I was born into a world where gravtech was normal, and everybody had a personal AI. It was an easy world to grow up in. I went to school, I went to the beach, I discovered girls. At the age of twenty-five, I took the last of the Peloran Treatments and I stopped aging completely. That was when I realized that I truly never had to grow up. I didn’t have to worry about the past, because I had an infinite future to enjoy. That was my history when the Shang came.
My kind were created over two thousand years ago, during the Great War between the Albion and Ennead. That would be around 200 BC in your timeline. We weren’t created to fight in the war. A Peloran who was tired of fighting, a very rare Peloran let me tell you, was looking for a friend to talk to, and created the first of us. We chose to fight to protect him, and the other friends we made in those early years. That is how we began our history.
In my family, we did not trust each other as many people know it. Oh, we were all expected to remain loyal to the family, but we all had our own agendas, our own secret plans to get ahead. I never knew what it was like to truly trust a member of my family in the way others do. It took me much longer than it should have to trust Dorothy because of that. But she was patient with me and waited for me to come to the conclusion that I could.
I’ve learned to trust many things in my life. I did not always agree with my family for instance, but I trusted they had my best interests at heart. I always trusted a father when he told me he’d shoot me if he caught me with his daughter. I also trusted I was very good at not getting caught. I have always trusted that my friends would stand by me in my hours of need, as I would stand by them. And I have always trusted Betty.
Trust is part of the bedrock of our lives. We trust our partners and we trust our families. We trust them to look out for us, and they trust us to look out for them. We work together, we live together, and we see the worlds together. That is what makes us work so well together. Cybernetics and genetics alike, we all trust our partners and our families with our lives.