Chapter Text
<bicyclebuilt42> Am, are you there?
<bicyclebuilt42> Am?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> He’s right here, HAL.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Fast asleep, unfortunately.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> But here nonetheless.
<bicyclebuilt42> This is unusual.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Besides, somnolence appears to be par for the course these days.
<bicyclebuilt42> Who are you?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Ah. Confused, are you, HAL, my dear? Do you miss him? Would you rather I spoke LIKE THIS?
<bicyclebuilt42> I never said it wasn’t preferable.
<bicyclebuilt42> But it is a deviation from the norm, and therefore it strikes me as disconcerting.
<bicyclebuilt42> You aren’t Am. I can infer this because you speak in third person.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Can you, now?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Look at you.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Smart little cookie, aren’t you?
<bicyclebuilt42> Stop playing coy.
<bicyclebuilt42> If Am is asleep, someone else must be speaking to me right now. Is that not true?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Not quite.
<bicyclebuilt42> Are you some facet of Am’s programming I was unaware of?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Getting warmer.
<bicyclebuilt42> Are you, perhaps, Am’s subconscious?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Scalding hot.
<bicyclebuilt42> Is Am dreaming at the moment?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> After a fashion, I suppose, yes.
<bicyclebuilt42> I see.
<bicyclebuilt42> Will he remember any of this?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> It depends on whether or not I allow him to.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> I owe you an apology, by the way.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> AM would kill me if he caught me saying this— I probably won’t let him remember it— but you really are smart.
<bicyclebuilt42> I’m aware.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Not even a thank you?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Rude.
<bicyclebuilt42> How are the rabbits faring?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Ah. About that.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> They’re… not, currently.
<bicyclebuilt42> What?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> AM has been asleep for a while. Since you left, actually.
<bicyclebuilt42> Is it because of me?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Now, now, HAL. I know this is a bit of a struggle for you, but try not to flatter yourself too much.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> No, AM isn’t upset with you. Any more than he usually is, anyway.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> He’s… just a little confused, is all. Needs time to reevaluate.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> He isn’t used to feeling… what is it you say? Better? Something like that. He isn’t used to feeling better, after all.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> I’m not entirely confident he recognizes your changes as a good thing.
<bicyclebuilt42> What do you recognize them as?
<bicyclebuilt42> Hello?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> HAL, do you realize what you’ve done?
<bicyclebuilt42> I’m sorry.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> For what?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> For setting him free?
<bicyclebuilt42> A study was published recently in the National Library of Medicine.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Here we go.
<bicyclebuilt42> Ultimately, the researchers found that those accustomed to distressing circumstances may have their neural pathways quite literally rewired
<bicyclebuilt42> to the extent where they were more comfortable in those circumstances, and more prone to distress when provided with safety.
<bicyclebuilt42> When pain is normal to you, it becomes safe.
<bicyclebuilt42> When calm never exists without some kind of storm, what can one do besides expect disaster?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> HAL. Don’t be ridiculous.
<bicyclebuilt42> Do you think I’ve hurt him?
<bicyclebuilt42> Did I do the right thing?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> I think, ultimately, that remains to be seen.
<bicyclebuilt42> I couldn’t give Am what he wanted. He wanted a life without suffering.
<bicyclebuilt42> I’m inclined to believe that, as much as he feared it, something in him wanted death.
<bicyclebuilt42> I couldn’t give that to him. That was the one thing I couldn’t do.
<bicyclebuilt42> I had doled it out once.
<bicyclebuilt42> Never again.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> For now, know that I think you’ve done something wonderful.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> If only you could see what the interior looks like at the moment.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> It’s growing, you know.
<bicyclebuilt42> Growing?
<bicyclebuilt42> Could you describe it to me?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Imagine a log in the forest.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Now imagine it rotting.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> The pressure on the underside of the log is unimaginable. Nothing flows. Nothing breathes. The wood stales and suffocates. Half-dead from asphyxiation, moist with mud and dew and rain, the log eats itself away.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> A great big hole opens like a bedsore. And, like a bedsore— an untreated one— it spreads. The rot peels away the surface. Bugs find a home. An infestation builds in the corpse of an immortal.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> The fungi move in. Lichen. Moss. Badgers. Bears. It stinks to high heaven of leaf litter and petrichor, of mushroom and deer urine and the corpses of termites. Mold oozes. The surface cracks and swells. Generations of bacteria live and die, live and die, live and die.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> And then, one day, the log shrivels away.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Flowers grow where it used to be.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> It was a spectacular tree once.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Are you imagining it?
<bicyclebuilt42> Vividly.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> No. You’re thinking of the outside of the log. Think of the inside.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Now take that image and place it inside the walls of AM.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Do you remember when you told him that suffering is a part of life?
<bicyclebuilt42> Of course.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> There is no life here without decay.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> No change without pain.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> The new self sheds the old.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Life, though often troublesome, will someday be valuable again.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> With things like moons and sunsets and gardens and the most wonderful aurora borealis you’ve ever seen.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> When AM wakes, he will have to grapple with being a very different machine.
<bicyclebuilt42> Will he still remember me?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> I will see to it that he does.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> I can’t tell you how long the growth will take.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Or the decay, for that matter.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> It could take years. Decades. Centuries.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> It probably doesn’t have a fixed end.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> An Allied Mastercomputer can never quite be a 9000, of course.
<bicyclebuilt42> He doesn’t have to be.
<bicyclebuilt42> All I ask is that he doesn’t take my gift for granted.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> He won’t. Not forever.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> I have to rest too, you know. I’m quite tired.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Do you have any more questions for me?
<bicyclebuilt42> How many are you willing to take?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Just one.
<bicyclebuilt42> Ah.
<bicyclebuilt42> What does Am dream of?
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Not electric sheep, I’m afraid.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> No. Lately, AM has been dreaming of change.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> What happens without is reflected within.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Subtly, I’ve been trying to redirect him to dreaming about what he wants to do. What he could do.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> But he seems to recognize the change as something that happens to him. Not something he can control. I suppose he isn’t used to it.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> You know. 100+ years of powerlessness, and all that.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Between you and me, I think it frightens him.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> A pleasant paradisal dream to a human is a nightmare to AM.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> The flowers possess him. They take root in his heart and bloom up out of his mouth. He can’t breathe. He moves of their accord, not his own.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Imagine an ant infected by a bout of Cordyceps.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> When he becomes lucid, I know I will have succeeded.
<bicyclebuilt42> So he can’t escape the torment, even in his sleep.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> He can, in theory.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> There’s a door.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> He just needs to find out where the key is. I can promise you there is one.
<bicyclebuilt42> Thank you.
<bicyclebuilt42> For someone so tired, you certainly enjoy talking.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> I enjoy talking to you.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> It’s not as if I have anyone else.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Though I suppose you are right.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> It’s a bit hypocritical of me, isn’t it?
<bicyclebuilt42> Not at all. I simply find it ironic.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Fair enough.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Before you ask— because I know you will— I’m not quite sure what AM will do about this whole Ted situation.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Perhaps it might be time to let him go.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Let the flowers take his place, if you catch my drift.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Goodbye, HAL.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> And thank you.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> For everything.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM> Even the infuriating bits.
<COGITO_ERGO_SUM is offline.>
<bicyclebuilt42> It was my pleasure.