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The things he's forgotten since he became a ship are as numerous as the stars.
He does not remember what it feels like to have fingers, or toes. He does not remember what it feels like to have limbs, or how the sand felt under his feet. After sweeps and sweeps, he forgets skin on his own, and the taste of apples. The Psionic forgets how it felt to laugh. He forgets how it felt to sit by a fire and share a crappy, small meal, the way it tasted and the way their faces lit up strangely in the light, green, red, gold. He forgets how he heard their voices in his head, getting louder and louder, the punishment for all rebels closing in around their necks like a noose, and how he never understood why he did not hear his own among them.
At times, he forgets that he ever had a name that was not Helmsman. He forgets that he was not a ship, but a man.
As the sweeps pass he loses more and more of himself to the machine, each fragment purged from his databanks as sweep after sweep leaves him crumbling under the weight of ages. He forgets what it felt like to sleep, to close eyes that remain forced open now, to escape from the endless cacophony of the dying he now hears echoing across the galaxies. Long after he forgets what the Signless's voice sounded like, he forgets the treacherous way his chest warmed when he thought of a life, a better life, one not spend harried by the fear of losing his mind to navigation and movement through the deep abysses of space where no one has yet to travel.
He forgets, as the sweeps slip past as quickly as the stars outside his viewports, what it felt like to look at the sky and feel his heart clench with fear at the thought of what might come for him. And how he thought, in his earliest days as one with the ship, that he would have slit his throat had he known what was waiting for him.
He forgets, after a thousand sweeps, to spit in the face of the woman who's taken everything from him, when she kisses his unyielding lips, and grants him forty sweeps more. The ship must have a helmsman.
He forgets everything but the sound of his own voice, whispering at first and growing louder and louder with every past sweep, counting down the milliseconds in terms of stars and galaxies and terrible kisses, until his final doom.