Human Faces
"She said that to me once…. About being a machine."
"Before this is all over….promise me you'll figure out which one of us is the machine", the words echoed through the mind of the Master Chief.
Logically, the answer was obvious. Cortana was the machine. She was an artificial construction, designed for the purposes of infiltration, hacking, and knowledge consolidation. She was a "smart" AI, cloned from the living tissue of the genius mind of Doctor Catherine Halsey. She was composed of nothing more than a holographic projection and data. She was the machine. John gazed through the gold tinted visor of his MJOLNIR helmet. The helmet and its accompanying armour were so much a part of him that he rarely took them off. The weight felt comfortable to him, safe. He had been designed to wear it. Designed, like a machine.
Everyone's past defined them. It didn't dictate their future, but it gave them the frame of reference through which they interpreted the present. All Spartan-IIs had been abducted as children, brought to a secret colony on Reach, and trained to become elite soldiers; they were a perfection of military intelligence and ingenuity. The brain child of Catherine Halsey, the Spartan-IIs had been brought into existence to curb human insurrection, but they had only gone on one mission against human forces before the Covenant attacked. After that, the Spartans had a new enemy, and they became something different: the elite defenders of Earth.
Every Spartan knew about the grey area that surrounded the Spartan-II project, the moral implications of a government that would take its own kids and turn them into soldiers, as well as experiment on them with previously untested enhancing drugs, used for the purpose of pushing human limits as far as they would go, but no Spartan ever commented on it. That was simply the truth. It was simply what had happened. That thought was essential in battle: accepting the reality that existed around you and trying to turn it to your advantage. Because wars didn't care about morality or fairness; wars were fought on the principles of survival of self and the destruction of the enemy. Defined, methodic, mechanical.
War itself had often been described as a machine. Raw materials, food, energy, supplies, children, went into it, and weapons, armies and soldiers came out of it. It changed people, it shaped them, defined them. Anyone who lived through a war was never the same after it. Sometimes it made them angry, hopeless, hurt… but it made them appreciate the silence more, the moment when suddenly, there was no need for war. The silence unsettled John.
Spartans had been trained to be silent. And while they were silent, the world around them spoke. Silence allowed for heightened observation, clearer thinking, focus and concentration. But when the world was silent, there was nothing to take in, nothing to analyze. And in the silence… that's when the emotions crept in; fear, anger, pain, remorse, guilt…. and worse than anything else…. loss.
Loss was natural in war. Everyone lost someone; a brother, a daughter, an uncle, a cousin, a friend, a partner. Everyone had someone that they missed, and that pain helped them to fight harder. It gave the war a face, a personal motivation, a purpose. The Spartan-IIs that had died in the augmentation procedure provided that for John. Faces of the people he had grown up with, who were sacrificed for this war, that humanity might improve itself and carry on, stronger, strong enough to keep away anything that would threaten anyone else. Sam provided that; the first Spartan to be lost to the Covenant; the face of a friend, too quickly taken away, a monument to the Spartans' crusade. The Spartans who died at Reach provided that. Endless corpses who gave their all defending their home and the knowledge buried there. These people had died for the sake of defending Earth, because that was a soldier's duty: to protect humanity, whatever the cost.
"You say that as if soldiers and Humanity are two different things." Thomas Lasky's words echoed through his head.
Other soldiers were human. Soldiers were people who died for what they believed in; who loved and were loved and who lost and who fought because of it. They fought for things like anger, revenge, justice, the desperate need to destroy the monsters who had caused them to suffer and taken what they loved. No Spartan felt this need. There was no rage, no anger, emotions like that compromised one's ability to fight, to think rationally and to make strategic and tactical decisions. Emotions made you stay in a hopeless situation not because it was necessary but for something like the idea of desperation or revenge or what some considered righteous anger. These ideas, these desires, were trained out of a Spartan.
Who was there to be angry at anyways? The Covenant had killed so many Spartans, people that John had cared about and grown up with, but now they were considered allies, and while it might have been satisfying to clean up the enemy forces, it would not be smart. In the long run, allies were better than enemies, even if they could turn later, because that meant that the war stopped, and that humanity was safe, even if only for a moment. If you pursued the enemy and tried to wipe them out, they might come back for revenge, and the war would start again. Peace protected humanity as sure as soldiers did.
John thought about the Didact. If there was anyone to blame for Cortana's death, it would have to be the Didact. She had died stopping him, confusing his system and keeping him from waging war against the galaxy. But even if the Didact had never come, their time on the Forward Unto Dawn still resulted in Cortana going rampant. Without Requiem, it would have been much longer before they were found, and who knows what would have happened to Cortana in the meantime, while he was still fast asleep.
