ornithologist | .//INBOX

I assure you that you're moving on in one way or another, whether or not you think you are. Time passes with or without you. Things change, you change, in prison or outside of it.

Your only real choice is whether you want to control which direction you move in.

[This is Harold, so Accelerator trusts that he both knows what he's talking about and is being completely sincere. Because of that, he feels comfortable asking a personal question.]

You ever have a hard time with that? Choosing what direction to go?

I don't think I've ever had an easy time with it -- either the choice itself or with accepting that I need to choose.

[ His particular character flaw has always been trying to hide from hard things. ]

Then how do you decide?

[ He's struck, suddenly, with the memory of trying to convince the Machine that they weren't monsters, what he'd said then. ]

I don't wish to give the impression that I have it all figured out, that I succeed or make the right choices every time.

There is good and bad in everyone. But we do the best we can.

Hmm.

[That's reasonable. Maybe it was naive for him to ask that question. Harold is just a person, of course he's going to make the wrong choice sometimes.]

Then you won't get pissed off when I make the wrong choice?

[It seems like an inevitability, and he doubts Harold would based on the things he's told him in the past... but he still wants to ask, anyways.]