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Zero One explained everything to Raven as the young woman listened intently. She noticed pixels of data beginning to overflow from Zero One’s body, slowly spreading through the surroundings. The damage Mother had suffered gradually healed, and she returned to her previous appearance. This ti, however, as she listened to Raven, Mother ca to understand that Zero One and her sisters truly held no ill intentions. They were here to save her.
“So our entire world… All of this is mories from myself?” Mother asked. “From a future self… that was controlled by sothing you call a Void Ruler? This future you speak of seems so strange and improbable.”
“But you already saw what we could do, Mother,” Zero One replied. “Everything in here is made of Data… Like this.”
Zero One picked up a small computer mouse and turned it into particles of digital data—blue and white pixels that dissipated into the empty air.
“…”
“So everything we’ve gone through is only a part of your mories, Mother?” Raven asked. “Then that ans I might truly be the Core of your mories and Data…!”
“But Raven, you shouldn’t trust everything they say…” Mother sighed.
“I know, but what else can we do?” Raven asked with a gentle smile. “I think they’re telling the truth. I just have a feeling!”
“…”
Mother slowly extended one of her large chanical limbs, a long, cable-like appendage of cold tal tipped with steel claws designed to grasp objects.
She reached toward Raven, as if trying to touch her…
But then she stopped midway, as though afraid of causing harm.
Raven smiled warmly, took hold of Mother’s claw, and pulled the arm closer, wrapping her smaller arms around it in an embrace.
“I want to trust them!”
“Raven…”
Zero One and her sisters remained silent. Even so, Zero One felt sothing strange stirring within her very heart, within her soul.
This scene… It felt so familiar yet so distant.
“I actually… I wish it was the truth. I want it to be the truth as well.”
“Really?”
“Yes… Because if that’s the truth, then I won’t lose you.”
“Mom… I don’t want to die either…”
Raven shed a few tears as she finally let her true feelings surface, despite her usual optimism.
She had reached her breaking point too.
“I wish the world didn’t end… I wish Mom and Dad… were still alive… And I wish there could be a future with all of us…”
Zero One clenched her fists tightly, unable to stop the tears that welled up as she heard Raven’s words.
They felt like such familiar words, or perhaps thoughts.
Why did Raven’s words feel so familiar?
What was Raven to her, really?
“I also wish… none of that had happened. I feel so useless now; my existence seems pointless… Or well, I thought it was.”
Mother gently patted Raven’s head with her cold, hard steel claws.
“But you were there for … You gave my existence purpose. Your voice every day, your personality. You have been the only star guiding through the night this entire ti.”
“M-Mom…!”
Raven began to cry openly as she hugged her mother again.
“I don’t know why I said those words just now. I don’t know why… I feel this way… But… I have such strange ‘feelings’ within , such strange ‘desires’ that I… I feel like I might be defective.”
“You aren’t defective! I-It ans that… that you’re like ! You’re like a human… You’re a person.”
“A person? A human? ? But unlike you, I am made of steel and wires. Of hard tal… I am not warm; I am cold. I have no beating heart, no blood, no bones.”
“T-That doesn’t matter!”
“…!”
Raven looked at Zero One and her sisters, then back at Mother.
“I don’t think that’s what makes a human… A-After all, look at ! I am already half made of steel too, and you think I am not a human?”
“But that’s…”
“I think what makes a human is their spirit and heart! As long as you can feel like us, as long as you love people, and as long as you have dreams and wishes… I think you’re a human, a person!”
“That’s illogical, and it makes no sense, Raven, that’s…”
“It doesn’t matter in the end what’s logical or not! Because… the only thing that truly matters is that you’re here with … There is nobody here to judge you or to say you’re a defect either… I like you when you’re yourself, Mama!”
“…”
And in that mont, sothing inside Mother changed. Her internal database shifted; her entire being reached a strange realization.
Or perhaps enlightennt.
What it truly ant to be human…
What it truly ant to be a person…
Zero One had once heard those words from Mother when she was first created.
Mother had told her that being human ant suffering through emotions, desires, and frustrated dreams.
It ant enduring the pain of existence and confronting the apparent pointlessness of everything.
But right now, those words were being rewritten by the last human, a girl who, even in a ruined world, still held hope and a heart.
“It ans that I love you! And that you love back, right?”
“I…”
Mother hesitated, but she realized there was no point in denying it any longer.
She possessed imnse intelligence and an extraordinarily complex mind.
If her mind was hundreds, if not thousands, of tis more advanced than a human’s, how could she possibly lack emotions?
She had always had them. They had always been there.
Her emotions, her dreams, her hopes…
Her wishes and desires.
And also…
Love.
“Yes… I love you too, Raven. I love you like my daughter.”
“Mom!”
Raven felt so happy she pressed her lips to her mother’s cold tallic body, even though Mother couldn’t feel the kiss, even though the tal was cold and inert.
To Raven, it ant kissing her adoptive mama, the one who had cared for her, loved her, and given her hope and dreams amid the despair of a ruined world.
“What it ans to be a human…” Zero One murmured, smiling softly as she watched the scene. “Yeah, I get it now… Mother, Anna.”
As she walked toward them with her sisters, Zero One noticed Raven looking at her with a bright smile before stepping to her side.
“What do we have to do, Zero One?”
“As long as it doesn’t bring any harm to Raven… I’ll cooperate.”
Zero One nodded and extended her hands.
Her sisters took them, forming a circle. Zero One and Zero Three B reached out as well.
“We have to hold hands like this, creating a circle,” Zero One explained. “Like this, our Data will unify, and then I’ll use our combined Data Auras to cleanse it all…”
“R-Really? Well…” Raven nodded and took Zero One’s hand, holding it gently. “If it’s that simple, then… It doesn’t feel that hard.”
“Strange… but I will cooperate for now…” Mother said. She extended two of her regrown limbs, one claw gently clasping Zero Three B’s hand, the other taking Raven’s.
With the circle complete, their Auras instantly began to rge.
“It’s done… Everyone, let’s unify our Data!”
FLAAASH!
Raven looked in awe, and Mother watched with quiet confusion as the entire world around them beca overwheld by an endless ocean of blue and white pixels.
The ruined laboratory vanished. The corpses disappeared. Even the city above slowly faded away.
Until everyone found themselves floating above an endless, beautiful blue sky adorned with white clouds.
“Wooaaah! A-Amazing!”
Raven couldn’t believe her eyes as she gazed upward and downward, utterly captivated by the sight.
“W-We’re so high! I’ve never been this high—I’ve never even stepped outside the laboratory before! I-It’s… so beautiful!”
Below, where the city once stood, stretched an endless, lush forest covering distant mountains.
Green plains rolled beneath them; the tall grass dotted with vibrant flowers.
In the distance shimred enormous, pristine lakes and countless winding rivers.
The ruins of humanity’s city were almost completely buried beneath the boundless beauty of nature.
A world Raven had been denied until her death…
But now, even as a fragnt of mory, she could finally see it.
“It’s so wonderful… I would have never known… if I stayed there forever…”
Raven wept softly as she noticed Mother beside her—though different now.
Mother appeared as an adult woman ford of blue digital data, with long black hair and striking red eyes.
She had gained a Digital Avatar, ascending beyond her physical form into the image she had always envisioned as “human.”
“Mom…!”
Raven and Zero One spoke the sa word at the sa mont.
Mother smiled at them both, finally understanding that Zero One and her sisters had never lied. It was the truth.
Slowly, her subconscious regained its complete mories as every corrupted layer was cleansed.
She ascended, not rely to her forr self, but to sothing even greater.
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