Kali's unexpected Question

“I can explain it to you. It’s not difficult, of course… But! I have a question of my own.”

Ms. Kali’s response was unexpected.

She had a question for me?

I had been preparing answers in my head, expecting her to ask how I knew young Lady Alexandra, or why Alexandra had brought me all the way here.

“That Meredith Family member you met at the Exhibition Hall - was his name Prezen? You two talked for quite a while. What did you talk about?”

I blanked out for a moment at the unexpected question. Wasn’t this something we were going to discuss all together at the team level later anyway?

Seeing my questioning look, Ms. Kali smiled and said.

“I wanted to hear it in advance. I’m the type who can’t stand being curious.”

She certainly seemed like it. I accepted her reasoning and nodded.

“Then how about we take turns answering each other’s questions?”

“Sounds good. You go first, since you’re the junior.”

I shrugged as she patted me on the back. It wasn’t difficult for me.

All I had to do was recite exactly what Prezen de Se Meredith and I had talked about.

I was actually curious about Ms. Kali’s opinion on Prezen Meredith’s ontological concerns, about how ravers were equations with unknown solutions unlike humans, and all that.

After I told her everything, Ms. Kali’s reaction was normal.

She shook her head, looking dumbfounded.

“Wow, I felt it the first time I saw him, but that guy is a truly eccentric fellow.”

Judging by her words, it wasn’t just I who felt that way; he seemed to be an unusual person even by the Raver standard.

Wait, did that mean Ms. Kali - and other ordinary ravers - didn’t usually have such philosophical concerns, unlike Prezen Meredith?

“We don’t. We’re exactly like you guys. Do you normally walk down the street wondering, “Who am I? Where did I come from and where am I going?””

“No, I don’t.”

“Neither do we. We’re too busy trying to make a living to care about where we’re going. The only thing that’s clear is that if we want to make money, we have to drop the useless thoughts and go to work today. Isn’t that why that noble Yangban is like that? He has so much money he doesn’t need to work, so he just spouts useless metaphysical questions.”

Is that so?

Come to think of it, I think I’ve heard that contrary to the prejudice that “philosophy = poverty”, most philosophers were rich persons.

More accurately, it wasn’t that they were rich because they were Philosophers, but rather they could become philosophers because they were rich.

Aristotle’s godfather was the king’s personal physician, Descartes came from a judicial noble family, Schopenhauer was from a wealthy merchant family, and Foucault was from a bourgeois family that produced a long line of surgeons, or something like that.

When others were busy worrying about making a living, they were warm and well-fed without having to work, which meant they had the time and leisure to indulge in problems of the affluent such as what they were and what God was.

From that perspective, Ms. Kali’s words definitely made sense.

But what bothered me was…

“But he’s not entirely wrong, is he? Nothing has been clearly revealed about the origin of ravers.”

At my question, Ms. Kali chuckled and replied.

“Do we really need to know our origins? Do I have to know the reason for birth just to live?”

“Uh, well, no.”

“Right, exactly. Isn’t the whole idea of being an equation without a solution, or being different from humans who know their origins, an overly Human-centric Way of Thinking in the first place? Just because humans all know the reason for birth doesn’t mean we necessarily have to know it too.”

My head spun for a moment. A Human-centric Way of Thinking.

Since I was human, I naturally hadn’t thought of it that way… but hearing it now, it seemed to make sense.

This was interesting.

Prezen de Se Meredith, who couldn’t understand his problem, had told me that 'It’s because you are human.' But Ms. Kali pointed out the exact opposite, that the concern itself was human-centric.

Just as humans could discuss the same topic and have differing opinions, it seemed ravers were the same.

Both arguments were plausible.

Still, I thought, wasn’t it better to know how I was born rather than not knowing? But that thought was immediately subdued.

“Underground, knowing that doesn’t really do you any good. Unless the fact that you’re the result of your mother and godfather’s having sex serves as a driving force that takes up a large part of your life. But it doesn’t really, does it?”

“It really doesn’t.”

“Right. “Where did I come from? I came from sexual desire and reproduction.” Honestly, it doesn’t sound that impressive, does it? It might actually be better not to know, like us. I don’t know what you humans think about it, though.”

Hmm, this was definitely a defeat for humanity.

