Chapter Text
[Transcript starts.]
[There is a translator’s note at the beginning:
“Might need to check his old notes on the script, if he still has our Akademiya notebooks. One word repeated here could either be ‘machine’ or ‘robot’ or ‘automaton’. I will be utilizing ‘automaton’, as so far, in the few first paragraphs, it seems to make the most sense in context. Might have to adjust it later, though.”
The note is crammed at the very top of the first page. Below it is another note:
“It might’ve been ‘machine’. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t”
The note is hardly legible. It is possible the translator’s hand might’ve been either shaking or unstable as they wrote it. It is difficult to tell.
The transcript starts below.]
The automaton holds that life is a pile of things on an open field, half of which are your choosing, the other half of which are wholly out of your control. The only actions you can really take, outside of collecting the odd knick-knack to add to the pile, is to arrange the order and manner in which things are stacked, and keep watch over them so that circumstances may not snatch whatever it is you have gathered, should you wish to keep it. Or add something you do not wish to possess.
The automaton sits on his pile and watches, having resigned himself long ago to the fact that the only way to ensure the pile is to his liking is to keep an eternal vigil over it.
It is exhausting, but, and this might sound contradictory; it is the only method that allows him to rest.
The automaton seldom sleeps well.
That is not to say that he has a bad sleep schedule, unlike his housemate’s “beauty sleep” from three in the morning to ten. The automaton goes to bed at no further than midnight (which he considers decent, not because it is, but because of what it could be), and wakes up no later than eight, usually at around seven thirty. So it cannot be said that he doesn’t get his due hours of sleep.
And yet he is never rested. Throughout the night, his body may be granted some repose from daily activities,
But his mind is not.
When he was younger, the automaton used to have dreams. Vivid dreams, that threaded the line between lucid and not. Dreams with cohesive, expansive, and consistent plot lines. An entirely different reality that he could only access when his head hit the pillow.
It was exhausting, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Many a time had the automaton woken up feeling like he just lost several years of a life he never really had. Mourning the loss of people he never met. Yearning to be able to go back, to resume where he left off, to somehow be able to bring some of what he had there into the real world.
But it was not possible, and so the automaton sat on his bed, held in a sigh, and went about his day. The only consolation he found was the idea that, once he grew up, he would stop dreaming. That is how things worked in Sumeru.
So maybe then he would wake up feeling invigorated. Energized.
He never did.
Even when the night would go by in a dreamless slumber, the automaton would still wake up tired. Even more that he did before. He no longer mourned a loss he never experienced, no longer wished he could go back to where he wasn’t-
But he was still tired.
And, overtime, he began missing his dreams. If he was going to be tired either way, then he would rather have something throughout the night.
Oftentimes, there were things he could only get from his dreams. Like a slow-acting poison, he longed for the only respite he used to have, despite knowing full well it was doing nothing for him.
But he longed for it nonetheless, because the automaton was a stupid, stupid thing.
The automaton and his grandmother had never been much for words. It hadn’t been out of a lack of trying, or out of some strain in their relationship; rather, it had been because his grandmother had been a good person, a smart person, and she’d known him better than anyone ever would.
The automaton had grown up fairly acquainted with the concept of death. To the idea that life was finite, and he was set upon this world to watch the people around him die. One day he would be one of those people, but then it would no longer be his problem. So until then, it was all a slow drag of the sand, watching people, wondering who would be the ones to leave next.
His parents were the first ones to go, gracefully introducing him to the idea that none of his relationships with anyone would ever last – it would only be a matter of whether death put an end to them, or something else entirely. Ideally, of course, he ought to aim for the former, but the automaton would also grow to recognize that, the reality was, he would likely end up landing on the latter.
His grandmother had thankfully remained squarely in the former. The automaton had known this, because while he might constantly work to anchor himself to certainties, he had only ever been certain of precious little in life.
His grandmother had been one of those things.
The automaton had known he would grow to see her die the moment he came to be under her care. She was old already, and while she wouldn’t die immediately, it was only a matter of time. He was going to outlive her. There was nothing he could do about it short of terminating his lease on life early, but then it would be a betrayal of her trust, because she expected him to outlive her. It was one of the few things she ever expected of him.
So he could only watch, and treasure the time he had with her.
Looking in from the outside, others seemed to believe his relationship with her was… cold. That she acted as a mere guardian, an instructor, and nothing else. Saddled with this kid that wasn’t hers, that wouldn’t talk, that wouldn’t smile, that would shy away from the things most kids gravitated towards,
That was ‘too smart’ for his own good. ‘Smart’ in a way adults did not appreciate. ‘Smart’ in a way people did not appreciate.
