head in hands. the way sphene's arc is a perfect tragedy but nobody starting with the writers themselves seems to realize it.
imagine the horror of waking up after practically the most traumatic events conceivable, leading up to nothing less than your death, only to find out that they made - without your consent or knowledge, of course - an AI version of you, using your likeness, voice, memories, and core personality traits tweaked to fill the needs of the nameless, mysterious puppeteerer holding the strings in the shadows, who is only keeping the aspects of your personhood that fit his agenda at any given time. and this - extremely sophisticated - AI is, as far as you can tell, sentient and aware of her nature and fate, but unable to do anything about it, agency being denied at every turn. and the thing is - people love her. her people - your people - adore her. she's endlessly (hah) doting, gentle, caring, the sister to every child and mother to everyone, a perfect doll to be deployed to pacify and placate the feelings of anyone. she has no needs nor even preferences of her own, the better to accomodate that of others. her algorithm - to which she is, as an AI, completely bound - even pushed her to self-destruct and violate every single principle she held, even though it cost her the small fraction of agency and personhood she had managed to build. she was stuck in what was effectively an abusive marriage of convenience for survival for three decades. that copy was eventually erased, then remade with slightly different parameters in order to follow a slightly different agenda, and nobody sees the difference. nobody even remembers the former iteration. you can, however. you never met the original AI - whom everyone including your newfound (and only) friends loves and clearly grieves, including someone you may or may not be falling in love with, who clearly was in love with the unauthorized AI version of you. eventually you manage to reclaim your agency, your personhood, you fight the shadow puppeteer, you even win! - and then, what happens?
you're back to square one. the people are grateful and they love you oh so much. everyone just looks up at you with hopeful, expectant, wet puppy eyes. they need you! by which, obviously, they mean they need the old version of you, the AI that only ever served them, even though they swear it's not the case, that they've changed now; was your own education, in a bygone era, when you were reared to assume this duty (and enthusiastically rose up to the challenge) anything different than a cold algorithmic decision? can you even tell the difference? programming is programming, isnt it? you have your duty. you need to protect and serve these people. who are you to refuse their wishes? yet something feels unfair, something buried very deep inside you. so you hesitate. you bow and examine the tiara - a girlish accessory, even though she was about 400 years old at this point - which was used to monitor your AI predecessor's every thought and action, spy on her constantly, and presumably give her orders. things are different now, they say. things are back to normal. the cycle has been fulfilled. only this time you are dimly aware of the personhood you're being so efficiently denied. or are you? is anyone? nobody seems to see anything wrong with this state of affairs. your newfound - and only! - friends encourage you to accept this role. for the sake of continuity, says the woman you may or may not be in love with. you are all standing in an illusory, impossible, computer-generated landscape. you slowly put the tiara on. THE END
