On Cassian

Cassian’s philosophy of image as power didn’t come out of the blue.

He is curious and cautious, learning as much as he can to survive as a human. He learns to see, to walk, and to hear. He learns to speak and taste, and what to avoid to not let the body die. And then he pours his might to uncover more of the human body’s deficiencies to avoid inconveniences. He learns that humans are fragile and need sleep. And while his soul still functions, his body refuses to cooperate when he lacks things biologically. he learns and modifies, and cuts down inefficiencies to become something more than human.

In his endeavor to become human, he becomes something beyond human. And he doesn’t care, for he knows he isn’t fully human. He is anything but human.

But being in the real world isn’t just learning biological functions. Learning speech and language opens the gates to social nuance and emotion. Such are trivial and unnecessary to him. He doesn’t fully understand why humans bother with such trivialities. So he seeks to understand.

And he does. He plays into the struggle. He gets his body chipped. He gets himself proper clothing. He formulates a mask. A mask is ever consistent with what he thinks is acceptable. And he sees things.

He falters sometimes. He is imperfect, really. And when he fails, he gets punished.

He doesn’t really understand why things work the way they do. But they are norms, and norms are what humans obey. So if he breaks the norms, then he must be in the wrong. And so he fixes and adapts.

Vitus sees nothing wrong with this. This whole endeavor is very trivial. But necessary. Especially so if he wants to learn what the top begets.

He needs to know what to expect. He needs to know the rules to survive, to fit in, to be human. He knows he is not human, but he tries anyway.

he is lonely, and he is without a concrete self. but to an entity whose existence is known to only 2 people and whose identity is never truly set in place, what is there to call his own?

in a way, the punishment and correction cycle is a game to him. figuring out the logical and illogical systems in order to achieve his goal of… something. (What is his goal? total understanding? leave a message? what is it… what was it?)

oh, the false empathy is very correct. he doesn’t understand it, but it is what people do, so what if he lies about it? is it just as real if a person thinks what he’s doing is real?

he learns the rules and emulates the rules, but by doing so, he becomes not so human. but he’s acting like what humans do, so does it count?