Gaia

I am dead. I died, and that’s it. I can’t remember the details, the blood loss must have messed with my memories, but I’m sure I’m dead. I died next to Akasha, and made sure to pass on my will to her. She will live in my stead, and experience the universe for me, and take my memory with her.

Was I a great friend for her? I think I must have been, I was there for her when her sister died, her parents, Figment, her whole life I’ve helped her through hardships. So I must have been a good person, right?

Of course, I know I inflicted pain on others. Over hundreds of years, countless people have felt pain directly through my actions, so does that make me a bad person?

I think, or, from my point of view, no one human can be truly good or bad, each person has a mix of some and the other. Most people strive to be good, some intentionally cause pain, and some simply don’t care. But no one human can ever be 100% good or bad, there will always be a human factor to them. It’s in our innate nature to have a mix of these values.

So the questions “Am I good?” or “Am I bad?” are meaningless. A better question would be “How good of a person am I?”, but even then, there is no real meaning to that question either, it is impossible to give values to each action in one’s life, and therefore impossible to truly know how good of a person you are.

Asking the questions are meaningless, since they lead to no result. So the only logical action to take is to be good. The world will always be in a balance of people committing good and bad acts, so even a small act of good will have an impact, so be good.

I think I am a good person, I did good when I could and never really meant to do bad. The universe seems to think so too, seeing as I’m not in hell right now. Rather, I’m floating in a space of pure white, as bright as a star, but as peaceful and calm as empty space. Is this heaven? Or maybe simply the place where one's soul goes when they die.

I’ll never leave this place. I’ll never be able to see or influence anybody’s actions in the real world anymore. All my actions are said and done, so did they have any meaning? Did my life have a meaning?

I struggled with that question throughout my life. I never came up with a question on my own. For a while, I thought that nobody’s life had any meaning. Rather, we live for ourselves, to make ourselves happy.

I found this happiness when I met Akasha, in other words, the meaning in my life rested within Akasha. That’s the meaning I came up with for my own life. The meaning of one’s life is not predetermined by the universe, some god, or someone else. We ourselves create our own meaning.

There’s a quote, a line from a book I read once, that goes: “Nothing has meaning on its own. Meaning is something that gets determined later. Humans are born, grow up, and die all without meaning. It’s only when a life’s over that you finally see what it meant. That’s what life is. We don’t live in order to create meaning. We live so meaning can be found from our life.” -Dr. Roman.

I think both my view of meaning and this view can exist alongside each other, we can guess the meaning and live for that during life, and see the true meaning of it after death. Now that I’ve died, I can see that my meaning was allowing Akasha to live, she is destined for far greater things than I can possibly imagine.

I don’t think I’ll mind staying here for the rest of eternity. I think Akasha will survive the whole ordeal all of Kuroe is undergoing right now, and she’ll be able to explore the universe to her heart’s content, like she always wanted to do. I’m sure of this, so I can rest here peacefully, and maybe that, eventually, Akasha will join me here after she lives a long life. That would be the greatest ending I could ever hope for.

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Gaia

HELLO?

I heard something talking to me, their voice kind of mechanical and synthesized.. I tried to open my eyes, but they didn’t budge. I tried to move my arms, legs, head, anything, but nothing moved.

Gaia, I need you to try opening your eyes.

I heard that sound again. I tried again, but nothing seemed to work. Maybe I was numbed, under the aftereffects of anesthesia maybe? I tried again, but to no avail.

Gaia, don’t try using your muscles anymore, just conceptualize opening your eyes.

This line confused me, but since nothing else had worked so far, I tried to think about opening my eyes, to conceptualize it.

A light flickered in my field of vision, at first I could only see seemingly random colors, but as I focused on “seeing” more, more details of my surroundings came into focus.

There were many lights in the room, shining down on a table next to me. Many people surrounded the table, looking in my direction. I was on a table myself, with a large box next to me, almost out of view. I tried to turn my head and move my eyes, but still nothing budged. I focused on the table next to me, and saw a body laying face down. The people must have been operating on that body, but why was I in the room with them? I looked at the body again, and noticed parts of their left arm and leg were missing, and from my angle I could kind of notice a hole in the stomach area. On top of that, the back of their head was opened up. Where one would expect a brain, or really any other flesh and fluids, there was nothing.

Hello Gaia. said one of the people next to the operating table. Hold on… they said, approaching the box next to me and adjusting something on it. “There, does my voice sound a bit more normal?”

I tried opening my mouth to speak, then after nothing happened, I thought about talking not using my mouth, and managed to “speak” to the people in the room

“Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyye… s?” I managed to blurt out. The people around me seemed happy, smiles forming on their faces.

“Fantastic.” The person said, reaching for something out of my field of view. “It seems the transfer of your consciousness from your old brain to the machine you’re currently in has been successful.”

…What?

“This old brain of yours is empty now, devoid of a soul, but we’ll keep it for a little bit just in case anything unexpected happens to you.” They said, holding up a box with countless wires and tubes protruding from it, most connecting back to the head of my old body. “Your brain is still connected to your old body, but it has no life anymore, it shouldn’t even move a muscle. It has a mind similar to a fetus, except without consciousness it will never grow up or mature. We’ll terminate it after we confirm the consciousness transfer had absolutely no issues.” He said, putting the box with my brain in it down, the. Sitting in a nearby chair to run some scans and tests on my new body.

After most other doctors in the room left, a few minutes passed while the (presumably head) doctor conducted some tests on me.

During the tests, I thought I noticed a faint green glow coming from my old body. After a moment, the intensity of the light grew slightly, and the hands on my old body started twitching. I tried to let the head doctor know, but I still wasn’t used to where I was now, so only a small grumble came out of my speakers.

“One moment, we’re almost done Gaia.” They said, probably thinking I was wondering when the tests would be done.

The hand continued to twitch, and the arm even started to move, bringing the hand closer to where the face would’ve been. According to the head doctor, even the hand twitching should be impossible, so the entire arm moving like that was a major anomaly.

I tried to get their attention again, but before I could make a coherent human noise, they pressed a button, a large beeping sound came from the box where my old brain was, and the green glow completely stopped, the arm going limp and the hand falling back to a resting position.

“Well, it’s all done now. I’ll have you installed into a temporary body while you go through some ‘updates’, which are required by the Android Party to officially recognize you as an android and to pay for your medical expenses. Sorry, but the next time you ‘open your eyes’ again, you’ll be on Aphia, the capital of the galaxy.” The head doctor said, flicking a switch on the large box next to me, making my artificial vision go dark, and my mind blank once again.