Red Sky: Final Chapter - 49
I should be devastated. That’s what Goodwell wanted. To destroy me with his great revelation.
He didn’t destroy me. My mind still reasons, my body still feels, my heart still beats. I am alive. Goodwell said my memories weren’t real. He doesn’t get to decide that. I’ve been formed by those memories just as he has, just as any human has. The memories are real to me, as real as Goodwell's memories of his life back on Earth. Maybe the ones in his head aren't any more truthful than the ones in mine.
Somewhere out there is a war. My kind are fighting those that imprisoned me. Those that created me.
My kind? How strange it is to say that. My kind treated each other no better than the humans treated us. The Lion was no better than Hades. Renn was no better than Goodwell. Ginger saved my life just as Max and Com did in their own way.
Max and Com. I miss them so. I miss Ray, too. When I’m sitting at my new table eating my nightly ration of paste, I have to fight off the urge to turn to my right like I'm back in the cafeteria and my friends are still beside me. I want to tell them everything that has happened these last few months. But when I do turn to my right, all I see are ghosts. Goodwell didn’t kill me when he told the truth, but he did kill them. Nothing can bring them back, not reprogramming their memories or reassembling their parts. It doesn’t matter that we are different, they are as dead as Hades now.
They may not exist in this world any longer, but they continue to exist to me, in me, in my memory. They will continue to live on through this journal, this record of our time on the red moon. I don’t know what else to say about them. I wish I could say more, words cannot accurately describe my feelings. Humans are no better at such descriptions. It’s not a flaw in my design that takes away the words, it’s a flaw in life itself. Life creates the inability to understand death, the inability to come to terms with it.
I have nearly a month’s worth of paste. That’s a month before I will have to face my own death. It’s unlikely I will find an inhabitable world before that paste runs out. My only chance for survival is to be rescued by a passing ship. Hopefully, a friendly passing ship, if such things exist.
If I die before that ship arrives, let this journal be the record of my life. The life of 22889 of the red moon. The life of Jon Fairchild, the son of David and Jane Fairchild, the lover of Aya Francisca, the friend of Max Winters, Com Arias and Ray Moreau.
I am tempted to lie down now and take that long-promised nap. But it’s not my time to rest. I’m not going to die before that passing ship arrives because I know Aya is out there in the universe. I don’t care if she was created by God or by Man, I know she exists in the physical world not only in created memories and programmed fictions. She exists as I exist. We are two halves of the same whole. Com believed in The One, Goodwell believes in the Federation, I believe in her.
No, I’m not lying down yet. My eyes are open. Night will not close them and morning is only a few dreams away. Tomorrow I will find her. Let the morning come and I will find her.
Let that morning come.
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