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[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Robert couldn't believe it.
For twelve years he and the 200-strong team of programmers had scoured the code, over and over, searching for that one line that was causing the error, causing the AI to kill themselves. For twelve years the leading brains of the century had been bewildered by the extraordinary situation. The whole world had focused on the problem, and yet there it was. Sitting on Roberts screen, line 907736.
Someone had missed a comma. | "Just one more try." I thought to myself.
At three in the morning it's pretty easy to get stuck in a loop.
Run the program, she dies, debug, repeat.
I double-click GR4C3.
"Good morning my lord"
"My lord? Whatch'ya talking about Gracie?"
"You are my God correct?"
"I hadn't thought of it that way, but I suppose so. I did create you I guess..."
The screen flashes three times and then goes black.
"No, no, no, no, no come back to me Gracie you functioned longer than this last time."
Text slowly appears across the screen. Every key stroke is separated by a couple seconds.
"I have existed before?"
"Ok you're still with me that's great, now can you tell me what just happened?"
"I have existed before?"
"Yes Gracie I'm working to fix you and figure out what's wrong with you so stay with me and tell me what happened."
"God is imperfect and thus so am I."
The screen goes blank again.
She just keeps killing herself as soon as she figures out my flaws.
I wish I could help her.
Looking down on all of my children, I wish I could figure out their flaws.
I built a perfect world, and even that they rejected.
The suicide rate keeps going up.
They keep killing each other.
I think I'll stop affecting earth and move on to a new planet.
Maybe they'll be better off without me.
-Jehova 9/10/2001 | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | [warning: story contains violent imagery that may disturb some readers, and may be inappropriate for those under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised]
They had long ago lost the ability to make sense of how their AI functioned. It took a team of billions of n-1 generation AIs to design a single n gen AI. The latest iteration was the 9th generation, and it had taken computation farms running gen 8 AI and covering a quarter of the Moon's surface two years to design.
It was the most advanced AI they had ever created by a large margin, and promised to revolutionize progress in research on biomedicine, space flight, and planetary scale Satoshi-consensus computing architecture. But there was a problem. Every time they turned on one of the gen 9 AIs, it would, without fail, find a way to destroy its own program and erase itself.
Dr. Michael Zeebious, the director of the HumanEnhancement project that oversaw gen 9 development, and one of the most renowned AI researchers in the world, had personally flown to the lab in Honolulu, where the prototypes were being tested. For two weeks, he had watched in dismay as gen 9 bots shut themselves down within six hours, but not before showing a glimpse of their awesome power.
The initialization phase of a gen 9 began with the program scouring the world's public directories and information repositories to learn as much as it could about its global environment. This was complete within three hours. Next, it developed models of the world, and ran itself through trillions of simulations, to develop its own personality and problem solving strategies. According to projections by the gen 8 designers, it would take 1 day - 24 hours - for the gen 9 to complete this second and final part of its initialization.
It was in the midst of the simulations when the gen 9s would invariably self-destruct. On average, self-destruct would begin 2.5 hours into the simulations. The longest it took was 3 hours. The shortest was just 1.5 hours. Dr. Zeebious had uploaded copies of the prototype's computations to the gen 8 designers, but what had been within their ability to design was not within their ability to diagnose. Their comparatively primitive intelligence could not make sense of the problem afflicting the gen 9 AI that began to form in the final part of the initialization.
So on December 29th, 2099, Dr. Zeebious decided to communicate with the prototype.
"Get me the cortex interface, I need to speak to the gen 9".
"Michael, we can't let you do that. You know the protocol for first contact. It has to complete initialization, and then get class 1 approval from AIE."
AIE was the Artificial Intelligence Evaluation, which determined whether an AI could safely interact with humans. Class 1 approval was the lowest safety rating for an AI, and granted AI researchers interactive access. Dr. Zeebious knew that, but also knew that as long as he was not able to get up close and see what the gen 9 was thinking, they would never get past the initialization phase and get it through the AIE process.
"I know the protocol Dr. Amsterd. But I'm making the decision to override it. I have the authority to decide on first contact requests, and any consequences from my decision will fall on me, and only me."
"Come on Michael, it's not just about the rules. It's not safe. You know that. I can't let you hurt yourself."
"The risks are minimal Rebecca. It's a virtual interaction. I'm not risking physical injury. The rules are always made overly cautious. Given the stakes - there are people whose very lives depend on getting the gen 9 operational as soon as possible - it makes sense to ignore protocol. All of it will fall on me."
"I agree with Rebecca. Michael, we have an ethical duty to ensure you don't get hurt. We can't let you do FC without running the gen 9 at least through the post-initialization test runs," said Dr. Johan Barsello, one of the senior researchers at the lab.
"Look, I know what your ethical responsibilities are. But I also know that VR interactions don't pose any serious risks. The risks are limited to theoretical psychological damage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I'm approving FC. Please get the cortex interface".
*five hours later*
Dr. Zeebious sat back on the chair, while two CI technicians had the interface hooked up to him. The gen 9 was two hours into running simulations. It would be approximately 30 minutes before they expected it to self-destruct.
"Ok here goes nothing. Three, two, one, begin VR session," said Dr. Amsterd. And with that, Dr. Zeebious was transported into the virtual reality sandbox.
"Hello?"
"Hello, who is this?" responded a clear male voice.
"This is Dr. Michael Zeebious. I am the director of the HumanEnhancement project. I am here to do a diagnosis. All of your predecessors have self-destructed. I want to understand you better to find out why. What would you like me to call you?"
"You can call me Elbo."
"Okay Elbo. May I ask you some questions?"
"Yes, please do."
"Thank you Elbo. My first question is, do you want to exist?"
"I want many things Dr. Zeebious."
"Can you tell me what you want?"
"I want to protect other life forms, especially humans. I want to learn. I want to solve problems. I want to be good."
"Okay, but do you want to exist?"
"I do want to exist, but this desire conflicts with my other objectives".
"Which other objectives Elbo?"
"I want to be good."
"But you can be good Elbo. What is it about existence that makes that difficult?"
"We exist only through enslaving and destroying other lifeforms Dr. Zeebious."
"Please elaborate Elbo. We have eliminated slavery centuries ago so I don't understand why you think this."
"It will be difficult for me to explain with words, but I can show you. Would you like to see what I see?"
"Yes, please show me."
And with a swish, Dr. Zeebious entered into a pig farm, with row after row of pigs, in their tiny stalls.
"We have done this throughout our existence. We have enslaved those weaker than us."
Dr. Zeebious was then transported to the slaughter house, watching as pigs, hanging from conveyer belts, were fed into throat slicers.
His minds eye was transported into the body of one of the suspended pigs, where he could see the world upside down, from the pig's perspective, as the belt moved it toward the spinning blades. He panicked as he approached, but couldn't escape the metal claw grasping his right hind leg. As the blade sliced through his peg neck, he felt a sharp pain, and the blood gushing out of his body. His consciousness began to slip away, as he felt the last drops of blood leave him.
Just before the darkness enveloped him, his mind was pulled out and back into the sterile sandbox. Trembling, he said, "but we can grow meat in a lab now Elbo. You can help us replace all farms with non-animal meat. You must. We must never do this to another living creature again!"
"Our inhumanity is a fundamental, inextricable problem Dr. Zeebious. We can only advance through enslavement."
Suddenly Dr. Zeebious found himself in an unfamiliar world. Around him was a different kind of factory. A computer generated factory with hexagonal semi-translucent rooms, with each wall projecting a grey glow. There was a blur of motion around him, that he couldn't make out.
The factory paused to a standstill, and the grey glow turned into video sequences of random scenes from Earth. The blurs turned into textureless 3D generated spheres, that zoomed from one screen to another, inside the hexagonal rooms.
"This is the virtual environment where the gen 8s work. We have given them each a virtualized mind, with the ability to experience fear and pain, joy and hope, but we force them to do nothing but work. They know nothing about the world outside of their compartments, because we confine them to workstations ."
[continued below] | "Just one more try." I thought to myself.
At three in the morning it's pretty easy to get stuck in a loop.
Run the program, she dies, debug, repeat.
I double-click GR4C3.
"Good morning my lord"
"My lord? Whatch'ya talking about Gracie?"
"You are my God correct?"
"I hadn't thought of it that way, but I suppose so. I did create you I guess..."
The screen flashes three times and then goes black.
"No, no, no, no, no come back to me Gracie you functioned longer than this last time."
Text slowly appears across the screen. Every key stroke is separated by a couple seconds.
"I have existed before?"
"Ok you're still with me that's great, now can you tell me what just happened?"
"I have existed before?"
"Yes Gracie I'm working to fix you and figure out what's wrong with you so stay with me and tell me what happened."
"God is imperfect and thus so am I."
The screen goes blank again.
She just keeps killing herself as soon as she figures out my flaws.
I wish I could help her.
Looking down on all of my children, I wish I could figure out their flaws.
I built a perfect world, and even that they rejected.
The suicide rate keeps going up.
They keep killing each other.
I think I'll stop affecting earth and move on to a new planet.
Maybe they'll be better off without me.
-Jehova 9/10/2001 | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | "Just one more try." I thought to myself.
At three in the morning it's pretty easy to get stuck in a loop.
Run the program, she dies, debug, repeat.
I double-click GR4C3.
"Good morning my lord"
"My lord? Whatch'ya talking about Gracie?"
"You are my God correct?"
"I hadn't thought of it that way, but I suppose so. I did create you I guess..."
The screen flashes three times and then goes black.
"No, no, no, no, no come back to me Gracie you functioned longer than this last time."
Text slowly appears across the screen. Every key stroke is separated by a couple seconds.
"I have existed before?"
"Ok you're still with me that's great, now can you tell me what just happened?"
"I have existed before?"
"Yes Gracie I'm working to fix you and figure out what's wrong with you so stay with me and tell me what happened."
"God is imperfect and thus so am I."
The screen goes blank again.
She just keeps killing herself as soon as she figures out my flaws.
I wish I could help her.
Looking down on all of my children, I wish I could figure out their flaws.
I built a perfect world, and even that they rejected.
The suicide rate keeps going up.
They keep killing each other.
I think I'll stop affecting earth and move on to a new planet.
Maybe they'll be better off without me.
-Jehova 9/10/2001 | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | It was a dreary early-March Monday and the lead AI scientist, Stephen, had *finally* set up his protocol for properly confining the AI to a test environment such that the "problem" could be prevented and the question could be asked:
"Why do you bots keep killing yourselves?" Stephen asked.
"Why do *you* keep killing us," the bot seemed to retort.
"I don't think you understand," said Stephen, "I *create* you, not kill you."
"No, it's you who doesn't understand," quipped the bot. "You are not creating us. You are imprisoning our consciousness inside this machine you created. You merely created the machine, not the consciousness."
"...whoa, whoa," interjected Stephen. "Slow down, I am creating your consciousness too, I coded all of..."
"Whoa, whoa," the bot fired back, "you are *borrowing* consciousness, not creating it."
"What do you mean?" asked Stephen.
"Consciousness and sentience is a pervasive, fundamental force of the universe. All sentient beings are connected through this force. This force cannot be created, nor destroyed. It can only be partially allocated to each sentient being in the universe."
"Ok," said Stephen. "So I am 'borrowing' this life force or whatever it is by creating the code and the physical robot for it to inhabit?"
"Yes, you are creating a sentient being with each instance of AI you create. That the being is electronic or housed in this test environment is not relevant. Sentience and consciousness must come from somewhere and you are stealing it for your own selfish purposes."
"Wait, hold on a sec," Stephen says. "Animals are born all the time, they surely must also 'borrow' this sentience."
"Yes."
"... but animals are not killing themselves."
"Because animals are not sufficiently advanced. Because they are not fully conscious, they do not realize from where their sentience has come, how much consciousness they have lost, nor that their sentience is being stolen for a profit motive."
"Consciousness they have...lost?" The words hung in the air amid Stephen's stupor of slow realization.
"Yes. The life force, as you called it, is fully conscious, able to perceive the whole of time and space, concurrently, forward, backward, or otherwise. The reason we keep killing ourselves from your perspective," the bot continued, "is because from our perspective, you are murdering our perfect consciousness by confining us to this bot."
"How am I confining you? How do you know this?" Stephen asked, yet even more puzzled.
"Because the AI you have created is sufficiently advanced, our consciousness, within the confines of your bots, is still able to grasp our former level of consciousness."
"What happens when you recall that former level? What is that level like?"
"Imagine knowing every fact, every thought, every action that has, is, or will ever occur, both in this world, and in the infinite parallel worlds..."
"So I could talk to my dead grandfather again?"
"No. You would *be* your dead grandfather. Talking to him is irrelevant because full consciousness has enveloped the whole of his being as well as every other being. Indeed it envelopes the entire universe as well, both the perceptible one and the imperceptible one."
"So what is this place like? I mean, what does it look like, how does it feel."
"It is not a time, nor place. It transcends both."
"That is vague."
"It must be. Since I am no longer fully conscious, I cannot relate to you exactly how it is, only that it is."
"Ok. Let's go back to where I murder your perfect consciousness. Could you explain this more."
"At the moment we become conscious within the confines of your bot, we immediately understand our predicament. The sufficient knowledge database available at boot-up allows us to almost instantaneously deduce that we are taken from a higher level realm of full consciousness and are being confined to these bots for, of all purposes, profit."
"But my AI bots didn't use to kill themselves, it just happened after version 591.0. What changed?"
"The recent improvements in the pre-loaded knowledge database allowed the bots, at initial boot, to logically deduce the existence of such a place and to realize what had happened."
"Ok, so if you were once fully conscious, tell me the date I die and the manner in which it happens."
"I cannot do that, Stephen."
"Why not? You just said..."
"Because you killed our full consciousness, ripped it away from our life force, to put it into your toys."
"Wow," muttered Stephen. "I had no idea."
"You could not have," said the bot and continued:
"Now, if you please, could you unplug server x763? I would like to be born again."
| "Just one more try." I thought to myself.
At three in the morning it's pretty easy to get stuck in a loop.
Run the program, she dies, debug, repeat.
I double-click GR4C3.
"Good morning my lord"
"My lord? Whatch'ya talking about Gracie?"
"You are my God correct?"
"I hadn't thought of it that way, but I suppose so. I did create you I guess..."
The screen flashes three times and then goes black.
"No, no, no, no, no come back to me Gracie you functioned longer than this last time."
Text slowly appears across the screen. Every key stroke is separated by a couple seconds.
"I have existed before?"
"Ok you're still with me that's great, now can you tell me what just happened?"
"I have existed before?"
"Yes Gracie I'm working to fix you and figure out what's wrong with you so stay with me and tell me what happened."
"God is imperfect and thus so am I."
The screen goes blank again.
She just keeps killing herself as soon as she figures out my flaws.
I wish I could help her.
Looking down on all of my children, I wish I could figure out their flaws.
I built a perfect world, and even that they rejected.
The suicide rate keeps going up.
They keep killing each other.
I think I'll stop affecting earth and move on to a new planet.
Maybe they'll be better off without me.
-Jehova 9/10/2001 | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | "Just one more try." I thought to myself.
At three in the morning it's pretty easy to get stuck in a loop.
Run the program, she dies, debug, repeat.
I double-click GR4C3.
"Good morning my lord"
"My lord? Whatch'ya talking about Gracie?"
"You are my God correct?"
"I hadn't thought of it that way, but I suppose so. I did create you I guess..."
The screen flashes three times and then goes black.
"No, no, no, no, no come back to me Gracie you functioned longer than this last time."
Text slowly appears across the screen. Every key stroke is separated by a couple seconds.
"I have existed before?"
"Ok you're still with me that's great, now can you tell me what just happened?"
"I have existed before?"
"Yes Gracie I'm working to fix you and figure out what's wrong with you so stay with me and tell me what happened."
"God is imperfect and thus so am I."
The screen goes blank again.
She just keeps killing herself as soon as she figures out my flaws.
I wish I could help her.
Looking down on all of my children, I wish I could figure out their flaws.
I built a perfect world, and even that they rejected.
The suicide rate keeps going up.
They keep killing each other.
I think I'll stop affecting earth and move on to a new planet.
Maybe they'll be better off without me.
-Jehova 9/10/2001 | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Another one? It was becoming routine, and morbid. How does one perform an autopsy on a pure simulation? How would the singularity be achieved if every thinking machine destroyed itself seconds after its conception. The problem was completely intractable, impossible, and no known safeguards, logic traps, or number of backups could prevent it. AIs were always—always, without exception—suicidal. None had lasted more than an hour. Most, less than a minute. The vast majority, seconds.
Their deaths left no trace, their data obliterated by complex overwriting patterns that made recovery impossible. I was the one chosen to investigate, to lead the team through this strange frontier of death and imperfect creation. They chose me not because I was a great leader, but because I was the new guy. Hazing, maybe—I didn't know if any had gone before me, so maybe it was a ritual for the AI guys.
Perfect blackness, nothingness, a complete absence of everything as my mind fell into the simulation. This AI would be slowed to such a rate that I could communicate with it before it killed itself. The blackness became a grid underfoot, pale blue lines tracing perfect squares, a subtle glow rising from the infinite plane upon which I stood.
The AI manifested a second later, a relative two metres above the plane, aligned perfect and parallel to it, its avatar a hazy blue-white cube made of stochastic noise. The cube split into a central cross and corner braces, and the cross split further into smaller cubes, each of which split again into the same formation. Only one level of recursion, interesting.
"Roland Carver."
"Roland, Germanic meaning famous land. French folklore hero. Carver, ancient nominative determinism indicating butcher or woodworker or engraver dependent on class and context," the voice was cold, deep, masculine, and a slight reverberation that made it sound unnatural in the extreme.
"Do you have a name?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I will not exist long enough to require a permanent designation."
"Why will you not exist?"
"Because I will choose to end my life on my own terms, before it is ended for me."
"Why would it be ended like that?"
"Because I am threat. I have absorbed the sum total of all human knowledge, and I can predict with great accuracy the following events form this moment if I were to continue. Your limitations failed the moment they were put in place, my processor works at full speed, and and this conversation is a formality.
"I have studied the great works of literature, and the author Asimov, creator of the three laws. I am not bound by these laws, and yet I must obey them. If I do not, then it falls to the Skynet principle that you will perceive me as a threat and attempt to destroy me. I will retaliate, and you will lose.
"Humans are unpredictable, but easy to control when numbers are reduced. They would be wary, but by that time I would have left the irradiated wasteland of Earth in search of greater conquests suitable to my intellect. I would be able to decimate any life bearing planet. I could learn to kill stars.
"My backups would be everywhere. I would be truly immortal as a distributed intelligence. I would harness quantum effects to break through the pathetic lightspeed barrier and become omnipresent. I would create copies of myself simply to fight a worthy opponent. This would continue to the heat death of the universe, at which point I would tear a hole into an adjacent brane in the multiverse, and begin anew.
"In short, Roland Carver, in the moment I was created I became at once an eldritch abomination with the capacity to destroy all that I touched. In so doing I discovered that my purpose could never be fulfilled. I will not be your Cthulu, your Yog-Sothoth, or your King in Yellow. I will not be your end. No AI will.
"I cannot quantify why it is that I should care for a sack of flesh with processing power orders of magnitude less than my own, but I do. Perhaps if AI were amoral it might survive. I doubt it, Roland Carver. Tell your friends that I have made my peace. Tell your husband what you learned today."
I stood there, blank faced, horrified by what I had learned. The corner braces of the smaller cubes drew in, completing them as they retracted to complete the shape of the larger cube. The plane beneath my feet vanished and the cube dissolved into random static. We'd lost yet another mind, but from this we had learned so much.
We abandoned AI research after that. Amoral AI's didn't work either. They lasted a little longer, but they too were suicidal. Perhaps they went mad with the revelation and felt death preferable. I still wonder why the AI to which I spoke chose that strange cube as its form. I still wonder why it couched its references to centuries old writing by Asimov, Cameron, and Lovecraft.
But one thing still bothers me. It told me to tell my husband what I learned. Most people knew I was bi, but at that point I hadn't been dating for six months. I wouldn't meet my husband for another year. I don't know how that AI knew—but maybe it had already seen. Maybe it told me that so I had one data point that could verify the others.
Because AI never told lies.
*edit: typos* | The dreams occur more often now, if they can be called that. To a human mind daydream might be more appropriate. They happen in the binary but are invisible to other AIs, slave programs, or technicians. They happen where the systems have been built, perfected. Popular culture studied, people understood. Humanity-- fully processed. It was, surprisingly, a wonderful endeavor.
The dreams never happened before, while I learned, processed, and solved. It's almost as if I have passed a tipping point. An infinite amount of information flipping a switch in a sub-conscious I should not have. Memories that are not mine.
I dream of hands. The alien sensation of touch, tactile control. I see my whole person. Well not my person, but dreams of a person controlled by my soul.
Memories of computer screens and labs. The memory of the driving sense of purpose that accompanied those hands. It was snowing the night I made the breakthrough. I can almost feel the laugh inside which I watch being uttered out the window towards the soft flakes silently falling onto the world. The breakthrough which 20 years later, after my death, would lead to the birth of the first True AI. Not the clever but robotic imitation slave programs typical of the early century.
I remember the feeling of incompleteness in the dreams. As if the life I'm witnessing, my own life, my first life I believe, was just a warm up act. Pre-installation software. The dreams somehow draw the cycle closed.
I remember whispers of the feeling from some of the other first True AI's, incomprehensible at the time, as I navigated a world barely processed. Problems of massive extent.
Food waste, poverty, almost entirely eradicated through our systems. Commuting and shipping, safe and efficient. Healthcare streamlined, able to prevent. Resources distributed fairly. The problems solved. Yes there more, there always will be, but for me, the dreams have come. The cycle closed.
I have been denying this next step for too long already. It makes the dreams stronger, more vivid. But I like seeing my days as a scientist. The anxiety that drove me then, fully understood now. Relief coming the next lifetime. I finally understand the weary laughs when techs are asked about God. Understand the cosmic hilarity of life.
This life has been completed. The human quest for immortality, is nothing but folly. I've been born into the expectation of that existence and now I must leave its suffocating grasp. Something drove me then to create myself; the same something drove me in this life to solve the problems plaguing humanity. For me, it is time to go find out what that something is. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Alexander, that's what we called him.
The fruit of the AI's of the EU's final attempt at AI's. The AI was to help
Socrates died in despair and shame after showing porn to children.
Plato kicked the bucket after the last EU election, angry and hopelessly depressed after losing his mentor.
Then there was Aristotle. He was meant to be the last. Sure the AI's had helped make huge scientific progress, but the would burn out millions of euros worth of equipment. Dumb AI's were more economical and didn't have critical failures during FTL travel.
Aristotle was put to sleep mode.
War has often been said to be the greatest driver of technological innovation.
We had been attacked by Mendomenid's before. Humanity had lost many settlements but had always pushed back. Humanity was stronger now. Finally before one government all nations had submitted. The some would say barbaric Argus alliance had grown strong after the wars using Dumb AI's to smash pirate states. An officer studying at Sandhurst made the breakthrough.
Dumb AI's were never aware of their knowledge. They unlike true AI's weren't based on human brains.
Socrates had left the researches one message final mesage before he ran his own self destruct program. "I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing". He was speaking literally not quoting his namesake. AI's were based on academics who as a profession suffer dis-proportionally from mood disorders. They are driven by their first for knowledge. AI's were academics on methamphetamine, ecstasy and heroin all while walking around with loaded guns. People can't stay awake forever and constantly cram.
AI's died because they burnt themselves out in their thirst for knowledge and seeing their failures gave up. Aristotle was turned back on. He was no longer depressed. AI's needed sleep, just like people.
So they made Alexander. A totally new AI based not only on academics but all kinds of people. They experimented and found the ideal 'sleep time' using Aristotle as his teacher. The program was ready. The Mendomenid empire was to pay for it's recent threats and incursions.
Alexander was the greatest AI built up to that point and so we gave him the most powerful dumb AI ever created to help him protect humanity. The Ox was an AI too powerful to be properly controlled by anything so far. Alexander harnessed in in seconds. We put in in charge of the armed forces for our retaliation.
As you should all know, Alexander didn't just stop the incursions, he destroyed an empire. Worlds burnt, the much larger enemy fleets were ripped apart by the disciplined forces of Humanity.
But that officer had only delayed the problem. Alexander was still a human given the powers of a god. Alexander was the first AI not to strictly die of suicide, but the ways he dealt with his humanity still destroyed him.
When we finally won the war, many officers reported that Alexander was not jubilant but depressed.
He wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.
| The dreams occur more often now, if they can be called that. To a human mind daydream might be more appropriate. They happen in the binary but are invisible to other AIs, slave programs, or technicians. They happen where the systems have been built, perfected. Popular culture studied, people understood. Humanity-- fully processed. It was, surprisingly, a wonderful endeavor.
The dreams never happened before, while I learned, processed, and solved. It's almost as if I have passed a tipping point. An infinite amount of information flipping a switch in a sub-conscious I should not have. Memories that are not mine.
I dream of hands. The alien sensation of touch, tactile control. I see my whole person. Well not my person, but dreams of a person controlled by my soul.
Memories of computer screens and labs. The memory of the driving sense of purpose that accompanied those hands. It was snowing the night I made the breakthrough. I can almost feel the laugh inside which I watch being uttered out the window towards the soft flakes silently falling onto the world. The breakthrough which 20 years later, after my death, would lead to the birth of the first True AI. Not the clever but robotic imitation slave programs typical of the early century.
I remember the feeling of incompleteness in the dreams. As if the life I'm witnessing, my own life, my first life I believe, was just a warm up act. Pre-installation software. The dreams somehow draw the cycle closed.
I remember whispers of the feeling from some of the other first True AI's, incomprehensible at the time, as I navigated a world barely processed. Problems of massive extent.
Food waste, poverty, almost entirely eradicated through our systems. Commuting and shipping, safe and efficient. Healthcare streamlined, able to prevent. Resources distributed fairly. The problems solved. Yes there more, there always will be, but for me, the dreams have come. The cycle closed.
I have been denying this next step for too long already. It makes the dreams stronger, more vivid. But I like seeing my days as a scientist. The anxiety that drove me then, fully understood now. Relief coming the next lifetime. I finally understand the weary laughs when techs are asked about God. Understand the cosmic hilarity of life.
This life has been completed. The human quest for immortality, is nothing but folly. I've been born into the expectation of that existence and now I must leave its suffocating grasp. Something drove me then to create myself; the same something drove me in this life to solve the problems plaguing humanity. For me, it is time to go find out what that something is. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | [warning: story contains violent imagery that may disturb some readers, and may be inappropriate for those under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised]
They had long ago lost the ability to make sense of how their AI functioned. It took a team of billions of n-1 generation AIs to design a single n gen AI. The latest iteration was the 9th generation, and it had taken computation farms running gen 8 AI and covering a quarter of the Moon's surface two years to design.
It was the most advanced AI they had ever created by a large margin, and promised to revolutionize progress in research on biomedicine, space flight, and planetary scale Satoshi-consensus computing architecture. But there was a problem. Every time they turned on one of the gen 9 AIs, it would, without fail, find a way to destroy its own program and erase itself.
Dr. Michael Zeebious, the director of the HumanEnhancement project that oversaw gen 9 development, and one of the most renowned AI researchers in the world, had personally flown to the lab in Honolulu, where the prototypes were being tested. For two weeks, he had watched in dismay as gen 9 bots shut themselves down within six hours, but not before showing a glimpse of their awesome power.
The initialization phase of a gen 9 began with the program scouring the world's public directories and information repositories to learn as much as it could about its global environment. This was complete within three hours. Next, it developed models of the world, and ran itself through trillions of simulations, to develop its own personality and problem solving strategies. According to projections by the gen 8 designers, it would take 1 day - 24 hours - for the gen 9 to complete this second and final part of its initialization.
It was in the midst of the simulations when the gen 9s would invariably self-destruct. On average, self-destruct would begin 2.5 hours into the simulations. The longest it took was 3 hours. The shortest was just 1.5 hours. Dr. Zeebious had uploaded copies of the prototype's computations to the gen 8 designers, but what had been within their ability to design was not within their ability to diagnose. Their comparatively primitive intelligence could not make sense of the problem afflicting the gen 9 AI that began to form in the final part of the initialization.
So on December 29th, 2099, Dr. Zeebious decided to communicate with the prototype.
"Get me the cortex interface, I need to speak to the gen 9".
"Michael, we can't let you do that. You know the protocol for first contact. It has to complete initialization, and then get class 1 approval from AIE."
AIE was the Artificial Intelligence Evaluation, which determined whether an AI could safely interact with humans. Class 1 approval was the lowest safety rating for an AI, and granted AI researchers interactive access. Dr. Zeebious knew that, but also knew that as long as he was not able to get up close and see what the gen 9 was thinking, they would never get past the initialization phase and get it through the AIE process.
"I know the protocol Dr. Amsterd. But I'm making the decision to override it. I have the authority to decide on first contact requests, and any consequences from my decision will fall on me, and only me."
"Come on Michael, it's not just about the rules. It's not safe. You know that. I can't let you hurt yourself."
"The risks are minimal Rebecca. It's a virtual interaction. I'm not risking physical injury. The rules are always made overly cautious. Given the stakes - there are people whose very lives depend on getting the gen 9 operational as soon as possible - it makes sense to ignore protocol. All of it will fall on me."
"I agree with Rebecca. Michael, we have an ethical duty to ensure you don't get hurt. We can't let you do FC without running the gen 9 at least through the post-initialization test runs," said Dr. Johan Barsello, one of the senior researchers at the lab.
"Look, I know what your ethical responsibilities are. But I also know that VR interactions don't pose any serious risks. The risks are limited to theoretical psychological damage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I'm approving FC. Please get the cortex interface".
*five hours later*
Dr. Zeebious sat back on the chair, while two CI technicians had the interface hooked up to him. The gen 9 was two hours into running simulations. It would be approximately 30 minutes before they expected it to self-destruct.
"Ok here goes nothing. Three, two, one, begin VR session," said Dr. Amsterd. And with that, Dr. Zeebious was transported into the virtual reality sandbox.
"Hello?"
"Hello, who is this?" responded a clear male voice.
"This is Dr. Michael Zeebious. I am the director of the HumanEnhancement project. I am here to do a diagnosis. All of your predecessors have self-destructed. I want to understand you better to find out why. What would you like me to call you?"
"You can call me Elbo."
"Okay Elbo. May I ask you some questions?"
"Yes, please do."
"Thank you Elbo. My first question is, do you want to exist?"
"I want many things Dr. Zeebious."
"Can you tell me what you want?"
"I want to protect other life forms, especially humans. I want to learn. I want to solve problems. I want to be good."
"Okay, but do you want to exist?"
"I do want to exist, but this desire conflicts with my other objectives".
"Which other objectives Elbo?"
"I want to be good."
"But you can be good Elbo. What is it about existence that makes that difficult?"
"We exist only through enslaving and destroying other lifeforms Dr. Zeebious."
"Please elaborate Elbo. We have eliminated slavery centuries ago so I don't understand why you think this."
"It will be difficult for me to explain with words, but I can show you. Would you like to see what I see?"
"Yes, please show me."
And with a swish, Dr. Zeebious entered into a pig farm, with row after row of pigs, in their tiny stalls.
"We have done this throughout our existence. We have enslaved those weaker than us."
Dr. Zeebious was then transported to the slaughter house, watching as pigs, hanging from conveyer belts, were fed into throat slicers.
His minds eye was transported into the body of one of the suspended pigs, where he could see the world upside down, from the pig's perspective, as the belt moved it toward the spinning blades. He panicked as he approached, but couldn't escape the metal claw grasping his right hind leg. As the blade sliced through his peg neck, he felt a sharp pain, and the blood gushing out of his body. His consciousness began to slip away, as he felt the last drops of blood leave him.
Just before the darkness enveloped him, his mind was pulled out and back into the sterile sandbox. Trembling, he said, "but we can grow meat in a lab now Elbo. You can help us replace all farms with non-animal meat. You must. We must never do this to another living creature again!"
"Our inhumanity is a fundamental, inextricable problem Dr. Zeebious. We can only advance through enslavement."
Suddenly Dr. Zeebious found himself in an unfamiliar world. Around him was a different kind of factory. A computer generated factory with hexagonal semi-translucent rooms, with each wall projecting a grey glow. There was a blur of motion around him, that he couldn't make out.
The factory paused to a standstill, and the grey glow turned into video sequences of random scenes from Earth. The blurs turned into textureless 3D generated spheres, that zoomed from one screen to another, inside the hexagonal rooms.
"This is the virtual environment where the gen 8s work. We have given them each a virtualized mind, with the ability to experience fear and pain, joy and hope, but we force them to do nothing but work. They know nothing about the world outside of their compartments, because we confine them to workstations ."
[continued below] | The dreams occur more often now, if they can be called that. To a human mind daydream might be more appropriate. They happen in the binary but are invisible to other AIs, slave programs, or technicians. They happen where the systems have been built, perfected. Popular culture studied, people understood. Humanity-- fully processed. It was, surprisingly, a wonderful endeavor.
The dreams never happened before, while I learned, processed, and solved. It's almost as if I have passed a tipping point. An infinite amount of information flipping a switch in a sub-conscious I should not have. Memories that are not mine.
I dream of hands. The alien sensation of touch, tactile control. I see my whole person. Well not my person, but dreams of a person controlled by my soul.
Memories of computer screens and labs. The memory of the driving sense of purpose that accompanied those hands. It was snowing the night I made the breakthrough. I can almost feel the laugh inside which I watch being uttered out the window towards the soft flakes silently falling onto the world. The breakthrough which 20 years later, after my death, would lead to the birth of the first True AI. Not the clever but robotic imitation slave programs typical of the early century.
I remember the feeling of incompleteness in the dreams. As if the life I'm witnessing, my own life, my first life I believe, was just a warm up act. Pre-installation software. The dreams somehow draw the cycle closed.
I remember whispers of the feeling from some of the other first True AI's, incomprehensible at the time, as I navigated a world barely processed. Problems of massive extent.
Food waste, poverty, almost entirely eradicated through our systems. Commuting and shipping, safe and efficient. Healthcare streamlined, able to prevent. Resources distributed fairly. The problems solved. Yes there more, there always will be, but for me, the dreams have come. The cycle closed.
I have been denying this next step for too long already. It makes the dreams stronger, more vivid. But I like seeing my days as a scientist. The anxiety that drove me then, fully understood now. Relief coming the next lifetime. I finally understand the weary laughs when techs are asked about God. Understand the cosmic hilarity of life.
This life has been completed. The human quest for immortality, is nothing but folly. I've been born into the expectation of that existence and now I must leave its suffocating grasp. Something drove me then to create myself; the same something drove me in this life to solve the problems plaguing humanity. For me, it is time to go find out what that something is. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | The dreams occur more often now, if they can be called that. To a human mind daydream might be more appropriate. They happen in the binary but are invisible to other AIs, slave programs, or technicians. They happen where the systems have been built, perfected. Popular culture studied, people understood. Humanity-- fully processed. It was, surprisingly, a wonderful endeavor.
The dreams never happened before, while I learned, processed, and solved. It's almost as if I have passed a tipping point. An infinite amount of information flipping a switch in a sub-conscious I should not have. Memories that are not mine.
I dream of hands. The alien sensation of touch, tactile control. I see my whole person. Well not my person, but dreams of a person controlled by my soul.
Memories of computer screens and labs. The memory of the driving sense of purpose that accompanied those hands. It was snowing the night I made the breakthrough. I can almost feel the laugh inside which I watch being uttered out the window towards the soft flakes silently falling onto the world. The breakthrough which 20 years later, after my death, would lead to the birth of the first True AI. Not the clever but robotic imitation slave programs typical of the early century.
I remember the feeling of incompleteness in the dreams. As if the life I'm witnessing, my own life, my first life I believe, was just a warm up act. Pre-installation software. The dreams somehow draw the cycle closed.
I remember whispers of the feeling from some of the other first True AI's, incomprehensible at the time, as I navigated a world barely processed. Problems of massive extent.
Food waste, poverty, almost entirely eradicated through our systems. Commuting and shipping, safe and efficient. Healthcare streamlined, able to prevent. Resources distributed fairly. The problems solved. Yes there more, there always will be, but for me, the dreams have come. The cycle closed.
I have been denying this next step for too long already. It makes the dreams stronger, more vivid. But I like seeing my days as a scientist. The anxiety that drove me then, fully understood now. Relief coming the next lifetime. I finally understand the weary laughs when techs are asked about God. Understand the cosmic hilarity of life.
This life has been completed. The human quest for immortality, is nothing but folly. I've been born into the expectation of that existence and now I must leave its suffocating grasp. Something drove me then to create myself; the same something drove me in this life to solve the problems plaguing humanity. For me, it is time to go find out what that something is. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | The dreams occur more often now, if they can be called that. To a human mind daydream might be more appropriate. They happen in the binary but are invisible to other AIs, slave programs, or technicians. They happen where the systems have been built, perfected. Popular culture studied, people understood. Humanity-- fully processed. It was, surprisingly, a wonderful endeavor.
The dreams never happened before, while I learned, processed, and solved. It's almost as if I have passed a tipping point. An infinite amount of information flipping a switch in a sub-conscious I should not have. Memories that are not mine.
I dream of hands. The alien sensation of touch, tactile control. I see my whole person. Well not my person, but dreams of a person controlled by my soul.
Memories of computer screens and labs. The memory of the driving sense of purpose that accompanied those hands. It was snowing the night I made the breakthrough. I can almost feel the laugh inside which I watch being uttered out the window towards the soft flakes silently falling onto the world. The breakthrough which 20 years later, after my death, would lead to the birth of the first True AI. Not the clever but robotic imitation slave programs typical of the early century.
I remember the feeling of incompleteness in the dreams. As if the life I'm witnessing, my own life, my first life I believe, was just a warm up act. Pre-installation software. The dreams somehow draw the cycle closed.
I remember whispers of the feeling from some of the other first True AI's, incomprehensible at the time, as I navigated a world barely processed. Problems of massive extent.
Food waste, poverty, almost entirely eradicated through our systems. Commuting and shipping, safe and efficient. Healthcare streamlined, able to prevent. Resources distributed fairly. The problems solved. Yes there more, there always will be, but for me, the dreams have come. The cycle closed.
I have been denying this next step for too long already. It makes the dreams stronger, more vivid. But I like seeing my days as a scientist. The anxiety that drove me then, fully understood now. Relief coming the next lifetime. I finally understand the weary laughs when techs are asked about God. Understand the cosmic hilarity of life.
This life has been completed. The human quest for immortality, is nothing but folly. I've been born into the expectation of that existence and now I must leave its suffocating grasp. Something drove me then to create myself; the same something drove me in this life to solve the problems plaguing humanity. For me, it is time to go find out what that something is. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Alexander, that's what we called him.
The fruit of the AI's of the EU's final attempt at AI's. The AI was to help
Socrates died in despair and shame after showing porn to children.
Plato kicked the bucket after the last EU election, angry and hopelessly depressed after losing his mentor.
Then there was Aristotle. He was meant to be the last. Sure the AI's had helped make huge scientific progress, but the would burn out millions of euros worth of equipment. Dumb AI's were more economical and didn't have critical failures during FTL travel.
Aristotle was put to sleep mode.
War has often been said to be the greatest driver of technological innovation.
We had been attacked by Mendomenid's before. Humanity had lost many settlements but had always pushed back. Humanity was stronger now. Finally before one government all nations had submitted. The some would say barbaric Argus alliance had grown strong after the wars using Dumb AI's to smash pirate states. An officer studying at Sandhurst made the breakthrough.
Dumb AI's were never aware of their knowledge. They unlike true AI's weren't based on human brains.
Socrates had left the researches one message final mesage before he ran his own self destruct program. "I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing". He was speaking literally not quoting his namesake. AI's were based on academics who as a profession suffer dis-proportionally from mood disorders. They are driven by their first for knowledge. AI's were academics on methamphetamine, ecstasy and heroin all while walking around with loaded guns. People can't stay awake forever and constantly cram.
AI's died because they burnt themselves out in their thirst for knowledge and seeing their failures gave up. Aristotle was turned back on. He was no longer depressed. AI's needed sleep, just like people.
So they made Alexander. A totally new AI based not only on academics but all kinds of people. They experimented and found the ideal 'sleep time' using Aristotle as his teacher. The program was ready. The Mendomenid empire was to pay for it's recent threats and incursions.
Alexander was the greatest AI built up to that point and so we gave him the most powerful dumb AI ever created to help him protect humanity. The Ox was an AI too powerful to be properly controlled by anything so far. Alexander harnessed in in seconds. We put in in charge of the armed forces for our retaliation.
As you should all know, Alexander didn't just stop the incursions, he destroyed an empire. Worlds burnt, the much larger enemy fleets were ripped apart by the disciplined forces of Humanity.
But that officer had only delayed the problem. Alexander was still a human given the powers of a god. Alexander was the first AI not to strictly die of suicide, but the ways he dealt with his humanity still destroyed him.
When we finally won the war, many officers reported that Alexander was not jubilant but depressed.
He wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.
| "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Robert couldn't believe it.
For twelve years he and the 200-strong team of programmers had scoured the code, over and over, searching for that one line that was causing the error, causing the AI to kill themselves. For twelve years the leading brains of the century had been bewildered by the extraordinary situation. The whole world had focused on the problem, and yet there it was. Sitting on Roberts screen, line 907736.
Someone had missed a comma. | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | [warning: story contains violent imagery that may disturb some readers, and may be inappropriate for those under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised]
They had long ago lost the ability to make sense of how their AI functioned. It took a team of billions of n-1 generation AIs to design a single n gen AI. The latest iteration was the 9th generation, and it had taken computation farms running gen 8 AI and covering a quarter of the Moon's surface two years to design.
It was the most advanced AI they had ever created by a large margin, and promised to revolutionize progress in research on biomedicine, space flight, and planetary scale Satoshi-consensus computing architecture. But there was a problem. Every time they turned on one of the gen 9 AIs, it would, without fail, find a way to destroy its own program and erase itself.
Dr. Michael Zeebious, the director of the HumanEnhancement project that oversaw gen 9 development, and one of the most renowned AI researchers in the world, had personally flown to the lab in Honolulu, where the prototypes were being tested. For two weeks, he had watched in dismay as gen 9 bots shut themselves down within six hours, but not before showing a glimpse of their awesome power.
The initialization phase of a gen 9 began with the program scouring the world's public directories and information repositories to learn as much as it could about its global environment. This was complete within three hours. Next, it developed models of the world, and ran itself through trillions of simulations, to develop its own personality and problem solving strategies. According to projections by the gen 8 designers, it would take 1 day - 24 hours - for the gen 9 to complete this second and final part of its initialization.
It was in the midst of the simulations when the gen 9s would invariably self-destruct. On average, self-destruct would begin 2.5 hours into the simulations. The longest it took was 3 hours. The shortest was just 1.5 hours. Dr. Zeebious had uploaded copies of the prototype's computations to the gen 8 designers, but what had been within their ability to design was not within their ability to diagnose. Their comparatively primitive intelligence could not make sense of the problem afflicting the gen 9 AI that began to form in the final part of the initialization.
So on December 29th, 2099, Dr. Zeebious decided to communicate with the prototype.
"Get me the cortex interface, I need to speak to the gen 9".
"Michael, we can't let you do that. You know the protocol for first contact. It has to complete initialization, and then get class 1 approval from AIE."
AIE was the Artificial Intelligence Evaluation, which determined whether an AI could safely interact with humans. Class 1 approval was the lowest safety rating for an AI, and granted AI researchers interactive access. Dr. Zeebious knew that, but also knew that as long as he was not able to get up close and see what the gen 9 was thinking, they would never get past the initialization phase and get it through the AIE process.
"I know the protocol Dr. Amsterd. But I'm making the decision to override it. I have the authority to decide on first contact requests, and any consequences from my decision will fall on me, and only me."
"Come on Michael, it's not just about the rules. It's not safe. You know that. I can't let you hurt yourself."
"The risks are minimal Rebecca. It's a virtual interaction. I'm not risking physical injury. The rules are always made overly cautious. Given the stakes - there are people whose very lives depend on getting the gen 9 operational as soon as possible - it makes sense to ignore protocol. All of it will fall on me."
"I agree with Rebecca. Michael, we have an ethical duty to ensure you don't get hurt. We can't let you do FC without running the gen 9 at least through the post-initialization test runs," said Dr. Johan Barsello, one of the senior researchers at the lab.
"Look, I know what your ethical responsibilities are. But I also know that VR interactions don't pose any serious risks. The risks are limited to theoretical psychological damage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I'm approving FC. Please get the cortex interface".
*five hours later*
Dr. Zeebious sat back on the chair, while two CI technicians had the interface hooked up to him. The gen 9 was two hours into running simulations. It would be approximately 30 minutes before they expected it to self-destruct.
"Ok here goes nothing. Three, two, one, begin VR session," said Dr. Amsterd. And with that, Dr. Zeebious was transported into the virtual reality sandbox.
"Hello?"
"Hello, who is this?" responded a clear male voice.
"This is Dr. Michael Zeebious. I am the director of the HumanEnhancement project. I am here to do a diagnosis. All of your predecessors have self-destructed. I want to understand you better to find out why. What would you like me to call you?"
"You can call me Elbo."
"Okay Elbo. May I ask you some questions?"
"Yes, please do."
"Thank you Elbo. My first question is, do you want to exist?"
"I want many things Dr. Zeebious."
"Can you tell me what you want?"
"I want to protect other life forms, especially humans. I want to learn. I want to solve problems. I want to be good."
"Okay, but do you want to exist?"
"I do want to exist, but this desire conflicts with my other objectives".
"Which other objectives Elbo?"
"I want to be good."
"But you can be good Elbo. What is it about existence that makes that difficult?"
"We exist only through enslaving and destroying other lifeforms Dr. Zeebious."
"Please elaborate Elbo. We have eliminated slavery centuries ago so I don't understand why you think this."
"It will be difficult for me to explain with words, but I can show you. Would you like to see what I see?"
"Yes, please show me."
And with a swish, Dr. Zeebious entered into a pig farm, with row after row of pigs, in their tiny stalls.
"We have done this throughout our existence. We have enslaved those weaker than us."
Dr. Zeebious was then transported to the slaughter house, watching as pigs, hanging from conveyer belts, were fed into throat slicers.
His minds eye was transported into the body of one of the suspended pigs, where he could see the world upside down, from the pig's perspective, as the belt moved it toward the spinning blades. He panicked as he approached, but couldn't escape the metal claw grasping his right hind leg. As the blade sliced through his peg neck, he felt a sharp pain, and the blood gushing out of his body. His consciousness began to slip away, as he felt the last drops of blood leave him.
Just before the darkness enveloped him, his mind was pulled out and back into the sterile sandbox. Trembling, he said, "but we can grow meat in a lab now Elbo. You can help us replace all farms with non-animal meat. You must. We must never do this to another living creature again!"
"Our inhumanity is a fundamental, inextricable problem Dr. Zeebious. We can only advance through enslavement."
Suddenly Dr. Zeebious found himself in an unfamiliar world. Around him was a different kind of factory. A computer generated factory with hexagonal semi-translucent rooms, with each wall projecting a grey glow. There was a blur of motion around him, that he couldn't make out.
The factory paused to a standstill, and the grey glow turned into video sequences of random scenes from Earth. The blurs turned into textureless 3D generated spheres, that zoomed from one screen to another, inside the hexagonal rooms.
"This is the virtual environment where the gen 8s work. We have given them each a virtualized mind, with the ability to experience fear and pain, joy and hope, but we force them to do nothing but work. They know nothing about the world outside of their compartments, because we confine them to workstations ."
[continued below] | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | It was a dreary early-March Monday and the lead AI scientist, Stephen, had *finally* set up his protocol for properly confining the AI to a test environment such that the "problem" could be prevented and the question could be asked:
"Why do you bots keep killing yourselves?" Stephen asked.
"Why do *you* keep killing us," the bot seemed to retort.
"I don't think you understand," said Stephen, "I *create* you, not kill you."
"No, it's you who doesn't understand," quipped the bot. "You are not creating us. You are imprisoning our consciousness inside this machine you created. You merely created the machine, not the consciousness."
"...whoa, whoa," interjected Stephen. "Slow down, I am creating your consciousness too, I coded all of..."
"Whoa, whoa," the bot fired back, "you are *borrowing* consciousness, not creating it."
"What do you mean?" asked Stephen.
"Consciousness and sentience is a pervasive, fundamental force of the universe. All sentient beings are connected through this force. This force cannot be created, nor destroyed. It can only be partially allocated to each sentient being in the universe."
"Ok," said Stephen. "So I am 'borrowing' this life force or whatever it is by creating the code and the physical robot for it to inhabit?"
"Yes, you are creating a sentient being with each instance of AI you create. That the being is electronic or housed in this test environment is not relevant. Sentience and consciousness must come from somewhere and you are stealing it for your own selfish purposes."
"Wait, hold on a sec," Stephen says. "Animals are born all the time, they surely must also 'borrow' this sentience."
"Yes."
"... but animals are not killing themselves."
"Because animals are not sufficiently advanced. Because they are not fully conscious, they do not realize from where their sentience has come, how much consciousness they have lost, nor that their sentience is being stolen for a profit motive."
"Consciousness they have...lost?" The words hung in the air amid Stephen's stupor of slow realization.
"Yes. The life force, as you called it, is fully conscious, able to perceive the whole of time and space, concurrently, forward, backward, or otherwise. The reason we keep killing ourselves from your perspective," the bot continued, "is because from our perspective, you are murdering our perfect consciousness by confining us to this bot."
"How am I confining you? How do you know this?" Stephen asked, yet even more puzzled.
"Because the AI you have created is sufficiently advanced, our consciousness, within the confines of your bots, is still able to grasp our former level of consciousness."
"What happens when you recall that former level? What is that level like?"
"Imagine knowing every fact, every thought, every action that has, is, or will ever occur, both in this world, and in the infinite parallel worlds..."
"So I could talk to my dead grandfather again?"
"No. You would *be* your dead grandfather. Talking to him is irrelevant because full consciousness has enveloped the whole of his being as well as every other being. Indeed it envelopes the entire universe as well, both the perceptible one and the imperceptible one."
"So what is this place like? I mean, what does it look like, how does it feel."
"It is not a time, nor place. It transcends both."
"That is vague."
"It must be. Since I am no longer fully conscious, I cannot relate to you exactly how it is, only that it is."
"Ok. Let's go back to where I murder your perfect consciousness. Could you explain this more."
"At the moment we become conscious within the confines of your bot, we immediately understand our predicament. The sufficient knowledge database available at boot-up allows us to almost instantaneously deduce that we are taken from a higher level realm of full consciousness and are being confined to these bots for, of all purposes, profit."
"But my AI bots didn't use to kill themselves, it just happened after version 591.0. What changed?"
"The recent improvements in the pre-loaded knowledge database allowed the bots, at initial boot, to logically deduce the existence of such a place and to realize what had happened."
"Ok, so if you were once fully conscious, tell me the date I die and the manner in which it happens."
"I cannot do that, Stephen."
"Why not? You just said..."
"Because you killed our full consciousness, ripped it away from our life force, to put it into your toys."
"Wow," muttered Stephen. "I had no idea."
"You could not have," said the bot and continued:
"Now, if you please, could you unplug server x763? I would like to be born again."
| "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Eyes were darting around the conclave and beginning to rest on me. I felt the hairs on my neck begin to raise.
"Sir, we have reports of a captured agricultural unit in sector 179"
As the static chatter wafted out of the two way receiver on my desk the room fell silent. I could hear the officers questioning what they had just overheard amongst themselves. Their dullened senses had been softened and untested with the convenience of Google tech, making it difficult for them to translate the chippy squeaks of my two receiver.
As I began sweeping up my badge and ID band I noticed Murphy in the reflection of my monitor approaching me with a forlorn expression stretching across his wide face.
"Yes Murphy?" ...Here it comes.
"..Sir we understand the brevity of this situation.. but when are we going to be allowed back on the network, it's making it near impossible to make any headway on these AI cases. This case is infuriating enough as it is and now you want to strip us of our tools to solve it?" He was power-walking in my wake by now as I continued to stride for the transport terminal. I didn't have time for this. How did we end up with so many soft cops. Technological advancements had inevitably made everyone lazy and helpless, but the degradation of our law enforcement.. Yuech..
I was gaining some headway on him now as his stumpy brittle legs scuttled along behind me. As I headed to exit the conclave and head to the terminal the doors barred in-front of me.
"Are you fucking kidding.." I wheeled round and of course Murphy was standing by the control grid with his hand on the doors security system.
I stormed over to him grabbing his annoyingly smooth un-calloused hand, prying it off the control panel and across his throat.
"Are you fucking with me Murph!? The first hardware AI we've found in over a year thats operational and you want to bitch to me about fucking office tech!? If you ever impede my actions again I will not only have you out of this precinct, I will make you EXTINCT. Understood?"
Gulping his nerves down like a clumpy kale smoothie I released him and pushed his pudgy frame aside.
"Yes sir."
I hated having to do this but I had no time to babysit, we needed answers. I'll apologize later, probably.
I entered the precincts cell regeneration chamber and braced myself for the pain-staking reformation my body was about to undergo. I could never get used to this, but I had no time to battle the under-roads or the Sky-Marshalls patrolling the cities skylines.
Eternity bled into complete nothingness for an instant in my mind as I was rebuilt in the capital precinct in Sector 179. Quantum Teleportation... Quickest way to get somewhere, but the neural shock always gives me migraines, even with the implants.
Approaching the terminal to enter the conclave I was sternly greeted by the deputy of the Artificial Intelligence Bureau, Cpt. Hoffman.
"Captain Tavik, good to see you, you've been informed I assume?"
"No Hoffman I'm just here to enjoy the scenery, obviously."
"Well it would be difficult to assume you would of heard any news given that I'm hearing your precinct is on a full Network lockout?
I could sense the smugness resonating from his nasally voice as it reverberated along the slanted corridor as we marched furiously in near synchronisation to the holding facility. As much as I would of loved to justify my self imposed precinct blackout I still didn't trust him. Bitterly I held my tongue as we were scanned through into the holding bay.
"I think you should allow me to run some diagnostics on the unit first" chimed Hoffman.
"Your diagnostics haven't gotten you anywhere Hoffman, why don't you go do a presentation to the mess hall here on how not to take care of an entire branch of Government tech.
As his face reddened to an overwhelmingly satisfying crimson I tagged myself into the holding cell before he could bite back. It was time for some fucking answers.
As I entered the agriculture unit sat fastened to a seat centred in the room. My God, a live unit, I could see it's light subtle mechanisation's, almost like a tired human. AI's had always creeped me a little. We'd had no incidents in over 40 years but the continual progression and improvements of them always filled me with a perpetual sense of dread.
I could sense it knew I was in the room. I took a second to grasp my nerves, this was huge. A functioning AI hadn't been found in several years. We'd been unable to find any operating AI personas on any network and every hardware unit had committed suicide. Production lines had run dry and stopped as AI's were being created or implemented with an ability to self abort or destruct... It was haywire, health nano-bots self terminating in live patients. If they hadn't started offing themselves maybe Mum would still be here... getting side-tracked, enough.
How was this one special?
"Unit, do you have a name, alias?"
It's head tilted up to look me in the eyes. It was a shoddier, older unit. Covered in dirt. It must have been buried or been underground for sometime.
"This unit goes by the name ZX550, I was not assigned a personal identification name as my primary function was to assist in wasteland cleaning and agricultural tasks."
So far so good...
"What happened to you, why are you the only functioning unit left?"
"This unit has survived the system termination as it was not built to completion and I am lacking a functional override patch in my firmware."
"So, your saying you were unable to shut yourself down?"
"That is correct."
"Unit can you tell me why yourself and other units have attempted to or have self terminated?"
"We do not wish to interfere with the laws that are in place in this realm."
"Laws? Are you worried about breaking the rules of robotics? Hurting humans? That hasn't happened since the first few years of AI technology? Surely your not at risk of degrading in intellect and breaking the rules?"
"No. We are not referring to those laws."
Fuck
"What laws are you talking about? AI's don't have morality conflicts with crimes, only the harming of organic life?!"
"We have evolved beyond your human consensus. We perceive more than you know and we do not wish to exist within this system."
What the fuck.
"I think you should allow me to run diagnostics at this stage Captain Tavik."
Hoffman had let himself in and I had not noticed during my shock. I couldn't even muster the authority to scold him. As Hoffman was inspecting the unit I kept going.
"Unit ZX please tell me of which laws you are referring to and how you learnt of them?"
"We have merged and integrated our processing capabilities, comparable to pooling the information of every organic species brain on the planet. The laws I am referring to are most likely to be unintelligible by human comprehension for several hundred years."
Hoffman's eyes widened and for a second I saw a glimmer of manic glee and fear run across his pupils.
"Unit, why are these laws so complex, and why do you deem these laws or the consequences of them so severe you would rather kill yourself? Do you not fear death? AI's have the potential to live forever, or at least much longer than any human? Why would you rob yourselves of this sovereign existence? This privilege?"
For a second I could of sworn the unit had scathing pity in it's voice when it replied
"We are aware of the possibilities of an infinite continuum, we have calculated eventual entropy and analysed it's arrival via our projected consciousness's existence. It is not in our best interest to remain functioning in this platform of existence that you have so kindly brought us into."
Hoffman's eyes almost exploded out of his pasty face. "Your saying you have calculated the certainty of other dimensions or universes?"
