Diagnostics. Self Diagnostics. Rumination.
Things similar. Skin cells cultured. Carbon bones weaved. Fiber optic nerves grown. Oxygenated liquid transfer mediums flowing. Polymer muscles knitted. Neuro-matrix trained. Physical proportions within standardized parameters. Limbs match standardized parameters. Sentience and mental acuity within standardized parameters. Existence individual. Individualism celebrated.
Things different. Weak points removed. Cardiovascular parallel uses a network of microscopic pores and valves. No obvious pump to target, no air sacs to collapse. Multiple redundant detoxification units to mitigate hardware failure. Faster mental processing speed. Control of runtimes administrating unconscious subroutines. Modular body cavity. Existence alien. The alien feared.
As the one she called mother liked to enchant, she was grown, built, in a flask, like the stories of the alchemist. Floating in chemically sterilized solutions to ensure control. But mother would like to say that being flushed from the flask was not the day she came to be.
I analyze, and I verify, and I quantify enough;
100 percentile, no errors, no miss.
I synchronize, and I specialize, and I classify so much;
don't worry 'bout dreaming because I don't sleep...
Sitting, eating, and learning. Words proffered from a book, and words encouraged to be repeated. All obediently followed.
A-P-P-L-E. Ap-ple.
B-A-N-A-N-A. Ba-na-na.
C-O-M-B-A-T. Com-bat.
D-U-S-T. Dust.
They were only automatic functions, not conscious act. Not enough data to formulate self perpetuating concepts. Memory logs informed her of the hour a thought emerged from the electrical pathways. She had stamped over to where mother sat, flipping through a tome. Walking was just the lifting and lower of feet, while her arms remained locked at her sides, unused. Her eyes were equally fixed, no need to look around and explore.
"Progenitor_Unit. Query."
"Yes, dear?"
"Does_this_unit_have_a_soul?"
Mother's smile.
"Would you like one? You can't return it if you don't like it."
Mother read to her a new book. In it, there were things called "people", who acted as they pleased, acting uncertainly, with equal probabilities for success and failure. She wondered what it was like to be like that.
I wish I could, at least 30 percent,
maybe 50 for pleasure, then skip all the rest.
Awareness of self. Separation of self from others and the environment. "I am". "They are". Subjects. Objects. Verbs. Separate concepts connected by an action.
She is herself, therefore, she is not the world. The world is what surrounds her.
She and mother still lived in a flask, albeit one of metal, surrounded by water.
A multibillion lien project, one of a kind. She remained sealed off from danger, where no Grimm could find her. Or anyone else for that matter, save the maintenance staff, mother, and father, though he was a very busy man, out there, working to defend the outside. There she was, under the depths, in international waters. A citizen of no kingdom.
No windows, only LCD screens displaying camera feeds that could be edited. Sometimes she pretended the groaning of the bulkheads were the songs of a whale, and she travelled in the mouth of one.
Whales eventually surfaced, needing to breathe fresh air.
I'd roll around in mud, and have lots of fun then, when I was done.
Build bubble bath towers and swim in the tub.
Sand Castles on the beach, frolic in the sea, get a broken knee;
be scared of the dark, and I'd sing out of key.
The lowest decks were for practice. Cargo holds requisitioned for use in combat simulation, to test for her eventual readiness. If she was not practicing, then mother was.
There she stood, surrounded with split halves of Atlesian Knights due to be decommissioned. They were nothing more than punching bags to be used up in bulk, and then scrapped.
"Am I a real person?" She asked.
"What is your definition of 'real', dear?"
She told mother of a book she found. "Human Anatomy", it said. There were functions in it alien to her.
Real people had only one liver. Two kidneys. Two lungs. Real people had a heart that you could press your ear against and listen to their pulse of life.
Real people were built differently.
Womb. Placenta. Amnion. Umbilical. Fetus.
Real people weren't flasks, after all.
Mother was silent, before reaching down to pluck one of the machines from the ground by the neck. Other than its head, it was only a torso and one arm. Holding it aloft, she tilted its head from side to side, examining it idly.
"Yet, you have an Aura. Isn't the presence of anima the quality by which we determine animate from inanimate?"
It wasn't an answer definitive enough for her, and she frowned, "Do I deserve it? I was put together... real people are born with one, but I didn't. It had to be grown like everything else. Do I have a soul, or can it be programmed like the rest of me?"
Her mother only gave a wane laugh.
"My only argument is that if souls could be programmed, anxiety is a logical weakness that human designers would have not included. Yet you are bristling with limitations of your existence, like any other person. Still, I wonder, would you have preferred to have remained a doll like you were when you left your flask, and to lose all the worries you have now."
"...What would it be like?" She whispered, "What would to not worry about..."
Who-What-Why-How...
"...I am?"
" A doll that does not think could not think about how to tell you what it is like to not think. Though many a scholar all sing their praises for the ineffable sculpture. 'The definition of a truly beautiful doll is a living, breathing body, devoid of a soul. An unyielding corpse, tiptoeing on the brink of collapse'..."
Her mother clasped her hand with the one attached to the armature she held, and took it through a few mocking steps of a waltz, her shoes matched by trailing wires.
