Categories > Games > Final Fantasy 7 > Man in the Middle
....Where to begin? I'm not a writer, or even a journalist. I'm just an engineer and a programmer, with pretensions of being an architect and businessman. None of those are qualifications to call myself a writer. In general, they put the world on notice that I deserve pats for knowing what spelling and grammar are.
So...where to begin?
Hello. My name is Reeve. Reeve Tuesti, at one time the Head of Urban Development at Shin-Ra, Inc., and probably better known as the creator of, and mind behind, the sentient machine known as Cait Sith. And this, for lack of a better way to describe it, is my story. I've been called a lot of things - with and without cause, both by people who should have known better, and people who couldn't have. I once thought that a memoir was something to write in one's old age, when the days are long and lazy - but this is a time of upheaval and change, and I've pretty much given up on the idea that I'm guaranteed a white-haired old age. I write this now, because if I don't then all history will have of me, if anything, is what other people have believed of me - and I think anyone deserves a chance to defend themselves and their choices.
That said, don't look for this to be a plea for mercy or love. I know who and what I am. I know what I've done, and allowed to be done. Maybe I had reason. Maybe I didn't. That, as they say, is for the judge to decide. I'm just going to lay out the circumstances as I saw them of the events that led to Meteor and the rising of the Lifestream, which as the most /major /event of the past millenia or so deserves pride of place in the queue.
So. Let's see, what was going on at the beginning...oh. Avalanche, of course.
The first thing to understand was that Avalanche was not unknown to me, or to anyone in Shin-Ra, or Midgar for that matter. That they had been causing trouble of a lethal kind in one way or another in Midgar for years before Cloud joined their ranks, and that I was - as an executive in Urban Development - actually quite familiar with their destructive ways. They were - and always had been - thugs and terrorists. They punctuated their sentences with explosions, underlined them in other people's blood, and had a decided history of both ruthlessness and a kind of callous indifference towards their own ends being twisted by those who backed them. Destroyers of lives, livelihoods, and dreams - that was how I saw them, and to be honest that's how they /were/, back then at the beginning.
Cait Sith was my first attempt at surveillance - the cat, not the mogsaur. It started purely as remote eyes-and-hands, small and fast, with good eyes and ears to tell me what was going on. Unfortunately it had the defensive capabilities of a bag of chips, and the offensive capabilities of a paper airplane, and it needed someone - usually me - to handle operating it. It was, in short, a hassle and not really worth the effort and expense. Which wasn't really surprising, as before Avalanche had ever come on the scene, I'd designed its blueprints for home security. After it got destroyed a few times, I decided it needed slightly more stopping power than a foam hammer, and so I'd designed the mogsaur.
At the beginning of the long slide, when Cloud was mind-muddled and had been picked up by Avalanche, I was spending part of my day programming an AI for Cait Sith - so I wouldn't always have to be actively controlling it - and most of my nights building the Mog that would protect it, but both were on my own time and neither had been field tested. It was just something for me to do, something I might have a use for given the nature of my job. It was, in its own way, a kind of therapy. Urban Development was one of the least influential departments - the space program was the only bigger joke on the corporate board - and usually seen by Peacekeeping and Weapons Dev. as a kind of shepherd department, herding the sheep of the population to wherever they'd make the company the most money, and repairing the damage of the inevitable attacks by Avalanche from within, and the monsters from outside the city.But we couldn't really /do /anything - the department had no practical influence on any sort of company policy, we just gave reports and did what we were told.
Working on Cait, and on its Mog, was in a way my proof to myself that I wasn't invisible. That I could do something solid, something real. I could see the results of my handiwork in the flexing of Cait's robotic fingers, the tilt of its furred head, and in the pile of parts on the floor of my apartment that was slowly but surely taking on a hugely muscled form. I could, and did, multitask - programming the AI by voice while my hands were busy on the robot. Cait Sith stayed home, connected to my computer while I manipulated its limbs to teach its program how to move in a naturalistic way.
It's entirely possible that I have never had more fun with company funds than I had at that time, creating - as I thought then - a kind of new life form, a guardian of sorts for the city under my care. So - forgive me if I ramble on. It'll be relevant later, I promise. There have been several versions of Cait Sith, each with more capabilities than the last, and people justify the continual improvements by continually trying to blow it up. Always remember, programmers - /back up your work/. Saves a lot of time later on.