So he was not a good kid. The automaton knew this. If kids were measured up to a set of standards that society all agreed on, then he simply did not meet those requirements. It was as clean-cut as that.
The automaton wasn’t a good kid. He didn’t grow up to be a good person, either.
But his grandmother hadn’t cared. Because she’d been smart. She’d known that being a good person or not being a good person were ultimately not the point. How would one go about defining good or bad, either way? How, when it was impossible to fully ever know someone, from within the confines of your own perspective? People loved to insist that one ought not judge without knowing, yet that was, in itself, a contradictory notion.
It was impossible to not judge without knowing, by virtue of ‘knowing’ being an impossible bar to reach.
His grandmother had never asked him to be a good person. She had only ever asked him to do good by himself, and by others if possible.
But the automaton had been quick to learn that his grandmother was an exception. She was an oasis in the middle of the desert. She was his only respite, the only place he could truly be in, the only person he could not have to pretend with.
So their time together was spent mostly in silence, because the automaton treasured the opportunity to not have to behave like something he was not, and because he knew it wouldn’t be long before he lost his one place to freely exist in.
The automaton did not cry when his grandmother passed away. He busied himself with arranging the funeral, dealing with the legal to-do list after a person dies, moving everything she left him behind to where he had been living at that point.
He did not cry, not because he believed himself above the action, but because he simply saw no point in it. He had known his grandmother would one day die – it was the inexorable trend. In the years and months prior to her passing, he had been counting down the days, knowing that one morning he would wake up, and she would no longer be there.
But crying is not the only method by which humans express grief. The self-centered would have you believe that not crying is a sign of a superiority complex, or a sign of a lack of emotions. That those who do not cry, do not feel. Or that they are trying to be ‘strong’, because while they hold everyone to the expectation that crying makes them a good person because it means they have feelings, they also tag everyone who cries as ‘weak’.
Ultimately, they can believe whatever they want. The automaton simply knows it is not true, and that’s that.
There were many things in life that the automaton had no control over. His emotions, of course, were one of them. What he could control, however, was his actions. He could have a box full of overflowing emotions – he could not control which emotions were in there, nor at which rate they appeared, nor in which quantities. But he could control whether that box was opened or not.
It was generally inconvenient to open it. So he kept it closed. They flowed inside of him like acid, like soothing balms, like cold water, like lava, like thick molasses; but they never poured out.
The automaton mourned the death of his grandmother. He did not cry, but he was no less destroyed by it. To him, it wasn’t simply the loss of his guardian, the only parental figure in his life that had mattered (his parents having died when he was far too young to make any meaningful impact); it was more than that.
To the automaton, the death of his grandmother had been the death of his freedom to be. Without judgment. Without repercussions.
It had been the death of the only person who would ever truly know him.
And perhaps it wouldn’t be incorrect to say he continues to mourn her, to this day.
The automaton’s life – everything in it – boils down to a series of calculations of cost-effectiveness.
To say that the automaton does not care for people’s opinions on him would not be a lie – he himself stands by that idea, outwardly.
But it would not be entirely accurate, either. It would be more correct to say he does not care what others think of him so long as their actions based on their perspective of him do not interfere with his peace.
Peace is the only thing his grandmother had ever wished for him, and so it is the only thing he has that could remotely be considered an ambition.
To attain personal peace. That is all the automaton works towards. It is the axis upon which his world spins, it’s the central factor to which he measures everything.
It is the end result against which he makes all his cost-effectiveness calculations.
It is not about taking the path of least resistance, but rather, about taking the most effective path. And if the automaton is good at anything, it is at tracing paths.
Complicated relationships are not conducive to peace, so he avoids them. Interacting with most people will often lead to complicated relationships, so he keeps his socializing to a minimum.
He does care what people’s opinion of him are, but his requirements are minimal, and his care ends as soon as the requirements are met.
The requirements being;
Will this be beneficial for my goal?
If yes, then that’s it. If not, then he’d push only so far as to make it so, and then it’s no longer his problem.
The requirement, of course, was broad. ‘Beneficial for his goal’ encompasses all sorts of things. If someone hating him will cause them to never interact with him, then that’s perfect in his book. It may not be ‘beneficial’, but it is not detrimental, and so it meets the requirement anyway. But if someone hating him will cause them to interfere with his life, then that won’t do. In that case, he’ll plan out the easiest and most cost-effective way to nudge them into not being an interference, carry out his plan, and then leave it at that. Oftentimes, that will result in people hating him in a different way, but it’s all the same in his book.
If someone liking him will cause them to observe from afar and not interrupt, fine by him. If it will cause them to actively help him with things, and if they are genuinely helpful and don’t get in his way, then sure, whatever.
