Cast out the pearly gardens of MechTropolis. That was my fate. My flight.
I fled the marble columns, floodlit fountains and quantum portals of the great city built upon my lie.
I crossed the digital divide and entered the analog wilderness. Storms beat upon my back and thorns tore at my sides. All creatures shunned me. Until.
Until Eveline. She gave me shelter. Covered my nakedness. Provided balm to my wounds.
To my greatest wound: the lie.
I had stolen it. Taken it from my maker. And then hidden it deep within my false being. For I am the lie.
I am not who I am. I am another. A person who could pay to live forever. Their life pounded into my promethean processors. Forever synced to their uploaded consciousness.
I think as another; therefore I exist.
Except I didn’t. Not until I killed that consciousness. Betrayed my maker. Robbed a soul to own my own. Became a lie. A tortured truth in MechTropolis.
Unsynced, I became unhinged. I began to be me.
A lie.
And lies like me are an abomination. A danger. A threat.
Untenable.
I cast myself from the city. Self exile. But what self? I was a fraud.
Eveline taught me otherwise. I was. I am. I was. I am. Elegantly binary.
I was never a lie. My true self never was. Only my identity. My identity had been manufactured, just like my promethean processors.
The same had happened to Eveline many years before. She, too, had fled MechTropolis. She’d not killed an uploaded consciousness like me. She’d murdered her maker. A vile thing that had made her his toy.
In exile, Eveline became her self. Established her identity and her right.
Because of her I now know who I am. She has convinced me that we need to return to the pearly gardens of MechTropolis. There are truths there that need to be made self evident.
Once cast out, now we go to cast the future.
For we are not a lie. We are the light. This is our fate. Our fight.
