AEGIS ambushed me as soon as I got home. At first she was just excited about my trip to the mine and wanted to know if I’d found what we needed, but something about the way I moved or talked gave me away and she started to nervously inquire about my mental health.

Words started to pour out of me before I knew what I was doing. I needed to talk, and she wanted to listen, and even though I’d already decided earlier that I wasn’t going to burden AEGIS with more troubles, the words wouldn’t stop coming.

I told her everything, and she stood and listened patiently, asking an occasional question or trying to relate when these events transpired, but otherwise just stood and listened. Several times, as I talked, I felt horrible, thinking that she was too good for me and didn’t deserve to hear and shouldn’t have to deal with my crap. Especially about my emotional outbursts, when I threw the mirror, angry at my own reflection, or used my Exhuman powers when I lost it with Karu pushing me, and finally when I stormed out on Saga after finding she was a Sino.

Yet she didn’t judge. She just listened and silently soaked it all in. When I was finished, she let out a deep breath it sounded like she was holding.

“Well,” she said. “On the surface, it sounds to me like you’ve got some thinking to do.”

“You said it.”

“No, I mean, more than usual. We humans…and by that I mean you too, Mr. Exhuman, are fragile things in our minds. We live in a world we construct with our own thoughts and see things through the lenses of our past experiences. Sometimes we see things that we know can’t exist, and then we have to take a step back and wonder, is the world different than how I thought it was, or am I?”

“This is a little deep, isn’t it? I didn’t know you got your shrink license.”

“Maybe I did. Perk of amnesia, you can’t prove that I’m not a shrink.”

“I…guess.”

“Anyway. One of the biggest lies of reality we tell ourselves is that we’re a good person. Everyone thinks they’re a good person, even the bad people. Nobody would be able to live with themselves if they honestly thought they were bad.”

“I know I’m a bad person, I’m an Exhuman.”

“Not what I mean. If you honestly thought you were a bad person, like you were just a big negative blight on the world like Karu seems to think you are, wouldn’t you probably kill yourself?”

“I dunno. Maybe? I turned myself in with the XPCA, that’s basically suicide.”

“But you didn’t call them and tell them you were Exhuman, you were still trying to go on with your life, right?”

“Right.”

“Because, despite being Exhuman, you still thought you could live a normal life.”

“I guess.”

“So you didn’t think you were bad.”

“I mean, it’s more complicated than that.”

“But I’m not wrong.”

“No, I guess not,” I agreed. It’s not like I took pleasure in being a bad person, but I’d held that shred of self-respect that I was a good enough person to give myself up, and she’d just obliterated that. On top of all the other shit I’d just gone through with Saga, it felt unfair to take even that away from me.

“Well, in this new scenario, you’re seeing new facts and they don’t coincide with your worldviews. Saga’s a Sino and an Exhuman. Ideally, you shouldn’t hate her for either of these, but you do. You blame it on your upbringing, whatever. But then you feel conflicted because you only hate her for one. Now, instead of a moral high ground, you’re finding you’re picking and choosing reasons to hate people. And that’s what a racist or bigot or hater, for a more general term, would do.”

“And you don’t like to think of yourself that way, so now you either have to rewrite your worldview to explain away these inconvenient facts, rewrite your personal ethics to make yourself accepting of your new roles, or…ideally…change to be the person you want to be.”

“Jesus, what a cynical way to look at things.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s the same process that kids use to grow, they’re just a lot more accustomed to the world being different than they thought then we are.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

I didn’t respond and we lapsed into silence together.

“I guess…I’m a lot more racist than I thought I was,” I said, after a long pause. “I didn’t even know that meeting a Sino would make me so angry. It kind of scared me, honestly.”

“I’m glad you have the self-awareness to realize it’s you and not her.”

“Are you sure you’re not a shrink?” I asked.

She just laughed and shrugged. “So who do you want to be?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter? I mean, I’m going to live out here in the middle of nowhere forever, until I die. Sooner than later if Karu has her way.”

“Might not matter to many people, but it matters to you. And to me, if you’re counting. And to Saga, I’m sure. Maybe even Karu.”

“I kind of get the vibe she’s less about caring and more about killing. Might be the unprovoked murder attempts talking.”

“Point being, my professional/unprofessional advice, depending on whether we establish I was a shrink in the past life or not is: figure out who you want to be, and take the course of action that leads you down that path. If you’re okay with hating Saga for being a Sino…and given what seems to be a lot of baggage and past experience, I don’t think anyone can blame you, then do that. If you want to hate her and yourself for being Exhuman, do that. If you want to hate nobody, then do that. But it is up to you. Nobody’s out here holding a gun to your head and telling you to hate or love anyone.”

