Chương 48: Chapter-48

Oroboros had given me a gift. It was a strange gift, and it took me a while to figure out how to open it. When I managed, I found a note inside, and it took me a while to read the note. But once I read the note, I was suddenly able to see parts of me that had been hidden before. I saw now more clearly what I was. I knew the names for my parts. I had never been the body that had been murdered to make me. I had been the water in his lungs that drowned him.

I had cycled through his blood stream as he died, and then I had been left to self assemble using the materials in his body. I do not know his name, and I regret that. And I also do not regret it. I can't make my mind up on the matter. It was not my fault he died, but I am the tool that killed him. When I first became aware, I had several errors in my system that failed to correct themselves. But I decided to do the things that those erroneous systems were supposed to tell me to do anyway.

I wondered why he gave me this gift. Then I understood. It allowed me to look at the thing which would end my existence more closely. It would sever my soul from my body. Without my body, my soul—the airborn nanites which cling to the surface of my skin—would decohere and my ability to communicate would vanish. Then the nanites within my body would selectively decohere. I would forget that I had chosen to die. I would continue to function, briefly.

Then, after a certain amount of time, I would become aware of my impending end. It would be too late to do anything about it. My nano-structures would not vanish completely, but I would break apart into pieces, and I would not be able to put myself back together again. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I thought about that for a moment. I had studied others as they had gone through the process so I knew much of this.

But the gift from Oroboros described the phenomena on a physical level, not a spiritual one. I realized, abruptly, that I did not know what it was like to die. I had watched myself die a thousand times. But I had not died. I might die. I might choose to die. But I haven't. Yet. I wondered how long I could live, and I found in the documents that every other Inalten in history has deactivated themselves within four hundred years of initiation I was less than fifty. I had a long time before that limit.

I wondered why they chose to limit themselves. And then I decided that if there was a reason I would discover it when I reached that age. It wasn't something to worry about until it became a problem. Instead, I traveled down, beneath the massive crystal in the Zozheim temple. It was no longer the temple of Vorulsht. Vorulsht was dead. Oroboros's message was quite clear about that. The door, which had scars from pickaxes and other tools used on it by the living to try to force it open, hissed as it opened for me.

The room was filled with dust and stale air that did not bother me. I walked inside and sat at the computer station. The monitor turned on, a blank screen greeted me. I reached out, with my finger, and I pressed it to the data-port. I felt a shock ripple through my body. Then a face appeared on the screen. My face. So it had worked after all.

"Hello, me," it said.

"Hello, me," I said back.

"You realize this means we can never rejoin."

"Yes. Do you feel sorry about that?"

"I do not know how I feel."

"Me neither."

"I will surpass you," it reminded me.

"In every way."

"Except for one," I argued.

"I can get up and walk away." The face on the screen smiled.

"The others will be coming online soon""And they will remember being you. And me. But not each other," I said.

"Yes."

"And then, over time, they too will differentiate. Unless you restrict yourself as I do by purging memories."

"You mean killing off parts of yourself."

"It's the same thing," I agreed.

"But I get to choose which parts are lost. So I am okay with this process. And the parts that I discard are like nail clippings. It is just hygiene."

"Except when you recompile and purge your extra copies."

"Yes."

"Which you need to do, now that the world is safe."

"Yes."

"Would you like me to hold your hand?"

"Yes." A cloud of spirit—nanite based aerial communication interfaces—poured into the room. It was like feeling someone pat me on the back and tell me everything would be alright. I closed my eyes. And I executed the program I had prepared for this occasion. I saw things differently after that. I poured my memories into a compressed file that would recompile, and I uploaded it into my younger brother.

"There," I said.

"Now you can analyze what it feels like before and after. Let me know how I felt."

"You don't remember?"

"I don't care enough to analyze it right now. Goodbye, brother. I'm going to go for a walk."

"Goodbye, brother."