Phoenix - the Insilico tales - chapter 21 - "Mono No Aware"
(originally posted 9/26/2011)
Phee kicked her chair away from the project she’d been working on and rolled toward the recharge terminal. It was the way she spent her nights now. She had been casting off more and more human habits, and as she grew used to living in the universe her mind offered, certain of those human accommodations seemed more and more wasteful. The need for a resting space, for example, was something she came to view as an unnecessarily expensive extravagance. She plugged herself into the jack, plugged her data line into her hardline terminal, and closed her eyes. When the morning came, she would already be in the lab, ready to resume work as the other lab assistants began to arrive.
In another place, beyond the synthskin and lab projects and half filled coffee cups and deadlines, Phee floated through a spinning maze of translucent blue panels, her own body glowing slighty. She’d eventually exercised a little creativity with her grid presentation, and now appeared similarly to the way Dawn had looked, but stylized and exaggerated, drifting through the grid as her shimmering angel wings fluttered gently. She’d wanted to imagine herself before the fear and anger that came with her time with Tokuma and the struggle against the TWF.
She made her way to her little memory space within the corporate node, and changed the wallpaper of the room so that she appeared to be perched atop a towering mountain overlooking a vast sea. Her vision drifted to the inscrutable pattern of the waves, and the distant crash of surf on the rocky shore below drifted into her ears.
“Was it time?” she asked herself. The objective facts were clear. The plan had succeeded. Resources were secured. Everything was in place. Funding flow was well established. Laundering was in place. Deals had been struck. Caches had even begun to be established at strategic points in dark places. Operationally, she was ready. But was *she* ready?
If she returned to the city as the frightened, scarred warrior who left, then all she would bring would be fear and suffering, regardless of the cause she fought for. This fight had to be better; nobler.
She listened to the waves, scanned the sky lazily, until her gazed fixed upon a gull, wobbling and cutting through the uneven wind, headed for a unseen spot on the crags below. It appeared to vanish behind a rock.
A few seconds passed, and there was no further sign or presence of the bird.
“....mono no aware...” Phee whispered in japanese. She stood, raised her arms, and the construct faded to a random blur of colors and sound as she ascended back up through the node entry point. She stopped briefly to change a data record. The words “remote assignment accepted” flashed briefly in red as she continued forth, passing back out of the data node.
Phee’s eyes blinked open in the darkened lab. She stood, unplugged herself, and began to assemble her possessions and supplies.
Phee kicked her chair away from the project she’d been working on and rolled toward the recharge terminal. It was the way she spent her nights now. She had been casting off more and more human habits, and as she grew used to living in the universe her mind offered, certain of those human accommodations seemed more and more wasteful. The need for a resting space, for example, was something she came to view as an unnecessarily expensive extravagance. She plugged herself into the jack, plugged her data line into her hardline terminal, and closed her eyes. When the morning came, she would already be in the lab, ready to resume work as the other lab assistants began to arrive.
In another place, beyond the synthskin and lab projects and half filled coffee cups and deadlines, Phee floated through a spinning maze of translucent blue panels, her own body glowing slighty. She’d eventually exercised a little creativity with her grid presentation, and now appeared similarly to the way Dawn had looked, but stylized and exaggerated, drifting through the grid as her shimmering angel wings fluttered gently. She’d wanted to imagine herself before the fear and anger that came with her time with Tokuma and the struggle against the TWF.
She made her way to her little memory space within the corporate node, and changed the wallpaper of the room so that she appeared to be perched atop a towering mountain overlooking a vast sea. Her vision drifted to the inscrutable pattern of the waves, and the distant crash of surf on the rocky shore below drifted into her ears.
“Was it time?” she asked herself. The objective facts were clear. The plan had succeeded. Resources were secured. Everything was in place. Funding flow was well established. Laundering was in place. Deals had been struck. Caches had even begun to be established at strategic points in dark places. Operationally, she was ready. But was *she* ready?
If she returned to the city as the frightened, scarred warrior who left, then all she would bring would be fear and suffering, regardless of the cause she fought for. This fight had to be better; nobler.
She listened to the waves, scanned the sky lazily, until her gazed fixed upon a gull, wobbling and cutting through the uneven wind, headed for a unseen spot on the crags below. It appeared to vanish behind a rock.
A few seconds passed, and there was no further sign or presence of the bird.
“....mono no aware...” Phee whispered in japanese. She stood, raised her arms, and the construct faded to a random blur of colors and sound as she ascended back up through the node entry point. She stopped briefly to change a data record. The words “remote assignment accepted” flashed briefly in red as she continued forth, passing back out of the data node.
Phee’s eyes blinked open in the darkened lab. She stood, unplugged herself, and began to assemble her possessions and supplies.
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