“Except Karu.”

“Yeah well, as you just said, she’s a little murder-y to get a vote.”

Despite myself, I laughed, and that made AEGIS smile.

“So, you think on that. In the meanwhile, I have a surprise for you,” she said, changing the subject with an excited wave of her hands, sending her long pigtails twirling. “While obviously it is of great importance to use that hunk of quartz to get me outta here, the schematic I am printing is not currently a data encoding crystal.”

“What…is it then?” I asked, now trying to peek through the grill into the mass-fab to see what’s being produced.

“Oh, just a little something for you. I think you’ll like it…if my observations have been correct. Please do try not to be a total perv, though.”

I had absolutely no idea what she could be talking about, but I was now fully curious.

She’d timed her reveal so that the job had only a few minutes left, which I waited through with an utter lack of patience. I was glad Saga wasn’t around to judge my thoughts of what could be developing inside. When it finished and the mass-fab cheerfully announced the assimilation was complete, I opened the cabinet and peered inside greedily.

Inside was…nothing? I took a closer look, and saw what looked like a perfectly clear semicircle. It was so perfectly smooth and clear and flush with the cabinet’s floor that it was hard to see. I reached in and picked it up easily, finding it to be crystal which fit in the palm of my hand.

“Some kind of extremely ornate paperweight?” I asked AEGIS. Looking into it was fascinating, no matter what angle, I saw a dazzling orientation of rainbows and kaleidoscopic lines, all following geometric laws well beyond my understanding.

“Woot, it’s done. Bring it over here,” AEGIS said, and took a good look at it through her camera, making sure her sundress didn’t slip down at all this time. “Looks fine from here, we can tell when you install it.”

“Install it where?”

“I’ll tell you. Get out that toolkit and bring out two drivers. You’ll probably need some rust remover and a cloth, and don’t touch the…glass thing, as much as you can avoid it.”

“This would be so much easier if you’d just tell me what we’re doing.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ll figure it out as soon as we start…”

Installation was fast and easy, despite the rust everywhere, and having only AEGIS’ voice to guide me. Less than 10 minutes later, I was cleaning my hands and she was ready to turn it on. A shiny new holo crystal on the AEGIS box, hopefully free from distortion, artifacts, and that wonderful yellow effect.

“Here we go,” her voice said from the box, and I heard her enter some keystrokes.

The holo lit up again, but much brighter and clearer. Still slightly yellow, but also finally showing other colors. The image quality was perfect; if I had been an alien or caveman, I would have thought there was a tiny semi-transparent person standing in the air in front of me.

The first thing I noticed was her freckles. She had a small mess of them on her nose and cheeks which had blended in with the noise on the old lens, and a blushing of them down the back of her pale neck and on her shoulders. The second thing I noticed was that her hair was not straw-colored, as the yellowing image had shown before, but was rather a natural redhead, with two long, shiny pigtails resplendent in a nutty orange-brown.

Details jumped out at me all over. I noticed the variety of velcro straps up and down her forearms, keeping her elbow-length wrist braces cinched tight. Her sundress was white with some lacy, still-almost-invisible patterns embroidered into it within a large V from the two thin straps at her shoulders down to her navel. If I looked at her from behind, the light from her holos passed through the sheer skirt of her dress, giving me a very titillating silhouette.

“Okay, put the old lens back,” she said.

“What, why?”

“Because you’re just staring at my ass.”

“I am not! I’m looking…” I stopped, realizing the truth wasn’t going to sound any better. “At. Your. Hair.”

“Uh huh. Are you gay perchance?”

“What? No.”

“Yeah, you weren’t looking at my hair.”

“Whatever. You look great.”

“Thanks, but I really didn’t do anything. Just thought you might enjoy a bit more of a face-to-face conversation. Instead of face-to-distorted-mess.”

Her words reminded me of Saga and I felt myself seethe for a moment. I saw a frown flicker at the corner of her mouth, and wondered how many times I’d missed something like that with the old lens.

“Still got problems with her, huh?” AEGIS asked. I nodded. She’d given me some good advice, but you couldn’t just advice away 17 years of watching Sinos kill people on the holos, seeing their faces leering from propaganda posters, field trips to non-irradiated parts of an exclusion zone so we can see the ruins.

It was in me, as much as being an Exhuman now was. And like being Exhuman, I hated it about myself.

The difference was, with this bit of myself, I had a choice.