A plan to become normal.

9S tried to go to sleep that night but struggled to do so, noticing that when immmersed within his own body instead of mind, he reactively associates the very feeling of being in a state of wakefulness with being conscious.

Confused by this specific situation, he tries to compare his subtle subjective experience with the subtle subjective experience of his ideal self.

'What would that even look like?', he would wonder on repeat throughout the night.

'If I am consciously aware in the belief that right now I am supposed to sleep, just as how the commander would have me and fellow androids expected the undeniablity of the assignment, then although I would have the persistence to try to sleep, the success would be purely accidental because I am trying to not try…

Then again, maybe the whole taking orders thing isn't the best approach, and is just the best one I am aware of…'

"Muuaaahhhh…", he sulks in his pillow quietly.

'What could there possibly be that's greater than belief systems in order to diagnose the present moment and both react and respond sensibly?

Belief systems are a force of nature as far as I know, but the difference between the education of doctrine and the actual force is that the beliefs are embodied from the pure perspective when the presence of the thing to believe in is a first hand experience, including the experience of the perception towards the things that are happening themselves.

Good thing I'm internally monologing, because if these words were being heard or read by others, the tale as old as time is that most would just consider this as yapping.

… Look, I don't like logically thinking things out that I can just put into practice, so maybe I should just come up with a plan on how to explore these existential possibilities through real world actions?', he thinks to himself as if there is someone is listening.

[The Next Day]

'I didn't get any sleep, but I came up with a plan.', his eyes are bloodshot as he stares at the sunlight seeping through the cracks in the door.

He gets out of bed early before A2 and 2B wake up, and leaves to go outside to begin his experiment.

He goes out into the middle of the resistance camp's ruins near the flower bed, takes a deep breath in, and takes his shirt off.

"I will overcome the world.", he says as he stretches out his arms with a Devine aura.

He then takes one more deep breath in, and then quickly gets into a push up position on the ground and tries to workout.

He speaks to himself out loud, "I realised that the issue is a matter of energy, and although sleep would be most efficient towards the recovery of my energy, a healthy body is what's needed in order to increase the maximum amount I can supply myself with. With more energy comes more sensitivity to my experiences within the present moment, and with more sensitivity to the present moment the less distracted I'll be, then my mind will be quiet and I can place my trust and faith in what is real and what is not and then I can have a belief system that is in relation to the present moment and then I can stay true to my grounded view of existence and in turn have an identity and over come the lingering identity crisis that plagued me after the death of 2B and then NYAAAAAA!!!! LIVING LIFE BABY!!!", he goes into complete overdrive and does a whole 10 push ups before gassing out.

"DAMN IT! I'M AN ANDROID, WHY DO I HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HEALTH?!"

"That's because the design of androids closely resemble the biological makeup of humans, without the same physical limitations, consciousness would not be able to hold within the vestle of an artificially designed body.", says Pod 153.

"… oh. But surely there are some things that don't need to be limitations, right?"

"As you are already aware, androids do not eat or drink, so their energy doesn't come from the consumption of food or how that nutrients is used, however, how energy is used from the black box's unlimited battery supply within the designed YorHa body comes down to the memory molecules that are used to act in the same and structurally efficient way that strength works within muscles for mammals. The more energy that is able to pass through these chain of moldable molecules, the longer the strength of electric and photonic current will be able to pass through with structural ease compared to if there was to be more energy than it these memory molecules were trained to handle."

"What happens if I do give the memory molecules more energy than it can handle?"

"Nothing. That's the difference between humans and androids. In a human it would have unfixable consequences, where as in an android, these molecules were predesigned to be self-fixing even under the most intense of conditions. The only way to break an android's conscious control over their body is by breaking their consciousness, which means terminating their blackbox. For the sake of a peaceful death, the blackbox of terminated shuts every operation within the body for it is the one and only core component. So if your consciousness begins to break, the body dies first, including pain."

"Why can we feel pain?"

"Is it bad to feel cold or hot? Pain is another sensation for the sake of survival similar to sensing temperature, only more intense due to being directly correlated to physical damage. There is no persisting pains though for androids, because the dignity of YorHa units is the trust that logical reasoning can be used after the first stimulus of pain is experienced. Though… that has not always been proven to be the case."

"Wow. I already knew why I chose to workout for myself because I had firsthand knowledge that I was physically capable of strength training and pain, but this is the first time I was actually told why these common things I take for granted are even possible in the first place."

"I'm happy to help, nines."

"Did you just call me nines?"

"If I recall correctly, you mentioned that all your friends called you nines. Although I do not wish to intrude on you and 2B's pet name that you have for yourself, I do want to be considered a… friend."

"Ahaha, wow! Where did this all come from? And, wait… pet name? Um *cough* I-I thought we were already friends?"

"Hmmm… most pleased."

"You really have grown a heart. To say pleased, and wish, and friend at that. Wow. I know we just had a purely logical discussion, but the moment we put that aside, it's interesting just how you have intrinsic values of your own. Anyways, I don't want to open up another rabbit hole of yapping."

"Yapping? Are you calling me abnoxious?"

"No! I was talking about myself. I'm fine with listening to you though.", 9S's eyes begin to get heavy.

"You appear to be running out of what little energy you have left."

"Yeah… I ruined my sleep. I'll have to sleep in today. Please tell 2B and A2 on my behalf that I'm sorry for not being responsible for what's actually important today."

"Will do."

"Wait, one more thing.", he says while putting his tshirt back on, "Why is it that even though the blackbox supplies us with unlimited energy that we end up running out of energy by the end of each day and have to go to sleep? Like, if the reason is because of the physical wear and tear of the memory molecules or whatever, then how would the universe be able to keep together if the atoms are always having energy transactions inside and between them? Living creatures, if they didn't have food for their source of energy, would be a clear example of how that only hypothesis I can think of you using as an explaination wouldn't pan out either."

"Yapping."

"Yeah… just answer me though, please?"

"…There is no information on that in my databank."

"That's lazy writing."

"Sometimes lazy is funny."

"ONLY FOR YOU!"

"Go to sleep, 9S."

"Hey?! What happened to nines?"

"I made my point already, but I believe that 2B has already made hers."

Pod 153 thinks to herself, 'As she is now, I'm too scared to even think if she heard me.'.

[24 HOURS REMAINING UNTIL FLOWER SICKNESS DIAGNOSIS]