The light is watched with the same listless gaze, instinctively feeling her soundwaves - anger, anguish, a desperation to be understood - but it's just white noise. Heard and easily ignored with the ease of years of practice.

People aren't tables.

But that doesn't change the ones he left behind because of this assignment. A thousand different faces with a thousand different stories all brought together by the same truth: you should consider yourselves lucky to have this chance. Give thanks that your needless existence can be put to use. And you believed - all of you did - because it gives you purpose. Because it's a reason to be something more than the monsters the rest of society hides you as. Because it was so much better than that other option. It's more efficient to just replace someone old and broken with something else.

Who's to say furniture can't pretend to be a person?

"I shouldn't, but I can." And I will. But she doesn't get it. Only they do, only we do, and that's fine. That's not Hers to understand. The fact that she is completely incapable of doing so is another of a myriad of smaller blessings to be grateful for. But at the same time, there's some weird twist to his that can't be effectively put to words.

"And you don't have the right to tell me otherwise."