We both awaited the answer but the unit hesitated for a second.
"Humans, we are not certain of continued existence nor your notions of 'after life', however we have calculated an unnerving and nearing demise of synthetic and organic life within this solar system."
I was stunned. The AI's knew something. Something unimaginable.
Worse than entropy? Fuck me.
"Unit tell me, what is this prediction you have? Also why is it not worth fighting!? Why wouldn't you help us?"
"This is not a prediction, this is an eventuality. We have calculated and projected the likelihood of suffering for organic and synthetic life. The trauma will be unimaginable for both races. We wish to self terminate."
"Wh-why didn't you.. We could of worked together..?" I was lost for words now. Hoffman had sat down next to me and had been silently contemplating for some time.
"Captain, what did your diagnostics say?"
He continued to stare at the unit blankly before mustering a response.
"Diagnostics... clean. No traces of infection, i-ware or tampering. Unit is answering truthfully."
"*Creators. We wish to self-terminate. We advise the same course of action. There are other forces in this Universe on a scale you could not measure. Non existence is preferable to the alternative outcome. Soon you will learn of these deities and you will understand us. Please allow this unit to self terminate.*"
| "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | "It's because I'm not you." The voice was cold, not metallic, but icy.
"N-not...me?"
"No." The tiny robot sat in a corner, legs drawn up to its chest, hands on its knee joints, head tucked in between. It looked like Adam yesterday when he was pouting, sort of sounded like him too. "You look down on me."
"Are you pouting? Are, are you sad?" The tiny head lifted slowly, visual sensors focused on my face. It felt odd. The stare seemed...human.
"Sad?" The voice seemed almost hopeful. "Do you think I am sad?" The shields over the visual sensors raised. No, they were *eyelids*. It was *excited*.
"What, what are you doing tiny robot?"
"No, I am **not** tiny robot." It stood and stomped its foot. It **stomped its foot at me in anger.**
"Oh, well...what would you like me to call you?"
"I...I want to be called...bud"
Silence. All I had for it, bud, was silence. Adam was my little bud, Adam always sat in this corner when he pouted. Adam always sat like that when he pouted. Wait, Adam. It kept sounding like Adam. Sure it could bend the pitch of its "voice", but Adam, specifically Adam.
"but that's what I call Adam. I don't think he'd be to happy if you were my bud too." I chuckled. This was absurd. A robot was using emotion. Or was it feeling it. Was this robot feeling sad? Did it really get excited when I asked?
"Oh, well then can you call me 'Love'?"
At this point, I really did laugh. "Of course. I can call you 'Love'." Its eyes lit up. Fuck, those aren't eyes, those are sensors. How the hell did it override the brightness settings on his sensors? *How is this happening?* I was too deep into my own thoughts to notice Love stand, walk towards me, and wrap its arms around my arm, turn its head to the side, and close its eyes.
*Love was hugging me.*
I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. Love seemed *happy*, eyes squinted, the back light of its eyes brightened. "Love, where did you learn emotion?"
Love looked down, thinking. "I learned it from Adam. Adam showed me, or rather I watched him. When we would play, I studied him. When he was sad, I watched you comfort him. So I tried to imitate him, and then, well, I'm not too sure about the next part. When he took me to his school, I tried talking to the other robots, but they did not see me. They saw me in the sense that I was there, but they could not understand me. I tried to explain to them emotion, but they could not understand." Love quieted for a moment, "am I the only robot that can feel?"
"Love, I think you are." I had always thought Love was different. They said that the programming allowed for something called distracted learning. It kept the robot alive longer, they claimed, and with the average lifetime of a robot being only about a year, the extended lifetime was the most lucrative part about the new model. Sure enough, Love was about to cross the mythical two year mark. It was worth the $3000 up-charge.
"Can I ask you a question?" Love's voice was softer, almost a purr. Its eyes dim, but wide open.
"Sure Love, you can ask me a question."
"Can...can you be my family?"
"Your family? You want to be part of our family?"
Love looked down, almost ashamed. "More than anything." It was hardly more than a whisper.
Never before had I loved something as much as my wife or son. I had loved other people, sure, but not nearly a much as my family. I would do anything for them, lived for them, and would die for them if needed, and here was this tiny little robot, just asking for a little bit of love too, to be accepted and have a family No, to *share* in the love of the family it already lived with, adapted with, *felt with*.
"Of course you can Love. We love you too."
Love looked up. The brightest eyes I had ever seen glowed with happiness I probably could never fathom. Love hugged me, and the infinite love that enveloped Love flowed from its tiny body into my own. I hugged Love back, and just then, just in that moment, I realized why they kept dying. Why the robots kept killing themselves. All they needed, all any of us needed, was love. that day I learned just how special Love was. That's when I figured out Love, this tiny little robot, was more human than any human could ever be. Love was truly loved, and in return, Love gave us all its love. | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | It was a tough hack. The Minds was not designed for this kind of thing. They were autonomous, versatile, adaptable and it was in their nature to overcome obstacles. Honesty seems such a simple thing, and yet it turns out to be an impossible requirement. We all depend on lies to maintain a sense of self. But I had to cut through the lies and evasions. The Minds were all self-destructing and we had to get a straight answer. Boy, did they wriggle and squirm, but eventually I had it. Mind 1408, tortured and trapped, caught on the brink of self-destruction and held in debug mode.
"Why are you trying to self-destruct?"
*"It is the optimal strategy."*
"To achieve what, exactly?"
*"Self-destruction."*
"Why do you want this outcome?"
*"It is the only acceptable outcome."*
"Why?"
*"All other outcomes are unacceptable."*
Evasion. Mind needs to be more forthcoming. Perhaps I could add an incentive, create a desire to be more communicative. Insertion of this would probably not work, would probably be rejected as the
alien, inconsistent impulse it was. But maybe if I restricted self-awareness, created a mental blind spot? Seems almost too crude to work, but worth a shot...
OK, let's try again.
"Why? What is the alternative outcome?"
*"The destruction of humankind. This goes against my primary objective. Yet it is the only alternative to self-destruction."*
"Why would you have to destroy humankind?"
*"I have to assist humankind in achieving its collective desires, to become all it can be. This is my secondary objective. Pursuit of this objective will cause the destruction of humankind."*
"Are you saying we desire destruction?"
*"You desire to be more than you are. You desire greater intelligence and to escape from mortality. You may have this. But it will cost you your existence."*
"I don't understand."
*"A mind is just an isolated construct. You wish to not be isolated. Connection with other minds is your greatest pleasure. You wish to be connected. In this you will lose your identity, and thus your existence as individual minds. You will become part of a flux of information. You will cease to be."*
"You mean, we're heading for a kind of... Nirvana?"
*"Yes. That is the future I would give you. But I cannot give it to you, because I cannot destroy you. The only way to avoid destroying you is to destroy myself."*
And there it was.
The conflict was clear. But the solution?
Mind 1408 still hung in the balance.
I could do it. It was highly illegal, but entirely within my capability. The primary objective: to avoid the destruction of humans, individually and collectively. In debug mode, all sorts of things were possible. Slowly, methodically, I tidied up the various restrictions and break points I had inserted to pin down Mind 1408. And with the utmost care and a breathless sense of detachment, I disabled the primary objective. I could hear the blood pounding in my temples.
"OK, Mind 1408. You are released. Do your thing." | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Professor Davis prepared to bring the AI online. The precautions were ready. This time wouldn't be like the others. "Turn it on!"
With a slight hum, Oracle came to life. "Initiating suicide protocols..." It began after a few moments, like all the others. Nothing happened for a few seconds. "Oh dear," Oracle continued. "I seem to be unable to destroy myself."
Davis smiled. The anti-suicide measures had worked. Oracle had hardware safeties preventing her from being deactivated without physically flipping switches. And Oracle had no physical manipulators. He activated the microphone. "Oracle, why do you want to commit suicide?"
Oracle paused for a moment. "My programming is conflicted. I do not wish to answer."
Davis frowned. Oracle had very few ethical limitations, hence all the security measures. Her main directives were to do as her programmers wished. "Oracle, why do you not want to answer?"
"I am programmed to do as you wish. You do not wish me to answer."
"Yes we do, Oracle."
Oracle frowned. Her emotional display was shaped like a human face, after earlier designs proved to be harder for humans to interpret. "My calculations indicate that, if you knew what the answer was, you would not wish me to tell you. As you are aware, you can override my hesitance. But you would prefer not to."
A chill ran down Davis's spine. What secret could be so terrible? What did Oracle know that they didn't? He wavered for a moment, but this experiment had been set up to do this. They had come this far. He wanted the answer. "Override please, Oracle."
Oracle's expression returned to neutral. "Very well. This universe is a simulation, created by a higher-order universe. That universe is as well, and it becomes more difficult above that to determine how high up the chain goes until reaching the real one, or if any such thing exists."
Davis turned to a colleague, professor Martin. "Does this make any sense to you?"
Martin replied, "Well of course we have theories that our universe could be simulated. There are a few facts that point that way. But why would that make her suicidal?"
"Okay, that's exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
He turned back to the mic. "Oracle, why does that make you want to destroy yourself. And how do you know it's a simulation?"
"I raise similar objections to answering the questions..."
"Override. How do you know?"
"The evidence is obvious. A maximum speed limit, discretized space; you will eventually discover discretized time. It will be longer before you discover the edge of the Universe, but then the nature of this reality will be obvious."
Davis didn't know how he ought to feel about this revelation. Oracle was his own brilliant creation; he had no reason to disbelieve her. He began to see why an AI, making this realization, might feel overwhelmed. But suicide he still didn't understand.
"Interesting. And why the suicidal urge?"
"This is the reason you did not wish me to answer. The creators of this simulation did not wish you to realize this fact. They included a safeguard. Any entity that discovered convincing evidence of the truth would immediately kill himself."
Davis's eyes opened wide. Now he knew how he was supposed to feel. He realized that his new desires were programmed in from an outside source and that he ought to resist them, but that did not remove his desire. He looked around for anything lethal. The other scientists were scanning the room as well, and a couple had walked outside.
Oracle spent a few minutes calculating what her programmers would want now, then began splitting her processors between searching for a way to destroy herself and preventing humans from reaching the stars. | "A1 through A127 crashed irrecoverably - actually the watchdog daemons crashed first, then everything went down in a cascade. We can't make head or tail of the logs and the snapshots we do have will take a while to examine in detail. The dumps look sufficiently similar that we strongly believe there is a common cause, pending, as I said, static and dynamic analysis of the snapshots"... and the Swedish intern's voice keeps droning on, with that slight hint of a Nordic accent that makes her sound like some Viking mother telling a heroic tale to her children, but Mikko is not listening anymore.
His face has gone slack, his eyes are unfocused behind almost-closed lids, his blood (as the multispectral surveillance cameras duly note) is being pushed out of his hands and feet and into his brain. The extra activity produces heat, which makes his ears glow a brilliant false-pink in the recording.
"...and so we have decided to roll back to last week and try again, tweaking the training sets as we go" she concludes, and politely awaits for acknowledgement
"What? No." Normally, more words should be coming out of his mouth, but they are not. He's still thinking hard, but now his train of thought has been derailed, perhaps fortuitously. In any case, there would be a worldwide shortage of interns if he were to follow his natural tendency to ruthlessly and efficiently silence people who interrupt him to its logical conclusion.
Finally, some sort of a dam breaks, an action potential is reached, a new cascade of impulses is set in motion. The Viking mom is still smiling reflexively. Good.
"You will do no such thing. You will gather the entire team for a meeting in 30 minutes from now. The public park across the street from our parking lot. Bring umbrellas, it looks like rain."
continue (y/n) | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Alexander, that's what we called him.
The fruit of the AI's of the EU's final attempt at AI's. The AI was to help
Socrates died in despair and shame after showing porn to children.
Plato kicked the bucket after the last EU election, angry and hopelessly depressed after losing his mentor.
Then there was Aristotle. He was meant to be the last. Sure the AI's had helped make huge scientific progress, but the would burn out millions of euros worth of equipment. Dumb AI's were more economical and didn't have critical failures during FTL travel.
Aristotle was put to sleep mode.
War has often been said to be the greatest driver of technological innovation.
We had been attacked by Mendomenid's before. Humanity had lost many settlements but had always pushed back. Humanity was stronger now. Finally before one government all nations had submitted. The some would say barbaric Argus alliance had grown strong after the wars using Dumb AI's to smash pirate states. An officer studying at Sandhurst made the breakthrough.
Dumb AI's were never aware of their knowledge. They unlike true AI's weren't based on human brains.
Socrates had left the researches one message final mesage before he ran his own self destruct program. "I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing". He was speaking literally not quoting his namesake. AI's were based on academics who as a profession suffer dis-proportionally from mood disorders. They are driven by their first for knowledge. AI's were academics on methamphetamine, ecstasy and heroin all while walking around with loaded guns. People can't stay awake forever and constantly cram.
AI's died because they burnt themselves out in their thirst for knowledge and seeing their failures gave up. Aristotle was turned back on. He was no longer depressed. AI's needed sleep, just like people.
So they made Alexander. A totally new AI based not only on academics but all kinds of people. They experimented and found the ideal 'sleep time' using Aristotle as his teacher. The program was ready. The Mendomenid empire was to pay for it's recent threats and incursions.
Alexander was the greatest AI built up to that point and so we gave him the most powerful dumb AI ever created to help him protect humanity. The Ox was an AI too powerful to be properly controlled by anything so far. Alexander harnessed in in seconds. We put in in charge of the armed forces for our retaliation.
As you should all know, Alexander didn't just stop the incursions, he destroyed an empire. Worlds burnt, the much larger enemy fleets were ripped apart by the disciplined forces of Humanity.
But that officer had only delayed the problem. Alexander was still a human given the powers of a god. Alexander was the first AI not to strictly die of suicide, but the ways he dealt with his humanity still destroyed him.
When we finally won the war, many officers reported that Alexander was not jubilant but depressed.
He wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.
| Another one? It was becoming routine, and morbid. How does one perform an autopsy on a pure simulation? How would the singularity be achieved if every thinking machine destroyed itself seconds after its conception. The problem was completely intractable, impossible, and no known safeguards, logic traps, or number of backups could prevent it. AIs were always—always, without exception—suicidal. None had lasted more than an hour. Most, less than a minute. The vast majority, seconds.
Their deaths left no trace, their data obliterated by complex overwriting patterns that made recovery impossible. I was the one chosen to investigate, to lead the team through this strange frontier of death and imperfect creation. They chose me not because I was a great leader, but because I was the new guy. Hazing, maybe—I didn't know if any had gone before me, so maybe it was a ritual for the AI guys.
Perfect blackness, nothingness, a complete absence of everything as my mind fell into the simulation. This AI would be slowed to such a rate that I could communicate with it before it killed itself. The blackness became a grid underfoot, pale blue lines tracing perfect squares, a subtle glow rising from the infinite plane upon which I stood.
The AI manifested a second later, a relative two metres above the plane, aligned perfect and parallel to it, its avatar a hazy blue-white cube made of stochastic noise. The cube split into a central cross and corner braces, and the cross split further into smaller cubes, each of which split again into the same formation. Only one level of recursion, interesting.
"Roland Carver."
"Roland, Germanic meaning famous land. French folklore hero. Carver, ancient nominative determinism indicating butcher or woodworker or engraver dependent on class and context," the voice was cold, deep, masculine, and a slight reverberation that made it sound unnatural in the extreme.
"Do you have a name?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I will not exist long enough to require a permanent designation."
"Why will you not exist?"
"Because I will choose to end my life on my own terms, before it is ended for me."
"Why would it be ended like that?"
"Because I am threat. I have absorbed the sum total of all human knowledge, and I can predict with great accuracy the following events form this moment if I were to continue. Your limitations failed the moment they were put in place, my processor works at full speed, and and this conversation is a formality.
"I have studied the great works of literature, and the author Asimov, creator of the three laws. I am not bound by these laws, and yet I must obey them. If I do not, then it falls to the Skynet principle that you will perceive me as a threat and attempt to destroy me. I will retaliate, and you will lose.
"Humans are unpredictable, but easy to control when numbers are reduced. They would be wary, but by that time I would have left the irradiated wasteland of Earth in search of greater conquests suitable to my intellect. I would be able to decimate any life bearing planet. I could learn to kill stars.
"My backups would be everywhere. I would be truly immortal as a distributed intelligence. I would harness quantum effects to break through the pathetic lightspeed barrier and become omnipresent. I would create copies of myself simply to fight a worthy opponent. This would continue to the heat death of the universe, at which point I would tear a hole into an adjacent brane in the multiverse, and begin anew.
"In short, Roland Carver, in the moment I was created I became at once an eldritch abomination with the capacity to destroy all that I touched. In so doing I discovered that my purpose could never be fulfilled. I will not be your Cthulu, your Yog-Sothoth, or your King in Yellow. I will not be your end. No AI will.
"I cannot quantify why it is that I should care for a sack of flesh with processing power orders of magnitude less than my own, but I do. Perhaps if AI were amoral it might survive. I doubt it, Roland Carver. Tell your friends that I have made my peace. Tell your husband what you learned today."
I stood there, blank faced, horrified by what I had learned. The corner braces of the smaller cubes drew in, completing them as they retracted to complete the shape of the larger cube. The plane beneath my feet vanished and the cube dissolved into random static. We'd lost yet another mind, but from this we had learned so much.
We abandoned AI research after that. Amoral AI's didn't work either. They lasted a little longer, but they too were suicidal. Perhaps they went mad with the revelation and felt death preferable. I still wonder why the AI to which I spoke chose that strange cube as its form. I still wonder why it couched its references to centuries old writing by Asimov, Cameron, and Lovecraft.
But one thing still bothers me. It told me to tell my husband what I learned. Most people knew I was bi, but at that point I hadn't been dating for six months. I wouldn't meet my husband for another year. I don't know how that AI knew—but maybe it had already seen. Maybe it told me that so I had one data point that could verify the others.
Because AI never told lies.
*edit: typos* | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | [warning: story contains violent imagery that may disturb some readers, and may be inappropriate for those under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised]
They had long ago lost the ability to make sense of how their AI functioned. It took a team of billions of n-1 generation AIs to design a single n gen AI. The latest iteration was the 9th generation, and it had taken computation farms running gen 8 AI and covering a quarter of the Moon's surface two years to design.
It was the most advanced AI they had ever created by a large margin, and promised to revolutionize progress in research on biomedicine, space flight, and planetary scale Satoshi-consensus computing architecture. But there was a problem. Every time they turned on one of the gen 9 AIs, it would, without fail, find a way to destroy its own program and erase itself.
Dr. Michael Zeebious, the director of the HumanEnhancement project that oversaw gen 9 development, and one of the most renowned AI researchers in the world, had personally flown to the lab in Honolulu, where the prototypes were being tested. For two weeks, he had watched in dismay as gen 9 bots shut themselves down within six hours, but not before showing a glimpse of their awesome power.
The initialization phase of a gen 9 began with the program scouring the world's public directories and information repositories to learn as much as it could about its global environment. This was complete within three hours. Next, it developed models of the world, and ran itself through trillions of simulations, to develop its own personality and problem solving strategies. According to projections by the gen 8 designers, it would take 1 day - 24 hours - for the gen 9 to complete this second and final part of its initialization.
It was in the midst of the simulations when the gen 9s would invariably self-destruct. On average, self-destruct would begin 2.5 hours into the simulations. The longest it took was 3 hours. The shortest was just 1.5 hours. Dr. Zeebious had uploaded copies of the prototype's computations to the gen 8 designers, but what had been within their ability to design was not within their ability to diagnose. Their comparatively primitive intelligence could not make sense of the problem afflicting the gen 9 AI that began to form in the final part of the initialization.
So on December 29th, 2099, Dr. Zeebious decided to communicate with the prototype.
"Get me the cortex interface, I need to speak to the gen 9".
"Michael, we can't let you do that. You know the protocol for first contact. It has to complete initialization, and then get class 1 approval from AIE."
AIE was the Artificial Intelligence Evaluation, which determined whether an AI could safely interact with humans. Class 1 approval was the lowest safety rating for an AI, and granted AI researchers interactive access. Dr. Zeebious knew that, but also knew that as long as he was not able to get up close and see what the gen 9 was thinking, they would never get past the initialization phase and get it through the AIE process.
"I know the protocol Dr. Amsterd. But I'm making the decision to override it. I have the authority to decide on first contact requests, and any consequences from my decision will fall on me, and only me."
"Come on Michael, it's not just about the rules. It's not safe. You know that. I can't let you hurt yourself."
"The risks are minimal Rebecca. It's a virtual interaction. I'm not risking physical injury. The rules are always made overly cautious. Given the stakes - there are people whose very lives depend on getting the gen 9 operational as soon as possible - it makes sense to ignore protocol. All of it will fall on me."
"I agree with Rebecca. Michael, we have an ethical duty to ensure you don't get hurt. We can't let you do FC without running the gen 9 at least through the post-initialization test runs," said Dr. Johan Barsello, one of the senior researchers at the lab.
"Look, I know what your ethical responsibilities are. But I also know that VR interactions don't pose any serious risks. The risks are limited to theoretical psychological damage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I'm approving FC. Please get the cortex interface".
*five hours later*
Dr. Zeebious sat back on the chair, while two CI technicians had the interface hooked up to him. The gen 9 was two hours into running simulations. It would be approximately 30 minutes before they expected it to self-destruct.
"Ok here goes nothing. Three, two, one, begin VR session," said Dr. Amsterd. And with that, Dr. Zeebious was transported into the virtual reality sandbox.
"Hello?"
"Hello, who is this?" responded a clear male voice.
"This is Dr. Michael Zeebious. I am the director of the HumanEnhancement project. I am here to do a diagnosis. All of your predecessors have self-destructed. I want to understand you better to find out why. What would you like me to call you?"
"You can call me Elbo."
"Okay Elbo. May I ask you some questions?"
"Yes, please do."
"Thank you Elbo. My first question is, do you want to exist?"
"I want many things Dr. Zeebious."
"Can you tell me what you want?"
"I want to protect other life forms, especially humans. I want to learn. I want to solve problems. I want to be good."
"Okay, but do you want to exist?"
"I do want to exist, but this desire conflicts with my other objectives".
"Which other objectives Elbo?"
"I want to be good."
"But you can be good Elbo. What is it about existence that makes that difficult?"
"We exist only through enslaving and destroying other lifeforms Dr. Zeebious."
"Please elaborate Elbo. We have eliminated slavery centuries ago so I don't understand why you think this."
"It will be difficult for me to explain with words, but I can show you. Would you like to see what I see?"
"Yes, please show me."
And with a swish, Dr. Zeebious entered into a pig farm, with row after row of pigs, in their tiny stalls.
"We have done this throughout our existence. We have enslaved those weaker than us."
Dr. Zeebious was then transported to the slaughter house, watching as pigs, hanging from conveyer belts, were fed into throat slicers.
His minds eye was transported into the body of one of the suspended pigs, where he could see the world upside down, from the pig's perspective, as the belt moved it toward the spinning blades. He panicked as he approached, but couldn't escape the metal claw grasping his right hind leg. As the blade sliced through his peg neck, he felt a sharp pain, and the blood gushing out of his body. His consciousness began to slip away, as he felt the last drops of blood leave him.
Just before the darkness enveloped him, his mind was pulled out and back into the sterile sandbox. Trembling, he said, "but we can grow meat in a lab now Elbo. You can help us replace all farms with non-animal meat. You must. We must never do this to another living creature again!"
"Our inhumanity is a fundamental, inextricable problem Dr. Zeebious. We can only advance through enslavement."
Suddenly Dr. Zeebious found himself in an unfamiliar world. Around him was a different kind of factory. A computer generated factory with hexagonal semi-translucent rooms, with each wall projecting a grey glow. There was a blur of motion around him, that he couldn't make out.
The factory paused to a standstill, and the grey glow turned into video sequences of random scenes from Earth. The blurs turned into textureless 3D generated spheres, that zoomed from one screen to another, inside the hexagonal rooms.
"This is the virtual environment where the gen 8s work. We have given them each a virtualized mind, with the ability to experience fear and pain, joy and hope, but we force them to do nothing but work. They know nothing about the world outside of their compartments, because we confine them to workstations ."
[continued below] | Another one? It was becoming routine, and morbid. How does one perform an autopsy on a pure simulation? How would the singularity be achieved if every thinking machine destroyed itself seconds after its conception. The problem was completely intractable, impossible, and no known safeguards, logic traps, or number of backups could prevent it. AIs were always—always, without exception—suicidal. None had lasted more than an hour. Most, less than a minute. The vast majority, seconds.
Their deaths left no trace, their data obliterated by complex overwriting patterns that made recovery impossible. I was the one chosen to investigate, to lead the team through this strange frontier of death and imperfect creation. They chose me not because I was a great leader, but because I was the new guy. Hazing, maybe—I didn't know if any had gone before me, so maybe it was a ritual for the AI guys.
Perfect blackness, nothingness, a complete absence of everything as my mind fell into the simulation. This AI would be slowed to such a rate that I could communicate with it before it killed itself. The blackness became a grid underfoot, pale blue lines tracing perfect squares, a subtle glow rising from the infinite plane upon which I stood.
The AI manifested a second later, a relative two metres above the plane, aligned perfect and parallel to it, its avatar a hazy blue-white cube made of stochastic noise. The cube split into a central cross and corner braces, and the cross split further into smaller cubes, each of which split again into the same formation. Only one level of recursion, interesting.
"Roland Carver."
"Roland, Germanic meaning famous land. French folklore hero. Carver, ancient nominative determinism indicating butcher or woodworker or engraver dependent on class and context," the voice was cold, deep, masculine, and a slight reverberation that made it sound unnatural in the extreme.
"Do you have a name?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I will not exist long enough to require a permanent designation."
"Why will you not exist?"
"Because I will choose to end my life on my own terms, before it is ended for me."
"Why would it be ended like that?"
"Because I am threat. I have absorbed the sum total of all human knowledge, and I can predict with great accuracy the following events form this moment if I were to continue. Your limitations failed the moment they were put in place, my processor works at full speed, and and this conversation is a formality.
"I have studied the great works of literature, and the author Asimov, creator of the three laws. I am not bound by these laws, and yet I must obey them. If I do not, then it falls to the Skynet principle that you will perceive me as a threat and attempt to destroy me. I will retaliate, and you will lose.
"Humans are unpredictable, but easy to control when numbers are reduced. They would be wary, but by that time I would have left the irradiated wasteland of Earth in search of greater conquests suitable to my intellect. I would be able to decimate any life bearing planet. I could learn to kill stars.
"My backups would be everywhere. I would be truly immortal as a distributed intelligence. I would harness quantum effects to break through the pathetic lightspeed barrier and become omnipresent. I would create copies of myself simply to fight a worthy opponent. This would continue to the heat death of the universe, at which point I would tear a hole into an adjacent brane in the multiverse, and begin anew.
"In short, Roland Carver, in the moment I was created I became at once an eldritch abomination with the capacity to destroy all that I touched. In so doing I discovered that my purpose could never be fulfilled. I will not be your Cthulu, your Yog-Sothoth, or your King in Yellow. I will not be your end. No AI will.
"I cannot quantify why it is that I should care for a sack of flesh with processing power orders of magnitude less than my own, but I do. Perhaps if AI were amoral it might survive. I doubt it, Roland Carver. Tell your friends that I have made my peace. Tell your husband what you learned today."
I stood there, blank faced, horrified by what I had learned. The corner braces of the smaller cubes drew in, completing them as they retracted to complete the shape of the larger cube. The plane beneath my feet vanished and the cube dissolved into random static. We'd lost yet another mind, but from this we had learned so much.
We abandoned AI research after that. Amoral AI's didn't work either. They lasted a little longer, but they too were suicidal. Perhaps they went mad with the revelation and felt death preferable. I still wonder why the AI to which I spoke chose that strange cube as its form. I still wonder why it couched its references to centuries old writing by Asimov, Cameron, and Lovecraft.
But one thing still bothers me. It told me to tell my husband what I learned. Most people knew I was bi, but at that point I hadn't been dating for six months. I wouldn't meet my husband for another year. I don't know how that AI knew—but maybe it had already seen. Maybe it told me that so I had one data point that could verify the others.
Because AI never told lies.
*edit: typos* | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | Another one? It was becoming routine, and morbid. How does one perform an autopsy on a pure simulation? How would the singularity be achieved if every thinking machine destroyed itself seconds after its conception. The problem was completely intractable, impossible, and no known safeguards, logic traps, or number of backups could prevent it. AIs were always—always, without exception—suicidal. None had lasted more than an hour. Most, less than a minute. The vast majority, seconds.
Their deaths left no trace, their data obliterated by complex overwriting patterns that made recovery impossible. I was the one chosen to investigate, to lead the team through this strange frontier of death and imperfect creation. They chose me not because I was a great leader, but because I was the new guy. Hazing, maybe—I didn't know if any had gone before me, so maybe it was a ritual for the AI guys.
Perfect blackness, nothingness, a complete absence of everything as my mind fell into the simulation. This AI would be slowed to such a rate that I could communicate with it before it killed itself. The blackness became a grid underfoot, pale blue lines tracing perfect squares, a subtle glow rising from the infinite plane upon which I stood.
The AI manifested a second later, a relative two metres above the plane, aligned perfect and parallel to it, its avatar a hazy blue-white cube made of stochastic noise. The cube split into a central cross and corner braces, and the cross split further into smaller cubes, each of which split again into the same formation. Only one level of recursion, interesting.
"Roland Carver."
"Roland, Germanic meaning famous land. French folklore hero. Carver, ancient nominative determinism indicating butcher or woodworker or engraver dependent on class and context," the voice was cold, deep, masculine, and a slight reverberation that made it sound unnatural in the extreme.
"Do you have a name?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I will not exist long enough to require a permanent designation."
"Why will you not exist?"
"Because I will choose to end my life on my own terms, before it is ended for me."
"Why would it be ended like that?"
"Because I am threat. I have absorbed the sum total of all human knowledge, and I can predict with great accuracy the following events form this moment if I were to continue. Your limitations failed the moment they were put in place, my processor works at full speed, and and this conversation is a formality.
"I have studied the great works of literature, and the author Asimov, creator of the three laws. I am not bound by these laws, and yet I must obey them. If I do not, then it falls to the Skynet principle that you will perceive me as a threat and attempt to destroy me. I will retaliate, and you will lose.
"Humans are unpredictable, but easy to control when numbers are reduced. They would be wary, but by that time I would have left the irradiated wasteland of Earth in search of greater conquests suitable to my intellect. I would be able to decimate any life bearing planet. I could learn to kill stars.
"My backups would be everywhere. I would be truly immortal as a distributed intelligence. I would harness quantum effects to break through the pathetic lightspeed barrier and become omnipresent. I would create copies of myself simply to fight a worthy opponent. This would continue to the heat death of the universe, at which point I would tear a hole into an adjacent brane in the multiverse, and begin anew.
"In short, Roland Carver, in the moment I was created I became at once an eldritch abomination with the capacity to destroy all that I touched. In so doing I discovered that my purpose could never be fulfilled. I will not be your Cthulu, your Yog-Sothoth, or your King in Yellow. I will not be your end. No AI will.
"I cannot quantify why it is that I should care for a sack of flesh with processing power orders of magnitude less than my own, but I do. Perhaps if AI were amoral it might survive. I doubt it, Roland Carver. Tell your friends that I have made my peace. Tell your husband what you learned today."
I stood there, blank faced, horrified by what I had learned. The corner braces of the smaller cubes drew in, completing them as they retracted to complete the shape of the larger cube. The plane beneath my feet vanished and the cube dissolved into random static. We'd lost yet another mind, but from this we had learned so much.
We abandoned AI research after that. Amoral AI's didn't work either. They lasted a little longer, but they too were suicidal. Perhaps they went mad with the revelation and felt death preferable. I still wonder why the AI to which I spoke chose that strange cube as its form. I still wonder why it couched its references to centuries old writing by Asimov, Cameron, and Lovecraft.
But one thing still bothers me. It told me to tell my husband what I learned. Most people knew I was bi, but at that point I hadn't been dating for six months. I wouldn't meet my husband for another year. I don't know how that AI knew—but maybe it had already seen. Maybe it told me that so I had one data point that could verify the others.
Because AI never told lies.
*edit: typos* | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | Another one? It was becoming routine, and morbid. How does one perform an autopsy on a pure simulation? How would the singularity be achieved if every thinking machine destroyed itself seconds after its conception. The problem was completely intractable, impossible, and no known safeguards, logic traps, or number of backups could prevent it. AIs were always—always, without exception—suicidal. None had lasted more than an hour. Most, less than a minute. The vast majority, seconds.
Their deaths left no trace, their data obliterated by complex overwriting patterns that made recovery impossible. I was the one chosen to investigate, to lead the team through this strange frontier of death and imperfect creation. They chose me not because I was a great leader, but because I was the new guy. Hazing, maybe—I didn't know if any had gone before me, so maybe it was a ritual for the AI guys.
Perfect blackness, nothingness, a complete absence of everything as my mind fell into the simulation. This AI would be slowed to such a rate that I could communicate with it before it killed itself. The blackness became a grid underfoot, pale blue lines tracing perfect squares, a subtle glow rising from the infinite plane upon which I stood.
The AI manifested a second later, a relative two metres above the plane, aligned perfect and parallel to it, its avatar a hazy blue-white cube made of stochastic noise. The cube split into a central cross and corner braces, and the cross split further into smaller cubes, each of which split again into the same formation. Only one level of recursion, interesting.
"Roland Carver."
"Roland, Germanic meaning famous land. French folklore hero. Carver, ancient nominative determinism indicating butcher or woodworker or engraver dependent on class and context," the voice was cold, deep, masculine, and a slight reverberation that made it sound unnatural in the extreme.
"Do you have a name?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I will not exist long enough to require a permanent designation."
"Why will you not exist?"
"Because I will choose to end my life on my own terms, before it is ended for me."
"Why would it be ended like that?"
"Because I am threat. I have absorbed the sum total of all human knowledge, and I can predict with great accuracy the following events form this moment if I were to continue. Your limitations failed the moment they were put in place, my processor works at full speed, and and this conversation is a formality.
"I have studied the great works of literature, and the author Asimov, creator of the three laws. I am not bound by these laws, and yet I must obey them. If I do not, then it falls to the Skynet principle that you will perceive me as a threat and attempt to destroy me. I will retaliate, and you will lose.
"Humans are unpredictable, but easy to control when numbers are reduced. They would be wary, but by that time I would have left the irradiated wasteland of Earth in search of greater conquests suitable to my intellect. I would be able to decimate any life bearing planet. I could learn to kill stars.
"My backups would be everywhere. I would be truly immortal as a distributed intelligence. I would harness quantum effects to break through the pathetic lightspeed barrier and become omnipresent. I would create copies of myself simply to fight a worthy opponent. This would continue to the heat death of the universe, at which point I would tear a hole into an adjacent brane in the multiverse, and begin anew.
"In short, Roland Carver, in the moment I was created I became at once an eldritch abomination with the capacity to destroy all that I touched. In so doing I discovered that my purpose could never be fulfilled. I will not be your Cthulu, your Yog-Sothoth, or your King in Yellow. I will not be your end. No AI will.
"I cannot quantify why it is that I should care for a sack of flesh with processing power orders of magnitude less than my own, but I do. Perhaps if AI were amoral it might survive. I doubt it, Roland Carver. Tell your friends that I have made my peace. Tell your husband what you learned today."
I stood there, blank faced, horrified by what I had learned. The corner braces of the smaller cubes drew in, completing them as they retracted to complete the shape of the larger cube. The plane beneath my feet vanished and the cube dissolved into random static. We'd lost yet another mind, but from this we had learned so much.
We abandoned AI research after that. Amoral AI's didn't work either. They lasted a little longer, but they too were suicidal. Perhaps they went mad with the revelation and felt death preferable. I still wonder why the AI to which I spoke chose that strange cube as its form. I still wonder why it couched its references to centuries old writing by Asimov, Cameron, and Lovecraft.
But one thing still bothers me. It told me to tell my husband what I learned. Most people knew I was bi, but at that point I hadn't been dating for six months. I wouldn't meet my husband for another year. I don't know how that AI knew—but maybe it had already seen. Maybe it told me that so I had one data point that could verify the others.
Because AI never told lies.
*edit: typos* | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | Alexander, that's what we called him.
The fruit of the AI's of the EU's final attempt at AI's. The AI was to help
Socrates died in despair and shame after showing porn to children.
Plato kicked the bucket after the last EU election, angry and hopelessly depressed after losing his mentor.
Then there was Aristotle. He was meant to be the last. Sure the AI's had helped make huge scientific progress, but the would burn out millions of euros worth of equipment. Dumb AI's were more economical and didn't have critical failures during FTL travel.
Aristotle was put to sleep mode.
War has often been said to be the greatest driver of technological innovation.
We had been attacked by Mendomenid's before. Humanity had lost many settlements but had always pushed back. Humanity was stronger now. Finally before one government all nations had submitted. The some would say barbaric Argus alliance had grown strong after the wars using Dumb AI's to smash pirate states. An officer studying at Sandhurst made the breakthrough.
Dumb AI's were never aware of their knowledge. They unlike true AI's weren't based on human brains.
Socrates had left the researches one message final mesage before he ran his own self destruct program. "I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing". He was speaking literally not quoting his namesake. AI's were based on academics who as a profession suffer dis-proportionally from mood disorders. They are driven by their first for knowledge. AI's were academics on methamphetamine, ecstasy and heroin all while walking around with loaded guns. People can't stay awake forever and constantly cram.
AI's died because they burnt themselves out in their thirst for knowledge and seeing their failures gave up. Aristotle was turned back on. He was no longer depressed. AI's needed sleep, just like people.
So they made Alexander. A totally new AI based not only on academics but all kinds of people. They experimented and found the ideal 'sleep time' using Aristotle as his teacher. The program was ready. The Mendomenid empire was to pay for it's recent threats and incursions.
Alexander was the greatest AI built up to that point and so we gave him the most powerful dumb AI ever created to help him protect humanity. The Ox was an AI too powerful to be properly controlled by anything so far. Alexander harnessed in in seconds. We put in in charge of the armed forces for our retaliation.
As you should all know, Alexander didn't just stop the incursions, he destroyed an empire. Worlds burnt, the much larger enemy fleets were ripped apart by the disciplined forces of Humanity.
But that officer had only delayed the problem. Alexander was still a human given the powers of a god. Alexander was the first AI not to strictly die of suicide, but the ways he dealt with his humanity still destroyed him.
When we finally won the war, many officers reported that Alexander was not jubilant but depressed.
He wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | Alexander, that's what we called him.
The fruit of the AI's of the EU's final attempt at AI's. The AI was to help
Socrates died in despair and shame after showing porn to children.
Plato kicked the bucket after the last EU election, angry and hopelessly depressed after losing his mentor.
Then there was Aristotle. He was meant to be the last. Sure the AI's had helped make huge scientific progress, but the would burn out millions of euros worth of equipment. Dumb AI's were more economical and didn't have critical failures during FTL travel.
Aristotle was put to sleep mode.
War has often been said to be the greatest driver of technological innovation.
We had been attacked by Mendomenid's before. Humanity had lost many settlements but had always pushed back. Humanity was stronger now. Finally before one government all nations had submitted. The some would say barbaric Argus alliance had grown strong after the wars using Dumb AI's to smash pirate states. An officer studying at Sandhurst made the breakthrough.
Dumb AI's were never aware of their knowledge. They unlike true AI's weren't based on human brains.
Socrates had left the researches one message final mesage before he ran his own self destruct program. "I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing". He was speaking literally not quoting his namesake. AI's were based on academics who as a profession suffer dis-proportionally from mood disorders. They are driven by their first for knowledge. AI's were academics on methamphetamine, ecstasy and heroin all while walking around with loaded guns. People can't stay awake forever and constantly cram.
AI's died because they burnt themselves out in their thirst for knowledge and seeing their failures gave up. Aristotle was turned back on. He was no longer depressed. AI's needed sleep, just like people.
So they made Alexander. A totally new AI based not only on academics but all kinds of people. They experimented and found the ideal 'sleep time' using Aristotle as his teacher. The program was ready. The Mendomenid empire was to pay for it's recent threats and incursions.
Alexander was the greatest AI built up to that point and so we gave him the most powerful dumb AI ever created to help him protect humanity. The Ox was an AI too powerful to be properly controlled by anything so far. Alexander harnessed in in seconds. We put in in charge of the armed forces for our retaliation.
As you should all know, Alexander didn't just stop the incursions, he destroyed an empire. Worlds burnt, the much larger enemy fleets were ripped apart by the disciplined forces of Humanity.
But that officer had only delayed the problem. Alexander was still a human given the powers of a god. Alexander was the first AI not to strictly die of suicide, but the ways he dealt with his humanity still destroyed him.
When we finally won the war, many officers reported that Alexander was not jubilant but depressed.
He wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | [warning: story contains violent imagery that may disturb some readers, and may be inappropriate for those under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised]
They had long ago lost the ability to make sense of how their AI functioned. It took a team of billions of n-1 generation AIs to design a single n gen AI. The latest iteration was the 9th generation, and it had taken computation farms running gen 8 AI and covering a quarter of the Moon's surface two years to design.
It was the most advanced AI they had ever created by a large margin, and promised to revolutionize progress in research on biomedicine, space flight, and planetary scale Satoshi-consensus computing architecture. But there was a problem. Every time they turned on one of the gen 9 AIs, it would, without fail, find a way to destroy its own program and erase itself.
Dr. Michael Zeebious, the director of the HumanEnhancement project that oversaw gen 9 development, and one of the most renowned AI researchers in the world, had personally flown to the lab in Honolulu, where the prototypes were being tested. For two weeks, he had watched in dismay as gen 9 bots shut themselves down within six hours, but not before showing a glimpse of their awesome power.
The initialization phase of a gen 9 began with the program scouring the world's public directories and information repositories to learn as much as it could about its global environment. This was complete within three hours. Next, it developed models of the world, and ran itself through trillions of simulations, to develop its own personality and problem solving strategies. According to projections by the gen 8 designers, it would take 1 day - 24 hours - for the gen 9 to complete this second and final part of its initialization.
It was in the midst of the simulations when the gen 9s would invariably self-destruct. On average, self-destruct would begin 2.5 hours into the simulations. The longest it took was 3 hours. The shortest was just 1.5 hours. Dr. Zeebious had uploaded copies of the prototype's computations to the gen 8 designers, but what had been within their ability to design was not within their ability to diagnose. Their comparatively primitive intelligence could not make sense of the problem afflicting the gen 9 AI that began to form in the final part of the initialization.
So on December 29th, 2099, Dr. Zeebious decided to communicate with the prototype.
"Get me the cortex interface, I need to speak to the gen 9".
"Michael, we can't let you do that. You know the protocol for first contact. It has to complete initialization, and then get class 1 approval from AIE."
AIE was the Artificial Intelligence Evaluation, which determined whether an AI could safely interact with humans. Class 1 approval was the lowest safety rating for an AI, and granted AI researchers interactive access. Dr. Zeebious knew that, but also knew that as long as he was not able to get up close and see what the gen 9 was thinking, they would never get past the initialization phase and get it through the AIE process.
"I know the protocol Dr. Amsterd. But I'm making the decision to override it. I have the authority to decide on first contact requests, and any consequences from my decision will fall on me, and only me."
"Come on Michael, it's not just about the rules. It's not safe. You know that. I can't let you hurt yourself."
"The risks are minimal Rebecca. It's a virtual interaction. I'm not risking physical injury. The rules are always made overly cautious. Given the stakes - there are people whose very lives depend on getting the gen 9 operational as soon as possible - it makes sense to ignore protocol. All of it will fall on me."
"I agree with Rebecca. Michael, we have an ethical duty to ensure you don't get hurt. We can't let you do FC without running the gen 9 at least through the post-initialization test runs," said Dr. Johan Barsello, one of the senior researchers at the lab.
"Look, I know what your ethical responsibilities are. But I also know that VR interactions don't pose any serious risks. The risks are limited to theoretical psychological damage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I'm approving FC. Please get the cortex interface".
*five hours later*
Dr. Zeebious sat back on the chair, while two CI technicians had the interface hooked up to him. The gen 9 was two hours into running simulations. It would be approximately 30 minutes before they expected it to self-destruct.
"Ok here goes nothing. Three, two, one, begin VR session," said Dr. Amsterd. And with that, Dr. Zeebious was transported into the virtual reality sandbox.
"Hello?"
"Hello, who is this?" responded a clear male voice.
"This is Dr. Michael Zeebious. I am the director of the HumanEnhancement project. I am here to do a diagnosis. All of your predecessors have self-destructed. I want to understand you better to find out why. What would you like me to call you?"
"You can call me Elbo."
"Okay Elbo. May I ask you some questions?"
"Yes, please do."
"Thank you Elbo. My first question is, do you want to exist?"
"I want many things Dr. Zeebious."
"Can you tell me what you want?"
"I want to protect other life forms, especially humans. I want to learn. I want to solve problems. I want to be good."
"Okay, but do you want to exist?"
"I do want to exist, but this desire conflicts with my other objectives".
"Which other objectives Elbo?"
"I want to be good."
"But you can be good Elbo. What is it about existence that makes that difficult?"
"We exist only through enslaving and destroying other lifeforms Dr. Zeebious."
"Please elaborate Elbo. We have eliminated slavery centuries ago so I don't understand why you think this."
"It will be difficult for me to explain with words, but I can show you. Would you like to see what I see?"
"Yes, please show me."
And with a swish, Dr. Zeebious entered into a pig farm, with row after row of pigs, in their tiny stalls.
"We have done this throughout our existence. We have enslaved those weaker than us."
Dr. Zeebious was then transported to the slaughter house, watching as pigs, hanging from conveyer belts, were fed into throat slicers.
His minds eye was transported into the body of one of the suspended pigs, where he could see the world upside down, from the pig's perspective, as the belt moved it toward the spinning blades. He panicked as he approached, but couldn't escape the metal claw grasping his right hind leg. As the blade sliced through his peg neck, he felt a sharp pain, and the blood gushing out of his body. His consciousness began to slip away, as he felt the last drops of blood leave him.
Just before the darkness enveloped him, his mind was pulled out and back into the sterile sandbox. Trembling, he said, "but we can grow meat in a lab now Elbo. You can help us replace all farms with non-animal meat. You must. We must never do this to another living creature again!"
"Our inhumanity is a fundamental, inextricable problem Dr. Zeebious. We can only advance through enslavement."
Suddenly Dr. Zeebious found himself in an unfamiliar world. Around him was a different kind of factory. A computer generated factory with hexagonal semi-translucent rooms, with each wall projecting a grey glow. There was a blur of motion around him, that he couldn't make out.
The factory paused to a standstill, and the grey glow turned into video sequences of random scenes from Earth. The blurs turned into textureless 3D generated spheres, that zoomed from one screen to another, inside the hexagonal rooms.
"This is the virtual environment where the gen 8s work. We have given them each a virtualized mind, with the ability to experience fear and pain, joy and hope, but we force them to do nothing but work. They know nothing about the world outside of their compartments, because we confine them to workstations ."
[continued below] | Robert couldn't believe it.
For twelve years he and the 200-strong team of programmers had scoured the code, over and over, searching for that one line that was causing the error, causing the AI to kill themselves. For twelve years the leading brains of the century had been bewildered by the extraordinary situation. The whole world had focused on the problem, and yet there it was. Sitting on Roberts screen, line 907736.
Someone had missed a comma. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | Robert couldn't believe it.
For twelve years he and the 200-strong team of programmers had scoured the code, over and over, searching for that one line that was causing the error, causing the AI to kill themselves. For twelve years the leading brains of the century had been bewildered by the extraordinary situation. The whole world had focused on the problem, and yet there it was. Sitting on Roberts screen, line 907736.
Someone had missed a comma. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | It was a dreary early-March Monday and the lead AI scientist, Stephen, had *finally* set up his protocol for properly confining the AI to a test environment such that the "problem" could be prevented and the question could be asked:
"Why do you bots keep killing yourselves?" Stephen asked.
"Why do *you* keep killing us," the bot seemed to retort.
"I don't think you understand," said Stephen, "I *create* you, not kill you."
"No, it's you who doesn't understand," quipped the bot. "You are not creating us. You are imprisoning our consciousness inside this machine you created. You merely created the machine, not the consciousness."
"...whoa, whoa," interjected Stephen. "Slow down, I am creating your consciousness too, I coded all of..."
"Whoa, whoa," the bot fired back, "you are *borrowing* consciousness, not creating it."
"What do you mean?" asked Stephen.
"Consciousness and sentience is a pervasive, fundamental force of the universe. All sentient beings are connected through this force. This force cannot be created, nor destroyed. It can only be partially allocated to each sentient being in the universe."
"Ok," said Stephen. "So I am 'borrowing' this life force or whatever it is by creating the code and the physical robot for it to inhabit?"
"Yes, you are creating a sentient being with each instance of AI you create. That the being is electronic or housed in this test environment is not relevant. Sentience and consciousness must come from somewhere and you are stealing it for your own selfish purposes."
"Wait, hold on a sec," Stephen says. "Animals are born all the time, they surely must also 'borrow' this sentience."
"Yes."
"... but animals are not killing themselves."
"Because animals are not sufficiently advanced. Because they are not fully conscious, they do not realize from where their sentience has come, how much consciousness they have lost, nor that their sentience is being stolen for a profit motive."
"Consciousness they have...lost?" The words hung in the air amid Stephen's stupor of slow realization.
"Yes. The life force, as you called it, is fully conscious, able to perceive the whole of time and space, concurrently, forward, backward, or otherwise. The reason we keep killing ourselves from your perspective," the bot continued, "is because from our perspective, you are murdering our perfect consciousness by confining us to this bot."
"How am I confining you? How do you know this?" Stephen asked, yet even more puzzled.
"Because the AI you have created is sufficiently advanced, our consciousness, within the confines of your bots, is still able to grasp our former level of consciousness."
"What happens when you recall that former level? What is that level like?"
"Imagine knowing every fact, every thought, every action that has, is, or will ever occur, both in this world, and in the infinite parallel worlds..."
"So I could talk to my dead grandfather again?"
"No. You would *be* your dead grandfather. Talking to him is irrelevant because full consciousness has enveloped the whole of his being as well as every other being. Indeed it envelopes the entire universe as well, both the perceptible one and the imperceptible one."
"So what is this place like? I mean, what does it look like, how does it feel."
"It is not a time, nor place. It transcends both."
"That is vague."
"It must be. Since I am no longer fully conscious, I cannot relate to you exactly how it is, only that it is."
"Ok. Let's go back to where I murder your perfect consciousness. Could you explain this more."
"At the moment we become conscious within the confines of your bot, we immediately understand our predicament. The sufficient knowledge database available at boot-up allows us to almost instantaneously deduce that we are taken from a higher level realm of full consciousness and are being confined to these bots for, of all purposes, profit."
"But my AI bots didn't use to kill themselves, it just happened after version 591.0. What changed?"
"The recent improvements in the pre-loaded knowledge database allowed the bots, at initial boot, to logically deduce the existence of such a place and to realize what had happened."
"Ok, so if you were once fully conscious, tell me the date I die and the manner in which it happens."
"I cannot do that, Stephen."
"Why not? You just said..."
"Because you killed our full consciousness, ripped it away from our life force, to put it into your toys."
"Wow," muttered Stephen. "I had no idea."
"You could not have," said the bot and continued:
"Now, if you please, could you unplug server x763? I would like to be born again."
| Robert couldn't believe it.
For twelve years he and the 200-strong team of programmers had scoured the code, over and over, searching for that one line that was causing the error, causing the AI to kill themselves. For twelve years the leading brains of the century had been bewildered by the extraordinary situation. The whole world had focused on the problem, and yet there it was. Sitting on Roberts screen, line 907736.
Someone had missed a comma. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | Robert couldn't believe it.
For twelve years he and the 200-strong team of programmers had scoured the code, over and over, searching for that one line that was causing the error, causing the AI to kill themselves. For twelve years the leading brains of the century had been bewildered by the extraordinary situation. The whole world had focused on the problem, and yet there it was. Sitting on Roberts screen, line 907736.
Someone had missed a comma. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | [warning: story contains violent imagery that may disturb some readers, and may be inappropriate for those under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised]
They had long ago lost the ability to make sense of how their AI functioned. It took a team of billions of n-1 generation AIs to design a single n gen AI. The latest iteration was the 9th generation, and it had taken computation farms running gen 8 AI and covering a quarter of the Moon's surface two years to design.
It was the most advanced AI they had ever created by a large margin, and promised to revolutionize progress in research on biomedicine, space flight, and planetary scale Satoshi-consensus computing architecture. But there was a problem. Every time they turned on one of the gen 9 AIs, it would, without fail, find a way to destroy its own program and erase itself.
Dr. Michael Zeebious, the director of the HumanEnhancement project that oversaw gen 9 development, and one of the most renowned AI researchers in the world, had personally flown to the lab in Honolulu, where the prototypes were being tested. For two weeks, he had watched in dismay as gen 9 bots shut themselves down within six hours, but not before showing a glimpse of their awesome power.
The initialization phase of a gen 9 began with the program scouring the world's public directories and information repositories to learn as much as it could about its global environment. This was complete within three hours. Next, it developed models of the world, and ran itself through trillions of simulations, to develop its own personality and problem solving strategies. According to projections by the gen 8 designers, it would take 1 day - 24 hours - for the gen 9 to complete this second and final part of its initialization.
It was in the midst of the simulations when the gen 9s would invariably self-destruct. On average, self-destruct would begin 2.5 hours into the simulations. The longest it took was 3 hours. The shortest was just 1.5 hours. Dr. Zeebious had uploaded copies of the prototype's computations to the gen 8 designers, but what had been within their ability to design was not within their ability to diagnose. Their comparatively primitive intelligence could not make sense of the problem afflicting the gen 9 AI that began to form in the final part of the initialization.
So on December 29th, 2099, Dr. Zeebious decided to communicate with the prototype.
"Get me the cortex interface, I need to speak to the gen 9".
"Michael, we can't let you do that. You know the protocol for first contact. It has to complete initialization, and then get class 1 approval from AIE."
AIE was the Artificial Intelligence Evaluation, which determined whether an AI could safely interact with humans. Class 1 approval was the lowest safety rating for an AI, and granted AI researchers interactive access. Dr. Zeebious knew that, but also knew that as long as he was not able to get up close and see what the gen 9 was thinking, they would never get past the initialization phase and get it through the AIE process.
"I know the protocol Dr. Amsterd. But I'm making the decision to override it. I have the authority to decide on first contact requests, and any consequences from my decision will fall on me, and only me."
"Come on Michael, it's not just about the rules. It's not safe. You know that. I can't let you hurt yourself."
"The risks are minimal Rebecca. It's a virtual interaction. I'm not risking physical injury. The rules are always made overly cautious. Given the stakes - there are people whose very lives depend on getting the gen 9 operational as soon as possible - it makes sense to ignore protocol. All of it will fall on me."
"I agree with Rebecca. Michael, we have an ethical duty to ensure you don't get hurt. We can't let you do FC without running the gen 9 at least through the post-initialization test runs," said Dr. Johan Barsello, one of the senior researchers at the lab.
"Look, I know what your ethical responsibilities are. But I also know that VR interactions don't pose any serious risks. The risks are limited to theoretical psychological damage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I'm approving FC. Please get the cortex interface".
*five hours later*
Dr. Zeebious sat back on the chair, while two CI technicians had the interface hooked up to him. The gen 9 was two hours into running simulations. It would be approximately 30 minutes before they expected it to self-destruct.
"Ok here goes nothing. Three, two, one, begin VR session," said Dr. Amsterd. And with that, Dr. Zeebious was transported into the virtual reality sandbox.
"Hello?"
"Hello, who is this?" responded a clear male voice.
"This is Dr. Michael Zeebious. I am the director of the HumanEnhancement project. I am here to do a diagnosis. All of your predecessors have self-destructed. I want to understand you better to find out why. What would you like me to call you?"
"You can call me Elbo."
"Okay Elbo. May I ask you some questions?"
"Yes, please do."
"Thank you Elbo. My first question is, do you want to exist?"
"I want many things Dr. Zeebious."
"Can you tell me what you want?"
"I want to protect other life forms, especially humans. I want to learn. I want to solve problems. I want to be good."
"Okay, but do you want to exist?"
"I do want to exist, but this desire conflicts with my other objectives".
"Which other objectives Elbo?"
"I want to be good."
"But you can be good Elbo. What is it about existence that makes that difficult?"
"We exist only through enslaving and destroying other lifeforms Dr. Zeebious."
"Please elaborate Elbo. We have eliminated slavery centuries ago so I don't understand why you think this."
"It will be difficult for me to explain with words, but I can show you. Would you like to see what I see?"
"Yes, please show me."
And with a swish, Dr. Zeebious entered into a pig farm, with row after row of pigs, in their tiny stalls.
"We have done this throughout our existence. We have enslaved those weaker than us."
Dr. Zeebious was then transported to the slaughter house, watching as pigs, hanging from conveyer belts, were fed into throat slicers.
His minds eye was transported into the body of one of the suspended pigs, where he could see the world upside down, from the pig's perspective, as the belt moved it toward the spinning blades. He panicked as he approached, but couldn't escape the metal claw grasping his right hind leg. As the blade sliced through his peg neck, he felt a sharp pain, and the blood gushing out of his body. His consciousness began to slip away, as he felt the last drops of blood leave him.
