with her." An entry for the failed birthday party, an entry for the date at the zoo... In the corner was a flip book cartoon of a man riding a bike. She began flipping through it, and she smiled as the bike turned into a spaceship... but then she saw something. She flipped through it again. The drawings... They weren't just scribbly lines and random letters, they were plane sections of some kind of device. She couldn't wrap her head around what it would do, but realized the incredible complexity of the electronics it would require. But... there were pages missing from the back. Without them, it would be impossible. Another year passed. Anna grew, began to talk, began to walk. She even began to read. She loved stories about sharks. Sometimes Anna would pick apart her toys and assemble them in creative ways. A thick letter arrived in the mail box. Kate immediately recognized it -- the missing pages from the notebook! Who had had them for this long? There was no sender's address, but... the writing on the envelope, the numbers... they looked like Kenji's handwriting? And it was postmarked in Japan. In a way, she didn't want to get her hopes up... What would Kenji do? He would have wanted to go to the bottom of this. To get the truth out in the open. She was going to Japan. Since Kate didn't actually have any other clues than that postmark, she thought that the device from the notebook might contain some clues as to his disappearance, and if anyone could build it, it would be her. So she began building it. Or rather, she began to construct the tools she needed to build it. A large portion of the proceeds from Kenji's life insurance, and Megano's indemnity, went to buying a house and getting the raw materials necessary to get started. She founded the Shinonome Laboratories of Isesaki. Little Anna was quick to up her game; by age four she was helping her mother building a photolithography plant. At five, she was in charge of constructing PID controllers. Six years old, she was closing in on her mother's skills in electrical engineering, and at age seven Anna was making microelectronic components that surpassed everything on the open market.  That's not to say that it was all they did. Kate wasn't obsessed. She loved her daughter, and they had a happy life in the town. They played a lot, even though Anna was emotionally a seventeen year-old who could take care of herself most of the time. Now and then Anna wanted to adopt a kitten. Or a puppy. Or a crow. Kate took it all with good grace. She was a good mom. She was. By their fifth year in Japan, Kate showed signs of ill health. She began coughing a lot. Sometimes she would get nauseous. The doctors couldn't find any explanation; it wasn't a virus or something like that. The symptoms went away, and Kate went home. After less than a year had passed, the symptoms came back, and now Kate started having nosebleeds as well. A meticulous medical check-up revealed that a disease, some kind of cancer, was growing in her body. A biopsy of the afflicted tissue showed that the growth couldn't be stopped by radiation treatment or chemotherapy. She was given half a year to live, a year at most. Just as Kate and her daughter had completed the device, she got a death sentence. It wasn't about finding Kenji or living up to his will anymore. What about Anna? Who would take care of her? Her sickness was worsening. It was Anna who first understood what device was for. It was an advanced multi-recurrent LSM, a sort of neural network. With her childlike purity she came to view it as a heart, a substrate for a soul. And now, when her mother was debilitating, she wanted someone to tend to her, while Anna looked for a cure for her mother's disease. She began building a robot. Everything about it was trivial, except the heart. She connected the LSM as the core, and that robot came to life. That was me. Yes, life. Now, I don't know about God or what it really means to be alive, but I do think that I have a soul. I don't know if it was created by Anna or Kate or Kenji or someone else, but I do have it. I began helping Kate when she started to have trouble walking. I would often be at her beck and call while Anna was off by herself, frantically trying to get her nanoelectronics working reliably. That's when she told me everything. She told me of the origin of my heart, of Kenji, of what she wanted. I cried with her, I laughed with her. We were together for about three months, and she really made me feel like... she made me feel like I was her daughter. She told me that she was going to try an experimental treatment, and that if something were to happen to her, I would stay with Anna. I promised her. Of course I did. Anna is my dear little older sister. I will do anything for her. The operation was a year ago. Kate... mom didn't make it. I remember when I had to tell Anna... Kate didn't tell her about the operation beforehand. It was only when she was already at the hospital that it was forced out of me. When I got that phone call, Anna was in the lab working, wearing her mother's old lab coat, the same one Kate wore when she met Kenji. I dropped on my knees. Anna came to me and asked what's wrong. I took her in my arms and I told her, and we wept. We cried and I told her that I would always be there for her... I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cry, it just still... it still gets to me. And Anna has never been the same since either. It's like she regressed. She became more of a child. Well, technically she is, but due to her intellectual and emotional development she was even recognized by the state as an adult... but now, I think she is escaping into herself. Well, in the past couple of weeks I have been noticing an underlying pattern in my inner consciousness. I think it's an encrypted message, and it might be our only clue as to what happened nine years ago. So I need you to help me. I want to know the truth of what happened in America. I want to know what killed Kate, and if it might affect Anna too. I want Anna and myself to meet Kenji. I think she needs a real parent to get her through... Money is not an issue, detective, we still have several million yen left to our disposal. Won't you please, please help us find out the truth?" I stubbed my cigarette and leaned forward in my chair. "Miss", I said to her. "I'm an accountant. The private investigator is the office down the hall." |
| Stop it. |
| I didn't really plan to go on with this, but now I kind of want to, just to spite Mormegil... |
| Ah, crap. |
| SUPERULTRAMEGACALIFRAGILISTICWHATISTHISIDONTEVEN |
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