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“...I don’t understand,” she muttered. “How come... If that’s true, why did Father...”
“There’s a lot you still don’t know,” he said with a gentle expression. “Let me show you.”
The decor changed. It was their father’s office again, but a later version. This time, their father was excitedly walking around, speaking out loud to himself, grabbing a paper to take notes, running to the computer, and chewing on a pen before doing some calculations.
“That’s the evening we figured out how to store and duplicate the Core’s version we had been working on,” smiled Pan. “See? I’m here.”
Eden looked where he was pointing at. There was one screen, among the six on her father’s desk, with someone there. She approached. The film quality was bad, but if she focused, she could vaguely recognize someone with Pan’s traits.
“I liked to appear like this,” he explained. “It helped Father a lot when he could think of me as being alive, only... trapped behind a screen. Sadly, he wasn’t the only one allowed to manipulate me. The Core was my master... Everyone controlling the Core could control me. Bit by bit, I started to become more of a machine, as someone who had never really been human.”
“...What about Mom?”
“...Mother never forgave Father for what they had done to me. You see, when she realized she would never get to hold me, she considered her child killed at birth, and I was merely a computer mimicking what that child could have been. I think it was too painful for her. I didn’t resent her for that... She didn’t hate me, and she eventually came around too. Luckily, they soon got pregnant again.”
He turned his eyes to her, with a bright smile on. Eden felt a bit uneasy. After everything that had happened, how could Pan seem so happy about her birth? He had basically been rejected by their mom... Eden couldn’t blame her or their dad. She didn’t know if she could have imagined that body was ever a human being. Pan’s real eyes looked... dead.
“...Everything changed after your birth,” he said.
The decor changed again. This time, it looked a lot closer to that scene she had seen, and her baby self was there, in her father’s arms. Except he was pacing around in his office, with a frustrated expression.
“You know, our parents almost separated, until they realized Mother was pregnant. Then, they got back together, stronger than before. Mother finally agreed to talk to me… sometimes. I don’t really know what she thought of me, but at least she acknowledged my existence a little. She was all about you, of course. They both were. For me, though, your birth was an even more pivotal moment.”
“...Why?” Eden asked, trying to follow her father’s constant pacing with her eyes.
Something inside her made her not want to miss a second of their dad’s gaze on her. For a man she couldn’t quite remember, he seemed completely enamored with his newborn. He was holding her little hand and talking to her, pacing around in the room, perhaps to soothe her into sleep. From the tiny and only window in the room’s ceiling, she could guess it was nighttime.
“See, as I began to outsmart every human, I became more and more... machine-like,” sighed Pan. “The fact was that I had never experienced the most basic human needs. I didn’t know what food tasted like, or that things have different scents. I had no idea what human touch felt like, nor warmth, nor cold. I didn’t even sleep or dream. All I did, 24/7, was study even more, as if I ate an entire library every day. But the more the Core manipulated me, integrated me into its System, the less... human I was. It began to worry Father a lot. He was scared he would lose the being he thought of as his son to a computer. So, he did his very best to let me experience those human emotions I was lacking. We watched all sorts of movies together. He tried to describe each sensation, each taste, everything a human was supposed to feel that I couldn’t.”
“But... if a Dive Hacker’s brain can be tricked like I am now, thinking my legs are fine when I know they aren’t, why didn’t it work for you? I can feel the heat or cold when I Dive, I can be... tricked into tasting something that doesn’t exist.”
“That’s because you know those sensations already,” smiled Pan. “Your brain remembers, and the System goes into your memories to pull it and trick you to relive it. Moreover, that kind of technology is very recent. Back then, Father had no way to let me experience all those things. He could only attempt and let me try to experience it through him, as a proxy. What is it, what makes you human, if everything you do and are capable of can be done by a computer as well? Your emotions, your feelings. Your sensations, and your experiences. I wasn’t able to get all that. And the more days passed, the less... human I was.”
