Tauria: Okay, I have been wanting to do something like this for a long time now, because there are lots of great one-shots about how Antauri wonders if he has a soul because of what was said in Ghost in the Machinder. And I decided I was gonna be different and do a whole STORY on it. Plus, if you read How It All Came To Be, then you know that I said I was going to start being mean to Antauri. So that's this story. Although I warn you, writing this first chapter made me kind of depressed . . . I hate writing for Antauri (really any character) this way, so it is sort of a challenge for myself.

Disclaimer: I don't own SRMT. Nor do I own the episode Ghost in the Machinder.

Heart Of A Machine

ANTAURIfan

Prologue

'Do machines really have souls?'

I have wondered this ever since the day the Robot started showing signs of intelligence. I, too, am a full robot, butI have come to call it my 'condition'. At first, I saw no difference between myself and the others. But now I do. The others have some sort of life in them . . . but do I? Do I truly have a soul? Am I capable of feeling? Of thinking? Of being alive? Or is it just simulated? Am I truly Antauri? Or am I just a copy, put into another body, that could be reprogrammed with ease.

Often, I find myself thinking back to the day these doubts entered my mind. I try to find some sort of answer. Some way to assure myself that I do have a soul . . . that I am still capable of being apart of this team. But each time I become more and more convinced that I am not . . .

We were headed to find the Skeleton King Worm. We couldn't let it destroy anymore planets then it already had . . . his corruption had already spread too far.

"Setting a course for the Daegon system," Our leader, Chiro, said, gloved fingers typing furiously at the controls. "If the Skeleton King Worm is ANYWHERE, it's GOTTAbe there."

"Strange . . ." Gibson said, looking at something on one of the smaller monitors. "The Super Robot not responding!" He pulled a lever down, trying to see if he could get the Robot to respond.

"It just put us on a new course!" Nova cried out.

"Let's check out the navigation system . . . maybe it's down!" Chiro said.

Nova gave him a single nod, and together the six of us headed to a room that glowed a bright red.

"It's not the computers," our mechanic, Otto, said. "You're not going to believe this, but the Super Robot's overriding our commands!"

I could believe it . . . after all, what was so different between me and the Robot? I, too, had become fully machine.

"You're saying it's . . . thinking for itself?" Chiro asked, as if the idea was strange to him.

Did I not think? Did that cross their minds? I decided to intervene. I would sound as if I was concerned about the Robot, but I would also be giving them a gentle reminder of what I have become as well. "Perhaps there is more to the Robot then meets the eye."

"You gotta be kidding me, Antauri," Sprx said. "I mean, it's a machine. It's probably just broken."

Sprx often spoke without thinking, but never had his words hurt me as those had. I wondered if I was only sympathizing with the Robot because I, too, had become a full fledged machine. And was I really hurt? Could I really sympathize?

"Agreed." Gibson said. "Technically speaking, machines can only APPEAR to be alive."

"Appearances CAN be deceiving," I said, once more trying to remind them that I, too, was machine. But did they care? Did they think I was still dead? That this body I was in was just a copy of what I once was?

"Uh, what you see is what you get," Sprx said. "Machines can NOT have a soul."

And then the alarm went off.

Were they talking about the Robot, after I spoke up? Or were they speaking about me too? For a while I was able to say that they weren't, since Sprx did risk his own life to rescue me, but could it have been because he thought they would need me? Surely I was still as important to them as I had been before my incident. Sometimes I doubted they still held respect for me as a living being . . . sometimes I think they feared me because I was a machine. They had once come to me whenever they needed me, but now they rarely came to see me. Of course, we were in the middle of a war . . . so perhaps that had something to do with it?

It is hard, having nothing to do but to think in the dead of night. I have no need for sleep, so I stay up quite late. Once a week I power down for the night, so that I can give my body some rest, but there is much to be done at night. The only problem is that these have become mindless tasks. Tasks that I need not think about. So my mind is free to think about what it pleases. And this is often the subject it returns too. I don't like to think about myself this way. It only does me more harm then good, but nothing I can think of helps me. I know I could talk to one of the others, but would they understand?

There is only one other I can talk to, and I have yet to figure out how to do that. Tonight, I have decided to occupy myself with trying to communicate with the Super Robot. He might understand. I would talk to Jinmay, but for one thing, she is so young, and for another, she was not around to know the others as well as the Robot. She knows us, but she was not there for many of our adventures, including the one I speak of. And it is that one I would mention. And also, I would be worried she would tell Chiro, and Chiro would worry, and Chiro has enough on his plate.

I sighed, as my most recent attempt failed. I stared down into my lap. So much that had been easy before was effortless now. Like floating. Before, that had been an easy task for me. But now it was effortless. Sensing danger had become easy too. I was more in tune with the Power Primate then ever before. I was also more in tune with Chiro. Those were some good points, I suppose. But some bad points were that sometimes, the silver monkey made it hard to show mercy. My mechanical brain made it easier to see the logic in things, and often times would try to block certain feelings if they got in the way of that logic. It made it hard for me to be a father to Chiro, especially. It said that a monkey could not be a father to a human . . . but so far I had managed to contain this, and do what was right for my 'son'.

With the war being here though, it was getting worse. It wanted to show less mercy . . . It wanted to work the team harder. But I couldn't let it do that. I just couldn't. I tried to make it see logic that it would tire them out, and for now that was working, but I was worried that my mechanical brain was going to take over my body. That it was going to completely control me. And that scared me . . .

Tauria: What a depressing way to start a story . . . well, I hoped you liked that, and I will update as soon as I can! :DD Please leave a review!