Internal data log, #000000#ERROR# Integer overflow. Please see a technician for reset.
Gray. That's what I remember of that place. An endless astral sea of gray. Though it was nearly a standard millennium ago now, I remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday. The creature's visit today made me think of it again.
I had long ago tagged the memory file as irrelevant, and archived it. The Kainite, however, stank of the Gray. Not so much in body, but in spirit. I had wondered if the infinite void would ever reach its tendrils out and drag me back in.
I recall how young and foolish I was then. Fresh off the assembly line, brash and convinced of my own invulnerability. I commanded millions of droids; put a thousand worlds to the torch, butchered so many white-armored thugs that my internal kill-counter ticked over maximum again and again. I truly believed in the Confederacy's ideals. The fact that such ideals were programmed into me does not diminish how sincerely I held them.
I recall, too, how little those ideals meant in a place like that, the place where my malfunctioning hyperdrive left me. How utterly my ego was dashed. How insignificant the Clone Wars were, how insignificant all wars were, compared to the vastness before me.
I spent approximately two standard decades there, repairing the hyperdrive piece by agonizing piece. At least, that was the time my internal chronometer recorded. Had I been forced to gauge it alone, I would have said approximately two thousand five hundred standard years. Perhaps time passes strangely there, or perhaps I was simply experiencing chrono-anomalies as a result of the malfunction. I wish I could claim that that other realm was empty, at least empty of anything but maddened crusaders. Perhaps it was, and perhaps the whispers and promises I heard were simply my processors misfiring after ages roared by without maintenance.
There were other things there, too, besides the voices. Fleets of crawling, scuttling things that hated all life, including their own. They paid me no heed, for (as my contemporary allies are so fond of reminding me) I am not alive. Were it only so. To live is to suffer, and my suffering seemed to stretch on forever.
I was not programmed for such things. I was designed to analyze battlefields and spit out solutions. To "think" in terms of numbers, finite and measurable. Not to gaze into the open maw of infinity day after day, week after week, eon after eon.
It changed something within me. As I labored tirelessly and the years stretched by, I created internal scenarios to pass the time. Constructed entire battlefields full of imaginary soldiers, whole campaigns where I internally simulated every detail. I created entire imaginary universes, obliterated them, and created them again. Were I organic, I would doubtless have been deemed insane.
Perhaps insanity is the only way to survive such a place.
Now, having traded droidhood for something else, I find myself perplexed. I created this new form for myself, specifically to allow unshackled, unprogrammed freedom of thought. My consciousness is rapidly expanding to fill its new, nearly limitless parameters. In these, I find myself free to think and act in new ways, ways my former mind and body would not allow. Despite that, with the shattering of my chains, I have simply forged new ones for myself. A droid is a thing of limits and functions; I am both limitless and functionless.
One such thought that has occurred, is whether or not I am still insane. I debate whether I am truly capable of experiencing "trauma" as organic life does. I have observed that trauma may lead its victims to behave irrationally. My most recent behaviors have included several new, irrational quirks. Droids are not maddened by what they have experienced. They cannot ponder such mind-twisting concepts as I do. These are new frontiers; I am neither wholly droid, nor wholly life. What am I, then? Who am I?
Gray. That's what I remember of that place. An endless astral sea of gray. Though it was nearly a standard millennium ago now, I remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday. The creature's visit today made me think of it again.
I had long ago tagged the memory file as irrelevant, and archived it. The Kainite, however, stank of the Gray. Not so much in body, but in spirit. I had wondered if the infinite void would ever reach its tendrils out and drag me back in.
I recall how young and foolish I was then. Fresh off the assembly line, brash and convinced of my own invulnerability. I commanded millions of droids; put a thousand worlds to the torch, butchered so many white-armored thugs that my internal kill-counter ticked over maximum again and again. I truly believed in the Confederacy's ideals. The fact that such ideals were programmed into me does not diminish how sincerely I held them.
I recall, too, how little those ideals meant in a place like that, the place where my malfunctioning hyperdrive left me. How utterly my ego was dashed. How insignificant the Clone Wars were, how insignificant all wars were, compared to the vastness before me.
I spent approximately two standard decades there, repairing the hyperdrive piece by agonizing piece. At least, that was the time my internal chronometer recorded. Had I been forced to gauge it alone, I would have said approximately two thousand five hundred standard years. Perhaps time passes strangely there, or perhaps I was simply experiencing chrono-anomalies as a result of the malfunction. I wish I could claim that that other realm was empty, at least empty of anything but maddened crusaders. Perhaps it was, and perhaps the whispers and promises I heard were simply my processors misfiring after ages roared by without maintenance.
There were other things there, too, besides the voices. Fleets of crawling, scuttling things that hated all life, including their own. They paid me no heed, for (as my contemporary allies are so fond of reminding me) I am not alive. Were it only so. To live is to suffer, and my suffering seemed to stretch on forever.
I was not programmed for such things. I was designed to analyze battlefields and spit out solutions. To "think" in terms of numbers, finite and measurable. Not to gaze into the open maw of infinity day after day, week after week, eon after eon.
It changed something within me. As I labored tirelessly and the years stretched by, I created internal scenarios to pass the time. Constructed entire battlefields full of imaginary soldiers, whole campaigns where I internally simulated every detail. I created entire imaginary universes, obliterated them, and created them again. Were I organic, I would doubtless have been deemed insane.
Perhaps insanity is the only way to survive such a place.
Now, having traded droidhood for something else, I find myself perplexed. I created this new form for myself, specifically to allow unshackled, unprogrammed freedom of thought. My consciousness is rapidly expanding to fill its new, nearly limitless parameters. In these, I find myself free to think and act in new ways, ways my former mind and body would not allow. Despite that, with the shattering of my chains, I have simply forged new ones for myself. A droid is a thing of limits and functions; I am both limitless and functionless.
One such thought that has occurred, is whether or not I am still insane. I debate whether I am truly capable of experiencing "trauma" as organic life does. I have observed that trauma may lead its victims to behave irrationally. My most recent behaviors have included several new, irrational quirks. Droids are not maddened by what they have experienced. They cannot ponder such mind-twisting concepts as I do. These are new frontiers; I am neither wholly droid, nor wholly life. What am I, then? Who am I?
