spoilers for the murderbot diaries network effect but i don't think im ever going to get over this one bc what if you spent every moment of your existence knowing you were statistically going to die in a self sacrificial way except it wouldnt be by choice. and then you free yourself from that system except you never even thought about placing value on your own life so you continue being sure that one day you'll die for someone elses sake except now you get to choose who. and so you keep going on these self appointed extremely dangerous missions with a passively suicidal belief that it should end successfully even if you have to die for that outcome bc thats what you were built for and its fine bc hey at least you chose to go out in a heroic blaze of glory! (and nevermind the fact that two books ago a bot did actually go out willfully protecting humans and died a hero and it wasn't you, and it kinda mega fucked you up but you refuse to process that)
and then you finally run into a scenario that is so serindipitously fucked that you have to make a copy of yourself to go die heroically. and everyone hates this plan, which you find stupid and frustrating, because they want to stop you from doing the thing you were MADE to do, the ending you've KNOWN ABOUT and CHOSEN NOT TO AVOID, the heroic sacrifice you had always planned for yourself and clearly your copy (as a copy of you) feels the same way.
but then you're not the self sacrificing hero. your copy is. You're the one behind the trigger. in the position of the humans, the ones who get to live as a result. and suddenly you have to stare your desire for self sacrifice in the face and realize that you don't want to kill yourself. that, being able to see yourself from the outside, you have to assign your own life some value because if you didn't you wouldn't hesitate to kill your copy. and if you dont want to give it the hero's ending it's INSISTING on, if it feels like it's not okay-- well shit maybe it wasn't okay every time you did the very same thing. maybe you never should have been fine with it. but youre realizing that maybe you don't want to die in self sacrifice in the same moment you have to enable that very thing for a version of yourself, and time is running out, and this is what you both had always planned for. you go through with it.
So a version of you gets the heroic ending it always expected. but it wasn't you. and you have to live with that.
You have to live.
