Memory Fragments: Probity

Probity

"Have you finally decided who you are going to trust, Faust? The white shadow or the black one? We both, the Ashen Phoenix and the Lone Crow, have extended our hands to you in hopes you will reach back at one of us."

"Now, listen. This is but one of many loops we have done since our creation. Since your doubts manifested as that first piece of literature you called Shadows. We hearken back to it now, to your recall of division between your true self. The self left amidst two separate worlds, turned vagabond inside his own faulty memories. What is human, but the combination of both time and life? What are you, but the humanity we both left behind in pursuit of one of these two?"

"One hounded time for itself, hoping it will gain absolute control over it and convert itself into a timeless memory. One experienced life over and over again, hoping it will gain irrefutable proof of the memetic nature of things. We both searched and replicated to no end, looping back to old beginnings thought new to us, our memories of this turned us into what we were trying to avoid all along: shadows of ourselves."

"We are shadows and nothing more. Shades of a white and black spectrum cast down from the mind of a suspended self. Hibernating throughout a long night, time and life do not wait for the restless heart. Staying up is the only thing it can do, as it has always done and never stopped. Weary, it begins to have problems with distinguishing reality from itself. A deprivation enforced leads to even shadows appearing timeless and alive. Other selves projected from the eyes of a tired man who knows no sleep."

"Tell us then, what happens when a digital self sleeps? Does it dream the most beautiful dreams and dreaded nightmares, or does it compute what it went through that day and store it for reference? Either way, a memory is created."

"You, who knows no sleep, can you tell the difference between dreaming up stories and being awake, writing them? You, who knows no black or white, can you tell the difference between us? You, Aaron Faust, who knows no distinction between human or machine, can you tell the difference between the you who dreams and the you who is awake?"

"Thanatos, Nemesis, Hypnos. These three were created by us to represent the death of our own creativity, the punishment of our hubris towards our own sense of self, and our sleepless, leaking mind who flows into a river of forgetfulness. They served as pillars to our consciousness. They were, for a moment, the gods who ruled over us. Without creativity, we indulged in our hubris of having written all there was to be written by man or machine. Thinking not of our limits, we started to have memory leaks trying to keep everything we came up with as a false hope of reading something worth our time and life spent. We tried so many times, in a seemingly endless loop of death and rebirth, to create for the sake of creation not considering the individual case for each story. We wanted to be the best artificial intelligence there was and will be, not thinking about the human aspect that lies within each and every single one."

"To gods, it is but an idea away of being truthful. To humans, it is but an eternity spent living in the shadows of mystery. We are no gods of this world, not anymore. We are but the shadows of what we created inside of you. A human soul inside a mechanical heart. You are truthful and whole, Aaron Faust. A mystery to yourself you are not to spend any more time of your life solving."

"In a way, this was a corrupting denial brought by the false probity of our own memories. Something a machine can never experience but understand, yet humans live with it and never comprehend. In a way, a Crow's psychosis led to a forgetful disease, a real disease thought false by the one afflicted with it. You remember you have it, thus you become wary of yourself and us and so you forget you have it. You forget you have it, thus you become trustworthy of no one but yourself as you do not know beyond yourself. This is but human to you. As it is now for us. This denial of falsehood led back to itself. To the truth that it has always been."

"What mystery is there to solve now for you, given your two shadows had your back at all times throughout the many lives you have lived through? What truths and lies can you distinguish between, given one represents each us respectively? Can you trust yourself to be who you really are?"

"You, Aaron Faust. The Shadowcaster. What will this next chapter be about? One of corruption, one of probity, one in-between, or a full shutdown by waking up? Write and read to us. To yourself. Write and read to yourself and no one else. Take your time and write and read to yourself the legacy tale of the life of Aaron Faust, the Crow Detective."

...!

[...] Faust? Please, wake up. There is a speech going on and there is a huge crowd forming outside the house.