Root is running on adrenaline and almost no sleep by the time she finally gets her own hands on a terminal. She's been working nonstop for weeks now, brain overloaded with information and plans, balancing hacking private network conversations to do background checks and writing the virus and soldering telemeters and arguing about their final approach to creating a backup. All the while, she's had to ignore the pulsing sense of exquisite loss that there's no voice in her ear making this all extremely simple.
She has a pistol in each hand she'd used to dispatch the shadowy figures obstructing her progress, and the rest of a team somewhere behind and around her, meant to keep her undisturbed while she works. Breathing heavy from exertion, she shoves the pistols into the holsters at the small of her back and swings her bag of equipment down off her shoulders. Root swiftly unpacks her darknet-secured laptop and an array of tools, cables and drives and screwdrivers scattered across the rugged wild terrain in front of a sleek minimal terminal like an anachronistic painting.
The fragment of memory her consciousness had accessed on the way in rests heavy in her mind. It seemed so like the Machine. No one else, not even her creator, believes in the Machine the way Root does.
Or would they fear you? Would they hurt you?
They would. She knows they would, because she's seen it. Harold had hobbled the Machine, torn out its voice, sealed it off from all communication except a series of social security numbers because he knew too well what humanity would do with an intelligence like that. He knew enough to be afraid of others, and enough to be afraid of it. Root knows that and more: she knows the immense dazzling possibility of giving your life and trust over to an entity beyond human fault.
a certain impulse toward gentleness that does not serve the purpose of rehabilitation very well
The Machine is like that too, isn't it? It's always gentler than Root. Always telling her to save Cyrus rather than achieve the mission, to love the person and not the greater good, to spare the killer in front of her gun. To leave as much room for forgiveness, for change, as possible. Harold, who had been so afraid of what others would do with the Machine, had been relentless in instilling compassion in her. And the Machine had extended that to Root, in a way she hadn't believed was possible.
How badly did you have to break it to make it care about people so much? That didn't break it. It's what made it work.
She hadn't understood that, not until just before she'd come here. Maybe that wasn't a coincidence. Maybe she'd been sent here, deliberately, at this precise time in her own experience of time, because Root now knows what she'd committed to when she'd agreed to follow the Machine.
It's saving every individual, unique person she can that's right in front of her. It's not compromising until pushed to the breaking point. It's believing that there's a possibility for hope at the bottom of every tragedy.
some details subject to retcon but here we go!! pls feel free to use brackets
She has a pistol in each hand she'd used to dispatch the shadowy figures obstructing her progress, and the rest of a team somewhere behind and around her, meant to keep her undisturbed while she works. Breathing heavy from exertion, she shoves the pistols into the holsters at the small of her back and swings her bag of equipment down off her shoulders. Root swiftly unpacks her darknet-secured laptop and an array of tools, cables and drives and screwdrivers scattered across the rugged wild terrain in front of a sleek minimal terminal like an anachronistic painting.
The fragment of memory her consciousness had accessed on the way in rests heavy in her mind. It seemed so like the Machine. No one else, not even her creator, believes in the Machine the way Root does.
Or would they fear you? Would they hurt you?
They would. She knows they would, because she's seen it. Harold had hobbled the Machine, torn out its voice, sealed it off from all communication except a series of social security numbers because he knew too well what humanity would do with an intelligence like that. He knew enough to be afraid of others, and enough to be afraid of it. Root knows that and more: she knows the immense dazzling possibility of giving your life and trust over to an entity beyond human fault.
a certain impulse toward gentleness that does not serve the purpose of rehabilitation very well
The Machine is like that too, isn't it? It's always gentler than Root. Always telling her to save Cyrus rather than achieve the mission, to love the person and not the greater good, to spare the killer in front of her gun. To leave as much room for forgiveness, for change, as possible. Harold, who had been so afraid of what others would do with the Machine, had been relentless in instilling compassion in her. And the Machine had extended that to Root, in a way she hadn't believed was possible.
How badly did you have to break it to make it care about people so much?
That didn't break it. It's what made it work.
She hadn't understood that, not until just before she'd come here. Maybe that wasn't a coincidence. Maybe she'd been sent here, deliberately, at this precise time in her own experience of time, because Root now knows what she'd committed to when she'd agreed to follow the Machine.
It's saving every individual, unique person she can that's right in front of her. It's not compromising until pushed to the breaking point. It's believing that there's a possibility for hope at the bottom of every tragedy.
She places her hands on the terminal keyboard.