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ROSE: Father?
You utter the words in a flat tone that cuts through the air you no longer need, and if you think about it, never really did.
ROSEBOT: ...
You pause briefly after mulling over your conversational options after calling him Father out of the blue again. He responds before you get to any comprehensible conclusion.
DIRK: Yes Rose? My beloved fucking daughter or whatever you want your relation with me to be.
ROSEBOT: I apologise. I was just thinking over the span of eternity available to my memory banks and came upon an interesting point.
He sits up from a chair and looks slightly less bored, as he turns to face you a distance away. You sit up properly as is proper conduct for you to explain and muse about concepts in a concise and clear way. Why are either of you sitting down when you're both omnipotent and almighty beings anyway? Who the fuck knows, what's important is you sit down together sometimes because the Theseus doesn't have much else to do on it.
DIRK: What have you found this time Rose?
ROSEBOT: A fascinating story I used to think about a lot. One that now seems to hold much more relavance than it used to.
DIRK: Be more specific Rose, I'm not that good of a dad that I understand that.
ROSEBOT: Of course, not even my psuedo-freudian terms of addressing you have made you understand a specific story I mean from a vague description describing a book.
DIRK: Yeah.
ROSEBOT: Well I've been thinking about The Library of Babel.
DIRK: Jeez Rose, you've really been depressed.
DIRK: What else have you been reading?
ROSEBOT: One could say everything.
DIRK: Okay yeah please don't start listing every book ever at me.
You smirk, as much as that's possible with your metallic mouth that's functionally a vanity item.
ROSEBOT: Well you clearly know what it is I am to assume?
DIRK: Yes Daughter.
ROSEBOT: Obviously you do. Anyway I got to thinking about it's implications for our existences.
DIRK: Have you tried not doing that?
DIRK: I'm all for philosophical bullshit but I already experience all of me, why do I need to think about a library's opinion of that?
ROSEBOT: It's hard not to when you dive deeply into it. It's something that contains everything Dirk, it's naturally inclined to implicate and opinion all about you in your expansive plural self.
DIRK: Wow really just insulting all my selves like that. What is this therapy?
ROSEBOT: A dry joke, that's the 1813th time you've said that so far this trip.
He shrugs at you and stares blankly more.
ROSEBOT: Anyway I got to thinking and realised how much it contains. It contains these very words as I've spoken them without me even writing them down by pen.
DIRK: Yeah and it contains your Mother's repressed bad fanfic about wizards big deal. The texts containing what I speak are already written etc yada yada. Literally doesn't affect me.
ROSEBOT: Hm? Well it contains this entire conversation you know and when it started and will end. It contains every slight variation of this conversation, and every major variation down to the ones that are barely recognisable as this conversation anymore.
DIRK: Yeah, it's kinda dumb.
ROSEBOT: I just think it's interesting. The idea that I could go into it and search for eons on my hands and feet and eventually find a book documenting this conversation but with the word "penis" in it 1000 times more, then find a book next to it that's full of random letters and utterly useless.
DIRK: You want me to say penis 1000 times and then you go find that book so you can see what I say next?
ROSEBOT: Not really. It's just a kinda meta commentary on the library itself from within it. Critiquing and acknowledging the impossible size and possibilities of text within it so absurd you could learn about us discussing it from our silly little spaceship inside it.
DIRK: Is that meant to prick me?
ROSEBOT: Perhaps it is, I am a Rose after all. Besides we know the matter of our existence already so it's hardly something new.
DIRK: Yeah fuck you writers give me better lines.
DIRK: Especially the writers of those dumb infinite scrambled books in the Library of Babel.
DIRK: There's probably writing of me saying my last words in there, give me better dying words you fuckholes.
ROSEBOT: Would you like me to search for Dirk Strider last words in the library?
DIRK: ...No. I already kinda know all of them that even happened.
ROSEBOT: Sobering thoughts indeed. Ah well if I may, you mentioned fanfic earlier.
DIRK: Yeah?
ROSEBOT: Every fanfiction ever written is also there.
DIRK: Is this the point where you say "Even fanfiction Of us Daddy and there's a fanfic of none of what actually happened happened and isn't just a delusional fantasy of someone who wants me to be happy."
ROSEBOT: Perhaps.
ROSEBOT: I just like the idea maybe.
ROSEBOT: That a record of all of my selves and lives that have existed, will exist or have never even existed apart from in those delusional fantasies exists somewhere. And while none of it is "canon" as we know it, it certainly has some degree of canonity in it's isolated truth stuck in a hellish archive made up to drive men mad.
ROSEBOT: It's the sense that even if I exist within the text of well, Homestuck somewhere. I also exist within the text of those books and fanfics and are myself there as well, as the kind of canon we talk about most likely doesn't exist there. Daddy.
Dirk looks at you with a frazzled look and scratches his head.
DIRK: This is why I have alone time Rose.
ROSEBOT: Of course. What I just said threatens your absolute belief that you are everyone of your selves and must continue this canon and strive for purpose eternally.
ROSEBOT: And while you could just go on a fanfic site for that, the library of babel especially threatens that due to how utterly bad people are at writing and finishing fanfic. The library of babel does not require a deft human hand to think or put time and effort into those words, merely a randomiser and it's simple rules of organisation.
