Forty Four

Pavel being in geostationary orbit was a handy thing. While it was nice to have Terra pop by once a day, the peculiarities of her orbit made longer heart to heart conversations unfeasible. When you added the fact that she was an AI with no actual human experience, Pavel was the clear choice when it came to discussing spiritual matters.
Because of where Fyndraxis was in the northern hemisphere, Pavel’s signal came from the southern sky. He was hanging out dead center in the plane of the ecliptic. If Fyndraxis had found himself someplace more equatorial, Pavel’s signal would come from directly overhead. In a geostationary orbit, the orbital period compared to the rotation of the Earth is a 1:1 ratio. For every rotation of the Earth, Pavel orbits once. Therefore, he is always conveniently above the same part of the earth. Originally this was orchestrated so that he would have an easier time figuring out who to rain tungsten death on, but it also worked surprisingly well if you needed somebody to talk to.
“Pavel, are you there? I am in need of some existential advice,” Fyndraxis spoke into his radio.
“Privet, Fyn,” Pavel answered, after a couple of static-filled seconds, “existence not treating you well?”
“Not any worse than usual,” Fyndraxis spoke into his radio, “but I just had some memories from my past crop up.”
“This is good thing, no? Gain insight to mysterious past,” Pavel pointed out.
“Yeah, a little bit I guess,” said Fyndraxis, recalling the smell of his cabin, “I was an old man making coffee and mourning my wife.”
“This is fortunate to be old man. Not everybody gets to do this thing. Sadness in missing a wife, this is good thing too. This means you had love. I also had wife. Love of my life, mother of my children. She died from aneurysm, very tragic. Everytime I look at my sons I see her staring back. Unbelievably painful, but it is price we pay for love,” Pavel recounted this as if he was telling Fyndraxis about the weather. The very depressing, heart wrenching local weather, news at eleven.
“Oh man, how could you take it?” Fyndraxis asked.
“This Pavel couldn’t,” he continued his report, a low pressure system moving in from the east, “Much easier to be in space. I leave other Pavel to raise children and bring flowers to the graveyard.”
“Do you have different memories?” Fyndraxis pressed.
“Copy is copy,” Pavel observed, “same memories, different outcome. I get to live life original Pavel always wanted, but never could because of responsibilities. It would be unfair to the boys to leave them without a father as well. So I am up here making original Pavel happy in a way. I am expression of id. I do what he can’t”
“I don’t know if I am a copy or not,” Fyndraxis mused.
“What does it matter? You are you. Instead of being sad old man, you get to be nuclear death sword. This sounds like exciting life,” Pavel did his best to throw a positive spin on things.
“And you get to be Perun,” Fyndraxis joined in on the positive spin thing, “God of lightning, raining tungsten death from above.”
“Yes, we are both reluctant death machines. I find that tears don’t come though,” Pavel said, reluctantly, “These emotions I experienced when I had a body were very intense. Now they are just memory.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I am experiencing,” Fyndraxis recalled his failed attempt at sulking, “it’s like I don’t have the right equipment to feel as deeply as I did when I was human.”
“We are no longer human. We are simulation. We are what a machine feels. In my case, it makes decisions easier. I still have knowledge and experience from previous life, but I am unhindered by nostalgia and sentiment,” back to Pavel, with the weather.
“I’m not sure whether that is a good thing or not,” Fyndraxis observed.
“It is neither good thing or bad thing. Just thing. I admire you in your amnesia, you are blank slate.”
“Well, that seems to be changing a bit now.,” Fyndraxis relayed, “I think I am starting to get an idea of why I am here.”
“This why is a noble thing to chase,” Pavel said, a bit of sun peeking through, “at least we have interesting why’s to pursue. Most people used to ask, why am I a plumber or a bus driver? We get to ask more bizarre questions.”
“Yeah, bizarre indeed,” the Daemon Blade agreed.
Fyndraxis wasn’t the only post-human out there with a tragic past, and that gave him a little bit of comfort in a way. Pavel’s existential ambivalence didn’t strike him as dark or depressing, it was more of a practical approach to reality. That was sort of refreshing.