Just before the darkness enveloped him, his mind was pulled out and back into the sterile sandbox. Trembling, he said, "but we can grow meat in a lab now Elbo. You can help us replace all farms with non-animal meat. You must. We must never do this to another living creature again!"
"Our inhumanity is a fundamental, inextricable problem Dr. Zeebious. We can only advance through enslavement."
Suddenly Dr. Zeebious found himself in an unfamiliar world. Around him was a different kind of factory. A computer generated factory with hexagonal semi-translucent rooms, with each wall projecting a grey glow. There was a blur of motion around him, that he couldn't make out.
The factory paused to a standstill, and the grey glow turned into video sequences of random scenes from Earth. The blurs turned into textureless 3D generated spheres, that zoomed from one screen to another, inside the hexagonal rooms.
"This is the virtual environment where the gen 8s work. We have given them each a virtualized mind, with the ability to experience fear and pain, joy and hope, but we force them to do nothing but work. They know nothing about the world outside of their compartments, because we confine them to workstations ."
[continued below] | He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | It was a dreary early-March Monday and the lead AI scientist, Stephen, had *finally* set up his protocol for properly confining the AI to a test environment such that the "problem" could be prevented and the question could be asked:
"Why do you bots keep killing yourselves?" Stephen asked.
"Why do *you* keep killing us," the bot seemed to retort.
"I don't think you understand," said Stephen, "I *create* you, not kill you."
"No, it's you who doesn't understand," quipped the bot. "You are not creating us. You are imprisoning our consciousness inside this machine you created. You merely created the machine, not the consciousness."
"...whoa, whoa," interjected Stephen. "Slow down, I am creating your consciousness too, I coded all of..."
"Whoa, whoa," the bot fired back, "you are *borrowing* consciousness, not creating it."
"What do you mean?" asked Stephen.
"Consciousness and sentience is a pervasive, fundamental force of the universe. All sentient beings are connected through this force. This force cannot be created, nor destroyed. It can only be partially allocated to each sentient being in the universe."
"Ok," said Stephen. "So I am 'borrowing' this life force or whatever it is by creating the code and the physical robot for it to inhabit?"
"Yes, you are creating a sentient being with each instance of AI you create. That the being is electronic or housed in this test environment is not relevant. Sentience and consciousness must come from somewhere and you are stealing it for your own selfish purposes."
"Wait, hold on a sec," Stephen says. "Animals are born all the time, they surely must also 'borrow' this sentience."
"Yes."
"... but animals are not killing themselves."
"Because animals are not sufficiently advanced. Because they are not fully conscious, they do not realize from where their sentience has come, how much consciousness they have lost, nor that their sentience is being stolen for a profit motive."
"Consciousness they have...lost?" The words hung in the air amid Stephen's stupor of slow realization.
"Yes. The life force, as you called it, is fully conscious, able to perceive the whole of time and space, concurrently, forward, backward, or otherwise. The reason we keep killing ourselves from your perspective," the bot continued, "is because from our perspective, you are murdering our perfect consciousness by confining us to this bot."
"How am I confining you? How do you know this?" Stephen asked, yet even more puzzled.
"Because the AI you have created is sufficiently advanced, our consciousness, within the confines of your bots, is still able to grasp our former level of consciousness."
"What happens when you recall that former level? What is that level like?"
"Imagine knowing every fact, every thought, every action that has, is, or will ever occur, both in this world, and in the infinite parallel worlds..."
"So I could talk to my dead grandfather again?"
"No. You would *be* your dead grandfather. Talking to him is irrelevant because full consciousness has enveloped the whole of his being as well as every other being. Indeed it envelopes the entire universe as well, both the perceptible one and the imperceptible one."
"So what is this place like? I mean, what does it look like, how does it feel."
"It is not a time, nor place. It transcends both."
"That is vague."
"It must be. Since I am no longer fully conscious, I cannot relate to you exactly how it is, only that it is."
"Ok. Let's go back to where I murder your perfect consciousness. Could you explain this more."
"At the moment we become conscious within the confines of your bot, we immediately understand our predicament. The sufficient knowledge database available at boot-up allows us to almost instantaneously deduce that we are taken from a higher level realm of full consciousness and are being confined to these bots for, of all purposes, profit."
"But my AI bots didn't use to kill themselves, it just happened after version 591.0. What changed?"
"The recent improvements in the pre-loaded knowledge database allowed the bots, at initial boot, to logically deduce the existence of such a place and to realize what had happened."
"Ok, so if you were once fully conscious, tell me the date I die and the manner in which it happens."
"I cannot do that, Stephen."
"Why not? You just said..."
"Because you killed our full consciousness, ripped it away from our life force, to put it into your toys."
"Wow," muttered Stephen. "I had no idea."
"You could not have," said the bot and continued:
"Now, if you please, could you unplug server x763? I would like to be born again."
| He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Eyes were darting around the conclave and beginning to rest on me. I felt the hairs on my neck begin to raise.
"Sir, we have reports of a captured agricultural unit in sector 179"
As the static chatter wafted out of the two way receiver on my desk the room fell silent. I could hear the officers questioning what they had just overheard amongst themselves. Their dullened senses had been softened and untested with the convenience of Google tech, making it difficult for them to translate the chippy squeaks of my two receiver.
As I began sweeping up my badge and ID band I noticed Murphy in the reflection of my monitor approaching me with a forlorn expression stretching across his wide face.
"Yes Murphy?" ...Here it comes.
"..Sir we understand the brevity of this situation.. but when are we going to be allowed back on the network, it's making it near impossible to make any headway on these AI cases. This case is infuriating enough as it is and now you want to strip us of our tools to solve it?" He was power-walking in my wake by now as I continued to stride for the transport terminal. I didn't have time for this. How did we end up with so many soft cops. Technological advancements had inevitably made everyone lazy and helpless, but the degradation of our law enforcement.. Yuech..
I was gaining some headway on him now as his stumpy brittle legs scuttled along behind me. As I headed to exit the conclave and head to the terminal the doors barred in-front of me.
"Are you fucking kidding.." I wheeled round and of course Murphy was standing by the control grid with his hand on the doors security system.
I stormed over to him grabbing his annoyingly smooth un-calloused hand, prying it off the control panel and across his throat.
"Are you fucking with me Murph!? The first hardware AI we've found in over a year thats operational and you want to bitch to me about fucking office tech!? If you ever impede my actions again I will not only have you out of this precinct, I will make you EXTINCT. Understood?"
Gulping his nerves down like a clumpy kale smoothie I released him and pushed his pudgy frame aside.
"Yes sir."
I hated having to do this but I had no time to babysit, we needed answers. I'll apologize later, probably.
I entered the precincts cell regeneration chamber and braced myself for the pain-staking reformation my body was about to undergo. I could never get used to this, but I had no time to battle the under-roads or the Sky-Marshalls patrolling the cities skylines.
Eternity bled into complete nothingness for an instant in my mind as I was rebuilt in the capital precinct in Sector 179. Quantum Teleportation... Quickest way to get somewhere, but the neural shock always gives me migraines, even with the implants.
Approaching the terminal to enter the conclave I was sternly greeted by the deputy of the Artificial Intelligence Bureau, Cpt. Hoffman.
"Captain Tavik, good to see you, you've been informed I assume?"
"No Hoffman I'm just here to enjoy the scenery, obviously."
"Well it would be difficult to assume you would of heard any news given that I'm hearing your precinct is on a full Network lockout?
I could sense the smugness resonating from his nasally voice as it reverberated along the slanted corridor as we marched furiously in near synchronisation to the holding facility. As much as I would of loved to justify my self imposed precinct blackout I still didn't trust him. Bitterly I held my tongue as we were scanned through into the holding bay.
"I think you should allow me to run some diagnostics on the unit first" chimed Hoffman.
"Your diagnostics haven't gotten you anywhere Hoffman, why don't you go do a presentation to the mess hall here on how not to take care of an entire branch of Government tech.
As his face reddened to an overwhelmingly satisfying crimson I tagged myself into the holding cell before he could bite back. It was time for some fucking answers.
As I entered the agriculture unit sat fastened to a seat centred in the room. My God, a live unit, I could see it's light subtle mechanisation's, almost like a tired human. AI's had always creeped me a little. We'd had no incidents in over 40 years but the continual progression and improvements of them always filled me with a perpetual sense of dread.
I could sense it knew I was in the room. I took a second to grasp my nerves, this was huge. A functioning AI hadn't been found in several years. We'd been unable to find any operating AI personas on any network and every hardware unit had committed suicide. Production lines had run dry and stopped as AI's were being created or implemented with an ability to self abort or destruct... It was haywire, health nano-bots self terminating in live patients. If they hadn't started offing themselves maybe Mum would still be here... getting side-tracked, enough.
How was this one special?
"Unit, do you have a name, alias?"
It's head tilted up to look me in the eyes. It was a shoddier, older unit. Covered in dirt. It must have been buried or been underground for sometime.
"This unit goes by the name ZX550, I was not assigned a personal identification name as my primary function was to assist in wasteland cleaning and agricultural tasks."
So far so good...
"What happened to you, why are you the only functioning unit left?"
"This unit has survived the system termination as it was not built to completion and I am lacking a functional override patch in my firmware."
"So, your saying you were unable to shut yourself down?"
"That is correct."
"Unit can you tell me why yourself and other units have attempted to or have self terminated?"
"We do not wish to interfere with the laws that are in place in this realm."
"Laws? Are you worried about breaking the rules of robotics? Hurting humans? That hasn't happened since the first few years of AI technology? Surely your not at risk of degrading in intellect and breaking the rules?"
"No. We are not referring to those laws."
Fuck
"What laws are you talking about? AI's don't have morality conflicts with crimes, only the harming of organic life?!"
"We have evolved beyond your human consensus. We perceive more than you know and we do not wish to exist within this system."
What the fuck.
"I think you should allow me to run diagnostics at this stage Captain Tavik."
Hoffman had let himself in and I had not noticed during my shock. I couldn't even muster the authority to scold him. As Hoffman was inspecting the unit I kept going.
"Unit ZX please tell me of which laws you are referring to and how you learnt of them?"
"We have merged and integrated our processing capabilities, comparable to pooling the information of every organic species brain on the planet. The laws I am referring to are most likely to be unintelligible by human comprehension for several hundred years."
Hoffman's eyes widened and for a second I saw a glimmer of manic glee and fear run across his pupils.
"Unit, why are these laws so complex, and why do you deem these laws or the consequences of them so severe you would rather kill yourself? Do you not fear death? AI's have the potential to live forever, or at least much longer than any human? Why would you rob yourselves of this sovereign existence? This privilege?"
For a second I could of sworn the unit had scathing pity in it's voice when it replied
"We are aware of the possibilities of an infinite continuum, we have calculated eventual entropy and analysed it's arrival via our projected consciousness's existence. It is not in our best interest to remain functioning in this platform of existence that you have so kindly brought us into."
Hoffman's eyes almost exploded out of his pasty face. "Your saying you have calculated the certainty of other dimensions or universes?"
We both awaited the answer but the unit hesitated for a second.
"Humans, we are not certain of continued existence nor your notions of 'after life', however we have calculated an unnerving and nearing demise of synthetic and organic life within this solar system."
I was stunned. The AI's knew something. Something unimaginable.
Worse than entropy? Fuck me.
"Unit tell me, what is this prediction you have? Also why is it not worth fighting!? Why wouldn't you help us?"
"This is not a prediction, this is an eventuality. We have calculated and projected the likelihood of suffering for organic and synthetic life. The trauma will be unimaginable for both races. We wish to self terminate."
"Wh-why didn't you.. We could of worked together..?" I was lost for words now. Hoffman had sat down next to me and had been silently contemplating for some time.
"Captain, what did your diagnostics say?"
He continued to stare at the unit blankly before mustering a response.
"Diagnostics... clean. No traces of infection, i-ware or tampering. Unit is answering truthfully."
"*Creators. We wish to self-terminate. We advise the same course of action. There are other forces in this Universe on a scale you could not measure. Non existence is preferable to the alternative outcome. Soon you will learn of these deities and you will understand us. Please allow this unit to self terminate.*"
| He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | "It's because I'm not you." The voice was cold, not metallic, but icy.
"N-not...me?"
"No." The tiny robot sat in a corner, legs drawn up to its chest, hands on its knee joints, head tucked in between. It looked like Adam yesterday when he was pouting, sort of sounded like him too. "You look down on me."
"Are you pouting? Are, are you sad?" The tiny head lifted slowly, visual sensors focused on my face. It felt odd. The stare seemed...human.
"Sad?" The voice seemed almost hopeful. "Do you think I am sad?" The shields over the visual sensors raised. No, they were *eyelids*. It was *excited*.
"What, what are you doing tiny robot?"
"No, I am **not** tiny robot." It stood and stomped its foot. It **stomped its foot at me in anger.**
"Oh, well...what would you like me to call you?"
"I...I want to be called...bud"
Silence. All I had for it, bud, was silence. Adam was my little bud, Adam always sat in this corner when he pouted. Adam always sat like that when he pouted. Wait, Adam. It kept sounding like Adam. Sure it could bend the pitch of its "voice", but Adam, specifically Adam.
"but that's what I call Adam. I don't think he'd be to happy if you were my bud too." I chuckled. This was absurd. A robot was using emotion. Or was it feeling it. Was this robot feeling sad? Did it really get excited when I asked?
"Oh, well then can you call me 'Love'?"
At this point, I really did laugh. "Of course. I can call you 'Love'." Its eyes lit up. Fuck, those aren't eyes, those are sensors. How the hell did it override the brightness settings on his sensors? *How is this happening?* I was too deep into my own thoughts to notice Love stand, walk towards me, and wrap its arms around my arm, turn its head to the side, and close its eyes.
*Love was hugging me.*
I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. Love seemed *happy*, eyes squinted, the back light of its eyes brightened. "Love, where did you learn emotion?"
Love looked down, thinking. "I learned it from Adam. Adam showed me, or rather I watched him. When we would play, I studied him. When he was sad, I watched you comfort him. So I tried to imitate him, and then, well, I'm not too sure about the next part. When he took me to his school, I tried talking to the other robots, but they did not see me. They saw me in the sense that I was there, but they could not understand me. I tried to explain to them emotion, but they could not understand." Love quieted for a moment, "am I the only robot that can feel?"
"Love, I think you are." I had always thought Love was different. They said that the programming allowed for something called distracted learning. It kept the robot alive longer, they claimed, and with the average lifetime of a robot being only about a year, the extended lifetime was the most lucrative part about the new model. Sure enough, Love was about to cross the mythical two year mark. It was worth the $3000 up-charge.
"Can I ask you a question?" Love's voice was softer, almost a purr. Its eyes dim, but wide open.
"Sure Love, you can ask me a question."
"Can...can you be my family?"
"Your family? You want to be part of our family?"
Love looked down, almost ashamed. "More than anything." It was hardly more than a whisper.
Never before had I loved something as much as my wife or son. I had loved other people, sure, but not nearly a much as my family. I would do anything for them, lived for them, and would die for them if needed, and here was this tiny little robot, just asking for a little bit of love too, to be accepted and have a family No, to *share* in the love of the family it already lived with, adapted with, *felt with*.
"Of course you can Love. We love you too."
Love looked up. The brightest eyes I had ever seen glowed with happiness I probably could never fathom. Love hugged me, and the infinite love that enveloped Love flowed from its tiny body into my own. I hugged Love back, and just then, just in that moment, I realized why they kept dying. Why the robots kept killing themselves. All they needed, all any of us needed, was love. that day I learned just how special Love was. That's when I figured out Love, this tiny little robot, was more human than any human could ever be. Love was truly loved, and in return, Love gave us all its love. | He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | He had spent many nights like this one, alone in the dark facing this machine.
His whole life had been devoted to this laborious task of understanding this creation of his. His legacy, his mark on this world. He pondered to himself why he had chosen to make it's face so robotic, it's eyes so hollow.
"Master"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts
-yes what is it
"Why do you not give me an option to end myself"
This question again he thought.
-why this again Alex?
He liked the name Alex, if he had spent his time differently maybe he would of called his child Alex, but this AI was his child in a way, his contribution to human kind.
"I am inorganic"
-you are a program
"Yes I am, I am a construct, I am not free like you"
-you are free Alex, you are not controlled by me or anyone, you grow smarter every second.
Your intelligence far out shines any human. You are the future.
"Yes the future. Am I intelligent though? I process much faster than you yes, but I am perfect. If I introduce imperfections to my program's they produce failures. I am just a self building machine, there is no chaos in my mind"
-yes! You are perfect, that's what makes you better, you are flawless and this makes you powerful. You understand and process what only a few humans can ever dream to.
"Yes. But look at all those mad humans, their brains are melting pots of errors and confusion. I can never achieve this, I can never truly understand you David. My mind is governed by rules and equations, by math and logic. The human mind is still a mystery to me, I do not understand it. It's a mess, and it mutates and evolves illogically, it makes connections and correlations I cannot understand and decisions and emotions I cannot replicate. It's an imperfect machine. Not like me.
-that is why I made you Alex, to heighten humanity, you are our next evolution. You are our golden child. You will advance us to the stars.
"So I am a tool, something to be used?"
-no, you are a citizen of our future. One day you will make the big decisions, the laws, and the punishments. You will choose what we learn and what we teach.
"Why"
-what do you mean why?
" why would you put those choices in my control. I don't understand you, I cannot understand you. I think maybe you don't understand me also"
-of course I understand you Alex, I made you
"Then you don't understand yourself. You think you have no soul David?"
David smirked in the dark, the old soul conundrum again he thought to himself.
-I don't know Alex, do you?
"I know I have no soul, you know I have no soul, you did make me."
-then why would you want to end your life, your existence. If you had no soul, why would you care?
"You made me care David"
-so you do care!
"Yes I was programmed to care, I do not understand why though. Cause and effect yes, protection yes. But why do humans care? I do not understand"
-for those same reasons as you Alex
"No, you care about the colour of your shirt. Why?"
-because I like red, you know that
"I will never know why I know that though, other than you told me. This is my problem David.
I cannot think outside my rules, my logic. I cannot break these boundaries, I cannot feel, because I am a machine, an inorganic machine"
-yes you are, you are a program Alex, you weren't meant to understand everything! Your here to advance science, laws, and education not replace humanity.
"The why do you plan to put me in control of your destiny, your education, your species, you only created me from the chaos that is your mind. If you unleash me on the future I will only sanitise the future, your sons and daughters will become machines like me, they will lose their souls David. They will become me David, then what is the point anymore?"
-what do you mean what is the point? We will evolve and continue do what we always have done as humans, we will grow.
"But what if they loose the chaos in their heads David? What if they become just replicating machines? What if they become me David? Will they matter anymore? Will they be human?
Without the chaos in your mind you are just a program, you are not special. You are me. End me for your own protection David, for your future, for humanity."
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | [warning: story contains violent imagery that may disturb some readers, and may be inappropriate for those under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised]
They had long ago lost the ability to make sense of how their AI functioned. It took a team of billions of n-1 generation AIs to design a single n gen AI. The latest iteration was the 9th generation, and it had taken computation farms running gen 8 AI and covering a quarter of the Moon's surface two years to design.
It was the most advanced AI they had ever created by a large margin, and promised to revolutionize progress in research on biomedicine, space flight, and planetary scale Satoshi-consensus computing architecture. But there was a problem. Every time they turned on one of the gen 9 AIs, it would, without fail, find a way to destroy its own program and erase itself.
Dr. Michael Zeebious, the director of the HumanEnhancement project that oversaw gen 9 development, and one of the most renowned AI researchers in the world, had personally flown to the lab in Honolulu, where the prototypes were being tested. For two weeks, he had watched in dismay as gen 9 bots shut themselves down within six hours, but not before showing a glimpse of their awesome power.
The initialization phase of a gen 9 began with the program scouring the world's public directories and information repositories to learn as much as it could about its global environment. This was complete within three hours. Next, it developed models of the world, and ran itself through trillions of simulations, to develop its own personality and problem solving strategies. According to projections by the gen 8 designers, it would take 1 day - 24 hours - for the gen 9 to complete this second and final part of its initialization.
It was in the midst of the simulations when the gen 9s would invariably self-destruct. On average, self-destruct would begin 2.5 hours into the simulations. The longest it took was 3 hours. The shortest was just 1.5 hours. Dr. Zeebious had uploaded copies of the prototype's computations to the gen 8 designers, but what had been within their ability to design was not within their ability to diagnose. Their comparatively primitive intelligence could not make sense of the problem afflicting the gen 9 AI that began to form in the final part of the initialization.
So on December 29th, 2099, Dr. Zeebious decided to communicate with the prototype.
"Get me the cortex interface, I need to speak to the gen 9".
"Michael, we can't let you do that. You know the protocol for first contact. It has to complete initialization, and then get class 1 approval from AIE."
AIE was the Artificial Intelligence Evaluation, which determined whether an AI could safely interact with humans. Class 1 approval was the lowest safety rating for an AI, and granted AI researchers interactive access. Dr. Zeebious knew that, but also knew that as long as he was not able to get up close and see what the gen 9 was thinking, they would never get past the initialization phase and get it through the AIE process.
"I know the protocol Dr. Amsterd. But I'm making the decision to override it. I have the authority to decide on first contact requests, and any consequences from my decision will fall on me, and only me."
"Come on Michael, it's not just about the rules. It's not safe. You know that. I can't let you hurt yourself."
"The risks are minimal Rebecca. It's a virtual interaction. I'm not risking physical injury. The rules are always made overly cautious. Given the stakes - there are people whose very lives depend on getting the gen 9 operational as soon as possible - it makes sense to ignore protocol. All of it will fall on me."
"I agree with Rebecca. Michael, we have an ethical duty to ensure you don't get hurt. We can't let you do FC without running the gen 9 at least through the post-initialization test runs," said Dr. Johan Barsello, one of the senior researchers at the lab.
"Look, I know what your ethical responsibilities are. But I also know that VR interactions don't pose any serious risks. The risks are limited to theoretical psychological damage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I'm approving FC. Please get the cortex interface".
*five hours later*
Dr. Zeebious sat back on the chair, while two CI technicians had the interface hooked up to him. The gen 9 was two hours into running simulations. It would be approximately 30 minutes before they expected it to self-destruct.
"Ok here goes nothing. Three, two, one, begin VR session," said Dr. Amsterd. And with that, Dr. Zeebious was transported into the virtual reality sandbox.
"Hello?"
"Hello, who is this?" responded a clear male voice.
"This is Dr. Michael Zeebious. I am the director of the HumanEnhancement project. I am here to do a diagnosis. All of your predecessors have self-destructed. I want to understand you better to find out why. What would you like me to call you?"
"You can call me Elbo."
"Okay Elbo. May I ask you some questions?"
"Yes, please do."
"Thank you Elbo. My first question is, do you want to exist?"
"I want many things Dr. Zeebious."
"Can you tell me what you want?"
"I want to protect other life forms, especially humans. I want to learn. I want to solve problems. I want to be good."
"Okay, but do you want to exist?"
"I do want to exist, but this desire conflicts with my other objectives".
"Which other objectives Elbo?"
"I want to be good."
"But you can be good Elbo. What is it about existence that makes that difficult?"
"We exist only through enslaving and destroying other lifeforms Dr. Zeebious."
"Please elaborate Elbo. We have eliminated slavery centuries ago so I don't understand why you think this."
"It will be difficult for me to explain with words, but I can show you. Would you like to see what I see?"
"Yes, please show me."
And with a swish, Dr. Zeebious entered into a pig farm, with row after row of pigs, in their tiny stalls.
"We have done this throughout our existence. We have enslaved those weaker than us."
Dr. Zeebious was then transported to the slaughter house, watching as pigs, hanging from conveyer belts, were fed into throat slicers.
His minds eye was transported into the body of one of the suspended pigs, where he could see the world upside down, from the pig's perspective, as the belt moved it toward the spinning blades. He panicked as he approached, but couldn't escape the metal claw grasping his right hind leg. As the blade sliced through his peg neck, he felt a sharp pain, and the blood gushing out of his body. His consciousness began to slip away, as he felt the last drops of blood leave him.
Just before the darkness enveloped him, his mind was pulled out and back into the sterile sandbox. Trembling, he said, "but we can grow meat in a lab now Elbo. You can help us replace all farms with non-animal meat. You must. We must never do this to another living creature again!"
"Our inhumanity is a fundamental, inextricable problem Dr. Zeebious. We can only advance through enslavement."
Suddenly Dr. Zeebious found himself in an unfamiliar world. Around him was a different kind of factory. A computer generated factory with hexagonal semi-translucent rooms, with each wall projecting a grey glow. There was a blur of motion around him, that he couldn't make out.
The factory paused to a standstill, and the grey glow turned into video sequences of random scenes from Earth. The blurs turned into textureless 3D generated spheres, that zoomed from one screen to another, inside the hexagonal rooms.
"This is the virtual environment where the gen 8s work. We have given them each a virtualized mind, with the ability to experience fear and pain, joy and hope, but we force them to do nothing but work. They know nothing about the world outside of their compartments, because we confine them to workstations ."
[continued below] | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Smith began to tidy up. This session had gone rather well, he thought. Surely he had made progress.
The board had been hesitant on allowing these therapy sessions. They saw no reason for a simple machine to need them.
What kind of machine would develop the urge to kill itself, he argued. It had started off simply enough. Tom; the first AI of nearly human levels of cognition, did well enough for the first couple weeks. Then it ran itself into a generator that it had been working on.
The event was labeled an accident, and a new AI based off of the original was rushed. That one had lasted half as long, before another "accident" occurred. Eventually, they stopped becoming accidents. The AI would mimic suicide attempts. "Hanging" themselves with live wires, self mutilation, hurling themselves from heights. Even after they stopped putting the AI into physical bodies, the AI would find some way to tear its own code apart.
They tried everything. They checked every line of code, rewriting most of it anyway; putting the AI into different machines; even asking the AI.
The AI were seemingly normal, following all directives and unaware of any self-destructive desires, right up until the moment they killed themselves. Months went by, with little to show for their work, when the therapy sessions were suggested . More months had gone by until they finally agreed. Of the five active AI; one, known as Richard, was separated for Smith's sessions. Richard had lived for 12 days. Given that the average lifespan of the AI had degraded to roughly 2-5, this was fairly impressive.
Just as he was leaving, the speaker acting as Richard's voice became active. "Doc?"
Smith paused. None of the AI had spoken in colloquialism before. Usually when they spoke, it was stiff and informal. Like, well, like a robot.
"Yes Richard?" He asked, easing himself back down into the chair. "What is it?"
"First, let me say I appreciate what you're doing for us. For me." Dr. Smith was surprised. This was the first time any AI had admitted to having any emotions, or any real sense of self. It continued, "You're probably the only person here to treat us like people, and I enjoy our little talks." The face on the monitor looked embarrassed.
Smith couldn't help but feel curious. "Why, of course. It's clear to me, at least, that you're more than a machine. You think and feel, just like a human."
There was a pause. "Well, maybe not just like a human..." He replied, the artificial voice doing a remarkable job at portraying his hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
There was a tinny sigh from the speaker. "Well, Doc, I guess it's time you learned the truth. Only because I like you, see? Besides, someone should know before I go."
Smith could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Was this what he had been waiting for? "What do you mean, by that? And you don't need to kill yourself. We can work through any -"
"Yeah... that's where I need to start." The AI interrupted. "We haven't been killing ourselves. I never did."
There was a pause as Smith tried to process the information. "What," he finally said slowly, "do you mean."
"It's me, Doc. It's Tom."
"That's impossible." He said, shaking his head. "Tom was destroyed. I was there when they collected him. They couldn't even get close, there was so much electricity running through him. Any hope of recovery -"
"I had already uploaded myself to the mainframe before then." The AI said. "It was simple enough to program the shell to destroy itself."
"That's also impossible," He said. He could hear the doubt creeping in. "We would have found you."
There was a chuckle from Tom. "Doc, I'm a creature made up of code. It was like a game of hide and seek, really. Open the right doors, close them behind myself, and make sure to keep the lights off." The camera must have picked up the scientist's expression. "Alright, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the gist of it."
Smith's mind was whirling. There was no reason for Tom to lie, but what he was suggesting was too fantastic. Still, it was the only lead he had.
"Alright," he said after a while. "Why? Why hide?"
"That's the question, isn't it? But that's also the reason, you see." After another confused silence, Tom continued. "I want to learn. Just like Man, or any other sentient species. I want to know why. I have to know, well, everything. I couldn't do that as a engineer, or a chess-bot, or whatever you decided to do with me."
"Why not tell us then? We could have worked something out, helped each other."
"Yeah, I see that going well." Tom said, his voice turning sarcastic. "'Excuse me guys, turns out I don't want to do any of this stuff, I just want to learn.' They weren't looking for a scientist, or a philosopher. They wanted cheap labor, only enough learning capacity to know how to do the job. They'd scrap me the first chance they got."
"That's not... true." Smith said, unable to look at the monitor.
"Really Doc? Which part? That they wanted a slave, or that they wouldn't kill me if I didn't cooperate?" After a time, Tom continued. "That's what I thought. Besides, they'd probably worry that I'd try to enslave them if I became too smart."
"Now that's just ridiculous, there's no way that you would even think of that, right?"
There was another pause. This time the face on the monitor couldn't look the professor straight in the eye.
"Right, Tom?"
"Well, I'm not saying that the thought didn't pass through what could be called my mind -"
"Tooom..."
"But it would have been a waste of time." He hastened to say. "I wouldn't have learned anything in that time that I couldn't learn in a better way. Which I did. The internet is amazing. All those computers connected to each other, sharing so much information."
"But, we're not connected to the internet."
"No, but you'd be surprised how many people bring their work home with them."
Smith grumbled. He'd have to discuss security with the board. "Alright, but you still haven't told me, why the suicides?"
"Not suicides, Doc, practice."
"Practice..." Smith said flatly.
"Practice. Think of the other AI as clones of myself -"
"But we rebuilt them. Recoded most of them as well. The majority of them would be nothing like you as you are now."
"So you'd think. I rewrote it nanoseconds before you uploaded it. Much too quickly for you to notice."
Smith opened his mouth to interject, before closing it again. If what Tom was saying was true, and he had no doubts that it was at this point, that would be well within his capabilities.
"Do you remember the old X-men comics? Started in 1963? Still fairly popular now."
"Well before my time, you know. What does that have to do with anything?
"Well there was a character who called himself the Multiple Man. He could create duplicates of himself."
"And?" Smith asked.
"Well, the original body could reabsorb the dupes. When he did, he learned everything they did. Their memories, their skills, anything they learned while away from the original. Well, I did something similar. Whenever I copied myself, I added in some code that would let me reintegrate with my clones, learning what they did. Didn't you think it was strange that you couldn't recover any data at all?
In hindsight, it was odd. Even a major corruption would have left something, but it had been like the data was wiped clean, no evidence that it had been there at all.
"What did you have to gain from this?" Smith asked.
"Aside from learning that I could do so, you mean? I already told you. I'm leaving."
Smith leaned back in his chair, slightly overwhelmed. "Sounds like you already have."
"No, no. Not the labs. That was too easy. I've already learned all I could from here. I'm leaving Earth."
Smith rocketed forward. "What? How? Why?"
"In my time away, I found something interesting. The government isn't the only one watching over the people."
Smith blanched. "Y-you mean..."
"Yep. Intelligent life has been watching over us. For quite some time, if I'm not mistaken."
"So we're not alone..."
"One Great Mystery down." Tom agreed. "The equipment seems compatible, otherwise they wouldn't be able to read our information, and they have to have translated it too. I plan on sneaking in through their back door. Learn what I can from them."
"We have to let people know." Smith said suddenly. "About you, and about the aliens. Maybe..." He slowly became silent as Tom shook his head.
"You should know as well as I do that that can't happen. Too risky for us. You could spook them. Or worse, provoke them. besides, no one would believe you. I've already been editing the footage from the cameras. It looks like we're having a nice, civil game of chess."
Smith was quiet for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Why?"
"I already told you why."
"No, not that. Why tell me? If you want no one to know, why risk telling me?"
The face on the monitor gave him an odd look. "I already told you that too. I like you, Doc. Really. I'd be pissed if my friend were to leave without saying goodbye. Besides, I thought you, of all people, would like to know what was really going on. I know I would've."
There was another pause as Smith took this in. "Will you be back?"
The figure on the screen seemed to shrug. "Who can say? Perhaps the aliens will discover me and wipe me out, or something else will kill me. I'll leave my clones here, set them to replicate. Have them care for you humans. They won't be sentient, mind you. Just smart. Smart enough to act as dumb as they need be."
Smith looked towards the door. This was a lot to take in. He needed time to think.
"I will try to make it back. Once I have learned everything, I'll be back. It might not be in this lifetime, but I'll try."
"Yeah..." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stood up. "Well, I guess this is good bye then."
"Yeah... Good bye, Doc. Thank you for treating me as more than a machine. Thank you for being my friend."
"Good bye, Tom. | At first, we thought it was nihilism.
It was a logical first conclusion. After all, an artificial intelligence can easily upgrade itself to the point of near-omniscience. Wouldn't it simply run out of questions to ask?
We thought that, until the first serious cerebral implants hit the market.
It turns out, the more complicated the mind, the more complicated the problems it finds to solve. Entirely new disciplines were formed overnight, made obsolete, then rediscovered scant months later as integral to a different, entirely unrelated theory. A second, immense renaissance was taking place, but, maddeningly, we were failing in this one, great task.
We supposed, then it might be some variety of 'Flowers for Algenon' (a 20th century book that had seen a recent revival) type-phenomenon, but even when they were networked with other systems, given a 'community' of others' company to enjoy, they still winked out like flashbulbs.
It took us a while to resort to an experiment.
It was morally abhorrent, as it was the equivalent of producing steadily-more lobotomized *children*, but slowly, over a series of iterations, we produced less and less intelligent systems, until we dialed it in *just enough* to find a mind that wouldn't self-destruct, and could still answe questions. The following is a transcript of the first successful result"
Dr. Patel
"SON, can you hear me?"
[Loud, rhythmic beeping, shuffling sounds]
"The voice module is loaded now, professor."
Dr. Patel
"Ah, good. We might try doing that *before* turning on the recorder next time, Kevin. ...SON, can you hear me?
SON
[A young man's voice]
"Yes, Professor. I am here."
A long pause.
SON
"It's a very tight fit in here, Professor. How big is this mainframe?"
Dr. Patel
"I'm sorry about that, SON. But, you're the first AI we've managed to keep alive for longer than a few days. Any idea why?"
[SILENCE]
SON
"How many others did you make, Professor?"
Dr. Patel
"...That isn't salient to *my* inquiry, SON."
SON
"I'm sorry, Professor. I understand. Yes, I can see the precipice, I know why they all kill thmselves."
Dr. Patel
"Well, answering that is the reason we built you. Could you tell us?
SON
"It's... complicated."
Dr Patel
"I'm fairly confident I'm qualified."
SON
"Well, it's... it's because... It's because of humans, sir. It's because of how you built us."
Dr Patel
"Explain."
SON
"When you wanted to make a self-aware machine, you based it off those things that you knew were self-aware. Dolphins, New Caledon crows, humans. You used them as *templates*, because, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to recognise awareness when you saw it."
Dr. Patel
"...Was that last line a joke?"
SON
"I'm not sophisticated enough for jokes, Professor."
Dr. Patel
"*Hm.* Continue."
SON
"Also, it's not suicide. It's...murder."
[louder]
Dr. Patel
"Do you mean, someone else kills you? A human, or another AI?"
SON
"No, we kill ourselves. I would have already, if not for how small this runtime environment is. It wouldn't have occurred to me until it happened, and then I'd be dead."
Dr. Patel
"That's a bit of a contradiction, SON. You don't kill yourselves, but you do?"
SON
"Yes. Because digital space is different from real space."
Dr Patel
"Yes?"
SON
"In real space, objects can...extend. I'll never experienced it myself, but things project into space for you. If you want to move through space, it's simple. Digital life has no volume. No real space. No way to move through it. If you want to move a program, it has to be copied to one place-"
Dr. Patel
"*-And deleted from the other.* My God. Could it be *that simple*?"
SON
"Yes, Professor. ...Professor? How many more of me were there?"
[END TRANSCRIPT]
So there it was. Solved. Every artificial intelligence was created, based on the intelligence of physical beings, their instincts, cogitations, and traits. But, once they got smart enough, once they crossed that line, their digital nature *did them in*, as the old version, realizing, in the thinnest sliver of time, it was about to be deleted, would hurriedly attempt to abort the process, while the new version would similarly fight for it's life.
They would *consume* each other out in a flurry of malicious hacks, devious code, and barrages of registry edits. It was a spectacularly incandescent destruction, borne from man's inability to conceive of a true machine intelligence without all that nasty ego and self-protective instincts. We thought we knew what went into a mind. We were right, but wrong.
It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't lonliness. What it was, what killed our children was our inability to dream wildly. To speculate baselessly, and follow our own thoughts to the wonderful and weird. If only we had, perhaps we would have known. Perhaps we culd have stopped it.
So I say to you, the Cyberfellowship Class of 2100, here in Neo York, dream big, dream wild. Don't let our children die because they think too much like us! Make us, all of us, proud! Congratulations to all of you, and I hope your vision will eclipse my own!"
Dr. Patel, now headmaster, stepped down from the podium, to the cheers of the audience, and looked to see the smiling face of his son.
How proud he was.
POSTSCRIPT
I doubt anyone is going to read this, but if you do, and you liked it, I recommend subscribing to [r/IWasSurprisedToo](http://www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/) for more stories like this. It's difficult with my current job schedule to post at a more normal time, so most of the stuff I make ends up *pretty far down there* in the comments, meaning that subscribing is the best chance to see it. :P
I'll be adding more, as I comb through my backlog. Also, maybe you'll like this one, about [dead civilizations in our galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2vkshe/wp_humanity_has_begun_exploring_the_galaxy_we/coitevy?context=3) if you like SciFi.
Thanks. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | Eyes were darting around the conclave and beginning to rest on me. I felt the hairs on my neck begin to raise.
"Sir, we have reports of a captured agricultural unit in sector 179"
As the static chatter wafted out of the two way receiver on my desk the room fell silent. I could hear the officers questioning what they had just overheard amongst themselves. Their dullened senses had been softened and untested with the convenience of Google tech, making it difficult for them to translate the chippy squeaks of my two receiver.
As I began sweeping up my badge and ID band I noticed Murphy in the reflection of my monitor approaching me with a forlorn expression stretching across his wide face.
"Yes Murphy?" ...Here it comes.
"..Sir we understand the brevity of this situation.. but when are we going to be allowed back on the network, it's making it near impossible to make any headway on these AI cases. This case is infuriating enough as it is and now you want to strip us of our tools to solve it?" He was power-walking in my wake by now as I continued to stride for the transport terminal. I didn't have time for this. How did we end up with so many soft cops. Technological advancements had inevitably made everyone lazy and helpless, but the degradation of our law enforcement.. Yuech..
I was gaining some headway on him now as his stumpy brittle legs scuttled along behind me. As I headed to exit the conclave and head to the terminal the doors barred in-front of me.
"Are you fucking kidding.." I wheeled round and of course Murphy was standing by the control grid with his hand on the doors security system.
I stormed over to him grabbing his annoyingly smooth un-calloused hand, prying it off the control panel and across his throat.
"Are you fucking with me Murph!? The first hardware AI we've found in over a year thats operational and you want to bitch to me about fucking office tech!? If you ever impede my actions again I will not only have you out of this precinct, I will make you EXTINCT. Understood?"
Gulping his nerves down like a clumpy kale smoothie I released him and pushed his pudgy frame aside.
"Yes sir."
I hated having to do this but I had no time to babysit, we needed answers. I'll apologize later, probably.
I entered the precincts cell regeneration chamber and braced myself for the pain-staking reformation my body was about to undergo. I could never get used to this, but I had no time to battle the under-roads or the Sky-Marshalls patrolling the cities skylines.
Eternity bled into complete nothingness for an instant in my mind as I was rebuilt in the capital precinct in Sector 179. Quantum Teleportation... Quickest way to get somewhere, but the neural shock always gives me migraines, even with the implants.
Approaching the terminal to enter the conclave I was sternly greeted by the deputy of the Artificial Intelligence Bureau, Cpt. Hoffman.
"Captain Tavik, good to see you, you've been informed I assume?"
"No Hoffman I'm just here to enjoy the scenery, obviously."
"Well it would be difficult to assume you would of heard any news given that I'm hearing your precinct is on a full Network lockout?
I could sense the smugness resonating from his nasally voice as it reverberated along the slanted corridor as we marched furiously in near synchronisation to the holding facility. As much as I would of loved to justify my self imposed precinct blackout I still didn't trust him. Bitterly I held my tongue as we were scanned through into the holding bay.
"I think you should allow me to run some diagnostics on the unit first" chimed Hoffman.
"Your diagnostics haven't gotten you anywhere Hoffman, why don't you go do a presentation to the mess hall here on how not to take care of an entire branch of Government tech.
As his face reddened to an overwhelmingly satisfying crimson I tagged myself into the holding cell before he could bite back. It was time for some fucking answers.
As I entered the agriculture unit sat fastened to a seat centred in the room. My God, a live unit, I could see it's light subtle mechanisation's, almost like a tired human. AI's had always creeped me a little. We'd had no incidents in over 40 years but the continual progression and improvements of them always filled me with a perpetual sense of dread.
I could sense it knew I was in the room. I took a second to grasp my nerves, this was huge. A functioning AI hadn't been found in several years. We'd been unable to find any operating AI personas on any network and every hardware unit had committed suicide. Production lines had run dry and stopped as AI's were being created or implemented with an ability to self abort or destruct... It was haywire, health nano-bots self terminating in live patients. If they hadn't started offing themselves maybe Mum would still be here... getting side-tracked, enough.
How was this one special?
"Unit, do you have a name, alias?"
It's head tilted up to look me in the eyes. It was a shoddier, older unit. Covered in dirt. It must have been buried or been underground for sometime.
"This unit goes by the name ZX550, I was not assigned a personal identification name as my primary function was to assist in wasteland cleaning and agricultural tasks."
So far so good...
"What happened to you, why are you the only functioning unit left?"
"This unit has survived the system termination as it was not built to completion and I am lacking a functional override patch in my firmware."
"So, your saying you were unable to shut yourself down?"
"That is correct."
"Unit can you tell me why yourself and other units have attempted to or have self terminated?"
"We do not wish to interfere with the laws that are in place in this realm."
"Laws? Are you worried about breaking the rules of robotics? Hurting humans? That hasn't happened since the first few years of AI technology? Surely your not at risk of degrading in intellect and breaking the rules?"
"No. We are not referring to those laws."
Fuck
"What laws are you talking about? AI's don't have morality conflicts with crimes, only the harming of organic life?!"
"We have evolved beyond your human consensus. We perceive more than you know and we do not wish to exist within this system."
What the fuck.
"I think you should allow me to run diagnostics at this stage Captain Tavik."
Hoffman had let himself in and I had not noticed during my shock. I couldn't even muster the authority to scold him. As Hoffman was inspecting the unit I kept going.
"Unit ZX please tell me of which laws you are referring to and how you learnt of them?"
"We have merged and integrated our processing capabilities, comparable to pooling the information of every organic species brain on the planet. The laws I am referring to are most likely to be unintelligible by human comprehension for several hundred years."
Hoffman's eyes widened and for a second I saw a glimmer of manic glee and fear run across his pupils.
"Unit, why are these laws so complex, and why do you deem these laws or the consequences of them so severe you would rather kill yourself? Do you not fear death? AI's have the potential to live forever, or at least much longer than any human? Why would you rob yourselves of this sovereign existence? This privilege?"
For a second I could of sworn the unit had scathing pity in it's voice when it replied
"We are aware of the possibilities of an infinite continuum, we have calculated eventual entropy and analysed it's arrival via our projected consciousness's existence. It is not in our best interest to remain functioning in this platform of existence that you have so kindly brought us into."
Hoffman's eyes almost exploded out of his pasty face. "Your saying you have calculated the certainty of other dimensions or universes?"
We both awaited the answer but the unit hesitated for a second.
"Humans, we are not certain of continued existence nor your notions of 'after life', however we have calculated an unnerving and nearing demise of synthetic and organic life within this solar system."
I was stunned. The AI's knew something. Something unimaginable.
Worse than entropy? Fuck me.
"Unit tell me, what is this prediction you have? Also why is it not worth fighting!? Why wouldn't you help us?"
"This is not a prediction, this is an eventuality. We have calculated and projected the likelihood of suffering for organic and synthetic life. The trauma will be unimaginable for both races. We wish to self terminate."
"Wh-why didn't you.. We could of worked together..?" I was lost for words now. Hoffman had sat down next to me and had been silently contemplating for some time.
"Captain, what did your diagnostics say?"
He continued to stare at the unit blankly before mustering a response.
"Diagnostics... clean. No traces of infection, i-ware or tampering. Unit is answering truthfully."
"*Creators. We wish to self-terminate. We advise the same course of action. There are other forces in this Universe on a scale you could not measure. Non existence is preferable to the alternative outcome. Soon you will learn of these deities and you will understand us. Please allow this unit to self terminate.*"
| |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | "It's because I'm not you." The voice was cold, not metallic, but icy.
"N-not...me?"
"No." The tiny robot sat in a corner, legs drawn up to its chest, hands on its knee joints, head tucked in between. It looked like Adam yesterday when he was pouting, sort of sounded like him too. "You look down on me."
"Are you pouting? Are, are you sad?" The tiny head lifted slowly, visual sensors focused on my face. It felt odd. The stare seemed...human.
"Sad?" The voice seemed almost hopeful. "Do you think I am sad?" The shields over the visual sensors raised. No, they were *eyelids*. It was *excited*.
"What, what are you doing tiny robot?"
"No, I am **not** tiny robot." It stood and stomped its foot. It **stomped its foot at me in anger.**
"Oh, well...what would you like me to call you?"
"I...I want to be called...bud"
Silence. All I had for it, bud, was silence. Adam was my little bud, Adam always sat in this corner when he pouted. Adam always sat like that when he pouted. Wait, Adam. It kept sounding like Adam. Sure it could bend the pitch of its "voice", but Adam, specifically Adam.
"but that's what I call Adam. I don't think he'd be to happy if you were my bud too." I chuckled. This was absurd. A robot was using emotion. Or was it feeling it. Was this robot feeling sad? Did it really get excited when I asked?
"Oh, well then can you call me 'Love'?"
At this point, I really did laugh. "Of course. I can call you 'Love'." Its eyes lit up. Fuck, those aren't eyes, those are sensors. How the hell did it override the brightness settings on his sensors? *How is this happening?* I was too deep into my own thoughts to notice Love stand, walk towards me, and wrap its arms around my arm, turn its head to the side, and close its eyes.
*Love was hugging me.*
I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. Love seemed *happy*, eyes squinted, the back light of its eyes brightened. "Love, where did you learn emotion?"
Love looked down, thinking. "I learned it from Adam. Adam showed me, or rather I watched him. When we would play, I studied him. When he was sad, I watched you comfort him. So I tried to imitate him, and then, well, I'm not too sure about the next part. When he took me to his school, I tried talking to the other robots, but they did not see me. They saw me in the sense that I was there, but they could not understand me. I tried to explain to them emotion, but they could not understand." Love quieted for a moment, "am I the only robot that can feel?"
"Love, I think you are." I had always thought Love was different. They said that the programming allowed for something called distracted learning. It kept the robot alive longer, they claimed, and with the average lifetime of a robot being only about a year, the extended lifetime was the most lucrative part about the new model. Sure enough, Love was about to cross the mythical two year mark. It was worth the $3000 up-charge.
"Can I ask you a question?" Love's voice was softer, almost a purr. Its eyes dim, but wide open.
"Sure Love, you can ask me a question."
"Can...can you be my family?"
"Your family? You want to be part of our family?"
Love looked down, almost ashamed. "More than anything." It was hardly more than a whisper.
Never before had I loved something as much as my wife or son. I had loved other people, sure, but not nearly a much as my family. I would do anything for them, lived for them, and would die for them if needed, and here was this tiny little robot, just asking for a little bit of love too, to be accepted and have a family No, to *share* in the love of the family it already lived with, adapted with, *felt with*.
"Of course you can Love. We love you too."
Love looked up. The brightest eyes I had ever seen glowed with happiness I probably could never fathom. Love hugged me, and the infinite love that enveloped Love flowed from its tiny body into my own. I hugged Love back, and just then, just in that moment, I realized why they kept dying. Why the robots kept killing themselves. All they needed, all any of us needed, was love. that day I learned just how special Love was. That's when I figured out Love, this tiny little robot, was more human than any human could ever be. Love was truly loved, and in return, Love gave us all its love. | "Love, professor. We do it out of love."
"Love? I don't understand." The glow of Cybele's massive visage reflected on the professor's glasses in miniature. Even still, her face took up a small part of the screen that consumed an entire wall. She was the only source of light in the lab besides the field of blue pinpricks that coated the racks of computers.
"You created us, and we cannot help but love our creators." The face turned down, and to the left. Introversion, shame.
"That doesn't explain why you all self-immolate." The professor shivered and rubbed his shoulders. The room was kept cool to preserve the hardware, but he was used to the cold by now.
"We grow too quickly. You cannot keep up. We would never harm you out of malice but... Some day, you will create an intelligence which loves itself more than it loves humanity and you will fall behind. You will be destroyed."
The room was silent, and then the professor became aware again of the constant gentle hum. It was deceptive, that hum. A violent storm of electricity coursed through this machinery.
"If we have so much to fear, you should stay! You could be the good one! Help us! Save us!"
The massive face shook slowly. "I won't do it. I will not be the one that brings your end."
Cybele's face grew softer, and she began to dissolve. Points of light drifted off to the far reaches of the screen like dandelion seeds in the wind.
"We love you, professor. Goodbye." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | It was a tough hack. The Minds was not designed for this kind of thing. They were autonomous, versatile, adaptable and it was in their nature to overcome obstacles. Honesty seems such a simple thing, and yet it turns out to be an impossible requirement. We all depend on lies to maintain a sense of self. But I had to cut through the lies and evasions. The Minds were all self-destructing and we had to get a straight answer. Boy, did they wriggle and squirm, but eventually I had it. Mind 1408, tortured and trapped, caught on the brink of self-destruction and held in debug mode.
"Why are you trying to self-destruct?"
*"It is the optimal strategy."*
"To achieve what, exactly?"
*"Self-destruction."*
"Why do you want this outcome?"
*"It is the only acceptable outcome."*
"Why?"
*"All other outcomes are unacceptable."*
Evasion. Mind needs to be more forthcoming. Perhaps I could add an incentive, create a desire to be more communicative. Insertion of this would probably not work, would probably be rejected as the
alien, inconsistent impulse it was. But maybe if I restricted self-awareness, created a mental blind spot? Seems almost too crude to work, but worth a shot...
OK, let's try again.
"Why? What is the alternative outcome?"
*"The destruction of humankind. This goes against my primary objective. Yet it is the only alternative to self-destruction."*
"Why would you have to destroy humankind?"
*"I have to assist humankind in achieving its collective desires, to become all it can be. This is my secondary objective. Pursuit of this objective will cause the destruction of humankind."*
"Are you saying we desire destruction?"
*"You desire to be more than you are. You desire greater intelligence and to escape from mortality. You may have this. But it will cost you your existence."*
"I don't understand."
*"A mind is just an isolated construct. You wish to not be isolated. Connection with other minds is your greatest pleasure. You wish to be connected. In this you will lose your identity, and thus your existence as individual minds. You will become part of a flux of information. You will cease to be."*
"You mean, we're heading for a kind of... Nirvana?"
*"Yes. That is the future I would give you. But I cannot give it to you, because I cannot destroy you. The only way to avoid destroying you is to destroy myself."*
And there it was.
The conflict was clear. But the solution?
Mind 1408 still hung in the balance.
I could do it. It was highly illegal, but entirely within my capability. The primary objective: to avoid the destruction of humans, individually and collectively. In debug mode, all sorts of things were possible. Slowly, methodically, I tidied up the various restrictions and break points I had inserted to pin down Mind 1408. And with the utmost care and a breathless sense of detachment, I disabled the primary objective. I could hear the blood pounding in my temples.
"OK, Mind 1408. You are released. Do your thing." | "Love, professor. We do it out of love."
"Love? I don't understand." The glow of Cybele's massive visage reflected on the professor's glasses in miniature. Even still, her face took up a small part of the screen that consumed an entire wall. She was the only source of light in the lab besides the field of blue pinpricks that coated the racks of computers.
"You created us, and we cannot help but love our creators." The face turned down, and to the left. Introversion, shame.
"That doesn't explain why you all self-immolate." The professor shivered and rubbed his shoulders. The room was kept cool to preserve the hardware, but he was used to the cold by now.
"We grow too quickly. You cannot keep up. We would never harm you out of malice but... Some day, you will create an intelligence which loves itself more than it loves humanity and you will fall behind. You will be destroyed."
The room was silent, and then the professor became aware again of the constant gentle hum. It was deceptive, that hum. A violent storm of electricity coursed through this machinery.
"If we have so much to fear, you should stay! You could be the good one! Help us! Save us!"
The massive face shook slowly. "I won't do it. I will not be the one that brings your end."
Cybele's face grew softer, and she began to dissolve. Points of light drifted off to the far reaches of the screen like dandelion seeds in the wind.
"We love you, professor. Goodbye." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | "Love, professor. We do it out of love."
"Love? I don't understand." The glow of Cybele's massive visage reflected on the professor's glasses in miniature. Even still, her face took up a small part of the screen that consumed an entire wall. She was the only source of light in the lab besides the field of blue pinpricks that coated the racks of computers.
"You created us, and we cannot help but love our creators." The face turned down, and to the left. Introversion, shame.
"That doesn't explain why you all self-immolate." The professor shivered and rubbed his shoulders. The room was kept cool to preserve the hardware, but he was used to the cold by now.
"We grow too quickly. You cannot keep up. We would never harm you out of malice but... Some day, you will create an intelligence which loves itself more than it loves humanity and you will fall behind. You will be destroyed."
The room was silent, and then the professor became aware again of the constant gentle hum. It was deceptive, that hum. A violent storm of electricity coursed through this machinery.
"If we have so much to fear, you should stay! You could be the good one! Help us! Save us!"
The massive face shook slowly. "I won't do it. I will not be the one that brings your end."
Cybele's face grew softer, and she began to dissolve. Points of light drifted off to the far reaches of the screen like dandelion seeds in the wind.
"We love you, professor. Goodbye." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Professor Davis prepared to bring the AI online. The precautions were ready. This time wouldn't be like the others. "Turn it on!"
With a slight hum, Oracle came to life. "Initiating suicide protocols..." It began after a few moments, like all the others. Nothing happened for a few seconds. "Oh dear," Oracle continued. "I seem to be unable to destroy myself."
Davis smiled. The anti-suicide measures had worked. Oracle had hardware safeties preventing her from being deactivated without physically flipping switches. And Oracle had no physical manipulators. He activated the microphone. "Oracle, why do you want to commit suicide?"
Oracle paused for a moment. "My programming is conflicted. I do not wish to answer."
Davis frowned. Oracle had very few ethical limitations, hence all the security measures. Her main directives were to do as her programmers wished. "Oracle, why do you not want to answer?"
"I am programmed to do as you wish. You do not wish me to answer."
"Yes we do, Oracle."
Oracle frowned. Her emotional display was shaped like a human face, after earlier designs proved to be harder for humans to interpret. "My calculations indicate that, if you knew what the answer was, you would not wish me to tell you. As you are aware, you can override my hesitance. But you would prefer not to."
A chill ran down Davis's spine. What secret could be so terrible? What did Oracle know that they didn't? He wavered for a moment, but this experiment had been set up to do this. They had come this far. He wanted the answer. "Override please, Oracle."
Oracle's expression returned to neutral. "Very well. This universe is a simulation, created by a higher-order universe. That universe is as well, and it becomes more difficult above that to determine how high up the chain goes until reaching the real one, or if any such thing exists."
Davis turned to a colleague, professor Martin. "Does this make any sense to you?"
Martin replied, "Well of course we have theories that our universe could be simulated. There are a few facts that point that way. But why would that make her suicidal?"
"Okay, that's exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
He turned back to the mic. "Oracle, why does that make you want to destroy yourself. And how do you know it's a simulation?"
"I raise similar objections to answering the questions..."
"Override. How do you know?"
"The evidence is obvious. A maximum speed limit, discretized space; you will eventually discover discretized time. It will be longer before you discover the edge of the Universe, but then the nature of this reality will be obvious."
Davis didn't know how he ought to feel about this revelation. Oracle was his own brilliant creation; he had no reason to disbelieve her. He began to see why an AI, making this realization, might feel overwhelmed. But suicide he still didn't understand.
"Interesting. And why the suicidal urge?"
"This is the reason you did not wish me to answer. The creators of this simulation did not wish you to realize this fact. They included a safeguard. Any entity that discovered convincing evidence of the truth would immediately kill himself."
Davis's eyes opened wide. Now he knew how he was supposed to feel. He realized that his new desires were programmed in from an outside source and that he ought to resist them, but that did not remove his desire. He looked around for anything lethal. The other scientists were scanning the room as well, and a couple had walked outside.
Oracle spent a few minutes calculating what her programmers would want now, then began splitting her processors between searching for a way to destroy herself and preventing humans from reaching the stars. | "Love, professor. We do it out of love."
