Chapter 135: Natural Choice
"[Zenith, shouldn’t you be paying more attention to your students?]" Nexus asks me when he sees that I came back from graduation as soon as my students’ part was over, and instead of waiting around to talk to them, or even going with them to their bases, I just decided to come home.
"No, I’m busy with something else at the moment...anyway, they’ll do fine in the military, and there’s a good chance I won’t see them for a while, at least until I decide what I’m going to do with my life."
"[What do you mean? Aren’t you going to keep teaching other students at the academy for a while?]"
"No, now that they’ve graduated, I’m going to resign tomorrow. I’ll send Astrid a letter making it clear that I won’t be teaching anymore, not even for a few months."
"[...I don’t understand. Why would you resign? You’re a very...unusual teacher, but your merits are undeniable, and Astrid doesn’t seem dissatisfied with what you did. Your students graduated with honors overall, and in the end, they’ll probably grow a lot in the military.]"
"..."
"It’s good for them, but being their teacher is something...different. I can’t be a teacher to normal people. Most of the students at the academy wouldn’t be able to handle the way I train." ’Most of the students at the academy are "normal," unlike my rebellious students.’
"...And...I wouldn’t be able to stand living around people who think normally. Each one of my students had concrete problems they needed to work on, things they had to overcome that were getting in the way of their talents, and I helped them with those problems."
"Meanwhile, most people won’t have problems like that. My aggressive methods would drive them away, cause them problems, and they’d probably die, or I’d accidentally kill them." My six students had clear problems they could be helped with, unlike most people, who will have more generic problems.
"I know my limits...unfortunately, even after two years, I still can’t live among people." ’I never managed to return to society as a functional person. I don’t even know what being "normal" is. I lived on the streets, surviving one day at a time with Nadir. Neither of us has any experience with being "normal" like everyone else.
"Besides, I don’t have the patience for this. It was pretty stressful having to help each one of them, and some of them didn’t even overcome their problems, they just masked them." ’Charlotte clearly has some kind of problem with her family and is just ignoring it now so she can focus on her own life.’
That isn’t a bad thing, but it shows that me being a good "teacher" didn’t make them perfect or anything like that. I only taught them how to survive, nothing more than that. The only one who seems to have truly overcome her problems is Eirwen.
"[You’re pretty pessimistic.]"
"...Pessimistic? I taught them to be weapons, in a ’gentle’ way, but that doesn’t change the miserable lives they’ll have from now on. Their graduation only made that painfully obvious." I’m not happy about their graduation.
"It’s great that they graduated, but graduation only means that their lives are in their own hands now."
"[You really think they’re going to die even after everything you taught them?]"
"...I don’t know, and there’s no way for me to know, but that’s the point. Why would I teach someone now? They’re the greatest talents of this generation, and I can’t even guarantee that they’ll survive for a year."
𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖
"It’s not pleasant imagining my future with me training dozens, even hundreds, of students only for them to die a few months later. I only took this job at the academy because I was forced to."
"But now that I’m done, I don’t have any obligations anymore."
"[They’d be sad if they heard you saying that. It would make it seem like you never cared about them and were only pretending.]"
"...It doesn’t matter to me if they’d be sad. This is my reality. It’s not like I’m mocking their efforts. They were incredible, and they deserve congratulations, but it’s like...like building something that you know is going to be torn down afterward."
"It’s not very rewarding to finish..."
"[Like building a sandcastle on the beach while knowing the waves will tear it down soon?]"
"Something like that." And worse, there’s Nemesis. I hate admitting it, but my paranoia has grown about everything, because I don’t know who she could be, whether she has some kind of disguise ability or something like that. So I’m constantly tense about everything.
It’s irritating, frustrating, and it makes me think about how I’m going to die. In the military, I was always someone who thought a lot about how I would die every time I had a dangerous mission.
"[I think I know what this is. You’re afraid of dying, right?]"
"...Hahaha, lines like that are what show that you don’t understand. In the end, you’re a robot, right? What should I expect from a machine?"
"[...Am I wrong?]"
"I’m not afraid of dying. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. I think I’m going to have an agonizing, painful death, and I’ll simply accept it when the time comes."
"[That’s a horrible view of your own future.]"
"It’s the only realistic view I can have...unfortunately, I don’t have many options. After all, I have this damn chip in my brain. If a monster doesn’t kill me, this chip will do the job."
"[Would you have liked to live a normal life?]"
"Yes."
"[...Do you blame anything or anyone for the life you have?]" When Nexus asks me this, I think about what Nadir and I discovered, that we were a monster transformed into humans. If it weren’t for this life, my life would have been that of a stupid monster crawling through the wreckage.
"I don’t blame anyone for the life I have. There were other options...yes...but this was the one I chose."
"[Other options? In regard to what?]"
"You’re awfully talkative today." As for Nadir, even if I don’t admit it, I chose the military because it was the best way to protect Nadir, something I know Nadir would never, ever have allowed, but he didn’t have much of a choice.
After I said I was joining the military, he wanted to come with me. I never forced him, but the fact that I chose to go regardless of his opinion led him down this path too.
"[You seem depressed. Graduation was supposed to be a happy day. Your students are happy, so seeing you like this is strange.]"
"...Haaa...just forget about it. I already did my part. All that’s left is to watch the new generation...I don’t really have everything I need to stay in the military anymore, anyway..." I look at my prosthetics.
Ashlyn helped me try to communicate with these prosthetics, something that never really worked out. I wonder what it’s like trying to communicate with the [Cube]. That cube doesn’t speak, so Ashlyn is the only one who can really tell what the cube "thinks" about everything.
"[Are you proud of the students you trained? You must be very proud of their success, right?]"
"...Proud...I’m not proud that I trained them, and they might be grateful to me now, but they won’t be so grateful in the future...I led every one of them down some very difficult paths. I can’t even say I’m proud of what I turned them into."
"It would be incredibly hypocritical. How can I be proud of creating weapons that will be used and discarded? Many of the scientists who created incredible weapons throughout human history regretted their creations after seeing the damage they caused."
"I imagine their future a few years from now...when they become too arrogant because of the power they have, too confident, and start to hate the system that uses them...power is intoxicating. What if one of them became a problem?"
"[...]"
"In the military, I was always taught to look at the worst-case scenario in everything, and my students are the result of two years of training, a project that has the power to finish wiping out humanity..."
"So no, I’m not happy. I’m not proud of them, nor am I proud of myself. I only did what I was told to do and nothing more. It’s up to them now. They’re no longer my problem."
"[So...are you going to live alone in this apartment from now on? It’s not good for you to live without contact with other people.]"
"Something like that. Since I’m going to resign from the academy, I’ll probably live here for a while before looking for a house somewhere away from the city."
"[You said you would try to become a military instructor for your students...did you lie?]"
"...Yes, I lied."
"[That’s cruel.]"
"They have no way of knowing. If they send me a letter or message, I can just say I wasn’t accepted, and if any of them finds out it was a lie, I’ll just cut contact with them."
"[Zenith, you’re cruel and cold. Those girls care about you. Doing this will hurt them.]"
"...I’m not a moralist. You’re not going to make me change my mind just by saying they’ll get hurt. I decide what I want for my life, and I don’t want to get involved in any of this anymore. And since I can’t go back to the military, I’ll look for something else to do."
"I was pretty interested in robotics. I think I’ll start studying robotics and use my money to buy parts and try to build robots and weapons, since I’ll have plenty of free time and I won’t even be able to use my powers."
"[...Humans are so complex. I hope you’re choosing something you won’t regret.]"
"I never regret my choices. Now be quiet. I’m busy watching television. Get off the screen so I can watch."