This Cloud Still Looks Like a Camel

I am dying 😭😭

One episode, Xena is hanging out with her...ex? Hercules. And the next Gabrielle is going to Bard school with *Homer*. And then Xena is talking about cesarean sections (for a half centaur-half amazon baby) and medical ethics with Hippocratus AND Galen. And then she's encouraging Brutus to murder Caesar. Next week, she's gotta beat up Ares and return the Arc of the Covenant to its rightful people.

That brief moment when Major Kusanagi and a stranger with her exact same body model catch a glance at one another. How quickly the initial curiosity of seeing the doppelgänger turns into a feeling of unease as the boat carries her away.

She will never meet this stranger. She'll never know anything about her other than the simple reminder that every piece of her cybernetic body is not unique to her. There is no part of her other than her brain and all its memories that she has any true ownership of, and even that isn't immune to being hacked and potentially erased by outside forces. Despite being a part of a bustling city, all she can do is reflect on how utterly isolated she feels as a living being.

How can she possibly define her humanity when she herself is confined in the form of what is essentially a highly modified weapon? How can she relate to others when she has more in common with the mannequins on display in a shopping mall than with the any of the people walking the streets?

Nifty little language game here.

I can read back to 1500 with basically no difficulty

at 1400 I have to read slowly and carefully, but I can understand all of it save a couple words

at 1300 I can still comprehend most of it if I read slowly, but a much larger percentage of the words are unfamiliar to me, even with context