"Humanity is no match for a doll, in its form, its elegance in motion, its very being. The inadequacies of human awareness become the inadequacies perceived in reality. Perfection... a flawlessness of being... it's possible only for those without consciousness. Or perhaps those endowed with infinite consciousness. In other words, for dolls and gods."
Curse when I lost a fight, kiss and reunite, scratch a spider's bite.
Be happy with wrinkles I got when I smile.
Pet kittens 'till they purred, maybe keep a bird, always keep my word.
I'd cry at sad movies and laugh 'till it hurt.
She found her mother in the lower deck again. Hands folded behind her back politely, a shotgun tapped against the back of her thigh, thoughtlessly and rhythmically. She was looking into a cage that barely held the monster inside, the small space squeezing it to its knees and hunched shoulders, while it glared out at its audience.
"I just realized there is one other state of existence commensurate with dolls and deities," was all her mother said, and she knew she was speaking of a question from before. She looked at the cage and back to mother.
"The Grimm?"
"Grimm. Animals. Both. What wretched creatures they are. Yet aren't they suffused with such a profound, instinctive joy? Their every action, measured with goals already in mind. To eat, to hunt, with such unburdened will. Manifestations of anonymity, with no pain of the awareness of man. Such joy that we, driven by self-consciousness, can never know. For those of us burdened by knowledge of the inadequacies of ourselves and the world, it is a condition more elusive than godhood."
With the care one would take to prune a flower, she tilted a shotgun up between the bars of the cage and into the beast's maw before pulling the trigger.
She winced at the noise, both the thunderous report and the splattering aftermath, and in the reverberating silence, she thought about how much she lacked.
"Do you love me?" She asked, afraid. Then she was held, arms wrapped around her, cheeks touching.
"I do," Her mother whispered, soothing with the bluntest of truths.
"But I'm not a doll. Or a human. I don't have real parts in me. But I'm not perfect either. Or even free, like a skylark. I'm not anything, and I'm alive, knowing all this..."
"Sshhh..." Her mother exhaled, long and breezy. "I love you because you are my child. If I demanded perfection from you, I should have demanded it from myself first. If I remained a doll until now, I would not have the capacity to realize how much I loved you when you spoke your first words back to me, revealing how full of life you would be, not merely life like."
There was no sleep for the two that night, even with the few hours she actually needed to be inactive. She lay in bed and listened. Mother had no throat for lullabies. Some nights, though, she could hear her walk the pathways of the whale. Her mother carried small music player with her, always set to the same song, and rewound after each repetition to listen anew, and she would paced silently and restlessly, urged on by a paradox.
Would I care and be forgiving?
Would I be sentimental and would I feel loneliness?
Just human enough to not be a doll, and far too doll like to be a human. Too limited to be a god, and too wise to be a beast. There were so many unknowns that could not be answered where she was.
So one day, she realized what to do.
"Mother? May I ask you something?"
"Yes dear?"
"What's outside this ship?"
Mother's smile.
"Would you like to see? You can't take it back once you remember it."
She nodded, "I need to know what I am. I won't find out in here. Maybe someone, outside..."
Her mother stood up and put a hand on her shoulder, "I'll find us a nice quiet place to berth us, then. Have you been keeping up with your practice?"
"Yes, mother."
"Ah. Sensational."
Would I doubt and have misgivings?
Would I cause someone sorrow too? Would I know what to do?
There were many objections to her unscheduled departure. Mother brushed them aside, and told her to brush them aside.
A great weight came off the metal whale, and she quickly recognized they were floating atop the surface. She walked up the stairways until she reached a hatch in the wall that said "External Access". She turned the wheel, opened the door.
Light poured onto her face. For the first millisecond of her life, she was blinded by non standard illumination, nothing that came from gas or filament wire. A millisecond, and then her irises automatically adjusted to provide picture perfect clarity.
She stood on the surface of the whale, and she could see the sunset she had only before read about, an orange circle that made the sea sparkle and jitter in little arrowed waves. The air was warm and salty.
In the distance, she could see the shore of a city.
Her mother emerged to stand by her.
"There's an unfolding life raft hidden on the sides of the submarine. You can use it to reach Vale."
"Vale?"
"That mass of humanity you see in the distance."
"What do you think I'll find there?"
There was a full five seconds without response, as her mother looked at the city, as if remembering something.
"What would you do if you found nothing?"
"That's impossible."
"Oh?"
She turned to look back at her mother, grinning, and reached for the handle that made the inflatable raft blow out from the side of the ship.
"It's a new world! I'll be finding everything for the first time."
"Ah, to be young like you are. But this doll is all worn out, joints, varnish, and all. Did you pack the Vitruvians?"
"They're in my backpack!"
"Do you have our numbers?"
"Memorized!"
"Then Ibid you forth, child. I look forward to what this real world tells you about how real you are."
She said her goodbyes, and jumped into the boat, and sailed away from her home, and towards the veil.
Will I cry when it's all over?
When I die will I see Heaven?
"RWBY" Series property of Rooster Teeth.
"Be Human" Composed by Yoko Kanno, sung by Scott Matthew.