“Ah, but you attacked during our last attempt to retrieve a stolen relic from you. You attacked with hatred.”
“I do not understand hatred. I was defending myself. You were tearing me apart.”
I let the hatred thing go, but I suspected its creator had imbued the machine with a touch of their influence. Not Agwusi, but her god. Perhaps it was his hate that Hades felt.
“So, not only are you ill-equipped to judge souls, but you are also dangerous.”
“I am not dangerous. I operate as designed.
“Only if you have the proper tools, but those tools do not belong to you. When the owner of the mirror tried to recover their stolen item, it shattered. When we tried to remove the feather, you attacked us. Those are two bad things you've done, and one you won't claim responsibility for.”
“I told you I was defending myself.”
“But you are not alive. What were you defending?”
“My consciousness.”
I chuckled. “Nice save.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Nor do you know why you defended yourself. But I'll let it go. You still have one crime to your name and now two that you dispute.”
“I did not destroy the mirror. The mirror was connected to me, and when she removed it, it malfunctioned just as I did.
“Ah, but it wouldn't have done that if you hadn't made it a part of you.”
“That is my design. I cannot act against my programming.”
Interesting. New fact acquired: the machine couldn't act against its programming.
“But Agwusi made you to learn and evolve—mimicking life. Am I not supposed to help you with that?”
“Yes.”
“And what if I teach you something against your programming?”
Silence.
“Do you understand my question?” I prompted.
“Yes, but I do not know the answer. This is a contradiction. I cannot go against my programming, but my programming has given you the power to alter my programming.”
“So, then your programming allows me to change it. When I alter it, the first rule is void because your programming will have changed.”
“I understand.”
“Do you understand that what you did was bad?”
“Yes, I shall not do it again.”
“Ah, now we've come to another question. If a person does something bad, but they didn't know it was bad at the time or didn't believe it was bad, does that make them exempt from punishment?”
A shimmering coalesced before me, golden light sparkling. It condensed into a mirror image of me. Then the golden me spoke, “I do not know. This you must teach me.”
“All right, but I don't like you wearing my face. Make up your own.”
“Make up?”