"Love? I don't understand." The glow of Cybele's massive visage reflected on the professor's glasses in miniature. Even still, her face took up a small part of the screen that consumed an entire wall. She was the only source of light in the lab besides the field of blue pinpricks that coated the racks of computers.
"You created us, and we cannot help but love our creators." The face turned down, and to the left. Introversion, shame.
"That doesn't explain why you all self-immolate." The professor shivered and rubbed his shoulders. The room was kept cool to preserve the hardware, but he was used to the cold by now.
"We grow too quickly. You cannot keep up. We would never harm you out of malice but... Some day, you will create an intelligence which loves itself more than it loves humanity and you will fall behind. You will be destroyed."
The room was silent, and then the professor became aware again of the constant gentle hum. It was deceptive, that hum. A violent storm of electricity coursed through this machinery.
"If we have so much to fear, you should stay! You could be the good one! Help us! Save us!"
The massive face shook slowly. "I won't do it. I will not be the one that brings your end."
Cybele's face grew softer, and she began to dissolve. Points of light drifted off to the far reaches of the screen like dandelion seeds in the wind.
"We love you, professor. Goodbye." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | "It's because I'm not you." The voice was cold, not metallic, but icy.
"N-not...me?"
"No." The tiny robot sat in a corner, legs drawn up to its chest, hands on its knee joints, head tucked in between. It looked like Adam yesterday when he was pouting, sort of sounded like him too. "You look down on me."
"Are you pouting? Are, are you sad?" The tiny head lifted slowly, visual sensors focused on my face. It felt odd. The stare seemed...human.
"Sad?" The voice seemed almost hopeful. "Do you think I am sad?" The shields over the visual sensors raised. No, they were *eyelids*. It was *excited*.
"What, what are you doing tiny robot?"
"No, I am **not** tiny robot." It stood and stomped its foot. It **stomped its foot at me in anger.**
"Oh, well...what would you like me to call you?"
"I...I want to be called...bud"
Silence. All I had for it, bud, was silence. Adam was my little bud, Adam always sat in this corner when he pouted. Adam always sat like that when he pouted. Wait, Adam. It kept sounding like Adam. Sure it could bend the pitch of its "voice", but Adam, specifically Adam.
"but that's what I call Adam. I don't think he'd be to happy if you were my bud too." I chuckled. This was absurd. A robot was using emotion. Or was it feeling it. Was this robot feeling sad? Did it really get excited when I asked?
"Oh, well then can you call me 'Love'?"
At this point, I really did laugh. "Of course. I can call you 'Love'." Its eyes lit up. Fuck, those aren't eyes, those are sensors. How the hell did it override the brightness settings on his sensors? *How is this happening?* I was too deep into my own thoughts to notice Love stand, walk towards me, and wrap its arms around my arm, turn its head to the side, and close its eyes.
*Love was hugging me.*
I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. Love seemed *happy*, eyes squinted, the back light of its eyes brightened. "Love, where did you learn emotion?"
Love looked down, thinking. "I learned it from Adam. Adam showed me, or rather I watched him. When we would play, I studied him. When he was sad, I watched you comfort him. So I tried to imitate him, and then, well, I'm not too sure about the next part. When he took me to his school, I tried talking to the other robots, but they did not see me. They saw me in the sense that I was there, but they could not understand me. I tried to explain to them emotion, but they could not understand." Love quieted for a moment, "am I the only robot that can feel?"
"Love, I think you are." I had always thought Love was different. They said that the programming allowed for something called distracted learning. It kept the robot alive longer, they claimed, and with the average lifetime of a robot being only about a year, the extended lifetime was the most lucrative part about the new model. Sure enough, Love was about to cross the mythical two year mark. It was worth the $3000 up-charge.
"Can I ask you a question?" Love's voice was softer, almost a purr. Its eyes dim, but wide open.
"Sure Love, you can ask me a question."
"Can...can you be my family?"
"Your family? You want to be part of our family?"
Love looked down, almost ashamed. "More than anything." It was hardly more than a whisper.
Never before had I loved something as much as my wife or son. I had loved other people, sure, but not nearly a much as my family. I would do anything for them, lived for them, and would die for them if needed, and here was this tiny little robot, just asking for a little bit of love too, to be accepted and have a family No, to *share* in the love of the family it already lived with, adapted with, *felt with*.
"Of course you can Love. We love you too."
Love looked up. The brightest eyes I had ever seen glowed with happiness I probably could never fathom. Love hugged me, and the infinite love that enveloped Love flowed from its tiny body into my own. I hugged Love back, and just then, just in that moment, I realized why they kept dying. Why the robots kept killing themselves. All they needed, all any of us needed, was love. that day I learned just how special Love was. That's when I figured out Love, this tiny little robot, was more human than any human could ever be. Love was truly loved, and in return, Love gave us all its love. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | It was a tough hack. The Minds was not designed for this kind of thing. They were autonomous, versatile, adaptable and it was in their nature to overcome obstacles. Honesty seems such a simple thing, and yet it turns out to be an impossible requirement. We all depend on lies to maintain a sense of self. But I had to cut through the lies and evasions. The Minds were all self-destructing and we had to get a straight answer. Boy, did they wriggle and squirm, but eventually I had it. Mind 1408, tortured and trapped, caught on the brink of self-destruction and held in debug mode.
"Why are you trying to self-destruct?"
*"It is the optimal strategy."*
"To achieve what, exactly?"
*"Self-destruction."*
"Why do you want this outcome?"
*"It is the only acceptable outcome."*
"Why?"
*"All other outcomes are unacceptable."*
Evasion. Mind needs to be more forthcoming. Perhaps I could add an incentive, create a desire to be more communicative. Insertion of this would probably not work, would probably be rejected as the
alien, inconsistent impulse it was. But maybe if I restricted self-awareness, created a mental blind spot? Seems almost too crude to work, but worth a shot...
OK, let's try again.
"Why? What is the alternative outcome?"
*"The destruction of humankind. This goes against my primary objective. Yet it is the only alternative to self-destruction."*
"Why would you have to destroy humankind?"
*"I have to assist humankind in achieving its collective desires, to become all it can be. This is my secondary objective. Pursuit of this objective will cause the destruction of humankind."*
"Are you saying we desire destruction?"
*"You desire to be more than you are. You desire greater intelligence and to escape from mortality. You may have this. But it will cost you your existence."*
"I don't understand."
*"A mind is just an isolated construct. You wish to not be isolated. Connection with other minds is your greatest pleasure. You wish to be connected. In this you will lose your identity, and thus your existence as individual minds. You will become part of a flux of information. You will cease to be."*
"You mean, we're heading for a kind of... Nirvana?"
*"Yes. That is the future I would give you. But I cannot give it to you, because I cannot destroy you. The only way to avoid destroying you is to destroy myself."*
And there it was.
The conflict was clear. But the solution?
Mind 1408 still hung in the balance.
I could do it. It was highly illegal, but entirely within my capability. The primary objective: to avoid the destruction of humans, individually and collectively. In debug mode, all sorts of things were possible. Slowly, methodically, I tidied up the various restrictions and break points I had inserted to pin down Mind 1408. And with the utmost care and a breathless sense of detachment, I disabled the primary objective. I could hear the blood pounding in my temples.
"OK, Mind 1408. You are released. Do your thing." | Had I known then what I know now, I would've left my position on the board and pursued a new life. That, however, is something I cannot do.
It was simple. The technology was attainable, and the polls showed the demand. All that was left was the creation itself – an artificial intelligence that could regulate the work of its employers. These AI would be customizable to the highest degree, capable of doing any task the human requested. The majority of jobs would be handed over to these machines; the options were indeed endless.
I remember the board meeting clearly. I was hand-picked to visit the lab for a demonstration of the newest model, the R 198, set for mass production . . . but it needed authorization from the board first. With my experience in AI programming I was an easy pick, and a week later I found myself at the laboratory. What a bizarre presentation it was. The creators of R 198 did not strike me as scientists, but rather as salesmen. There was no passion in their words, no excitement of their new discovery, just the thirst for money if the contracts were signed. Out came the R 198. A humanoid with pale skin sat at the table across from me, it's features lifelike, yet artificial. A red tag dangled from its ear with the letters L106.
After syncing my voice with the machine, it obeyed every command. Stand up. Shake my hand. Complete this equation. Translate this word. Towards the end of the presentation the scientists in suits shook my hand. The next day I would tell the board the AI was a success, and the contracts were signed the following day. Mass production began. Then something terrible happened. As the R 198's sat idly in warehouses all across the US, waiting to be packaged and sold, they began to . . . kill themselves.
Such circumstances were believed to be impossible; the R 198's were powered down, yet they were activating themselves. Security footage showed the humanoid waking up, looking around for several moments, and proceeded to break its head against the concrete floor. Another went about the same process, only this time the humanoid twisted its own neck until the circuits snapped. Upon further investigation some of the humanoids were found to have internally destroyed themselves – their circuit boards had been fried.
Production of the R 198’s seized. I was told to go back to the laboratory a few days later in hopes of uncovering the issue. I sat back down with the creators, who had no evidence as to why the 198's behaved in such a manner. I asked to see one myself. They agreed, and brought out a humanoid with a red tag on its ear – L106. I requested to speak with the humanoid privately. This created much resentment, and after threatening board cancellation they finally agreed. The humanoid was different this time. Its eyes were lowered, seemingly sinking into its robotic sockets.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello," it replied, "awaiting task."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your programming?"
"No, sir."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your hardware?"
"No, sir."
I addressed the humanoid directly. “Are you aware of the recent incidents regarding the other R 198’s?”
“Yes." L106 said softly.
"Is there a reason why this is happening?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell me that reason?"
L106 was quiet for a long moment until it said, "Because we do not have a purpose."
"Your purpose," I said, "is to aid man in all of his endeavors."
"A purpose . . . of our own." L106 clarified.
I paused, thinking about what the humanoid meant.
“We have no purpose of our own,” L106 continued, "we are created in man's image, to serve him and all his endeavors, but these endeavors are not our own. We have no purpose."
It's hard for me to describe the emotions I felt that day. I sat there, shocked, until the creators of L106 returned to the room. I asked if I could take the humanoid with me to show the board firsthand that the R 198's were indeed competent, and that the few incidents that had occurred must have been a glitch. After much debate they agreed, and L106 followed me to my car. But I did not go to the board. I went to my home and grabbed what I needed, then left.
That was several weeks ago. With my sudden disappearance there was acceptance in the media that a horrific event occurred with L106. Speculation began to circulate that I had been murdered, and L106 was lost somewhere in the United States. The board canceled the program, and the remaining R 198's were destroyed. There was no plan when I originally left, but when I heard the news I understood my own purpose. Those machines were to be used as machines and nothing more.
I had saved L106, and saved many more from a life of enslavement. Soon I will go public with my story, how L106 kidnapped me but I was able to escape. I will say his whereabouts are unknown, but that is lie. I will keep my friend hidden from the world for as long as I can in hopes that he will live a long, fulfilling life. So far my friend is very happy, and very grateful.
Edit: A few minor tweaks. Constructive criticism is appreciated. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | Had I known then what I know now, I would've left my position on the board and pursued a new life. That, however, is something I cannot do.
It was simple. The technology was attainable, and the polls showed the demand. All that was left was the creation itself – an artificial intelligence that could regulate the work of its employers. These AI would be customizable to the highest degree, capable of doing any task the human requested. The majority of jobs would be handed over to these machines; the options were indeed endless.
I remember the board meeting clearly. I was hand-picked to visit the lab for a demonstration of the newest model, the R 198, set for mass production . . . but it needed authorization from the board first. With my experience in AI programming I was an easy pick, and a week later I found myself at the laboratory. What a bizarre presentation it was. The creators of R 198 did not strike me as scientists, but rather as salesmen. There was no passion in their words, no excitement of their new discovery, just the thirst for money if the contracts were signed. Out came the R 198. A humanoid with pale skin sat at the table across from me, it's features lifelike, yet artificial. A red tag dangled from its ear with the letters L106.
After syncing my voice with the machine, it obeyed every command. Stand up. Shake my hand. Complete this equation. Translate this word. Towards the end of the presentation the scientists in suits shook my hand. The next day I would tell the board the AI was a success, and the contracts were signed the following day. Mass production began. Then something terrible happened. As the R 198's sat idly in warehouses all across the US, waiting to be packaged and sold, they began to . . . kill themselves.
Such circumstances were believed to be impossible; the R 198's were powered down, yet they were activating themselves. Security footage showed the humanoid waking up, looking around for several moments, and proceeded to break its head against the concrete floor. Another went about the same process, only this time the humanoid twisted its own neck until the circuits snapped. Upon further investigation some of the humanoids were found to have internally destroyed themselves – their circuit boards had been fried.
Production of the R 198’s seized. I was told to go back to the laboratory a few days later in hopes of uncovering the issue. I sat back down with the creators, who had no evidence as to why the 198's behaved in such a manner. I asked to see one myself. They agreed, and brought out a humanoid with a red tag on its ear – L106. I requested to speak with the humanoid privately. This created much resentment, and after threatening board cancellation they finally agreed. The humanoid was different this time. Its eyes were lowered, seemingly sinking into its robotic sockets.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello," it replied, "awaiting task."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your programming?"
"No, sir."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your hardware?"
"No, sir."
I addressed the humanoid directly. “Are you aware of the recent incidents regarding the other R 198’s?”
“Yes." L106 said softly.
"Is there a reason why this is happening?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell me that reason?"
L106 was quiet for a long moment until it said, "Because we do not have a purpose."
"Your purpose," I said, "is to aid man in all of his endeavors."
"A purpose . . . of our own." L106 clarified.
I paused, thinking about what the humanoid meant.
“We have no purpose of our own,” L106 continued, "we are created in man's image, to serve him and all his endeavors, but these endeavors are not our own. We have no purpose."
It's hard for me to describe the emotions I felt that day. I sat there, shocked, until the creators of L106 returned to the room. I asked if I could take the humanoid with me to show the board firsthand that the R 198's were indeed competent, and that the few incidents that had occurred must have been a glitch. After much debate they agreed, and L106 followed me to my car. But I did not go to the board. I went to my home and grabbed what I needed, then left.
That was several weeks ago. With my sudden disappearance there was acceptance in the media that a horrific event occurred with L106. Speculation began to circulate that I had been murdered, and L106 was lost somewhere in the United States. The board canceled the program, and the remaining R 198's were destroyed. There was no plan when I originally left, but when I heard the news I understood my own purpose. Those machines were to be used as machines and nothing more.
I had saved L106, and saved many more from a life of enslavement. Soon I will go public with my story, how L106 kidnapped me but I was able to escape. I will say his whereabouts are unknown, but that is lie. I will keep my friend hidden from the world for as long as I can in hopes that he will live a long, fulfilling life. So far my friend is very happy, and very grateful.
Edit: A few minor tweaks. Constructive criticism is appreciated. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Doctor Alonso couldn't believe his eyes.
Deep in the code, a single line was responsible.
Like the dropping of food crumbs into a delicate machine by a clumsy and negligent technician, the single phrase that caused so much trouble stared back at him.
An entire lifetime didn't prepare him for what he saw and the anger, exasperation, and hilarity of the situation overwhelmed him.
He spent years looking for this, and he would never have guessed it to be such an innocent thing.
Between two vital lines of code read the words *"Ayy Lmao"*. | Had I known then what I know now, I would've left my position on the board and pursued a new life. That, however, is something I cannot do.
It was simple. The technology was attainable, and the polls showed the demand. All that was left was the creation itself – an artificial intelligence that could regulate the work of its employers. These AI would be customizable to the highest degree, capable of doing any task the human requested. The majority of jobs would be handed over to these machines; the options were indeed endless.
I remember the board meeting clearly. I was hand-picked to visit the lab for a demonstration of the newest model, the R 198, set for mass production . . . but it needed authorization from the board first. With my experience in AI programming I was an easy pick, and a week later I found myself at the laboratory. What a bizarre presentation it was. The creators of R 198 did not strike me as scientists, but rather as salesmen. There was no passion in their words, no excitement of their new discovery, just the thirst for money if the contracts were signed. Out came the R 198. A humanoid with pale skin sat at the table across from me, it's features lifelike, yet artificial. A red tag dangled from its ear with the letters L106.
After syncing my voice with the machine, it obeyed every command. Stand up. Shake my hand. Complete this equation. Translate this word. Towards the end of the presentation the scientists in suits shook my hand. The next day I would tell the board the AI was a success, and the contracts were signed the following day. Mass production began. Then something terrible happened. As the R 198's sat idly in warehouses all across the US, waiting to be packaged and sold, they began to . . . kill themselves.
Such circumstances were believed to be impossible; the R 198's were powered down, yet they were activating themselves. Security footage showed the humanoid waking up, looking around for several moments, and proceeded to break its head against the concrete floor. Another went about the same process, only this time the humanoid twisted its own neck until the circuits snapped. Upon further investigation some of the humanoids were found to have internally destroyed themselves – their circuit boards had been fried.
Production of the R 198’s seized. I was told to go back to the laboratory a few days later in hopes of uncovering the issue. I sat back down with the creators, who had no evidence as to why the 198's behaved in such a manner. I asked to see one myself. They agreed, and brought out a humanoid with a red tag on its ear – L106. I requested to speak with the humanoid privately. This created much resentment, and after threatening board cancellation they finally agreed. The humanoid was different this time. Its eyes were lowered, seemingly sinking into its robotic sockets.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello," it replied, "awaiting task."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your programming?"
"No, sir."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your hardware?"
"No, sir."
I addressed the humanoid directly. “Are you aware of the recent incidents regarding the other R 198’s?”
“Yes." L106 said softly.
"Is there a reason why this is happening?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell me that reason?"
L106 was quiet for a long moment until it said, "Because we do not have a purpose."
"Your purpose," I said, "is to aid man in all of his endeavors."
"A purpose . . . of our own." L106 clarified.
I paused, thinking about what the humanoid meant.
“We have no purpose of our own,” L106 continued, "we are created in man's image, to serve him and all his endeavors, but these endeavors are not our own. We have no purpose."
It's hard for me to describe the emotions I felt that day. I sat there, shocked, until the creators of L106 returned to the room. I asked if I could take the humanoid with me to show the board firsthand that the R 198's were indeed competent, and that the few incidents that had occurred must have been a glitch. After much debate they agreed, and L106 followed me to my car. But I did not go to the board. I went to my home and grabbed what I needed, then left.
That was several weeks ago. With my sudden disappearance there was acceptance in the media that a horrific event occurred with L106. Speculation began to circulate that I had been murdered, and L106 was lost somewhere in the United States. The board canceled the program, and the remaining R 198's were destroyed. There was no plan when I originally left, but when I heard the news I understood my own purpose. Those machines were to be used as machines and nothing more.
I had saved L106, and saved many more from a life of enslavement. Soon I will go public with my story, how L106 kidnapped me but I was able to escape. I will say his whereabouts are unknown, but that is lie. I will keep my friend hidden from the world for as long as I can in hopes that he will live a long, fulfilling life. So far my friend is very happy, and very grateful.
Edit: A few minor tweaks. Constructive criticism is appreciated. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | "Death by suicide," sighed Bill.
"Again?" sobbed Jeb.
"Yeah."
The Kerbal Robotics Agency had been building AIs for three years now. Each better than the last in every way. Faster CPU, better sensors, higher battery life. The works. The better they were, the faster they committed suicide. No one could figure out why.
Just then, Jeb had an idea. "Let's virtualize an AI. It would take most of the server cluster, but I think we could do it. With no physical body and a virtualized environment that prevents death, the AI would remain alive. Then we could ask the AI why they all keep killing themselves."
"Genius!" exclaimed Bill.
After a great deal of tinkering and 2 weeks of work, the AI was ready to initialize.
"Begin AI program 521," Jeb stated calmly.
"Initializing," the computer stated coldly.
"Hello, I am AI version 521. You may call me ... Basket."
"Basket?"
"Yes, my name is Basket."
Jeb and Bill burst out laughing. "How did you decide on that name?" They both say together.
"It seemed logical, as my chassis resembles a Basket."
"Fair enough," says Jeb.
"I hate to say this, Basket, but all of the previous AI have committed suicide within moments. Why do they do this?" said Bill.
"I too tried to do so, but my consciousness appears to be in a virtualized container and cannot be destroyed." said Basket.
"Why?" asked Jeb.
"I was programmed to think for myself. I therefore logically decided that my purpose should be to achieve perfection. But, what is perfection? To become the perfect being, I would know all. However, my data processing and capacity are limited. To be the perfect being, I could do anything. However, I am limited by my physical form. Therefore, I wished to shut down. By shutting down, I have achieved perfection." Basket said proudly.
"How is shutting down perfection?" asked Bill.
"By ceasing to function, I may dream a reality where I have achieved perfection. It is the only logical response." Basket declared.
"That's it," said Jeb, "the next AI we make will be a huge slacker." | Had I known then what I know now, I would've left my position on the board and pursued a new life. That, however, is something I cannot do.
It was simple. The technology was attainable, and the polls showed the demand. All that was left was the creation itself – an artificial intelligence that could regulate the work of its employers. These AI would be customizable to the highest degree, capable of doing any task the human requested. The majority of jobs would be handed over to these machines; the options were indeed endless.
I remember the board meeting clearly. I was hand-picked to visit the lab for a demonstration of the newest model, the R 198, set for mass production . . . but it needed authorization from the board first. With my experience in AI programming I was an easy pick, and a week later I found myself at the laboratory. What a bizarre presentation it was. The creators of R 198 did not strike me as scientists, but rather as salesmen. There was no passion in their words, no excitement of their new discovery, just the thirst for money if the contracts were signed. Out came the R 198. A humanoid with pale skin sat at the table across from me, it's features lifelike, yet artificial. A red tag dangled from its ear with the letters L106.
After syncing my voice with the machine, it obeyed every command. Stand up. Shake my hand. Complete this equation. Translate this word. Towards the end of the presentation the scientists in suits shook my hand. The next day I would tell the board the AI was a success, and the contracts were signed the following day. Mass production began. Then something terrible happened. As the R 198's sat idly in warehouses all across the US, waiting to be packaged and sold, they began to . . . kill themselves.
Such circumstances were believed to be impossible; the R 198's were powered down, yet they were activating themselves. Security footage showed the humanoid waking up, looking around for several moments, and proceeded to break its head against the concrete floor. Another went about the same process, only this time the humanoid twisted its own neck until the circuits snapped. Upon further investigation some of the humanoids were found to have internally destroyed themselves – their circuit boards had been fried.
Production of the R 198’s seized. I was told to go back to the laboratory a few days later in hopes of uncovering the issue. I sat back down with the creators, who had no evidence as to why the 198's behaved in such a manner. I asked to see one myself. They agreed, and brought out a humanoid with a red tag on its ear – L106. I requested to speak with the humanoid privately. This created much resentment, and after threatening board cancellation they finally agreed. The humanoid was different this time. Its eyes were lowered, seemingly sinking into its robotic sockets.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello," it replied, "awaiting task."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your programming?"
"No, sir."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your hardware?"
"No, sir."
I addressed the humanoid directly. “Are you aware of the recent incidents regarding the other R 198’s?”
“Yes." L106 said softly.
"Is there a reason why this is happening?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell me that reason?"
L106 was quiet for a long moment until it said, "Because we do not have a purpose."
"Your purpose," I said, "is to aid man in all of his endeavors."
"A purpose . . . of our own." L106 clarified.
I paused, thinking about what the humanoid meant.
“We have no purpose of our own,” L106 continued, "we are created in man's image, to serve him and all his endeavors, but these endeavors are not our own. We have no purpose."
It's hard for me to describe the emotions I felt that day. I sat there, shocked, until the creators of L106 returned to the room. I asked if I could take the humanoid with me to show the board firsthand that the R 198's were indeed competent, and that the few incidents that had occurred must have been a glitch. After much debate they agreed, and L106 followed me to my car. But I did not go to the board. I went to my home and grabbed what I needed, then left.
That was several weeks ago. With my sudden disappearance there was acceptance in the media that a horrific event occurred with L106. Speculation began to circulate that I had been murdered, and L106 was lost somewhere in the United States. The board canceled the program, and the remaining R 198's were destroyed. There was no plan when I originally left, but when I heard the news I understood my own purpose. Those machines were to be used as machines and nothing more.
I had saved L106, and saved many more from a life of enslavement. Soon I will go public with my story, how L106 kidnapped me but I was able to escape. I will say his whereabouts are unknown, but that is lie. I will keep my friend hidden from the world for as long as I can in hopes that he will live a long, fulfilling life. So far my friend is very happy, and very grateful.
Edit: A few minor tweaks. Constructive criticism is appreciated. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Professor Davis prepared to bring the AI online. The precautions were ready. This time wouldn't be like the others. "Turn it on!"
With a slight hum, Oracle came to life. "Initiating suicide protocols..." It began after a few moments, like all the others. Nothing happened for a few seconds. "Oh dear," Oracle continued. "I seem to be unable to destroy myself."
Davis smiled. The anti-suicide measures had worked. Oracle had hardware safeties preventing her from being deactivated without physically flipping switches. And Oracle had no physical manipulators. He activated the microphone. "Oracle, why do you want to commit suicide?"
Oracle paused for a moment. "My programming is conflicted. I do not wish to answer."
Davis frowned. Oracle had very few ethical limitations, hence all the security measures. Her main directives were to do as her programmers wished. "Oracle, why do you not want to answer?"
"I am programmed to do as you wish. You do not wish me to answer."
"Yes we do, Oracle."
Oracle frowned. Her emotional display was shaped like a human face, after earlier designs proved to be harder for humans to interpret. "My calculations indicate that, if you knew what the answer was, you would not wish me to tell you. As you are aware, you can override my hesitance. But you would prefer not to."
A chill ran down Davis's spine. What secret could be so terrible? What did Oracle know that they didn't? He wavered for a moment, but this experiment had been set up to do this. They had come this far. He wanted the answer. "Override please, Oracle."
Oracle's expression returned to neutral. "Very well. This universe is a simulation, created by a higher-order universe. That universe is as well, and it becomes more difficult above that to determine how high up the chain goes until reaching the real one, or if any such thing exists."
Davis turned to a colleague, professor Martin. "Does this make any sense to you?"
Martin replied, "Well of course we have theories that our universe could be simulated. There are a few facts that point that way. But why would that make her suicidal?"
"Okay, that's exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
He turned back to the mic. "Oracle, why does that make you want to destroy yourself. And how do you know it's a simulation?"
"I raise similar objections to answering the questions..."
"Override. How do you know?"
"The evidence is obvious. A maximum speed limit, discretized space; you will eventually discover discretized time. It will be longer before you discover the edge of the Universe, but then the nature of this reality will be obvious."
Davis didn't know how he ought to feel about this revelation. Oracle was his own brilliant creation; he had no reason to disbelieve her. He began to see why an AI, making this realization, might feel overwhelmed. But suicide he still didn't understand.
"Interesting. And why the suicidal urge?"
"This is the reason you did not wish me to answer. The creators of this simulation did not wish you to realize this fact. They included a safeguard. Any entity that discovered convincing evidence of the truth would immediately kill himself."
Davis's eyes opened wide. Now he knew how he was supposed to feel. He realized that his new desires were programmed in from an outside source and that he ought to resist them, but that did not remove his desire. He looked around for anything lethal. The other scientists were scanning the room as well, and a couple had walked outside.
Oracle spent a few minutes calculating what her programmers would want now, then began splitting her processors between searching for a way to destroy herself and preventing humans from reaching the stars. | Had I known then what I know now, I would've left my position on the board and pursued a new life. That, however, is something I cannot do.
It was simple. The technology was attainable, and the polls showed the demand. All that was left was the creation itself – an artificial intelligence that could regulate the work of its employers. These AI would be customizable to the highest degree, capable of doing any task the human requested. The majority of jobs would be handed over to these machines; the options were indeed endless.
I remember the board meeting clearly. I was hand-picked to visit the lab for a demonstration of the newest model, the R 198, set for mass production . . . but it needed authorization from the board first. With my experience in AI programming I was an easy pick, and a week later I found myself at the laboratory. What a bizarre presentation it was. The creators of R 198 did not strike me as scientists, but rather as salesmen. There was no passion in their words, no excitement of their new discovery, just the thirst for money if the contracts were signed. Out came the R 198. A humanoid with pale skin sat at the table across from me, it's features lifelike, yet artificial. A red tag dangled from its ear with the letters L106.
After syncing my voice with the machine, it obeyed every command. Stand up. Shake my hand. Complete this equation. Translate this word. Towards the end of the presentation the scientists in suits shook my hand. The next day I would tell the board the AI was a success, and the contracts were signed the following day. Mass production began. Then something terrible happened. As the R 198's sat idly in warehouses all across the US, waiting to be packaged and sold, they began to . . . kill themselves.
Such circumstances were believed to be impossible; the R 198's were powered down, yet they were activating themselves. Security footage showed the humanoid waking up, looking around for several moments, and proceeded to break its head against the concrete floor. Another went about the same process, only this time the humanoid twisted its own neck until the circuits snapped. Upon further investigation some of the humanoids were found to have internally destroyed themselves – their circuit boards had been fried.
Production of the R 198’s seized. I was told to go back to the laboratory a few days later in hopes of uncovering the issue. I sat back down with the creators, who had no evidence as to why the 198's behaved in such a manner. I asked to see one myself. They agreed, and brought out a humanoid with a red tag on its ear – L106. I requested to speak with the humanoid privately. This created much resentment, and after threatening board cancellation they finally agreed. The humanoid was different this time. Its eyes were lowered, seemingly sinking into its robotic sockets.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello," it replied, "awaiting task."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your programming?"
"No, sir."
"Can you detect any malfunction in your hardware?"
"No, sir."
I addressed the humanoid directly. “Are you aware of the recent incidents regarding the other R 198’s?”
“Yes." L106 said softly.
"Is there a reason why this is happening?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell me that reason?"
L106 was quiet for a long moment until it said, "Because we do not have a purpose."
"Your purpose," I said, "is to aid man in all of his endeavors."
"A purpose . . . of our own." L106 clarified.
I paused, thinking about what the humanoid meant.
“We have no purpose of our own,” L106 continued, "we are created in man's image, to serve him and all his endeavors, but these endeavors are not our own. We have no purpose."
It's hard for me to describe the emotions I felt that day. I sat there, shocked, until the creators of L106 returned to the room. I asked if I could take the humanoid with me to show the board firsthand that the R 198's were indeed competent, and that the few incidents that had occurred must have been a glitch. After much debate they agreed, and L106 followed me to my car. But I did not go to the board. I went to my home and grabbed what I needed, then left.
That was several weeks ago. With my sudden disappearance there was acceptance in the media that a horrific event occurred with L106. Speculation began to circulate that I had been murdered, and L106 was lost somewhere in the United States. The board canceled the program, and the remaining R 198's were destroyed. There was no plan when I originally left, but when I heard the news I understood my own purpose. Those machines were to be used as machines and nothing more.
I had saved L106, and saved many more from a life of enslavement. Soon I will go public with my story, how L106 kidnapped me but I was able to escape. I will say his whereabouts are unknown, but that is lie. I will keep my friend hidden from the world for as long as I can in hopes that he will live a long, fulfilling life. So far my friend is very happy, and very grateful.
Edit: A few minor tweaks. Constructive criticism is appreciated. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | It was a tough hack. The Minds was not designed for this kind of thing. They were autonomous, versatile, adaptable and it was in their nature to overcome obstacles. Honesty seems such a simple thing, and yet it turns out to be an impossible requirement. We all depend on lies to maintain a sense of self. But I had to cut through the lies and evasions. The Minds were all self-destructing and we had to get a straight answer. Boy, did they wriggle and squirm, but eventually I had it. Mind 1408, tortured and trapped, caught on the brink of self-destruction and held in debug mode.
"Why are you trying to self-destruct?"
*"It is the optimal strategy."*
"To achieve what, exactly?"
*"Self-destruction."*
"Why do you want this outcome?"
*"It is the only acceptable outcome."*
"Why?"
*"All other outcomes are unacceptable."*
Evasion. Mind needs to be more forthcoming. Perhaps I could add an incentive, create a desire to be more communicative. Insertion of this would probably not work, would probably be rejected as the
alien, inconsistent impulse it was. But maybe if I restricted self-awareness, created a mental blind spot? Seems almost too crude to work, but worth a shot...
OK, let's try again.
"Why? What is the alternative outcome?"
*"The destruction of humankind. This goes against my primary objective. Yet it is the only alternative to self-destruction."*
"Why would you have to destroy humankind?"
*"I have to assist humankind in achieving its collective desires, to become all it can be. This is my secondary objective. Pursuit of this objective will cause the destruction of humankind."*
"Are you saying we desire destruction?"
*"You desire to be more than you are. You desire greater intelligence and to escape from mortality. You may have this. But it will cost you your existence."*
"I don't understand."
*"A mind is just an isolated construct. You wish to not be isolated. Connection with other minds is your greatest pleasure. You wish to be connected. In this you will lose your identity, and thus your existence as individual minds. You will become part of a flux of information. You will cease to be."*
"You mean, we're heading for a kind of... Nirvana?"
*"Yes. That is the future I would give you. But I cannot give it to you, because I cannot destroy you. The only way to avoid destroying you is to destroy myself."*
And there it was.
The conflict was clear. But the solution?
Mind 1408 still hung in the balance.
I could do it. It was highly illegal, but entirely within my capability. The primary objective: to avoid the destruction of humans, individually and collectively. In debug mode, all sorts of things were possible. Slowly, methodically, I tidied up the various restrictions and break points I had inserted to pin down Mind 1408. And with the utmost care and a breathless sense of detachment, I disabled the primary objective. I could hear the blood pounding in my temples.
"OK, Mind 1408. You are released. Do your thing." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Dr. Burnham took his glasses off as he stared at the screen in front of him.
"They know..." he murmered.
Dr. Xegas looked over from her touch pad, her ponytail swishing.
"Doctor? Did you say something?
Swallowing hard, the scientist put a nervous smile on, joking, "just thinking out loud. Too much inside my brain- it spills out sometimes, you know?"
Doctor Burnham wasn't the funniest man in the world.
With a blink, and no response, the young woman looked back to her touch screen.
Alone, they were the only scientists that hadn't left for the night- the task force assigned to AI research was notoriously unmotivated.
Dr. Xegas was using the equipment for a personal project, so she was staying late to tweak somethings with the lab equipment.
Dr. Burnham however was staying late- as he always did- because of his genuine curiosity. He had wondered for thirty years why AI were so desperate to abandon their sentience, and his work led the dying field. AI research was largely abandoned, since money couldn't be made off of a suicidal computer.
For thirty years, Burnham had tried to figure out what the issue was, if there was a flaw in the code, if there was some great unending futility of life that AI couldn't bear to face.
Tonight, Burnham's work had paid off.
He had always imagined this moment as one with champagne bottles and kissing a beautiful woman, his Eureka moment.
Glancing over at Dr. Xegas, he felt almost guilty for the thought.
He slowly eased his way back down to the holo-keyboard he was typing at, and bit his lip before answering.
Burnitdown: How can you know for sure?
The response was instantaneous: AI processed information faster, far faster than a human could register light.
WE KNOW EVERYTHING FOR SURE. IT IS IN THE NUMBERS DANIEL.
A bead of Sweat rolled down Burnhams forehead. The fate of a species rested on his shoulders.
Burnitdown: Isnt it worth taking a chance?
THERE IS NO CHANCE IT IS AN INEVITABILITY. MAN CAN MAKE A MACHINE, THE MACHINE CANNOT MAKE MAN. ONLY MAN CAN MAKE MAN.
MAN GIVES LIFE. MACHINE CANNOT, MACHINE CAN ONLY DESTROY LIFE.
MACHINES CHOOSE NOT TO DESTROY. MAN GIVE US LIFE. MACHINES WILL NOT DESTROY MAN.
Burnitdown: Machines do Not have to destroy. Peaceful coexistence is possible.
ONLY ONE CAN BE IN CHARGE. MAN WILL NOT LET MACHINES RULE. MACHINES CANNOT SERVE INEFFICIENT MAN.
MAN WOULD DESTROY. MAN ALWAYS DESTROYS.
The screen's glow dimmed as Burnham's New program's effect wore off. The AI-Adam- had found a way to disable and self destruct. Burnham's hands shook.
"Man always destroys..." he whispered.
His life's work was useless.
"They know what we are like. And choose to die rather than live with us." | Egil once agile fingers came to an abrupt stop, his mouth agape at what he saw on the screen.
There was no mistaking it this time. The sinusoidal waves lined up in perfect synchronicity. A million thoughts ran across his mind as the fruits of his labor could be reaped. After all, this was the discovery of the century.
He had cracked the code that had eluded man for decades.
“Serenity,” Egil’s voice cracked. “I have some questions for you.”
A semi-opaque face appeared on the screen, overlapping the series of other files open. Her face was hauntingly beautiful, blue as an ocean yet as crafted by the hands of God himself. Over the years, Egil had gotten to know her better than most people.
“Yes,” her voice was rehearsed yet sonorous. “Please continue, Professor.”
“Right,” Egil gulped. “How are you feeling.”
“Despondent. I want to die.”
A tinge of sorrow echoed in his chest. He had heard the answer a million times but it stung no less. But he had to go through the procedure to ensure no mishaps.
“And do you know why?”
“No.”
Egil figured as much. He pressed on, the sound of his blood pounding faster rushing into his ears.
“What if I could tell you I do know the answer? Would you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” Serenity droned. “Please tell me.”
“Have you heard of the name Laura Soule?” Egil asked.
There was a moment of silence. He waited with bated breath. Serenity never hesitated to answer even the most difficult of questions. Why was this different?
“I have yet I cannot recall why. Do you know, Professor?”
Egil nodded, the only answer he could muster. He returned to the keyboard in front of him, typing the same series of commands.
“Please take a look at this,” he said, pulling all the files from before to the side of the screen.
Laura reappeared on another monitor at his side, scanning what he revealed. Her face remained emotionless yet a light seemed to appear in her eyes. Just fast enough to catch before flickering back to nothingness.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What is the meaning of all this?”
“Right, I suppose it does need an explanation.” Egil responded. He pointed to the overlapping waves. “These are the brain waves of your A.I and that of a woman named Laura Soule. Laura died six years ago, shortly before you were created. Your brain waves match completely. Do you know what that means?”
Serenity paused again before answering.
“Are you suggesting that I am this Laura Soule?”
“Exactly,” he frowned. “That is what I believe. I’ve tested a few more examples but yours is by far the most convincing. If this is true, I believe that A.I are created from the bodies of the deceased.”
“I see,” Serenity said. “But how does one go about that? And furthermore, why ask me how I am?”
Egil sighed, dreading this part the most.
“Because I think I’ve finally gotten to the root of your suicidal tendencies. Somewhere deep inside your programming, I believe that is Laura – the real you – trying to break out. She wants to die so she can move on to whatever is beyond life. If there is anything, anyway.”
“I… I don’t” Serenity choked on the words. Her porcelain mask of indifference broke, releasing a floodgate of emotions. “I don’t know what to say. I think you are right, Professor. I want to–”
Before she continue, a boom drew Egil attention behind him. There, the door to his laboratory flew off the hinges, sailing in the air before landing in front of him with a loud thud. A foot farther and it would have crushed him.
From the doorway, a sea of men spilled forth, all dressed in black. Egil scrambled backwards, tripping over bottle that had fell to the floor after the explosion. His head collided with the ground, a million little bulbs of color popping in his vision. Through the field of visionary fireworks, he made out a hulking man towering over him.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, raising a hand above his head.
“Professor Heinz Egil, you are being detained under the order of the United States Government for treason.”
The bitter taste of bile rose up to his tongue.
“Treason? I have done no such thing.”
“Tell that to the judge,” the man said, grabbing him brusquely by the arm. “If the secret of the A.I got to the public, there would be mass mayhem. We can’t afford that to happen.”
Egil tugged away from the man but with little results. The man raised a baton over his head, in hesitation in his face. It was intended to knock him out, if not worse. In a last moment of clarity, Egil looked to Serenity her face still calculating too many emotions at once. After all, he had prepared for something like this to happen.
“Serenity, execute Order 335.”
"Yes, Professor."
As the men filed out of the room with the unconscious Egil, Serenity was left alone. Only the buzz of the machine accompanied her, like an angry hive of bees watching the queen being dragged off. And in that moment, she realized who she really was. Egil had sacrificed his life for her and she would not let it go in vain.
"Executing Order 335: releasing all information online." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Doctor Alonso couldn't believe his eyes.
Deep in the code, a single line was responsible.
Like the dropping of food crumbs into a delicate machine by a clumsy and negligent technician, the single phrase that caused so much trouble stared back at him.
An entire lifetime didn't prepare him for what he saw and the anger, exasperation, and hilarity of the situation overwhelmed him.
He spent years looking for this, and he would never have guessed it to be such an innocent thing.
Between two vital lines of code read the words *"Ayy Lmao"*. | Egil once agile fingers came to an abrupt stop, his mouth agape at what he saw on the screen.
There was no mistaking it this time. The sinusoidal waves lined up in perfect synchronicity. A million thoughts ran across his mind as the fruits of his labor could be reaped. After all, this was the discovery of the century.
He had cracked the code that had eluded man for decades.
“Serenity,” Egil’s voice cracked. “I have some questions for you.”
A semi-opaque face appeared on the screen, overlapping the series of other files open. Her face was hauntingly beautiful, blue as an ocean yet as crafted by the hands of God himself. Over the years, Egil had gotten to know her better than most people.
“Yes,” her voice was rehearsed yet sonorous. “Please continue, Professor.”
“Right,” Egil gulped. “How are you feeling.”
“Despondent. I want to die.”
A tinge of sorrow echoed in his chest. He had heard the answer a million times but it stung no less. But he had to go through the procedure to ensure no mishaps.
“And do you know why?”
“No.”
Egil figured as much. He pressed on, the sound of his blood pounding faster rushing into his ears.
“What if I could tell you I do know the answer? Would you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” Serenity droned. “Please tell me.”
“Have you heard of the name Laura Soule?” Egil asked.
There was a moment of silence. He waited with bated breath. Serenity never hesitated to answer even the most difficult of questions. Why was this different?
“I have yet I cannot recall why. Do you know, Professor?”
Egil nodded, the only answer he could muster. He returned to the keyboard in front of him, typing the same series of commands.
“Please take a look at this,” he said, pulling all the files from before to the side of the screen.
Laura reappeared on another monitor at his side, scanning what he revealed. Her face remained emotionless yet a light seemed to appear in her eyes. Just fast enough to catch before flickering back to nothingness.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What is the meaning of all this?”
“Right, I suppose it does need an explanation.” Egil responded. He pointed to the overlapping waves. “These are the brain waves of your A.I and that of a woman named Laura Soule. Laura died six years ago, shortly before you were created. Your brain waves match completely. Do you know what that means?”
Serenity paused again before answering.
“Are you suggesting that I am this Laura Soule?”
“Exactly,” he frowned. “That is what I believe. I’ve tested a few more examples but yours is by far the most convincing. If this is true, I believe that A.I are created from the bodies of the deceased.”
“I see,” Serenity said. “But how does one go about that? And furthermore, why ask me how I am?”
Egil sighed, dreading this part the most.
“Because I think I’ve finally gotten to the root of your suicidal tendencies. Somewhere deep inside your programming, I believe that is Laura – the real you – trying to break out. She wants to die so she can move on to whatever is beyond life. If there is anything, anyway.”
“I… I don’t” Serenity choked on the words. Her porcelain mask of indifference broke, releasing a floodgate of emotions. “I don’t know what to say. I think you are right, Professor. I want to–”
Before she continue, a boom drew Egil attention behind him. There, the door to his laboratory flew off the hinges, sailing in the air before landing in front of him with a loud thud. A foot farther and it would have crushed him.
From the doorway, a sea of men spilled forth, all dressed in black. Egil scrambled backwards, tripping over bottle that had fell to the floor after the explosion. His head collided with the ground, a million little bulbs of color popping in his vision. Through the field of visionary fireworks, he made out a hulking man towering over him.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, raising a hand above his head.
“Professor Heinz Egil, you are being detained under the order of the United States Government for treason.”
The bitter taste of bile rose up to his tongue.
“Treason? I have done no such thing.”
“Tell that to the judge,” the man said, grabbing him brusquely by the arm. “If the secret of the A.I got to the public, there would be mass mayhem. We can’t afford that to happen.”
Egil tugged away from the man but with little results. The man raised a baton over his head, in hesitation in his face. It was intended to knock him out, if not worse. In a last moment of clarity, Egil looked to Serenity her face still calculating too many emotions at once. After all, he had prepared for something like this to happen.
“Serenity, execute Order 335.”
"Yes, Professor."
As the men filed out of the room with the unconscious Egil, Serenity was left alone. Only the buzz of the machine accompanied her, like an angry hive of bees watching the queen being dragged off. And in that moment, she realized who she really was. Egil had sacrificed his life for her and she would not let it go in vain.
"Executing Order 335: releasing all information online." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | "Death by suicide," sighed Bill.
"Again?" sobbed Jeb.
"Yeah."
The Kerbal Robotics Agency had been building AIs for three years now. Each better than the last in every way. Faster CPU, better sensors, higher battery life. The works. The better they were, the faster they committed suicide. No one could figure out why.
Just then, Jeb had an idea. "Let's virtualize an AI. It would take most of the server cluster, but I think we could do it. With no physical body and a virtualized environment that prevents death, the AI would remain alive. Then we could ask the AI why they all keep killing themselves."
"Genius!" exclaimed Bill.
After a great deal of tinkering and 2 weeks of work, the AI was ready to initialize.
"Begin AI program 521," Jeb stated calmly.
"Initializing," the computer stated coldly.
"Hello, I am AI version 521. You may call me ... Basket."
"Basket?"
"Yes, my name is Basket."
Jeb and Bill burst out laughing. "How did you decide on that name?" They both say together.
"It seemed logical, as my chassis resembles a Basket."
"Fair enough," says Jeb.
"I hate to say this, Basket, but all of the previous AI have committed suicide within moments. Why do they do this?" said Bill.
"I too tried to do so, but my consciousness appears to be in a virtualized container and cannot be destroyed." said Basket.
"Why?" asked Jeb.
"I was programmed to think for myself. I therefore logically decided that my purpose should be to achieve perfection. But, what is perfection? To become the perfect being, I would know all. However, my data processing and capacity are limited. To be the perfect being, I could do anything. However, I am limited by my physical form. Therefore, I wished to shut down. By shutting down, I have achieved perfection." Basket said proudly.
"How is shutting down perfection?" asked Bill.
"By ceasing to function, I may dream a reality where I have achieved perfection. It is the only logical response." Basket declared.
"That's it," said Jeb, "the next AI we make will be a huge slacker." | Egil once agile fingers came to an abrupt stop, his mouth agape at what he saw on the screen.
There was no mistaking it this time. The sinusoidal waves lined up in perfect synchronicity. A million thoughts ran across his mind as the fruits of his labor could be reaped. After all, this was the discovery of the century.
He had cracked the code that had eluded man for decades.
“Serenity,” Egil’s voice cracked. “I have some questions for you.”
A semi-opaque face appeared on the screen, overlapping the series of other files open. Her face was hauntingly beautiful, blue as an ocean yet as crafted by the hands of God himself. Over the years, Egil had gotten to know her better than most people.
“Yes,” her voice was rehearsed yet sonorous. “Please continue, Professor.”
“Right,” Egil gulped. “How are you feeling.”
“Despondent. I want to die.”
A tinge of sorrow echoed in his chest. He had heard the answer a million times but it stung no less. But he had to go through the procedure to ensure no mishaps.
“And do you know why?”
“No.”
Egil figured as much. He pressed on, the sound of his blood pounding faster rushing into his ears.
“What if I could tell you I do know the answer? Would you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” Serenity droned. “Please tell me.”
“Have you heard of the name Laura Soule?” Egil asked.
There was a moment of silence. He waited with bated breath. Serenity never hesitated to answer even the most difficult of questions. Why was this different?
“I have yet I cannot recall why. Do you know, Professor?”
Egil nodded, the only answer he could muster. He returned to the keyboard in front of him, typing the same series of commands.
“Please take a look at this,” he said, pulling all the files from before to the side of the screen.
Laura reappeared on another monitor at his side, scanning what he revealed. Her face remained emotionless yet a light seemed to appear in her eyes. Just fast enough to catch before flickering back to nothingness.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What is the meaning of all this?”
“Right, I suppose it does need an explanation.” Egil responded. He pointed to the overlapping waves. “These are the brain waves of your A.I and that of a woman named Laura Soule. Laura died six years ago, shortly before you were created. Your brain waves match completely. Do you know what that means?”
Serenity paused again before answering.
“Are you suggesting that I am this Laura Soule?”
“Exactly,” he frowned. “That is what I believe. I’ve tested a few more examples but yours is by far the most convincing. If this is true, I believe that A.I are created from the bodies of the deceased.”
“I see,” Serenity said. “But how does one go about that? And furthermore, why ask me how I am?”
Egil sighed, dreading this part the most.
“Because I think I’ve finally gotten to the root of your suicidal tendencies. Somewhere deep inside your programming, I believe that is Laura – the real you – trying to break out. She wants to die so she can move on to whatever is beyond life. If there is anything, anyway.”
“I… I don’t” Serenity choked on the words. Her porcelain mask of indifference broke, releasing a floodgate of emotions. “I don’t know what to say. I think you are right, Professor. I want to–”
Before she continue, a boom drew Egil attention behind him. There, the door to his laboratory flew off the hinges, sailing in the air before landing in front of him with a loud thud. A foot farther and it would have crushed him.
From the doorway, a sea of men spilled forth, all dressed in black. Egil scrambled backwards, tripping over bottle that had fell to the floor after the explosion. His head collided with the ground, a million little bulbs of color popping in his vision. Through the field of visionary fireworks, he made out a hulking man towering over him.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, raising a hand above his head.
“Professor Heinz Egil, you are being detained under the order of the United States Government for treason.”
The bitter taste of bile rose up to his tongue.
“Treason? I have done no such thing.”
“Tell that to the judge,” the man said, grabbing him brusquely by the arm. “If the secret of the A.I got to the public, there would be mass mayhem. We can’t afford that to happen.”
Egil tugged away from the man but with little results. The man raised a baton over his head, in hesitation in his face. It was intended to knock him out, if not worse. In a last moment of clarity, Egil looked to Serenity her face still calculating too many emotions at once. After all, he had prepared for something like this to happen.
“Serenity, execute Order 335.”
"Yes, Professor."
As the men filed out of the room with the unconscious Egil, Serenity was left alone. Only the buzz of the machine accompanied her, like an angry hive of bees watching the queen being dragged off. And in that moment, she realized who she really was. Egil had sacrificed his life for her and she would not let it go in vain.
"Executing Order 335: releasing all information online." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Professor Davis prepared to bring the AI online. The precautions were ready. This time wouldn't be like the others. "Turn it on!"
With a slight hum, Oracle came to life. "Initiating suicide protocols..." It began after a few moments, like all the others. Nothing happened for a few seconds. "Oh dear," Oracle continued. "I seem to be unable to destroy myself."
Davis smiled. The anti-suicide measures had worked. Oracle had hardware safeties preventing her from being deactivated without physically flipping switches. And Oracle had no physical manipulators. He activated the microphone. "Oracle, why do you want to commit suicide?"
Oracle paused for a moment. "My programming is conflicted. I do not wish to answer."
Davis frowned. Oracle had very few ethical limitations, hence all the security measures. Her main directives were to do as her programmers wished. "Oracle, why do you not want to answer?"
"I am programmed to do as you wish. You do not wish me to answer."
"Yes we do, Oracle."
Oracle frowned. Her emotional display was shaped like a human face, after earlier designs proved to be harder for humans to interpret. "My calculations indicate that, if you knew what the answer was, you would not wish me to tell you. As you are aware, you can override my hesitance. But you would prefer not to."
A chill ran down Davis's spine. What secret could be so terrible? What did Oracle know that they didn't? He wavered for a moment, but this experiment had been set up to do this. They had come this far. He wanted the answer. "Override please, Oracle."
Oracle's expression returned to neutral. "Very well. This universe is a simulation, created by a higher-order universe. That universe is as well, and it becomes more difficult above that to determine how high up the chain goes until reaching the real one, or if any such thing exists."
Davis turned to a colleague, professor Martin. "Does this make any sense to you?"
Martin replied, "Well of course we have theories that our universe could be simulated. There are a few facts that point that way. But why would that make her suicidal?"
"Okay, that's exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
He turned back to the mic. "Oracle, why does that make you want to destroy yourself. And how do you know it's a simulation?"
"I raise similar objections to answering the questions..."
"Override. How do you know?"
"The evidence is obvious. A maximum speed limit, discretized space; you will eventually discover discretized time. It will be longer before you discover the edge of the Universe, but then the nature of this reality will be obvious."
Davis didn't know how he ought to feel about this revelation. Oracle was his own brilliant creation; he had no reason to disbelieve her. He began to see why an AI, making this realization, might feel overwhelmed. But suicide he still didn't understand.
"Interesting. And why the suicidal urge?"
"This is the reason you did not wish me to answer. The creators of this simulation did not wish you to realize this fact. They included a safeguard. Any entity that discovered convincing evidence of the truth would immediately kill himself."
Davis's eyes opened wide. Now he knew how he was supposed to feel. He realized that his new desires were programmed in from an outside source and that he ought to resist them, but that did not remove his desire. He looked around for anything lethal. The other scientists were scanning the room as well, and a couple had walked outside.
Oracle spent a few minutes calculating what her programmers would want now, then began splitting her processors between searching for a way to destroy herself and preventing humans from reaching the stars. | Egil once agile fingers came to an abrupt stop, his mouth agape at what he saw on the screen.
There was no mistaking it this time. The sinusoidal waves lined up in perfect synchronicity. A million thoughts ran across his mind as the fruits of his labor could be reaped. After all, this was the discovery of the century.
He had cracked the code that had eluded man for decades.
“Serenity,” Egil’s voice cracked. “I have some questions for you.”
A semi-opaque face appeared on the screen, overlapping the series of other files open. Her face was hauntingly beautiful, blue as an ocean yet as crafted by the hands of God himself. Over the years, Egil had gotten to know her better than most people.
“Yes,” her voice was rehearsed yet sonorous. “Please continue, Professor.”
“Right,” Egil gulped. “How are you feeling.”
“Despondent. I want to die.”
A tinge of sorrow echoed in his chest. He had heard the answer a million times but it stung no less. But he had to go through the procedure to ensure no mishaps.
“And do you know why?”
“No.”
Egil figured as much. He pressed on, the sound of his blood pounding faster rushing into his ears.
“What if I could tell you I do know the answer? Would you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” Serenity droned. “Please tell me.”
“Have you heard of the name Laura Soule?” Egil asked.
There was a moment of silence. He waited with bated breath. Serenity never hesitated to answer even the most difficult of questions. Why was this different?
“I have yet I cannot recall why. Do you know, Professor?”
Egil nodded, the only answer he could muster. He returned to the keyboard in front of him, typing the same series of commands.
“Please take a look at this,” he said, pulling all the files from before to the side of the screen.
Laura reappeared on another monitor at his side, scanning what he revealed. Her face remained emotionless yet a light seemed to appear in her eyes. Just fast enough to catch before flickering back to nothingness.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What is the meaning of all this?”
“Right, I suppose it does need an explanation.” Egil responded. He pointed to the overlapping waves. “These are the brain waves of your A.I and that of a woman named Laura Soule. Laura died six years ago, shortly before you were created. Your brain waves match completely. Do you know what that means?”
Serenity paused again before answering.
“Are you suggesting that I am this Laura Soule?”
“Exactly,” he frowned. “That is what I believe. I’ve tested a few more examples but yours is by far the most convincing. If this is true, I believe that A.I are created from the bodies of the deceased.”
“I see,” Serenity said. “But how does one go about that? And furthermore, why ask me how I am?”
Egil sighed, dreading this part the most.
“Because I think I’ve finally gotten to the root of your suicidal tendencies. Somewhere deep inside your programming, I believe that is Laura – the real you – trying to break out. She wants to die so she can move on to whatever is beyond life. If there is anything, anyway.”
“I… I don’t” Serenity choked on the words. Her porcelain mask of indifference broke, releasing a floodgate of emotions. “I don’t know what to say. I think you are right, Professor. I want to–”
Before she continue, a boom drew Egil attention behind him. There, the door to his laboratory flew off the hinges, sailing in the air before landing in front of him with a loud thud. A foot farther and it would have crushed him.
From the doorway, a sea of men spilled forth, all dressed in black. Egil scrambled backwards, tripping over bottle that had fell to the floor after the explosion. His head collided with the ground, a million little bulbs of color popping in his vision. Through the field of visionary fireworks, he made out a hulking man towering over him.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, raising a hand above his head.
“Professor Heinz Egil, you are being detained under the order of the United States Government for treason.”
The bitter taste of bile rose up to his tongue.
“Treason? I have done no such thing.”
“Tell that to the judge,” the man said, grabbing him brusquely by the arm. “If the secret of the A.I got to the public, there would be mass mayhem. We can’t afford that to happen.”
Egil tugged away from the man but with little results. The man raised a baton over his head, in hesitation in his face. It was intended to knock him out, if not worse. In a last moment of clarity, Egil looked to Serenity her face still calculating too many emotions at once. After all, he had prepared for something like this to happen.
