The polished deck plates of the Crow’s observation lounge reflected the cold, distant light of the stars like a black mirror into infinity. It was a view meant to inspire awe, to remind the crew of the grandeur they sailed through. All it did for me was highlight the sheer, isolating emptiness. A fitting backdrop for the conversation I was having with a creature who was, herself, a masterpiece of isolation.
Commander Taera’s laughter was a sharp, crystalline sound that didn’t quite reach her eyes. They remained ancient, calculating pools of obsidian, even as she pretended to wipe a tear away. “I got the stick?” she asked, her voice rich with a theatricality I was learning was her native language.
“Are you kidding? I got the biggest, shiniest golden carrot imaginable. Sure, the stick is there, looming like an executioner’s ax over my non-existent neck, but look at that carrot!” Her performance was flawless. Was that genuine emotion glistening there? I doubted it. This was an empath who had been manipulating the emotional currents of everyone around her since long before the System gave her a fancy title and a quest log. Authenticity seemed as likely as a friendly rift-spawn.
I shook my head, the motion sending a fresh, familiar jolt of fire down the ravaged pathways of my neck. I gritted my teeth against it. Just another spike. Breathe through it. It’s just pain. “Now I am confused. A shitty manual, and tin tier? That’s your carrot? Commander, with all due respect, that sounds less like a reward and more like a particularly cruel participation trophy.”
She almost glared at me, the mask of amusement slipping to reveal the diamond-hard pragmatism beneath. “Divine Paladin Kushiel. You are 40 years old. A veteran of a hundred battlefields, physical and spiritual. Try using your brain for a moment, if the constant screaming from your nervous system allows it. Your pain is no excuse for you being this stupid.”
I leaned against the cool transparisteel of the viewport, the chill a minor counterpoint to the inferno in my spine. I thought about it. Yes, I was distracted, my world perpetually narrowed to the battle of holding my own body together. But her ‘carrot’ still sounded like a raw deal wrapped in a catastrophic failure condition. “But… wait, you cannot advance?”
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She nodded, a gesture that was somehow both elegant and utterly mechanical. “I cannot cultivate. I do not have a divine root and can’t get one. I do not have a cultivation base. I have no dantians to store essence, no meridians to channel it… Yours were burned, scarred, but mine never existed."
"I am a construct, David. A biological robot made almost entirely of barely differentiated T-cells, kept animated by an essence battery and a chemical nervous system that is a masterpiece of soulless engineering. I have no sex, no true genetic identity, not even a real name. Just an experimental designation from a lab that was dust centuries ago.”
I nodded slowly, the pieces clicking into place with a grim finality. “So you want to be able to cultivate, why? You already have a powerful gift. A Gold Core’s psychic strength, at least. Unless you want to be a physical combatant? To swing a sword?”
She shook her head, a look of profound pity on her face, as if I’d just tried to explain color to someone born blind. “David, please. Think. What can happen when a cultivator moves from Gold Core to Twin Core?”
“Body refinement and re…” I stopped. The word died in my throat. “Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.” The word was a sigh, carrying the weight of millennia of longing. “I don’t give a scrot if the process removes my functional immortality. I don’t give a scrot if I suddenly start to bleed and bruise, and ache. I identify as female, but I am not… I am a concept wearing skin. I honestly don’t care if the System, in its infinite and bizarre wisdom, turns me into a male or a female. All I care about is that someday, when I pass Gold Core, the body refinement will give me a renewed, purified, and altogether HUMAN body. A real one. One that is mine.”
She took a step closer, and for the first time, I felt something from her that wasn’t calculation or performance. It was a deep, resonant hum of pure, undiluted want. “I want to be human. I want to experience everything I have ever heard about, everything I’ve felt second-hand from the minds of thousands of others. I want to feel for myself the emotions I detect from everyone else, every day, but can only observe like a painting behind glass.”
“I want to stand on a bridge—a real one, over water, not a ship’s gantry—and have someone kiss me because they want to, and feel, for just one insane, illogical instant, what it’s like to be in love. To me, that is a golden carrot worthy of ANY price, any sacrifice I, personally, can make. I am the tin man, in quest of a heart, and I will do ANYTHING to have it for even one day.”
The core of Commander Taera's motivation is finally revealed, and it's far more profound than simple power. Her desire for a real, human experience is something a Paladin like Wasserman can barely comprehend.
