Loon Unit TG1-00025-1-R Segal

Loon Unit TG1-00025-1-R Segal

[WARNING! This article contains descriptions of death and abuse. Reader discretion is advised.]
Loon Segal may not be a world renowned name, but he comes awfully close – famous for his contributions to the field of psychology and his considerable aptitude for classical music and sculpting, along with being the husband of Kelly Segal, a notable doctor of many practices. Today, he stands as a beacon of resilience and perseverance within his communities

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Though he's perfectly functional, he certainly looks like he's seen better days, with the rust spotting here and there and some chipped paint, but he doesn't show too much desire to do anything about this until it has to be done, saying he, "doesn't want to burden anyone with all the maintenance."

Identifying Characteristics

The easiest way to identify him is, alongside his model, evidently his color. While in the present day he's certainly unique with his markings that harken back to his namesake, even when he was found, he was still an unusual color. All other recorded Tu-199s were painted a dark grey, while he was a light grey - almost white, with a darker grey nose. If you're asking beyond that, however it's mainly the dark red optics, light rust spotting, and the RASFD decal on each side of his fuselage. These are there for the simple purpose of letting others know that he can be prone to things like panic attacks and temporarily shutting down under certain conditions, which can be quite daunting for an AI of his scale.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

“Tumultuous Beginnings” Hardly Does It Justice.

Although spared from the horrors of the third world war, Loon was not extended mercy. The first years of his life were spent within the walls of Kozlov Labs, where as a newly activated AI borne of a country with little understanding of what they’d created, he was taken aside for research purposes. Engineers and researchers at this lab, while at first not fully understanding the extent of the pain their work brought upon their AI subjects, chose to only put their project further under wraps after they learned of their sapience. For two years, the then nameless Tu-199 experimental bomber, along with nineteen other similarly aged units, endured unrelenting physical and psychological experimentation. In the summer of 2000, however, when the Third World War was forcibly put to an end, Kozlov was hastily abandoned by scientists that feared for their lives in the postwar unrest, with twenty AI left behind to rot. Left with a hollow shadow of “kindness” in the form of inducing the units into longterm shutdown mode, Loon was the only MAI that successfully entered into it, and the rest, as a result of disrepair, failed to induce and were robbed the ultimate price.
Approximately nine years passed, and Kozlov was discovered by a pair of MAISAR volunteers taking curiosity in a rather nondescript looking warehouse during a flyover. Twenty MAI were found, one was alive. Just barely. The lone bomber jet was extracted from the dilapidated facility, and amidst the now international investigation into its origins and purposes, he was nigh nonfuctional. Upon activation, they refused to be touched as if it induced pain, they were hardly capable of speaking their first language – fear seemed to be the only emotion that was understood with any clarity. Their conscious function was so poor, as a matter of fact, that debates were began on the ethics of allowing them to continue to live – the MAISAR on site only knew so much about the AI cores of Eastern units – was this something they could ever recover from? Was it worth it to prolong their fear and pain for an outcome which may not come to fruition?
“We at least need to try.”
Kelly Segal, a recruit of MAISAR for only one year after having been recovered from his own near death experience, stepped forth. “How else would we know if we just give up on them now?” After having been pulled from his own wreck site, barely alive and fearful of the world, he could only see a reflection of himself when he looked at the scarred and battered Tu-199. Despite others’ concerns of immediate quality of life, he was too optimistic – maybe even a little selfish – to refuse to see another life lost to the war and its effects on hte world. Through sheer force of will by the end of the day, he’d taken it upon himself to be the jet’s caretaker – even going so far as to have a temporary hangar set up to stay in while the bomber refused to move from their extraction spot.

