*001* | In Memoriam

[maverickhunterx]

"Hey." 

Nothing but a simple tombstone, engraved with nothing but a "Z", stared back at him. Not that X expected it could talk; a slab of stone under a large blossoming apple tree didn't make for good conversation, he wagered. Still, there was a comfort in small, silent things, from the simple grassy field that made up their meeting place to the hilt of the beam sabre that sat next to the bouquet of irises that lied down next to it. 

It wasn't meant to be an extravagant place full of pomp and ceremony: the clear sunny sky, endless grass (short of the single tree), and lack of any sort of building made that abundantly clear. 

"It's been a while since I've seen you...sorry about that. I've been busy and it's been hard to get away, even to sleep. You know how it is."

X chuckled, scratching his head. 

"But we're starting to home in on the last of the straggler groups still holding onto Sigma's ideals. We might even win the war soon, and then...well. Things will be peaceful again. Maybe I'll be able to go back to being a B-class, huh?"

Maybe. Maybe he'd even be able to wear his favorite human clothes, like he was wearing now: blue upon blue, with even more blue. Right now, he couldn't have even worn these around the base with as little free time as he had, but here, it was all right. In dreams, everything was safe, including prattling about at a gravestone in the middle of nowhere like he was a character in a human drama. 

Well. He was alone. 

There was no harm in creating a grave for an old friend that didn't exist in the real world, just as there was no harm in voicing his thoughts to him.

After all, it wasn't as though anyone could hear him.

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[maverickhunterx]

Well, that was certainly formal. Really, if it wasn't such a sombre occasion, X would have remarked that she reminded him of many commanders that he met in the Maverick Hunters, apt to tell him their rank alongside their name even in simple introductions.

Besides, there was something else that he was more interested in.

"I'm sure he's happy that you came to see him," X said. "and given him such beautiful flowers."

If those were all left by her, that is. Still, there was something of a quiet beauty of flowers at a memorial stone, almost...humbling. It was enough to set X aback, at any rate.

"I don't know if human souls can see things like that after death, but...I'd like to think that they're watching, and see these things."

[waterfell]

The flowers were laid by Mercury, and yet even she could not be sure what he would make of them, whether he would be affected by simple loyalty, or merely impatient and snappish with the sentiment. There was no one else to mourn him. Other comrades were also gone; and enemies were far more numerous. He had not lived a gentle life.

Neither had she. She was not to be led further into intimacy.

"Isn't that something people say only to comfort themselves?" she challenges X. A half-dozen years ago, she might have agreed with him. Or at least wanted to.

[maverickhunterx]

"No."

It's funny; X said that without even thinking. There was no prompting, no deliberation, it was like breathing. Was this 'mercury' a figment of his own heart, the doubt he carried within himself whenever he fought in battle?

Maybe.

But if she was, then why did he deny her so easily and so quickly, without even feeling an ounce of burden? That wasn't how 'facing yourself' was supposed to work, was it?

"There are all sorts of things the modern mind, whether human or mechanical, can't begin to understand. Who's to say that it isn't true, and that there's consciousness after death, whether it be organic or mechanical?"

[waterfell]

She thought first of the mechanical - of AI, of computer simulations, of parts of a person's consciousness stored for the future. She thought of the past life she knew she'd lived, of being reborn in the Dark Kingdom and all that entailed. Vaguely, like a dream already fading into the morning, she even thought of the Galaxy Cauldron where she, like other stars, lost and gained life.

There was something. She had seen that for herself. But it wasn't some guardian angel, it wasn't even some tender thought. More likely, it was the pressure of a hard demand that still needed to be carried through even if others had fallen along the way.

"Even if it were true," she told X, "Do you think it's that easy?" Even if there's something, why should it be something good?

[maverickhunterx]

"Why not?" he asked. "If humans have a heaven, why can't we? Data can exist in just about anything that allows it to be held, and if you download a Control Chip into a computer or convert it into a file, who's not to say that their consciousness would activate it, and it could move through networks and see the world and watch over those they care about?"

It was possible. Even if modern computer science learned as much as they could about data within Reploids and other machines, sentient life had a way of doing things that went beyond expectations. Humans alleged that they saw spirits, glimpses of heaven and hell, when they were close to death.

Reploids, within their given element, could certainly go beyond the expectations and do what needed to be done.

But...at the same time...

Scientifically, none of this could be proven. And even if it could, it was unlikely that humans would give much thought to it. The spiritual implications of a Reploid Afterlife was something that the more religious humans tended to avoid, and the more scientific denied as they denied the existence of an afterlife at all.

But who was to say that it didn't exist?

[waterfell]

"Humans don't have a heaven either," Mercury said simply, even in front of this grave she so obviously came to honor. Her question hadn't been whether a Reploid consciousness could duplicate a human's, or another being's. It had been whether these pretty thoughts existed, or were reachable, at all.

A part of her supposed it would be nice to believe in someone watching over her, but that wasn't how the world actually worked. (And even if it was, there would be no one watching for her.) And even if there were a heaven, she doubted the man buried here ever expected to see it instead of Hell. She didn't expect it, either, not after what her life had been.