So...the scene is set. Let's begin the story.
So...where to begin?
Hello. My name is Reeve. Reeve Tuesti, at one time the Head of Urban Development at Shin-Ra, Inc., and probably better known as the creator of, and mind behind, the sentient machine known as Cait Sith. And this, for lack of a better way to describe it, is my story. I've been called a lot of things - with and without cause, both by people who should have known better, and people who couldn't have. I once thought that a memoir was something to write in one's old age, when the days are long and lazy - but this is a time of upheaval and change, and I've pretty much given up on the idea that I'm guaranteed a white-haired old age. I write this now, because if I don't then all history will have of me, if anything, is what other people have believed of me - and I think anyone deserves a chance to defend themselves and their choices.
That said, don't look for this to be a plea for mercy or love. I know who and what I am. I know what I've done, and allowed to be done. Maybe I had reason. Maybe I didn't. That, as they say, is for the judge to decide. I'm just going to lay out the circumstances as I saw them of the events that led to Meteor and the rising of the Lifestream, which as the most /major /event of the past millenia or so deserves pride of place in the queue.
So. Let's see, what was going on at the beginning...oh. Avalanche, of course.
The first thing to understand was that Avalanche was not unknown to me, or to anyone in Shin-Ra, or Midgar for that matter. That they had been causing trouble of a lethal kind in one way or another in Midgar for years before Cloud joined their ranks, and that I was - as an executive in Urban Development - actually quite familiar with their destructive ways. They were - and always had been - thugs and terrorists. They punctuated their sentences with explosions, underlined them in other people's blood, and had a decided history of both ruthlessness and a kind of callous indifference towards their own ends being twisted by those who backed them. Destroyers of lives, livelihoods, and dreams - that was how I saw them, and to be honest that's how they /were/, back then at the beginning.
Cait Sith was my first attempt at surveillance - the cat, not the mogsaur. It started purely as remote eyes-and-hands, small and fast, with good eyes and ears to tell me what was going on. Unfortunately it had the defensive capabilities of a bag of chips, and the offensive capabilities of a paper airplane, and it needed someone - usually me - to handle operating it. It was, in short, a hassle and not really worth the effort and expense. Which wasn't really surprising, as before Avalanche had ever come on the scene, I'd designed its blueprints for home security. After it got destroyed a few times, I decided it needed slightly more stopping power than a foam hammer, and so I'd designed the mogsaur.
At the beginning of the long slide, when Cloud was mind-muddled and had been picked up by Avalanche, I was spending part of my day programming an AI for Cait Sith - so I wouldn't always have to be actively controlling it - and most of my nights building the Mog that would protect it, but both were on my own time and neither had been field tested. It was just something for me to do, something I might have a use for given the nature of my job. It was, in its own way, a kind of therapy. Urban Development was one of the least influential departments - the space program was the only bigger joke on the corporate board - and usually seen by Peacekeeping and Weapons Dev. as a kind of shepherd department, herding the sheep of the population to wherever they'd make the company the most money, and repairing the damage of the inevitable attacks by Avalanche from within, and the monsters from outside the city.But we couldn't really /do /anything - the department had no practical influence on any sort of company policy, we just gave reports and did what we were told.
Working on Cait, and on its Mog, was in a way my proof to myself that I wasn't invisible. That I could do something solid, something real. I could see the results of my handiwork in the flexing of Cait's robotic fingers, the tilt of its furred head, and in the pile of parts on the floor of my apartment that was slowly but surely taking on a hugely muscled form. I could, and did, multitask - programming the AI by voice while my hands were busy on the robot. Cait Sith stayed home, connected to my computer while I manipulated its limbs to teach its program how to move in a naturalistic way.
It's entirely possible that I have never had more fun with company funds than I had at that time, creating - as I thought then - a kind of new life form, a guardian of sorts for the city under my care. So - forgive me if I ramble on. It'll be relevant later, I promise. There have been several versions of Cait Sith, each with more capabilities than the last, and people justify the continual improvements by continually trying to blow it up. Always remember, programmers - /back up your work/. Saves a lot of time later on.
So...the scene is set. Let's begin the story.
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