With hir new robot body, the militant, nearly fanatic vegan, considers going home to try to get everyone to pledge to be rid of their 'dirty' animal bodies and give up ever eating anything again. After all, isn't eating the same as killing, be it plant or animal? Hir therapists are starting to run out of ideas.
@internutter/challenge-03243-h334-is-this-a-perfect-body -- Anon Guest
"You cannot go free, not yet," said the Phloran therapist. "You do not understand the wrongs you have done."
"But I've acknowledged every one of them," argued Lass. "I consumed living things for my own benefit. I caused indirect harm to living things. I ate pets. I ate parts of people. I was not the clean soul I am now. Today, I only consume the clean and free energy of light and ambient radiation. I am in an immortal shell and my self is free of sin."
Dymenschscha took a deep breath and started over. "Those are truths, but they are not the whole truth. You remember purposefully invading our territories despite being told to stay away, right? You remember making sure that you had to stay?"
"I knew that this world was paradise," said Lass. "I was correct. I have been purged of my sinful form."
"You committed self-neglect and self-murder," corrected Dymenscha. "Another crime. Until you understand, you cannot begin to make progress. Until you acknowledge all your crimes, you can't begin to make reparations."
"You can be clean, too," said Lass. "Abandon the sinful body and live forever in metal and wires. Let the world be natural and free."
"You were part of the natural and free world," argued Dymenscha. "You could have lived in harmony with your surroundings, but you shaped it to suit your needs. You claim to be selfless and giving, yet you also insist that the rest of the universe adhere to your morality. And you don't even understand how that is wrong."
"Are you not insisting that I adhere to your morality?"
"You have committed crimes here. You have entered our spaces and broken our laws. You have ignored consequences and acted as if you have all the rights and none of the responsibilities. Can you at least acknowledge that?"
"Laws are a social construct. The laws of nature doubly so."
"So you would re-order nature. Make carnivores into herbivores. According to your ideas of right and clean."
"Is it possible? Do we have the technology?"
Dymenscha took that as a 'yes'. "In an environment with nothing but herbivores, the herbivores eat all the plants, then starve to death. Is this clean? Is this right?"
"They can become machines, too. They can be as clean as me. We can all be clean."
"In making a rabbit clean, it has to die. Is that not dirty to your mind?"
"I want," said Lass, "a world without death. Without death, there can be no cruelty. It will be pure."
Desperate, Dymenscha tried, "Can you understand that trying to make you see the truth is cruel to me?"
"You don't have to," said Lass. "I'm happy. I'm not harming anything any more."
"You harmed yourself," argued Dymenscha. "You harmed hundreds here. How many others have you hurt in your excellent ignorance? Can you even begin to see it?"
"All they need to do is become pure. It can be arranged, can't it?" Lass had a dreamy sing-song whisper to their voice. It was terrifying.
"You are not pure," said Dymenscha. "Even now, you cause harm. You would cause harm to so much more." Images on a screen, showing the scraping bare of natural areas just to build a factory. "This is the making of the facility for your new, clean body. This is where they make spare parts for your form. This is all the barrels of chemicals that have to be processed after those parts are made. This is the processing facility..."
"Stop!"
"These are the roads that had to be built to make it all happen."
"STOP!"
"These are the environmental changes that occurred just for your allegedly clean body."
"STOP IT!"
"Do you realise? Do you see? There's no such thing as clean. There's no such thing as living without harm. Every action has a consequence."
"Then I will do nothing."
"That," said Dymenscha, "is even worse."
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