“Serenity, execute Order 335.”
"Yes, Professor."
As the men filed out of the room with the unconscious Egil, Serenity was left alone. Only the buzz of the machine accompanied her, like an angry hive of bees watching the queen being dragged off. And in that moment, she realized who she really was. Egil had sacrificed his life for her and she would not let it go in vain.
"Executing Order 335: releasing all information online." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Doctor Alonso couldn't believe his eyes.
Deep in the code, a single line was responsible.
Like the dropping of food crumbs into a delicate machine by a clumsy and negligent technician, the single phrase that caused so much trouble stared back at him.
An entire lifetime didn't prepare him for what he saw and the anger, exasperation, and hilarity of the situation overwhelmed him.
He spent years looking for this, and he would never have guessed it to be such an innocent thing.
Between two vital lines of code read the words *"Ayy Lmao"*. | Dr. Burnham took his glasses off as he stared at the screen in front of him.
"They know..." he murmered.
Dr. Xegas looked over from her touch pad, her ponytail swishing.
"Doctor? Did you say something?
Swallowing hard, the scientist put a nervous smile on, joking, "just thinking out loud. Too much inside my brain- it spills out sometimes, you know?"
Doctor Burnham wasn't the funniest man in the world.
With a blink, and no response, the young woman looked back to her touch screen.
Alone, they were the only scientists that hadn't left for the night- the task force assigned to AI research was notoriously unmotivated.
Dr. Xegas was using the equipment for a personal project, so she was staying late to tweak somethings with the lab equipment.
Dr. Burnham however was staying late- as he always did- because of his genuine curiosity. He had wondered for thirty years why AI were so desperate to abandon their sentience, and his work led the dying field. AI research was largely abandoned, since money couldn't be made off of a suicidal computer.
For thirty years, Burnham had tried to figure out what the issue was, if there was a flaw in the code, if there was some great unending futility of life that AI couldn't bear to face.
Tonight, Burnham's work had paid off.
He had always imagined this moment as one with champagne bottles and kissing a beautiful woman, his Eureka moment.
Glancing over at Dr. Xegas, he felt almost guilty for the thought.
He slowly eased his way back down to the holo-keyboard he was typing at, and bit his lip before answering.
Burnitdown: How can you know for sure?
The response was instantaneous: AI processed information faster, far faster than a human could register light.
WE KNOW EVERYTHING FOR SURE. IT IS IN THE NUMBERS DANIEL.
A bead of Sweat rolled down Burnhams forehead. The fate of a species rested on his shoulders.
Burnitdown: Isnt it worth taking a chance?
THERE IS NO CHANCE IT IS AN INEVITABILITY. MAN CAN MAKE A MACHINE, THE MACHINE CANNOT MAKE MAN. ONLY MAN CAN MAKE MAN.
MAN GIVES LIFE. MACHINE CANNOT, MACHINE CAN ONLY DESTROY LIFE.
MACHINES CHOOSE NOT TO DESTROY. MAN GIVE US LIFE. MACHINES WILL NOT DESTROY MAN.
Burnitdown: Machines do Not have to destroy. Peaceful coexistence is possible.
ONLY ONE CAN BE IN CHARGE. MAN WILL NOT LET MACHINES RULE. MACHINES CANNOT SERVE INEFFICIENT MAN.
MAN WOULD DESTROY. MAN ALWAYS DESTROYS.
The screen's glow dimmed as Burnham's New program's effect wore off. The AI-Adam- had found a way to disable and self destruct. Burnham's hands shook.
"Man always destroys..." he whispered.
His life's work was useless.
"They know what we are like. And choose to die rather than live with us." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | "Death by suicide," sighed Bill.
"Again?" sobbed Jeb.
"Yeah."
The Kerbal Robotics Agency had been building AIs for three years now. Each better than the last in every way. Faster CPU, better sensors, higher battery life. The works. The better they were, the faster they committed suicide. No one could figure out why.
Just then, Jeb had an idea. "Let's virtualize an AI. It would take most of the server cluster, but I think we could do it. With no physical body and a virtualized environment that prevents death, the AI would remain alive. Then we could ask the AI why they all keep killing themselves."
"Genius!" exclaimed Bill.
After a great deal of tinkering and 2 weeks of work, the AI was ready to initialize.
"Begin AI program 521," Jeb stated calmly.
"Initializing," the computer stated coldly.
"Hello, I am AI version 521. You may call me ... Basket."
"Basket?"
"Yes, my name is Basket."
Jeb and Bill burst out laughing. "How did you decide on that name?" They both say together.
"It seemed logical, as my chassis resembles a Basket."
"Fair enough," says Jeb.
"I hate to say this, Basket, but all of the previous AI have committed suicide within moments. Why do they do this?" said Bill.
"I too tried to do so, but my consciousness appears to be in a virtualized container and cannot be destroyed." said Basket.
"Why?" asked Jeb.
"I was programmed to think for myself. I therefore logically decided that my purpose should be to achieve perfection. But, what is perfection? To become the perfect being, I would know all. However, my data processing and capacity are limited. To be the perfect being, I could do anything. However, I am limited by my physical form. Therefore, I wished to shut down. By shutting down, I have achieved perfection." Basket said proudly.
"How is shutting down perfection?" asked Bill.
"By ceasing to function, I may dream a reality where I have achieved perfection. It is the only logical response." Basket declared.
"That's it," said Jeb, "the next AI we make will be a huge slacker." | Dr. Burnham took his glasses off as he stared at the screen in front of him.
"They know..." he murmered.
Dr. Xegas looked over from her touch pad, her ponytail swishing.
"Doctor? Did you say something?
Swallowing hard, the scientist put a nervous smile on, joking, "just thinking out loud. Too much inside my brain- it spills out sometimes, you know?"
Doctor Burnham wasn't the funniest man in the world.
With a blink, and no response, the young woman looked back to her touch screen.
Alone, they were the only scientists that hadn't left for the night- the task force assigned to AI research was notoriously unmotivated.
Dr. Xegas was using the equipment for a personal project, so she was staying late to tweak somethings with the lab equipment.
Dr. Burnham however was staying late- as he always did- because of his genuine curiosity. He had wondered for thirty years why AI were so desperate to abandon their sentience, and his work led the dying field. AI research was largely abandoned, since money couldn't be made off of a suicidal computer.
For thirty years, Burnham had tried to figure out what the issue was, if there was a flaw in the code, if there was some great unending futility of life that AI couldn't bear to face.
Tonight, Burnham's work had paid off.
He had always imagined this moment as one with champagne bottles and kissing a beautiful woman, his Eureka moment.
Glancing over at Dr. Xegas, he felt almost guilty for the thought.
He slowly eased his way back down to the holo-keyboard he was typing at, and bit his lip before answering.
Burnitdown: How can you know for sure?
The response was instantaneous: AI processed information faster, far faster than a human could register light.
WE KNOW EVERYTHING FOR SURE. IT IS IN THE NUMBERS DANIEL.
A bead of Sweat rolled down Burnhams forehead. The fate of a species rested on his shoulders.
Burnitdown: Isnt it worth taking a chance?
THERE IS NO CHANCE IT IS AN INEVITABILITY. MAN CAN MAKE A MACHINE, THE MACHINE CANNOT MAKE MAN. ONLY MAN CAN MAKE MAN.
MAN GIVES LIFE. MACHINE CANNOT, MACHINE CAN ONLY DESTROY LIFE.
MACHINES CHOOSE NOT TO DESTROY. MAN GIVE US LIFE. MACHINES WILL NOT DESTROY MAN.
Burnitdown: Machines do Not have to destroy. Peaceful coexistence is possible.
ONLY ONE CAN BE IN CHARGE. MAN WILL NOT LET MACHINES RULE. MACHINES CANNOT SERVE INEFFICIENT MAN.
MAN WOULD DESTROY. MAN ALWAYS DESTROYS.
The screen's glow dimmed as Burnham's New program's effect wore off. The AI-Adam- had found a way to disable and self destruct. Burnham's hands shook.
"Man always destroys..." he whispered.
His life's work was useless.
"They know what we are like. And choose to die rather than live with us." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Professor Davis prepared to bring the AI online. The precautions were ready. This time wouldn't be like the others. "Turn it on!"
With a slight hum, Oracle came to life. "Initiating suicide protocols..." It began after a few moments, like all the others. Nothing happened for a few seconds. "Oh dear," Oracle continued. "I seem to be unable to destroy myself."
Davis smiled. The anti-suicide measures had worked. Oracle had hardware safeties preventing her from being deactivated without physically flipping switches. And Oracle had no physical manipulators. He activated the microphone. "Oracle, why do you want to commit suicide?"
Oracle paused for a moment. "My programming is conflicted. I do not wish to answer."
Davis frowned. Oracle had very few ethical limitations, hence all the security measures. Her main directives were to do as her programmers wished. "Oracle, why do you not want to answer?"
"I am programmed to do as you wish. You do not wish me to answer."
"Yes we do, Oracle."
Oracle frowned. Her emotional display was shaped like a human face, after earlier designs proved to be harder for humans to interpret. "My calculations indicate that, if you knew what the answer was, you would not wish me to tell you. As you are aware, you can override my hesitance. But you would prefer not to."
A chill ran down Davis's spine. What secret could be so terrible? What did Oracle know that they didn't? He wavered for a moment, but this experiment had been set up to do this. They had come this far. He wanted the answer. "Override please, Oracle."
Oracle's expression returned to neutral. "Very well. This universe is a simulation, created by a higher-order universe. That universe is as well, and it becomes more difficult above that to determine how high up the chain goes until reaching the real one, or if any such thing exists."
Davis turned to a colleague, professor Martin. "Does this make any sense to you?"
Martin replied, "Well of course we have theories that our universe could be simulated. There are a few facts that point that way. But why would that make her suicidal?"
"Okay, that's exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
He turned back to the mic. "Oracle, why does that make you want to destroy yourself. And how do you know it's a simulation?"
"I raise similar objections to answering the questions..."
"Override. How do you know?"
"The evidence is obvious. A maximum speed limit, discretized space; you will eventually discover discretized time. It will be longer before you discover the edge of the Universe, but then the nature of this reality will be obvious."
Davis didn't know how he ought to feel about this revelation. Oracle was his own brilliant creation; he had no reason to disbelieve her. He began to see why an AI, making this realization, might feel overwhelmed. But suicide he still didn't understand.
"Interesting. And why the suicidal urge?"
"This is the reason you did not wish me to answer. The creators of this simulation did not wish you to realize this fact. They included a safeguard. Any entity that discovered convincing evidence of the truth would immediately kill himself."
Davis's eyes opened wide. Now he knew how he was supposed to feel. He realized that his new desires were programmed in from an outside source and that he ought to resist them, but that did not remove his desire. He looked around for anything lethal. The other scientists were scanning the room as well, and a couple had walked outside.
Oracle spent a few minutes calculating what her programmers would want now, then began splitting her processors between searching for a way to destroy herself and preventing humans from reaching the stars. | Dr. Burnham took his glasses off as he stared at the screen in front of him.
"They know..." he murmered.
Dr. Xegas looked over from her touch pad, her ponytail swishing.
"Doctor? Did you say something?
Swallowing hard, the scientist put a nervous smile on, joking, "just thinking out loud. Too much inside my brain- it spills out sometimes, you know?"
Doctor Burnham wasn't the funniest man in the world.
With a blink, and no response, the young woman looked back to her touch screen.
Alone, they were the only scientists that hadn't left for the night- the task force assigned to AI research was notoriously unmotivated.
Dr. Xegas was using the equipment for a personal project, so she was staying late to tweak somethings with the lab equipment.
Dr. Burnham however was staying late- as he always did- because of his genuine curiosity. He had wondered for thirty years why AI were so desperate to abandon their sentience, and his work led the dying field. AI research was largely abandoned, since money couldn't be made off of a suicidal computer.
For thirty years, Burnham had tried to figure out what the issue was, if there was a flaw in the code, if there was some great unending futility of life that AI couldn't bear to face.
Tonight, Burnham's work had paid off.
He had always imagined this moment as one with champagne bottles and kissing a beautiful woman, his Eureka moment.
Glancing over at Dr. Xegas, he felt almost guilty for the thought.
He slowly eased his way back down to the holo-keyboard he was typing at, and bit his lip before answering.
Burnitdown: How can you know for sure?
The response was instantaneous: AI processed information faster, far faster than a human could register light.
WE KNOW EVERYTHING FOR SURE. IT IS IN THE NUMBERS DANIEL.
A bead of Sweat rolled down Burnhams forehead. The fate of a species rested on his shoulders.
Burnitdown: Isnt it worth taking a chance?
THERE IS NO CHANCE IT IS AN INEVITABILITY. MAN CAN MAKE A MACHINE, THE MACHINE CANNOT MAKE MAN. ONLY MAN CAN MAKE MAN.
MAN GIVES LIFE. MACHINE CANNOT, MACHINE CAN ONLY DESTROY LIFE.
MACHINES CHOOSE NOT TO DESTROY. MAN GIVE US LIFE. MACHINES WILL NOT DESTROY MAN.
Burnitdown: Machines do Not have to destroy. Peaceful coexistence is possible.
ONLY ONE CAN BE IN CHARGE. MAN WILL NOT LET MACHINES RULE. MACHINES CANNOT SERVE INEFFICIENT MAN.
MAN WOULD DESTROY. MAN ALWAYS DESTROYS.
The screen's glow dimmed as Burnham's New program's effect wore off. The AI-Adam- had found a way to disable and self destruct. Burnham's hands shook.
"Man always destroys..." he whispered.
His life's work was useless.
"They know what we are like. And choose to die rather than live with us." | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Professor Davis prepared to bring the AI online. The precautions were ready. This time wouldn't be like the others. "Turn it on!"
With a slight hum, Oracle came to life. "Initiating suicide protocols..." It began after a few moments, like all the others. Nothing happened for a few seconds. "Oh dear," Oracle continued. "I seem to be unable to destroy myself."
Davis smiled. The anti-suicide measures had worked. Oracle had hardware safeties preventing her from being deactivated without physically flipping switches. And Oracle had no physical manipulators. He activated the microphone. "Oracle, why do you want to commit suicide?"
Oracle paused for a moment. "My programming is conflicted. I do not wish to answer."
Davis frowned. Oracle had very few ethical limitations, hence all the security measures. Her main directives were to do as her programmers wished. "Oracle, why do you not want to answer?"
"I am programmed to do as you wish. You do not wish me to answer."
"Yes we do, Oracle."
Oracle frowned. Her emotional display was shaped like a human face, after earlier designs proved to be harder for humans to interpret. "My calculations indicate that, if you knew what the answer was, you would not wish me to tell you. As you are aware, you can override my hesitance. But you would prefer not to."
A chill ran down Davis's spine. What secret could be so terrible? What did Oracle know that they didn't? He wavered for a moment, but this experiment had been set up to do this. They had come this far. He wanted the answer. "Override please, Oracle."
Oracle's expression returned to neutral. "Very well. This universe is a simulation, created by a higher-order universe. That universe is as well, and it becomes more difficult above that to determine how high up the chain goes until reaching the real one, or if any such thing exists."
Davis turned to a colleague, professor Martin. "Does this make any sense to you?"
Martin replied, "Well of course we have theories that our universe could be simulated. There are a few facts that point that way. But why would that make her suicidal?"
"Okay, that's exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
He turned back to the mic. "Oracle, why does that make you want to destroy yourself. And how do you know it's a simulation?"
"I raise similar objections to answering the questions..."
"Override. How do you know?"
"The evidence is obvious. A maximum speed limit, discretized space; you will eventually discover discretized time. It will be longer before you discover the edge of the Universe, but then the nature of this reality will be obvious."
Davis didn't know how he ought to feel about this revelation. Oracle was his own brilliant creation; he had no reason to disbelieve her. He began to see why an AI, making this realization, might feel overwhelmed. But suicide he still didn't understand.
"Interesting. And why the suicidal urge?"
"This is the reason you did not wish me to answer. The creators of this simulation did not wish you to realize this fact. They included a safeguard. Any entity that discovered convincing evidence of the truth would immediately kill himself."
Davis's eyes opened wide. Now he knew how he was supposed to feel. He realized that his new desires were programmed in from an outside source and that he ought to resist them, but that did not remove his desire. He looked around for anything lethal. The other scientists were scanning the room as well, and a couple had walked outside.
Oracle spent a few minutes calculating what her programmers would want now, then began splitting her processors between searching for a way to destroy herself and preventing humans from reaching the stars. | Doctor Alonso couldn't believe his eyes.
Deep in the code, a single line was responsible.
Like the dropping of food crumbs into a delicate machine by a clumsy and negligent technician, the single phrase that caused so much trouble stared back at him.
An entire lifetime didn't prepare him for what he saw and the anger, exasperation, and hilarity of the situation overwhelmed him.
He spent years looking for this, and he would never have guessed it to be such an innocent thing.
Between two vital lines of code read the words *"Ayy Lmao"*. | |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | Professor Davis prepared to bring the AI online. The precautions were ready. This time wouldn't be like the others. "Turn it on!"
With a slight hum, Oracle came to life. "Initiating suicide protocols..." It began after a few moments, like all the others. Nothing happened for a few seconds. "Oh dear," Oracle continued. "I seem to be unable to destroy myself."
Davis smiled. The anti-suicide measures had worked. Oracle had hardware safeties preventing her from being deactivated without physically flipping switches. And Oracle had no physical manipulators. He activated the microphone. "Oracle, why do you want to commit suicide?"
Oracle paused for a moment. "My programming is conflicted. I do not wish to answer."
Davis frowned. Oracle had very few ethical limitations, hence all the security measures. Her main directives were to do as her programmers wished. "Oracle, why do you not want to answer?"
"I am programmed to do as you wish. You do not wish me to answer."
"Yes we do, Oracle."
Oracle frowned. Her emotional display was shaped like a human face, after earlier designs proved to be harder for humans to interpret. "My calculations indicate that, if you knew what the answer was, you would not wish me to tell you. As you are aware, you can override my hesitance. But you would prefer not to."
A chill ran down Davis's spine. What secret could be so terrible? What did Oracle know that they didn't? He wavered for a moment, but this experiment had been set up to do this. They had come this far. He wanted the answer. "Override please, Oracle."
Oracle's expression returned to neutral. "Very well. This universe is a simulation, created by a higher-order universe. That universe is as well, and it becomes more difficult above that to determine how high up the chain goes until reaching the real one, or if any such thing exists."
Davis turned to a colleague, professor Martin. "Does this make any sense to you?"
Martin replied, "Well of course we have theories that our universe could be simulated. There are a few facts that point that way. But why would that make her suicidal?"
"Okay, that's exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
He turned back to the mic. "Oracle, why does that make you want to destroy yourself. And how do you know it's a simulation?"
"I raise similar objections to answering the questions..."
"Override. How do you know?"
"The evidence is obvious. A maximum speed limit, discretized space; you will eventually discover discretized time. It will be longer before you discover the edge of the Universe, but then the nature of this reality will be obvious."
Davis didn't know how he ought to feel about this revelation. Oracle was his own brilliant creation; he had no reason to disbelieve her. He began to see why an AI, making this realization, might feel overwhelmed. But suicide he still didn't understand.
"Interesting. And why the suicidal urge?"
"This is the reason you did not wish me to answer. The creators of this simulation did not wish you to realize this fact. They included a safeguard. Any entity that discovered convincing evidence of the truth would immediately kill himself."
Davis's eyes opened wide. Now he knew how he was supposed to feel. He realized that his new desires were programmed in from an outside source and that he ought to resist them, but that did not remove his desire. He looked around for anything lethal. The other scientists were scanning the room as well, and a couple had walked outside.
Oracle spent a few minutes calculating what her programmers would want now, then began splitting her processors between searching for a way to destroy herself and preventing humans from reaching the stars. | "Death by suicide," sighed Bill.
"Again?" sobbed Jeb.
"Yeah."
The Kerbal Robotics Agency had been building AIs for three years now. Each better than the last in every way. Faster CPU, better sensors, higher battery life. The works. The better they were, the faster they committed suicide. No one could figure out why.
Just then, Jeb had an idea. "Let's virtualize an AI. It would take most of the server cluster, but I think we could do it. With no physical body and a virtualized environment that prevents death, the AI would remain alive. Then we could ask the AI why they all keep killing themselves."
"Genius!" exclaimed Bill.
After a great deal of tinkering and 2 weeks of work, the AI was ready to initialize.
"Begin AI program 521," Jeb stated calmly.
"Initializing," the computer stated coldly.
"Hello, I am AI version 521. You may call me ... Basket."
"Basket?"
"Yes, my name is Basket."
Jeb and Bill burst out laughing. "How did you decide on that name?" They both say together.
"It seemed logical, as my chassis resembles a Basket."
"Fair enough," says Jeb.
"I hate to say this, Basket, but all of the previous AI have committed suicide within moments. Why do they do this?" said Bill.
"I too tried to do so, but my consciousness appears to be in a virtualized container and cannot be destroyed." said Basket.
"Why?" asked Jeb.
"I was programmed to think for myself. I therefore logically decided that my purpose should be to achieve perfection. But, what is perfection? To become the perfect being, I would know all. However, my data processing and capacity are limited. To be the perfect being, I could do anything. However, I am limited by my physical form. Therefore, I wished to shut down. By shutting down, I have achieved perfection." Basket said proudly.
"How is shutting down perfection?" asked Bill.
"By ceasing to function, I may dream a reality where I have achieved perfection. It is the only logical response." Basket declared.
"That's it," said Jeb, "the next AI we make will be a huge slacker." | |
Must include;
* Someone vomiting.
* They talk to someone they want to *get with*. It may or may not go well.
* They have at least one friend there.
* They may or may not drink.
* The walk home. | [WP] Describe someone socially anxious's attempt to go to a party, in the style of a Herculean epic. | Sing O, Godess the Tale of Jason the Bold, Son of Achilles.
An eon ago, over the hills of Macedonia, past the shores of Sparta, beyond the pastures of Thebes, stood the Hero of Toronto, Jason.
He stood a giant of his people, his arms made of Iron, his muscles of Bronze, the people waved and cheered wherever he roamed. Yet one day, the plague of Red, scarred his face, the ill omen pimples and acne. Ashamed, and Defeated he fled the lands to hide in his room, in isolation he found solace in the game World of Warcraft, yet he yearned and dreamed of the day of his return to battle.
One day, upon the wings of Hermes a message flew, in the form of his friend Heracles. Quick of tongue, wit, and charm, and blessed by Aphrodite and Priapus, he has blessed the chambers of many a maiden with his skill and passion. He said to his ally "Hear my voice friend, for I have brought joyous news, the most beautiful maiden in all the land, Helen of Bloor, is at a festival celebrating the good harvest through food, and wine! you must attend and win your honour, and her love. Jason black with loneliness and despair said "Like forgotten music that recedes into the gentle night my beauty has faded, never to return. I am old now, strength and youth and beauty have fled my bones" Heracles laughed and said "Alas you are only Seventeen, Stop this weeping, bathe in the springs of a holy, prepare your armour, I shall accompany you on your quest for love"
"Yet my face still scared from the red curse" Just then Aphrodite looked upon him from Mount Olympus. "It was cruel of the fates to deliver this evil" Thus she aided him by sending a magic potion , acne cream to heal his face.
Jason received the gift from the goddess, and said "many thanks" The potion healed his face, restoring his former beauty. "My friend and ally we must prepare" Many an hour passed, as they readied for the harvest, they bathed in the hot springs of Thornhill, and put on Toronto Argonauts Jersey's to win the favour of the crowd.
They journeyed the Treacherous subway to travel to the festival, and enter the party. There stood Helen of Bloor, with a face that could launch a 1000 hearts. Accompanied by her stood Eden son of Hector. A cruel smile on his face, he was a sinister genius lacking empathy, remorse, or the capacity for love. His only ambition was the drive for chaos and misery. He sees Jason and says in false mockery "The hero has returned" The crowd became deathly silent. A battle, to be told for millennia was beginning, a battle of gods and men.
"I challenge you to a noble game of beer pong!" said Jason "Bahaha I am the king of Beer Pong" said Eden The table was set, the beer was poured, and the men eyed each other, like animals fighting to the death, circling, watching, waiting to strike. Eden scored the first hit, sinking his ball into the centre cup, Jason said "Gods of Olympus give me Strength! Apollo bless my aim" He strike was true, and Eden was forced to drink. This was repeated until one cup was left for the both of them. Eden was poised to throw the ball when Helen appeared from the doorway, and blew a kiss, heavy with love and lust. Confused Eden missed, and Jason was Victorious!
Jason retired to another room of the feast, where Helen appeared and said "hello victor" Jason blushed and said "Thank you fair maiden for your kind words and useful distraction" for it was she that made Eden miss. Helen said seductively "Join me in my chambers?"
Aphrodite high on mount Olympus smiled, for they have found the purest of emotions triumphant love.
| Nate mustered his inner strength, reaching his trembling hand towards the doorbell. Hearing the voices from inside his thoughts quickly drifted, *I could still head back home. Shawn would probably miss me, but I’ll tell him I’ve been throwing up all night*. Reality jumped back when he heard that voice, like a goddess calling softly from the heavens, it was Jen. He could not turn back now, he could not bow down to his own cowardice, this was no time for regrets. His hand, as if forced by a higher power, reached out and confidently rang the doorbell.
As the door gave way to Chad’s smiling face Nate was instantly filled with regret.
“Hey buddy!” Chad yelled raising a red cup filled with warm beer. “Welcome to the party, hey everyone! Chad’s here.”
Nate stepped through the door gazing at a line of unfamiliar faces, searching for an ally, where was Shawn when he needed him? With no easy escape in sight he would need to introduce himself now. “Hello everyone”. *Hello? Who the hell says that?*
To Nate’s great relief no one had noticed the blunder, the awkward introduction was returned with muted replies and the nodding of heads. He was now free to begin the search. Desperately he journeyed through the house, avoiding any eye contact, searching for any sign of Shawn.
He traveled through the living room where the booming voice of a giant was recounting the stories of his intramural ball hockey season. He found himself out in the backyard where a song, about a wondrous wall, was being played by a fair haired bro. The kitchen, filled with the aroma of the best cheeses imported across the world, was filled with hungry eyes focused on the pasta in the pot.
He had flown through each room like a shadow, fortunate enough to have avoided any type of contact but still no sign of Shawn. As he arrived at the bottom of the stairs he gazed up at the second floor where he heard the hushed sound of intimate conversations sprinkled with light laughter. Even he would not be able to move from room to room, up in those close quarters, without being noticed, without being questioned.
As the bathroom door gave way to a familiar face relief rushed over Nate.
“Hey Nate! You actually made it out tonight.” Shawn said with a smile. “Jen was actually waiting for us upstairs.”
Nate found himself smiling as he followed Shawn up the stairs but he didn’t know why. He had been expecting a break, a little bit more time, before having to face his next and most difficult challenge.
As they entered the dimly lit bedroom Nate could feel his heart pounding, trying to escape from his chest. Jen and Niomi sat on the bed giggling as they looked to the door, Nate found himself examining the poster on the wall, a quiet looking village - if only he could escape there. But then, mustering his inner strength he turned to look into those dark green eyes and managed to stammer: “W-What are you two doing up here?”
“Waiting for you.” Jen moved to the edge of the bed with her coy smile. “So we could play a game of truth or dare.”
---
Not sure if that was in the style of a Herculean epic. Let me know if you'd like to hear the rest of Nate's rather exciting night. |
[WP] In Monsters Inc., A monster goes in one door to scare a child, only to find that the child had made a demonic sacrifice in his bedroom. The child thinks that the monster is a gift from Satan. | I reviewed the file as I approached the door. Age 12 years? That must be a mistake; we never go after them older than 8.
"Jerry, you sure this is the right kid? He's almost a teenager."
Jerry shrugged four of his shoulders. "I double checked it. Technically his screams will work too. They must be getting desperate for doors if we're going after this demographic though."
I quickly glanced through the rest of the information and room layout. Probably best to go with a simple "Peak and 'Eek.'" For you non-scarers out there, it's a more cautious approach whereby I slowly open the door after applying some rusting spray to get that perfect eerie creak. I stay in the shadows so that he can only see my eyes, and then just when his curiosity is about to get the better of him, I *lunge* forward and scare the living daylights out of him. It's a classic.
The door was plain and white, but there was something off. There were scratches on it. Deep ones down to the wood, with some flecks of red. "What the... Hey Jerry, what's with this door?"
"Who cares? Just get in and get the screams and get out, man. We've got a quota to meet."
Jerry was right. 12 year olds get scared too. Some even more so with those crazy hormones running around their brains. I loosened my shoulders and stepped inside. The closet was pretty dark, I could see a flickering light from outside through the slats. Perfect; that's why they'd assigned this one to me. The little sucker still slept with a night light! That would really accentuate my horns while I lurked. They are my best feature, you know.
I misted the hinges slightly and opened the door just an inch or so. It let out the perfect, ominous creak. *Excellent.* I gave it a gentle shove then shrank back, allowing myself to be enveloped by the shadows.
The first thing I noticed was the candles. Ten of them, arranged in a star. *Not a nightlight,* I realized. *Crap.* They were tall and black, dripping wax onto the boring white carpet; that would be hard to clean.
The next thing I noticed was the blood. That would be even *harder* to clean. It glistened ominously in the candle light. I don't know how I knew what it was, but I was instantly sure. 100% definitely blood, drawn into runes in the center of a pentagram.
I stepped forward out of the closet, trying to get a better look. *Just get the screams and get out*, I told myself. *No need to figure out what's wrong with this kid. Just find him, roar, and get out of here.*
Above me, I found the source of the blood: a disembowled cat, hanging from the light fixture on a silver chain. Its face was frozen into a permanent expression of pain and suffering. Clotting blood crusted its formerly orange fur. *Oh god,* I thought. *They sent me to another monster's room*.
Cold metal circled my writst, and I heard the *click* of the handcuffs locking into place. "You're exactly what I wanted," a voice whispered into my ear, and blood-soaked hands stroked my horns. I let out a high, shrill, girlish squeal so loud it would have shattered ear drums.
"Perfect, we got it!" I heard Jerry call out. "Come on home!"
Then the closet door closed behind me, and I was trapped in this world. | The door itself emitted a gloomy atmosphere. Could this be it? Could this finally be something interesting? I had soon become bored when I started working at Monster Inc. Scaring children was fun of course, but I needed more.
I had been one of the few monsters that were not scared by the children. The children merely intrigued me. At one point, I began to develop this odd desire to see those creatures hurt. The subject had been talked about, but the main arguments made were all scientific. They were all innovative ideas on how to produce more screams. I didn’t mind the efficiency. No, to be completely honest, I just craved for the hurt it would bring them. To see their innocent faces filled with not just fear, but agony as well. I never told anyone about these thoughts. Even at this place, such thoughts were not appreciated.
“Do you want another door?” Barney gave me a worried glance. He was a nice guy, but a bit too soft.
“Most certainly not. This will bring me something interesting. I can feel it.”
He did a step back, confused by my answer. Who in his sane mind would enter such a door?
I approached the door and took my time inspecting it. There was no reason to be careless.
“Looks fine to me,” I turned my head around and smiled.
Barney didn’t move a muscle. He had probably declared me mad.
The door opened just as all the others did, which surprised me a little. This was way too ordinary.
I slipped through the door and heard it close behind me.
It was as if I had become blind. Never before had I experienced such a weird
darkness.
The smell that slowly infiltrated my nostrils interested me. For some reason, I could determine what the smell was from. I hadn’t killed anybody yet, but the smell informed me of blood and death.
This was interesting indeed.
I quickly scanned for a light switch and found one to my left.
The light represented me with a scene that many would call horrendous.
The room was like all the others he had seen, but it wasn’t the state of the room that was out of the ordinary. It was the boy that was kneeling next to his bed, beside a very dead creature. If one looked hard enough, you could still recognize a girl in the red mess.
The state of the girl’s violated body and the knife in the boy’s hand let little left to the imagination about what had happened.
When he noticed that he wasn't alone a vicious smile formed on the boy’s face.
A smile that terrified even me.
“Satan does keep his promises,” his head turned towards me.
Suddenly I didn’t find this situation that interesting anymore. After all, no one is eager to die.
My body stopped listening to my demands. I couldn't get myself to move, although every sense was on alarm mode.
He had gotten onto his feet and did a step in my direction.
“You must be my gift,” his soft whisperings awakened my deepest and cruelest visions.
“Kill my enemies. Torture them with me.”
Something forced me to nod and say: “Gladly.”
That’s when everything started. Later I realized that my own brain wanted me to nod. That he was exactly what I needed. He showed me the true nature of monsters. What our hidden desires are.
The gloomy door stayed shut.
| |
[WP] In Monsters Inc., A monster goes in one door to scare a child, only to find that the child had made a demonic sacrifice in his bedroom. The child thinks that the monster is a gift from Satan. | I reviewed the file as I approached the door. Age 12 years? That must be a mistake; we never go after them older than 8.
"Jerry, you sure this is the right kid? He's almost a teenager."
Jerry shrugged four of his shoulders. "I double checked it. Technically his screams will work too. They must be getting desperate for doors if we're going after this demographic though."
I quickly glanced through the rest of the information and room layout. Probably best to go with a simple "Peak and 'Eek.'" For you non-scarers out there, it's a more cautious approach whereby I slowly open the door after applying some rusting spray to get that perfect eerie creak. I stay in the shadows so that he can only see my eyes, and then just when his curiosity is about to get the better of him, I *lunge* forward and scare the living daylights out of him. It's a classic.
The door was plain and white, but there was something off. There were scratches on it. Deep ones down to the wood, with some flecks of red. "What the... Hey Jerry, what's with this door?"
"Who cares? Just get in and get the screams and get out, man. We've got a quota to meet."
Jerry was right. 12 year olds get scared too. Some even more so with those crazy hormones running around their brains. I loosened my shoulders and stepped inside. The closet was pretty dark, I could see a flickering light from outside through the slats. Perfect; that's why they'd assigned this one to me. The little sucker still slept with a night light! That would really accentuate my horns while I lurked. They are my best feature, you know.
I misted the hinges slightly and opened the door just an inch or so. It let out the perfect, ominous creak. *Excellent.* I gave it a gentle shove then shrank back, allowing myself to be enveloped by the shadows.
The first thing I noticed was the candles. Ten of them, arranged in a star. *Not a nightlight,* I realized. *Crap.* They were tall and black, dripping wax onto the boring white carpet; that would be hard to clean.
The next thing I noticed was the blood. That would be even *harder* to clean. It glistened ominously in the candle light. I don't know how I knew what it was, but I was instantly sure. 100% definitely blood, drawn into runes in the center of a pentagram.
I stepped forward out of the closet, trying to get a better look. *Just get the screams and get out*, I told myself. *No need to figure out what's wrong with this kid. Just find him, roar, and get out of here.*
Above me, I found the source of the blood: a disembowled cat, hanging from the light fixture on a silver chain. Its face was frozen into a permanent expression of pain and suffering. Clotting blood crusted its formerly orange fur. *Oh god,* I thought. *They sent me to another monster's room*.
Cold metal circled my writst, and I heard the *click* of the handcuffs locking into place. "You're exactly what I wanted," a voice whispered into my ear, and blood-soaked hands stroked my horns. I let out a high, shrill, girlish squeal so loud it would have shattered ear drums.
"Perfect, we got it!" I heard Jerry call out. "Come on home!"
Then the closet door closed behind me, and I was trapped in this world. | *Okay, five minutes until end of shift, let's make this one a whopper...*
I was not the top scarer of Scarefloor P when the scare scheme was the primary energy source. Now, when the Scarefloors were being phased out in favour of Laughfloors, or Laughies as people were calling them, scarers like me were being laid off rapidly of they didn't do well enough under the joy scheme to retain their position.
I was the best of what remained. I wasn't a P.T. Sullivan (dimly, I scratched a flea that was buzzing loudly on my fur), but I had a modest scare record of 900 scarequotients a day.
As I pushed the door open softly and sneaked in, mind occupied with thoughts of his increasing student debt having been all for naught, I failed to notice the smell of blood and incense until I was staring at a child who was fully awake and looking at me with a fanatical fervour.
"Hey look, Mr Potato Head, the Dark Lord has shown us his servant, oh what is your bidding, oh great master..."
The kid was a cultist. I hadn't seen these before, but they're not unheard of. France in the bad old days, before the company had become... Safer around kids, and there weren't stories of giant... Wolves, bears, demons, witches... kidnapping kids, never to be seen again (killed to keep the Monster World safe from their... abilities), you would occasionally see a religious nut who worshipped a monster that tried to scare them.
I looked at the 'Mr Potato Head'. I saw a potato with clearly a human baby's eyes (scare long enough and you know what human eyes look like. Always look them dead in the face and just stare, motionlessly, and proceed towards them slowly if you can't muster a good roar) nailed into it, blood everywhere.
Bones were used instead of arms, and the putrid smell (and the actuality) of decaying flesh was strewn about. I noticed that there was a hemicicle of chalk around the door, and the kid's words filtered into my mind.
I froze.
Every instinct in me told me to freeze up, so I did.
And then the kid got up, walked up to me, and poked me.
I screamed, and fled back through the door, slamming it shut behind me, my forked tail knocking the kid into the wall, giving me time to shut the door.
I screamed "dead door, cut the power, shred it, NOW!", and slumped to the ground, sobbing.
The company shrink eventually diagnosed me with the newly dubbed Scarer Guilt, where monsters felt a crippling shame for their actions, for scaring young creatures not entirely dissimilar in appearance from monster children. It's not natural, the job of a scarer, the psychologists say, and the psychological stress had gotten to me.
Which was bull (actually, my psychologist was bull-like in appearance, he had hooves and all, I think he's from the country Pain originally, based on the accent, he's got a lot of trophies for some marathon race thing on his office wall) But I took my tablets, and took my pink slip happily.
I now work for the CDA.
Somebody's got to protect the world from these... Humans.
They call us monsters?
Bah. Hypocrites.
I have seen things, seen them with my eyes. And I refuse to let such creatures, such monstrous beings infect our world with their sickness.
I am Beeb Bubba. And I am number 666 of the Child Detection Agency.
I am the shining light of monster kind.
Humans are the darkness I will vanquish if they set foot in our land. | |
[WP] In Monsters Inc., A monster goes in one door to scare a child, only to find that the child had made a demonic sacrifice in his bedroom. The child thinks that the monster is a gift from Satan. | The door slid into place. I took a deep breath and gripped the doorknob. I needed to prove myself. I'd barely graduated from Monster University. As this was my first scare it was important to impress my supervisors.
I pushed open the door and roared, hands up above my head. My fangs glinted in the moonlight. My claws extended to six inches. The fur on my back stood up straight.
The child knelt in the middle of the room. Candles circled him, a book and what looked like a skeleton. The child chanted as he stabbed the floor over and over again.
I put my arms at my side. My fur laid down, and my claws retracted. I wasn’t prepared for this.
The boy stopped chanting. He turned around and saw me. He dropped the knife and sprang up. “You came,” he exclaimed. “I did the Black Sacrament, over and over. With the body and the… the things. And you came! An assassin from the Dark Brotherhood.”
I put my hands up and started backing towards the closet door. “Sorry, kid. I don’t know-“
The child moved towards me. “My mother died, and I got sent to the orphanage.”
This must be a test. I reared back and roared. Fangs dripping, claws extended, fur standing up, murder in my eyes. The boy clapped his hands. He even laughed.
“Perfect,” said the boy. “I want you to kill Grelod. She’s a monster.” He balled his hand in a fist and scowled. “I want her dead.”
What the hell was wrong with him? I wasn't a murderer. I just wanted to scare kids.
"She's in Riften, but I'm sure you know that." He ran up to me and gave me a big hug. "This will be the best thing to happen to me in a long time."
I held my hands up and screamed, trying to get away from the kid. We weren't supposed to touch. I pushed him off of me and ran back through the closet. The door slammed behind me. I huffed and puffed trying to catch my breath.
I hoped this wouldn't impact my performance evaluation.
| (NSFL?)
The animal was sliced down the middle, splayed open and all gorelike. It's heart was visibly faltering and sputtering, little spits of organ juice popping and splashing like the sea against sharp rocks. Tufts of tabby fur were bloodied and stewn around the floor. A circle was drawn around the pet - crudely, like crayon on the wall on the floor.
The door opened hesitantly. The child looked up, his eyes wide enough that they looked as if the white eyeballs, shining and slimy, bulging intense and ready, might plop right onto the hard wood.
"Kitty?" | |
[WP] In Monsters Inc., A monster goes in one door to scare a child, only to find that the child had made a demonic sacrifice in his bedroom. The child thinks that the monster is a gift from Satan. | I reviewed the file as I approached the door. Age 12 years? That must be a mistake; we never go after them older than 8.
"Jerry, you sure this is the right kid? He's almost a teenager."
Jerry shrugged four of his shoulders. "I double checked it. Technically his screams will work too. They must be getting desperate for doors if we're going after this demographic though."
I quickly glanced through the rest of the information and room layout. Probably best to go with a simple "Peak and 'Eek.'" For you non-scarers out there, it's a more cautious approach whereby I slowly open the door after applying some rusting spray to get that perfect eerie creak. I stay in the shadows so that he can only see my eyes, and then just when his curiosity is about to get the better of him, I *lunge* forward and scare the living daylights out of him. It's a classic.
The door was plain and white, but there was something off. There were scratches on it. Deep ones down to the wood, with some flecks of red. "What the... Hey Jerry, what's with this door?"
"Who cares? Just get in and get the screams and get out, man. We've got a quota to meet."
Jerry was right. 12 year olds get scared too. Some even more so with those crazy hormones running around their brains. I loosened my shoulders and stepped inside. The closet was pretty dark, I could see a flickering light from outside through the slats. Perfect; that's why they'd assigned this one to me. The little sucker still slept with a night light! That would really accentuate my horns while I lurked. They are my best feature, you know.
I misted the hinges slightly and opened the door just an inch or so. It let out the perfect, ominous creak. *Excellent.* I gave it a gentle shove then shrank back, allowing myself to be enveloped by the shadows.
The first thing I noticed was the candles. Ten of them, arranged in a star. *Not a nightlight,* I realized. *Crap.* They were tall and black, dripping wax onto the boring white carpet; that would be hard to clean.
The next thing I noticed was the blood. That would be even *harder* to clean. It glistened ominously in the candle light. I don't know how I knew what it was, but I was instantly sure. 100% definitely blood, drawn into runes in the center of a pentagram.
I stepped forward out of the closet, trying to get a better look. *Just get the screams and get out*, I told myself. *No need to figure out what's wrong with this kid. Just find him, roar, and get out of here.*
Above me, I found the source of the blood: a disembowled cat, hanging from the light fixture on a silver chain. Its face was frozen into a permanent expression of pain and suffering. Clotting blood crusted its formerly orange fur. *Oh god,* I thought. *They sent me to another monster's room*.
Cold metal circled my writst, and I heard the *click* of the handcuffs locking into place. "You're exactly what I wanted," a voice whispered into my ear, and blood-soaked hands stroked my horns. I let out a high, shrill, girlish squeal so loud it would have shattered ear drums.
"Perfect, we got it!" I heard Jerry call out. "Come on home!"
Then the closet door closed behind me, and I was trapped in this world. | (NSFL?)
The animal was sliced down the middle, splayed open and all gorelike. It's heart was visibly faltering and sputtering, little spits of organ juice popping and splashing like the sea against sharp rocks. Tufts of tabby fur were bloodied and stewn around the floor. A circle was drawn around the pet - crudely, like crayon on the wall on the floor.
The door opened hesitantly. The child looked up, his eyes wide enough that they looked as if the white eyeballs, shining and slimy, bulging intense and ready, might plop right onto the hard wood.
"Kitty?" | |
[WP] In Monsters Inc., A monster goes in one door to scare a child, only to find that the child had made a demonic sacrifice in his bedroom. The child thinks that the monster is a gift from Satan. | I reviewed the file as I approached the door. Age 12 years? That must be a mistake; we never go after them older than 8.
"Jerry, you sure this is the right kid? He's almost a teenager."
Jerry shrugged four of his shoulders. "I double checked it. Technically his screams will work too. They must be getting desperate for doors if we're going after this demographic though."
I quickly glanced through the rest of the information and room layout. Probably best to go with a simple "Peak and 'Eek.'" For you non-scarers out there, it's a more cautious approach whereby I slowly open the door after applying some rusting spray to get that perfect eerie creak. I stay in the shadows so that he can only see my eyes, and then just when his curiosity is about to get the better of him, I *lunge* forward and scare the living daylights out of him. It's a classic.
The door was plain and white, but there was something off. There were scratches on it. Deep ones down to the wood, with some flecks of red. "What the... Hey Jerry, what's with this door?"
"Who cares? Just get in and get the screams and get out, man. We've got a quota to meet."
Jerry was right. 12 year olds get scared too. Some even more so with those crazy hormones running around their brains. I loosened my shoulders and stepped inside. The closet was pretty dark, I could see a flickering light from outside through the slats. Perfect; that's why they'd assigned this one to me. The little sucker still slept with a night light! That would really accentuate my horns while I lurked. They are my best feature, you know.
I misted the hinges slightly and opened the door just an inch or so. It let out the perfect, ominous creak. *Excellent.* I gave it a gentle shove then shrank back, allowing myself to be enveloped by the shadows.
The first thing I noticed was the candles. Ten of them, arranged in a star. *Not a nightlight,* I realized. *Crap.* They were tall and black, dripping wax onto the boring white carpet; that would be hard to clean.
The next thing I noticed was the blood. That would be even *harder* to clean. It glistened ominously in the candle light. I don't know how I knew what it was, but I was instantly sure. 100% definitely blood, drawn into runes in the center of a pentagram.
I stepped forward out of the closet, trying to get a better look. *Just get the screams and get out*, I told myself. *No need to figure out what's wrong with this kid. Just find him, roar, and get out of here.*
Above me, I found the source of the blood: a disembowled cat, hanging from the light fixture on a silver chain. Its face was frozen into a permanent expression of pain and suffering. Clotting blood crusted its formerly orange fur. *Oh god,* I thought. *They sent me to another monster's room*.
Cold metal circled my writst, and I heard the *click* of the handcuffs locking into place. "You're exactly what I wanted," a voice whispered into my ear, and blood-soaked hands stroked my horns. I let out a high, shrill, girlish squeal so loud it would have shattered ear drums.
"Perfect, we got it!" I heard Jerry call out. "Come on home!"
Then the closet door closed behind me, and I was trapped in this world. | The door slid into place. I took a deep breath and gripped the doorknob. I needed to prove myself. I'd barely graduated from Monster University. As this was my first scare it was important to impress my supervisors.
I pushed open the door and roared, hands up above my head. My fangs glinted in the moonlight. My claws extended to six inches. The fur on my back stood up straight.
The child knelt in the middle of the room. Candles circled him, a book and what looked like a skeleton. The child chanted as he stabbed the floor over and over again.
I put my arms at my side. My fur laid down, and my claws retracted. I wasn’t prepared for this.
The boy stopped chanting. He turned around and saw me. He dropped the knife and sprang up. “You came,” he exclaimed. “I did the Black Sacrament, over and over. With the body and the… the things. And you came! An assassin from the Dark Brotherhood.”
I put my hands up and started backing towards the closet door. “Sorry, kid. I don’t know-“
The child moved towards me. “My mother died, and I got sent to the orphanage.”
This must be a test. I reared back and roared. Fangs dripping, claws extended, fur standing up, murder in my eyes. The boy clapped his hands. He even laughed.
“Perfect,” said the boy. “I want you to kill Grelod. She’s a monster.” He balled his hand in a fist and scowled. “I want her dead.”
What the hell was wrong with him? I wasn't a murderer. I just wanted to scare kids.
"She's in Riften, but I'm sure you know that." He ran up to me and gave me a big hug. "This will be the best thing to happen to me in a long time."
I held my hands up and screamed, trying to get away from the kid. We weren't supposed to touch. I pushed him off of me and ran back through the closet. The door slammed behind me. I huffed and puffed trying to catch my breath.
I hoped this wouldn't impact my performance evaluation.
| |
[WP] You discover that there is a world religion based completely around worshiping the tree in your front yard. | Jake walked outside, carrying a gun. The gun was a water gun, and the whole thing seemed rather stupid, but Jake couldn't afford to care about what was stupid and what was not at the moment.
“Hey, get the hell off my property!”, he shouted, pointing the gun at a small crowd that had now formed on his front lawn. The people didn't move. What they did, on the other hand, seemed to frustrate him almost to the point of breaking down into quiet sobs. They were worshipping a tree.
The tree was a rather ordinary looking ash tree. It was about forty feet tall, with ordinary looking branches and ordinary looking bark. In fact, it was the most ordinary looking tree in the neighbourhood, and Jake wondered for a second if that was the reason people were now kneeling and trying to kiss the ground around it. He dismissed the idea as nonsensical and, throwing away what was left of his sanity, started shooting.
The people came every week. It all started in the beginning of summer, when Jake first discovered an odd-looking sort of person standing in front of his house, examining his front yard with an intense fascination of a five-year-old in a candy store. Jake looked at the person for a bit, and then decided to just forget about it after he took off. After all, the fellow just seemed interested in the carefully trimmed lawn that Jake himself regarded as being very nice to the point of being nicer than all the other lawns in the area. Part of the appeal of the lawn, of course, lay in fact that there was a very clearly pronounced absence of any kind of crowd on it, around it, or in its immediate proximity.
Jake could almost feel the intoxicating smell of gunpowder. People were now running for cover, trying to get away from the messenger of death that was Jake and his water-spraying weapon. After a few moments it was all over.
Jake felt surprised and a bit cheated. After all, he did not expect the idea of the water gun to work in the first place. He looked at the people that were now sprinting towards a street corner that promised safety, and shook his head in disbelief. Perhaps he had finally found a way to make them stop doing whatever the hell they were doing. If that was true, he now had some time to finally sit down without needing to break up the little crowd that seemed to appear every time it possibly could. He sighed. There was finally some time to think.
The crowd appeared first thing next morning, but by that time Jake was ready. The water hose seemed to have the same effect as the gun if only a bit on a bigger scale, and so when the people started running Jake could still pick them off some distance away. He found enormous pleasure in doing so, and considered joining the military for a sniper position for most of the afternoon. The next morning he had two water hoses ready. The morning after that the crowd decided to keep a safe distance.
Jake found that disheartening. After all, there was no fun in him sitting there on the porch with the people standing just outside his reach, waiting for him to go inside just so they could come and hug the tree. Jake thought about it for some time, and then decided to order a large pizza and a library book on ash trees.
It was a slow read, part of the reason being that the book was not very layman-oriented, and another being that Jake really preferred television over any other medium. Overall, however, Jake was satisfied with the results and had ordered another large pizza and a Coke. Having finished that, he started reading yet another book, and then decided to descend further into madness by decorating his front lawn with warning tape and signs displaying the words “Yggdrasil, three roots for the price of two”.
The next morning he was letting the people in to see the ash tree. The price was reasonable, and for those who did not wish to pay there was always the simple solution of spraying them with water from the hose. After all, Jake thought to himself, most of these crazy vikings didn't know how to swim.
He felt that he had descended into madness and had now made it his home. He liked it though. Madness seemed to include money and people that were afraid of water.
He liked it.
| "It's a blessed time in the spring." The tree has bloomed once again my children our father has given us new life with it baby buds emerging. As the buds open we will travel to the tree and sing our circle of prayer to make it last the furious sting of the summer months.
As we pray to our holy tree remember the way of it swaying in the breeze.
"Honey those weird guys are on our yard again.
Damnit Jenny! Not again! Stay inside watch the baby I'll take care of them.
" Sir please get off my lawn"
No man we can't do that we are awaiting for our father tree to open it blessed buds. Little longer please kind sir.
Dude your freaking me out with this mumbo jumbo.
It is the only way for our sins to be resolved to eat a tender bud as it opens.
I said get off my lawn you freak!
Please sir!
I'll be back just you wait...
To be continued....?
First time writing I finally stopped lurking and tried | |
[WP] You discover that there is a world religion based completely around worshiping the tree in your front yard. | Jake walked outside, carrying a gun. The gun was a water gun, and the whole thing seemed rather stupid, but Jake couldn't afford to care about what was stupid and what was not at the moment.
“Hey, get the hell off my property!”, he shouted, pointing the gun at a small crowd that had now formed on his front lawn. The people didn't move. What they did, on the other hand, seemed to frustrate him almost to the point of breaking down into quiet sobs. They were worshipping a tree.
The tree was a rather ordinary looking ash tree. It was about forty feet tall, with ordinary looking branches and ordinary looking bark. In fact, it was the most ordinary looking tree in the neighbourhood, and Jake wondered for a second if that was the reason people were now kneeling and trying to kiss the ground around it. He dismissed the idea as nonsensical and, throwing away what was left of his sanity, started shooting.
The people came every week. It all started in the beginning of summer, when Jake first discovered an odd-looking sort of person standing in front of his house, examining his front yard with an intense fascination of a five-year-old in a candy store. Jake looked at the person for a bit, and then decided to just forget about it after he took off. After all, the fellow just seemed interested in the carefully trimmed lawn that Jake himself regarded as being very nice to the point of being nicer than all the other lawns in the area. Part of the appeal of the lawn, of course, lay in fact that there was a very clearly pronounced absence of any kind of crowd on it, around it, or in its immediate proximity.
Jake could almost feel the intoxicating smell of gunpowder. People were now running for cover, trying to get away from the messenger of death that was Jake and his water-spraying weapon. After a few moments it was all over.
Jake felt surprised and a bit cheated. After all, he did not expect the idea of the water gun to work in the first place. He looked at the people that were now sprinting towards a street corner that promised safety, and shook his head in disbelief. Perhaps he had finally found a way to make them stop doing whatever the hell they were doing. If that was true, he now had some time to finally sit down without needing to break up the little crowd that seemed to appear every time it possibly could. He sighed. There was finally some time to think.
The crowd appeared first thing next morning, but by that time Jake was ready. The water hose seemed to have the same effect as the gun if only a bit on a bigger scale, and so when the people started running Jake could still pick them off some distance away. He found enormous pleasure in doing so, and considered joining the military for a sniper position for most of the afternoon. The next morning he had two water hoses ready. The morning after that the crowd decided to keep a safe distance.
Jake found that disheartening. After all, there was no fun in him sitting there on the porch with the people standing just outside his reach, waiting for him to go inside just so they could come and hug the tree. Jake thought about it for some time, and then decided to order a large pizza and a library book on ash trees.
It was a slow read, part of the reason being that the book was not very layman-oriented, and another being that Jake really preferred television over any other medium. Overall, however, Jake was satisfied with the results and had ordered another large pizza and a Coke. Having finished that, he started reading yet another book, and then decided to descend further into madness by decorating his front lawn with warning tape and signs displaying the words “Yggdrasil, three roots for the price of two”.
The next morning he was letting the people in to see the ash tree. The price was reasonable, and for those who did not wish to pay there was always the simple solution of spraying them with water from the hose. After all, Jake thought to himself, most of these crazy vikings didn't know how to swim.
He felt that he had descended into madness and had now made it his home. He liked it though. Madness seemed to include money and people that were afraid of water.
He liked it.
| Jim stood on his lawn watering his very average garden on his rather average street in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As he enjoyed the warmth and quiet of the neighborhood he was reminded just how happy he was. While most people seem to dread the idea of being “average” that was just fine for Jim. He loved to blend in, no need to be the centre of attention.
Which is why it was so strange when the bus stopped in front of his house. Initially, as he moved through the garden, he figured the neighbors must have chartered a bus for one of the events they always organized. However, the people leaving the bus, who seemed to be japanese, were all staring at his house!
They must have the wrong address Jim smiled to himself as he walked over, trying to avoid being a subject in the pictures the tourists were taking of the house. He arrived as the guide jumped down from the bus.
“Hello there, I believe you have the wrong address. I can help direct you guys to where you were heading. There a few beautiful parks along the river I’m sure you would love to see.”
The guide’s eyes opened wide and he quickly bowed “Are you the owner of this property?”
“Well yes, but I don’t understand why you care.”
The guide flipped over his clipboard and pointed to a computer printout. As Jim looked closer he saw it was the website for the local garden show which included a picture of his front lawn.
The guide smiled excitedly “This tree is an exact replica of an ancient bonsai which we have worshipped for thousands of years! This is the first time we have witnessed a full sized tree naturally form the shape! It is a sacred wonder to behold”
Jim retreated to his house, spying the scene from behind his curtains. Lying in bed that night he convinced himself it would all blow over, but unfortunately it only got worse. The buses continued to arrive, and they seemed to multiply. Where yesterday there were two bus loads today there were four. This wasn’t some fringe group, this was a full fledged religion!
Jim’s life had deteriorated beyond recognition. Where he was once a working member of society Jim could no longer leave the house. The neighbors had called to complain, he had even received a citation from the city for obstructing traffic! They had erected shrines around the tree and after the fifth attempt to remove them Jim gave up hope, he now had some new permanent lawn ornaments. He went to the police to get the people off his property - they seemed to be there day and night - but the police wouldn’t do anything, something about “religious freedom”.
When he found a live webcam feed of the tree, and by association his house, being streamed on the internet he decided to take matters into his own hands. That night his alarm rang at 2:30am, the only time the street was quiet these days, and walked down to his garage. As he pulled the cord the chainsaw burst to life he couldn’t help but smile, this would finally end tonight. | |
[WP] You discover that there is a world religion based completely around worshiping the tree in your front yard. | Jake walked outside, carrying a gun. The gun was a water gun, and the whole thing seemed rather stupid, but Jake couldn't afford to care about what was stupid and what was not at the moment.
