"I shouldn't have to explain my frame of mind to you." He said, nearly choking on his words. He had no idea why, but he did. "I just... I'm just tired of it all." He sat down and put his hand on his head. "I don't like it."
"Well, you got your life out in front of you to go this far, why can't you just keep on-"
"You're messing with stuff- That's the problem with all of you! Gosh, you were around generations and generations- Seen things I couldn't have dreamed. You'll be the oldest man alive, and I'll be dead. You will kill me, and you'll feel guilty for it, and then you'll find yourself some other bright young thing to get to follow you around, and plunge into your terrible, horrible machines." He took a tab of paper out of his pocket with shaky hands, placing it on his tounge as he always did. He sighed, then pounded his fist on the table.
"I told you they would lose their use-"
"Don't tell me what to do. I've had enough, and it doesn't matter." He folded his arms, staring at the flawless tiles below his feet for a while. "Can't you see- I doubt you can even feel that much guilt. Look at me- My own parent engineered me as some kind of relic. You're real, like all of the old ones and the ones that don't have a billion pennies to their names. Dark eyes and wiry hair, a longer face and large hands. I'm something they fished out of somewhere far from nostalgic, some kind of prehistoric joke. Like all of my generation. I probably don't have any real DNA in me, with this yellowish hair and pale eyes- Just like the movies. Like some sort of toy, and I still get those odd looks from people. Whoever did this to me didn't even have the decency to stick around."
"In my time people were different. I remember when-"
"And I don't. There is no way for you to know what that is like. You have seen the rise and fall of civilizations, you have walked upon open, living soil. You have seen the sky a blue that I can never see. You have expirienced life, and belonged to it, and you still want to mess around things you have no buisness with."
"Alkyrteen, it's discovering a new world, discovering many new worlds, risking sacrifice for discovery of wonderous things, that's what we've dedicated our lives to."
"That's all I could do. It's all I could think, and I'm sick of it. I've seen things burn, I've seen people die, I've seen what I could very well become if I stuck around as long as you have. I've seen what could be the future, I could see the past. Some day, you're going to shove me into something that'll make me mad, or blind, or torn up into a bunch of rotting pieces. I am not an apprentice, but a slave to what you call 'Discovery'."
"You've got to stop taking those pills or whatever you've cooked up for yourself. They're killing your brain."
"You're not going to even say anything to me, then. Just going to walk off, because you're above anything that isn't cerebral after being so old."
"Look, I care about you. Is that what you want to hear? I care about you so much that I'm still going. This could have been my last trip out, could have disconnected when I was past the gravity shield and floated to the nearest star. My work had been the love of my life, and I was starting to lose touch with it. And you show up, giving me a spark of curiosity again. I'm going on with my projects, and you don't have to follow me. I'll go in myself, by myself, and hope that the radiation or atmospheres doesn't get me. If I had relied on anything else, I would have been gone a long time ago. But I relied on my brain, like a computer. I'm not real- I've lived for nearly nine centuries. You're as real as anyone I've seen, from the 23rd century to now. I may be reckless, but after all of these years, I feel guilt better than any other man in the world. If anything would happen to you, I would be through."
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