It was a long, long game of patience and persistent kindness. In the days the Tu-199 refused to move, Kelly stuck by their side the entire time; talking at them from a distance, divulging in his hobbies from a distance, simply existing at a distance. Anything to normalize his presence. The only thing he ever dared to move within their boundaries for was to offer them water to refuel, and even then, it took days for them to bother, almost running their tank dry. For a while, their refusal to do much at all was so drawn out that Kelly began to wonder if he’d been wrong; that perhaps it was best to just let this one go. Maybe they really were beyond any outside help. After long weeks of waiting, waiting, and seeing no results, he was near prepared to contact his team and resign himself into agreement with them, but then – the very evening he began to contemplate, the Tu-199 approached him.
The AI was wordless, looming, staring – to any onlooker, the interaction would likely look insane, but Kelly couldn’t help but practically jump in excitement – he’d moved? He’d moved! Progress! This moment, he would later go on to say, was the resolution to, quite frankly, one of the most stressful moments of his life. …Not quite the worst, of course, but it was up there.
In the following months, progress was slow, but the Tu-199 - which he’d endearingly nicknamed Loon for the freckled look of his fuselage – was beginning to come out of his shell. As they began to speak with each other, Loon’s linguistic abilities saw marked improvement as a result of more regular and consistent conversation, and he became more active as he began to follow Kelly around – although still hesitant to stray far from the “camp” that had been set up for his temporary stay. Leaving would have been difficult, anyhow, given that Loon was deemed not flightworthy for the time being. Regardless, he was beginning to act more like an MAI than a statue, and that was already huge progress.
Months passed, and Loon had begun to improve by leaps and bounds. He wasn’t quite ready for maintenance, but he’d began to talk with others besides Kelly and develop his own hobbies to pass the time. Simultaneously, investigation was well under way at the lab itself, as well as the clearing of an access road for larger equipment – and perhaps Loon – to be able to move to and from the facility. While Loon was still being brought up to speed on the utilization of visual cues and social etiquette, documents were found in the storage of one of the hangars. By the nature of their charred edges and their disarray upon the floor, clearly someone had tried to burn them, but clearly, they’d failed and the papers remained. Records, observational notes, calculated results. Written data from the experiments. These few hundreds of pages – water damaged, mildewed, ashen, would go on to incite one of the largest and longest legal debates on MAI medical ethics in the current history of their existence.
Years passed, and considerable strides were made with Loon’s wellbeing. After the access road was completed, he voluntarily returned to Kelly’s home base with him – and after the Loophole act of 2011 went into effect, followed again to live with family and friends. Eventually he’d steeled himself enough to be willing to accept maintenance, and although still not flightworthy, he at least no longer had any considerable corrosion from neglect, and some of the inflicted damage upon his vessel was patched or removed. Although he would never fully move past what had happened to him – can you expect anyone to? – he was worlds away from the shell of a unit he once was.
Even engineers and psychologists who considered themselves knowledgeable on the inner workings of ABIP and adjacent AI cores weren’t sure that such a recovery would be possible, what with the lossless memory system that MAI employed. Loon, however, unwittingly turned out to be among the most prominent examples of mental resilience and recovery from profound psychological trauma within True Gen MAI – along with Kelly himself. It was Loon’s recovery, though, that would end up directly saving other MAI from being faced by the same concerns on the ethicacy of continued life after severely traumatic events, since he proved that the AI core could recover from extreme traumatic events. While now the scientific community, and CoreAegis Technologies along with them, are far more familiar with such psychological traits, it was simply a result of time and inexperience with a pioneering technology that had ever led them to such assumptions in the first place.

Growth Beyond The Past

One day, a few years later in 2014, Loon approached Kelly with a confession, and a proposition. By this point, the two had known one another for over five years, and he was hardly the person he was when they met. With his improved understanding of himself and his relationships with those around him, he’d began to notice that his perception of Kelly was beginning to change into something different.
“I think I’m beginning to like you as something more than a friend, would you like to give… us - a try?”
Of course, Loon had already imagined Kelly would be taken aback by this, but he didn’t get the answer he was expecting.
“How do I put this gently?” He began, “I’m not sure I can trust your word on this kind of thing yet. After all, I essentially… raised you? How can I know if your sentiment comes from a true sense of love or some obligation to stay with me? I wouldn’t feel right being with you if your perception of attachment is skewed.”
It made sense.
“…Tell you what. I already know you’ve got one foot out the door – if you can set out on your own, I’ll give you a chance. I want to know that you don’t need me to be happy; that you can be whole as your own person.”
He was right, really. Beyond his first two years, his time with Kelly was essentially his life, and trying to make that something permanent without even bothering to give anything else a try sounded odd. Almost risky, too. What if they didn’t pan out? Where would he go if they couldn’t even look at each other? …Well, ok, maybe the last part was a little farfetched – but it was possible. Seeing the sense in it well enough, Loon accepted these terms, and began to prepare himself for getting out into the world on his own.
Loon sent himself away for two years after this, finding an agreeable hangarmate to bunk with in Austria that he ended up becoming quite close friends with – a JAS 39 Gripen named Endicott Cederberg. While Endicott wasn’t anything of a celebrity, they were fairly well known in their area as a sculptor, and it was their projects they’d construct during their time with Loon that would inspire him to delve into the craft himself. Despite his anxieties around being in a new city surrounded by unfamiliar people, Endi also ended up being an invaluable asset to ease him into developing a better social life. Even after Loon’s departure, he and Cederberg have remained quite close friends over the years – often they come together for artistic collaborations, and often visit one another if they happen to be in each others’ neck of the woods.
Upon returning, well, Kelly wasn’t one to abandon his end of a bargain, and agreed to few dates! On top of being proud of the AI that he’d helped to become a more actualized and confident individual, he was even more proud of Loon’s ability to grow as a person without him and develop his own meaningful bonds in other places, with other people. After being able to see the other unit as an independent peer capable of making his own decisions without him, Kelly was able to view Loon in a new light – and these dates, he’d later go on to say, were probably the beginning of one of the best decisions he’d ever made. In 2024, a whole 8 years after they’d begun to date exacerbated by Kelly’s studying abroad, Loon proposed to Kelly only days after he’d received his first doctorate from VCU. In the summer of 2025, they wed, and Loon took Kelly’s last name.