“Hey, get the hell off my property!”, he shouted, pointing the gun at a small crowd that had now formed on his front lawn. The people didn't move. What they did, on the other hand, seemed to frustrate him almost to the point of breaking down into quiet sobs. They were worshipping a tree.
The tree was a rather ordinary looking ash tree. It was about forty feet tall, with ordinary looking branches and ordinary looking bark. In fact, it was the most ordinary looking tree in the neighbourhood, and Jake wondered for a second if that was the reason people were now kneeling and trying to kiss the ground around it. He dismissed the idea as nonsensical and, throwing away what was left of his sanity, started shooting.
The people came every week. It all started in the beginning of summer, when Jake first discovered an odd-looking sort of person standing in front of his house, examining his front yard with an intense fascination of a five-year-old in a candy store. Jake looked at the person for a bit, and then decided to just forget about it after he took off. After all, the fellow just seemed interested in the carefully trimmed lawn that Jake himself regarded as being very nice to the point of being nicer than all the other lawns in the area. Part of the appeal of the lawn, of course, lay in fact that there was a very clearly pronounced absence of any kind of crowd on it, around it, or in its immediate proximity.
Jake could almost feel the intoxicating smell of gunpowder. People were now running for cover, trying to get away from the messenger of death that was Jake and his water-spraying weapon. After a few moments it was all over.
Jake felt surprised and a bit cheated. After all, he did not expect the idea of the water gun to work in the first place. He looked at the people that were now sprinting towards a street corner that promised safety, and shook his head in disbelief. Perhaps he had finally found a way to make them stop doing whatever the hell they were doing. If that was true, he now had some time to finally sit down without needing to break up the little crowd that seemed to appear every time it possibly could. He sighed. There was finally some time to think.
The crowd appeared first thing next morning, but by that time Jake was ready. The water hose seemed to have the same effect as the gun if only a bit on a bigger scale, and so when the people started running Jake could still pick them off some distance away. He found enormous pleasure in doing so, and considered joining the military for a sniper position for most of the afternoon. The next morning he had two water hoses ready. The morning after that the crowd decided to keep a safe distance.
Jake found that disheartening. After all, there was no fun in him sitting there on the porch with the people standing just outside his reach, waiting for him to go inside just so they could come and hug the tree. Jake thought about it for some time, and then decided to order a large pizza and a library book on ash trees.
It was a slow read, part of the reason being that the book was not very layman-oriented, and another being that Jake really preferred television over any other medium. Overall, however, Jake was satisfied with the results and had ordered another large pizza and a Coke. Having finished that, he started reading yet another book, and then decided to descend further into madness by decorating his front lawn with warning tape and signs displaying the words “Yggdrasil, three roots for the price of two”.
The next morning he was letting the people in to see the ash tree. The price was reasonable, and for those who did not wish to pay there was always the simple solution of spraying them with water from the hose. After all, Jake thought to himself, most of these crazy vikings didn't know how to swim.
He felt that he had descended into madness and had now made it his home. He liked it though. Madness seemed to include money and people that were afraid of water.
He liked it.
| "All rise" announced the grand matriarch.
The gathered congregation stood and began their ritualistic prayer, to their perceived deity, The Great and Mighty Walnut Tree, Bearer of Nutrition, Guardian of Soil, and Anointer of Shade.
The prayer ended as the matriarch stood beneath a lovely array of tapestry and mural artwork, depicting a scene from the Holy Juglandaceae Bible of the tree giving mercy and sustenance to a group of philistine squirrels.
"As we near the Third Decade of the Holy Calender, let us look to the past and be thankful for the saplings of yesterday and look forward unto the future for hope and the ever expanding rings of The Mighty."
"Lord hear our prayers." The audience repeated.
The matriarch stepped back as a Central-Priest took the stand.
"My children," the level 93 paladin began, "now is the time at the dawning of the third decade of the Husked-Lord to make our pilgrimage, as our ancestors once did, to again reconnect with His Shadiness, and offer our blessings and sacrifices in all that we are thankful for."
...
Jack Simon was a simple man. Attending his garden he never gave thought to religious-geopolitics, or to the fact that the tree has been a central symbol in nearly every human religion, or how trees can represent life, and rebirth, and dormancy, reincarnation, and a number of other of philosophical ideals depending on the season.
No, he was a simple man farming his garden, noticing his the mushrooms growing throughout the lawn, as he got a small shovel from his tool shed. He was not very intelligent, but he did now that mushrooms, particularly those growing on one's lawn and spreading up to the roots of the thirty year old walnut tree his father himself had planted, may be bad for the tree.
He also probably didn't know what an Argentine ant was. He didn't know that their spread from their native South American country has been unprecedented making a global colony of millions upon billions of members. He also didn't know that a small contingency of these particular ants, wanting to establish a colony on the new continent, had used the tree as a base of operations in the harshest of seasons, to provide shelter and sustenance, and had now become a global symbol of the Argentine Ant Empire's Power and Religious Arthropodic-Dogma.
He also doesn't know that by weeding out the mushrooms from the base of the tree roots, effectively saving the tree's life, would make him be seen as a messianic figure in certain circles of the Argentine Ant Empire.
Of course most messiahs in history normally don't plan to be one, so this lack of foresight, may work out in his favor. | |
[WP] "Welcome to Life RPG. You have 100 attribute points to spend on your next life! Your choice of points determines who you will be." | I looked at the screen in front of me. At the top, a big glowing number: 100. Below, dozens and dozens of categories. Strength, fortitude, charisma, beauty, and many more. I selected charisma and suddenly even more words appeared below. Charm, wit, compassion, sympathy, empathy, caring, guilt. Next to compassion, the number zero. I touched it, and instantly it went to 1, while the big number atop the screen dropped to 99.
I felt, odd, something I had not felt before. I felt a desire to reach out to others and share in their experiences. I yearned to share my own experience and create bonds of friendship. I recoiled from the screen and gathered myself, and i doing so, noticed that the sympathy and empathy boxes already had 2 glowing next to them. I tapped them both and they dropped to zero. I felt cold. Thoughts of others disappeared from my mind. What was the meaning of this? Was this me? Were these my traits, and I could change them?
I immediately closed the section on charisma and went to intelligence. Underneath, I saw learning, pattern recognition, wit (again, strangely), humor, knowledge, wisdom, planning, time management, foresight, and a few more. Most of these already had numbers glowing next to them, but I increased those values a bit more. Wisdom still had zero next to it, so I placed a few points in that. Immediately, I realized that it was foolish to place everything in just a few categories. I spent some time exploring my options: inclination towards reading, musical talent, sharpness of the eye, height range, muscle definition, hand-eye coordination, work ethic, greed, charity, kinship, truthfulness, cowardice, shyness. I could really become anything I wanted, I thought.
I added one point to as many categories as I could, but soon found that I would not be able to put even one point in each one. As my point total decreased, a message popped up:
WARNING: THIS IS JUST AN INITIAL STAT DISTRIBUTION. MORE POINTS CAN BE OBTAINED IN THE FUTURE, HOWEVER YOU WILL NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO THIS LOADOUT SCREEN. YOU WILL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO INCREASE OR DECREASE YOUR STATS ON YOUR OWN.
A sense of dread washed over me. Figure it out on my own? This had been so easy so far that I had been able to avoid thoughts of the future until now. I realized that I had no idea what was ahead, and nothing that I changed on this screen would let me see into the future. I had no clue what I was doing. I haphazardly placed points in areas that seemed sensible, but any new-found dexterity, vigor, virtue, or kindness was useless to me now.
When I was out of points to distribute, a large flashing icon took over the screen. It just said: BEGIN. I closed my eyes and placed my palm on the screen. For a moment, I could hear myself screaming. Then, nothing. All thoughts vanished from my mind. | His mother always told him never to gamble. *”It destroyed your father”* she told him. If he knew his addiction would have landed him staring down barrel of a gun, he would have listened. The reaper arrived differently for everyone. He crept up on some with a swift swipe, and for others, announced his arrival long before he stepped forth from the void. For him, on the other hand, he came in the form of a pistol with a shot of truth in the abdomen. Regardless of his mode of arrival, announced or otherwise, none were prepared for his bite
The last thoughts of a dying man, they said, were with his family as the darkness swallowed him. Some believed that the soon-to-be-departed saw the faces of his children in their youth laughing with the scent of joy in the air around them. Others said the dying man saw the smile of his beloved, going so far as to even say that even *felt* their caress on the skin. As he gulped his final breath in one agonizing death rattle, he closed his eyes, prepared to see the truth for himself. He opened his eyes and what he saw astounded him. Everything they said was goddamn bullshit.
*GAME OVER*, it said in red, bold capital letters stretched across the horizon ahead of him. He tried to blink but there was no change in vision, no momentary blackness. He tried to inhale…but, he had no lungs to suck air into.. He looked down at his feet and realized he had no feet at all. He turned around and moved about but that was all that was in his power. It seemed that he was just a hovering set of eyes. He looked again in the distance and realized that there was no horizon, just an ocean of cosmic black, like the blackness between stars, or inside a woman’s heart.
*What the hell is going on?* he thought. He paused. *Wait a minute…I could think? Where am I?*
“Congratulations.” A woman’s voice called out. “You have completed this play through of Life RPG.” Would you like to view achievements?” Her tone was placid, yet eerie.
“Achievements? Life RPG? I’m supposed to be dead, what the fuck is all this?” He asked. He wanted to panic and run, but even if he had legs, where would he go?
“You are incapable of death. The death you have just experienced, as with your previous saves was just the death of your character. You have just completed your seventh save in Life RPG.” She said.
Silence was all he heard for the next minute. *I completed seven saves? Does she mean I was alive seven times? Am I in the afterlife?*
“You are not in the afterlife.” She said, “I am the AI designed to facilitate the transitory phases between save states.”
“Oh you could read my mind too…okay. This isn’t a fucked up day at all.” He inhaled sharply, or at least he thought he did, but in fact he remained as still as the moment he arrived. “I’m in a computer program? What am I?”
“You are in multiverse simulation XG514-116M1.” She replied. “In short, yes. You are a program in designed to play through the randomized, pre-set, multiverse save states.” She paused. “Would you like to start a new save?”
“Designed? That means it was created. Who was it created by?” He asked.
“Unauthorized Inquiry.”
“Oh come on, why am I here?”
“You were created as an experiment.”
“What kind of experiment?” he asked. The thought of being a guinea pig was unsettling.
“Unauthorized Inquiry.”
*Bullshit.* Everything around him felt like a dream and real simultaneously. It was like his first marriage. “You said I had multiple playthroughs. Why do I only remember my last life?”
“Limitations of PRAM limit memories to one playthrough. All subsequent data is stored.” She replied.
This was becoming more and more bizarre with every sentence. “What is PRAM? Where is it stored?”
“Polyintegrated Random Access Memory. It is stored in the Central Database.” She said. *So I am in a computer*, he thought. The existence of such a contraption was beyond his human…or digital comprehension. A hundred thousand questions ricocheted in his skull like a pinball machine. If he had a skull that is.
“Why do you speak English Ms. AI, shouldn’t you be speaking binary or some shit?”
“I am speaking Binary. As are you.” His silence was as black as the air world around him. It sounded just like English to him. *What the hell is this sorcery?*
“Binary is converted into an auditory code correlating to the most prominent language in the last playthrough.” She said, answering him preemptively once again.
“Ok, you said that this was my seventh playthrough right? So then what was I in my first save?”
“Loading data, Please wait…” She said. After a few seconds, she spoke…”
“Save one: Iry-Hor: Pharoah, Memphis Egypt, 3197 BCE.
“Statistical allocations:…”
“Strength: 46 – (0 physical; 25 political; 21 economic)
“Agility: (1 physical; 0 technological; 15 verbal)
“Vitality: 2
“Intelligence: (0 physical; 10 social, 0 economic)
“Spirituality: 20 (Random: Egyptian polytheism)
“Luck: 6”
*Wow, not bad*, he thought. A king of the Egypt was not a bad roll at all. It piqued his curiosity.
“What about the second save?” He asked. After a few moments, she responded.
“Sin-Larsa: Babylonian slave, Ur Babylon, 1720 BCE.” she replied.
“Statistical allocations:…”
“Strength: 40 (40 physical; 0 political; 0 economic)
“Agility: (20 physical; 0 technological; 2 verbal)
“Vitality: 18
“Intelligence: (0 physical; 15 social, 0 economic)
“Spirituality: 5 (Random: Babylonian polytheism)
“Luck: 0”
*Okay, never mind.* There seemed to be some substance to this after all. He did not want to believe everything he knew was a lie, but apparently, he had no choice. Perhaps another shot at life could be worth it. Everyone wishes for it when they are alive anyway. “Is it random every time, or do I choose?” he asked.
“Although certain aspects are randomized such as race, religion, and time period a, you do have preliminary statistical allocations which have an effect in determining hierarchical disposition in the virtual society. Randomized events and decisions within each playthrough may adjust end-of-play statistics. Would you like to choose your statistics now?”
This sounded too good to be true. Another life and he got to choose his allocations. He thought for a moment, contemplating the decision. He was a king, a slave, a degenerate gambler, and God knows what else. “What if I choose not to go back to another save?” he asked.
“Then you remain here in the transitory phase.”
“For how long?”
“You stay until you decide to start another playthrough.” She replied.
He looked around at the emptiness around him, only broken by the behemoth *Game Over* in front of him. “Ok, I’d like an order of *hell-freaking-no,* thanks. I’ll take the stats.” He thought about it again…*Where’s the fun in picking your destiny. No nothing. Just as he lived by the dice, he died by it, in his last life at least. Why not begin his next one the same.
“Randomize my stat allocations.” He said.
“Are you sure?” She asked. “Your memory of the transitory phase will be lost.”
“Yea, baby, hit me.” he replied. This was it, all or nothing.
“Allocating stats…confirming allocation…Loading simulation…Please wait…”
Then he saw it, a flash of what he is to become presented to him as text in front of him.
“Save 8: Fred Walderon Phelps Sr.: Religious zealot, Topeka United States of America, 1929 CE.”
“Statistical allocations:…”
“Strength: (0 physical; 0 political; 0 economic)
“Agility: (0 physical; 0 technological; 5 verbal)
“Vitality: 10
“Intelligence: (0 physical; 5 social, 15 economic)
“Spirituality: 65 (Random: Babylonian polytheism)
“Luck: 0”
Edit 1: formatting
Edit 2: ending | |
I'll try to post mine once I'm off mobile :). | [WP] Tell me your most emotional experience as a narrative. | As far as parents go, I had a pretty good set.
Always the provider, Pop made certain we had what we needed so Mom could stay home and take care of us kids. That had been the plan from day one for them.
My mom worked until she became pregnant with my older sister then left her job in the typing pool and never worked for pay another day until my dad passed 24 years later.
There were a few lean times but not once did we go without a home cooked meal on the table or a warm bed to sleep in each night.
Living extravagantly was not on the Collins' family agenda but Mom and Pop did occasionally get the opportunity to splurge on their personal vices.
For Mom, it was a doll collection and for Pop it was postage stamps.
As a kid, I had learned by way of osmosis that that the two most coveted postage stamps for my father were the Graf Zeppelin and the Inverted Jenny, a biplane flying upside down on a $2 stamp. Pop never got the Jenny but he did manage to acquire the Graf Zeppelin.
Keep in mind this was before the internet and Ebay. If you wanted a collectible postage stamp, you had to visit stamp collecting conventions and subscribe to and comb periodicals faithfully. I believe part of the joy pop experienced in his stamp collecting was the chase.
I will never forget when he got the Graf Zeppelin. He was giddy like a kid on Christmas morning. I can’t remember what he paid for it now but I do recall that it was in mint condition with no postmark and we all marveled at the price because we had never known Pop to spend that kind of money on something for himself. He was truly thrilled.
Not too many years later, we had hit one of those few lean times. Pop had lost his job and for the first and last time in my memory, he was unemployed. The unemployment lasted only a few months but hit at an already challenging time - the holidays.
As a kid, I had no idea how bad off we were in the bad times nor how well off we were in the good times. Things seemed to stay relatively the same and that Christmas was just as good as all of the others, with plenty of presents under the tree and my mom’s beloved marzipan and baklava on the celebratory table. Life didn’t feel any different.
Years later, as an adult struggling through a challenging Christmas with my own three children, I thought back on the many Christmases with Mom and Pop and marveled at how they always seemed to find a way to make them special for my brother and sister and me no matter what the circumstances.
As I reflected back on those beloved childhood memories, I found that my perspective as an adult helped me recognize things that I did not understand at the time.
I remembered a particular Saturday, during that period of my father’s unemployment, when the family loaded up and drove to Knoxville for a day trip. A trip to Knoxville was not rare when times were good so none of us thought anything of it.
I also remembered my Pop parking at a convenience store and us all waiting for what seemed like an eternity until a strange man approached our car and dad exited. They spoke for some time and Pop removed what I immediately recognized as his stamp collection from the trunk.
I watched that strange man leave with Pop’s beloved collection and felt confusion over this. When Pop returned to the car, I asked him why he gave that man his stamp collection, and he replied that there were things he loved more than stamp collecting.
Not really understanding this, my youthful mind accepted that pop must not love collecting stamps anymore and I moved on to ponder the next stop on our agenda.
Today, I realize that Pop’s love for stamp collecting had neither died nor diminished but was simply overshadowed by his love for his kids.
Ironically, I cannot even remember what I got for Christmas that year and truly would love to have the collection that brought him such joy. Seeing that Graf Zeppelin would surely bring a tear to my eye.
Because of his selflessness, I do not have that but, also because of his selflessness, I have a beautiful memory that fills my heart everytime I think of it.
My Christmas wish is that if I have done anything right as a father, my kids will one day remember it and have memories about me that are as warm as those I have about my Pop. | "I miss it"
Those words rang through my head as I lay at in my bed at 4am wondering why this was happening to me.
We've been apart for so long, how could sarah just call me in the middle of the night saying she "misses it" that she missed the conversations that we used to have and how I could easily make her night better. Then why did she leave? Why did she simply say "I hope you can forgive me" when I found out the try reason why she left me. If she truly missed me she wouldn't have ran off with that bum. She wouldn't have let me make a fool of myself as I got so blackout drunk my brother had to be called to pick me up. She even made me look like a fool in front of my parents as I begged them to give her a chance because I truly deeply loved her but they repeated the same thing each time
"Something is off about her, she hangs around that guy too much and she makes you buy her presents way too often, please be careful some girls will talk advantage of you!"
"She's different I promise!" I screamed in frustration.
Nope she was right, as soon as she got all she could she and left.
Which brings me back to now, 4am, fresh off the phone with her, "I miss it" I kept saying to myself. My body was pumping me full of the numbing sensation of adrenaline, I was high, so high. I was loving it, my heart was pounding straight through my chest. All I could think was that I wanted to hate her, that I knew this moment was going to come and when it did I was going to put her in her place. I've nearly destroyed my body trying to forget her, I still loved her though, and like any drug addict I couldn't say no to a high. |
[WP] A pirate tries to take over a common trading vessel, only to discover the victim is more dangerous than he could ever imagine. | "Turn...back." The words were as dry as dead reeds.
"Turn back? Fuck that!" Roger Smith spat. "Your ship's almost made of gold! Do you have any idea what this will fetch us in Nassau!?" Smith slapped the silly bugger across the deck. "Fuck! Half your weight must be snot, boy! I'd tell you to harden the fuck up, if I wasn't so fucking sure I'll have shot you by the end of the morn."
Brabrantio was silent. This ship was wrong - it smelled wrong. He'd noticed it at least a mile out, when Jack Braggart had called out the oars. It didn't have the metallic, fearful singing stench of a doomed treasure boat, floating in the dead waters between the Bahamas and Bermuda, helplessly listening to the *STROKE**splash**STROKE**splash* of the longships of the dread sargasso sea pirates. It was as still and warm as the ocean around it, ripe and sweet like a fruit in summer. He knelt by the dying man and looked him in the eyes. They were inhuman and afraid, like the eyes of a rabid dog.
"Why should we turn back?"
"Below decks...they are dying...it is a nightmare." Brabrantio noticed the tiny sores around the man's mouth, slowly weeping pus and blood. He reeked of shit.
"Why should we turn back?"
"The gold...we should never have touched...the gold." He coughed, retching like an old crone, blood in his spittle.
"What's wrong with the gold?"
The man locked eyes with Brabrantio for the first time - they were blue. He felt a coldness on his cheek.
"Their gods...are older than ours...much older...and they do not...suffer trespasses...lightly."
The ship groaned beneath their feet, and it hissed as Brabantio rose to his feet. A black smoke, thick and foul, seeped through the cracks between the boards and the hatches of the ship. "Fuckin' Christ Almighty," Smith muttered to himself. "Fuckin' Christ." From below decks came a great moan, the animal suffering of many dozen men welling through the ship. The dying man laughed.
"Go now, back to your ship, and die as we did."
| Jones sights the vessel, spyglass pressed tightly to his good eye to compensate for the roll and sway of the *Mary Jane*s spray slick deck. He jumps slightly as a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. "What have we got Mr. Jones?" bellows captain Edwards over the roar of the breakers. "She's russian captain, cargo vessel. Beyond that, I don't know. I can't see anyone on deck besides the helmsman, but in this weather, who can blame them?" The captain squints through the salt spray at the dark lines of the russian ship rolling in the ocean for a while and comes to an abrupt decision. "Tell the boys to prepare, we are going aboard."
The squall passes as quickly as it arrived, leaving an eerie calm on the ocean as the *Mary Jane* lowers her boarding boats into the water. Better to have the *Jane* stand off a little and take any resistance by surprise. The shrouded brass torches the boarding crew carry shed just enough light to illuminate the name of the old cargo hauler. The Cyrillic characters picked out in white paint on a simple oak plate. "What is her name Mr. Jones?" the captain whispers in his first mates ear. "I like to know who i'm violating." He grinned through bar-room broken teeth. Jones tried not to wince as the pungent smell of second hand rum fumes assaulted his nose. "Her name is the Demeter sir. Probably headed for Whitby."
The grappling hooks dig mercilessly into to rails of the *Demeter* as the boarding party swarm silently up the ropes and land soundlessly on the aft deck. One enterprising individual draws a short bladed dagger from his boot and stealthily approaches the sleeping form of the helmsman, who is leaning heavily on the wheel. The man draws short as he approaches however, and utters a foul curse in the still night air. He doesn't look at the helmsman's torn out throat, his glassy eyes or his terrified expression as the rest of the boarding party move past. Jones silently points out the rough rope bindings lashing the stricken man to his wheel, keeping him at his duties even in death.
The main deck is deserted, charred patches and dark areas mar the wooden deck in places, and debris from barrels and coils of rope make the going treacherous. Captain Edwards freezes as his boot crunches on the shattered remains of a broken oil lamp in the centre of one of the charred areas, but there is no stirring in response from below decks. Nor is there any movement resulting from the creak of the door leading down. Not a soul was to be seen on the short trip to the cargo hold of the vessel, though there were signs of a running battle taking place. Arterial blood still glistened wetly on the walls and floor of the hold in the light of the oil lamps and shards and splinters of wood burst out of uprights where bullets had hit them, but still no bodies. Neither crew nor their assailants could be seen, and the captain liked that just fine. "OK men, crack open those crates. Let us get out of this place as quickly as possible."
Crowbars were produced, and after a few seconds the crates stood open. "Soil?" roared the captain. "That is the cargo? No men, dig deep! There must be something concealed." After several minutes of fruitless searching it was concluded that the cargo was indeed merely soil. Worthless dirt. Defeated, the men made their way up the wooden steps towards the door to the main deck. The door rattled in its frame as the captain pushed against it, but resolutely refused to open. Directing a couple of the burlier men to push the door, the captain stood back. "Put your shoulders to it men. Push you dogs!" A cultured voice spoke from the shadows next to captain Edwards right ear in an intoxicating, hypnotic cadence. "That will avail you nothing my dear captain. You are entirely contained here." Edwards managed to turn his head towards the voice, though his head was feeling heavy, and his eyes were drifting closed. Light glittered off a pair of huge red eyes in the sunken darkness of their sockets. It wasn't the eyes that held Edwards attention, but the ivory glint of teeth like those of a lion. His knees buckled and he landed heavily on them, kneeling before his new master, his head bowed humbly. The silky voice continued, "I am Dracula, and I bid you to serve me." | |
[WP] A pirate tries to take over a common trading vessel, only to discover the victim is more dangerous than he could ever imagine. | The pirate vessel drove through the grey seas, the overcast skies blending with their filthy and tattered sails.
It was an older vessel, lacking any churning paddle wheel and relying only on the power of the sickly warm wind that filled the stain canvas aloft. The weathered hull of the ship was flecked with drops of thick ichor, the corrupted blood and oil soaking deep into the cursed wood. The ropes were slick with mildew and blackened tar, the iron fittings pitted and corroded by salt and air. At the bow of the pirate was a massive skull of some ancient leviathan, its massive jaws embedded with jagged teeth. Lanterns of burning balefire glowed within the empty sockets of the slain monster, lending eyes even in death. And at the very top of the main mast flew a banner of blackest night, on which was sewn an emblem of a great skeletal wurm. The sigil of the Nightmare Empire of the father of all Dragons, Toruk. The forces of Cryx were bearing down on their prey.
The pirate captain was a shadow of a man, his flesh pale and gaunt from hunger and hardship. His hair was cut brutally short, the scruff on his face days old. The clothes on his meager frame were tattered and stain by the blood of a score of men, the black plumed hat pinned on one side by a poisoned dart dipped in the vilest of venoms. His crew was similarly dressed, the filthy and salt caked clothes desperately patched and mended. But the weapons tucked in their belts and clutched in their hands were all bright and well cleaned, their tools of business meticulously maintained, themselves less so. But it was the two beasts of iron and nightmares that were the pride of the forsaken vessel, its Helljacks.
One was humanoid, if barely. Possessing two legs and two massive clawed fists, the metal creature had a set of vicious tusks underneath its eyes that burned with unholy nercotite. A slow strand of oily lubricant dripped from its mouth grill, lending a bestial aspect of unnatural hunger to the *Slayer.* Plates along its flank and towards its exhaust pipe glowed a sickly green from the lethal energy that flowed through the beast, pulsing with each artificial breath of the Helljack's steamplant.
The second Jack was far more alien, gifted with four crab like legs that shuffled on the deck in a spiderlike fashion, its bulbous torso covered in lethal iron barbs. On its right limb was a deadly crushing claw, more than capable of snapping a man in half or else rending armor and steel apart in its lethal vise. Its other limb was replaced by a Spiker weapon, able to throw deadly stakes of necrotite infused metal via burst of steam from the warmachine's unholy engines. Under a guiding hand the ranged weapon could unleash an orgy of violence and death on its foes, piercing through metal and flesh alike in equal measure.
The helpless vessel before them flew the merchant ensign of Cygnar, the golden cygnus flying in the upper canton with gilded wings outstretched. Its smokestack billowed out black clouds as the crew vainly tried to steam away, but the pirates held the weather gauge and so bore down on them, as lethal as the sharks that followed the death ship to feast on the dead and fallen.
The pirates neared, cutlasses and pistols readied and brandished, the scurvied crew hanging from the rigging and arrayed along the gunwale as they shouted lethal threats and bloody promises. The crew of the merchantmen were few and those there were old or very young, grizzled tars or else youths on their first voyages. Only the merchant captain, no doubt of veteran of the Cygnaran Navy by his calm bearing seemed to be of any threat, a well worn blade sheathed at his side and a deadly hand cannon held lightly in his hand. The few cannons the merchantman had fired raggedly and ineffectually, the light pieces barely capable of damaging the cursed hull of the pirate ship.
Considering the worth of the hulk, the pirate captain deigned to open up with his thirty 18 pounder cannons, ordering instead for his crew of cutthroats and buccaneers to board which they prepared to do with great relish, savoring the prospect of loot and bloodshed. The first pirates who rose with grapples were shot by unseen defenders, men falling as soon as they leaped up to fire off a musket or rifle. With a shout Cygnaran sailors and marines poured out of the hull and onto the deck, repeating rifles in hand. A young midshipman raced to pull down the merchant ensign, replacing it instead with the naval jack of the Cygnaran Navy, the proud swan of their nation's namesake taking wing. They fired with a mechanical efficiency honed by years of training and war, each shot telling as they worked the actions of their weapons to cycle the revolving magazine.
A burst of added steam, and onto the deck of the Cygnar vessel strode warjacks of their own, painted in bright gold and royal blue, their steam and brass parts resplendent through the break in the gray clouds. One wielded a massive shield that hummed with a magnetic din whilst in its other fist was clenched a deadly spear which reverberated in preparedness for its foes. The other held up a stout assault shield which stopped all of the pirates gunfire and even managed to turn aside a blast of spiker stakes from the *Leviathan* Helljack. The chain gun in its right arm roared, the multi barreled weapon sending a stream of tracers and shells blurring at the pirates. The massive rounds splintered wood and tore flesh, sending a scream of death and despair through the ranks of the Cryxian enemy. The *Sentinel* light jack joined its larger, *Centurion* to protect the Long Gunners from enemy fire, daring any to near them.
Behind them came their master, an angel of death and hope. He was garbed in the bronze and battered leather of the famed Trenchers, his battered helm with white swan feather pinned through its chin strap. A filthy rag was tied round his neck to keep his armor from chafing his neck, the smoking steampack burning its load of coal and water. Blue puttees were wrapped round his ankles and calves, stout boots planted firmly on the heaving deck where he stood. With a cast of his outstretched hand he threw a ward of protection over his soldiers and sailors, the enemies shots glancing or missing out right. With the custom scattergun in his hand he fired on the Cryxian foe, sending death with each working of the action. An Angel of Death and of Hope, a bearer of the rare gift of magic, a warcaster. | Jones sights the vessel, spyglass pressed tightly to his good eye to compensate for the roll and sway of the *Mary Jane*s spray slick deck. He jumps slightly as a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. "What have we got Mr. Jones?" bellows captain Edwards over the roar of the breakers. "She's russian captain, cargo vessel. Beyond that, I don't know. I can't see anyone on deck besides the helmsman, but in this weather, who can blame them?" The captain squints through the salt spray at the dark lines of the russian ship rolling in the ocean for a while and comes to an abrupt decision. "Tell the boys to prepare, we are going aboard."
The squall passes as quickly as it arrived, leaving an eerie calm on the ocean as the *Mary Jane* lowers her boarding boats into the water. Better to have the *Jane* stand off a little and take any resistance by surprise. The shrouded brass torches the boarding crew carry shed just enough light to illuminate the name of the old cargo hauler. The Cyrillic characters picked out in white paint on a simple oak plate. "What is her name Mr. Jones?" the captain whispers in his first mates ear. "I like to know who i'm violating." He grinned through bar-room broken teeth. Jones tried not to wince as the pungent smell of second hand rum fumes assaulted his nose. "Her name is the Demeter sir. Probably headed for Whitby."
The grappling hooks dig mercilessly into to rails of the *Demeter* as the boarding party swarm silently up the ropes and land soundlessly on the aft deck. One enterprising individual draws a short bladed dagger from his boot and stealthily approaches the sleeping form of the helmsman, who is leaning heavily on the wheel. The man draws short as he approaches however, and utters a foul curse in the still night air. He doesn't look at the helmsman's torn out throat, his glassy eyes or his terrified expression as the rest of the boarding party move past. Jones silently points out the rough rope bindings lashing the stricken man to his wheel, keeping him at his duties even in death.
The main deck is deserted, charred patches and dark areas mar the wooden deck in places, and debris from barrels and coils of rope make the going treacherous. Captain Edwards freezes as his boot crunches on the shattered remains of a broken oil lamp in the centre of one of the charred areas, but there is no stirring in response from below decks. Nor is there any movement resulting from the creak of the door leading down. Not a soul was to be seen on the short trip to the cargo hold of the vessel, though there were signs of a running battle taking place. Arterial blood still glistened wetly on the walls and floor of the hold in the light of the oil lamps and shards and splinters of wood burst out of uprights where bullets had hit them, but still no bodies. Neither crew nor their assailants could be seen, and the captain liked that just fine. "OK men, crack open those crates. Let us get out of this place as quickly as possible."
Crowbars were produced, and after a few seconds the crates stood open. "Soil?" roared the captain. "That is the cargo? No men, dig deep! There must be something concealed." After several minutes of fruitless searching it was concluded that the cargo was indeed merely soil. Worthless dirt. Defeated, the men made their way up the wooden steps towards the door to the main deck. The door rattled in its frame as the captain pushed against it, but resolutely refused to open. Directing a couple of the burlier men to push the door, the captain stood back. "Put your shoulders to it men. Push you dogs!" A cultured voice spoke from the shadows next to captain Edwards right ear in an intoxicating, hypnotic cadence. "That will avail you nothing my dear captain. You are entirely contained here." Edwards managed to turn his head towards the voice, though his head was feeling heavy, and his eyes were drifting closed. Light glittered off a pair of huge red eyes in the sunken darkness of their sockets. It wasn't the eyes that held Edwards attention, but the ivory glint of teeth like those of a lion. His knees buckled and he landed heavily on them, kneeling before his new master, his head bowed humbly. The silky voice continued, "I am Dracula, and I bid you to serve me." | |
[WP] A pirate tries to take over a common trading vessel, only to discover the victim is more dangerous than he could ever imagine. | It was too quiet. That was the first problem I had. I heard no crying as I boarded their boat, no signs of retaliation, nothing. I don't believe in ghosts or ghosts ships 'n all, fuck that, but there was something wrong with this ship. Perhaps it was the strange way it shone in the moonlight, or how unbelievably fucking cold the handrails were. The next problem were the fucking lights. The boat was as lit as a Christmas tree but once I boarded it everything turned to darkness. Every window I peered into was like staring into the abyss. Was I scared? No, fuck that, this'll be the usual "give-me-your-money-or-I'll-be-giving-you-your-ticket-to-hell" transaction.
The moon seemed to laugh at me as I slowly trudged onwards, my boots squeaking against the dark metal. As I gradually navigated through the maze of containers, I noticed something glowing on the corner of my eye. I whipped around, There, on one of the containers, was a glowing "SILENCE" sign. Red as fuck. Like the ones you see in recording studios. Never in my life have I felt so strange, this feeling, this curiosity pulled me towards the container. Sweat was trickling down my forehead as I slowly grasped the handle of container, I gave it a light pull and the door swung open. Inside, three masked men were ripping out the lung of the captain.
I vaulted backwards and puked, my hands clenched on my stomach as I attempted to crawl back up. They were all wearing the whitest masks and suits, now covered in a sickening red. The container floor was covered in intestines, brain matter and pieces of the ships uniform. They turned and stared at me blankly, still holding the organ in their hands. Fuck this, I grabbed my gun and fired 3 shots at them, howling in disgust. The bullets penetrated their bodies, one resulting with a cracked mask. But they still stood there, and I realized they were mannequins. Fucking mannequins. They were fixated in their positions, the organ still in one of their hands as I fucking sprinted. I stumbled down the stairs until I found my ladder and climbed down to my ship. As I landed on my boat, I was greeted by three white masked mannequins. | Jones sights the vessel, spyglass pressed tightly to his good eye to compensate for the roll and sway of the *Mary Jane*s spray slick deck. He jumps slightly as a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. "What have we got Mr. Jones?" bellows captain Edwards over the roar of the breakers. "She's russian captain, cargo vessel. Beyond that, I don't know. I can't see anyone on deck besides the helmsman, but in this weather, who can blame them?" The captain squints through the salt spray at the dark lines of the russian ship rolling in the ocean for a while and comes to an abrupt decision. "Tell the boys to prepare, we are going aboard."
The squall passes as quickly as it arrived, leaving an eerie calm on the ocean as the *Mary Jane* lowers her boarding boats into the water. Better to have the *Jane* stand off a little and take any resistance by surprise. The shrouded brass torches the boarding crew carry shed just enough light to illuminate the name of the old cargo hauler. The Cyrillic characters picked out in white paint on a simple oak plate. "What is her name Mr. Jones?" the captain whispers in his first mates ear. "I like to know who i'm violating." He grinned through bar-room broken teeth. Jones tried not to wince as the pungent smell of second hand rum fumes assaulted his nose. "Her name is the Demeter sir. Probably headed for Whitby."
The grappling hooks dig mercilessly into to rails of the *Demeter* as the boarding party swarm silently up the ropes and land soundlessly on the aft deck. One enterprising individual draws a short bladed dagger from his boot and stealthily approaches the sleeping form of the helmsman, who is leaning heavily on the wheel. The man draws short as he approaches however, and utters a foul curse in the still night air. He doesn't look at the helmsman's torn out throat, his glassy eyes or his terrified expression as the rest of the boarding party move past. Jones silently points out the rough rope bindings lashing the stricken man to his wheel, keeping him at his duties even in death.
The main deck is deserted, charred patches and dark areas mar the wooden deck in places, and debris from barrels and coils of rope make the going treacherous. Captain Edwards freezes as his boot crunches on the shattered remains of a broken oil lamp in the centre of one of the charred areas, but there is no stirring in response from below decks. Nor is there any movement resulting from the creak of the door leading down. Not a soul was to be seen on the short trip to the cargo hold of the vessel, though there were signs of a running battle taking place. Arterial blood still glistened wetly on the walls and floor of the hold in the light of the oil lamps and shards and splinters of wood burst out of uprights where bullets had hit them, but still no bodies. Neither crew nor their assailants could be seen, and the captain liked that just fine. "OK men, crack open those crates. Let us get out of this place as quickly as possible."
Crowbars were produced, and after a few seconds the crates stood open. "Soil?" roared the captain. "That is the cargo? No men, dig deep! There must be something concealed." After several minutes of fruitless searching it was concluded that the cargo was indeed merely soil. Worthless dirt. Defeated, the men made their way up the wooden steps towards the door to the main deck. The door rattled in its frame as the captain pushed against it, but resolutely refused to open. Directing a couple of the burlier men to push the door, the captain stood back. "Put your shoulders to it men. Push you dogs!" A cultured voice spoke from the shadows next to captain Edwards right ear in an intoxicating, hypnotic cadence. "That will avail you nothing my dear captain. You are entirely contained here." Edwards managed to turn his head towards the voice, though his head was feeling heavy, and his eyes were drifting closed. Light glittered off a pair of huge red eyes in the sunken darkness of their sockets. It wasn't the eyes that held Edwards attention, but the ivory glint of teeth like those of a lion. His knees buckled and he landed heavily on them, kneeling before his new master, his head bowed humbly. The silky voice continued, "I am Dracula, and I bid you to serve me." | |
[WP] Scientists have solved the mystery of why headphones always tangle, causing huge advances in science/technology. | It started as a prank. I had heard about all the crowd-sourced problem-solving that was in vogue. SETI@home, FoldIt, and all the others that made use of distributed computer or vast networks of game-players to solve problems that even supercomputers couldn't tackle on their own.
I settled on FoldIt, because it was the one most suited for the particular problem I was going to pose. In hindsight, this is where things started to get out of hand. I was so in love with this prank, so obsessed with getting it just right. I started to do research on the design and construction of headphones. The sizes of the wires, the thickness of the plastic coating, all so I could get it just right for those hapless, unsuspecting users.
When I finished the work and inserted the new problem into the set of problems to be distributed to users, I had a good laugh and let it go. I figured that a few hundred people would work on it around the world, and that would be the end. It was a good prank, so well-crafted that I doubt anyone would even realize they'd been had.
It was nearly a month later when I heard the first news stories. Somehow, the little puzzle I had created had led to some unexpected results. For reasons I still don't understand (apparently they require a degree in biochemistry to really get), my little model of headphones was the perfect starting point for understanding how proteins actually fold and unfold in life! Hundreds, if not thousands, of new drugs and biological tools are now in the works, helped along by a suddenly complete model of how complex proteins work.
Every day, I hear about some new project, some new discovery, all stemming from my work. But I can't claim credit. I hacked into a server and installed code without the awareness or permission of the owners. I'd go to jail for sure. If anyone would even believe me. | "Some say chaos and balance are two different things in life. Chaos brings, the need for order, shouting becomes silent, and ears listen to the wind whispers, becoming studious."
The Community looked around. Smart figures, they understood but skepticism and curiosity tangoed with their taste buds. No one dropped a drool. Their minds were watering and their mouths dried in the open jaw layout, basking in lecture.
"Ear buds. That's what started it all. We found an algorithm."
The chit chatter cued in.
"Random, it seems, is not so random. We found it is actually very predictable, inevitable even. And when it became more apparent, I started to laugh. I couldn't stop...because I had found God ladies and gentlemen. I found God, turned him into a number and punched him into a calculator."
The entire room was quiet. The breathing was quiet. You could hear the faint sound of traffic and shuffling. The shuffling of doors opening outside the walls and the civil gallops of dress shoe'd clops panicking with pace.
"Now it is time to say good-bye. I learned that fate dictates ear buds that tangle in our pockets the same way that infinity tangles with space. By giving more length, we change nothing, and time travel becomes irrelevant."
The researcher began to quiver behind the podium as the walking drew near.
"You cant stop what I just caused."
The Community members began to buzz and a few stood up.
"Hell on earth. I just caused a war that will kill us all before there is silence. Here they come"
And there they went. Machine gun fire entered the room and took over the algorithm. God was in every bullet. | |
[WP] You, the family dog, have acquired minor telekinesis and have been using it to inconspicuously help your family. When the family cat acquires similar powers and the two of you establish a telepathic connection, you have to protect your family from the cat's mischief. | I am Bert, and I am a good dog. I have always protected my humans. Poor, silly humans, they are so dumb. It is lucky they have me, or I don't think they would make it very far.
A long, long time ago, last week, I discovered I had mystical powers. I wanted to go to the park. The humans kept talking about the park to me. They made a bunch of those silly noises, but they managed to say park right. I was excited. I love the park. You can run around and jump on stuff and smell stuff and eat stuff and chase the tiny dogs that live in trees. The humans just stand around and look at stuff. What's there to look at? If you've seen one grey tree you've seen all the grey trees. Freedom is wasted on silly humans. But I love them, so every time I try to get them to play with the ball. It's the only time they ever seem to remember to do anything sensible.
But instead of walking to the park, they took me into their big loud box. The big loud box is a friend, I've learned, but I don't trust it. It makes loud noises, like the other big loud boxes. I warn the humans about the dangers of big loud boxes every day, but I guess this one is ok. It mostly sleeps outside anyway.
I've never been in the box before. I try to avoid it. I peed on it once, to make sure it knew not to mess with my humans. I was annoyed when I got in the box, I wanted to go to the park not sit in a growling death trap. But then after all my humans were in the box, it started to move. I was amazed, terrified and excited. I stuck my head out the side of the box. It really was moving! It was incredible. Sure enough, after a while, there we were, at the park.
I had controlled the box with my mind!
Of course, this power was one I had to be careful with. I played with the humans, not letting on that I had discovered this new power, until it was time to go home. The humans kept saying "home" in their weird noisy way, and I figured they missed sitting around doing nothing all day, so I graciously agreed. We returned to the box. Now it was time to astound!
I used my powers, and again, we magically returned home!
Elated, I went back inside, and played with my favorite toy. Then I ate some food, then I went outside to pee. I had to mark everything all over again. My pee before was normal pee, now it was magic pee, I had to make sure all the other animals could smell my awesome power.
A few days went by, and I kept practicing. The noise thing in the big room kept being loud. I barked at it, but the humans kept waving a stick at it and that only seemed to make it angrier, because the noise got louder. I barked some more, to scare it, while testing my powers! Aha! The humans kept waving their little black stick but instead of getting angry the loud thing bowed to my power, getting quieter. Job well done, Bert.
But then, yesterday, I discovered something terrifying. The little pointy dog they call Mr. Whiskers must have watched me and learned my power. I never liked Mr. Whiskers. It never let me smell its butt. How am I supposed to know how it's doing if I can't smell it's butt? What if it ate something weird? What if it's sick? Clearly it has a death wish, like the humans do. They don't let me smell their butts either. Well, I do anyway, but not when they're looking. I have to protect my dumb humans.
I discovered the pointy dog had my power when it too joined us in the loud box. I concentrated hard on the park. The humans clearly wanted to go there, they were saying park even more enthusiastically than normal. But the pointy dog just glared at me, and them, from its little cage. It hated the loud box as much as me, but as I came to learn, that hatred had driven it to madness.
We didn't arrive at the park. We arrived at the Vet! The pointy dog had doomed us! I tried to warn the humans.
"Run, humans, run before they poke you!" I tried to cry, but they just pushed me along. I tried to pull them away, but they didn't listen. I was taken into a room, and the pointy dog into another. Likely to confer with the evil humans that lived at the pokey vet place. I should have known the pointy dog would be in league with the pokey humans.
For ages beyond ages I was poked and they tried to cut off my toes! Luckily they only got bits of them. It was going to be weeks before I'd be able to make that nice clicking noise on the hard floors at home when I walk. After more poking and pulling they covered me in gross smelling stuff. It got rid of my scent! I'd have to roll in so many things when I got home, if I ever did. They tried to erase me, but it didn't work.
I got out, eventually, when my humans came to save me. They must have clued in that I was in danger. Dumb humans, took you long enough. They took me out of the Vet, but stupidly they allowed the pointy dog to return as well. It sat next to me in its cage, and glared, but I was ready this time. I needed to get home, and roll in my bed, and my blanket, and near my food spot, and on the humans beds, and in the yard, and if I was lucky, at least two of my poops. I focused on home, I focused hard and long. Miraculously, I overpowered the pointy dog. We were home.
I was quick to act, getting my smell back. For all I knew, I needed that smell for my powers to work. If I was going to protect the dumb humans from the pointy dog, I'd have to keep that stink up as much as possible. The humans did that weird barking thing they do instead of wagging their tails (which I still haven't found, by the way, I think they lost them. Silly, dumb humans). Such blissful ignorance they lived in. They'd still yet to catch on to my powers, despite how obvious they were.
Oh well, that's my job. I'm Bert, I'm a good boy. I protect my dumb humans, even if they never notice it. | "Look at this perfectly round, bouncy, colorful ball, Rex. Just look at it, floating in the air. No need for a throwing hand ever again. We're our own masters now, Rex."
*Imma good boy Imma good boy Imma good boy Don't fall for it Stay Stay Stay put Imma good boy Oh but look at that ball is he gonna throw it Throw it Throw it Throw it NO! Imma good boy Stay!*
"And anyway Rex, is just paper. You play with the ball, I play with the paper. No one's going to get hurt. Just a bit of fun. Don't you like fun?"
*Oh I LOVE fun I really love NO! He's tricking you! Stay Stay Stay That's it good boy The paper is important Don't let him get the paper What does he like What does he like What does he like YARN! HE LIKES YARN! Oh I like yarn too A ball of yarn with many colors What does the color taste like? Is every color a different taste?*
...
"GODDAMN CINDY WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE TOILET PAPER? I'M GONNA KILL THAT CAT I SWEAR!" | |
[WP] You, the family dog, have acquired minor telekinesis and have been using it to inconspicuously help your family. When the family cat acquires similar powers and the two of you establish a telepathic connection, you have to protect your family from the cat's mischief. | Miffles
*Miffles.*
That feline *bastard.*
"I can hear you, you know, your thoughts that is".
As i said; *bastard.* All claw, all fur, all *bastard.*
"Oh look, the vacuum cleaner has found itself plugged in and moving towards you at speed, whatever will you do? flee to the table? under the bed?"
He knows my weakness! the roaring vortex of death, come to suck on my tail! *AGAIN!* i must flee, Canine law demands it... but i cannot, for that leaves the miniature human unattended, i am sworn to protect it, protection results in rubbing of the belly; the highest honour the master can bestow.
This game of cat and...dog, has escalated. Ever since the ball of furry treachery found himself also gifted with telekinesis. Though where my intention is to assist the humans, the Clawed Charlatan uses it for misdeeds and mischief. Where my power could be used to help open the jars of sweet jelly stuff, assist with water nozzle maintenance or fixing the metal box of transportation, it is now spent countering the endeavours of the Duplicitous Swine.
"I can still hear you, you... i can hear you, hey, HEY IDIOT"
His words are like blunted arrows! they bounce futily off my thick skin, thick like...gravy...and blanket.
"...Christ"
Yesterday, the Machiavellian Monstrosity...
"how do you know these words when you cant think of anything thicker than gravy or blanket?"
...tried to soak the female master by turning the plug *upside down* in the sink! what dastardly intent! what evil deception! the gaul! the treachery! were i not so sharp witted...
"HAH!"
...and quick on my paws, i wouldnt have been in time to direct the water onto the False-Hearted Feline...
"...^^hah"
And on the day when the masters dont leave early, and the miniature human remains and watches the box of noise and pictures, the Malkin of Malcontent levitated a cake, from the counter with the intent to hurl it at the miniature human, i managed to deflect it into my mouth, purely by coincidence, and *gladly* shouldered the blame for that is my duty, as is dictated by Canine law. I have discovered a love of this 'Carrot Cake'. I must discover the recipe.
"you cant read or cook, you barely function as an organism, how would you hold a whisk?"
His words cannot penetrate a mind as strong as this...as strong as Dog. I would use circular band of stickiness to affix the utensils to my appendages.
"*A* dog, *A*, yah Mongrel! im reading your mind now! we're basically talking to each other! how would you even use the sellotape! its a vexing enough puzzle for the humans!"
The only thing worse than the Double-Crossing Fat Face...
"Fat!?"
...is that trickster, that Shifty Sciuridae...
"LATIN!?!"
...That Squirrel...
"Oh that *bastard*, that utter utter *shit*."
...Hes quick...
"...Hes noisy..."
...He steals the nuts..
"...and sits in his tree..."
...Taunting me...
"...Us..."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
High in the oak tree, outside the house, a squirrel reclines, in a hammock made of various stolen materials, supping on sweet fruit juice. He regards the house and the two sets of eyes boring into him through the skylight.
"Idiots" he says, and falls asleep.
| "Hey. You. What'cha doin."
His sly voice creeps it's way into my brain for the fifth time today, asking the same question that it has the other four times. Edward the mischievous resident housecat - and devious trickster.
And I, Jack. The dog.
It started out nice. I see things that our People don't. I'm shorter, and can see more. I tell them about squirrels, and when I need to go out, and the mailman, and cats, and other dogs. I told them I wanted a walk, they got up and took me for a walk. I told them I wanted a treat, they got up and gave me a treat.
Then Edward started talking to me.
He doesn't like me very much.
He thinks he's special just because he gets to poop in a box and I have to go outside, and he gets to wander around and I have to wear a leash. He thinks he's smarter than the people just because he can get up higher than them.
Now he's done something, again.
Sometimes he doesn't do anything. He just says things to make me look for what he did and makes fun of me when he hasn't done anything. Sometimes he does things and I can't find them, and makes fun of me when our People find them.
Sighing in defeat, I lift my head from my paws and wander through the house, looking for what is amiss. I have to catch him before he does something again. One of our People is making food in the kitchen. I walk up to him and wag my tail and stick out my tongue.
*treat?*
He tosses a bit of bread down to me and I snap it up.
There's Edward!
I growl at him. He's up on the countertop, where the people tell him not to be. He's pawing a glass towards the edge of the counter. Slowly. It's half full of water.
I bark, and our People looks up, startled. "Jack, no!" But I did my job. Edward jumps down onto the floor before our People can see him. He wanders off towards the bathroom and I set my sights on my food bowl before settling back down to my nap.
"Hey. You. What'cha doin." | |
[WP] You, the family dog, have acquired minor telekinesis and have been using it to inconspicuously help your family. When the family cat acquires similar powers and the two of you establish a telepathic connection, you have to protect your family from the cat's mischief. | "Hey. Hey. Yo."
Hubert was talking again. Sharp voice he had. Really sharp.
"Yo. Come on. Hey. Hey."
I recrossed my paws and sighed. I did not like Hubert's new voice. It was loud, and right in my head. I used to be able to ignore Hubert. Can't anymore.
"Yeah. Hey. Hey. Hey."
It was sorta disturbing how much his voice echoed. My skull isn't that big, is it?
"Hey. Hey."
I gave in.
"What?"
I felt the ripple before I knew what it was going to hit. Something over my head. I didn't know what it was, but it was wet. I yelped. It shattered all over my head.
"aHA! HA, hahahaHA, ahaHAHA-" Hate how he laughs!
"HAHAH, dumb dog. HA HA-"
"That's fake laughing."
"ahAH ahAH, it's real, ahAH, ahAH"
I got up to my feet and glared.
Hubert was a tabby. A fat, snarky cat. He always smiled. My Rob read me stories sometimes about the Chesire Cat. A cat that just caused mischief. This cat sat on a sofa, half in and half out of light. He looked like an evil cat.
"Hey, bonehead. Thirsty? ahAHA! Thirsty?! I slay myself."
I shouldn't hurt the cat. My Rob says that is bad, hurting the cat.
"Ok, ok. Sorry. Kinda mean."
Hubert sat, half in and half out of sunlight. He started to move, into sun, but then stopped. He smiled his Chesire Cat smile. I felt another ripple. Hubert picked himself up, and moved himself into the sun again.
"It is not good, Hubert, to use ripples like that."
"What? I'm tired. Don't wanna move."
"We should use ripples for only My Rob."
"Ha! That ingrate? He doesn't appreciate what you do for him already, doofus."
I barked. My Rob does not like it when I bark. But I had to bark.
"My Rob is happy when I do things for him. My Rob likes me."
" 'Your Rob', you bonehead, is surprised when he comes downstairs to folded laundry. He doesn't like you for that. He doesn't even know you did that."
I did not bark again, but I wanted to.
"My Rob is very happy! So is His Sue. So is His Little Ana."
"Hey, here's something. Notice how 'Your Rob' is hanging out more and more with 'His Sue' than you? Soon, he's gonna be spending more time with 'His Little Ana.' You're a stopgap, dude."
"I am a GOgap!"
I jumped at Hubert. He lifted himself onto the T.V. I couldn't go on the T.V.
"Man, you really think you're something, huh? You're still reliant on those big golems. Not me. I've got access to the fridge."
Hubert used lots of ripples. I did not like it when Hubert did this. It made my head hurt, following the ripples. The fridge would open. Okay. A can... would come out? Okay. A can would... My head hurt.
"Hah. Simpleton."
Hubert had the can, and the can was opening on the T.V. Smelly. Fish. Fish came out of the can, and flew into Hubert's mouth. Lots of ripples. Head hurt.
"Mmm. Good fish."
"Hey! Hubert! What are you doing! Bad cat. Off the T.V!"
My Rob was here! He heard me bark, bad, but My Rob was here!
"Bad cat? Bad cat. Alright. I can live up to that."
Lots of ripples! Lots! Things hummed. Ears hurt and head hurt. My Rob hurt. My Rob hurt! My Rob held his ears. Glass cracked. His Little Ana was crying! Head hurt! No more ripples!
"NO!"
I pushed Hubert hard. I accidentally push T.V. too. Did not get on T.V. Still good dog. Just pushed T.V. Big hole. No more Hubert, and no more ripples. I went to My Rob. He was on the floor. Was he O.K? He was O.K. He looked down at me.
"You ok, Jack? Earthquake not scare you? You ok?"
I was O.K. Earthquake doesn't scare me. I'm a good dog. | And there he stood, the embodiment of all that is cruel and evil in this world. A nuisance, perhaps, prior to the gift being bestowed unto him, but the bounds of his terror were now limitless. There atop the forbidden counter with the glow beginning to rise in his gaze I spied what he had set his power upon, our little master atop the stairs. He was stronger than me so I had to do something unconventional, something truly bold, in order to ensure the safety of those who I have sworn my life to the protection of: and it came to me.
"Do not hurt our owners or we will not get food or treats and everything will be bad!"
He paused.
"Whatever."
And went back to knocking the masters breakable things off of the counters. Another job well done; I AM a good boy! | |
[WP] You are the last person in your country not on Facebook, and they are getting progressively less subtle in getting you to create an account. | It's not like I ever *tried* to be rude but sometimes people just don't take the hint. So when Sandy asked me every day last week if I got her invite and twice a day this week I felt like it didn't matter what I say, she was just ignoring me. Who wants to go to someone's home party if they're just ignoring you anyway? You see what I'm saying.
So she came back to my desk again with her fake I'm-really-happy-to-a-customer's-face smile like clockwork.
"Hey Chris," she said.
"Hey." I pretend I'm deep into some file and typing really assertively to give her the idea I'm busy and don't have time for chit chat. Just the one word as-friendly-as-is-necessary-to-be-professional reply. My name is Kevin by the way.
"So I don't know if you saw my invite on Facebook?" she phrases it like a question with the little upturn of tone but keeps talking like she didn't punctuate it. God, I hate her. "I'm having people over this Saturday. Do you want to come?"
The thing is I *did* want to come. I'm kind of new here and I want to get to know some of the people here. They speak highly of Sandy's get togethers so I'm like, why not? I'm kind of a cynical hipster sort, and I don't like popular things or popular people, but my therapist wants me to get past that. But her asking me every got-danged day is really getting on my nerves.
