hacking around

If there was one part of Alvis, one observable entity, Shulk expected to see at the end of all things, it wouldn't have been the part that A represents; that A is. The Alpha and the Omega, vital to all things, monad and ultimate abstraction of all constructions, successful or failed, is an idea quintessentially Alvis, so while it's difficult to separate A from that idea, to see A being so human and acting so...rigid?

The phenomenal fluidity of everything about A, crimson earring to ebullient cape, defies every notion of beauty and possibility ever inspired upon the Endless Sea.

A moves in a way subtly dissociated from the fabric of the mortal world, Shulk thinks. A sways when A walks, while A remains fixed on a single perfect line.

A, the equation. A, the solution. A, the absolute parabola; the rate of unchanging change.

"Are you susceptible to disease?" Shulk asks, rather than posing it much more simply: can you get sick?

"I believe so," replies A. "There would be no reason for me not to be."

"No reason?" Shulk begins to gush before he can stop himself. "You're Alvis. You're--" Alright, maybe a little stop, to compose himself. "You're a star, right? You're that little twinkling star I saw at the end of the old world! You getting sick, you...ceasing to function, it doesn't make any sense."

"You can't handle the thought of me infirm?" A makes teasing out a genuine question so easily, so...almost preternaturally. Would that be the word?

Shulk shakes his head, mechanical fingertips grasping chin in thought. Now, hang on.

But A proceeds. "I am not just a copy, nor a side effect. I am an entirely new being. My own category, perhaps."

In which case, sickness would also mean nothing to A, but in a different way yet.

Shulk still stirs with his contemplative silence.

"Or would you prefer that I-" statefully inorganic bioautomaton "-display a defect? Something you could attempt to debug?"