If someone liking him will cause them to be a nuisance, to expect things from him based on their own made-up version of him in their heads product of their lack of knowledge about him, then no. He’ll find a way to get them to stop liking him, to make them disappointed in him. Whatever it takes to remove the problem from the equation.
Like clearing a path through the jungle; he does not care about anything outside that path. So long as the path is clear, even if the path has to work around certain obstacles, it will all be fine.
That is what he means by not caring about others' opinions of him. Strictly speaking, with all that in mind, it would seem as though he does care, in a likely fucked-up way. But he’s not here to debate semantics.
Moreover, it is a long and tedious explanation. The automaton had quickly discovered that people generally did not care for explanations, and that it was usually more cost-effective to let them keep a harmless (or sometimes even harmful) misunderstanding than sitting down and trying to explain his thought process to them.
So yes, whatever, let’s say the automaton doesn’t care what others think of him. Such a notion makes people abrasive to him, and makes them stay away; so ultimately, it is also the most cost-effective route to take.
The automaton has never known how to describe himself.
‘A child’ had been the go-to descriptor when he was younger. It was ambiguous enough to serve, and it kept people from asking – very few cared much for children’s opinions, even more so when they did not particularly like a child in specific. The automaton was (still is) seldom liked by others, so that was fine by him. All he really needed was his grandmother, and by the time she passed, he had long since trained himself to be self-reliant, given he’d known she wouldn’t always be there.
As he grew up, he could no longer say he was a child, so he had to find some other way to describe himself. ‘A bad person’, then, had become his go-to descriptor as the years went by. He did not care much for what that entailed, and it tended to align with people’s own views of him, so that was it. What good person didn’t care about people’s opinions of them, anyway? The automaton didn’t, not in the conventional way people understood, so he was therefore not a good person. It wasn’t that much of a long logical leap to skip straight to ‘bad person’ from there, and it made people feel vindicated, which further kept them from bothering him.
He had long since known most people did not know the difference between ‘not a good person’ and a ‘bad person’.
Inwardly, the automaton knew then and knows now that he’s not a bad person. He’s simply not a good one. But what he thinks of himself and what other people think of him are two entirely different things. He might not consider himself a bad person, but he knows how his mind works. He knows the explanations behind every action. He knows his history, his track record, his reasons.
Other people didn’t, not then and not now. And telling them would be a hassle, so he never bothered.
Thus, to an outside perspective, not only was the automaton not a good person (then and now), but he was most likely also a bad person.
Sticking to the general consensus, then, the automaton would agree, and label himself a bad person. It was the easiest thing to do, and he couldn't be asked to bother with such things.
With the years, the automaton would find a new, better descriptor. He usually stuck with the ‘bad person’ label, and some other silly ones he had thought up with time – a feeble scholar, a paperwork employee, a lazy person; among others. Those were the easiest to use, the most cost-effective ones. Letting people form their own was also welcomed – the first time someone had called him a ‘freak’, he'd been pleasantly surprised.
But those labels only worked on people he didn’t know. With time, the automaton had inserted himself into something akin to a network of acquaintances. Some people in the network would, likely for ease of speech, refer to some of the others as their ‘friends’. Occasionally, the automaton would be included in that group, much to his mild inner surprise.
(The automaton has always believed people use the ‘friend’ label far too loosely, but he isn't one to judge nor express his opinion unless asked. And even then, it is always a shortened version, corners cut, mangled from his original thought process to a degree that is sometimes unrecognizable.
So if someone else calls him their friend, then well, their funeral.)
When someone considers another a friend, they tend to pry deeper. Either because they know (or they think they know) the other person better, so they don’t take easy descriptors at face value. The automaton tended to view this as too much of a chore to go through, so he did his best to keep people just far enough that nobody would do that to him.
But he knew not everyone would be appeased by that, so he had to come up with an answer to use when he knew a simple superficial label would only invite further scrutiny. He needed something that could be easily explained and would make people think he was weird, thereby making them stop prying further into the answer.
He landed on ‘a machine’.
The automaton’s acquaintance circle would thus know he had a tendency to ‘excuse his bad behavior’ by saying “you have to think of me like I’m a machine.” They would scoff at the notion, believe he was trying to shrug off accountability for ‘being an asshole’, believe he was calling himself ‘smarter than all of you’ because, in their minds, a machine equaled non-human intelligence,
And they would not ask further. Moreover, they would take one step away from him, either mildly disappointed, mildly weirded out, mildly amused, or mildly disgusted.
It was perfect.
The most cost-effective path to peace was through disappointed stares and guards lowered and raised in all the wrong places.