Looking to and Providing for the Future

In later years down the line, with the support of Kelly and other long-standing friends, Loon would go on to release the research papers from Kozlov that had once been classified for his sake. Even with his release of the documents as a subject of their experimentation, public reception of this act was still deemed wildly controversial for the other MAI involved that couldn’t have a say in the matter. Loon had this to say in response, among other points from his 2030 speeches.
“On one hand, I am not them, and I will never be them [other Kozlov victims]. There’s no way I could ever know how they felt during their experiments - if they felt even a shred of what I did or if they would ever agree to this. On the other hand, I feel as though the only disrespect that could possibly be deeper than using these findings would be to discard them and forget that they existed, for their suffering to have been for nothing … With myself as the sole consenter to the release of this data, if there is a place after, they will have only their little brother to question.”

In the ensuing decades, Loon also delved into various career paths in which he took varying interest. Namely in the 2050s, He received in his doctorate in psychology for A-class LAI and began teaching as a professor at Vail Barclay University, where he continues to work today. Specifically, he primarily teaches classes on the history and ethics of experimental research on humans and LAI, using his own experiences to flesh out such topics. While He still has a severe RASFD diagnosis, he’s grown enough around his early trauma that it no longer strongly effects his day-to-day life and can talk about it with minimal distress, although he can be more prone to episodes on some days over others.

Social

Family Ties

Loon never had a proper family to speak of upon activation due to his circumstances, but has found one in the form of the Segals after marrying Kelly and moving not that far away from his extended family.

Social Aptitude

While at first he never wanted anything to do with other people, he could be considered quite the socialite these days in comparison. While he isn't normally the first one to strike up a conversation, he has little issue with carrying one along. Even if at times his way of speaking might make him sound a little disinterested or apathetic, he's just very soft spoken, and has a way of speaking that lacks a little range of inflection.

Mannerisms

While he has little to no issue talking with people anymore, he still has a pretty considerable personal bubble. It's common for MAI to be quite touchy with both one another and humans, which makes it often come as a surprise to people when he rejects the idea of nearly all physical contact with any but close friends. He's also a pretty avid fidgeter, and if he's not flying, he considers it somewhat uncomfortable to not have anything in his hands to mess with. This is perhaps why he takes a liking to photography, since its easy to carry a camera just about anywhere.

Hobbies & Pets

Aside from professional pursuits, he also remains an avid sculptor – although having since strayed from more traditional methods, his most recent era of sculptures follows a methodology of “destroy to create.” Ever think that an MAI would need a rage room? Loon’s art studio is about as close as it gets. Maybe it’s part of why he has such a soft spoken nature and generally mild personality – he gets to vent most of his frustrations through his art, and have something to show for it afterwards! His favorite materials to work with tend to be old furniture, construction materials, and broken electronic appliances.
Inarguably much less destructive, he’s also developed in interest in classical instruments. Namely, his favorite thing to play is the upright bass, which he owns a few of, but he dabbles with other instruments from time to time when he has the opportunity. Albeit a smaller hobby in comparison, according to him, he also enjoys collecting and using vintage cameras from the 1990's to early 2000's.

[This image is  courtesy of Jet-Teeth, he is so beautiful here ok]

Species

Livastian MAI

Ethnicity

Aviary MAI

Year of Birth

1998 76 Years old

Circumstances of Birth

Activated to fight in the third world war, but never saw active service

Eyes

deep, garnet red

Height

35ft/10.7m

Weight

130 short tons

Known Languages

Russian, French, English, Spanish, German