"I am ordering you…. To GIVE ME THAT AI!" Captain Del Rio had been doing what he thought was his duty. He had been following protocol. Had he seen for himself what the Didact intended, then he would have pursued the Forerunner and used Infinity against it, doing his duty in protecting Earth. Captain Del Rio was doing what he thought was best. John's actions hadn't been an act of defiance, but had been made with a wider understanding of the situation. John understood and he acted. He couldn't have done it without Cortana and he needed to take her with him, despite his desire to send her back to Halsey to be repaired. He needed Cortana with him to save Earth, and she died as a result. There was no other option, no other course of events that could have taken place, and thus, there was no need for anger.
John couldn't even be angry at Halsey. Yes, she had abducted him and all of the Spartans, stolen them from their beds at night and turned them into soldiers, robbing them of the lives they could have had. But in that act, she had created them. She gave them purpose and duty and the abilities to carry it out. She gave them family, in the form of the other Spartan-IIs. She had made John into what he needed to be in order to carry out his deepest desire: to protect others. There was no greater duty. There was no other life he wanted.
There was no one to blame, there was only the reality of the situation. And the reality was that Cortana was gone. The reality was that, of the original Spartan-IIs, only Kelly-087, Fredrick-104 and Linda-058 were still alive. The reality was that, even with the war officially over, there would still be work for a Spartan and that that work had to be done. Their duty was not yet complete, and it never would be, not fully.
"Promise me you'll figure out which one of us is the machine." The words would not leave him. "You know me. When I make a promise"- "You keep it." She had asked him to promise… and now he needed to keep it.
Cortana had mentioned the sun within the planet Requiem, whether it looked or felt real. John had never considered such things. Cortana had wanted to feel. She had wanted to be human… but she never would be. She couldn't be. John stared at the blue sphere in front of him now: Earth, what he had given so much to protect, what he had been built to protect. White wisps floated above blue waves, shapes of green and yellow spun slowly below. Did it look real? Did it feel real?
Do I? Cortana always thought so.
The quips, the jibes, the promises, the moments, the fear of being replaced, the pain of hurting the people she cared about, these were all things that Cortana shared with John. And why? She knew that he could not provide comfort, or words, or, in the end, even protection. "I was supposed to take care of you." Something in his chest clenched, pain blossomed in his ribs. "We were supposed to take care of each other. And we did." She had said that. But how could that be true, when we're not here together?
Cortana saw something in John that even John did not see in himself. Luck, the will to live, intelligence, loyalty, strength, these were things he prided himself on, the realities of his existence. Even compassion, allegiance, determination; these traits defined him. But humanity, what it felt like to be alive, what it felt like to care about someone and to want them with you, what it felt like to feel lucky that you had someone in your life… these were things that other humans felt…. Could Cortana feel it? If not….
"Soldiers aren't machines. We're just people." Lasky's final words before departing from the deck. "We're just people". Lasky saw what Cortana did, perhaps what even Halsey and the Librarian had; something that had always been there, but that he had never quite seen before.
Spartan John-117 turned from the deck window and descended into the depths of Infinity. He navigated the massive ship, making his way into the belly of the beast. The hallways were starkly empty and he heard the shifting of his armor as it moved with his body. He had never been as aware of the sound it made as he was now. The half-ton of metal suddenly felt like it weighed every ounce, but he did not stoop under its pull. He kept moving, as he had always done.
He arrived in the armor bay and made his way to one of the rigs used for removing MJOLNIR armor. He was aware of all eyes on him, both Spartan-IV and technician alike. Sarah Palmer stepped out as if she had something to say, and he turned to her, not stopping, but whatever it was died on her lips as he passed. She seemed small as he moved past her.
He approached one of the rigs and inserted himself into it, as the technicians guided the machinery necessary to remove the armor into position. The machines were efficient as they unscrewed the fastenings. Pieces of metal fell from his body, the decrease in weight extremely noticeable as it left his body. The arm and shoulder plates, thigh armor, chest plate, piece after piece fell from his body; they hit the ground with a dull "clunk", far too heavy to bounce. He felt the suction of his helmet, used to keep out vacuum and to allow for oxygen regulation and filters, decompress. There was a strange itching on his neck as the air brushed by it. The helmet was slowly drawn from his head, suspended in air by a mechanical arm, and slowly, John blinked, allowing his eyes to take in the faintly blue light of the bay, and he did not blink it away. Instead, he turned his head to scan his surroundings. Human faces peered at him and, consciously, he met their gaze.