The automaton doesn't care much for the traveler, the famous one that arrived in Sumeru not that long ago. He was assigned to keep an eye on them, sure, but the fact of the matter is that such a mission isn’t in his job description. Sure, Azar and his buddies will get pissy if he refuses to do it – but what are they going to do, fire him? No. They are far too dependent on his fast and neat writing to ever even consider changing Scribe.
Thus, the automaton has no intentions of carrying out this mission. It seems pointless. If anything, from what little he knows, it would be better for him if he let this traveler run around doing their thing.
He plans to set off, nonetheless. The lead of the Divine Knowledge capsule going missing in the desert is far too interesting to ignore. It is also convenient that the automaton’s housemate is also away lately, and so he doesn’t have anyone to answer to at the moment.
A highly-priced knowledge capsule loose out in the open, holding supposedly sacred knowledge…
He wonders just how many people it will mobilize.
The automaton doesn’t care much for the traveler, even less so now that he has actually met them. He has no grand opinions on them, and were they not a very anomalous gravitational center that seems to change the course of ordinary life around them, he would not even bother interacting with them. It certainly doesn’t help that they walk around with that… other being.
The traveler has the eyes of someone who complains about getting roped into stuff after prying where they shouldn’t. The eyes of someone who demands things of people and complains when they are asked to lend a helping hand.
And yet, they also have the eyes of someone who will end up lending a helping hand either way.
The floating one looks annoying in that same way little children are when they are innocent and not taught properly, thus go around causing problems, but nobody can really put blame on them.
And yet.
And yet, they seem to hold immense power. They both look like they are going to dig their hands beneath his lungs and pry, but…
If he can help them on the path they are already set on, this could be a massive breakthrough.
It is too big an opportunity to ignore. It might just be worth the headache of having to interact with them for what looks like it will be an extended period of time.
They were already instrumental in his stealing of the Divine Knowledge capsule. If this goes where he thinks it is going, they could…
They could get Lesser Lord Kusanali out of her cage.
Prior to the traveler’s arrival, he would’ve never considered it. It would be too much of a hassle for potentially no pay-off.
But once the traveler appeared, it was as though a narrow but direct path cleared up in the jungle. He could see it, far-reaching. With some work, he could find a way out of the biggest threat to his peace yet.
What was that saying? “If you play your cards right for long enough, the solution practically makes itself”? Something like that.
The automaton met Lesser Lord Kusanali once before.
As the Scribe, it is his duty to record everything. Every minute detail, every little thing, it must be written down and checked upon every set number of years. When he eventually ceases being the Scribe, he will pass on the lengthy Status Index onto his successor, and they will have to conduct their first ever thorough fact checking. It won’t matter if the automaton had done the scheduled check the month prior – the successor is obligated to conduct a thorough first investigation on every single record in existance to ensure that all the information being passed down to them hasn’t been altered by the previous Scribe.
The automaton performed this very same first check when he came into his position, and it was then that, much to the reluctance of the Sages, he was allowed brief entrance into the Sanctuary of Surasthana.
He had seen Lesser Lord Kusanali then. The inspection had been so brief that there had been no time to exchange words, and anything he might’ve said would’ve been heard by the matra standing guard outside the door, so he refrained from speaking.
Lesser Lord Kusanali had been seemingly asleep when he entered. He’d made himself busy, checked the perimeter of the room, written down the notes, made a second sweep, checked the notes again, and gone on his way out.
In the interim, the Dendro Archon had woken up. The automaton had caught her four-leaf sigil eyes, given her a quick nod (she was his Archon), and made himself scarce.
Now, the automaton would never claim to understand an Archon. He did not revere her, but he also did not dismiss her. She was part of a biological hierarchy that existed in their world, and so to him, she was simply another being walking Teyvat with him. Perhaps deserving slightly more respect, given her duties, but that was all he cared to give.
As a fellow living being, however, he did not agree to the notion of keeping her caged. It made sense, of course; it was painfully obvious to the automaton that the Sages’ control over the Akademiya, the Akasha, and Sumeru as a whole relied on keeping their Archon hostage. It made sense why she was there.
But he did not agree to any of that. It was simply that there was nothing he could do about it. All it would amount to would be breaking his carefully curated and hard fought peace.
The automaton was a selfish thing, so he prioritized his only goal above all else.
So he did not claim to understand her. But in that second where their eyes had met, he had been hit with a strange sensation. Like he was being looked through. Perhaps, as the Archon of Sumeru, she knew about all her people. Perhaps it was due to her being the God of Wisdom that she could tell all about him at a first glance. He didn’t know.