They both turned their eyes back to their father. He had now gone to sit on the large, comfortable chair in one corner of the room. Eden didn’t remember that piece of furniture from before, so maybe it had been added because of her... Her father was still hugging her gently, his index finger caught in her tiny hand, but his expression was still upset, and staring at the screens at the opposite end of the room.
“I don’t think Father expected your birth to be what would finally... trigger my emotions again.”
The scene changed again. This time, they were transported into what was clearly a nursery. Eden hadn’t expected the little room to look so... full. All the furniture was in pale wood, and there was a large, pink teddy bear in a corner. The pink carpet seemed very thick, and there were little wooden toys left on a play mat. Her baby self was in her bed, although completely awake. From the bright sunlight, it was early morning, and she was alone, visibly chattering to herself and moving her arms around, making little smiles and coos. Eden blushed, finding herself surprisingly cute...
“...What’s special about this scene?” she frowned, confused.
“Nothing,” he chuckled, “but it is one of my favorite memories of you. We can’t hear it, but I was playing music for you... While our parents slept, you were always awake early. If nothing was going on in the room, you were bored, and immediately cried, so I would always play some music for you. I was... fascinated by your baby self. I had seen thousands of children before, but you were my little sister, you see. Something about you made me... feel different. I was experiencing new things for the first in a very long time. Not through you, but because of you. There is something adorable about how unpredictable babies are. Adults were almost boring to me, but you... you were my everyday favorite distraction.”
Seeing the baby smile happily to whatever music was playing in the nursery, Eden found herself smiling too. The scene changed again without warning, and baby Eden was now lying on her stomach on the play mat while a little screen was put next to her in the room with Pan’s face on it. The baby seemed busy with another toy, but Pan was visibly talking to her, and from time to time, she’d turn her head to him and giggle.
“I’m proud to say I was your favorite babysitter,” chuckled Pan. “Those were the happiest times of my life... When I was less computer and only Eden’s big brother. I could forget about all those calculations, the System, and whatever they were doing to me. All I wanted was to spend time with you. Father had to explain to me those sensations I felt because all the software in the world was lacking knowledge about love.”
Pan sighed and turned his head just as the scene changed again. They were now back in their father’s office, but Eden was gone, and he was simply chatting with someone on the computer, perhaps Pan.
“...The changes in me didn’t please a lot of people,” muttered Pan, his smile gone. “As I got... more human, and more interested in my baby sister than the System we were supposed to improve, the Core’s leaders grew impatient. With me, and with Father. They urged him to revert the changes in me, as my conscience had grown. I wasn’t agreeing to a lot of things they wanted to implement in the System anymore and, unfortunately for them, I was still stronger, so they couldn’t make me change like that. I refused to do some things that I found hateful, ruining some of their plans. One day, knowing very well the story behind my own birth, I even wrote in the very core of the System a rule, that they should never kill a child, unborn or not. It made them furious, as you can imagine... They couldn’t punish me, so they directed their anger toward Father. It only made him realize how wrong the new System was turning out to be. Your birth had changed both of us, and he wasn’t willing to be part of that corrupted System anymore. Men like him, and his friend Charles that you have met, began looking for a way out of that future the Core was building. They felt sorry for the people in the Suburbs and even more sorry for the future generations that would be bound to that corrupted System.”
“Why couldn’t he just... stop everything?” Eden asked. “Why not just destroy it all, start all over?”
Pan turned to her, and Eden suddenly understood.
“...Because of you,” she muttered. “...It would have meant killing you.”
“Exactly,” nodded Pan. “Father wasn’t ready to make that sacrifice. He sought a way to destroy the System he had built, but all the ways he thought of implied destroying me one way or another. That was a thought that terrified him, but it was sadly true. I had become too close to the System, we were–no, we still are two parts of the same machine. Father couldn’t find a way to get rid of it without also damaging or killing me.”
