Initializing_Sequence...
file_found: <[Unit_335]DESIGNATION:GLE>
<select id=EMOTIONPROCESSING>
<option value="FAITH">8594602</option>
<option value="BELIEF">4534534534</option>
<option value="DOUBT>4534534535</option>
Amongst the hardened soldiers with skull-faces and cold, dead, eyes there was an anomaly. The anomaly came in the form of a slender, graceful device, with no indication that it was a device at all ; looking perhaps more human than even the purist of the purists. This glitch did not wear the bulky trappings of non-integrated armor, nor did the device show signs of any sort of partially mechanical construction in addition to its organic facade. For all intents and purposes, the glassy-eyed boy with dark hair and thin fingers, wrapped in a warm leather coat, was altogether organic, and altogether pure. Of course, the truth lay beneath centuries-old nano-paint and beneath wiring, down in the mechanized motor where a fan ran at all times, to prevent this delicate instrument from overheating, and exposing the real heart that the anomaly had - an octo-core ship with thousands upon thousands of biomaterial nano-wires that transmitted signals all through the complex inner-workings. The device referred to those signals as "feelings" or even more damning; "beliefs." The world had determined that machines should think, long ago when corpses were stripped of their meat-shells and placed into elaborate exoskeletons, but what was the good of "beliefs"? What use was a machine that believed in things beyond tactical advantage, or believed in something other than absolute loyalty to the government programs that funded its construction? These functions were extraneous.
But those extraneous feelings, that concept of 'belief', was what the unit designated as "Glé" felt now. He believed that he did not belong here - and that perhaps he had made a terrible mistake. At the time, it had been logical to sign on, when the demand for personnel had come out. He felt within himself a primal need to be involved in purist affairs, to live amongst them, but this need had often led him into ennui and boredom. He had never had a job, something he was expected to do, day in and day out, something that he could work tirelessly towards. His lips twitched in recollection of data that he didn't precisely remember but could recall; unthinking machines that went about their tasks without ever questioning why they did them or burdened with whether or not they were performing these operations "well". These machines had been mindless automatons that could not tire, could not bore, and could not feel. Glé wondered if he envied them, or if their history merely coursed through his circuitry because the desire to perform a function came from a rich ancestral tradition of automated processes. Of course, he longed for more purpose than simply mindlessly going about a task; that's why he was here. He had been designed for the purpose of handling complex emotional problems that humans tended to process in inefficient or hazardous ways. He had been meant to intercede in conflicts, and resolve them.
Glé glanced to his side, taking in the sights of the other members of his taskforce and feeling signals transmute through him, determining how he should respond to them. How should he feel about a purist and a transhuman? He didn't find himself feeling anything, no emotional response to this unusual stimuli. He had lived for most of his short, concious life amongst purists, and he had been designed for the sole purpose of assisting them in their endeavours. However, the emotional bonds that he witnessed between purists were something that he never experienced himself. Glé supposed that there was a vague memory of a hawk-faced man with wrinkles around his eyes and a receeding hairline who had helped him into the bath. But that hadn't been him. That had been Unit_51, and the connection hadn't been for him. They had both been Glé, but those feelings that he felt were not his own. They were the residual stirrings from files that had yet to be deleted in his mainframe, and he had no desire to delete them. Those memories were something to clutch to. Even if they didn't really belong to him. But nothing about him really belonged to him. he was government property, and the concept that he was something that could be considered 'property' unnerved him and stressed him to the extremes. But he remembered the old maxim, "In the slavery of machines, the future of the world depends."
The unit designated "Glé" rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to keep his eyes directly focused on the path ahead of him. His posture was slightly slumped, devoid of the military precision expected of a different kind of unit. He had organic posture, meant to mimic a teenager's slump. The first Unit had walked with a slump, childhood scoliosis that had never been corrected with augmentation. Unit_1 had never gotten the chance. It had been blown to bits in enemy artillery. Glé found himself dreading the possibility of open combat. His glassy retinas peered at the two others, one look for the woman, another look for the other machine. He wondered how many explosions they had seen. He wondered if they had ever had a brother, a son, a father, taken away from them in rapid fire and heavy bombing. He began to fidget slightly, an uncomfortable response to all this new stimuli. The flickering bioluminescent plant-life made his skin crawl. It was too real - too wild and untamed. He had lived a life where his every action, and the actions of all those around him had been measured through lines and lines of code. He tugged at his fingernails, knowing full well that they were coated in resistant enamel, and would not tear away. Still, it gave the unit designated "Glé" small comfort.
A question lingered on the anamoly's mind, a doubt. If you could believe, you could doubt too. He doubted if he belonged here. He believed he had made a terrible, terrible mistake. But he was here now. A reject amongst the manufactured, a failed cog in the machine. Awake, amongst the sleeping. He found his processors drifting, thinking about everything in a microsecond, diagnosing every feeling he felt as part of a cycle of grief. Psychoanalysis was what he had been built for, so that's what he would do.