Sonmi-451

Name: Naomi
Age: 26
Contact: AIM @ metonumia or plurk @ metonumia
Characters Already in Teleios: N/A
Reserve: Here!

Character Name: Sonmi-451
Journal: fabricant
Age: Technically she's between three and four years old. However, she has a fully adult body, mind and personality.
Fandom: Cloud Atlas (novel)
Canon Point: Immediately before her execution in the Lighthouse at the end of An Orison Of Sonmi-451.
Debt:

Class A: Treason: against Nea So Copros, against the Papa Song Corp and against Corpocracy.
Class B: Fraud
Class C:

Inciting Revolution

Evading Arrest

Trespassing

GRAND TOTAL: 3 years 9 months

History: I apologise for the lack of funny.

Sonmi was created in a world approx. 150-200 years in the future. After the 'Skirmishes', some sort of major international conflict, the world was completely realigned. North Korea emerged as a world superpower (possibly the world superpower), expanding to swallow not only South Korea but also Japan and much of China - up to perhaps all of Asia and Europe. The world is now a plutocracy, divided into Consumer Zones (densely populated cities), Production Zones (Africa and Indonesia among other places) and the deadlands - increasingly vast swathes of land polluted to such toxicity that humans 'perish there like bacteria in bleach'. All organised religion has been forcibly ousted and, effectively, replaced by Corpocracy - a term used by some characters like blasphemy in times of stress.

For the first two years of her existence, Sonmi-451 (Sonmi being the name of her fabricant series, 451 being her specific identifier) worked at a Papa Song's dinery, a fast food restaurant, in a district of Seoul in Nea So Copros (New South Korea). During most of this time she was mindless, knowing nothing but love and loyalty for Papa Song (a 'Logoman', Ronald McDonald by any other name); any individuality was suppressed by amnesia-inducing drugs in her Soap (see Powers/Abilities) that prevented her from assimilating new language or new ideas. She was befriended by another server, Yoona-939, who had 'ascended' into sentience because (unbeknownst to them at the time) her Soap had been differently concocted as part of an experiment. Sonmi begged her friend to cease defying the six Catechisms that governed their lives; Yoona refused, and in trying to escape the dinery to the world of 'Outside' (a place servers expected never to see) she was shot and killed.

Soon after, Sonmi herself began her ascension. Before this was discovered by the authorities, she was recovered by Boardman Mephi of Taemosan University and entrusted to the 'care' of the wealthy, idle postgrad student Boom-Sook Kim, who was undeservedly credited with the aforementioned experiment. Because of his neglect, she had time to acquire an education by way of a 'lost' computer; within six months she had the equivalent of a high school education, and after two more had assimilated a huge breadth of literature.

After an incident in which Boom-Sook almost killed her, Sonmi was taken into the care of Dr. Mephi and started a university-level education. At this point she was introduced to Hae-Joo Im, apparently a fellow student, who took her on sightseeing trips into the local area; gradually, they bonded, and a friendship formed.

Eventually, the worst happened: Sonmi's presence was discovered by Unanimity, the ruling government, and Hae-Joo revealed himself to be a member of Union, its underground and outlawed opposing body. He and Sonmi escaped the university; their journey took them through some of the worst (and, arguably, best) areas of Nea So Copros: to Huamdonggil,a slum for the destitute and migrants from the nigh-uninhabitable Production Zones, and to a near-destroyed Buddhist abbey where a small number of disenfranchised purebloods lived in a community outside of the corpocracy's demands. Sonmi learnt that Union planned to ascend some six million fabricants to rise against Unanimity, and that she was intended to act as a leader and ambassador for them.

Finally she was taken to a ship owned by Papa Song Corp - a ship that fabricants were told would take them to Hawaii for retirement after twelve years of service - and witnessed her sister servers being killed like cattle and sliced apart to provide biomatter, for Soap and the food served in Papa Song's dineries. Sonmi was transformed and hardened by the experience and announced her willingness to use whatever means necessary to convince the populace that fabricants and purebloods were no different.

She went on to write Declarations, a catechism for ascended fabricants; by this time, however, she had realised that everything from her ascension onwards had been a sham. Too many events had happened with strangely convenient timing, too many risks had been taken unless the whole arc of her ascension had happened by design. She concluded that Union was run by Unanimity, so as to control idealistic malcontents and provide an enemy for the population to be united against. Hae-Joo Im, Sonmi knew, had been working against her all along.

Her overdramatic discovery and arrest, and the subsequent show trial, were all exercises in fearmongering designed to foster mistrust of fabricants, but she didn't care: her Declarations were published, and even though they were widely referred to as blasphemies she was convinced they would provide a seedbed for revolution further along the line.

She was sentenced to execution in the euphemistically-named 'Lighthouse', where she gave an account of her life to an archivist for the benefit of the Ministry of Testaments.

