Dustwalker

by Tiffany Roberts

“Does a thing have to be flesh and blood to be alive?” he asked, voice low and brimming with anger. “Do humans own that term, that they get to define it?”

“I think, I reason, I react to the world around me. I question what I know and see, and I wonder what the future might bring, though I know it won’t likely be different than the past. I hope!” His voice dwindled, becoming something raw. “I yearn.”

There was a chance he’d eventually discover the nature of his programming out in the Dust. But with Lara, he might learn how to live.

Was that the purpose of life? Was it simply a transient state between creation and destruction, birth and death, existence and nonexistence? A thing made more precious by its very frailty, made more miraculous because it had survived overwhelming odds, a thing that defied the universe by simply being?

“Let this ring be my vow. To protect you. To provide for you. To give you all you need that’s within my power, and find a way to give you whatever’s not.”

“Then I vow to protect you, too, to the best of my ability. To place my trust in you and never break yours. To remind you, every day, that you are alive.”

“I’ll keep you safe, Lara Brooks.” She smiled, her breath tickling his skin, and placed a hand on his forearm. “I know.”

She kissed him. “Thank you for giving me a future to look forward to.” “It’s nothing you haven’t already given me, Lara Brooks.”

“Oh, really? Well, then, I think I might be too worn out for it by then, anyway.” She walked past him. “I thought you already are, with the way you’ve been talking.” “Smart ass.” “My ass is, at best, of average intelligence.”

“My vow to you remains,” Ronin said, squeezing her hand gently, “but I must amend it. I will love you, even after darkness takes me.”

“I spent a long time searching,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the back of Lara’s hand, “for my purpose. My programming. All of us were made for a reason.” He chuckled. “It’s not a reason I would have guessed…but it doesn’t matter anymore. I found what I was looking for before Newton told me any of that. “It was you, Lara. You’re my purpose, you’re my reason for carrying on, the reason I haven’t sat down in an abandoned building and never stood up again. I don’t think I’m selfish, normally, but I need you. I just found you, and I don’t think I can go any further without you.”

The whole point is that you have free will. You can experience emotions, you have doubts and regrets, you can fall in love. That is what it means to be human. It was never about being an organic bipedal lifeform evolved from primates.”