What I Love

Am I a bad person?

Answer me truthfully. I promise I won’t be angry or take revenge, because I won’t be around for that long.

Well, I don’t suppose you can decide without me telling you what I did – or, rather, failed to do.

I’m a Protector. I was raised, born and bred, alive for one purpose and one purpose only:

To make sure that my Principle lived. Safe. Alive. Well. No matter whether they wanted to live or not, I was to protect them with my life, nothing else.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I have to die. A dead Protector is just a lump of meat, wasted money and time, training gone and
dead. Just like them. Useless.

I’m not to question orders, just do them. I may disobey anything if there is a viable reason – meaning anything compromising the Principle’s safety. I can torture, maim, and murder millions, for my Principle. That’s what I’ve been made for. My job is not to think, but to do.

To be.

A fearsome bodyguard, fierce and terrible yet invisible at the same time. Silent as light, a conscience as insignificant as a cobweb,
ruthless and fearless and deadly.

I couldn’t do that.

Am I really a bad person, if it wasn’t my fault? I can tell you don’t believe me, but it’s true: My handlers, the scientists who were in
charge of Imprinting me to a Principle (the one person who defined my life), forgot.

My blindfold slipped. And, for the first time, I saw.

The world, really, or my world, at least. It was beautiful, but I didn’t know what it was called at the time. I don’t know if it was a person or a thing, but I know I had to protect it. It is mine: To keep, to love, to cherish forever and ever until I die. It was the first thing I ever saw and the last thing I ever want to see, the only thing I have ever cared and will ever care about.

They didn’t notice, and I kept my eyes closed until they led me into the room and ripped the cloth out, taking away my handicap
and letting me see the person who bought me.

I can remember sounds, words, but my only thought facing my second Principle was this:

Ugly.

I don’t remember what they did. I went in and out of white, when I could see again they weren’t so ugly. But still not as beautiful as my first sight. I think they brushed it off as in the normal range, but it wasn’t. Not my normal.

Am I a bad person, if I want to protect the one thing in the world I love? I saw it, or he, or she again. Many times, the same yet different each time. They were just as stunning as the first time, flawless and complete. I’ve seen them countless times, and would spend every second of my life bathing in their warmth, overcome by perfection and love.

Am I a bad person, if I didn’t bother protecting the person who wanted to kill my beloved? They were always secondary, because I didn’t know my first’s name. I wanted to know them, but I couldn’t get away from endless hours shut up away from them, plain and dull and dark.

Am I a bad person, if I let the person who wanted to kill my one pleasure die? I knew of the plot, I could see the gun, but I didn’t move, didn’t even think of it. He deserved to die.

Am I a bad person, if my perfect being was saved, and countless other lives too, at the cost of one?

Am I a bad person, if I let my second Principle die? They deserved it, truly.

Am I a person, if this one thing is all I can see, no matter where I look, or go? No matter what I see, it’s there, always.

Am I a person at all? Do I deserve a trial, a lawyer, a chance to explain? The Handlers don’t seem to think so. Do you? Are my eyes too big, my ears too small, my height too much? What defines a human? A soul? The ability to feel, to love? If that, then I am more human than anything.

If not, then who am I? What am I? What have I done and what will I do? I’m not a person, remember? Tell me. It’s not like anyone will hear me. Or, if they do, believe me.

Tell me. Am I a bad person?

All I did was fall in love. Is love not one of the most human of emotions? If I am not human, am not a person, how did I love?

Was it not love? Was it like, or happiness? Tell me, please. I want to know. Give me a reason. Show me. Give me.

When I die, what will become of them, my Principle, my real one? Will they notice? Will they even know? I don’t mind if they don’t. I am nothing, they are everything. Tell me.

If I am a bad person, then is my Principle bad as well? Like calls to like, but opposites attract. I want to know. Please.

What was my crime? All I did was see The Sunrise.

(fin)