Both of me died in the Mech.
Or maybe it's just been me all along. I'll admit I was never smart enough to truly understand ArtInt theory. Maybe my onboard system just gave me a headmate, or maybe I've been the ArtInt all along and even in death I'm running simulations. I dunno. Point is, there was two of us in there and now there is one of us here, and we/I am/are a ghost.
Turns out despite everything, it doesn't matter how far you get in the future or how advanced your technology gets, ghosts still exist and are largely unprovable. So Here I am. We are. I am. I am one now. And soon to be nothing.
Maybe it would have been quicker if my mech hadn't been totalled. Then, I could have leveraged some resolution out of a new pilot stepping into it, recognizing the ephemeral nature of pilots, the Eternal nature of mechs, and found some inner peace that way or something. I don't know, just as I wasn't an ArtInt expert I'm not much of a theologist either. Or a poet.
But our Mech was absolutely smashed to bits, and I found myself stuck. Some part of me wasn't done with this world, or whatever excuse makes ghosts stick around. We lingered, I watched my Squad mates fish my body out of my mech, pull my Black Box out, the free part of me that could be salvaged came along with a crew. I was given a burial, my parts intergated into other things, I lingered in a slice just short of the real world where the only way to interact was little pushes on reality. They never did much.
Just like in old Sports stadiums, they raised my call sign to the rafters like a jersey, and part of me for a while was convinced that was what was holding me back, that they had to use it again. that was my unresolvedness in this universe. That was my own foolishness. I've never been attached to the name, and they didn't hand them out like that anyway. Names fell in.
No, the reason I am clinging to this world as long and hard as I can right now is because someone had to take my place among the Scavenging crew, there had to be another me, not me as a person, but me in the vital role I played to my team. Even now the Bliss of afterlife blurs the edges, and I can barely remember what that role is. My family found Among the Stars had to let me go. And they have, and you have, you have, you have!
I'm burying these words as best I can inside files on the new me's mech frame. He will find them, he will come to you all with questions and confusion, and you will tell him about me, and you will make me seem a hero. I wasn't. I was just a someone.
When you accepted him, there was no longer tether holding me to this earth, this world, this reality, and so with this I must bid you give farewell.
He seems like a smart kid. Keep him around, please. I'm not here to make a final request, I just think it would be good for you. All of you.
I've passed it, now I'm out of the race. Get him across the finish line. Whenever you get up here, tell me how it went.
Until then?
Peace, gang. It's been good.
