Pino (OU)

Pino is Pino!

The Basics

 * Name: Pino
 * Species: Autorave (Android)
 * Model: Companion
 * Gender: Female
 * Age: Indeterminate; Looks about 6
 * Hair: Lavender
 * Eyes: Matte green
 * Race/Ethnicity: Appears Caucasian
 * Location: Wastelands
 * Year: ????
 * Series: Ergo Proxy
 * Canon Point: Circa Episode 5
 * Verse: Original
 * Room #: 108
 * Mun: Pen
 * LJ: usagipino

Appearance
Pino looks, for the most part, like a normal little girl. In reality she is a Companion model Autorave, a type of android designed for companionship purposes. Because she is a very recent model, she looks very much like a regular human; however, the metal plating on her arms and legs and her lack of true flesh gives her away as a robot. Prior to being infected by the Cogito Virus, Pino looks and acts like a proper little girl, with green eyes and dark hair, who wears pretty, expensive clothes. After her infection, her hair turns a shade of light purple, almost lavender, and she begins wearing a pink bunny suit almost constantly. When she’s not wearing the bunny suit, she wears nothing but a pair of green overalls, and her melodica on a string around her neck.

Pino is made out of metal and synthetic material. Her main operating system can be accessed through a zipper on her back, and a metal plate at the lower back of her head protects her memory core.

Psychology
Pino before the infection is like any other Autorave; she has no real conscious will, emotion or thought, and is completely beholden to her human masters and to her raison d’etre. She treats her “mother and father” as any normal child would treat their parents, but she also treats them as a servant would treat his or her masters. She takes orders and commands automatically and without question. Since she is a Companion model, her raison d’etre is to make her “parents” happy. She is everything one would expect of a robot; loyal, devoted, and with no free will or anything that really makes her human.

After she is infected with the Cogito Virus, however, Pino’s entire personality changes. She becomes able to abandon her raison d’etre and follow her own destiny. She develops free will and begins to slowly develop a conscious and emotions. The Cogito Virus also implants a map in her head which allows her to follow a certain route which leads her out of Romdeau City. After the infection, Pino becomes a lively, childish girl who also has a developing sense of creativity. She likes to play pranks, explore and mimic people, and also enjoys playing her melodica, which she keeps with her at all times. More evidence of her childish, innocent nature is shown in that she often wears a pink bunny suit, complete with enormous ears. Although she no longer automatically accepts commands from humans and is largely independent, she has not lost her sense of loyalty. In fact, her sense of loyalty has developed into true friendship. However, the process of developing emotions and a conscience is not as abrupt as the development of free will, and she continues to develop over the course of the show. Since Autoraves can’t really die, she also has no real concept of death, though she can understand death means that a person will never be seen again.

Pino loves to learn, and so she loves to ask questions. She doesn’t always talk much, and what she does say is sometimes nonsensical and hard or impossible to understand. She is also very childish; she’ll copy people, get into their possessions, and try to get them to play with her. She’s energetic and very curious. She usually displays the full range of emotions, although sometimes her emotions do not really fit the situation, which makes her very strange to some people. However, the only time she gets really testy is when people ignore her, or when they interrupt her while she’s reading a book.

Lastly, Pino is incredibly loyal to her friends, Vincent in particular.

Skills/Powers
As a Companion model Autorave, Pino comes with less functions than Entourage or Battle models. She does come with the Turing Chat Mode, which allows for Autoraves to communicate (chat) with humans on an almost human level. She is also capable of determining distances, and comes with a built in clock and calendar which allows her to tell the exact time and date. All around, she is relatively good with numbers and measurements, just as a general function of all Autoraves. She is also capable of mimicking people, art, or movements exactly, although she can’t mimic voices.

Pino is also rather skilled as a musician. She loves playing the piano and is quite good at it, and she also loves her melodica, which she carries with her everywhere. Since becoming infected she also becomes able to generally take care of herself, no longer relying on humans for her raison d’etre or orders.

All Autoraves are also capable of accessing the Romdeau mainframe, which is essentially an advanced version of the Internet. She can therefore access just about any information available on the mainframe, though she does not have the ability to access classified or hidden information.

Since she is a very recent model, and also a Companion model, she is also capable of displaying normal facial expressions, unlike Entourages. She can smile, frown, pout, and so on. She is made of completely inorganic material, although she does have what appears at first glance to be real flesh and muscle. Her strength far surpasses that of a human, as does her resistance to cold and heat. She also does not have to sleep or eat at all.

Weaknesses
Pino has a hard time understanding human emotions. After becoming infected, she slowly becomes able to feel these emotions, but has no standard by which to interpret them. She might feel sad at someone’s death, but she won’t really understand why, or what death truly means. While she displays emotions and expressions, she does lack some things that make her truly “human,” although the differences become less clear as the show progresses. She can mimic perfectly, but it is very hard or impossible for her to create, say, a drawing from scratch.

