First

July here,

If you look around you can easily find systems who've given their members named roles. In our case, we want to see ourselves as people first, and so we don't do anything like that. But these ideas come about from perfectly common personality traits and impulses, and sometimes... we get it. There's an appeal to having a job that you know you're good at. One that helps the people you love. To have been made 'for' something. But if you try too hard to chase that idea, it could easily turn disastrous.

Thing is, the only one of us that knows when it was born is Blackheart, and it still had to come to terms with itself. It came from an idea, really just an extreme version of the one I already put forward: that it would be so much easier to be a machine, programmed for someone else's happiness. It was a very Mira idea, but meant for survival. It lacked the passion and love they normally put into that kind of thing. And so Blackheart understands itself as a tool meant to preserve the rest of us, body and mind, when needed.

The rest of us don't remember being born, though. We've been over it a bunch of times. There's a narrative we can concoct making each of us the original, and there's the possibility that none of us are, and that person no longer exists. We've probably been like this for decades, so you could say that almost definitionally that person doesn't exist in the way that nobody is the same person at 5 and 35 years of age. Doesn't matter. Our earliest memories are all being embarrassed publicly or yelled at. The only thing I can say for sure is that when we were very young, I'm talking about like 6 or 7, we were very angry and would lash out more when threatened. That wasn't a good way to get on, but however it got stamped out of us definitely went too far in the other direction. I suspect there's something there, but we'll never get any real answer. Again, this was far too long ago and is far too poorly remembered to work with.

Viper, though... he has something of that in him. He's extremely protective of his people, both us and others, and I know we're capable of being fierce to that end. It's something we've had to work on and hone to make it less damaging, but it's not bad. He's a sweetheart, but he craves trust and solitude. That makes him fit so well with Mira, who wants to feel loved and safe. It's hard to imagine them having nothing to do with each other originally. Viper likes the idea of being created to protect Mira, and Mira likes the idea of being created to serve Viper.

Trinket, we've spent some time thinking must be the first one of us, but I think that may have been more of a romantic idea I was concocting for myself as much as anything. Who can say? We can remember some of her traits going back for a long time for sure. But she likes having a job to do as much as she likes having fun. Is she our inner child? She really seems like the most mature one here a lot of the time, honestly. I'll admit, we had some difficulty untangling her from Mira early on, so that also affects our judgement. As far as I'm concerned, she's my sunshine. It's hard to really care what order anything happened in when I'm with her.

Which brings us to myself. I don't feel like I have anything akin to a role to play. I also trend towards fronting the longest. Heck, could I be the first one? Maybe. I've tried to fit myself into boxes before, and its never worked out. I want to love and to nurture, and I have my interests, but sometimes I feel jealous of the clarity that the others can feel. Other times, I have my own clarity, and everything's wonderful. I think, because I have a problem with being too self-sacrificing, thinking of myself as a creation of circumstances would be unhelpful. Even if it's true!

When we think about these things, I think we're longing more for an explanation of our past than a blueprint for the future. The desire to know these things is strong, though. I wish I could live up to the logical ideal: kill the past and live for now. It doesn't matter anyway. We can't change it. Here we are, though. I've talked about it with Viper a lot today, and we still end up at the same place in the end. I wonder if uncertainty is just a prison we're doomed to get stuck in forever? There are worse things. It does make for a funny twist of fate, though: the drone is the only one not subject to this. It came to terms with this when it was one year old, and made its choice. It knows what it wants from the past and the future. If only I could follow its lead more fully.