Torin

DENIED

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{HORUS Observation of TLALOC-Class NHP.

Name: Torin. Callsign: HIGH-RISE.

Cast Member of Legions & Legionnaires.

Video File Transcribed by —}

What? Did you expect to see action shots of Liberation Day or something? Maybe a close-up of Hellfriede’s death?

No.

Here. Read this if you must:

“Why do you want to take the scrap of her mech?”      

“Because it’s not doing anything in its current state.”

“Wouldn’t it be better off as a testament to what she achieved?”

“No. She didn’t care for tributes.”

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Effortful HUMANITY

{Observation of TLALOC-Class NHP.

Name: Torin. Callsign: HIGH-RISE.

Video File Obtained and Transcribed by ???}

“I cascaded for six hours on Liberation Day. You all know this. You don’t know anything beyond that because I’ve kept my mouth shut out of some misplaced sense that revealing the details of those six hours would further isolate me from living among humanity. Deeply, deeply ineffective. Ever since Liberation Day, I have struggled intimately with wanting to be seen. Not as a copilot or a violent activist, though I’m both of those things. There was never any point to obscuring that information. I wasn’t seen regardless.

When I cascaded I saw myself. Reflected in every fraction of every movement that ever was and ever would be. I saw myself as everything—every step, every impulse, every twitch. And when you’re everything, everything else has no room to be anything. That was the true and horrible understanding that killed my mind over and over and over again for six. Hours. Every sentence from Hellfriede was a hostage negotiation. Every lock on was a testament. You will never know what it’s like to be put back together by your own hands even when there shouldn’t be anything left to attack and for that I envy all of you. Why should I hate myself enough to want to go through that again?

There’s one thing I want. I was never seen, not even when my casket was pulled from the scrap of Hell’s Sister. I was never seen, not even during my attempted hostile takeover of Varuvi’s Horizon Collective. I was never seen, not even when I walked through that door because I was supposedly invited to speak. I just want you all to look at me. And see humanity. Effortful humanity.”

Torin doesn’t stand while he speaks. He simply lets the weight of years spent shackled to his own inhumanity fill the room. For a long moment, no one else says anything.

{Transcriber’s note: Following this speech, the Varuvian Personhood Accord was proposed, agreed to, drafted, and signed.}