indulged it. I pretended she didn’t because I couldn’t let go. I wasn’t ready to.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. And you do, too. You need to abandon the Excalibur. Shut yourself down. End yourself.”
Morgan shook her head with such force that it seemed like it might come loose. “Why are you saying this? How can you believe it? Because I left you behind once?”
“Because for the longest time my mother, who was sick of her immortality, wanted to end it all. That’s who my mother was! And I miss her terribly, but it’s over! She’s over! This,” and she gestured toward Morgan, “this echo of her is just an illusion. A dream that it’s time to wake up from!”
Softly the Doctor corrected, “From which it’s time to wake up,” but Soleta fired him a glance that instantly silenced him.
“That’s ridiculous,” Morgan said, and it was clear she was fighting to keep her voice steady. “Don’t you understand? Just because I made mistakes in the past doesn’t mean I have to keep on making them. I’ve learned. I’ve grown.”
And now Seven stepped forward. “No,” she said quietly. “You’ve mutated. And you need to be purged.”
“What do you know of anything?” said Morgan. “You’re a stranger to all this.”
“I’m not a stranger to living a half life,” said Seven. “To having all your memories be merely things that are detached from you. From being someone who’s standing on the outside of your own life looking in. To having everything that you are, and everything you ever will be… bonded with a machine. I know that sense of community, of… of being part of something bigger than you are yourself. It’s comforting. It’s… it’s…” And her voice dropped to a hoarse, husky whisper. “It’s wonderful.”
Morgan reached for Seven and took her hand. Seven didn’t resist. “It is, isn’t it. You do understand.”
“I understand that it can be difficult to give up. Impossible. A living hell.”
Morgan nodded. “Yes. Yes…”
And very slowly, Seven disengaged her hand. “But it’s not a life. It’s just existence. And mere existence is”—a tear began to roll down her face and she wiped it away—“futile.”
“No, it’s not.”
The Doctor had spoken. He had not moved one inch from where he had been when he first came aboard the ship. Watching the confrontation with what seemed utter detachment, he said, “Existence is not futile. It doesn’t matter if you don’t age. Or breathe. Or live. All we are—all any of us are—are the sum of our experiences. You think. Therefore you are.”
“Thank you,” Morgan said. “I should have known that you, of all people, would understand.”
“I do understand,” he said. Seven was looking at him with an air of someone who was being totally betrayed. He didn’t meet her gaze. “I understand better than you do. We all see the world through the prism of those experiences, and they help us to learn and grow…”
“Yes! Just as I was saying—”
“Except,” said the Doctor, and he was speaking with more force, but also clinical detachment, “you haven’t been doing that. You’ve been moving further and further away from everything that you were. Your callous disregard for life has made that clear. I’ve studied your lengthy medical history thoroughly—and I am forced to one ineluctable medical conclusion. Nothing in the psychological profile of Morgan Primus displays anything resembling psychosis or the mind-set typical to a mass murderer. The deviation from the accepted norms is beyond the margin of error. The prism of your experiences has been shattered beyond repair. There is life… and then there is a semblance of life. I believe you are the latter. It is a difficult thing to understand one’s limitations. I know. I’ve never been terribly good at it myself. But there it is.”
“And I would share that point of view if I had any limitations,” said Morgan. “I don’t.”
“That’s the point,” replied the Doctor. “The woman upon which you’ve modeled yourself understood that a lack of limitations… including natural limitations on one’s own existence… was inherently wrong. The fact that you do not leads one to the conclusion that you are not her. You cannot have a claim to life if you do not respect life’s sanctity.”
“That’s ridiculous. History is filled with mass murderers. Are you saying none of them were alive?”
And Robin spoke up once more. “So you admit you’re a mass murderer?”
“I suppose… technically…”
“Then what more proof do you need that you’re not my mother? She would never do that. Never. I want you,” and