"I never considered myself weak, and I never thought I represented anything. Those were all roles you imposed on me."
She clenched her fists.
"I just wanted everyone to live."
For twenty years.
Or perhaps throughout that unknowable past that had already been formatted away.
"I was only wondering what I would be like if our civilization could return to the time before history, if I were just an ordinary person within it. I knew that was unrealistic, so I never did anything to harm the collective because of that thought. But you still wouldn't leave me alone."
"Yes, I defected, but that was because you wanted to wipe out everything my father had worked so hard to build."
"Every Hive City, every uploaded consciousness, contributed to making our Mechanical Church stronger. Yet on a unilateral whim, you wanted to erase everything they had achieved. I won't allow it, because if my father were here, he would never give such an order!"
She raised her head, her eyes as biting as ice.
"If a change in policy means killing and abandoning countless people..."
"Then we're better off without a collective like that."
She clenched both fists.
She had never said these things to anyone.
She had kept them bottled up inside for so long.
She did not know when she had begun thinking this way. Perhaps it was when she saw how that man always protected the companions he considered friends and family, regardless of the cost. Perhaps it was when the split among the Seven Gods brought about the Great Purge of all uploaded consciousnesses.
And now...
Everything was gone again.
She had failed to save her subordinates, or any of those willing to follow her.
But she refused to accept it.
She could not accept it.
The old