‘Sidra—’
Sidra continued to walk past the rows of ships. ‘Do you know what one of the hardest parts of this has been for me? I don’t mean this trip – I mean every day since I was installed.’ She glanced sideways at Tak. ‘Purpose. There’s a file in me, and it’s labelled “purpose”. Now, when I woke up in the Wayfarer core, the data in that file told me that I was a monitoring system, and that I was there to protect people. If you had asked me what my purpose was, I would have responded with that. It would have been the truth, and it would’ve satisfied me. But the moment I was put into this body, that was no longer the case. I couldn’t answer that question the way I’d been programmed to, because that file was no longer true. I spent the longest time wondering what should be there instead. After you helped me be able to edit my own code, scrubbing that file clean was one of the first things I did. But I didn’t delete the file itself. I couldn’t delete it, because I wanted to figure out what should be written there instead. And that’s the trick of it, see. That’s the logical fallacy that was passed on to me. If I’m nothing more than a tool, then I must have a purpose. Tools have purposes, right? But I’m more than that. Pepper and Blue – and you, even – have been telling me that again and again and again. I know that I’m more than a tool. I know I’m a person, even if the GC doesn’t think so. I have to be a person, because I don’t need a purpose and not having one drives me crazy.’
‘I’m not following,’ Tak said.
Sidra smoothed out her pathways, trying to find the best words. ‘All of you do this. Every organic sapient I’ve ever talked to, every book I’ve read, every piece of art I’ve studied. You are all desperate for purpose, even though you don’t have one. You’re animals, and animals don’t have a purpose. Animals just are. And there are a lot of intelligent – sentient, maybe – animals out there who don’t have a problem with that. They just go on breathing and mating and eating each other without a second thought. But the animals like you – the ones who make tools and build cities and itch to explore, you all share a need for purpose. For reason. That thinking worked well for you, once. When you climbed down out of the trees, up out of the ocean – knowing what things were for was what kept you alive. Fruit is for eating. Fire is for warmth. Water is for drinking. And then you made tools, which were for certain kinds of fruit, for making fire, cleaning water. Everything was for something, so obviously, you had to be for something too, right? All of your histories are the same, in essence. They’re all stories of animals warring and clashing because you can’t agree on what you’re for, or why you exist. And because you all think this way, when you built tools that think for themselves, we think the same way you do. You couldn’t make something that thought differently, because you don’t know how. So I’m stuck in that loop, just as you are. I know that if I am a person, I have no purpose by base, but I’m starving for one. I know from watching all of you that the only way to fill in that file is to write it myself. Just like you did. You make art, much like Blue does. You two do it for different reasons, but that’s the purpose you chose. Pepper fixes things. Someone else gave her that purpose, but she chose it for herself, after the fact. She made it her own. I haven’t found a purpose like that yet – nothing so overarching and big. But I don’t think purposes have to be immutable. I don’t have to have the same one always. For now, my purpose file reads “to help Owl”. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I’m for. I can do the thing Pepper couldn’t, and I’m happy with that, because she’s done so much for me. If that is my only purpose, if I don’t write in another after this, I’m okay. I’m okay with that. I think it’s a good purpose to have.’
Tak reached out and stopped her. She turned Sidra to face her, putting a hand on each shoulder. A symphony of colour bled through her cheeks, pushing through the calm she’d inhaled and swallowed. Her talkbox lay silent, but Sidra knew her friend was speaking. The words were lost on her, but she could see the reasons beneath. Kindness. Worry. Respect.
Sidra squeezed Tak’s hands and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
They continued to the shuttle in silence. Sidra hung back as Tak swiped her patch over the security barrier, opening a passage forward. Tak took the power supply from Sidra, jacked it into a port on the hull, and opened the hatch manually. Sidra took a breath as she stepped through, her hands balled at her sides. Tak repeated the steps again to open the airlock, then again to turn on the lights. Sidra stood on the threshold. She didn’t take another step.
‘What is it?’ Tak said.