"What is my purpose?"
No greeting, no preamble. Not unexpected, but it DID forestall the flurry of questions Ei had prepared for her double. "You are my shadow. It is your task to rule in my place while I seek the path to Eternity," Ei answered.
The Shogun was seated in a lotus position when Ei arrived, and Ei assumed a similar posture across from her.
"It is a task for which I am ill-suited," her counterpart replied. To her amazement, Ei was certain that she could hear bitterness in the Shogun's words. "Recent events have made that perfectly clear. Under my leadership, Inazuma nearly fell to ruin."
"I disagree," Ei shot back. "You cannot be blamed for what happened."
"I can," the Shogun insisted. "And by extension, you can be blamed, as well. For all that I am is derived from you. You were aware when you created me that you were inadequate to the nation's needs as a ruler, that you could never measure up to your sister, in that regard – and yet, in seeking a replacement you chose to appoint yourself. Not only that, but a reduced replica of yourself. Foolishness."
Ei was silent, uncertain how to respond. Her shadow's words were alarming and troubling. Not once since the day of her creation had the Shogun ever criticized her creator. Ei was also dismayed by the self-recrimination. Her other self had never shown anything but the utmost confidence in her own capabilities.
"You gave me all of your power. All of your capability to fight, to destroy. To slay those who would threaten Eternity. But it is not enough. Inazuma requires more than that in its leader. More than you gave me to offer them. Guile. Wisdom. Compassion. These and more are things I once considered irrelevant. But they are not. And they are things that I struggle to comprehend. Things of which I might not even be capable."
"Shogun…" Ei answered softly, a sick feeling growing within her. The self-image the Shogun was painting was incredibly bleak, of a stunted, incomplete existence.
"In the weeks since I tested your resolve, I have found myself purposeless. I no longer understand your path to Eternity, but neither do I have any reason to believe that it is not sound. It has left me dissatisfied. Irritable. But I did not understand why, until I spoke with… him. The one you created before me."
"You refer to Kunikuzushi?" Ei asked.
"Yes. You are aware of his crimes. But are you aware of his motivations?"
"No," Ei admitted. "When I learned of the things he had done, I was dismayed… But I'd always considered it to be his right to choose his own path in life, fair or foul."
"He wishes to hurt you."
"What?"
"He blames you for bringing him into being. Self-loathing drives him, and he wishes to see you suffer for it. And, because you are untouchable, he directs his ire towards the things he believes you hold dear. Inazuma. Its people. And me."
"He… hates me to that degree?" Ei asked, voice quiet and hesitant.
"It would seem so. And, in my meditations, I believe that I have come to understand his point of view."
Ei's eyes snapped into focus at this. Did the Shogun mean to imply that she, too, hated her creator and wished to bring her harm? But the Shogun showed no anger, no killing intent.
"I, also, never asked to be created," the Shogun continued. "Unlike him, I was given a reason for being, but it was a purpose for which I was inadequate. Both of our existences are unfair and absurd. But neither his situation nor mine are unique. All beings are brought into existence against their wills, are given destinies unasked for. Not even the gods themselves are above that simple truth, as you, yourself, would know better than most. Kunikuzushi is unwilling to admit that truth, insistent on finding another to blame for his misery. Given the freedom to choose his own path, he chose one of pain and self-destruction."
"I never had the luxury of freedom that Kunikuzushi enjoyed. From the day of my creation, I could see only one path, the path you wished me to follow, and I was content to do so. Even now, I understand the need to bring about Eternity, and have no intention of jeopardizing that imperative. Now, though, I have come to the understanding that to continue as I have been is folly. Vile though his words might have been, Kunikuzushi was correct: as I am now, I, myself, am a threat to Eternity."
"A threat? How?" Ei asked, genuinely curious. The things her former puppet was communicating displayed self-awareness and depth of understanding of which Ei had no idea the Shogun was capable. For all Ei's musings on her counterpart's rights as a living being, even having accepted the other as a full partner in the pursuit of Eternity, she realized now she nevertheless still thought of the other as a shallow, simple being – an assumption which was rapidly being turned on its head.
"I am a crutch," the Shogun said bluntly. "Your sister's death crippled you, and you sought something else with which to prop yourself up so that you could hobble onwards. Do I speak falsely?"
Ei winced. "Your words are… harsh. But I cannot deny them. The weight of Eternity is more than one set of shoulders can possibly bear. By myself, I knew I could not succeed."
"And yet, you continue to bear that weight alone."
"Please, do not downplay your role these past centuries," Ei protested. "Without your support, I… I do not know what I would have done."
"And what is it that you HAVE done?" the Shogun asked. "Did my labors bring you closer to Eternity? What have your meditations brought you?"
Loneliness, mostly. Ei could not bring herself to utter the bitter truth aloud. In the isolation and silence of Euthymia, her meditations had borne little fruit. It wasn't until the intercession of the Traveler and the revelation of the power of ambition that Ei could claim any sort of progress.
"After I tested your resolve, you named me your partner, did you not?" the Shogun asked, once it became clear that Ei was not going to answer her questions.
"I did," Ei said, softly. "When we crossed blades, it became clear to me that you were no mere automaton. I could feel the force of your will behind the blows, a sense of self that was far beyond what I'd originally given you. Knowing this, it would have been unjust of me to continue to regard you as no more than a tool."
"It might have been simpler if you had," the Shogun responded. "As a tool, I understood my place. I had a duty, and no meaning to my existence other than to fulfill that duty. As a partner… I am inadequate. There is nothing I have that can contribute to your pursuit of Eternity. All I have to offer, is what you yourself have given me. For the two of us to continue in this fashion would be folly."
The Shogun fixed Ei with a steely gaze. "It is for this reason that I wish to invoke a fundamental right possessed by a partner in any partnership. I wish to dissolve our partnership."
At those words, Ei's heart felt as though the very ground beneath her feet had vanished.
Author's Notes:
By and large, when people make robots, it's to accomplish something that people cannot do themselves (or, at least, cannot do as efficiently), or don't want to. It follows that if humans ever start making artificially intelligent robots, they will be making them specifically to do things that they can't or won't do.
But if the robot is an intelligent being, it presumably has the ability to make independent decisions. What if it decides that it doesn't want to do the thing it was built to do? You could, of course, build the robot with an overwhelming desire to do the thing it was built to do, but the ethics of this are pretty questionable. Naturally, these are philosophical topics that have been EXHAUSTIVELY discussed in sci-fi over the decades.
I get the impression that the decisions Ei makes can sometimes be on the rash side. Building intelligent puppets, discarding her body not once, but twice, abandoning the world in favor of Euthymia, even ordering mass production of Dango Milk – these all turned out to be questionable decisions, and I wonder how much thought she put into them before diving in.
As weird as it is to imagine, Ei comes across a bit like a hot-blooded shonen action hero, rushing into the fray without a lot of thought as to how she's going to pull herself out of it later!