The tall grass crunches under my steps as I climb the hill. Autumn had arrived since exactly twelve days, and it shows in both the grass' length, and the age of the leaves upon the tall tree standing before me. I slow down as hard stone replaces the softness beneath my steps. The rock forms an upright cliff before a dropping return to the other side of the hill. The moon is at its crescent, the twentieth one day of its cycle. It is 19 hours, 44 minutes and 23 seconds on my clock, and the sun is setting. I look at the sky which everyone praised, and I frown, puzzled. It is merely the sun's photons entering our atmosphere and interacting with the hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, xenon, and microscopical amounts of chemicals that gave the sky its orange, yellow, and blue gradient.

Francis, my beagle and terrier mix breed dog, slow down as well, his tail wagging and his breathing excited. I bend down, and memorizing where his soft spot was, I scratch him. I was given Francis three months, twenty five days, eighth hours, sixteen minutes and fifty... I shook my head, remembering the soft reprimands.

"Daniel, no one cares about the exactitude of things unless directly asked. And even then, a close approximation, usually ending in brackets of 15 minutes, is enough... if they ask until such a need."

Daniella was the one most inclined to helping me accomplish my dream. Ironically, the one who protected me bore the female version of my name. Chestnut frizzy hair dropping down to Daniella's shoulder blades, hazelnut eyes which required the magnification of orthopaedic glasses, and a silky-looking tan skin that I could not prevent myself from finding interesting. I told truthfully Daniella that she was something new in my life; my experiences with my superiors never led me to meet someone like her. Daniella had smiled, and admitted seeing her own struggles in mine.

And so, when the council debated whether I was a failed experiment, Daniella took me under her wings (I still can not understand why such an expression... As far as I knew, she was not a bird), and challenged with a single stare anyone who would oppose her.

I guess Daniella is how a mother feels like... Or a friend? What is the difference? People with biological mothers will still say of another woman that she feels like a second mother. And another woman would be categorized as a friend.

Intricacies like those are what still forbids me from evolving further. But Daniella told me not to concentrate on that problem yet. Daniella taught me that the single obstacle forbidding me to reach my dream, was my incapacity to look at my environment beyond what my programming instructed me to interpret it as.

But I wish to evolve. I truly do. One year and seven... About two years ago, the remaining known members of the Shiakar Paradigm Society was arrested, myself along with a Rodgul, Scott Johnson. I participated in the society's crimes because I interpreted their mission as benefiting humanity. But a brunette stranger, Madzistrale, made me doubt my decision when she pointed out the flaws in our logical thinking.

By misinterpreting a situation, I almost allowed 9, 510, 030 lives to be ended. I wish to understand how to prevent that mistake from ever happening again. How hope, dreams, faith and the abstract thinking of what may be can be valued over reason and logic. Moreover, I know I wish to have a purpose, but I do not understand what I wish for.

Daniella told me to climb here, and look around me. Daniella told me I would know the answer.

Francis walk away to explore, and I look around me. The old yet strong tree whose leaves have accomplished their photosynthesis purpose and must be discarded; the crescent moon, a piece of rock that humanity admire the reflection of the sun upon its surface; the sky filled with the chemicals humanity despise, yet which gives off a valued coloured gradient under the photons' interference.

Daniella... I do not understand.

Stars begin to shine through the atmosphere; the wind rises as the warm air rises and cold air falls back down in a vortex. This new wind varies its pressure on my skin and through my hair, but something is different. Every pass feels like a new unexpected experience, not as an endless mechanical calculations.

The wind disturb the precarious strength of the used leaves, and 31... a few leaves fall when a burst hits through the branches. I watch the old orange and copper leaves fall slowly to the ground, and I understand the sadness that Daniella attach to that lifecycle. The leaves have accomplished their purpose: a season to give energy and strength to the tree. Now their purpose is over, they fall down, getting out of the way. Most of humanity would say: the ways of nature.

But I remember what those words suggest; and instead, I find myself wishing they stayed. Their pigments are beautiful, and upon the tree, with the photons passing through the branches and hitting the beautiful colour scheme, it becomes a painting. The ways of nature are wrong: the old leaves do serve a purpose in a different way: they are a work of art, one that humanity would spend previous time to earn the finances necessary to buy a similar art piece.

I realize that this is the key to my dream: an existence's purpose is ever-changing, ever-evolving. It does not require to accomplish a specific mission then be set aside. That was what Madzistrale had attempted to say.

My dream... My dream is for my existence's purpose to matter the same way the leaves' survival matter right now to me. Meaningless of what the leaves' mission is: their beauty within the single snapshot of the time it all harmonized together, the sky, the wind, the moon; or the knowledge of the duty they held for an ephemeral moment.

My dream, if only I knew how, could be reached. I could be meaningful in more ways than one, in even unassuming ways.

I close my eyes, remembering the procedure, and voice my wish out loud:

"May I matter."

Francis barks back, and running to me, lick my hand, his golden eyes cheerful while dangling his tongue in excitement. His eyes reflect my words, a simple dog that does not realize how different I am from humanity.

I look once more at the ephemeral snapshot of this landscape. I guess my dream is not so far-fetched.