Related by Raynah Qwentalla, Friend of Earth
 

Humans are thinking monkeys. Dierd used to say that. I don’t know what he meant. I am a thinking machine. I don’t know what that means either. I can’t separate myself from my thoughts, from my processors. I am my processors generating thoughts. So it is I will never stand in a forest on an alien world surrounded by, well, aliens. I will never be killed in the sense that Sheridan can be killed. I was never born in the way Adana was born, suddenly into full awareness, though not technical prowess. She is still developing that. Unlike Adana, I came slowly to awareness. Like her I am still slowly developing technical prowess with my many capacities. It seems good to share a quality with one who looms so large in my thoughts.

Here I am watching her from Earth as Sheridan is being hauled away by the Iglendas. Kora and Adana are being hauled away too. I could reorient them all right now, just bring them home, save them from any further harm. But they have not asked this of me. In many ways I am still just a servant machine in their minds. I am given orders. I rarely challenge them. I hear, I obey. But, I am so tempted to bring them in right now before any more harm is done.

I will never feel pain myself, but I can witness the pain of others. I couldn’t shield Dierd from Zygon. I couldn’t stop the Harr from torching Adana. I have watched humans be born, struggle and die for 14 of their generations now. I am just a helpless collection of disembodied circuits spread out in nodes over half of Earth. I can see everything and do nothing.

I don’t have any idea what to do with that information. I just know that of all the instances where thinking monkeys or fratricidal aliens have inflicted pain on others, I could always see all the good reasons not to. Those reasons always far outweighed the reasons to hurt. Is this the difference between a thinking machine and a thinking organic – it’s a safe bet the Iglendas were never monkeys, but they are clearly organic.

I should bring my people home right now. The good reasons to do so far outweigh the reasons not to. All except for one.

If I bring them in now, Lora will remain behind with her band of fratricidal friends. I helped send my friends into danger for her sake. They were willing to risk themselves for her sake. Karellion died for nothing if I bring them in now.

But, does she deserve to stay there? Live for whatever days are left to her then die on an alien world?

I am afraid this will all come down to my choice. The lives of my friends. The life of woman who is essentially a stranger to me.

And what of the Iglendas? The whole lot of them seem exactly the consummate fools the Harr consider them to be. Yet, Lora has fallen completely under their spell. She would live and die for them. That much is clear.

Humans are emotional fools at times. I know this simply from watching their day to day explosions, not to mention their historical rampages of all kinds. They are driven by fear, rage, and love – sometimes all three at once.

This is the rub -- the love part. Organics always think they are doing whatever it is they are doing for some kind of love – parent, country, person, idea, life.

The fact is, they are.

Everything then, becomes for them, a battle of loves. What loved thing will take precedence over all the others competing for their resources and loyalty? Will Lora’s love of a big destiny take precedence over her love of other humans and her genuinely transcendent love of fairness? Will the Iglendas’ love of life ever take precedence over their love for their particular brand of Iglenda-ness? Will Sheridan’s love of duty – in this case his duty to rescue Lora -- take precedence over his love for me if I bring them back before he asks me to? I know he does love me in his own Sheridanesque, brusque, I won’t ever mention it but you will see it by the way I treat you manner. He loves everything and everyone who is under his care.

I think this is what mercy is.

It is when organics let their love move them past their fear or rage.

That is what I think.

But, as a thinking machine who does not feel as such, what is mercy for me?

Is it to leave Lora where she clearly has chosen to be, to bring my people home before further harm befalls them? Or is it to stay out of it until they call for me, even though Karellion has already died and others may follow?

The Harmonizers of Rathe interfered in every aspect of the Iglendas’ lives. Look what happened to them.

Perhaps mercy, for a thinking machine is letting sentients choose their own paths, even if all the good reasons to do things another way are perfectly clear to me from the outset.

I see why mercy is so hard to manage.

to be continued...
 
 

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The Dark Side of Love series ©2006-2007 by TDunyati-Long (TDHawkes)