Her communication skills are also very flawed. It’s unclear whether she is simply incapable of explaining things, or just doesn’t want to. Her communication skills are on par with that of a six- or seven-year-old child, but she also tends to say nonsensical things. Her sense of herself as “Pino” is also always a source of confusion for her. After becoming infected, she is capable of remembering her life beforehand, but there’s a sense of disconnect between that life and the life she has now. It would be safe to say that she is self-aware, but not self-actualized, which is part of the reason that she is always asking questions.

Despite her resistance to things that would kill normal humans, she has no combat skills whatsoever and her only real way of defending herself is to run away or shout for help. Although she can’t “die” in the normal sense, she can be broken beyond repair. She also runs on electricity, and if her battery runs out she is essentially in a comatose state until she is recharged. She charges by basically plugging herself into a power source, and while she is charging she is similarly in that comatose state and is completely unaware of her surroundings. When she is running low on power, she becomes lethargic and disoriented.

History
Pino was created within Romdeau City as a top-of-the-line Companion model Autorave. She joined the Creed family as a surrogate child and played this role for several years while the Creeds tried to get a child of their own. Pino’s “mother” is a housewife and a society woman; her “father” is Raul Creed, recently appointed the position of Chief of the Security Bureau, which doubles as both a police force and an intelligence agency in Romdeau.

Eventually Romdeau granted the Creeds the right to adopt a child, which essentially destroyed Pino’s raison d’etre. Now that they had a real child, there was no longer a reason for Pino’s existence, and she was up for decommissioning. Shortly after the infant began living in their home, Pino began to display symptoms of the Cogito Virus, which had been plaguing the city for a year or so. She would disobey orders or act strangely, which made Mrs. Creed nervous. Mrs. Creed therefore called for someone from the Specialty Bureau to come and test her for Cogito. The man who came was an immigrant named Vincent Law, who tested Pino and found that she was not infected.

Only a day later, that would change.

The following day, Mrs. Creed took the baby and Pino to the mall to do some shopping. Some kind of monster--later confirmed to be a proxy--had escaped from one of the laboratories and went on a killing spree, chasing Vincent Law through the mall and killing any in its way. Unfortunately, Mrs. Creed and her new baby were in the way. Despite Pino's efforts to protect them, the proxy killed Mrs. Creed and her child. Pino was immediately overtaken by the Cogito Virus and dropped to her knees in prayer.

She spent the next day or so wandering aimlessly about the dome, returning home only to collect her bunny suit. Then she left, following the path that all the other infected Autoraves had been following, toward the dome's exit. On the way she ran into Vincent and the two of them escaped the dome together.

Vincent developed a virus from the tainted air outside the dome, and was nursed back to health by Hoody, a man living in a small commune in the dome's dump. Pino helped to look after Vincent, who she'd become attached to, and made friends with some of the other commune residents. One day, however, a surveillance bot searching for Vincent spotted them, and shortly thereafter a detective named Re-L and her Entourage Autorave left the dome in search of Vincent. Meanwhile, Raul Creed ordered an attack on Vincent and the commune. Vincent and Pino were able to escape with a few others on board a hoverboat known as the Centzon Totochtin, or "Four Hundred Rabbits" that Hoody had been hiding.

They set out across the wastelands in search of Vincent's home dome, Mosk. On the way, the other members of the commune all died until Vincent and Pino were the only ones left. They continue to travel away from Romdeau, unaware that Re-L is pursuing them.

World Info
Many years ago, a string of explosions in the methane hydrate reserves (a form of fuel), wiped out 85% of the planet. The world has ended, and all that remains is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with only a handful of pockets of civilization remaining. These pockets of civilization take the form of domed cities. All of these cities are in varying states of decay, but Romdeau City is certainly the most prosperous of these. The many bureaus in Romdeau keep a tight control on the everyday lives of its citizens. Overseeing everything is Donov Mayer, Re-L’s grandfather and the Regent of Romdeau, the man who controls all aspects of life inside the city. Assisting him are four Entourage Autoraves in the form of stone statues—Derrida, Berkeley, Lacan and Husserl—through which he speaks.

Everyone living inside Romdeau—humans and Autoraves alike—is created with a raison d’etre, a “reason for being” or a purpose. Each person follows this raison d’etre without fail, sometimes without realizing it. The reason for this is that the remaining human populace on Earth are all clones, and have presumably been programmed to carry out various roles. The people who are capable of questioning their raison d’etre are the ones who are truly free, and therefore the most dangerous to the stability of Romdeau. Similarly, Autoraves infected with the Cogito Virus deny their raison d’etre completely.

