Bear with me…

Megaman legends 2

Silly kids game, lots of fun, early dungeon crawling, but they snuck in heavy philosophy.

There is a scene where the protagonist is recalling long forgotten memories. The last living human, in luxury, in extravagance, in exactly what techbros want today but actually achieved here, has a perfect system, a perfect world, serving his every whim. A world without poverty, disease, suffering.

And he is lonely.

He befriends a bot in this system charged with keeping order. Basically a cop in this world. But he gives him special privileges to be able to “think” in ways the others are restricted from. This one is special. He literally creates a friend.

Then he uses the incredible technological prowess to recreate suffering.

He creates a synthetic recreation of humans, designed to be vulnerable to disease, to hunger, to suffering. They are subject to pressures that simply delay their deaths. And through doing so they achieve meaning and happiness. They exist.

The master watches them, like fish in an aquarium, for generations. Eventually, he goes down to earth to fully experience them. Thousands of years of disease free living have basically robbed this last human of an immune system. He is vulnerable there. No force in the universe can take him out. Man has become god. And yet, he goes down there anyway.

To experience the smell of a dinner bearing prepared.

He dies. Before he does, he released the bot that brought him down to earth from the rules of the system that governed him and told him to burn it all down. Perfection was not a remedy, it was a curse. And then he dies as the bot holds him in his hands, watching him fade away.

This was a game for children. And I understood way too much of it.