"
Tyro glanced back to the monitor and
watched the status bar reach 100%.
"The capsule's ready anytime,
sir."
X made no motion that he heard. He simply kept staring down at the floors as
if still waiting. Tyro knew X must've heard him so he did not repeat himself.
X's hands went to the side of his
head and he took off his helmet slowly, revealing messed up black hair. Tyro had never seen X with his helmet off and
looked at it wondrously. He looked very
human without it.
"I can't remember the last time
I took this off," X said, looking at it, turning it on his fingers. "It's been a long time." He ran his fingers over his head, feeling the
sensation of his synthetic hair.
Purposeless, but somehow necessary.
He set the helmet on the status console attached to the capsule.
"I was born in a capsule like
this," X said, now responding to Tyro.
"Well, perhaps not born, but this is where my first memories
were."
"Uh, yes, sir." Tyro wasn't sure what to make of this, but he
went with the flow.
"Some thirty years ago. The information was so badly eroded, no one
knew how long I was in there. Found in
an archeological dig. I and the
holographic capsules are all that's left of him."
"Sir?" Tyro perked his head out.
"Dr. Light, my
father." X looked the machine up
and down. "And the reploids and
Mavericks will be all that's left of me.
The Creator of the Chaos. I
wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't been a Maverick
Hunter."
"We'd all be a lot worse off,
sir," Tyro responded to X's out-loud thinking.
X looked at his X-Buster arm, a
rounded and bulging cannon, like a growth.
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
X hit the latch on the capsule door
and it sprung open a crack. A hydraulic
hiss emitted as he opened the chamber access all the way. The two leg wires and arm wires dangled from
their respective positions, while the CPU cord hung from the capsule's top.
X stepped up and then stopped
suddenly. Behind him, Tyro, ready to
assist, stopped also in surprise.
"Tyro," X asked. "If you had to, do you think you could
kill a human?"
"Uh, sir?" Tyro asked
innocently.
X turned to him seriously. "If you had to. If the fate of many others depended on
it?"
"I suppose I would have to be
presented with that situation before I could make a decision."
"Back in history, humans had to
kill each other in order to survive.
Then they killed each other for power and greed. Now we're here, the reploids, and still bound
by their government. Because we are free
from the bonds of the three robotic laws."
"I believe that humans and
reploids should have the same rights and laws.
We can feel the same, so we are the same."
"Hm," X smirked. He stepped into the capsule and lay against
the naugahyde cushion. Tyro moved around
X to attach his cords as he spoke.
"I like your philosophy, but I can't agree with you. We are different. We are stronger. We can change ourselves at will, without
difficulty. And we are ageless. That is the problem. Human lives are finite. We can go as long as our parts hold out and
when they fade we simply transfer over to a newer body. It frees us and imprisons us. The trade-off is we do not have
offspring. We're locked in our own
cycle."
"But we can make more
reploids. That's sorta offspring."
"Kind of. Yes, but they're always their own
reploid. No influence of those who came
before, only with A.I. programs. So we
are immortal and multiplying. Two lives
trying to coexist on one planet and that's where the conflict lies."
Tyro sat up again, and inserted the
CPU cord into the back of X's skull base.
If this were disconnected without the proper shutdown procedure, X's
memory would be permanently damaged, so he was careful with its placement. He stood back, done with his connections.
X continued, "I would rather
die tomorrow than know I would have to live a thousand more years of war."
Tyro, not familiar with X waxing
poetically, had no response. "Sir,
if you no longer want to be a Maverick Hunter, there's nothing saying that you
have to. You can quit at anytime. You should move on."
"Move on? I can't now.
Not when I'm in so deep. I'm the
one responsible for all this. Every
reploid was based off my design. So was
the Maverick virus. I'd be remiss in my
duties if I didn't do something to fight it.
To fight for peace."
"Sir, I know you're a pacifist,
and I admire that you still fight. But
perhaps you weren't meant for this line of work."
"No, Tyro. I was."
X looked back to his arm cannon again.
Tyro saw it and became forlorn.
"If it's any consolation, sir,
I'm proud to have been based on a design such as yours. Whether I go Maverick or not."
X made no answer. He just lay there, leaned against the back of
the capsule, wires sticking out of his extremities. He looked beyond the point of no return.
"Ready, sir," Tyro blandly
said, leaving X's sorrows unanswered, for he knew no other recourse.
X nodded in acknowledgment. Tyro pulled over the glass case of the
capsule, pressure hissing in as the thick plate closed and latched, lighting an
LED green. He walked around back to the
console and started the diagnostic program.
It would run its course through X's system and X would 'sleep' in the
meantime, perchance to dream.