Altered States

Dear Mom,

I killed someone today for the first time. Figure I won't beat around the bush; you always did hate that. The school sent me out on a mission to stop a vandal or saboteur or bored kid or whatever you want to call him; it doesn't matter. He fired on me and I killed him. Cause and effect, like you always told me when you were explaining thrusters, or the market.

I didn't think about it; I reacted on instinct, like the school taught me. I'd been worried when I first came out here about whether it was right or wrong, but none of that occurred to me when the firing started. I was surprised that it took such a short time; I thought it was much longer while it was happening. We fired until finally he quit, and I took his stuff.

What I don't understand is that I'm not sad or happy over it. That surprises me; that it doesn't matter whether he was a kid or not. He was the guy shooting at me. Is this a side effect of the books I've injected? Is this part of the  rewiring that virus is doing to me?

Anyway, that's how things are. Hope to hear back from you soon and hear you are doing well. Say hey to Dad.

***************************

I sat for a while after I finished, playing the message over again. The wreckage was drifting away, inertia carrying it off, eventually into deep space. They say the pod has made us immortal; that we can't die as long as we have a clone parked in a station somewhere. The pilot of that craft was a mere human, his meat still trapped in what was left of his ship; setting out on a journey of thousands and thousands of years probably. Would I still be around one day when he finally reached another system; would I be able to look in at his frozen, mangled body and say "I know you. You were my first" ?

"Close file." "Would you like me to send it now, Captain?" the ship asked. "I have found 200 Bailey Morels in the Luminaire system if you would like to--"

"Delete file. Confirm delete file." My parents probably wouldn't even open the file if it ever reached them; not since they'd found religion. I don't know if they'd even have understood it anymore. "Take us back to dock, ship. Contact my agent and let him know the mission is accomplished. Then prepare to uninstall me."

I felt like being with a mere human tonight, and having a real drink in my belly.