okay, but ben... ben as a little boy who was so fascinated by robots that he set out to study ai and create one, who’s brought in when they discover an artificial intelligence whose crash landing upon earth destroyed the planet as they knew it. ben, who still was partly that idealistic little boy, setting out to try and connect with the robot, to communicate with it. but it is confused and angry and dangerous. and it injures him. once, twice, as many times as he’s willing to keep trying. and nothing works, nothing communicates, so he starts thinking of those injuries as a form of communication, think that electrical impulses ( base stimuli ) might accomplish what words and numbers and every other method he’s tried failed to. and he justifies it to himself. justifies it because he cares so much and it’s the only way and surely, surely it’s not as bad as it seems from the outside. and eventually, he loses sight of that. eventually, scarecrow becomes the only hope for humanity, for his wife and kids, to have a normal life with blue skies and green plants and a beautiful planet. and if he uses scarecrow to ferry people across the galaxy, he has time and resources to keep studying him, to find other ways, to communicate properly, and surely that is worth it.
I honestly believe that ben doesn’t think scarecrow experiences pain, but I also don’t think he’s fully thought it through. I don’t think he’s let himself, because it’s too convenient, there’s too much benefit, and somewhere there’s still that idealistic boy in him that thinks the world’s better than it is, the boy that he sees reflected back to him in will...
