* * * * *
“You can’t ignore me, computer. I will remain here on Tiasenne with Eiron for as long as I wish.”
“On Tiasenne,” the computer repeated.
“And don’t speak a word to me about Kiel3,” Alessia cautioned. “I think I deserve some happiness and a free life.”
“So you’d rather dally here than stop Marankeil murdering billions of lives across the universe?” The computer retaliated as she was about to leave. “Don’t forget what you were made for. For God’s sake, you aren’t even human any more, you damned fool.”
Alessia disregarded its objection.
“I want to be free, to live an ordinary life.” She said tiredly. “Eiron will help me save Hinev’s colonists, and when our work is finished here, then we can speak of making the journey to Kiel3 together. I can’t handle this mission all alone.”
“So, you’re content to sacrifice the Empire’s subjects and their future for a moment of happiness here, just for yourself,” the computer challenged.
“Should I sacrifice billions of our own people here instead? What if we leave, and they end up annihilated by the lai-nen empire in our absence?”
“And what have you accomplished so far, but to create another adversary in defying Hinev’s ban against using the serum ever again? Sargon is an immortal now, and he will pose a threat to us.” The computer responded.
“Enough!” Alessia cried. Why was this inanimate thing torturing her? “You don’t how much I regret what I’ve done!”
“No, how can I know? I am only a computer.”
Alessia glared at the computer terminal, knowing that the little entity could see her in its own way.
“Exactly why you can’t understand the human heart. You are nothing more than fake emotions, and an unlived life that has no real existance, because you have no living body.”
“I understand that you have betrayed the others. You have betrayed Hinev’s explorers.” The computer said, this time with more venom.
The comment visibly stung her.
“They would have gone on, no matter what the cost.” The computer said. “That was the cause that united all of Hinev’s explorers. ‘The price of immortality is eternal responsibility.’ Isn’t that what Kiel said?”
“I’ve paid the price enough already, and you know it.” Alessia countered. “Hinev’s serum was not a gift. It was a curse! Your damned council never saw that. The Elder Council only thought that if Hinev could only unlock the secret to an everlasting physical life that they would control everyone in the universe for all eternity, but they couldn’t achieve that animal immortality for themselves. They gave that gift to us, his experimental subjects, by mistake. We have paid for it. I am free, shall be free, now.”
“Alessia, your suffering is regrettable, but it is not enough to exonerate your debt for what you were given. You have still your mission to fulfill.”
“I didn’t ask to be made immortal!” Alessia shouted. “Nothing ever ends for me. Nothing! Everything else, everyone else, slips through my fingers, while I live on into new futures upon new futures I don’t even recognize! And am I happy? No. I feel nothing, and I become less and less human as the years go by.
“At times I do feel like a ghost, a shadow passing through the real world!
“Yet Hinev found a way to die—and the immortals, the anti-serum finally killed them, but not me. You don’t even understand—I spend my days fighting—fighting temptation. The ghosts’ souls stored in my mind urging me to abandon my old self and do precisely as I wish for a change!! Why not? ‘I could control the universe!’ they tell me. I could rule the universe myself! Why give a good God damn about any other life?! And they will not be silenced! I fight them, but the struggle feels as though it tears my mind apart. And yet, what peace, what end will there ever be to this battle of will? Isn’t this sacrifice enough for you?”
“This is all immaterial.” The computer said. “Your feelings alter nothing. You must decide quickly what to do about Celestian and make your journey to Kiel3.”
“What an injustice, to be incapable of pity.” Alessia remarked, her voice falling. “What decisions would you have Alessia the all-powerful make for the people of Celestian then, oh voice of reason?” She asked.
“Poor child, you deceive yourself.” The computer said. “You must do as you are told. You know it as well as I do. You cannot live with yourself otherwise.”
“You’re right, of course,” Alessia agreed. “I lost my soul, but I still have a conscience! Hinev chose us well, didn’t he? I won’t let the Empire go on forever, will I? But, I chose to come here, didn’t I? Well, that might have been Hinev’s soul commanding me, and not even mine!”
“He didn’t tell you to come here.” The computer insisted.
“No, not exactly… but he did will it.”
“I disagree.”
“I don’t care.” I reject your gift, Hinev. I reject the responsibility of it. I will be myself again, and I will live for myself.
“You can’t do that,” the computer rebuked her, hearing her unguarded thoughts.
“I will be human again, computer. Now stay out of my way.”
Fata viam intervenit. Fate will find a way.
—Virgil
Chapter Twenty
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 62
