2023-03-12: Soliloquy on "I"
- Log: 2023-03-12: Soliloquy on "I"
- Cast: Marida Cruz
- Where: Ra Mari II
- Date: U.C. 0097 03 12
- Summary: Cogito, Ergo Sum
I [ahy]
noun, pronoun
1. the ninth letter of the English alphabet, a vowel
2. the nominative singular pronoun, used by a speaker to refer to themself
3. the ego
The ego, the self, the sign of personhood. It was a subject of intense discussion and deliberation among philosophers and psychologists of the Middle Century, and as humanity spread to the stars in the Universal Century, the realizations that humanity was not alone and that humanity had not reached the end of their path as a species sparked further discussion.
Sigmund Freud posited that the ego was one of three pillars of the psyche. René Descartes famously wrote "je pense, donc je suis," I think, therefore I am.
Neither Freud or Descartes, however, could have even fathomed the circumstances that brought one Marida Cruz into existence. An artificial existence, a weapon forged in the shape of a human, intended not to live, but to kill. And when she failed to do so, she was cast aside. Thrown into the garbage.
I am trash.
No, she thought to herself. That's presumptive. To call yourself I, with your stolen face. Your stolen life that should have been hers. Would it be more accurate to say...
It is trash.
That did her well for years, she remembered. Then, people came into her life. People that made her existence as it was...difficult.
Suberoa Zinnerman. Mineva Leo Zabi. Banagher Links. The crew of the ill-fated Garencieres.
They had all, in one way or another, saddled her with unnecessary feelings.
That she deserved kindness
That she deserved to be happy
That she deserved love
If Marida Cruz was a person, would that make all the evil she has done unforgivable? The people she's hurt, the people she's killed, the decisions of a human being rather than the effects of a weapon. Free will is an incredible responsibility, and an unthinkable burden. It meant that she would have to find her own path, rather than being pointed to where people wanted her to go. What did she want for herself? Had she even felt the emotion of want before? To have something for its own sake was an incredibly selfish idea for a tool to have.
But she couldn't help it.
Marida blinked herself back into reality, staring at the paperwork on her desk. She had been in the middle of her signature
MAR
halfway through the i, she had drifted off in thought. Must not be getting enough sleep. She erased her half signature to start over.
Marida
The name Captain Zinnerman had given her. The first name she had ever had. The man who had first seen her as her. She looks down to the report, giving it another once-over before looking at how she had signed it.
Marida Zi
She erased it again before her eyes had even finished. She had gotten distracted again. Do it right this time.
Marida Cruz
That would do for now.