002 - Audio
I'm getting tired of people asking after the hawks. If you really want to know, myself and a friend released them. Chaining birds up so you can use them is a travesty and I won't allow it while I'm here. They deserve to fly free and hunt as they will.
You're welcome for the taste of freedom in this dreary place.
You're welcome for the taste of freedom in this dreary place.
And a long life has anything to do with a soul? I was under the impression souls are... the individual, not bestowing physical qualities on the body.
[His optics are briefly turned off as he tries to think.]
In your world... universe, perhaps. Is this concept so impssoible to accept? Rules of existence aren't universal; the very variability of life should point to that. I am not just a something, but an inidvidual. Take away my spark, and what you have then would be something less than I am now. An empty frame.
You would restrict "life" to merely being biological, organic propagation and existence? Not the creation, interaction, spreading of culture, of relationships and interaction between individuals?
[This is... admittedly, an exceedingly interesting conversation, but Jetfire has to pause for less than seconds at a time at some point, to be able to speak evenly. This is a bit too... personal.]
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[Iramaat, for her part, is trying to keep her voice even, but she's not doing a very good job of it.]
I do not restrict it; that is how it is! Machines cannot live! To claim otherwise is a mockery of everything normal and right in the world. I do not know what powers you or what compels you to think you live, but it is not life.
[She makes a sound of disgust at the back of her throat.]
What does life have to do with culture? They are separated.
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Iramaat, as long as you're actually speaking to me, I would like the courtsey of either being addressed by my designation, which happens to be Jetfire, or nothing at all. Not a word that, while it ought to be value neutral, you put it below anything organic in the way you speak it.
[He's hard pressed not just to slam the journal shut; ideological differences for all that, but being denigrated as not being alive to his face (er, so to speak) is a bit much.]
To be honest, that claim of the soul giving the body life? From where I'm standing, considering I have seen no proof of a human's soul, I could say as far as I know, neither of those claims are true for humans, or anything organic.
[He can play this game too. He's usually more collected than this.]
Compels me? I'm a free spark, I have nothing that dictates that I should have a claim to life; I do that merely by my spark existing; being who and what I am! Your definition of a 'machine', I assume, uses the context of humans' technology which is, indeed, unliving, but what I come from is not.
My spark grants me life as well as being me. If I was a religious mech, There's always the Covenant of Primus and what it says about our sparks come from Primus. [A brief pause as he supresses the growling of his engine.]
What is life without culture? Merely existence. Bare subsistence; anything sentient would require stimulation in the form of ineractions with other individuals, creating patterns both social and emotional, making culture.
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What is life without culture? Look at plants. Look at the trees. Look at all the growing things of the world and then tell me that life must have culture for it to be called life. Culture is an invention of humans - and one which I take much pleasure in, considering I owe it my existence - but it is not a requirement for life, anymore than speech or the ability to fly. There is beauty and joy in simple survival and tending to needs unfettered by concerns of what is right and proper or thoughts of what life means.
Which takes nothing from the thoughts of people, but for you to claim that it is not as good a life while in the same breath telling I that I must redefine my concept of life and of machines, it rings hollow.
[Iramaat snorts.]
You keep insisting that you have life and I don't doubt you speak and think, but that doesn't make you alive. You can enchant a wheel to move on its own, but that does not make it living! And I do not doubt you are powered by some sort of strong magic - but that does not make you like one of my people or anything else on the earth. It is simple and yet you do not understand - or refuse to!
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You'll forgive my less than gentle choice of words; it's quite hard to remain perfectly exacting when speaking while being accused of not being either alive, or an individual in my own right. [While he doesn't sound either particularly angry or cynical, the tone is flat. There's a slight noise of shifting metal as Jetfire crosses his arms.]
As I said earlier, life has many definitions, and the more basic variation of life as that of plants is hardly less than, but it is not the only form of life that exists. Which you seem to want to imply. Culture being a variation, or an expression of life would be just as valid.
[Hear that? Jetfire just briefly ground his teeth.]
If we want to be technical, I am powered by energon, which is a natural element. But all the energon in the world wouldn't help a Cybertronian if the spark is extinguished, and a spark... is not magic. [Oh, so much disbelief. He's seen what's an expression of his own creator and god smacking down an agent of ultimate evil, and only relatively recently accepted it as a something more than... natural.
Magic?
No.]
And if I refuse to understand, how much are you refusing? I know life is complex; it is both the organic reproduction and the interaction between individuals, whether those be... one-celled organisms, insects, horses, humans, or something else, yet you are saying I must be what amounts to an automaton without a... mind or personality of my own? That merely because I am not biological, I cannot be alive?
Who of us, truly, does not understand?
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You, of course. I've explained this several times and I'm not sure how much clearer I'm going to get.
[She sounds so very sure of herself when she speaks.]
I do not say that you are not an individual, just that you aren't alive. Really. Open your ears! Although I doubt anything I tell you is going to get you to understand.
[OK, she's probably just stringing him along now.]
Nor do I know what this "biological" is. What do you mean by one-celled organisms? You have very strange language.
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Death is the opposite of being alive, yes?
[The problem with Jetfire is that he has no idea how to stop discussions like this, even when it might be better for his frame of mind not to continue.]
Anything organic, not made up out of metal or other inorganic material constitutes as 'biological'. Cells are just the simplest structures that makes up, say, a human, a blade of grass, or other organic things.
[He's, really, not interested in actually explaining these things right now, but at the same time, it's something simpler than the earlier accusations.]
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[Weeeeird.]
So, all living things are made up of these cells? How strange. I have never heard of such a thing before now.
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[Simpler discussion, he can do this part, yes. Jetfire sighs slightly and shakes his helm.]
Depending on the level of technology where you are from, it will simply be impossible to see cells; they're too small.
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