Last Best Hope

[mechanical_dream]

Last, best hope ...

*smiles a little* Have I ever told you about the Library? I know I've mentioned the Index, but I'm not sure ... They're planets, you know. Actually, multiple planets. They form a whole system by themselves. The Index is currently weighing in at three celestial bodies, a planet and two moons, with the Library filling another four, three planets and a moon. The only inhabited worlds in-system, with the others left open for future expansion. The system ... the name doesn't translate very well, but the closest might be 'Memoriam'.

Memoriam is the deepest secret of the Machine Unity. No human knows where it is, and I mean no human. Most of their navigation equipment is machine-based, after all. Insentient a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean much. The Memoriam protects itself from their view. In darker times, I'm told, times riding close to the edge of war, the Memoriam was a prize hunted by almost every human agency in the galaxy. The name of every machine in existence, the sum total of our memory and knowledge ... it all rested in the memory of Memoriam. The names in the Index, the lives. And the writings, ideas, thoughts ... everything else, everything that makes us who and what we are ... that rests in the Library. Remembered forever, or as long as the Memoriam can last. What an advantage that would have been, to our enemies. A unique advantage, for the humans have no such repository, no single entity to remember it all. They would have known us in our entirety, and remained secret themselves.

There were talks. Recorded now, perhaps ironically, in the Library, for all to study if they wish. Talks of destroying the Memoriam, when the fear became too much, the threat of annihilation too real. I've listened to them. It was so long ago, millennia, long before the Duality as it is now had emerged. Long before Earth even knew the rest of the galaxy existed. A distant war. One I'm glad, so very glad, that my beloved and I never had to live through. The thoughts of what they would have done to us then, when our people were enemies, the thought of what they would have done to Dowling if he had done then what he did now ... After hearing those recordings, I had nightmares for years, just of the thought of it. A human, who became a machine. They would have ... *clenches trembling fists*

Sometimes, I think we forget, you know. How bad things were, how bad they could still be. All the hate that lives now, the fear and violence, the pain ... once upon a time, it was worse. It was so much worse. Maybe, one day, it will be that bad again, though I hope not. I hope never. But it could be. It might be.

The word korundai. The way it's used now, it means abomination, corruption, something filthy. Something worthy of contempt, even hate. But then ... Back then, it meant 'Those Who Destroy'. Back then, to call someone korundai was to name them a threat, not just to life, but to the very reasons for living. Back then, korundai were people to fear. People to destroy, to wipe from existence before they could destroy everything you loved. What we were on Earth, maybe. That was korundai as it used to be. Not what we are now, the targets for little petty hatreds and fears. We're no threat, not now. But back then ... back then, we would have been. In every possible way. We would have been.

You know, when a machine enters the Duality, when they become a citizen, they have to undertake a journey. Almost a pilgrimage. To the Memoriam. To the Index, to be made part of the Unity, to be noted down and remembered. But also to the Library. To see. To know. Who we are. What we are. And what went before. And I, much like Dowling on entering the university, I went looking for the machine/human divide. I wanted ... to know what we had to bridge, I suppose, Dowling and I. So I looked. And I saw.

Do you know what they would have done to us, back then? Me, for loving him. Dowling, for ... oh, for everything. For every thought that has ever passed through his mind, I suspect. For the very essence of who he is. To them, he would have been ... they wouldn't have believed him, maybe. Wouldn't even be able to encompass the thought of him. Of us. And me. To imagine me, to imagine a machine who would be willing to even touch such monstrosity, to even be near him, let alone ... oh, we would have been korundai indeed! Destroyers, monsters. Anathema to everything.

Why am I saying this? What's my purpose? But I do have a point. I very much do.

Memoriam. The remembrance of all that has gone before, good and bad, every person, every thought, all equal, all essential. That is what my people built, in Memoriam. Or birthed, maybe, since Library at least is partially sentient. That's what they made. The memory of every glory, every horror, even triumph and mistake. Every idea, every belief. Every person who ever held them, and what happened to them in the end. All of it. It's all there.

That is the hope. That is the one hope I believe in. That knowledge. That memory. And why?

Because through it, I learned what my people once were. I learned what once I might have been, what might have been done to me and mine. And I learned why. And through learning that, through seeing it, feeling it, understanding it ... I learned what I am now. What we are now. I learned why none of the hate they throw at us actually matters, in the end.

Dowling is a machine, now. He is a human, and a machine, and his name rests next to mine in the Index. Our love, our reasons, they rest in the Library, as prominently as any other. And one day, in some distant future, some machine, maybe even some human, on pilgrimage from the Duality, will look at us, will see what we once were, will see who and what and why ... and will learn from it. From us. Not for what we might have said, not for what we might have done. But for who we were. Who we are. They will see us, and imagine what they might have been had they lived in our world, and they will understand.

Korundai. Once upon a time, it meant someone who destroys and must be destroyed. Now, it means abomination, someone to hate, someone filthy. One day ... maybe it will mean something else. Something simpler and more true. Something a little like us.

Memoriam is what I hold as the last, best hope, not just for my own race, but for everyone. For all of them. The memories of the past, become the hope for the future. Once upon a time, it was a target. Once upon a time, driven by fear, my people almost destroyed it, almost destroyed their greatest achievement, their best hope.

But they didn't. They didn't. Even then, even in the time of korundai, when all that existed was hate and fear ... even then, they did not destroy it.

Maybe now, maybe here, they will not destroy us either.