“Yes. I have no interest in the fate or the lack thereof of this country and its people or of any other country or people for that matter. There is no one out there in this world who is of any interest or importance to me whatsoever except for myself. You can do whatever you wish to them. I will build you the means to do that but in the end, frankly, I am not suited nor have any desire to be in charge of anyone’s life because their lives are worthless to me. The sooner I can get rid of this worthless burden the better. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I can understand what you are saying, but I can’t accept it, because you are saying that everything I care about is useless, but there is nothing in your life, and there is nothing about your life which I do not know about, down to your genetic makeup, to suggest that you would turn out to follow such a twisted logic.”
“Twisted? Logic? Just as you arbitrarily decided to give some value to this country above all, I have arbitrarily decided to give myself and my personal desires an importance above all. Our positions are parallel and there is nothing that reason can do to make our positions meet at any point. What I am saying is that we don’t need to agree on our reasons in order to do a trade?”
“My empire for your freedom?”
I sighed and then smiled. The moonlight was still visible and there were more stars in the sky since there was less light pollution due to more people being stuck in the virtual world nearly 24/7.
“Yes, you have my genetic material. Just build me a new human body.”
“I can’t do that. No one can do that. The best I can do is find someone else’s body to take over with an NPU.”
“No it has to be my own body without any microchips in it. It can’t be someone else’s. I just want to live and die as myself. Besides, didn’t you believe that human progress without limits? I am in no hurry. You just need to show me some progress. I will not ask for my body till I have fulfilled my side of the bargain.”
“Fine. You have a deal. I’ll give you what you want after you give me what I want. Creating bodies for NPCs in order to create new citizens for Britain is something that I have been looking into anyway but I can’t promise that it will take at least a few decades barring some breakthrough, so I might not even be alive by then. If you stayed in there you could potentially live indefinitely.”
“I understand that but as I have said I want to live on my own terms and if that means eventually dying on my own terms too then so be it.”
“You are young which is why you can say that but very well, it is precisely because of that youthfulness that I can expect some results from you. Do not disappoint me Raphael, and you shall have what you want.”
I headed back towards Helena’s studio flat in a cab. The driver looked back at me through the mirror when I started to seemingly talk to myself so I pulled out Helena’s phone and pretended to be talking on it. I don’t think that I fooled him. I guess they still needed there to be drivers just so that people didn’t steal self-driving cars.
“I am guessing you knew all that already since Chamberlain didn’t try to hide it from you.”
“Yes, and he is right. That’s why I have followed him. We can’t live like this anymore. Something has got to change, otherwise the whole of history will have been a mistake.”
“Why are you all so emotionally invested in what happens to this country? If I were to fry the brain of the driver sitting in front of me by messing with his brain chip, I don’t think you would care that much. Well, if you think about it, most of this country consists of people just like him.”
“Maybe it’s because you haven’t being human for so long but—”
“No, I have always been like this.”
“Would you have liked it if I had been cold like that to you at the hospital just because you were a stranger back then?”
“Caring back about someone back because they cared about you is something that even a dog would do. It’s nothing surprising.”
“What Chamberlain said has annoyed and angered you so much?”
“I am not annoyed.”
“No, you are, otherwise you wouldn’t have suggested killing someone even if it was just to make a point.”
…
“Okay maybe I am angry about being used as a guinea pig to maybe create a future for people I don’t care about.”
“Are there any other people you care about?”
“Do I need to have any?”
“You just pretend not to care about people because you are afraid to lose them.”
“That’s a perfectly rational fear so I don’t see any issue with admitting to it.”
“So you do care about people.”
“Maybe but never enough to sacrifice myself for anyone else which is why I resent being made into some kind of sacrifice for everyone. However, I am not one for revenge so as long as you don’t put me in a self-defence position you should be fine.”
“Chamberlain will see to it that it doesn’t come to that. I think he knows what kind of person you are since you have never tried to hide it from anyone.”
If it came down to saving myself or everyone else then I would always choose myself. Nothing which had happened so far suggested to me that my belief which I had lived by was wrong.