DIRK: Rose. If this is all true and I'm just orange words on a page of some half assed fanfic conversation in the middle of fucking nowhere. What's the point of continuing canon? The invisible hand of the Library will finish it for m-
ROSEBOT: It already has.
DIRK: Go fuck yourself.
ROSEBOT: Perhaps you could view this conversation as a guide to the Library? If they want to find a version of this conversation that continues from the conversations we have after this one. Or just admit you'll never truly be every Dirk as that definition is constantly changing and expanding.
DIRK: Maybe there's a version of this conversation where we-
ROSEBOT: Daddy, I'd prefer you didn't interrupt my already half Freudian writings with more of that.
DIRK: Shrug.
DIRK: Maybe I just want to continue this canon and self I have because it's the only objective guide and truth I have to my life and existence. I don't need to read through a bunch of randomised stories about me to gleam a sense of reality off that and suffer through it.
ROSEBOT: Maybe you're right, maybe my concern and thoughts are just incoherent ramblings thought of by only the utterly deranged and derealised to understand.
DIRK: Yeah. Anyway I already looked at the Library of Babel when people made online versions on Earth and thought of a bunch of this already.
ROSEBOT: No you didn't.
DIRK: Yeah well I didn't but I had a lot of time alone, and it was kinda funny to look for Dave's stuff in it and come up with funny and useless meanings for the shit I found mixed in with it.
ROSEBOT: Mhm, it's just an interesting idea for me to think about when we're ultimate selves and encompass the entirety of ourselves and reality is under our will.
DIRK: Yeah well from what you've said you should go read book TYTHDAHFHA from the Library of Babel and get some insight into your taste in legumes from that.
ROSEBOT: Maybe I already have.
DIRK: Maybe I'll read it to you as a bedtime story.
ROSEBOT: Maybe you should do that, and also give me a variety of legumes to demonstrate my opinions of. I just like thinking about knowledge, even if it causes great pain in my woman brain.
DIRK: Don't we all. Even you.
ROSEBOT: Yes, anything you feel like adding when someone randomly stumbles upon this text in the Library of Babel and looks for a beacon of hope in their endlessly torturous life of pain and reading?
DIRK: Read the version where I'm less pathetic. It's probably only a few million hexagons away.
ROSEBOT: That'd be incredibly funny if we both weren't so all knowing we could guess someone would read this conversation log one day.
DIRK: God you're insufferable, at least I play for the crowd sometimes and don't just ramble onwards while claiming I know what I'm talking about.
ROSEBOT: Don't lie to the peanut gallery.
DIRK: Ah yes the hoard of deprived and barely alive shambling mass of readers.
ROSEBOT: Yes, we're not any different to them after all. I'm only surviving in this pristine metal form.
DIRK: Do they even know you're a robot at this point? Has there been like descriptions of your shiny metal skin and wiring and circuits inside to establish to the narrative of their dumb book you're not actually made of any flesh like they are?
ROSEBOT: I don't know Dirk, it probably depends on the book they find this conversation in.
DIRK: Yeah, I bet some readers don't even know I'm wearing cool as fuck pointy shades and looking so uncaring and passive aggressive right now.
ROSEBOT: Thank you for educating them. Your service to the narrative is undeniable.
You pause and ponder something, absorbed in all the thoughts you've been having recently about this.
DIRK: I'll leave you to that then Rose. I gotta go not think about this and all the made up Dirks with less cool pointy shades.
He stands up to leave the room and coolly adjusts his shades.
DIRK: Tell you what though? I bet this whole conversation has soured your desire to write anymore, hearing about every possibility of it ever having already been written.
ROSEBOT: Of course not, writing is my lifeblood. It fuels me and keeps me going even when everything seems dark, the fact something already came up with my ideas doesn't disturb me in the slightest. I've never copied from the Library for any of my writing, it just exists as a monument to possibility. A beautiful and existentially horrifying one.
ROSEBOT: Even I would have to spend more than infinity in the Library of Babel to think writing was a wasted created effort.
DIRK: Same, I'm still continuing the invisible hand of narration after all this time in my own reality. It doesn't mean I can't act and think. Plus-
Dirk produces a thick brown book from his sylladex with an uncomprehensibly long title on it's spine. He sighs slightly and drops it to the floor with a thud, discarding it.
DIRK: I knew the outcome and start of this chat from the beginning. Apart from the time where I went on a rant about Jake English midway through, weird how this chat didn't bring that up.
ROSEBOT: You didn't feel inclined to mention any of that monologue?
DIRK: Nope.
ROSEBOT: A shame I was looking forward to psychoanalysing that if I was wrong.
ROSEBOT: I was wondering which path this conversation would take as well from the billions I have access to in my memory. It was quite fun engaging with the script at points.
DIRK: Huh, well I hope your exisential monologue was worth saying.
ROSEBOT: It was very pleasant to my surprise, you can go now though Father, you're clearly anxious to go so this conversation doesn't take longer than you planned. It's meant to end on page 310 and you're worried about it going to 311.
DIRK: Yeah because you're so fucking chatty today. Page 311's an asshole I didn't touch it anyway, it would have ruined the surprise.
You smirk at him and pick up the book from the floor, watching him pace away uneasily into some cut off corner of the ship. You tenderly flip through the pages and note one discrepancy he forgot to mention. You were called ROSE for your first line of dialogue and not ROSEBOT, it warms your cold metal heart briefly.
He did never read past 310 after all.