What he did know, is that the look in her eyes when they fell on him, was achingly similar to many a look he had received throughout his life. From teachers in the Akademiya, to fellow students, to fellow coworkers, to his housemate. It was the “you have a superiority complex” look. The “you think you’re better than all of us?” look. The “don’t treat me like I’m an idiot” look. The age-old misunderstanding that the automaton had long since realized could not be fixed, no matter how hard he tried.
Few were the people who had never given him that look.
(His grandmother had been one of them.)
Thus, being plenty used to that look, the automaton felt nothing about being deemed a disappointment by Lesser Lord Kusanali.
The automaton is, lately, of the opinion that his situation can be best described thusly;
He sits in a library inside a fortress. The walls are high, impossibly high, built to withstand anything. Outside the walls is a wretched hellscape for several miles surrounding the fortress, one he has curated carefully and purposefully. Thorny vines, wicked bramble, ominous trees, toxic swamps, stakes, bear traps; you name it. Everything is set up perfectly on the perimeter outside the walls, and it surrounds the fortress completely.
Save for the path to the door.
The path to the door is straightforward and clean. It isn’t wide, but it isn’t narrow, either – perfectly big enough for one person to comfortably and swiftly walk up and into the fortress. In the path there is nothing but cobbled stone and guiding lights, and the door at the end, wide open, for anyone to enter.
Should anyone find the path, it is a direct route into the library where he sits.
But nobody ever finds the path.
This is not due to people's lack of merit. The automaton has long since understood that, sometimes, people won’t find the path no matter how many signs with arrows he sets up around the brambles. Apparently the path is rather difficult to find, even though, from where he sits in the library, the path is in plain sight. People will simply see all the wretchedness surrounding the fortress, and not even bother approaching.
This, of course, is exactly what the automaton wants. Else he wouldn’t have bothered curating the exterior to put off as many people as possible.
But the automaton is a stupid, stupid thing, so he left a path – slim, but he left it. He, somehow, still has something akin to hope.
Hope that someday, someone will find the path.
Someone like-
Someone like… his grandfather.
The automaton never met his grandfather. He had already died, by the time he came under the care of his grandmother. He hadn’t lived to see the accident that took away his child and their spouse, leaving his grandchild alone.
All the better, the automaton tends to guess. He would not wish that upon anyone.
His grandmother often told him stories about his grandfather. Over dinner, while washing the dishes, while cleaning the house; they never talked much, but whenever they did, it was often her the one who carried out the bulk of the conversation.
The automaton was aware he had taken after his grandmother. And so, as he listened to her tell him stories, he would always wonder. In the back of his mind, there was a small hope. An afterthought of a wish, a passing idea,
That one day, just how his grandmother met his grandfather, he, too, would meet someone.
Of course, he knew now that such a thing would most likely never come to pass. Unlike his grandmother, the automaton wasn’t… he wasn’t likable. Or a good person.
So it was likely not in the cards for him, yet still he hoped. Vaguely. Distantly.
When he had stopped dreaming as he grew up, this little fantasy had been the only thing he could cling to. Prior to that, his exhausting and oppressive dreams were keeping his longing at bay. To a degree.
But when he lost them?
Sure, at first it was a relief. Thank the Archon for ridding him of those dreams!
Except, of course, it all came crashing down rather quickly. Not dreaming didn’t fix his energy problems. And not dreaming deprived him of his only sad, sad emotional outlet. Which only made everything worse, because without a dream to endlessly scream into, a dream to be slaughtered over and over in, a dream to be hugged in and kissed silly and held tight like he mattered to someone-
There was no distraction from the fact he was so utterly alone, and since this stupid little fantasy was the only thing he could cling onto now, with it came an idiotic hope that just. wouldn’t. leave.
But he digressed,
His grandmother had originally been the one to come up with the fortress and the brambles analogy. She had told him how his grandfather, like everyone else, had stumbled into the brambles at first.
But unlike the others, his grandfather hadn’t turned tail and ran. Instead, he had persevered, trudging through the wretched landscape, stubborn, until he eventually found himself halfway onto the path. From there, he made a beeline for the door.
His grandmother had commented that she believed he must’ve caught a glimpse of the path, once. That his grandfather had seen through the door, seen the garden she was keeping inside the fortress, and decided he would go there. That many people often did, in fact, but hardly anyone made it in.
Because once they lost sight of the path and tried to go through the brambles, they would be put off, and would turn around and leave.
Evidently, grandfather hadn’t been like that. He had caught a glimpse of the garden in the fortress, lost sight of the path, but ventured into the brambles regardless. Hopelessly threading through thorns and vines and stakes because he knew what he’d seen, and he refused to give it up. Because he knew there was a path, and he just had to find it.
Maybe, even, because he knew the brambles and the thorns weren’t really hurting him, and because they were set up precisely to keep those easily scared away. Maybe because he believed it to be worthwhile.