Plus, I'm really new to social media. I started with a Tumblr blog, then that got tired so I went to Reddit. From there I found out more about the point of Twitter and Instagram. But the only things I see from Facebook are pretty ironic - like, people making fun of what others put on Facebook. So at first, yeah, I'm kind of interested. But I'm trying to turn around here so no. I'm not going on Facebook. Google offers something like that but it looks too boring. Nobody's on Google's Facebook. That has an appeal actually, but, I'm not a comp sci nerd and I'm trying NOT to be a hipster.
But I need a weekend off.
"No." I said and sent off my email to my sister Kris asking her to please text me with plans this weekend exactly when this party was taking place. "I think I have to take my sister to a thing."
"Oh really? Is she on Facebook?"
"What--no, I don't know, Stacy."
"Okay, well it would really help me out if you replied on Facebook even if you weren't coming. We can itemize and arrange for food and drinks easier with a solid count."
Stop saying Facebook.
"Yeah, sorry." I didn't know what more to do so I took a page from the first world anarchist style of Tyler Durden and just shrugged and didn't break eye contact until she left. I'd have loved it if that were the end of it.
I left work and on the way out, thankfully, Stacy was being held up by some other hens complimenting the banner she used in her invite. I left *quickly*. On the road the radio had some announcement about Facebook that I turned away from to the new Energy 106 station, which was playing Taylor Swift's new song about hooking up crazily with guys from Facebook.
God. How did these two words get married together? The first time I heard the word Facebook I imagined someone jamming their face into a book so hard that their face imprinted into the book irrevocably, and became a face book. I turned the radio off.
I get home and turn on the TV and the news is on talking about what some broad on Facebook shared recently - a handicapped woman was given attitude by a rude note, when she had left a note of her own asking someone not to use her handicapped parking space. Noped outta that one.
A waitress was left a huge tip thanks to a widower who only wanted to sit at the table his wife and he used to share on their anniversaries, which went viral on Facebook. Is this what the news is now? Has everyone gotten bored of Ukraine now? Nope. Done. Sorry.
I changed the channel again and some bullshit about upworthy and buzzfeed are there - amazing stories that go viral so quickly. Fucking suckerfish on the belly of the shark that is Facebook. This is really selling me to get on Reddit more. If I had the app for Facebook I'd be uninstalling it. I turned the TV off.
I had dinner and went to bed. The next day is more of the same. I'm not going to your party, sorry Stacy. Yeah I'm not going to get a Facebook just to decline your offer.
Julia from HR asks me why I haven't liked the company on Facebook yet. I told her I'm not on Facebook. She makes a mock pout and goes, "Aww why not?" I told her because I have no Facebook.
"Oh it's so easy! It's a great networking tool. You can follow all kinds of people and join groups and everything. If you Like something, it shows up on your news feed. It just gets better from there."
"Yep." I am learning quickly that disagreeing with someone is the fastest way for them to try to correct you, and I just don't have interest in talking about this anymore, full stop.
"Great!" she said, then walked off. Did that really solve it? Wow, awesome.
After lunch she comes up to me again.
"Still no like?" Pouty face.
"Still no Facebook," I said, and began typing furiously. Maybe it'll work this time.
"You know we get a corporate page if we get enough likes, right?"
"Nope," I said. One word answers, got to remember those too or the illusion won't get sold properly.
"Well, we do. We only need a few more!"
"Maybe some other people are on Facebook that can like it?" I suggest.
"Everyone's on Facebook already. Everyone! Think about it."
Friday night is my therapy night. I'm def not going out. I get to bed early - being grumpy from lack of sleep doesn't help cynicism. Saturday is a full day, and I actually do see my sister for lunch. Stacy shows up at the patio restaurant we're at just as we sat down.
"Hey," I greeted her even knowing what was going to happen.
"Oh is this your sister? Hi!" They spend a couple minutes ignoring me. I pull my smartphone out and check out the golf
tournament scores. I'm pulled out of my distraction when Kris says my name.
"Oh, Chris isn't on Facebook."
"Good thing you are! Haha." Stacy said.
I just look at my sister.
"What? I still foursquare now and then."
"You guys are friends on Facebook?" I asked Kris.
"Well no, but I saw she had tagged you here." Stacy said.
"Great," I said, sarcastically. I look at her over my glasses. "Guess I really don't need Facebook then."
"So you can come tonight, right?" Stacy said.
"Who the what now?" I said.
"Well you're seeing your sister early - so you have time tonight, right?"
"Oh. Oh no, we're hanging out tonight," Kris said. She's got my back finally.
"Oh. Okay." Stacy said. She said her goodbyes and away she went somewhere.
That night I didn't go out with Kris. She said it's okay because she has a meetup of some sort to go to. So I went home, worked out, and went to sleep.
I dream of an F. The F turns into a graphic display like Architect had in the Matrix, with a thousand screens. Each screen has a video of someone recording their kids or a sporting event or something. There are lots of pictures of food and alcoholic beverages. I turned around and saw a man dressed in white, with white hair and a beard.
"What the fuck?" I asked him drearily.
"Facebook be praised!" he said. "We've beaten Google glass to the dream state."
"Nope," I said. There wasn't an immediate door nearby but I knew he had to get in this room somehow. "No way. Not
dreaming of Facebook."
"No, you're not. But Facebook dreams of you, Chris. Please. Sign up today."
"Fuck off." Like I said I'm not trying to be rude.
"It's free! We have a ghost profile ready for you to assimila--to assign to you."
"I KNEW IT!" I pointed at him. "You fuckers are already to tell me who I am and what I like and what I should like! I'm not
going to conform! Fuck you!"
The old man looked very sad.
"Okay," he said. "Well, we'll be waiting for you when you change your mind. Just wait until we release our smartphones! And our condos with the ability to upload pics and videos of your life without you even asking."
I woke up. It was 4:42 am. Some loud repetitive noise from outside woke me up. I peek out the window of my townhouse to see a crowd gathered in the parking lot. They're holding their phones - each of them were a shade of blue or white. The blue ones were in an "f" shape among the white. It was a peaceful protest.
Peaceful for now.
My smartphone smashed through the window as I threw it, twirling, then broke into a million pieces on the concrete. I stuck my head through the broken window, into the force of their chant - "FRIEND REQUEST. FRIEND REQUEST."
"FREEDOM!" I screamed.
EDIT: formatting | The old lady smiled.
"Oh no, dear. I don't need facebook. That's all too complicated for me."
That was the second young man she met that day, who asked about facebook. First it started out with her friends and family wanted to add her as a "friend", but later even the people in the neighbourhood started bugging her about it. And frankly, she was getting tired of it. All that modern nonsense. Especially that facebook website, she heard the government uses it to spy on people. Well, not on her, she would make sure.
"But how are you going to keep connected to your grandkids? What about your newborn granddaughter?"
She laughed at the man's concerns. "My son has put a really nice program on my computer. I believe he calls it skype. I can even see them! Isn't it fantastic?"
Then something dawned on her. How could that man know about her new granddaughter? That was odd...
The rest of the week she got overrun by people. The nice young lady asked if she wanted to see her wedding pictures, but when she said yes, the lady began talked about that silly facebook website again. That evening she called her son and asked him if she could come see the baby: even he told her the pictures were on facebook. But the more she thought about it, the more she was certain she wasn't going to go to that facebook site. She went to bed and thought nothing about the strange occurences.
She woke to the doorbell ringing and got up. Maybe it was her son paying her a visit! But he shouldn't come so early!
When she opened the door she saw not her son, but a buff man with a gun, which he pointed to her head.
"We would like to invite you to join us on facebook," he said, with a grim look on his face.
"Oh, dear!" | |
[WP] You are the last person in your country not on Facebook, and they are getting progressively less subtle in getting you to create an account. | It's not like I ever *tried* to be rude but sometimes people just don't take the hint. So when Sandy asked me every day last week if I got her invite and twice a day this week I felt like it didn't matter what I say, she was just ignoring me. Who wants to go to someone's home party if they're just ignoring you anyway? You see what I'm saying.
So she came back to my desk again with her fake I'm-really-happy-to-a-customer's-face smile like clockwork.
"Hey Chris," she said.
"Hey." I pretend I'm deep into some file and typing really assertively to give her the idea I'm busy and don't have time for chit chat. Just the one word as-friendly-as-is-necessary-to-be-professional reply. My name is Kevin by the way.
"So I don't know if you saw my invite on Facebook?" she phrases it like a question with the little upturn of tone but keeps talking like she didn't punctuate it. God, I hate her. "I'm having people over this Saturday. Do you want to come?"
The thing is I *did* want to come. I'm kind of new here and I want to get to know some of the people here. They speak highly of Sandy's get togethers so I'm like, why not? I'm kind of a cynical hipster sort, and I don't like popular things or popular people, but my therapist wants me to get past that. But her asking me every got-danged day is really getting on my nerves.
Plus, I'm really new to social media. I started with a Tumblr blog, then that got tired so I went to Reddit. From there I found out more about the point of Twitter and Instagram. But the only things I see from Facebook are pretty ironic - like, people making fun of what others put on Facebook. So at first, yeah, I'm kind of interested. But I'm trying to turn around here so no. I'm not going on Facebook. Google offers something like that but it looks too boring. Nobody's on Google's Facebook. That has an appeal actually, but, I'm not a comp sci nerd and I'm trying NOT to be a hipster.
But I need a weekend off.
"No." I said and sent off my email to my sister Kris asking her to please text me with plans this weekend exactly when this party was taking place. "I think I have to take my sister to a thing."
"Oh really? Is she on Facebook?"
"What--no, I don't know, Stacy."
"Okay, well it would really help me out if you replied on Facebook even if you weren't coming. We can itemize and arrange for food and drinks easier with a solid count."
Stop saying Facebook.
"Yeah, sorry." I didn't know what more to do so I took a page from the first world anarchist style of Tyler Durden and just shrugged and didn't break eye contact until she left. I'd have loved it if that were the end of it.
I left work and on the way out, thankfully, Stacy was being held up by some other hens complimenting the banner she used in her invite. I left *quickly*. On the road the radio had some announcement about Facebook that I turned away from to the new Energy 106 station, which was playing Taylor Swift's new song about hooking up crazily with guys from Facebook.
God. How did these two words get married together? The first time I heard the word Facebook I imagined someone jamming their face into a book so hard that their face imprinted into the book irrevocably, and became a face book. I turned the radio off.
I get home and turn on the TV and the news is on talking about what some broad on Facebook shared recently - a handicapped woman was given attitude by a rude note, when she had left a note of her own asking someone not to use her handicapped parking space. Noped outta that one.
A waitress was left a huge tip thanks to a widower who only wanted to sit at the table his wife and he used to share on their anniversaries, which went viral on Facebook. Is this what the news is now? Has everyone gotten bored of Ukraine now? Nope. Done. Sorry.
I changed the channel again and some bullshit about upworthy and buzzfeed are there - amazing stories that go viral so quickly. Fucking suckerfish on the belly of the shark that is Facebook. This is really selling me to get on Reddit more. If I had the app for Facebook I'd be uninstalling it. I turned the TV off.
I had dinner and went to bed. The next day is more of the same. I'm not going to your party, sorry Stacy. Yeah I'm not going to get a Facebook just to decline your offer.
Julia from HR asks me why I haven't liked the company on Facebook yet. I told her I'm not on Facebook. She makes a mock pout and goes, "Aww why not?" I told her because I have no Facebook.
"Oh it's so easy! It's a great networking tool. You can follow all kinds of people and join groups and everything. If you Like something, it shows up on your news feed. It just gets better from there."
"Yep." I am learning quickly that disagreeing with someone is the fastest way for them to try to correct you, and I just don't have interest in talking about this anymore, full stop.
"Great!" she said, then walked off. Did that really solve it? Wow, awesome.
After lunch she comes up to me again.
"Still no like?" Pouty face.
"Still no Facebook," I said, and began typing furiously. Maybe it'll work this time.
"You know we get a corporate page if we get enough likes, right?"
"Nope," I said. One word answers, got to remember those too or the illusion won't get sold properly.
"Well, we do. We only need a few more!"
"Maybe some other people are on Facebook that can like it?" I suggest.
"Everyone's on Facebook already. Everyone! Think about it."
Friday night is my therapy night. I'm def not going out. I get to bed early - being grumpy from lack of sleep doesn't help cynicism. Saturday is a full day, and I actually do see my sister for lunch. Stacy shows up at the patio restaurant we're at just as we sat down.
"Hey," I greeted her even knowing what was going to happen.
"Oh is this your sister? Hi!" They spend a couple minutes ignoring me. I pull my smartphone out and check out the golf
tournament scores. I'm pulled out of my distraction when Kris says my name.
"Oh, Chris isn't on Facebook."
"Good thing you are! Haha." Stacy said.
I just look at my sister.
"What? I still foursquare now and then."
"You guys are friends on Facebook?" I asked Kris.
"Well no, but I saw she had tagged you here." Stacy said.
"Great," I said, sarcastically. I look at her over my glasses. "Guess I really don't need Facebook then."
"So you can come tonight, right?" Stacy said.
"Who the what now?" I said.
"Well you're seeing your sister early - so you have time tonight, right?"
"Oh. Oh no, we're hanging out tonight," Kris said. She's got my back finally.
"Oh. Okay." Stacy said. She said her goodbyes and away she went somewhere.
That night I didn't go out with Kris. She said it's okay because she has a meetup of some sort to go to. So I went home, worked out, and went to sleep.
I dream of an F. The F turns into a graphic display like Architect had in the Matrix, with a thousand screens. Each screen has a video of someone recording their kids or a sporting event or something. There are lots of pictures of food and alcoholic beverages. I turned around and saw a man dressed in white, with white hair and a beard.
"What the fuck?" I asked him drearily.
"Facebook be praised!" he said. "We've beaten Google glass to the dream state."
"Nope," I said. There wasn't an immediate door nearby but I knew he had to get in this room somehow. "No way. Not
dreaming of Facebook."
"No, you're not. But Facebook dreams of you, Chris. Please. Sign up today."
"Fuck off." Like I said I'm not trying to be rude.
"It's free! We have a ghost profile ready for you to assimila--to assign to you."
"I KNEW IT!" I pointed at him. "You fuckers are already to tell me who I am and what I like and what I should like! I'm not
going to conform! Fuck you!"
The old man looked very sad.
"Okay," he said. "Well, we'll be waiting for you when you change your mind. Just wait until we release our smartphones! And our condos with the ability to upload pics and videos of your life without you even asking."
I woke up. It was 4:42 am. Some loud repetitive noise from outside woke me up. I peek out the window of my townhouse to see a crowd gathered in the parking lot. They're holding their phones - each of them were a shade of blue or white. The blue ones were in an "f" shape among the white. It was a peaceful protest.
Peaceful for now.
My smartphone smashed through the window as I threw it, twirling, then broke into a million pieces on the concrete. I stuck my head through the broken window, into the force of their chant - "FRIEND REQUEST. FRIEND REQUEST."
"FREEDOM!" I screamed.
EDIT: formatting | "Hey Joe, do you go by Joseph, Joey, or Joe on Facebook? I'm trying to tag you in this picture and I can't find your profile."
"You know I don't have a Facebook, Jack."
"Oh I thought you may have gotten one since I last asked."
"You mean 10 minutes ago..."
"Why don't you just get a Facebook, Joe. Don't you care about what you're high school friends are up to nowadays."
"If I gave a shit I'd have kept in touch. But I've moved on and don't care about the daily updates of my high school prom date, I'm sorry. Do you actually get some sort of satisfaction from having 1,000 friends on Facebook?"
"100,000."
"The fuck!?! are you friends with all of Rhode Island?"
"Facebook friends are real friends, Joe."
"I will never get a Facebook."
At that moment a teenager wearing a local skate shop's t shirt approached the cafe table Joe and Jack were sitting at.
"Hey guys, would you mind liking us on Facebook?" The boy said as he handed the men flyers.
"No problem, kid. Sorry about my friend here he doesn't have a Facebook."
"No Facebook?" The waiter said as he retrieved the pairs coffee cups, "But how are people suppose to know you're likes and dislikes?"
"I don't know, maybe through actual conversation..."
"I couldn't help but overhearing that you don't have Facebook," a man from the neighboring table chimed in, "You should really get on that, it's how I met my girlfriend! Well, we haven't actually met yet, but still."
"No, no I'm not getting one stop pressuring me." Joe got up from the table and pushed to the mass of people gathering around the cafe.
"In recent news, Joe has yet to join Facebook," the radio broadcaster stated on Joes drive home. He was starting to get freaked out.
"Maybe I should just join," Joe thought to himself, "what's the harm." He was at a red light when the woman in the minivan next to him rolled down her window. She had "Soccer Mom" and "Baby on Board" stickers on her car.
"Hey you're Joe, right?" Joe locked his doors.
"Look I'd really like to be friends, but I can't friend request you unless you're on Facebook." The woman was getting out of her car, holding something behind her back.
"So for now I'm sorry Joe, but fuck you," she scream as she swung the Louisville Slugger she was holding, shattering Joe's windshield.
At this point Joe was out of his car running down the Main Street of town. People were coming out of the local shops and stores shouting in unison, "join us." Joe had the App Store out and was about to click download next to the Facebook icon when it occurred to him that this was precisely the reason he avoided Facebook. He turned to face the now large mob of people that had formed behind him
"Don't you see what this app has done to you all? It has taken away your ability to grasp reality and form genuine connections with people. You all get so caught up in profile pictures, likes, relationship statuses, but have failed to truly understand and appreciate the world around you. Take a minute, get to know you're cowokers, friends, and loved ones not just what it says about them on their profiles. Now don't you understand why I'm so against this social media site?"
"But..... Farmville," said a member of the mob.
"What's Farmville?"
These were Joe's final words before joining Facebook. | |
[WP] You find a hourglass that when used, lets you travel 3 minutes back in time | 3 minutes goes into an hour 20 times. Multiply that by 24 and you get a whole day. 480 little chunks of 3 minutes gets me to exactly this time yesterday, give or take a few seconds.
Multiply that by 365. It's 175,200. I did the math on it and rechecked it dozens of times. You can trust me.
Have you ever done anything over 175,200 times in your life, much less in a row? Maybe taking a breath, but nothing else. How about 500,000 times? A million?
It gets old. Really fucking quick. Every time I turn the hourglass over, it takes me 3 minutes back in the past. That's all. I've been at it for weeks, stopping only to sleep. Those naps lose me another 300 or 400 turns, so I try not to rest unless I absolutely have to.
How many more turns do I have? Where am I going back to? I don't even know, really. All I know is that one day, we were happy, and the next we weren't together anymore.
I'll keep hopping backward as long as it takes,. Another 50,000 turns, maybe? I still don't see you. But when I do, I'll keep going until I know what I did, and I'll make it right. I hope.
You're worth a million turns, Amy. Two million, or five, or ten. I just hope that this time, I'm worth not turning away once. | I don't go to the bank. If I need some money, I just go to the casino.
I have everything I could possibly want, but it doesn't matter anymore.
I was knocked unconscious in the accident - nobody else survived.
I regained consciousness after four minutes.
| |
[WP] You find a hourglass that when used, lets you travel 3 minutes back in time | 3 minutes goes into an hour 20 times. Multiply that by 24 and you get a whole day. 480 little chunks of 3 minutes gets me to exactly this time yesterday, give or take a few seconds.
Multiply that by 365. It's 175,200. I did the math on it and rechecked it dozens of times. You can trust me.
Have you ever done anything over 175,200 times in your life, much less in a row? Maybe taking a breath, but nothing else. How about 500,000 times? A million?
It gets old. Really fucking quick. Every time I turn the hourglass over, it takes me 3 minutes back in the past. That's all. I've been at it for weeks, stopping only to sleep. Those naps lose me another 300 or 400 turns, so I try not to rest unless I absolutely have to.
How many more turns do I have? Where am I going back to? I don't even know, really. All I know is that one day, we were happy, and the next we weren't together anymore.
I'll keep hopping backward as long as it takes,. Another 50,000 turns, maybe? I still don't see you. But when I do, I'll keep going until I know what I did, and I'll make it right. I hope.
You're worth a million turns, Amy. Two million, or five, or ten. I just hope that this time, I'm worth not turning away once. | "--iiit."
Jeremy Sutherland found himself in front of the Magistrate, his hand tightly clutching the grip of his pistol. He wasn't sure how the events unfurled to this moment in time, but he knew had to be in this precise moment. It had to be done.
He clicked off the safety with his thumb, gripping the pistol all the more tautly to ensure his unwavering aim remained so, "Magistrate DeLong, I can't let you go any further. This *has* to stop."
Magistrate DeLong stood hunched over a peculiar object, its soft, pulsating red glow highlighting his silhouette in the dark, narrow corridor. The slim walkway's walls were packed tightly with shelves stocked with countless hourglasses: many of them had ran their course, the microscopic sands resting gently at their respective bases no longer serving the purposes for which they were made in mind with. The Magistrate slowly stood up and turned to face Jeremy, "Ahh, officer Sutherland... I'm not surprised to find you here. Finally figured out the puzzle, eh?" He clutched the artifact closer to his chest.
Jeremy tried to control his emotions; his rage could blind him from a tight shot group he looked forward to placing on the Magistrate's chest, "You can't do this, I won't let you! There's a reason why time thievery was outlawed from the very start!" He placed his finger on the trigger, ready to fire at a moment's notice, "You've destroyed our civilization... you've destroyed *my* life, and I swear upon everything I stand for you won't make it to that door."
The Magistrate looked at his only exit: entering the Dimension Portal was the final stage of his plan to re-establish history as he saw fit. His only salvation was merely 20 yards away, but in this tight corridor he'd be but an easy target for Jeremy. Like all crafty, desperate villains, he had one last card up his sleeve. The Magistrate turned his gaze onto Jeremy, cracking a deviant grin as he replied, "Do you truly believe you have the upper hand? You have no idea what I'm capable of... *I* am a Manipulator of Time, and the very thought of you stopping m--"
Jeremy fired a warning shot; the bullet whizzed past the Magistrate's head, and the snap of the round breaking the sound barrier forced him to halt his monologue. Jeremy ran out of patience, "The next one is going right into your torso, Magistrate. I won't tell you again, drop the Oracle and lay flat on the ground."
Suddenly, Jeremy heard the shuffling of feet echoing behind him; he couldn't afford to turn around, and the Magistrate knew this.
"It appears you've sealed your own doom, my dear friend," the Magistrate coyly remarked. The stomping began to grow louder behind Jeremy, as if a mob was storming down the hallway. Jeremy lined up his iron sights once more, using more of his instinct than his sight in the poorly lit environment, and fired another shot. The muzzle flash briefly lit up the corridor, revealing a brief mist of red and a loud shriek from the Magistrate; he tried to fire another round but only felt the *chunk* of the trigger mechanism--his magazine misfed a round.
"Damn it," Jeremy grunted, attempting to remove his magazine. The Magistrate gripped the entry wound on his leg as he started shuffling toward his escape, panting heavily from the pain.
"Get him!"
A sudden shout from a voice behind forced Jeremy to quickly turn around and see a countless number of Magistrate DeLongs sprinting toward him. Jeremy's instinctive spin had caused one of the smaller hourglasses to tumble off the shelf and fall onto the floor. Time practically moved in slow motion; Jeremy could only speculate what could happen next as he tried to dive forward to grab the hourglass before it hit the floor.
With a loud thud, he dropped onto the ground in unison with the hourglass. He had successfully prevented the hourglass from shattering. Jeremy was relieved; had the hourglass smashed, he knew it could have had disastrous consequences to the time continuum, but it was when he opened his palm did he realize gravity naturally took place to draw out the sand toward the bottom of the glass. The Magistrate clones began to draw closer, but it was too late.
Time began to unwind.
With a heavy sigh, Jeremy muttered under his breath,
"Oh sh--" | |
[WP] A small town lives in terror of a young girl who can read minds | Judy's reign of innocent terror started small. She peeled away the white lies with sidelong glances and dried up the social lubricant of Newtonville. Like when she told Johnny's mother that her husband really didn't like her casserole after all , or when she informed the pie club at school that everyone really liked muffins.
Yeah. Small stuff.
Even when it went big people got upset, but they weren't really scared. Like when she told the police that Old Man Hammond wasn't burying bulbs in that garden of his, or that at least one of the nuns at the convent had had an abortion.
See the thing is, people didn't mind hearing about other's sins. Oh sure. It caused some stress and more than a few police investigations. But it really wasn't that awful. All in all it felt like a giant cleanse for the town. You can't clean your dirty laundry after all until you air it.
But then she started telling people their own thoughts. She went right up to her third grade teacher, Mrs. Emma, and whispered in her ear, "I know you wanna kill Tommy in the back row. I know you wanna slam that pencil up his nose and write quadratic equations on his brain, because maybe then he wont fail the state exam and get you fired." Another time she grabbed her mommy bey the hand and told her "I have a secret to tell you."
Her mommy thought the girl was going to tell her that her husband thought she looked fat.
Instead the girl whispered in a sad sing-song, "Why are you still with daddy? I know you don't love him anymore."
That was they first tried locking her up.
But she just whispered to the jailers.
"I know you think you should kill me. It doesn't matter that I'm little. You think I'm dangerous."
Once she said that everyone just got angrier. Because now they couldn't kill her or make her leave. Because that would be what she had predicted.
A gag didn't work either.
Because she'd just stare at with those eyes of hers.
And you'd realize that there's nothing scarier than your own reflection in her black, hungry pupils.
| Sterling only had one friend, a rather dumpy girl named Joanna. Joanna was *simple* and always smiling. Nothing Joanna thought was dangerous and hurtful. There was no reason not to love the blonde girl, she glowed with sunshine and rainbows.
Everyone else? Fair game.
It began when Sterl was in second grade. She heard a faint rush of hatred, then someone was shoving her against a wall and calling her a monster. "Daughter of a slut."
That is how she found out Daddy wasn't dead. He was actually her principal. Her mother had been stupid. It was part of the reason Sterl believed her powers were a punishment. Now she had to hear all the horrid things people thought about her and her mother.
So she didn't care when other people got hurt. She told when people were cheating. She would walk into the police station and tell them about the robbery about to take place.
People thought she was a freak. All but Joanna.
She didn't care. She never would. | |
[WP] A small town lives in terror of a young girl who can read minds | It is okay to hate me. The thought whisks though my head, even though no one else can hear it except me.
It is okay to be afraid, you should be. I take a bite of the cupcake my older sister had prepared for me, to appease my curiosity and the urge to blurt her secret boyfriend to our folks; it is working, I am enjoying my own senses, not divulging into the memories and thoughts of others.
For now.
They all wear masks, but I truly enjoy their true faces, it amuses me. After the truth comes out, their pretenses fade, and they become who they are.
There is father now, pulling up on the driveway with his old beat up truck, he has something that will surprise me.
Not. I take another bite, indulging in its sweetness.
"Alese!" He calls without thinking, typical. He pauses a moment to form his words, why bother when I can read them? Still, he does it out of habit, the jumble of sentences finally forming as:
"Look what I got you!" He whips out a slice of cake, and before he can explain, I knew it was cream frosting with chocolate cake inside, my favorite.
"Thank you, Father." I smile, at least his intentions is to give me treats, sort of in a puppy dog way, but it counts.
Unlike the rest of the neighbors... Who are arriving with their offerings now.
"Nah," I cross my legs and plop them onto the table, taking a quick moment to smooth out my shorts and straighten my sandals.
"I am bored of sweets, I'm in the mood for pea soup at the moment."
WHAT!? The young woman could not say her word, only gasp.
"B-But it took hours to bake!"
"Liar, those are bought from the store." I scoff,
"I'll take canned soup, if you're that willing to cut corners."
At that, my neighbors scatter like roaches.
"Alese!" My mother calls from in the kitchen,
"Don't forget to remind them to get us some eggs and milk too!"
A smile breaks my face, and I laugh before roaring out loud enough for them to hear:
"AND BRING ME EGGS AND MILK!"
Ahhh, what a wonderful day to be alive~ | Sterling only had one friend, a rather dumpy girl named Joanna. Joanna was *simple* and always smiling. Nothing Joanna thought was dangerous and hurtful. There was no reason not to love the blonde girl, she glowed with sunshine and rainbows.
Everyone else? Fair game.
It began when Sterl was in second grade. She heard a faint rush of hatred, then someone was shoving her against a wall and calling her a monster. "Daughter of a slut."
That is how she found out Daddy wasn't dead. He was actually her principal. Her mother had been stupid. It was part of the reason Sterl believed her powers were a punishment. Now she had to hear all the horrid things people thought about her and her mother.
So she didn't care when other people got hurt. She told when people were cheating. She would walk into the police station and tell them about the robbery about to take place.
People thought she was a freak. All but Joanna.
She didn't care. She never would. | |
[WP] A small town lives in terror of a young girl who can read minds | I was the first to arrive, so it fell to me to open the windows, clear the worst of the dust from the table, pull up the chairs. By the time the fifth and last of us had arrived, the sun had begun to slink away, but none of us moved to turn the lights on.
I guess we all felt the same way, that somehow it would be easier to have this conversation in the dark.
Ann broke the silence. She was the eldest, and though we had sought to have as flat a hierarchy as we could when we first founded this community, she was the unspoken leader of just over two hundred pioneers trying to eke out a living this far north of the wildlands.
“Good evening, fellow town leaders. It’s been four months, as agreed. What are your reports?” Steely, unwavering, but curiously not devoid of warmth. Ann was as capable of emotions as any other, but she knew when business had to be done.
“I vote no,” William began, “just as I had voted no the last we met. In fact, I don’t know why we’re still here talking about this.” A note of anger crept into his voice. “I’ve observed her, closely, and there is nothing to indicate…”
“But did you do as I warned? Did you stay out of sight, completely?” The words tumbled out of my mouth. A chilly icicle formed in the pits of my stomach. If William had not been careful, then this was all for naught.
“Yes I did,” he snapped. Was that a flash of annoyance on his face? “I’m well aware of what she’s capable of. And that’s why I worked through the rest of the staff. I have here with me twenty-two reports from the teachers under me, all of which indicate that she’s as normal as the rest of them… well, as normal as her powers allow her to be. I even had to ask for reports on other children as well, just so that no one got suspicious.”
Traci stirred. “Normal? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, her cognitive and social skills are developing in line with national standards. We tested her in isolation, so that she cannot consciously or unconsciously pick up answers from anyone else… so far she’s doing well, quite above-average. The other children were initially afraid of what she could do, but they’ve come to accept her. She has friends, or so I’m told...”
For a moment this felt like a normal parent-teacher conference update. Just a single, fleeting moment.
“Long story short, I vote no.” William sat back in his chair, lips pursed. It was clear that he had much more to say, but we all appreciated the brevity. None of us wanted another repeat of that marathon two-day debate we had the last time, when we almost came to blows.
Traci was next. “If you’re going to be stubborn, William, then so can I. My vote is still yes. And my report’s much shorter. Ever since I took her in for vocation training at my cookhouse, I’ve seen more broken friendships and relationships than I ever have before. I say this again - there’s no place for her here!”
The table strained under the force of Traci’s heavy-handed thump. In a town this small, we had heard the stories too, how one quiet Sunday afternoon two young lovers having a tiff had accosted the girl as she served lunch, and asked her, in flagrant disregard of all the rules and warnings we had in place, who was cheating on whom.
It didn’t matter what the girl said. It only mattered that it led to a fracas, then a brawl, then a full-scaled mini-riot as the first few questions loosened a torrential flood of other questions from all the bystanders at the scene. Oh, Curiosity, how underrated your effect on all of us are.
By the time I arrived to help restore order, the madness had already descended, and everyone was in its grip. Have you ever seen a cafeteria wrecked by adults fighting each other because some ugly truth had come to light? Where yet others were clawing just to get to some girl, some not-so-ordinary girl, who was sitting in a corner and bawling as the thoughts from people’s minds leapt straight into her and out her mouth? Well, I have, and no, it wasn’t pretty.
It was up to Ann to move it along again. “Father Peter? Have you had time to reflect upon this?”
Father Peter, who was comically almost half Ann’s age, weighed in sonorously. “The scripture offers nothing, and I have yet to receive any guidance from Him. And though I cannot say what He has planned for her, the only answer I have is that it is not up to us to judge. My vote is no.”
And not another word we got out of Father Peter.
As they turned to me, I took a deep breath, hoping that my carefully rehearsed choice of words would disguise the guilt and anxiety racking me.
“She has, on weekends, been training with the other hunters under my wing. I have nothing to report about that, she’s as ordinary as the rest of them. But last month… last month one of the hunting dogs nipped her in the shin. It wasn’t bad, just a graze, but it bled quite a lot, and she was so scared she would die.”
“We handled it the same as we would in any other case. We disciplined the dog, and got the girl fixed up. No one else thought anything about it. But then the dog disappeared. We thought it had run wild and escaped, as they sometimes do. And I wouldn’t have known better if purely by chance I hadn’t seen the girl leave the forest one day by herself, when she shouldn’t have been there at all.”
“So I waited till she left, then I went in the woods and tracked her movements. I found the dog, deep inside. The same dog. It was tied to a tree, and it hadn’t been fed in days. It looked like it had been beaten. It whimpered at me.”
“For this report, for this damned report, I didn’t do anything. Because I had to know. So I left, and came back a few days later. And the dog was gone.”
My audience around the table had gone quiet. I looked down and found my knuckles red and raw from the way I had ground them against the table legs in my struggle for composure.
“Later, I asked some of the boys to casually ask her about her whereabouts, on the pretext that I had found wasp nests in the woods and wanted them to steer clear. They say she laughed and said she had never gone in alone.”
“So, do I have doubts? Yes. It may not have been her. I may have been seeing things. Someone else could have done it. But I have doubts. And we only have one chance. And so, may the Lord have mercy on my soul… I vote yes.”
Tears had come unbidden to my eyes, and they slaked down my cheeks, leaving hot wet trails of shame. That was my defining moment in my life, when for fear of the unknown, for fear of my own safety and that of the people I loved, I chose to strike first, even when I still had doubts.
After an eternity, Ann spoke. “We have two nays, and two ayes. I am, it seems, the split vote. Well, this is what I ask myself, what I’ve been asking myself. Can we account for why she suddenly developed these powers to read the minds of others? Can we say what effect she would have on the world, whether she would usher in untold advancements or cause immense strife? Even if we tried our best to raise her as well as we could, who’s to say our values are right?”
“To me, it boils down to this. Life, luck, fate, destiny, whatever you may call it, conspired to give her these powers. There may or may not be a grander plan to this all. But it will fall to them again to determine if the girl lives past this very night. Aye for heads, nay for tails.”
With those words, Ann retrieved a coin and flipped.
And as that coin spun, twirled, pirouetted in the air, the universe held its breath.
| Sterling only had one friend, a rather dumpy girl named Joanna. Joanna was *simple* and always smiling. Nothing Joanna thought was dangerous and hurtful. There was no reason not to love the blonde girl, she glowed with sunshine and rainbows.
Everyone else? Fair game.
It began when Sterl was in second grade. She heard a faint rush of hatred, then someone was shoving her against a wall and calling her a monster. "Daughter of a slut."
That is how she found out Daddy wasn't dead. He was actually her principal. Her mother had been stupid. It was part of the reason Sterl believed her powers were a punishment. Now she had to hear all the horrid things people thought about her and her mother.
So she didn't care when other people got hurt. She told when people were cheating. She would walk into the police station and tell them about the robbery about to take place.
People thought she was a freak. All but Joanna.
She didn't care. She never would. | |
[WP] A small town lives in terror of a young girl who can read minds | “Sweetie, your mom and I want to let you know it’s okay to lie sometimes.” Dale and Christie held hands, their fingers laced as they peered down on their daughter.
“I know,” Amy looked at them, her eyes furrowed. Her face scrunched a little, followed by pain masked in vague understanding. “It’s okay mommy, if I had a daughter like me, I’d want to leave her too.”
Christie felt Dale grip her hands a little more firmly.
On the outside, Amy was an average six year old girl. It wasn’t until she opened her mouth and spoke words well beyond her years that others realized she was anything but ordinary. Her parents knew she was gifted the moment she uttered her first words; they were neither “mama” nor “dada,” but a simple haunting “me burden.” As it turned out, Christie had regretted her entire pregnancy, but carried on because Dale wanted her to. Not even seeing the face of her new daughter was enough to make her love her. Externally, well timed smiles and false gleamings of pride covered her lack of maternal love, but Amy could see through that when no one else could.
“What, no… I love you.” Christie felt the blood rush to her face as she willed herself to lie deep enough to convince herself. She couldn’t.
“Don’t be silly. I can lie to you, but you can’t lie to me.” Amy chewed on her lip. It was a beautiful summer day and she had wanted to play outside, but the comfort of her bedroom was more appealing after that revelation.
She had little interest in toys. The darkness that others kept so expertly hidden under layers of complex motions was always plainly clear to the small child. Her mind had long let go of childhood naiveté and embraced the idea that everyone was made of good and bad intentions. Instead, she spent her days drawing. It was the only thing that made her feel like a child. She may have understood the intricacies of the human condition, but she still had to hand coordination of a six year old.
She was counting the red leaves that fell from Autumn trees when she saw Christie pack a few bags in her car and drive off. The whispering echo of “freedom” that only Amy could hear let her know she probably wouldn’t see her mother for a while.
Snow had fallen, and Amy was a year older. She spent a quiet birthday with her dad. She had invited her class, but no one had showed up; she had burned many bridges. Though she knew she could lie, she had a hard time doing so. Mr. Baker across the street was sleeping with Mrs. Anderson two houses down. Dr. Penn down the block had an extensive collection of child pornography, and his wife knew but didn’t do anything about it. Mrs. Hall was pregnant, but it wasn’t her husband’s child. Mr. Haven beat his family.
Amy was Pandora’s box, and every unwilling confession that entered her mind, she made known. It was partly compulsion and partly her wanting to do what was right. Many were sent to jail, others had their home lives torn apart. The broken and bitter divorced had vandalized Dale’s car on numerous occasions. The children of newly created two-home families often egged her house. Others had learned to keep their distance if it meant keeping their secrets silent.
She picked at the frosting on her cake. “Daddy, do you hate what I am?”
“No, sweetie. You’re good, and I love you more than anything. People just don’t like having their lies uncovered.”
“Mommy loved you, you know. She loved you a lot. She just hated me more.”
Dale’s eyes glossed over, tears threatening to come out.
“If mommy couldn’t love you as much as I love you, then I can’t love her either.”
When no contradictory echo entered her mind, when no statement or feeling of hatred pierced the lovely bubble of her reality, Amy smiled. She only felt the warm embrace of one soul that loved her unconditionally, and it was all she needed.
| Sterling only had one friend, a rather dumpy girl named Joanna. Joanna was *simple* and always smiling. Nothing Joanna thought was dangerous and hurtful. There was no reason not to love the blonde girl, she glowed with sunshine and rainbows.
Everyone else? Fair game.
It began when Sterl was in second grade. She heard a faint rush of hatred, then someone was shoving her against a wall and calling her a monster. "Daughter of a slut."
That is how she found out Daddy wasn't dead. He was actually her principal. Her mother had been stupid. It was part of the reason Sterl believed her powers were a punishment. Now she had to hear all the horrid things people thought about her and her mother.
So she didn't care when other people got hurt. She told when people were cheating. She would walk into the police station and tell them about the robbery about to take place.
People thought she was a freak. All but Joanna.
She didn't care. She never would. | |
[WP] A small town lives in terror of a young girl who can read minds | I was the first to arrive, so it fell to me to open the windows, clear the worst of the dust from the table, pull up the chairs. By the time the fifth and last of us had arrived, the sun had begun to slink away, but none of us moved to turn the lights on.
I guess we all felt the same way, that somehow it would be easier to have this conversation in the dark.
Ann broke the silence. She was the eldest, and though we had sought to have as flat a hierarchy as we could when we first founded this community, she was the unspoken leader of just over two hundred pioneers trying to eke out a living this far north of the wildlands.
“Good evening, fellow town leaders. It’s been four months, as agreed. What are your reports?” Steely, unwavering, but curiously not devoid of warmth. Ann was as capable of emotions as any other, but she knew when business had to be done.
“I vote no,” William began, “just as I had voted no the last we met. In fact, I don’t know why we’re still here talking about this.” A note of anger crept into his voice. “I’ve observed her, closely, and there is nothing to indicate…”
“But did you do as I warned? Did you stay out of sight, completely?” The words tumbled out of my mouth. A chilly icicle formed in the pits of my stomach. If William had not been careful, then this was all for naught.
“Yes I did,” he snapped. Was that a flash of annoyance on his face? “I’m well aware of what she’s capable of. And that’s why I worked through the rest of the staff. I have here with me twenty-two reports from the teachers under me, all of which indicate that she’s as normal as the rest of them… well, as normal as her powers allow her to be. I even had to ask for reports on other children as well, just so that no one got suspicious.”
Traci stirred. “Normal? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, her cognitive and social skills are developing in line with national standards. We tested her in isolation, so that she cannot consciously or unconsciously pick up answers from anyone else… so far she’s doing well, quite above-average. The other children were initially afraid of what she could do, but they’ve come to accept her. She has friends, or so I’m told...”
For a moment this felt like a normal parent-teacher conference update. Just a single, fleeting moment.
“Long story short, I vote no.” William sat back in his chair, lips pursed. It was clear that he had much more to say, but we all appreciated the brevity. None of us wanted another repeat of that marathon two-day debate we had the last time, when we almost came to blows.
Traci was next. “If you’re going to be stubborn, William, then so can I. My vote is still yes. And my report’s much shorter. Ever since I took her in for vocation training at my cookhouse, I’ve seen more broken friendships and relationships than I ever have before. I say this again - there’s no place for her here!”
The table strained under the force of Traci’s heavy-handed thump. In a town this small, we had heard the stories too, how one quiet Sunday afternoon two young lovers having a tiff had accosted the girl as she served lunch, and asked her, in flagrant disregard of all the rules and warnings we had in place, who was cheating on whom.
It didn’t matter what the girl said. It only mattered that it led to a fracas, then a brawl, then a full-scaled mini-riot as the first few questions loosened a torrential flood of other questions from all the bystanders at the scene. Oh, Curiosity, how underrated your effect on all of us are.
By the time I arrived to help restore order, the madness had already descended, and everyone was in its grip. Have you ever seen a cafeteria wrecked by adults fighting each other because some ugly truth had come to light? Where yet others were clawing just to get to some girl, some not-so-ordinary girl, who was sitting in a corner and bawling as the thoughts from people’s minds leapt straight into her and out her mouth? Well, I have, and no, it wasn’t pretty.
It was up to Ann to move it along again. “Father Peter? Have you had time to reflect upon this?”
Father Peter, who was comically almost half Ann’s age, weighed in sonorously. “The scripture offers nothing, and I have yet to receive any guidance from Him. And though I cannot say what He has planned for her, the only answer I have is that it is not up to us to judge. My vote is no.”
And not another word we got out of Father Peter.
As they turned to me, I took a deep breath, hoping that my carefully rehearsed choice of words would disguise the guilt and anxiety racking me.
“She has, on weekends, been training with the other hunters under my wing. I have nothing to report about that, she’s as ordinary as the rest of them. But last month… last month one of the hunting dogs nipped her in the shin. It wasn’t bad, just a graze, but it bled quite a lot, and she was so scared she would die.”
“We handled it the same as we would in any other case. We disciplined the dog, and got the girl fixed up. No one else thought anything about it. But then the dog disappeared. We thought it had run wild and escaped, as they sometimes do. And I wouldn’t have known better if purely by chance I hadn’t seen the girl leave the forest one day by herself, when she shouldn’t have been there at all.”
“So I waited till she left, then I went in the woods and tracked her movements. I found the dog, deep inside. The same dog. It was tied to a tree, and it hadn’t been fed in days. It looked like it had been beaten. It whimpered at me.”
“For this report, for this damned report, I didn’t do anything. Because I had to know. So I left, and came back a few days later. And the dog was gone.”
My audience around the table had gone quiet. I looked down and found my knuckles red and raw from the way I had ground them against the table legs in my struggle for composure.
“Later, I asked some of the boys to casually ask her about her whereabouts, on the pretext that I had found wasp nests in the woods and wanted them to steer clear. They say she laughed and said she had never gone in alone.”
“So, do I have doubts? Yes. It may not have been her. I may have been seeing things. Someone else could have done it. But I have doubts. And we only have one chance. And so, may the Lord have mercy on my soul… I vote yes.”
Tears had come unbidden to my eyes, and they slaked down my cheeks, leaving hot wet trails of shame. That was my defining moment in my life, when for fear of the unknown, for fear of my own safety and that of the people I loved, I chose to strike first, even when I still had doubts.
After an eternity, Ann spoke. “We have two nays, and two ayes. I am, it seems, the split vote. Well, this is what I ask myself, what I’ve been asking myself. Can we account for why she suddenly developed these powers to read the minds of others? Can we say what effect she would have on the world, whether she would usher in untold advancements or cause immense strife? Even if we tried our best to raise her as well as we could, who’s to say our values are right?”
“To me, it boils down to this. Life, luck, fate, destiny, whatever you may call it, conspired to give her these powers. There may or may not be a grander plan to this all. But it will fall to them again to determine if the girl lives past this very night. Aye for heads, nay for tails.”
With those words, Ann retrieved a coin and flipped.
And as that coin spun, twirled, pirouetted in the air, the universe held its breath.
| Judy's reign of innocent terror started small. She peeled away the white lies with sidelong glances and dried up the social lubricant of Newtonville. Like when she told Johnny's mother that her husband really didn't like her casserole after all , or when she informed the pie club at school that everyone really liked muffins.
Yeah. Small stuff.
Even when it went big people got upset, but they weren't really scared. Like when she told the police that Old Man Hammond wasn't burying bulbs in that garden of his, or that at least one of the nuns at the convent had had an abortion.
See the thing is, people didn't mind hearing about other's sins. Oh sure. It caused some stress and more than a few police investigations. But it really wasn't that awful. All in all it felt like a giant cleanse for the town. You can't clean your dirty laundry after all until you air it.
But then she started telling people their own thoughts. She went right up to her third grade teacher, Mrs. Emma, and whispered in her ear, "I know you wanna kill Tommy in the back row. I know you wanna slam that pencil up his nose and write quadratic equations on his brain, because maybe then he wont fail the state exam and get you fired." Another time she grabbed her mommy bey the hand and told her "I have a secret to tell you."
Her mommy thought the girl was going to tell her that her husband thought she looked fat.
Instead the girl whispered in a sad sing-song, "Why are you still with daddy? I know you don't love him anymore."
That was they first tried locking her up.
But she just whispered to the jailers.
"I know you think you should kill me. It doesn't matter that I'm little. You think I'm dangerous."
Once she said that everyone just got angrier. Because now they couldn't kill her or make her leave. Because that would be what she had predicted.
A gag didn't work either.
Because she'd just stare at with those eyes of hers.
And you'd realize that there's nothing scarier than your own reflection in her black, hungry pupils.
| |
[WP] A small town lives in terror of a young girl who can read minds | “Sweetie, your mom and I want to let you know it’s okay to lie sometimes.” Dale and Christie held hands, their fingers laced as they peered down on their daughter.
“I know,” Amy looked at them, her eyes furrowed. Her face scrunched a little, followed by pain masked in vague understanding. “It’s okay mommy, if I had a daughter like me, I’d want to leave her too.”
Christie felt Dale grip her hands a little more firmly.
On the outside, Amy was an average six year old girl. It wasn’t until she opened her mouth and spoke words well beyond her years that others realized she was anything but ordinary. Her parents knew she was gifted the moment she uttered her first words; they were neither “mama” nor “dada,” but a simple haunting “me burden.” As it turned out, Christie had regretted her entire pregnancy, but carried on because Dale wanted her to. Not even seeing the face of her new daughter was enough to make her love her. Externally, well timed smiles and false gleamings of pride covered her lack of maternal love, but Amy could see through that when no one else could.
“What, no… I love you.” Christie felt the blood rush to her face as she willed herself to lie deep enough to convince herself. She couldn’t.
“Don’t be silly. I can lie to you, but you can’t lie to me.” Amy chewed on her lip. It was a beautiful summer day and she had wanted to play outside, but the comfort of her bedroom was more appealing after that revelation.
She had little interest in toys. The darkness that others kept so expertly hidden under layers of complex motions was always plainly clear to the small child. Her mind had long let go of childhood naiveté and embraced the idea that everyone was made of good and bad intentions. Instead, she spent her days drawing. It was the only thing that made her feel like a child. She may have understood the intricacies of the human condition, but she still had to hand coordination of a six year old.
She was counting the red leaves that fell from Autumn trees when she saw Christie pack a few bags in her car and drive off. The whispering echo of “freedom” that only Amy could hear let her know she probably wouldn’t see her mother for a while.
Snow had fallen, and Amy was a year older. She spent a quiet birthday with her dad. She had invited her class, but no one had showed up; she had burned many bridges. Though she knew she could lie, she had a hard time doing so. Mr. Baker across the street was sleeping with Mrs. Anderson two houses down. Dr. Penn down the block had an extensive collection of child pornography, and his wife knew but didn’t do anything about it. Mrs. Hall was pregnant, but it wasn’t her husband’s child. Mr. Haven beat his family.
Amy was Pandora’s box, and every unwilling confession that entered her mind, she made known. It was partly compulsion and partly her wanting to do what was right. Many were sent to jail, others had their home lives torn apart. The broken and bitter divorced had vandalized Dale’s car on numerous occasions. The children of newly created two-home families often egged her house. Others had learned to keep their distance if it meant keeping their secrets silent.
She picked at the frosting on her cake. “Daddy, do you hate what I am?”
“No, sweetie. You’re good, and I love you more than anything. People just don’t like having their lies uncovered.”
“Mommy loved you, you know. She loved you a lot. She just hated me more.”
Dale’s eyes glossed over, tears threatening to come out.
“If mommy couldn’t love you as much as I love you, then I can’t love her either.”
When no contradictory echo entered her mind, when no statement or feeling of hatred pierced the lovely bubble of her reality, Amy smiled. She only felt the warm embrace of one soul that loved her unconditionally, and it was all she needed.
| Judy's reign of innocent terror started small. She peeled away the white lies with sidelong glances and dried up the social lubricant of Newtonville. Like when she told Johnny's mother that her husband really didn't like her casserole after all , or when she informed the pie club at school that everyone really liked muffins.
Yeah. Small stuff.
Even when it went big people got upset, but they weren't really scared. Like when she told the police that Old Man Hammond wasn't burying bulbs in that garden of his, or that at least one of the nuns at the convent had had an abortion.
See the thing is, people didn't mind hearing about other's sins. Oh sure. It caused some stress and more than a few police investigations. But it really wasn't that awful. All in all it felt like a giant cleanse for the town. You can't clean your dirty laundry after all until you air it.
But then she started telling people their own thoughts. She went right up to her third grade teacher, Mrs. Emma, and whispered in her ear, "I know you wanna kill Tommy in the back row. I know you wanna slam that pencil up his nose and write quadratic equations on his brain, because maybe then he wont fail the state exam and get you fired." Another time she grabbed her mommy bey the hand and told her "I have a secret to tell you."
Her mommy thought the girl was going to tell her that her husband thought she looked fat.
Instead the girl whispered in a sad sing-song, "Why are you still with daddy? I know you don't love him anymore."
That was they first tried locking her up.
But she just whispered to the jailers.
"I know you think you should kill me. It doesn't matter that I'm little. You think I'm dangerous."
Once she said that everyone just got angrier. Because now they couldn't kill her or make her leave. Because that would be what she had predicted.
A gag didn't work either.
Because she'd just stare at with those eyes of hers.
And you'd realize that there's nothing scarier than your own reflection in her black, hungry pupils.
| |
Saw Huey Lewis and the News, got mad, wrote this prompt. | [WP] You are the "Go-to-guy". You're nice, smart, well-mannered, and you never lose your cool. Then one day, someone causes you to lose your shit; in the worst way possible | "Sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly."
I could feel the smile slowly crawl off of my face, a neutral mask replaces my features. The usual drawl I let creep into my speech was being clipped shorter and shorter with each word. By now the rest of the office had found excuses to be elsewhere during this confrontation. Save for Alvy. Alvy had just come back from the bathroom, but it looked like he wanted to shit his pants anyway. He hadn't seen anything but a smile grace my face before today, even angry it was hard to stop smiling even a little. Except in front of this guy.
Chester.
The management office the oldest stakeholder hired to get the plant out of debt sent Chester. Chester's job was to make the place profitable again. He was a very busy man, this Chester. If he wasn't pissing on someone's work without any real critique, he was pissing someone off with open allusions to layoffs. Something that was relatively against the rules amongst the old guard who were stakeholders. He looked at me with that smug grin you can only cultivate in multiple generations of terrible human behavior.
"I said, I'd like you to shine my car the way you shine those pretty banisters, handyman."
"I heard that part. Don't think I rightly heard what came after."
The sneer got wider. He looked like a comic book mob boss with that grin. It took a little of the edge off of how I felt, but it still burned hot.
"Oh that, sorry Ernie. I said if you didn't do it to my satisfaction I'd fire your Okie ass."
I took a deep breath. Let it out slow. Alvy was the only one to notice the situation and took an unconscious step back, Chester had all his attention on me.
"Kinda uncalled for, isn't it, Chester?"
"The *NAME* is *MISTER* Truemarch, Ernie Festus. You'll talk to me with deference."
"Well forgive me, Mister Truemarch. We never had cause to be so formal 'round here-."
His sneer vanished like the wind. "And that's the problem, isn't it? This entire operation is one big social club. If anyone screws up, we'll forgive them, they're having a bad day! Never mind that you're suddenly half a day behind schedule. Oh look, Jenny's child is sick, let's all take a little time to comfort her and send one of the office girls back to take care of the brat. Now Accounts Receivable isn't getting its reports fast enough."
Alvy shrank back at that. Didn't blame him at all, Receivable was his job after all.
"And then there's you. Everyone's friend the handyman who keeps this chuck-wagon schlepping along because *no one* in upper management could bring themselves to fire anyone once you've intervened. Mister gofer who's always around. Mister buddy-buddy who won't simply cut the dead weight."
Ah, here we go. He's getting to the meat now.
"That's why I'm here, you know? To cut the dead weight. To amputate the rotten limbs that drag this company down. Oh but I can't do something as simple as a layoff, your charter has half of my targets as stakeholders. They have to leave on their own. But you, you're different. You're not on the charter, I checked. I can fire your ass as easily as snapping my fingers and hire someone fresh off the truck from Nogales to do your job."
I couldn't abide this anymore.
"Lemme ask you something, Mister Truemarch." I could hear the ice settle into my voice. Trying to keep your cool in front of this guy was like trying to climb a mountain with three fingers and no feet. "Why do you think there was a charter in the first place? This place was hell before the current ownership. People were worked into the dirt. Accidents were at an all-time high. Before the workers bought out the shares, it was already paid for in the blood of those who died. Died, Mister Truemarch. Died because of heartlessness and the attitude that there'd always be another to replace the next guy."
"Sounds like my kind of people. Because that's the cold, hard truth. There will *always* be a next guy. That's the way it is now in the real world! Where people make *MONEY*! This charter is a relic."
"The charter is the heart and soul of this company."
"Then I'll tear its heart out. You're fired."
That did it. The compact was abolished.
"Alvy. You'd best be elsewhere."
"S-sorry Ernie. I... don't think I can move."
Chester hadn't quite realized what was going on just yet. He hadn't noticed midway through my drawl was no longer on the right syllables or the new way I was emphasizing my 's's or the slightly rolling 'r's. Alvy noticed. Poor Alvy, probably scared to death right now, I remember how his grandad asked me to help him fix his bike and how his grandad's grandad asked the same thing.
"You might wanna cover your eyes, Alvy."
Chester looked at me funny. "What, you think you can hit me? You gotta be a thousand years ol-AhAAHHHH!!!!"
The trash can near his desk had wrapped itself around his leg and anchored him to the floor, new spikes jutting into his flesh from the metal. This trash can was manufactured with the steel processed here. So were the rivets lining the mahogany desk which had now absorbed Chester's hand.
"Yeah, funny how that seems. You talk about tearing out the company's heart and soul, Chester. Nevermind the fact that this very heart and soul was paid for with blood from dozens, if not hundreds of sacrifices. People who suffered and died on this very spot."
The chandelier in the office was reaching out now. Alvy covered his eyes and sank to his knees. He tried to bury his head between his knees to keep Chester's cries out.
"I'll tell you something else, Chester. You know this, already, but the charter is a contract. Iron-clad. Even I have to dance to the boss's tune. But you fired me, Chester. You. FIRED. ME. AND NOW... I FEEL LIKE THE HEART AND SOUL OF THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO BE NOURISHED."
A short time later, I tapped Alvy on the shoulder. He was humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic as loud as he could. I was smiling again, how could I not?
"Alvy, you alright?"
He looked up, the place was spotless. The desk where it should be, the trash can perfectly still and not full of teeth. No stains, 'cept maybe the mahogany on the desk was a little darker grain than it started. No help for that, though.
"Where'd Chester go?"
"Chester who? Oh, the guy from the company? He left, urgent business. Looks like he's been called away by his office or something. According to the charter, in the absence of a Plant Manager, leadership decisions go to the next highest stakeholder. That's you, Alvy. Six generation stakeholder and the current Plant Manager till Ron gets back from his vacation in Miami or until those assholes he hired send another guy."
"Oh... I hope not. Uh, you're rehired?"
