For the purposes of espionage, Cortana has decided to be a strawberry blond, her robot body's blue-black hair lengthened and turned almost pink, and her icy-pale skin warmed and scattered with freckles.
It's pretty cute.
Open
The "no technology" rule means this place is basically Cortana's own personal hell, the digital no-fly zone making her squirrelly and irritable. Instead of relaxing--what good is a massage for someone made of untiring metal and polymers?--she's pacing the beach, which is too damn picturesque to even have skippable rocks, so instead she's hurling lovely iridescent seashells into the surf. It's inadvertently a good setup for her "marriage" failing, but she can't claim to have planned it that way. She's just cranky, and not paying too much attention to where she's throwing those shells.
Closed to North and America
You know what Cortana's not good at? Faking affection. It's not that she doesn't like America and North (and Theta) in her sharp, dysfunctional way, but romance? Romance is one of those wastes of time an AI's short life has never permitted, and that the war had made too costly even for those with the years to spare. At least she figured out holding hands was a thing in time to not look too suspicious to the greeter.
Also not suspicious is the engaged group sitting close to each other, speaking quietly. Obviously they're exchanging endearments and hopes for the future, right?
"Let's skip sharing memories," Cortana says, her drink ignored by her elbow. "All of mine are classified, anyway."
Cortana
It's pretty cute.
Open
The "no technology" rule means this place is basically Cortana's own personal hell, the digital no-fly zone making her squirrelly and irritable. Instead of relaxing--what good is a massage for someone made of untiring metal and polymers?--she's pacing the beach, which is too damn picturesque to even have skippable rocks, so instead she's hurling lovely iridescent seashells into the surf. It's inadvertently a good setup for her "marriage" failing, but she can't claim to have planned it that way. She's just cranky, and not paying too much attention to where she's throwing those shells.
Closed to North and America
You know what Cortana's not good at? Faking affection. It's not that she doesn't like America and North (and Theta) in her sharp, dysfunctional way, but romance? Romance is one of those wastes of time an AI's short life has never permitted, and that the war had made too costly even for those with the years to spare. At least she figured out holding hands was a thing in time to not look too suspicious to the greeter.
Also not suspicious is the engaged group sitting close to each other, speaking quietly. Obviously they're exchanging endearments and hopes for the future, right?
"Let's skip sharing memories," Cortana says, her drink ignored by her elbow. "All of mine are classified, anyway."