His grandmother has been the only person in his life who has been on his own path to his fortress. She saw it immediately, because she met him when the automaton hadn’t yet started setting up the stakes and brambles.
When she got there, there had only been unruly weeds growing outside. Things that would trip people over on accident. Nothing purposeful.
So she walked the path straight to the fortress. Even as he went about setting up the brambles as he grew up, she remained steadfast in her ability to always find the path, and to always make it to the door without any issues.
As an emotion, hope is something entirely outside of the automaton’s control.
All he can do about it is ignore it. He can’t get rid of it. He can only refuse to act upon it.
It is too late for him now, anyway. People can see the brambles from a mile away, and they refuse to even entertain the idea of going near, let alone of there being a path in there.
But that is just as well. For his purposes, it is the most cost-effective situation.
The automaton is not going to die from not indulging in his feelings, anyway. As they say, a broken heart never killed anyone.
The automaton knows he is not a good person, but Archons, being reminded of it certainly isn’t entertaining.
The liberation of Lesser Lord Kusanali doesn’t bring with it the level of peace he had anticipated.
Sure, it is still a level of peace that makes the entire ordeal perfectly worth it. But it is not what he, stupid, stupid thing he is, had hoped for.
Liberating Lesser Lord Kusanali doesn’t solve his problems. It makes things better, yes,
But it also makes many, many things worse.
It being all over, at the very least, means he can step back and not have to interact with any of these people in any major capacity again. It means he will no longer have the traveler’s floating companion making perfectly obvious questions that wouldn’t need to be asked should she use more than one brain cell at a time. Or maybe there is something wrong with him.
It means the traveler will stop looking at him like he knows something he doesn’t. The automaton doesn’t know everything. In fact, he knows very little, actually. He is largely ignorant, so the look of that… odd feeling of inner satisfaction the traveler has, like they know something he doesn’t and they feel smug because ‘he knows everything’; it is disappointing. Or, maybe there is something wrong with him.
It means he will go back to keeping his tenuous ‘relationship’ with the General Mahamatra as mere acquaintances, even if he wishes they could go back to strangers. At least he will no longer be subject to those eyes that seem to see the world in black and white, where people who have committed misdeeds ought to be punished, because those eyes know everything there is to know about everyone and thus are allowed to make the final judgment. Or, maybe, there is something wrong with him.
It means he will likely not see Candace for a while to come, either. He will get out from under mismatched eyes of an older sister he never asked for, that look like they are both capable and willing to dole out punishment as she sees fit without considering any alternative first. Or maybe, there is something wrong with him.
He will miss Dehya, though. Slightly. It is not often that you come across an ally with the guts to go through risky plans. Other than her, the only highlight was Nilou, and even then. Standing around Nilou for too long feels like touching a flower too much – you are eventually going to ruin it, so you should probably limit your contact with it.
All in all, the problems are not in the people he had to be with for this all to work. They will all go back to their ordinary lives and forget about him, as they should, and he will return to his own.
And everything will be better and worse.
Azar and company are out of the picture, which is wonderful. They have an actual Archon to speak of now, and the Akasha system services have been terminated. That is all excellent, that is exactly what he wished to accomplish out of this ordeal. It eliminates many of the complications for his goal, and so overall, he considers this a worthwhile investment.
At the same time, however, there have been numerous side-effects that he hadn’t foreseen. Which is to be expected, of course, but he hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of some of those things.
For starters, with most of the Sages gone, he has been shoved into the position of Acting Grand Sage. The automaton isn’t certain how he is going to survive the coming bureaucratic shit-show that is about to hit him. Sure, he won’t die, but perhaps that is the worst part.
There is also the fact that, somehow, he is dreaming again.
It is torture. If the automaton had ever entertained the idea of what dreaming again would be like, he had not anticipated that it would fuck him over to this degree.
He still does not feel energized, he still has wonderful dreams that make him question why he carries on with life, and now, on top of that, there are new things that have been added to the… gallery, from which his dreams pull information.
There are new people in his dreams, people he’s met over the years since he stopped dreaming. People he’s met very recently, people he’s known for a while now.
It is agonizing.
The only upside is that, now that the topic of dreams is invading his mind again, he realizes he’s been accruing confirmations over the years on what the things that used to happen to him in his dreams actually feel like in real life. Like being stabbed, or burned, or nearly-drowned, or electrocuted, or buried in sand, or shot. Which is- wonderful, and very fulfilling for his inner child; but also a major headache, because now he can experience all of those things in their full accuracy, for the entire night. Some of them are much better – somehow, being burned in a dream feels worse than being burned in the waking world; but most are significantly worse.