The Cogito Virus was originally a weapon that went haywire, and has a major tie-in with the show’s theme of “awakening.” The virus has existed in Romdeau for a year or so, and Autoraves infected with it often go berserk and kill the humans they are supposed to serve. Autoraves infected with the virus display several symptoms. The virus appears to really take effect when their raison d’etre disappears or is called into question, and as it takes full effect the Autorave will fall to its knees, look upwards and clasp its hands as if in prayer. The virus seems to cause Autoraves to become self-aware; they begin to question or deny their raison d’etre outright, sometimes even displaying normal human emotions. They will disobey orders and cannot be controlled by humans, unless the Autorave itself is willing to take the orders. Autoraves that become infected while within Romdeau are also implanted with a map of a route out of the city, which they all follow unquestioningly. Pino is the first Autorave to actually make it out of the city.

Autoraves are essentially robots. They come in several different forms. Battle Autoraves and heavy industrial ones are the robots that engage in battle or do tasks such as construction and such. Entourage Autoraves take on the role of assistants, and these Autoraves are always androids, though there are no Entourages with artificial skin or a human-like face capable of making expressions. Entourages serve a variety of functions, acting as assistants in the office, as nurses, relaying orders, or acting as chauffeurs. They are completely devoted to usually a single human master and will defend that master to the death; therefore, many of them have a certain degree of combat skills. However, they are also beholden to the Regent’s authority, and can deny their master’s orders if the Regent tells them so.

Companion Autoraves, like Pino, are androids that are the closest in appearance to human. They often have synthetic flesh and muscles, and the latest models even have human faces capable of making normal expressions. The raison d’etre of a Companion model isn’t necessarily to protect the human master, but rather to provide the master with companionship. They often take on the role of lovers, children, or friends. They have much fewer functions than Entourages, able to do basic tasks like calculate numbers, keep a schedule or do chores.

The final known Autorave is essentially a birthing Autorave. These Autoraves are largely unknown to the people in Romdeau, and their only purpose is to create humans. All humans are “created” in this way, in artificial incubators attached to these Autoraves. Since these Autoraves are never truly conscious, it seems that they cannot be infected with the Cogito Virus. Few people know about their existence, but all of the people in Romdeau were born of, or rather cloned from, these Autoraves.

Beyond Romdeau, the world is a wasteland. The air and land are toxic and there are virtually no trees or plants. The sun is almost always obscured by thick clouds that cover the entire planet. People who leave the protection of a city for the wasteland often become infected by a virus which kills the majority of those infected. Those who survive then have no trouble living off of the wastelands, though it is still hard to survive. Some of these people live as parasites of the domes, surviving on whatever trash is dumped out into the wastelands. Some animals have managed to survive, but they are scarce. The world is dead, humans are dying off, and there seems to be no hope of getting the human race back on its feet.

Many years ago before the Earth was rendered mostly uninhabitable, the human race commissioned a couple of projects to try and ensure its survival. One of these was the Proxy Project; the other was the Boomerang Project, which included the creation of the Cogito Virus. The Proxy Project was the creation of the Proxies, superpowerful, immortal beings which are neither human nor Autorave. Each city on the destroyed Earth had one of the 300 created Proxies, where they were kept in a comatose state for many hundreds of years. Their purpose was to act as a power source and keep the human race alive. The Boomerang Project was connected to the Proxy Project, and involved the creation of the Boomerang Star, an enormous rocket hurriedly built to take humans away from the Earth. The humans aboard would survive in space until the Earth could again sustain their existence. However, the project was rushed and the Boomerang Star was built in a hurry, and thus it could not take all the humans who remained on Earth; hence the creation of the Proxy Project.

The Heartbeat of Awakening is the end of the Proxy Project, and indicates the time when the Proxies will awaken. Proxies cannot continue to live on an Earth fit for humans; not only is their existence a threat to humanity, they also cannot withstand direct sunlight and die instantly from contact with it. Thus whenever a Proxy meets another Proxy, they must fight. Much like the Highlander, “there can only be one”, and at the end even that one will be destroyed once the blue sky comes back.

The Awakening is also the reason for the Cogito Virus, though it is unclear as to why.

Canon

 * Vincent Law--Friend--Pino's closest friend, Vincent Law was originally a perfectly normal man until he discovered his true nature as Ergo Proxy, the Emissary of Death. She thinks of him as both a brother, a father and a best friend. He's the only real companion she has anymore, and he always protects and looks out for her. They rely on each other for companionship; Vincent especially, since otherwise he would have to face the wastelands and his inner self on his own.


 * Re-L--???--They haven't fully met yet at Pino's canon point, but Pino kind of likes her, even if Re-L is relentlessly chasing them across the wastelands.


 * Raul Creed--Family?--Pino's "Father." She will often start to say something about him and then fall silent. Thinking about him tends to confuse and upset her as she continues to determine what feelings are, and how they relate to him.


 * Timothy--Friend--A boy from the commune around Pino's age. He was Pino's only child friend and they would often play together until his death.