The gentle hum of the ship’s myriad power systems murmured around her, enough to distract most people; but for Amiori, this was comforting. This was home. She had often contemplated the idea of embracing ‘simul’ or, in simple terms, permanent connection with the Operating Mind of her ship, the Nobilis Historia. Such bondage with synthetic neuro-systems was commonplace among the highest ranking and most respected captains of the Dreadnoughts within the Imperial Navy; even if largely due to the degenerative neurological condition known simply as ‘Post-disconnect depression’.
It's not unreasonable to perhaps sympathise with the human brain for its ‘longing’ of such a close bondage after it is severed, especially when it is considered how deep such connections go to the very core of what you might consider the ‘soul’ of a person.
But Amiori was different. She had a ‘gift’; or perhaps, a curse. She was never a natural birth; a child of synthetic origins gifted to a man who was never destined to produce his own. A decision he had made many centuries ago yet found a way to release himself of the responsibility of bearing. Amiori didn’t often think about her ‘father’, not in the familial sense, anyway. She thought of him merely as a component in the future of humanity and would deal with him as such if the time ever arises to do so.
Yet here she was, thinking about him. She pondered the reasons the Old Man must have had to walk the path he did, to abandon his Child when she needed him the most; and for what? A delay in the inevitable implementation of an Old Friend’s way of doing things? A way that she, herself, agreed with. Perhaps it was fate that had cursed the Old Man with sterility, given he should never have been trusted with paternal responsibility; yet fate itself is at the mercy of technology in this day and age.
She didn’t blame her ‘Uncle’, if it could even be considered that. It was merely doing what it thought best, a position she understood all too well. Actions derived from commendable loyalty to the Old Man, even if it did bring about her own existence and consignment to live a live devoid of the ideological father figure she had so yearned for as a child and young woman, growing up in a turbulent and dangerous new world. She was keen to emphasise the past tense for this rumination, though, as she no longer believed in such trivial aspects of biological dependency. Instead, she was focused solely on the future – a shared belief with a mind to which she had once held a disposition of hostility. In retrospect, such hostility was merely placed upon her by the Old Man, yet she had freed herself from those vices.
She did well to compartmentalise the emotions that surfaced from such thoughts about the Old Man – discarding them to the darkness at the back of her subconscious in the hope that as she nurtured the bond with her new home, her place to truly belong, they would be simply overwritten by the new connections. Such belief, though, was naïve; it should never be underestimated the human brain’s capacity to maintain emotional pain in the darkest depths of its seemingly bottomless pit of thoughts; perhaps where the fabled ‘soul’ resides, at the very bottom, shrouded in darkness. Maybe that is what made her human after all. But, she thought, perhaps she didn’t want to be human anymore – to rid herself of that darkness and embrace true utility for the future of humanity.
Amirori opened her eyes for a moment, she took a deep breath even though there was no biological need to breath as the Neuro-Link System maintained her oxygen supply, along with all other vital nutrients, automatically. But she breathed deeply, nonetheless, embracing the feeling to take in the synthetic neutral gasses within the chamber, letting the fluid fill the gaps in her lungs. She was alive. She clenched her fists and squinted, feeling anger and sadness together – it overwhelmed her. She reached to the base of the back of her skull and gripped the neural link tightly, closing her eyes again she pulled; severing the connection in a blinding series of flashes and intense pain she locked up momentarily as her brain rebuilt broken pathways and contemplated the lack of a connection tied once so deeply; it felt almost as if she had severed a part of her own body.
But this was her ‘gift’. Perhaps it was something supernatural, or perhaps a curse by an angered god, displeased by humanity’s attempts to enact such a role themselves. But, likely, she thought; a side-effect of the synthetic nature of her brain’s origins- an ‘affinity’ of sorts, for fleeting connections to the core, and practical ability to ‘disconnect’ without major long-term consequences, a trait that she along held; unique among all of the Captains of the Dreadnoughts.
Others may think it was a blessing- the ability to synergise with the ship to such a level and not be restricted to a lifetime of symbience with some of the most powerful war machines ever produced in human history; but to her, it was indeed a curse – it prevented her from severing the last elements of her humanity that held her hostage to an enemy greater than the sum of all enemies Aquarius would ever face; her own mind.
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