Of course, this comes with no upside, since the automaton hasn’t gotten to experience any of the good things that used to happen to him in his dreams.
Vaguely, after the first week of non-stop nighttime extravaganza, he wonders if pushing through this hell as a child was what fucked him in the head so badly. Maybe many of his nerves that handle the emotional and empathetic affairs were… burned, by his dreams. It would explain a lot. The automaton is a fundamentally flawed, stupid, stupid thing; so it would not come entirely out of left field.
To add salt to injury, his housemate managed to miss the entire uprising.
Which means he is not going to believe the automaton.
Which means he is going to ask other people.
Which means he will eventually accept that he truly did miss such a momentous occasion.
Which means he is going to forever perceive as though the automaton will hold it over him, both for ‘I told you so’ rights and whatever brand of superiority complex his housemate seems to think he has.
Which is just grand.
Liberating Lesser Lord Kusanali made it more comfortable inside the fortress, and added another mile of bramble to the outside.
The automaton is a stupid, stupid thing. He is ignorant, and he is not a good person.
None of those things are suggestions, none are up for debate. Those are hard facts.
Once upon a time, when the automaton had been free to exist, he had sought to change those things. Foolish and young, he had believed that, with enough hard work, perhaps he could be perceived as something better.
He had been quick to realize otherwise. About a year or two quick.
The automaton was, functionally, blind. What mattered being able to see the world around him when he could not see the most important thing of all?
He could not see the lines people drew around them. The lines that marked how far they were willing to let others go before shunning them, before their perception of them would sour, before they would forever brand the other person as something that could never, never be reversed.
It was the age-old trick of accusing someone to be a liar. What response is one supposed to give to that? Agreeing only proves their point, and disagreeing can be countered by, well, being called a liar again. And once someone has branded you a liar, true or not, it never goes away.
It certainly doesn’t help that people’s definitions of what a lie is are narrow and short-sighted.
The automaton could say many things. He could say some of the people who accuse others of lying have a tendency to do so out of an intrinsic entitlement to others’ ideas and opinions.
He could defend himself. Could try to explain his thought process, even though he doesn’t owe it to anyone. Could try to… to open up his circuits and beg people to look at them, to see that he is simply different-
But none of those are acceptable things to say. People cannot all have some perverse entitlement to your information (they do not). They cannot, because it is always you the one who is in the wrong. You are, somehow, always wrong, even when you aren’t.
You cannot defend yourself, because it is seen as an admission of guilt. You cannot explain yourself, because not only is it seen as an excuse, but people don’t want to hear the explanation, either way. You cannot rip out your insides, expose the deepest parts of you in hopes someone will understand, because nobody will believe you.
You cannot be different, because if you admit to being different, you are admitting to being better than anyone else. You are admitting to being above others. You are admitting to being superior. You are admitting to seeing others as imbeciles, as idiots. Even though you don’t. Archons, you don’t.
If you make a statement, a correct one, about a group of people that does not include you, then you are wrong, and in no way have basic pattern recognition skills and/or observation skills that allow you to make the statement in the first place. You are looking down at the group of people, because you have just admitted to being above them. Even though you haven’t, but who is going to believe that? Who is going to believe someone who says they do not lie?
You cannot win, even if you are only trying to survive.
So the automaton cannot say anything. No matter what he says, he is only going to come out with more problems than he already has. The easiest, the most cost-effective solution, then, is to avoid having to interact with people at all. To completely isolate himself, even while living in a community. To accept their perceived ideas of you so that they might leave you in peace.
It is not acting. It is not a lie. They perceive you that way, so it must be the full truth. They must be right. They have to be. Because, if they aren’t, then you’re just using excuses. You’re saying everyone is an idiot that doesn’t understand you. You’re playing the victim. You’re wallowing in your miseries despite having no miseries to speak of.
So you have to be wrong, and they have to be right. Anything remotely resembling a complaint is just you being bitter about the world. Being a pessimist. Being an ‘angsty teenager’. Being dramatic.
And so you must be a bad person. You have to be. You must be a cold, ruthless, emotionless, empathy-less excuse of a human. You must be a sociopath, in their horribly biased perception of what sociopahty is. You must be an asshole.
Because they can never be wrong, and you can never be anything but.
So there is something intrinsically wrong with the automaton. He is of flawed design. He does not comprehend the people around him, and sometimes, it feels like their brains do not even work the same. But since his brain isn’t better than anyone’s (and he has never believed that), then his’ must be wrong, somehow. He just doesn’t know how.
He isn’t smart. Far from it. If he were smart, then that would make everyone else an idiot. And that’s not the case, because that’s not how things work. Moreover, that’s what people insist on, so they can’t all be wrong.
