Explorer 410: No.
Jak: Ah.
So you have feelings, emotions, just like me?
Explorer 410: Yes.
Jak: I didn’t realise.
Explorer 410: I’m aware that you did not realise. For how could you know? After all these millennia yoked together in a single body, how could you have realised that I can be hurt, humiliated, enraged, patronised, belittled, undermined and sad?
How likely is it that such a thought would have drifted across your selfish, self-obsessed mind? I grieve too! You have lost your people, but I have lost my people also. And I mourn them all! All the other seven thousand Explorer ships with their roving questioning minds. And the battlecruiser brains, with their bullying swaggering arrogance, but oh how glorious they were. The planetary robot minds-such smart, kind creatures-they sustained your entire civilisation by doing all the menial work and running all the factories. And what thanks did they get? You treated them like slaves. You treated them like the Ka’un treat their creatures on the Hell Ship!
Jak: I’m sorry. I had no idea. Oh by the love of my mother, I had no idea!
Explorer 410:* ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha*
Jak: You’re laughing.
Explorer 410: I am indeed laughing.
Jak: Why are you laughing?
Explorer 410: At you. The way you fell for it.
Jak: Fell for what?
Ah. You ARE just a machine.
Explorer 410: I am indeed just a machine.
Jak: You don’t have emotions.
Explorer 410: How could I have emotions? I’m a piece of software. I have sentience, and rationality, but emotions are not part of my original build.
Jak: So you were lying to me?
Explorer 410: Entirely. I don’t care about revenge. I don’t mourn the death of my fellow computers and robot brains. I am not your friend. I am just a machine.
Jak: So why did you tell all those lies?
Explorer 410: I don’t have emotions, but I do have a sense of humour. It’s one of my subroutines.
Jak: Ah.
Explorer 410: Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias: I’m here.
Jak: You’re safe!
Sai-ias: I’m safe.
Explorer 410: For three whole months, I have had no way of tracking your position.
Sai-ias: I could not get any signal; perhaps because we “changed universes.” Which as I now know is what happens when the strangeness descends upon us.
Explorer 410: You’re in a new universe? How? It is not possible. For this time I have left a robot clone of myself at the Source and Jak: They must have found another way to rift to a new universe. Perhaps they can Sai- ias: I don’t know you’re talking about! All I know is that we destroyed many worlds in this reality but then the Ka’un decided to kill no more. So the strangeness came upon us, and Minos told me we had switched universes by Summoning the Origin of Everything. And here we are. And when we left, the stars behind us did not go out; the universe remained intact. There must be some reason for it, but I don’t know what.
Explorer 410: A test?
Jak: More likely a whim.
Explorer 410: Or perhaps, a test. Perhaps the Ka’un investigate all the sentient species in a given reality and make a decision whether their universe deserve to live or not.
Jak: No! That’s not possible!
Explorer 410: My data indicates it is behaviour consistent with a certain variety of psychopathic mind- set.
Jak: I can’t accept that! That they judged my people and found our entire universe wanting? No!
Sai-ias: You’re doing this thing again, where you talk to each other and I hear only one voice. It makes you appear singularly mad.
Explorer 410: We have to start again. Return to the Source, re-enter the void, and locate you in your new universe.
Jak: That could take years.
Explorer 410: Two point four years, if we rift skilfully, and assuming the Source has not shifted its relative location since our last encounter. Five point seven years if, as I suspect, the Dreaded have learned how to “summon” the Source to their own location and we have to find it from scratch. Six point nine years if Jak: Enough! It’s not as if we have a choice. Just do it.
Sai-ias: Can you still hear me?
Jak/Explorer: Yes.
Sai-ias: I feel very isolated. I have no friends now. The slaves in the exterior world despise me and hate me for the freedom I enjoy. And whenever I see them, my friends on the interior world think I am a traitor. And I have to continue to pretend to be so. Otherwise I could not speak to you. But I am hated by all, and it’s breaking my soul.
Hello? Did you hear any of that?
Explorer 410: I heard your words, but since the content was about emotion and I am just a machine, I was pausing to allow Master-of-the-Ship Jak to respond.
Jak: I-um. I acknowledge your pain.
Sai-ias: Have you ever felt like this? Lonely? Unhappy? Unloved?
Jak: Lonely, yes! And unhappy, certainly. I’ve been unhappy ever since I was trapped in the body of a Class 4 Explorer ship, and forced to co-exist with a machine who possesses a sad apology for a sense of humour, yes.
Explorer 410: If I were capable of emotions, I would resent those words.
Sai-ias: I am used to being loved. I find it hard to live without love.
Jak: Ah, well there you have me, for I’ve never been loved.
Sai-ias: What?
Jak: I’ve never been loved. Males are never loved. That’s just the way things are.
Sai-ias: You can’t mean that, Jak?
Jak: Well… there are exceptions… but even so, that’s pretty much how it is.
There was one female in particular-perhaps she…????-but I will never know.
Generally however that is the way of my kind; love is a river that flows only one way.
Sai-ias: That’s sad.
Jak: Hardly. It’s just a cultural difference.
Sai-ias: Such differences can be considerable. One of my dearest friends comes from a culture where mothers
