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This experience has given you time to reflect. It feels so natural to be doing this, climbing just outside the reach of snapping jaws.
<span class="mu-r">”Jaaxi~ Come here Jaaxi! Come to your end!”</span>
While the sweat collects on your brow, you feel a sort of calm collected feeling of focus that's hard to get in a simulator or even in a knife duel. You're following what you were born to do, same as this worm.
You think- <span class="mu-i">why</span> did you decide to Stand? There was no real reason not to do what the worm wanted; a better position in the galactic community for the cost of some of your own pride. You find the idea a little silly. The truth is you were both angry, sadistic, arrogant, proud... all traits common to Supreme Rulers. You wanted to reject the worm, sneer in his face, and watch him die. All of this comes down to your biological impulses as an aggressive, omnivorous species who takes the safety of the tribe very seriously. Something Kimnan had said really stuck with you. Have we really <span class="mu-i">chosen</span> anything? Eoba I would have almost certainly done the same thing in your position- his genetic profile is almost identical to yours. Your upbringing was certainly different, but would he be the same as you given the identical upbringing?
You certainly hate this creature climbing after you into the highest reaches of the control tower. If you can reach the hatch to the roof first- you'll be safe. But how can you hate something doing what it is born to you? It had no more choice in the matter then you did. It is simply atoms and molecules doing whatever they were set on the path to do at the beginning of time. And one day, those atoms will be meaningless dust- exactly as the worm proscribes.
Of course, it is the purpose that you give this time that matters, which is the prevailing belief of the Hegemony. The idea of free will, TRUE free will, is both meaningless and illogical. To be truly free, one would have to be a god-like being capable of going anywhere, doing anything they wished, with no limitation of resources or time or competition. To be able to do anything you wished without any difficulty is this mythical true freedom, but it also sounds like a hellish existence.
The greatest heroes and martyrs of your people; they were born in a society that shaped them, experienced through a genetic lens that defined them. None of them got to choose anything, not what they could learn nor how long they could live nor even the <span class="mu-g"><span class="mu-s">color</span></span> of the uniform they wore. Yet despite this you still value what they have done. Why?