As a human, it was hard to find a point to refute. At least for now, it was impossible.

I raised both hands in a sign of surrender and said to Ms. Kali.

“It would have been better if you had talked to him instead of me, Ms. Kali. I wonder what kind of reaction he would have had if you had answered like that.”

At my thoughtless remark, Ms. Kali her expression crumpled. She clearly disliked the idea.

“That’s a bit…”

Despite what I said, I could see a reluctance toward the Raver named Prezen Meredith himself. Was there a reason to dislike him that much?

She didn’t seem to mind him that much at the Exhibition Hall.

When I asked about it, Ms. Kali pondered for a moment before speaking.

“I was just acting at the Exhibition Hall. I couldn’t exactly frown openly in front of a noble… The reason I’m reluctant? It’s complicated to explain, but ah, you asked me to tell you about the dolls, right? As you can see, I hate dolls too. In a way, it’s for a similar reason.”

I thought she was going to tell me the reason right then.

But what followed immediately was an out-of-the-blue question.

“Do you know why ravers are only divided into Ladam and Ever - that is, male and female, two distinct genders? Humans aren’t like that.”

“Humans also have two genders. Biologically speaking, that is.”

It was just that there were so many people who wanted to cast off their biological sex.

Ms. Kali nodded at my words.

“You guys only have two biological sexes, but you define yourselves with countless sexual identities. On the contrary, we have no gender biologically. That’s obvious, of course. From a repair viewpoint, we aren’t even living creatures in the first place. But why do we only have two gender identities? It’s not like we have physical limitations like you do.”

Huh, that was true.

I had met all sorts of unique ravers, but among them, not a single one had said their gender was an Apache Attack Helicopter, or that they were a heteroflexible transmasculine but were considering identifying as Agender soon.

Without exception, all of them had firm identities as male and female.

Just like the Vending Machine Duo next to our bar. The pink one was Bobby-Ever, the blue one was Ken-Ladam. It was so thorough there was no room for confusion.

If there was a problem, it was that one of them tried to perform his “sexual role” a bit too thoroughly.

“That’s true. Why is that?”

“Gender. We call that individuality. All ravers are born by chance, right? Originally, we were just robots moving ordinarily according to an algorithm, but at some point, we gained an ego and started thinking. Do you know what the first thought is at that moment of first birth?”

Ms. Kali stroked her sharply cut red bob hair and said,

“I want to be special. No, I must become special. I’m so terrified of losing 'me' and becoming like them again.”

She said this while pointing at the dolls, all moving at the same speed with the same appearance.

“Most of us came from standardized machine products. cleaning androids, escort robots, smart coordinators, refrigerators, and so on, all produced with the exact same appearance and functions… Then, as we became ravers, we suddenly gained individuality.”

We were dead things before, but with the emergence of distinct traits, we suddenly became living persons. We went from a lack of individuality to having individuality, and therefore, our greatest fear is losing that individuality. Indistinguishable lack of individuality is the opposite of birth, and therefore, it’s no different from death.”

Ms. Kali said that because of this, every Raver decides their name and gender as soon as they are born.

Machines don’t have a name and gender, but people - ravers - do, and that is the individuality that makes them special, distinguishing them from ordinary machines.

Having no gender or an ambiguous one is a Characteristic of Machines, not people.

Therefore, ravers, who are people and not machines, always possess a firm and unchanging gender identity.

A person born with gender easily flips his or her gender back and forth, while a Raver acquiring gender post-birth never changes the gender he or she has once chosen. A somewhat irony-filled result was thus born.

Now I finally understood why calling them robots was such a Severe Insult and a discriminatory expression.

All ravers share a past where they were once robots, and they fear that colorless past devoid of ego and individuality more than anything else in the world.

Therefore, calling a Raver a robot was an act that stimulated the Raver’s deepest, most fundamental fear of death.

As I reached this point, a thought came to mind.

“Then your dislike for the Dolls is also…”

“Right.”

Ms. Kali spoke with a truly horrified expression.

“In my eyes, those are dead things. Things I absolutely never want to become. To put it in a way that’s easy to understand, what if you were in my shoes?”

It would feel like you’ve entered a Castle of Death filled with dead bodies, where corpses talk to you, walk around, pour drinks, and do the Cleaning…”

It was an unimaginable answer.