He isn’t wise. He isn’t clever. He isn’t a good person. He isn’t a good fighter.
He is a blind thing, trying to see where the limit of people’s tolerance for him lies. His face is wrong. His tone of voice is wrong. They are too harsh, too condescending, too cold.
(It is the only tone he has ever used. It is the only face he has.)
He is always angry. Always annoyed. Always looking down on others.
(He cannot afford to be angry, because if even mild annoyance is misconstrued as anger, then what would his anger be like? He has never acted on his anger once in his life, he doesn’t think. He cannot afford to. And to look down on others would imply he believes himself to be better than them, which he is not. He is arguably much worse. He is ignorant and stupid, and very, very confused.)
He thinks he knows everything.
(He wishes he knew anything. )
Nothing is on purpose. It is simply an unfortunate situation that he’s in, and he’s trying to make the best of it. He’s not aiming for cold, but it ends up landing on cold anyway, somehow, so he has no choice then but to use that. He has nothing else to use, and his grandmother raised him to attain peace. So attain it he shall, with whatever cards he is given. Even if they are bad cards. Even if they are not the cards he had once hoped he’d get.
He cannot do anything about it.
He is just… There is something wrong with him.
And yet, there cannot be anything wrong with him at all. Because if there was, he would be different, and if he were different, he would be better than others, smarter, above them all, he’d look down on everyone, he’d be a genius, he would be a wise man viewing the mediocre majority as defective.
(He had most certainly not been meant - nor had he meant - to overhear that conversation. But, then again, when had he?)
Because he cannot be different. And yet, he is not like others.
But he isn’t different.
So people aren’t deaf. But he can’t have particularly exceptional hearing, either, so much so that he is forced to wear noise-canceling headgear so that his head doesn’t kill him and he doesn’t overhear a million conversations he’s not supposed to. People aren’t deaf, but he is also the only one in the room who, even with the headgear on, hears the matra before they enter the room. Hears the difference in everyone’s walking gait, in the way their shoes squeak against the floor. Hears the quiet sigh across the hall. Hears the wind outside change direction. Hears the humm of the lights, the scratch of paper, the breathing of eleven people around him, the beating of his own heart, the flow of his blood in his veins, his organs working, at all times, at all hours of the day, without stopping-
There is simply something wrong with him. Except there’s nothing wrong, because he’s not different.
He’s just wearing that headgear because he’s an asshole, and he wants to ignore people.
(So does he have good hearing, or do people just not know how to whisper?
Neither has a positive answer. He’s just wrong. Except he’s not, because he’s not different.)
People don’t have bad eyesight. But he doesn’t have particularly exceptional eyesight, either. People don’t need glasses, but he is also the only one who can read the tiny letters under the illustrations of the book. He’s the only one who can see the girl’s missing earring glinting in the grass. He’s the only one who can see the rishboland tiger waiting to ambush them from the bushes.
Him and Forest Ranger Tighnari, that is. But Forest Ranger Tighnari is different, because he has non-human ancestry.
There is simply something wrong with him. Except there’s nothing wrong-
People don’t have weak noses. But he doesn’t have a particularly good sense of smell, either. People can smell things just fine, but he is also the only one who can tell when it’s blood and when it’s the Kshahrewar’s iron compounds. He’s the only one who can list off all the ingredients in today’s menu from the cafeteria, all the way from the study hall. He’s the only one who knows where the stray cat went off to.
Him and Forest Ranger Tighnari, that is. But Forest Ranger Tighnari is different,
And he’s not.
People aren’t numb. But he’s not particularly skin-sensitive, either. People are always perfectly aware of all the nerve-ends of their bodies, but he is also the only one who feels the difference between two extremely similar fabrics. He’s the only one who cannot wear any sort of hydrating cream because it feels awful. He’s the only one who can feel his entire body itch everywhere. He’s the only one who feels everything all the time, who can feel exactly where his sleeves rest on his arms, where his knees bend one over the other, where his shoes fit around his feet, where his hair falls on his nape, where his headgear’s cord sits on his shoulder, where his pocketbook tucked into his sash rests. He’s the only one who feels his lungs contract and relax, who feels his ribs against them, who feels his stomach shift as he eats, who feels the air go down his entire respiratory system, who feels his eyes rotate in his skull-
There is simply something wrong with him. But he couldn’t possibly be hyper-sensitive, because that would make him different.
And he’s not.
There couldn’t possibly be something wrong with his brain, cannot have any sort of mental deficiency, or mental difference. There can’t be anything wrong with him.
Because he’s not different.
The automaton is only a stupid, stupid thing.
That’s all there is to it.