i have the touch

---

Humans are muddy, messy, bloody, hungry. They are mouths and they are corpses; infants and infirm. Noisy, and violent. Scratching and clawing, as if conflict is their natural state.

The Praetorium is clean.

Amalthus is calm, collected, calculated.

The Praetorium is quiet.

Far removed from those desolate plains, Titans away, where the Aegis set off the divine equivalent of a bomb and decimated each mouth before it could start to scream.

No one claws at the robes and soles of the Aegis. No one comes close. Humans cower in fear of anything promised to them by their god, the so-called Father, after all.

Malos is certain - damned certain.

If I am touched, I cannot be profound.

The Aegis comes complete, a processing system. An execution unit, it's often been said. Receives input. Produces output. And touch, as one of the five human senses, is merely input.

Except when one considers that it is also output. All signals, sourced. All chemicals emanating from somewhere, something, someone.

But if the Aegis is to be touched, the Aegis cannot be profound.

The Aegis's form replicates that of old human models. Sensory factors are simply what were accessible to Aoidos's human staff. What else? Even colors seen only by shrimp are still seen.

(Oh, indeed - without love, it cannot be seen.)

The Aegis observes. The Aegis is informed. When in doubt, the Aegis ponders, ruminates, and draws upon ratcheted levels of nuance to draw new conclusions, deriving and delivering new paths and courses of action.

No touch. No change. Only movement, step and will.

Touch is weakness. Touch is common. Touch is base.

Touch is assumed, as a gateway, if not a conduit, toward concession, toward understanding. Toward change.

It must be accepted. It must be striven for. It must be venerated.

What would cause another, lesser being to flinch and fidget only brings the Aegis faintest pause.

A processing unit does not yearn, does not founder for information it ultimately lacks.

It is no one's position to change this fact.

The Paragon is new information. The Aegis is not compelled, because the Aegis has no need for the capability to become compelled.

The Aegis's scheduler, however, is in a position to forecast and prepare for the Paragon's signals. At the front of this pipeline, a neural network observes the Paragon: also profound, also untouching and untouched.

Physically, that is. But the Paragon is a Blade. A normal Blade, but for the status as exemplar. And Blades are, by nature, touched. Influenced by their Drivers.

Contempt, the Aegis feels, for humanity's propensity to grasp and cling, in hypocrisy. Distaste, for the utter inutility.

But the Aegis offers the Paragon a hand. It is a nonverbal output expressing instruction:

Come with me.

Too, it is a physical prop. The Paragon, in step with the current state of the world, is not capable of standing unaided.

The situation demands a sharing of resources. The Aegis condescends to provide even a little bit more.

The Paragon, even in this state, would never be reduced to clutching at the Aegis's ankles. The Paragon would not have to.

Eye level. The other three senses (scent, taste, sound) do not receive input with the same peripheral as that which produces the corresponding output. Touch is hand to hand, skin to skin. And eyes can make...contact.

But they do not touch again, until the end.

Two Blades grow in wordless, telepathic communication naturally, if the Driver is shared. If the Cores are shattered and volatile, they are as open wounds that bleed information into the ether, through ether into the air.

The Aegis, though fallen, remains aloof. The Paragon, though altered, remains the same.

Jin is certain - damned certain.

Though we do not touch, we are profound.