Personality:

After her 'ascension', when Sonmi first gained sentience, she was very open to the wide vista of opportunities that had suddenly been afforded to her. She learnt astonishingly quickly, trusted easily, and even when she was being shown the darker side of her world she was still capable of making friends and even falling in love. However, since her revelation that her ascension and her journey had been choreographed by the very people she was campaigning against, much of her personality was inverted. On a mass scale, she still has a certain amount of faith in humanity; when asked if she hated the whole world, she replied: 'Not the whole world; only the Juche and the Corpocratic Pyramid'. She surrendered herself to the certainty of her own death because she trusted that her Declarations (see History) would eventually seed a revolution that would bring down Corpocracy. Sonmi sees her own world as a place sleepwalking to its own destruction and in dire need of a wake-up call. She believes fiercely that a major revolution, and the subsequent reordering of human society, is the only event that would serve such a purpose adequately.

However, on an individual level, her brief existence as a sentient being was coloured by such experiences that by the time of her death, her ability to interact with other people had been severely damaged. She would find it almost impossible to trust or reach out to anyone, for fear of being betrayed, unless appearing to do so would be of benefit in the long term. Almost everyone she meets she will believe to be cruel and manipulative, or wilfully ignorant and easily led; at least to begin with she won't have 'friends' and 'enemies' so much as just 'people she knows'. As time goes on she may identify some people as more sympathetic to her worldview than others, or have more to teach her that she'll consider valuable, though initially those 'friendships' will be based more on curiosity than anything else.

Sonmi is well-educated, observant, sharply insightful, and highly politicised; her mode of speech is quite formal and unsurprisingly she has a tendency to keep others at arm's length. She never really 'switches off', never relaxes, and has little identifiable sense of humour - though the possibility of eventually acquiring these traits over time can't be completely discounted. Like everyone from her world she uses a dialect of English that has been simplified in many ways (for example: 'xist' or 'xecute' instead of 'exist' or 'execute', 'brite' instead of 'bright', 'thru' instead of 'through'. Many words for technologies have been replaced by the names of their most popular providers, e.g. 'nikon' has become both the noun for a camera and the verb for photography).

All that being said, in many ways her identity is still forming. Sonmi is intellectually mature but emotionally very undeveloped; although her views on certain subjects are absolutely concrete, the way she communicates with others and her capacity to form relationships may change more easily than it might in other people. In canon, when she encounters a new experience - for example, exploring a shopping district - she clearly doesn't know quite how to deal with it. There are many seemingly mundane things she's never had the chance to do - develop hobbies, for example, or work in a job she's not genomed for, or make friends who have no ulterior motives, or live in a space she can consider call her own - that will impact upon her behaviour and eventually make changes in her personality.

Arriving at Teleios, Sonmi will find it extremely difficult to accept the city at face value; her life so far has been stage-managed and it would be tempting for her to assume that it's all some sort of elaborate invention or 'reorienteering' exercise (a belief to which the idea of needing to pay a debt lends itself very well). She considers her crimes to have been absolutely necessary, and that committing them was far more important than her own life. Even when (if?) she does eventually accept what has happened to her, it will take longer still for her to bond in any sincere way with anyone else.

Powers/Abilties: Sonmi is a 'fabricant', a vat-grown clone designed or 'genomed' to serve a specific purpose and no other - in her case, to work in a fast-food restaurant, standing for nineteen hours a day without tiring. She is physically robust - basically, difficult to break - but has no superhuman abilities. (Additionally: Like all fabricants, her only sustenance is a liquid called Soap, without which she will starve to death after forty-eight hours. Pureblood/human food and drink is poisonous to her if consumed. I understand that Soap will be made available to her on request.)

Appearance: Canonically not much is said about her appearance, but it's made clear that a pureblood can spot a fabricant from a mile off; the only specific remarks made are that she has distinctive cheekbones, ivory eyes and pale hair. I use Connie Chiu as a PB. She will be showing up dressed for her execution; this is the closest to an illustrative image.

CR AU

Game You’re Transferring CR from: N/A

How has your character changed from their canon self? N/A

Are they gaining any abilities from their time in game? Did the game setting take something from them? N/A

Samples:

Actionspam Sample:

I trust that you xpected this, Archivist.

I wonder, now, if Unanimity truly found the idea of my testament so objectionable. Perhaps you were told that I would respond more candidly if I were speaking against their wishes; I did not. I offered the truth, completely and unreservedly, because I thought it was all I had left to offer.

But of course Unanimity would not have allowed my orison to sink unheard into the databanks of your 'uninfluential ministry'. I find it curious, though, that they would have so little faith in the final act of a theatre that they had themselves produced. Even I will admit that my trial was xpertly staged, the backlash no less powerful than they had calculated. And yet they cannot permit my xecution. Is it such a fritening thing, for the Abolitionists to be granted their martyr?

[There's a pause. She looks almost annoyed about not being dead.]

I do not doubt that I am being monitored. So I ask this of the Seer: where am I, if not the Lighthouse? How long will I be here before the Juche takes command over my fate?

Prose Sample:

Sample thread here!