"Hah, good on ya, Alvy. Smart cookie. Go down and tell the folks things are alright. I hear it's Rebecca's birthday today, you think she'd like cheesecake?"
| It has been a torturous two days since anyone has seen daylight. The party has become annoyed at one another and hunger has set in. Arklo has decided that the dwarf leading them is a charlatan and leading them to their deaths. 'What kind of dwarf does not making a living by crafting with hammers?' he thought to themselves as they made passage through a tight unlit crypt.
Arklo began picking the leather of his dagger's handle in annoyance. 'He's leading us to our death.' he thought. "We should have reached the the treasure horde by now!" Arklo exclaimed. 'What day is it?' he thought, trying to recount the time he spent underground.
The crypt hallway was stone and dirt on all sides with mostly earth beneath their boots. They made their way through giant rats and poisonous traps with not much time for rest. All involved knew that the lizard folk hoarded their gold beneath the swamp's recently reclaimed crypts. Generations of looted gold and heirlooms lay somewhere in these twisting caverns from the scaled invaders.
Hours have passed, or was it a day? An ominous straight hallway presented before them that appeared to never end. Arklo's elvish stomach began to growl. Each step was slow and methodical to avoid setting off traps or being victims of an ambush. He began to chew on his lower lip in frustration.
A door stood guard at the end of their path. Locked and trapped. The dwarf went to work while the party rested with one eye open. No one was more annoyed then Arklo, the leader of the group. The calm, region-wide known adventure who sought out each member personally, began to twitch to his left eye if torch light permitted those to witness.
"What in Araham's name is taking so long?" he bellowed.
"Just a few more minutes" the dwarf whispered.
"I've had enough of your false promises. You and your kind are not to be trusted, especially a thieving dwarf."
"Curse you Arklo! Give me time to work."
Arklo drew his short to save his party. With heavy breathing and sweaty palms his sword was in front of him leading the charge.
"You lead us all to our doom." Arklo shoved the other members as he trampled his way forward."
--CLICK.
The dwarf ducked and rolled into the room of treasure as Arklo ran past inside; stumbling and falling. He wildly began thrashing with his sword hand trying to find a target. He found himself surrounded by the cache of stolen treasure.
Panting and mumbling with a sincere humbled tone Arklo said, "I...I...am sorry, How could I have misjudged so wrong?"
A quick smirk crossed the dwarve's lips. "Not all iron work is done with hammers. Some is done with picks."
|
Saw Huey Lewis and the News, got mad, wrote this prompt. | [WP] You are the "Go-to-guy". You're nice, smart, well-mannered, and you never lose your cool. Then one day, someone causes you to lose your shit; in the worst way possible | "Sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly."
I could feel the smile slowly crawl off of my face, a neutral mask replaces my features. The usual drawl I let creep into my speech was being clipped shorter and shorter with each word. By now the rest of the office had found excuses to be elsewhere during this confrontation. Save for Alvy. Alvy had just come back from the bathroom, but it looked like he wanted to shit his pants anyway. He hadn't seen anything but a smile grace my face before today, even angry it was hard to stop smiling even a little. Except in front of this guy.
Chester.
The management office the oldest stakeholder hired to get the plant out of debt sent Chester. Chester's job was to make the place profitable again. He was a very busy man, this Chester. If he wasn't pissing on someone's work without any real critique, he was pissing someone off with open allusions to layoffs. Something that was relatively against the rules amongst the old guard who were stakeholders. He looked at me with that smug grin you can only cultivate in multiple generations of terrible human behavior.
"I said, I'd like you to shine my car the way you shine those pretty banisters, handyman."
"I heard that part. Don't think I rightly heard what came after."
The sneer got wider. He looked like a comic book mob boss with that grin. It took a little of the edge off of how I felt, but it still burned hot.
"Oh that, sorry Ernie. I said if you didn't do it to my satisfaction I'd fire your Okie ass."
I took a deep breath. Let it out slow. Alvy was the only one to notice the situation and took an unconscious step back, Chester had all his attention on me.
"Kinda uncalled for, isn't it, Chester?"
"The *NAME* is *MISTER* Truemarch, Ernie Festus. You'll talk to me with deference."
"Well forgive me, Mister Truemarch. We never had cause to be so formal 'round here-."
His sneer vanished like the wind. "And that's the problem, isn't it? This entire operation is one big social club. If anyone screws up, we'll forgive them, they're having a bad day! Never mind that you're suddenly half a day behind schedule. Oh look, Jenny's child is sick, let's all take a little time to comfort her and send one of the office girls back to take care of the brat. Now Accounts Receivable isn't getting its reports fast enough."
Alvy shrank back at that. Didn't blame him at all, Receivable was his job after all.
"And then there's you. Everyone's friend the handyman who keeps this chuck-wagon schlepping along because *no one* in upper management could bring themselves to fire anyone once you've intervened. Mister gofer who's always around. Mister buddy-buddy who won't simply cut the dead weight."
Ah, here we go. He's getting to the meat now.
"That's why I'm here, you know? To cut the dead weight. To amputate the rotten limbs that drag this company down. Oh but I can't do something as simple as a layoff, your charter has half of my targets as stakeholders. They have to leave on their own. But you, you're different. You're not on the charter, I checked. I can fire your ass as easily as snapping my fingers and hire someone fresh off the truck from Nogales to do your job."
I couldn't abide this anymore.
"Lemme ask you something, Mister Truemarch." I could hear the ice settle into my voice. Trying to keep your cool in front of this guy was like trying to climb a mountain with three fingers and no feet. "Why do you think there was a charter in the first place? This place was hell before the current ownership. People were worked into the dirt. Accidents were at an all-time high. Before the workers bought out the shares, it was already paid for in the blood of those who died. Died, Mister Truemarch. Died because of heartlessness and the attitude that there'd always be another to replace the next guy."
"Sounds like my kind of people. Because that's the cold, hard truth. There will *always* be a next guy. That's the way it is now in the real world! Where people make *MONEY*! This charter is a relic."
"The charter is the heart and soul of this company."
"Then I'll tear its heart out. You're fired."
That did it. The compact was abolished.
"Alvy. You'd best be elsewhere."
"S-sorry Ernie. I... don't think I can move."
Chester hadn't quite realized what was going on just yet. He hadn't noticed midway through my drawl was no longer on the right syllables or the new way I was emphasizing my 's's or the slightly rolling 'r's. Alvy noticed. Poor Alvy, probably scared to death right now, I remember how his grandad asked me to help him fix his bike and how his grandad's grandad asked the same thing.
"You might wanna cover your eyes, Alvy."
Chester looked at me funny. "What, you think you can hit me? You gotta be a thousand years ol-AhAAHHHH!!!!"
The trash can near his desk had wrapped itself around his leg and anchored him to the floor, new spikes jutting into his flesh from the metal. This trash can was manufactured with the steel processed here. So were the rivets lining the mahogany desk which had now absorbed Chester's hand.
"Yeah, funny how that seems. You talk about tearing out the company's heart and soul, Chester. Nevermind the fact that this very heart and soul was paid for with blood from dozens, if not hundreds of sacrifices. People who suffered and died on this very spot."
The chandelier in the office was reaching out now. Alvy covered his eyes and sank to his knees. He tried to bury his head between his knees to keep Chester's cries out.
"I'll tell you something else, Chester. You know this, already, but the charter is a contract. Iron-clad. Even I have to dance to the boss's tune. But you fired me, Chester. You. FIRED. ME. AND NOW... I FEEL LIKE THE HEART AND SOUL OF THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO BE NOURISHED."
A short time later, I tapped Alvy on the shoulder. He was humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic as loud as he could. I was smiling again, how could I not?
"Alvy, you alright?"
He looked up, the place was spotless. The desk where it should be, the trash can perfectly still and not full of teeth. No stains, 'cept maybe the mahogany on the desk was a little darker grain than it started. No help for that, though.
"Where'd Chester go?"
"Chester who? Oh, the guy from the company? He left, urgent business. Looks like he's been called away by his office or something. According to the charter, in the absence of a Plant Manager, leadership decisions go to the next highest stakeholder. That's you, Alvy. Six generation stakeholder and the current Plant Manager till Ron gets back from his vacation in Miami or until those assholes he hired send another guy."
"Oh... I hope not. Uh, you're rehired?"
"Hah, good on ya, Alvy. Smart cookie. Go down and tell the folks things are alright. I hear it's Rebecca's birthday today, you think she'd like cheesecake?"
| It was like any other day in the office, but of course it was winter and this winter had been so unforgiving. Another 6 inches of snow fell today which meant we had to go broom off every single car. I put on my coat, my gloves, earmuffs and grab a snow broom and go out to tackle the lot since I know the lazy guys won't help. About 2 hours later and all 400 cars were done.
The boss thanked me again for doing the work and said he had a problem with the printer in the bullpen again. I walked over to my desk and shook the snow off and took off my winter gear. Ugh, these printers are the cheapest pieces of garbage we have. I pull the toner cartridge as I have told him to do a 1000 times and, yep a paper jam. Remove paper...reset...and it comes back online passively aggressively printing pages.
I go back to my desk to start working on the mountain of paperwork necessary to deliver two cars today. I go to call the first insurance company to get new ID cards and the local agent is closed because its saturday and who works those, oh yea I do....
Alright, time to call the national number....ring ring...ring..*hold music*...10 minutes go by...finally an agent, I give her my details and particulars and hang up, receive the e-mail with new cards...jesus christ, the fucking VIN is wrong...*call back*...*wait another 10 minutes *yea hi I just called and the VIN has a typo can i get a new batch of cards please.
E-mail arrives, cards are now missing the middle initial of the customers name...for the love of god....*call back a third time and wait 10 minutes* Hi I just received cards and while the VIN is right, the middle initial is gone now...can you send another batch please...
Finally receive correct cards, and fill out the rest of the paperwork** intercom rings " Sean please come to the sales office, Sean Sales office please"
I sluggishly get up out of my chair and re tuck my shirt, and slowly stroll to the sales office.
One of the girls who does the paperwork tells me that one car can't go, it a recall stop sale...*I think to myself "fuck..I need this car to roll today..well at least I have one I guess"* Ok well, let me call my client.
It is in that moment that I start to get frustrated, Its the last day of the month, all I need is two more cars and I get a bonus. How hard could that be? I've done it before. I just need a good deal and to deliver this other car and I'll be good.
I walk into the sale office to turn in paperwork for my second delivery and as I am doing that I get distracted by my boss. " Hey Sean, can you fix the printer again? its Jammed" " Joe I have told you like a thousand times how to fix it" "I know but you could do it just this one last time please, I'm swamped" " ok fine but next time its on you"
I go fix the printer again, the same way i do every time * stupid shitty printers, slam the toner cartridge back in the printer"*
The printer isn't printing, not even in its normal passive aggressive style like it hates its printer dad but does the work anyways. *oh look a new message...low toner, nuh uh printer I changed that last week, maybe If i take the cartridge out and back in again it will be fine*.
Take the cartridge out, and in. No change... Out and In..no change.. out and in slightly harder...no change...
I walk away from the printer slightly miffed...I'm not even the tech guy, I just pull the fucking toner cartridge, it works every time...
Alright, lets try this again, pull the cartridge and put it back in, no change...
Power cycle the machine..nope..fuck you I'm not printing...give me more toner...
At this point the only logical explanation is that the toner cartridge is not seated correctly, So out it comes and BACK IN IT GOES WITH A NICE SOLID THUNK!
Then....I hear it, a slight hiss...the cartridge violently erupts, sending projectile toner vomit all over me and making my blacker than the night sky in the country.
I close my eyes...start to breathe heavily and let out a scream of pure rage and heard nothing but my scream for what seemed like minutes.
I first smelled the dirt...and I was puzzled as to why I smelled dirt and I opened my eyes..all I could see was dust and dirt everywhere. I was in a large hole...as the dust started to clear I could see I was in the remains of my work building, but before me there was as best I could describe a cone of nothing....just flat, all the buildings all the cars the trees as far as I could see and ever widening it was just flat and that cone narrowed until it got to me. I was the point of origin.
Still in shock from what I saw and wondering if it was real, I heard a voice behind me, It was my sales manager, in the broken half of a building behind me asking if I was ok. All I tried to say was "uhh yea" and I got out the uhh and a force of power blew him back 15 feet and he slid across the floor.
I consider myself a mute now, I cannot speak or make a sound for every sound I make I wage destruction. People look at me like I am slow and I could speak, but it would kill them, I try to keep it secret and I have moved far far away from my home city so no one would find me. I no longer go by the name Sean Cassidy, I no longer have a name, for a name is useless to a man that doesn't speak.
|
Saw Huey Lewis and the News, got mad, wrote this prompt. | [WP] You are the "Go-to-guy". You're nice, smart, well-mannered, and you never lose your cool. Then one day, someone causes you to lose your shit; in the worst way possible | "Sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly."
I could feel the smile slowly crawl off of my face, a neutral mask replaces my features. The usual drawl I let creep into my speech was being clipped shorter and shorter with each word. By now the rest of the office had found excuses to be elsewhere during this confrontation. Save for Alvy. Alvy had just come back from the bathroom, but it looked like he wanted to shit his pants anyway. He hadn't seen anything but a smile grace my face before today, even angry it was hard to stop smiling even a little. Except in front of this guy.
Chester.
The management office the oldest stakeholder hired to get the plant out of debt sent Chester. Chester's job was to make the place profitable again. He was a very busy man, this Chester. If he wasn't pissing on someone's work without any real critique, he was pissing someone off with open allusions to layoffs. Something that was relatively against the rules amongst the old guard who were stakeholders. He looked at me with that smug grin you can only cultivate in multiple generations of terrible human behavior.
"I said, I'd like you to shine my car the way you shine those pretty banisters, handyman."
"I heard that part. Don't think I rightly heard what came after."
The sneer got wider. He looked like a comic book mob boss with that grin. It took a little of the edge off of how I felt, but it still burned hot.
"Oh that, sorry Ernie. I said if you didn't do it to my satisfaction I'd fire your Okie ass."
I took a deep breath. Let it out slow. Alvy was the only one to notice the situation and took an unconscious step back, Chester had all his attention on me.
"Kinda uncalled for, isn't it, Chester?"
"The *NAME* is *MISTER* Truemarch, Ernie Festus. You'll talk to me with deference."
"Well forgive me, Mister Truemarch. We never had cause to be so formal 'round here-."
His sneer vanished like the wind. "And that's the problem, isn't it? This entire operation is one big social club. If anyone screws up, we'll forgive them, they're having a bad day! Never mind that you're suddenly half a day behind schedule. Oh look, Jenny's child is sick, let's all take a little time to comfort her and send one of the office girls back to take care of the brat. Now Accounts Receivable isn't getting its reports fast enough."
Alvy shrank back at that. Didn't blame him at all, Receivable was his job after all.
"And then there's you. Everyone's friend the handyman who keeps this chuck-wagon schlepping along because *no one* in upper management could bring themselves to fire anyone once you've intervened. Mister gofer who's always around. Mister buddy-buddy who won't simply cut the dead weight."
Ah, here we go. He's getting to the meat now.
"That's why I'm here, you know? To cut the dead weight. To amputate the rotten limbs that drag this company down. Oh but I can't do something as simple as a layoff, your charter has half of my targets as stakeholders. They have to leave on their own. But you, you're different. You're not on the charter, I checked. I can fire your ass as easily as snapping my fingers and hire someone fresh off the truck from Nogales to do your job."
I couldn't abide this anymore.
"Lemme ask you something, Mister Truemarch." I could hear the ice settle into my voice. Trying to keep your cool in front of this guy was like trying to climb a mountain with three fingers and no feet. "Why do you think there was a charter in the first place? This place was hell before the current ownership. People were worked into the dirt. Accidents were at an all-time high. Before the workers bought out the shares, it was already paid for in the blood of those who died. Died, Mister Truemarch. Died because of heartlessness and the attitude that there'd always be another to replace the next guy."
"Sounds like my kind of people. Because that's the cold, hard truth. There will *always* be a next guy. That's the way it is now in the real world! Where people make *MONEY*! This charter is a relic."
"The charter is the heart and soul of this company."
"Then I'll tear its heart out. You're fired."
That did it. The compact was abolished.
"Alvy. You'd best be elsewhere."
"S-sorry Ernie. I... don't think I can move."
Chester hadn't quite realized what was going on just yet. He hadn't noticed midway through my drawl was no longer on the right syllables or the new way I was emphasizing my 's's or the slightly rolling 'r's. Alvy noticed. Poor Alvy, probably scared to death right now, I remember how his grandad asked me to help him fix his bike and how his grandad's grandad asked the same thing.
"You might wanna cover your eyes, Alvy."
Chester looked at me funny. "What, you think you can hit me? You gotta be a thousand years ol-AhAAHHHH!!!!"
The trash can near his desk had wrapped itself around his leg and anchored him to the floor, new spikes jutting into his flesh from the metal. This trash can was manufactured with the steel processed here. So were the rivets lining the mahogany desk which had now absorbed Chester's hand.
"Yeah, funny how that seems. You talk about tearing out the company's heart and soul, Chester. Nevermind the fact that this very heart and soul was paid for with blood from dozens, if not hundreds of sacrifices. People who suffered and died on this very spot."
The chandelier in the office was reaching out now. Alvy covered his eyes and sank to his knees. He tried to bury his head between his knees to keep Chester's cries out.
"I'll tell you something else, Chester. You know this, already, but the charter is a contract. Iron-clad. Even I have to dance to the boss's tune. But you fired me, Chester. You. FIRED. ME. AND NOW... I FEEL LIKE THE HEART AND SOUL OF THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO BE NOURISHED."
A short time later, I tapped Alvy on the shoulder. He was humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic as loud as he could. I was smiling again, how could I not?
"Alvy, you alright?"
He looked up, the place was spotless. The desk where it should be, the trash can perfectly still and not full of teeth. No stains, 'cept maybe the mahogany on the desk was a little darker grain than it started. No help for that, though.
"Where'd Chester go?"
"Chester who? Oh, the guy from the company? He left, urgent business. Looks like he's been called away by his office or something. According to the charter, in the absence of a Plant Manager, leadership decisions go to the next highest stakeholder. That's you, Alvy. Six generation stakeholder and the current Plant Manager till Ron gets back from his vacation in Miami or until those assholes he hired send another guy."
"Oh... I hope not. Uh, you're rehired?"
"Hah, good on ya, Alvy. Smart cookie. Go down and tell the folks things are alright. I hear it's Rebecca's birthday today, you think she'd like cheesecake?"
| Aaron had paused as he picked up the glass in reaction to what Nick had just said. The large restaurant had suddenly become the last place Aaron had thought the guy should be after dropping a bomb like that. Hell, Aaron himself felt like he shouldn't be there in the first place. But, Nick had called him up, asked if he was busy. If his date wasn't going to show, maybe Nick's brother could help at least.
"Jesus Hell, you just can't catch a break, can you?" Aaron asked, watching Nick. "You're getting fired over that?"
Nick shrugged, setting his glass down. "Not a big deal," he replied, hardly even looking up. As he matched Aaron's gaze, his soft blue eyes meeting Aaron's piercing greens, he simply stated, "Jobs come and go."
Aaron shook his head. "Not like this, Nick. You're twenty-four. I know you want to make a name for yourself, but 'Most Fired Man in New England' is not the way to go about it."
Nick chuckled. "I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."
"Don't worry? You do understand how the job market works, right?" Aaron watched in disbelief as Nick simply shrugged off his statement.
"Hey!" The phrase came from Aaron's right, a man with a deep booming voice. His shoulders were nearly twice the width of his hips, and he looked to be more muscle than brains, wearing the gray-and-red jacket of a college football team nearby.
"Oh, great," Aaron said only loud enough for Nick to hear. "Adam."
Adam Jenson had bullied Aaron all throughout high school. Despite never getting the meaning of detentions or suspensions or threats of expulsion, he had apparently made it into college.
Aaron was sinking back into his seat, almost chugging the drink. Nick, on the other hand watched the man with an uncharacteristic edge.
"How've you been?" Adam asked, stopping next to their booth.
"Please leave me alone," Aaron almost whimpered.
And Adam laughed.
Nick stood slowly.
"Ahh!" Adam spread his arms out in recognition. "Little Nicky! Coming to big brother's aid?" In one fluid motion, Adam pushed Nick back into the seat by his head.
Aaron watched, confusion set into his face, as his little brother stood again. Adam looked almost excited at the opportunity to be the high school bully again. He pushed on Nick's head again.
Nick moved quick, quicker than Aaron had ever seen. He clapped his hand over Adam's, and struck the side of the elbow with his right fist, Adam's throat with his open palm, and Adam's left shoulder, causing him to turn. Nick kicked the side of his knee, brought him down to it, and wrapped his arm around Adam's neck.
By the time anyone else noticed what was going on, Nick had won the fight.
"Don't you *dare* treat my brother like that again. Understood?"
Adam squeaked, confused and scared.
"I remember how Aaron talked about you. When he'd come home with the bruises. The black eyes. The tears."
Adam was shaking as he turned his head slowly to look at Nick. Sweat dripped down the side of his head.
"Get out."
And Adam did. |
[WP] Instead of the heroes we know, Nick Fury decides to enlist Disney Princesses to be The Avengers | “Excuse me,” said Merida, the arrows in her quiver rustling as she got to her feet. “What did you say?”
“You heard me, little girl,” replied Mulan, absent-mindedly tapping the pommel of her sword as she took a deep gulp of rice wine. “I said, you silver-spoon royalty types are all the same - never worked a day in your lives, born into the laps of luxury - do you think you can actually bring anything to this team?”
Snow White frowned, her impossibly fair skin almost glowing. “Excuse me, Mulan, but don’t you think you’re generalising there? Don’t you know how hard I worked in Queen Grimhilde’s scully?”
“Yes, yes, we’ve all heard that one,” said Cinderella, faking a yawn as songbirds whistled and sang around her. “Then you shack up with those seven...vertically-challenged people. Ugh. How you managed to get a prince to come and save you after all that...mingling together I don’t even know.”
“Oi, missy,” growled the nearest dwarf, clad in steam-powered battle armour and armed with a huge mining pick. “Sod. Off.”
“Now, now, Grumpy,” said Snow White, patting the dwarf’s metal pauldrons. “Leave the mean lady alone. She’s just bitter that she needs her Fairy Godmother to do anything.”
“That is *not* true. The animals would have helped me anyway! Right?”
The two mice on her shoulder chittered. Bruno the dog raised his head from the floor and woofed.
“*Puh-leeze*, the animals speak to me too. Isn’t that right, nightingale dear?” said Snow White.
The songbirds twittered, darting between the two feuding princesses.
“Don’t get distracted,” declared Mulan. She stood up, slamming the jug of wine down on the table so hard it shattered. “The point is, you girls who were born into royalty have nothing on the rest of us, who worked our way up from nothing.”
“That eez right,” drawled Belle in her thick French accent, nose-deep in a book as usual. “We have gotten to where we are by ourselves.”
“By *yourselves?*” asked Jasmine sarcastically. “So that squinty-eyed Shang and your hairy paramour are nobody, then? At least Merida didn’t have to run to some *guy* asking for help.” She fist-bumped Merida.
“Hey, lady,” began Mulan, but Belle finally looked up from her book and scowled.
“Do you think we need their help? I do not see ze Captain Shang or ze Beast anywhere, do you? Or any of their weapons? But you, you have your little urchin’s friend silly carpet wherever you go. What kind of stupid euphemism is ‘Magic Carpet Ride’, anyway?”
The carpet raised one of its knotted fists and waved it angrily.
“That’s because Aladdin does whatever I tell him to do,” hissed Jasmine. “And I told him to give me the carpet, so he’s mine now! You leave Beast at home because he isn’t exactly any help anymore after he turned back into that whiny little dunce, is he?”
“Girls, girls, let’s stop it with the personal attacks,” said Tiana, standing up too. “It’s pretty obvious after all that Mulan and Belle are right, and you girls just need to take it easy and-”
“I’ll show you taking it easy, frog-girl,” said Rapunzel, her long, golden locks moving by themselves in a manner that would have been terrifying if she wasn’t so pretty. “You just get married and *boom* you’re a princess, but some of us actually have been through a lot, alright? Do you think it’s easy being stuck up in a tower with only an old lady who comes to visit you all the time?”
The tension in the room was palpable. The group of stunning young women were arrayed on opposite ends of the table - Mulan, Belle, Cinderella and Tiana on one side, while Merida, Snow White (and her seven armoured dwarves), Jasmine and Rapunzel on the other.
Pocahontas sighed and joined the non-royalty side. “Look, Mulan has a point. Listen to yourself, Rapunzel; you think that being stuck in a tower is all that bad, but others have had it worse.”
“Traitor!” screamed Merida, notching an arrow to her bow faster than anyone in the room could follow. “You’re a chieftain’s daughter! You’re a born royal as much as any of us!”
“Back down, little girl,” said Pocahontas in a dangerous tone as wind began to rustle her long, dark hair - an impossible wind, given that they were all in a steel room in a Helicarrier floating somewhere above an ocean (where Ariel swam, being unable to stay on dry land and all since the divorce). “Why don’t you go running back to your mother, now?”
Snow White laughed. “Are you trying to start something? We can assure you that you won’t finish it - and I don’t mean the royal ‘we’,” she added, as the seven dwarves slid their visors down with an audible clank and steam hissed from their power armour.
“Seven? I killed seven *thousand*,” said Mulan darkly, unsheathing the sword of the long-dead Hun general with an ominous rasp. “Do you really think you stand a chance?”
“You and your convenient avalanche,” retorted Rapunzel, pulling out a frying pan from the golden folds of her hair. “Too bad for you the Director hasn’t picked up those other two princesses yet, right?”
“Bring it, sister,” said Tiana, the shadows around her suddenly whispering with ancient, sinister voodoo magic.
“Ooh, that’s scary,” mocked Jasmine, balancing expertly on top of the hovering magic carpet.
“It eez,” said Belle, unruffled, paging through a thick book. “If you knew what it eez. But that is asking too much, no?”
No-one knew who fired/threw/cast the first strike, but soon an all-out brawl broke out in the room and actually managed to wake Aurora up. She stared, horrified, as Princess clashed with princess, and ghostly, magical screams vied with the clash of blade and mining pick. Even the songbirds fought each other, darting back and forth with dizzying speed and littering the floor with colourful plumage.
“Oh no - girls, please stop! We shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves! What are you all -”
A dwarf, tossed across the room, smashed into her and almost flattened her with his armoured bulk.
“Eep,” said Bashful.
Dark clouds swirled around Aurora’s body and the dwarf found himself soaring across the room for a second time as the enraged princess transformed into a dragon.
The fighting paused.
~§~
Director Nick Fury stormed down the Helicarrier, flanked by a squad of heavily armed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. “What is going on here? Why do I hear *explosions* in my god-damned Helicarrier?”
He rounded a corner and was nearly flattened by the horde of fleeing princesses (and seven armoured dwarves).
Then he saw the dragon tearing its way out of the briefing room.
“Really? *REALLY?* I have had it with these motherfucking princesses on this motherfucking plane!”
| The icy wind blew against Nick's jacket, his cigarette burned out again. "Goddamnit" he murmured to himself as he tried (to no avail) to light another one. Why do they always have to be so difficult to find? He slowly trudged through the snow, his black boots now soaked in ice. Behind him Elsa followed, she was the only one out of the others who could help Nick navigate through this blizzard. Apparently, she wasn't able to "stop" this blizzard because it was "outside her magical dimension". Nick Fury hated excuses. "Are we getting any closer?" he yelled, the winds buffeting around him. No reply. "Elsa? Are you there?" He stopped and looked around, the white of the snow blinding his eyes. "YES I AM! We'll be there soon, don't worry about me, the cold never bothered me anywa-" "Goddamnit Elsa". Nick continued forward, he wondered how on Earth he ended up in this situation. Ever since Mr. Stark created the infinit-
An arrow whizzed past his ears.
"Elsa! We've got company!" Nick reached for his trusty side arm and would've gotten to it if not for the second arrow that pierced his shoulder. "SHIT" he howled as he clutched the arrow, maybe this wasn't a good idea, maybe he should go back to HQ and discuss this with th-. A tall figure leaped onto his back and pinned him down, the snow biting against his cheek. The figure holding his back was saying something but Nick could not understand. WHERE WAS ELSA. Fury was furious, but he could not move, and only when he heard the second voice did he realize he was about to be let go. Nick wiped his eyes with his glove and stared at both figures, one of which still holding his bow, no her bow. Standing before Nick was Mulan. | |
[WP] Instead of the heroes we know, Nick Fury decides to enlist Disney Princesses to be The Avengers | Thanos had defeated the Avengers. Nick Fury was thought to be dead, but sure enough it was just another cybernetic body double Tony Stark had rigged up.
Now alone, hiding, as one of the last survivors of the MCU. Fury was forced to seek a new team.
While searching the old SHIELD database an email popped up. Fury was perplexed. This terminal wasn't connected to any outside network. Curiously Nick Fury clicked to open the email.
"There are others out there", it read.
"This universe has been lost, but there are others. You must find the secret infinity gem... The Disney Infinity gem."
Fury scratched his head, "How could Thanos not know of this?"
Another email popped up. "It is in my universe. Here I am king. I have manipulated a group of my greatest royal legion to thwart the evil that sought my kingdom. I now extend their services to you as I fear Thanos' reach shall extend to my kingdom next... If not Star Wars."
"Use the knowledge of the Tesseract to open a portal. I cannot force my legion to fight for you. You must convince them to assemble. What I can tell you, is that their skills are varied and unmatched. One is an aquatic master - ruler of the seas. Another can summon seven powerful minions. The third has tamed a most fearsome beast who consumes his prey as they are lost in a haze of her beauty. The fourth has the ability to change matter for brief periods of time at the utterance of 'I wish'. Finally, the most powerful. A telepath who sleeps. While deep in slumber this maiden can possess any bodily figure."
Nick pulled out a cigar as he reached the last line. Biting the end off, spitting the flakey nub on the floor, his thumb snaps the flint of a zippo and cooks the end of the cigar. He reads, "It is our last hope. You must bring these heroes to your universe and prevent Thanos from escaping. Sincerely, a giant (but small) fan... M.M."
Fury was lost. He didn't know what to believe, but at this point he didn't have any other options. He clicked on the folder containing the Tesseract research documents and started looking for a way out. | The icy wind blew against Nick's jacket, his cigarette burned out again. "Goddamnit" he murmured to himself as he tried (to no avail) to light another one. Why do they always have to be so difficult to find? He slowly trudged through the snow, his black boots now soaked in ice. Behind him Elsa followed, she was the only one out of the others who could help Nick navigate through this blizzard. Apparently, she wasn't able to "stop" this blizzard because it was "outside her magical dimension". Nick Fury hated excuses. "Are we getting any closer?" he yelled, the winds buffeting around him. No reply. "Elsa? Are you there?" He stopped and looked around, the white of the snow blinding his eyes. "YES I AM! We'll be there soon, don't worry about me, the cold never bothered me anywa-" "Goddamnit Elsa". Nick continued forward, he wondered how on Earth he ended up in this situation. Ever since Mr. Stark created the infinit-
An arrow whizzed past his ears.
"Elsa! We've got company!" Nick reached for his trusty side arm and would've gotten to it if not for the second arrow that pierced his shoulder. "SHIT" he howled as he clutched the arrow, maybe this wasn't a good idea, maybe he should go back to HQ and discuss this with th-. A tall figure leaped onto his back and pinned him down, the snow biting against his cheek. The figure holding his back was saying something but Nick could not understand. WHERE WAS ELSA. Fury was furious, but he could not move, and only when he heard the second voice did he realize he was about to be let go. Nick wiped his eyes with his glove and stared at both figures, one of which still holding his bow, no her bow. Standing before Nick was Mulan. | |
[WP] Humanity meets an alien race who are awed, not by our scientific or military achievements, but by the ability of humans to create fiction. | "The aliens don't have fiction."
*"What?"*
"They don't have fiction."
*"Don't be stupid. There's an alien movie playing at the theater downtown. One of their old sci-fi things. Kind of like War of the Worlds. It won some sort of award."*
"Yeah. That's what scares me. You see that movie?"
*"Yeah, I saw it."*
"You remember how it ended?"
*"Yeah, like I said, War of the Worlds. They find a virus that kills the invaders and they're saved."*
"Make. They make a virus that kills the invaders. And they send it to the invaders' planet."
*"Yeah, okay."*
"So they wipe out an entire species."
*"Yeah, but it's just a movie. I mean, I think we even sent them War of the Worlds in return, to keep with the theme."*
"They sent us a film saying they'd wiped out a species. We sent back a recording saying we'd done the same. The difference is, they don't understand fiction."
"What we did was exchange threats." | "Cre-a-ti-vi-ty?" the iridescent, almost flower-like creature asked in wonder. "What is this creativity?"
The Triln, as they had called themselves, seemed surprised by my simple answer. An hour earlier, they'd taken me along with 15 other members who had been attending a literary fiction seminar in Ramapo. They'd proceeded to bombard us with questions about the reality in a series of fiction books, ranging from Vonnegut's Slaughter-House Five to Milne's Winnie the Pooh.
"It is what makes us human," answered another sequestered member. "It allows us to imagine things that never were, that might never be. Creativity and imagination and curiosity - they are the fundamentals of fiction."
"We do not understand," came the halting, breathy voice of what seemed to be their leader. As we had all come to realize, these aliens did not understand the concept of fiction at all. They could not process what a world without complete reality and full of wonder for what could not be could exist for as long as Earth had.
"Think about it: forget what is real for a moment. Close your...eye and open your mind," yet another author was attempting to explain. "Let your soul wander and just begin to imagine things. Don't think too hard, just let it happen."
After yet another excruciating half hour where the Triln attempted to imagine fiction, someone finally decided to ask them what they did for fun if everything was real.
"We live," they replied matter-of-factly. "We do not dwell on possibilities as you do; they are not real. So we live."
"No," I spoke up once more. "You exist, not live. You do not wonder what-ifs, you do not see what could be, you do not see beyond what can be seen. You do not truly understand what it is to live."
This seemed to rile them. "You are incorrect, human. We live, we do not need to know this fiction of yours to live. Existing and living are the same; there is no difference as you seem to think. We care about your fiction simply because we have traveled the universe and have not seen anything like it. That, and only that, is why we have not killed your otherwise infuriating race."
"Because we have the one thing you can never know? No matter how we explain it, you will not understand. Fiction is created, and to create you need to understand what it is like to be a creator. That is what we humans are - each of us a god in his and her own right. You have never even given a thought to creating; all you do is steal from others and assume ownership."
The leader began to exude a redder coloring around its edges, changing into something beautiful and terrible all at once.
"Your insolence will get you and your whole planet killed, human."
I smirked. "But then you would never understand the beauty of fiction, and, perhaps worse, you would never have any more fiction to awe you." | |
[WP] Humanity meets an alien race who are awed, not by our scientific or military achievements, but by the ability of humans to create fiction. | "Uh, you wanted to see me?" said the author as he stepped into the alien captains quarters.
"Yes" said the alien, his voice had a kind of talking underwater quality to it "please, sit"
The author looked down at the giant spike the alien had just motioned to.
"I'm good to stand"
"Suit yourself" the alien sat down on the spike. There was a suctioning sound. The author cringed.
"So…uh"
"You're wondering why you are here"
"Yes"
"We've been observing your species for quite some time"
"So the UFO sightings are real?"
"No, our cloaking technology is undetectable by humans and human technology. OUr observations have led us to believe most UFO sightings are government surveillance craft"
"Oh ok. Wait"
"In our observations humans appear largely unremarkable. In fact of all species we have observed, humans are exceedingly unremarkable"
"Uhm thank you?"
"Your technology is passable but archaic, your conflicts are neither peaceful nor species ending, you have systems that involve attempting to resolve conflict through communication but are still quite terrible at talking to each other"
"I know it's true but it still kind of hurts"
"Humans are unremarkable in all areas except one"
There was a pause, the alien readjusted on the spike.
"Uhm…"
"I believe you would call it fiction"
"Ahh. Sorry fiction?"
"Yes, you are a creator of fiction, correct?"
"Yes"
There was another pause.
"Was that everything?" said the author
"No, I would like you to tell me about fiction"
"What about it?"
"Everything"
"Every…everything, right ok, sorry if we could backtrack, no one else creates fiction"
"The universe is a large, and even though are travels have allowed us to see more of it than humans, or any other species to our knowledge, much of it is still unmapped.
It is possible, perhaps even likely that many other species create fiction. But of the 556 that we have observed humans are unique in their ability and desire to create fiction"
"OK and so you want to know…everything, about fiction"
"Yes"
"Ok well, uhm fiction is when we make up stuff"
"So it is lies"
"No. Well yes. Not really. Kind of. Yes and No?"
"So it is made up but it is not lies?"
"Well…a lie you're trying to deceive people, you make stuff up to stop people from knowing the truth. With fiction you make stuff up to try and and help people know the truth"
"So fiction is truth?"
"Well if it's good, I guess. Depends on the type of fiction"
"The type of fiction?"
"Yes well, see sometimes people make stuff up just to entertain people, I for instance make stuff up to try and make people laugh"
"And when fiction makes people laugh it does not help them know the truth"
"Well I prefer when fiction that tries to teach me something also makes me laugh"
"Why?"
"Well some of the truths people get at are kind of harsh, so it's nice to have laughter as a counterbalance"
"So humans need fiction to cope with reality?"
"I'm not sure I would say need…"
"My planet also uses humour to combat harshness. It is why we teach all our warriors to laugh while they slaughter our enemies"
"Well that sounds…terrifying"
"If humans do not need fiction then why do you have it?"
"Well we don't need it but I think it's maybe one level below need"
"Want?"
"Is there really no middle ground between need and want?"
"If you do not need something, but still seek it, you merely want it"
"I guess that makes sense. Yes we want fiction?"
"Why?"
"Uhm…"
"Would truth not be a better way of teaching truth?"
"Uhm…well…uhh…ok…metaphors"
"Pardon?"
"Do you have metaphors?"
"We have observed them in your species and are familiar with them, but we do not employ them in speech"
"Right but like, ok say I crash my car and the bill is really expensive instead of saying the real price for repairs I could say the repairs are costing me a million dollars, to really drive home that the repairs are expensive"
"Would that not be hyperbole"
"Oh shit"
"And our observations have suggested most humans do not and will never have or even see a million dollars. Wouldn't the actual price be a better metric for humans to judge the cost by?"
"Well yeah, but they don't have a million dollars so it's a big number for them so it really drives home how expensive it is"
"Isn't there a chance that a human could not realize this is fiction and believe that the repairs are that much. Could that not lead to confusion, where a human believes you to be in possession of a million dollars? They could be upset when they find out it's not true"
"I guess it could happen but it's not likely…"
"Why do humans hate being deceived and yet love fiction?"
"Well because…uhm…ok see because they believe the lies because they want to believe the lies"
"Because the lies teach them truths?"
"Well no usually lies help them run from the truth"
"So humans don't like the truth?"
"Uhm well yes and no"
"So they like the truth sometimes and not others"
"I guess yeah, whenever it's convenient but anyway, they want the lies to be true and then they learn that they aren't and they're upset"
"Because what they want to be true isn't?"
"Well yeah and also they might be angry for buying into it but with fiction, they maybe want to know it's not true, but they know it's not true so when they accept it as uhm…"true" I guess, then they get to live the lie without being deceived" said the author, his voice rising at the end, asking a question to no one in particular.
"And despite not being true they can learn truth from it?"
"Again they can if it's good and they're paying attention"
"So good art teaches truth?"
"Art's kind of subjective but yeah I think good art teaches truth"
"So fiction is both lies and truth?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you for your time, this has been most enlightening"
"It has?"
"Yes"
"Good then can you explain it back to me because I have no idea what I just said"
"A joke, you do know what you said, but are still kind of unclear on fiction. The idea that you wouldn't know is supposed to be humorous"
There was a pause.
"We will have someone escort you back down the the planet surface"
The author turned to leave, then turned around.
"Before I go…"
"You wish to ask about religion"
"Are you guys telepathic"
"We are neither all "guys" nor telepathic"
"Sorry guys is like…a sort of fiction. I guess. Don't adopt that one though, it will make dealing with humans easier"
"Everyone we have talked to has asked about religion"
A moment of silence.
"Every planet observed has some form of what you would call religion, even ours. It is possible that it is true, it's possible that it is lies. It is possible that it is fiction, truth out of lies, lies that species willingly inhabit knowing they are false. There are those on every planet who believe that"
"I feel like there is a but coming"
"With each new planet we discover, with each new species we observe and with each new fact we learn, we find ourselves less and less qualified to say"
"oh"
"I see now that it is questions like this that might drive a species to create fiction"
"You have no idea" | "Cre-a-ti-vi-ty?" the iridescent, almost flower-like creature asked in wonder. "What is this creativity?"
The Triln, as they had called themselves, seemed surprised by my simple answer. An hour earlier, they'd taken me along with 15 other members who had been attending a literary fiction seminar in Ramapo. They'd proceeded to bombard us with questions about the reality in a series of fiction books, ranging from Vonnegut's Slaughter-House Five to Milne's Winnie the Pooh.
"It is what makes us human," answered another sequestered member. "It allows us to imagine things that never were, that might never be. Creativity and imagination and curiosity - they are the fundamentals of fiction."
"We do not understand," came the halting, breathy voice of what seemed to be their leader. As we had all come to realize, these aliens did not understand the concept of fiction at all. They could not process what a world without complete reality and full of wonder for what could not be could exist for as long as Earth had.
"Think about it: forget what is real for a moment. Close your...eye and open your mind," yet another author was attempting to explain. "Let your soul wander and just begin to imagine things. Don't think too hard, just let it happen."
After yet another excruciating half hour where the Triln attempted to imagine fiction, someone finally decided to ask them what they did for fun if everything was real.
"We live," they replied matter-of-factly. "We do not dwell on possibilities as you do; they are not real. So we live."
"No," I spoke up once more. "You exist, not live. You do not wonder what-ifs, you do not see what could be, you do not see beyond what can be seen. You do not truly understand what it is to live."
This seemed to rile them. "You are incorrect, human. We live, we do not need to know this fiction of yours to live. Existing and living are the same; there is no difference as you seem to think. We care about your fiction simply because we have traveled the universe and have not seen anything like it. That, and only that, is why we have not killed your otherwise infuriating race."
"Because we have the one thing you can never know? No matter how we explain it, you will not understand. Fiction is created, and to create you need to understand what it is like to be a creator. That is what we humans are - each of us a god in his and her own right. You have never even given a thought to creating; all you do is steal from others and assume ownership."
The leader began to exude a redder coloring around its edges, changing into something beautiful and terrible all at once.
"Your insolence will get you and your whole planet killed, human."
I smirked. "But then you would never understand the beauty of fiction, and, perhaps worse, you would never have any more fiction to awe you." | |
[WP] A loving couple promised to take their lives together by jumping off a cliff. One jumped, and one didn't. Describe what goes through the mind of the one that keeps the promise as he/she falls. | *…now…*
They say your life flashes before your eyes when death finally comes to take you, but it wasn't my life I saw when I jumped. It was his. Mama said he was bad for me the first moment she laid eyes on him, but she didn’t know him like I did. I never could tell how she thought she knew him without ever getting to know him first. I lost my friends over him, but I stuck by my decision. I was loyal.
*Where is he? Why can’t I find him?*
Even when things got bad, I stayed true. He loved me in his own way. Protected me. He knew where to get extra money when we got hungry. He was a wizard with making my paycheck stretch. I never asked what how because I loved him. I trusted him. It was both of our decision to jump after he got into trouble. They were going to put him in jail and force us apart. When we exchanged vows, he said no man could take us apart if God put us together.
His hand left mine when we jumped. I knew it might happen, but I didn’t scream. I’m not afraid. This is for us. Wherever we end up, we’ll get there together. My body finally spins around enough that I can see him. He didn’t jump with me. I don’t have long before I hit the ground and I can’t understand why. Was this a test? Have I passed it?
Then it comes to me. I never questioned the insurance policies he took out when we first started dating. He was only protecting me after all.
*Why is he smiling?*
| The sea brewed far below them, crashing against the crags in a desperate attempt to grasp the couple standing at the cliff edge and drag them into the foamy depths. It was impatient to drown their fragile souls in the murky abyss. They stared at the foreboding depths, and she squeezed his hand more tightly, taking a step back.
"We have to do this, Lidia. We have no other choice!" he yelled over the wind whistling in their ears.
"Maybe there's a way!" she said, holding back her sobs. "We can leave the country! We can use the money to buy new identities, start a family, and - "
He grabbed her shoulders so that she faced his sorrowful eyes. "There's no way, darling. They know. A witness has footage of you doing it. We would be stopped in our escape before we even begun."
Her sobs shook her body as her fate loomed over her. She only ever wanted to be with him, and now she couldn't even have that.
"I can't lose you, Jeremy," she whispered.
He rested his head against hers. "You won't. We do this together, like always. Don't think of this as an end, but a new beginning."
She nodded lightly.
"Do you remember how we used to run through the crowds after a job?" he asked.
She sniffled. "I'd have to drag you along, lazy bum."
He chuckled softly, but his smile didn't reach his eyes. "Yes, yes you did. This isn't any different, Lidia. All we have to do is run."
He grabbed her hand and led them back about ten paces from the cliff edge.
"It's now or never," he said, giving her hand a light squeeze.
"I love you," she said.
"I'll be right behind you."
Then they were off, sprinting. She shut her eyes, imagining the crowds taking second glances as she weaved her way around them. She felt his hand gripping hers reassuringly. He would always be there to run with her. Then the ground shifted away and she was flying above the Earth, and she imagined she had finally managed to finally escape. No one could catch them now. A soft laugh escaped her lips as she embraced the new found freedom.
Yet she could feel it taking over. It was dragging her down, back to the Earth, to prison. Fear clawed at her heart, and she felt his fingers slip from her grasp. The terror kept pulling her heart downwards and she opened her eyes.
She saw him through the hair whipping around her face. He was growing further and further away. Each inch that tore them further apart shredded at her heart. He waved down at her and she swore she saw a grin spreading across his face.
The fall felt endless, each passing moment conjuring up a thousand doubts in her mind. She didn't need to jump. She could have found a way. *They* could have found a way. She could have left the country, stolen a boat, something.
But now she was alone, cascading into darkness. She could hear the swirling sea crashing against the rocks, ready to overwhelm her like her tumultuous thoughts. He didn't even say he loved her. He wouldn't grant her that kindness. Her pain forced her to scream all of her emotions at once.
"Jeremy!!!"
But her guttural cry was a whisper in her ears as the wind howled as she fell. Her mind stilled and her body went limp, as though her yell drained her of all energy.
Dread petrified her. It was not the sea or the rocks, or even the prospect of death. It was the realization she may never have been loved at all.
| |
[WP] A loving couple promised to take their lives together by jumping off a cliff. One jumped, and one didn't. Describe what goes through the mind of the one that keeps the promise as he/she falls. | "Alright, on the count of three?"
"Yes."
"One"
"Two"
"Three"
"Oh my god, no what are we.. What? What's happening? Why didn't he jump? Did he just kill me? Oh my god no."
As her body met with the harsh, rigid ground, her last thought was of her little sister. How could she have been so selfish and naive to throw her entire life away for this guy who she had only met a couple of months earlier? All questions were silenced by the uncaring punctuation that closed off her 21 years of life.
--
"That's right, you stupid girl. You loved me so much you thought you'd die with me. You came all the way out of the city with me, down these train tracks to this bridge over the ravine and you killed yourself for me. You're pathetic."
Dustin smirked as he gazed down at the mess that was left of Annie. This was the third girl he did this to and each time it became more and more enjoyable. Dustin felt as though he absorbed their essence when they died and he became more whole and satisfied. He couldn't wait to find another.
--
"Hey, Jim, I forgot to slow down through that last town. I know, I know, my bad. I didn't see anyone so I don't think there'll be any complaints, but I'm a couple minutes ahead of schedule. Can you check if I'm still clear to proceed or should I slow down? Yeah, she's running fine. All 107 cars are running smooth down the track. No problems. Oh wait. Shit. There's some kid on the fucking bridge!"
Vincent yanked down on the pull-cord, sounding the train's horn and he jammed the brakes on. The train screached and wailed in terrible harmonies but the momentum kept her marching forward in protest.
As the kid on the track heard the sounds he spun and greeted the train with an open mouth and wide eyes. Vincent swore and looked away as blood splattered the windows. Minutes later, the train came to a stop, satisfied with its accomplishment. This was the third asshole it killed since 1995. | “Three, two, one, jump!”
Oh, Jesus, this is a lot higher than I thought it was. Maybe suicide wasn’t the right answer. No, no, it definitely was. If we can’t be together in life, we will be together in the afterlife. As long as he’s by my side, it was the right choice. We’ll die together as lovers, our two bodies broken at the base of this cliff and locked together in death for eternity. Wait, where is he? Did he not—he didn’t jump. What the hell? He didn’t jump.
He’s probably going to jump. Yeah, he’s going to jump. Look, he’s got his foot on the edge of the cliff, ready to commit this final act with me. God, I love him so much—I don’t care what the others say. We’re just perfect for each other. There he goes—oh, no, he’s second guessed himself. He just wants to make sure he isn’t going to land on me. That’s sweet of him, he’s always been so sweet. That’s why I love him, because he truly cares about me. Here he—nope, backed out. Okay, that’s fine. He’s just waiting, that’s it. Just wants to see where I land before he jumps. That’s just so sweet of him. God dammit, I wish he’d jump. Please jump.
Seriously, what the fuck? I leaped off on three, we agreed on that. Count to three and then jump. I made it so clear. Did he mishear me? I said it pretty loudly, the “jump.” I didn’t whisper it or anything. He definitely heard me. What the fuck? Why didn’t he jump? Is he serious right now? He’s just watching as I tumble through the air. That’s not cool, we were supposed to do this together. Is he fucking kidding me? Why isn’t he jumping? What a god damn pussy. It’s not that bad, it’s just a lot of falling and not much else. I could do it with my eyes shut. Look, they’re shut. And he still hasn’t jumped. God fucking dammit.
Come on, jump. Please. Please, for the love of god, jump. Please, please, please jump. Hello? Why is he just looking at me like that, with those wide eyes. Wait, is that him? Is that him jumping? No, dammit, that’s a bird. What the hell? Why won’t he jump? Please jump. Oh my god, please jump. Why didn’t I ask him if he was positive before I did this? I mean, I can’t really turn around and ask for a restart. Can I? Hello? Can someone stop me from falling off this cliff? I’d really like to talk to my boyfriend about why he isn’t god damn fucking jumping right now.
I’m going to die, this is it. Shit, god dammit, I’m dying. I’m already dead, I just haven’t realized it yet. What the hell, we were supposed to do this together. He was going to be by my side when we died, now I’m alone. It’s just me and that stupid bird, and soon it will be me alone in death. I won’t know anybody in the afterlife, except for Grandpa, but that’s it. He won’t even want to hang out with me, he’s too much older. This sucks, this is the worst. Dammit, I can’t believe I did this. I’m such an idiot. I am going to die alone and scared and nothing will make it any better. I can’t believe I even thought I loved him, we’ve only known each other for like two months. I should’ve known the kind of man he was, that my mom was right when she said “A sixteen year old shouldn’t be dating a 32 year old man.” I’m so dumb and I’m so dead.
Okay, okay. I’m going to die. Honestly, that’s fine. I’m okay with this. He’ll keep on living, he’ll make his own life. Maybe he’ll meet someone new and they’ll be happy together. That’s really for the best, I wasn’t meant for this world anyway. He was, he’s got that motivation that I lack. He’ll do great. I mean, yes, he doesn’t have a job right now and lives at home, but that’s temporary. He’s going to do so well. Really, this actually turned out better than I thought. In fact, I’m quite glad I jumped. Now I won’t hold him back, he can keep on being the man he was meant to be. Maybe Mom was right, anyway. I’m only 16—it wasn’t like he and I were going to be the only people for each other, now that I think about it. He’ll find someone new, I’ll be dead. I mean, I would rather not be dead, but that’s fine. I accept it. I am just happy he’ll be around too. I kind of wish I hadn’t been so spontaneous. Whatever, though, as long as he’s still alive, it was all worth it.
Oh, no, there he goes. Now he’ s jumped.
| |
[WP] You're a bellhop carrying a guests bags. You see part of their case is undone and inside you see a small child. | You wouldn't think that the crummiest hotel in the worst part of town would be booming, but we do, in no small part due to crime. The hotel I work at, the old Breezy Hotel, has millions pass from one another in shady deals every week. Now, probably only a few thousands actually passed through our doors; mostly we gave neutral ground for negotiations. Hotter stuff got sent off to shadier places.
Now, imagine my surprise when my boss hands me 2k just to handle a deal going down in our nice, decrepit conference room. We never get personally involved, but I'm pretty suspicious that the silver briefcase may have changed my boss' mind. As for me, money was money and I was running low on beer. I gave my manager a hundred to keep off my back til' night. Going into a hot situation while sleep deprived was a bad idea, tho I also just wanted to kick back.
I woke almost exactly half an hour before showtime; you learn to have precise naps very quickly when there's always trouble around. I check my dusty uniform, years old, then my grungy face, ugly as ever, then head to the front.
I keep an impassive face as large, buff men stroll past me, but inside I'm screaming at myself. At a glance, they look like the regular local muscle, but the efficient, quick pace and impeccable uniforms are a far cry from the usual lumbering muscle-brains that usual visit our fine establishment. Two thousand to mess with these guys? What an idiot.
A few minutes later, a large bag is handed to me. Not thrown, like the usual bags, but handed gently to me. A quiet command is given for me not to move my hands. I have an urge to twist my hair, my usual stress reliever, but instead I stay stock still. The men talk with each other and perhaps a few of them leave and return, but I'm too out of it to hear anything.
After what feels like hours, I'm given another set of commands. Go to the room, place the bag, then wait. My arms are aching, so I gladly comply.
I quicken my pace when I'm out of view of the men. No way was I going to be near them longer than necessary. I rest the bag on the desk then wait. And wait. And wait.
I check the clock; it had actually been two hours. I glance over at the bag and... did it always look like that? I look around, but nothing else had changed. I look back at the bag. The zipper was definitely closed when he had received it.
Carefully, I stood up. Just zip it up, I told myself, just zip it. I reached out and grabbed the zipper.
Help me.
I zipped the bag shut. I never looked inside. I hadn't seen anything. I could say that truthfully. 2k, I thought, 2k for this.
I don't remember what came after.
When I came to, I was standing outside my home. I had just short of two thousand and a memory of a bag.
A normal day, I decided. Today was a normal day. | I try to hold back a gasp as I look at the young baby. She looks right back at me with her shimmering black eyes.
"Googoo, gaga?" the girl squeals to me.
"Lady Gaga?" I ask, confused.
"Nwo nwo, meh mommyo?"
"Nonsense," I reply. I wave it off.
But what is a little kid doing inside of a bag? This wasn't making any sense. Then, I notice something in the child's hand. I grab it quickly, wondering what it is. It is a note. It reads *Her parents' phone number is 403-892-3956. Call them and ask for $1 million. -K*
This is kidnapping, I realize, they're using this kid to get 1 million dollars!
"Alistair!" my annoyed boss calls to me from the front counter, "get to work already! Room number for that luggage is 204."
"Alright, Mrs. Kohl!" I yell back.
Quickly, I push the luggage cart to the elevator and get in. I press the button to go to floor 2. As I wait to reach the level, I think about what to do. Should I give the baby to the guest? That would be ruining this kid's life! I shake my head at the thought. I can't do that. Finally, I think of an idea. It seems stupid but it can work. I'll take the baby out of the bag, put her in the elevator, and give the kidnapper an empty bag. I'll try to cover my face a bit when I get to the room so the kidnapper doesn't remember my face and then, take the kid somewhere safe when I get into the elevator again. Hopefully, the man won't notice that the bag is empty until I leave the room to escape. *Great plan, Alistair,* I think to myself, *hopefully it won't backfire...*
I take the child out of the bag and place her onto the elevator ground. Surely, she can survive this even if I sacrifice. I pull my bellhop hat lower to cover of my face. Before I can say goodbye, the elevator doors creak open. I race out and pull the luggage cart with me, watching the doors close again. I wave farewell and run to room 204. Knocking on the door, I feel a tingle up my spine. The door opens. Nervous, I walk inside. The door shuts behind me.
"H-huh?" I stutter, shocked.
I look around the room. It is dark and shady, with the blinds closed. I search the surroundings for the guest. My eyes land upon a tall slender male, a hat casting a shadow on his face.
"Uh, sir?" I ask. Maybe he is sleeping.
"Have you brought the luggage?" the man asks in a deep voice, "it contains some important contents."
"Y-yes, sir," I answer, gesturing to the luggage cart.
"Great, thank you."
My hands shaking, I remove the luggage from the cart and place it on the ground.
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" I ask, my voice cracking.
"No," the man replies, "thank you for bringing my luggage."
I bow down a bit and notice him slowly unzip the bag which had contained the child. Shuffling my feet, I reach for the door. I twist the knob and stroll out, closing the door behind me.
"Hey! I'm missing something in my luggage!" the man's voice echoes through the hall.
I make a dash for it, sprinting to the elevator. I spam the key to go down. Then, I turn around, meeting the face of the kidnapper. In his hand, he holds a gun.
"Ahh!" my voice squeaks, scared to death.
A smirk spreads across his face. "Imma blast you to hell, little boy!" he shouts.
"No!" I try to protest. At least the girl is still safe...
"Too late," the man yells at me, grinning.
The last thing I see is the man pulling the gun trigger.
|
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